“Who taught you?”
“Do you know of the Peacock? There were some good-humoured men on board. Right after that, it was the O’Cain. I cannot imagine why your Tsar thought it wise to get mixed up with the Americans, but who am I to say so? Your men were good enough teachers of your language.”
“I’ve never heard of those ships. I come from the Sviatoi Nikolai.”
“Yes, Captain Slobodchikov said there would be more ships—Russian ships—but we haven’t seen any yet. Mostly it’s the English and the Americans.”
“Our brig passed this coast about two weeks ago.”
He smiles. “We have much to discuss. Welcome to Tsoo-yess.”
He has a complicated name crowded with hard consonants and long vowels. I attempt it, but he laughs and tells me to call him Makee. Now I want to laugh—poppy seed!—but it would be unkind and rude to laugh at his name. He mangles Anna Petrovna Bulygina—such a simple name!—and we end with agreement that he’ll just call me Anna, like the others. He pronounces it “Anna,” in the Russian way.
He invites me to sit beside him on a bench and lays his rattle between us. His is carved in the shape of a fish and there’s a person clutched in its jaws. Four men, including the moustached toyon who came here with me, sit alongside us. Others—including women and children—either sit or stand in a semicircle before us. A baby nearby fusses until its mother pulls it to her breast. I can hear the sucking, gulping, and a happy chirping sound coming from the baby.
“I wish I could offer you tea,” Makee says. “Your people are quite obsessed with it, aren’t you? But this will have to do.” A woman with her hair tightly tied back offers me a small wooden bowl of warm liquid that smells like tree needles. There’s a white, crescent-shaped scar on the back of her right hand. I sip the drink—it’s hot and bitter—and cradle the bowl to my chest. After the journey, the drink and the hospitality are comforting.
“Thank you,” I say to Makee. “That’s very kind. Now—if you would allow me to speak bluntly for a moment—where am I?”
He smiles sympathetically. “You’re in Tsoo-yess.”
“And why am I here?”
“The Chalats have brought you.” He points with his chin toward the men who were in my canoe.
“But why? The others—the people I’m with—they’ll be wondering where I am.”
Makee smiles again. “The people you’re with, so I am told, are quite hopelessly lost in the forest.”
“We’re not lost. We’re trying to get down the coast to meet a ship that’s expecting us. But . . . we’ve run into some . . . unfortunate difficulties.”
Makee peers at me, his brow furrowed. “If you will now allow me to speak bluntly—what are you doing in our territory? What do you want?”
“We’re on a mission—with the Russian-American Company. We’re here to trade with you; we’re also looking for an empty place where we might be able to build a settlement.”
“I see.” Makee’s smile disappears.
“We’re here in the name of the Tsar.”
Makee turns to the four men sitting around him and speaks to them in his language. They look at me, then him, then back at me again.
When he finishes, Makee turns to me once more and says, “Did your Tsar tell you to take all their salmon?”
It takes me a moment to figure out what he means. He means the dried slabs of fish we took from the little abandoned hut we discovered that day on the riverbank. “We didn’t.” It wasn’t all the salmon. “We were hungry. We didn’t know it belonged to anybody.”
“They were going to eat that fish this winter. Do you understand what will happen to them now?”
“I’m sorry. We didn’t know,” I stammer. “We left them some beads. And a robe. Didn’t they tell you about the beads?” I remember the inadequate piles we left behind. How I said nothing.
“Did your Tsar also tell you to shoot at them with your muskets? And before that, what you did to the Quileutes on the beach?” He doesn’t allow me to respond. He speaks again to the four men and while he does, everyone listens.
I think again about the dead boy with the ragged hole that opened his chest. Sand lay on his cheek and in his hair like dust. We left him there so the koliuzhi could come back for him.
Makee finally turns back to me. “There have been so many problems since your ship arrived.”
I open my hands and plead to Makee. “Then let us go. If you let me go, I’ll tell the others what you said, and we’ll leave. We won’t cause you any more difficulties if you’ll just take me back to the others.”
“But Anna—I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The Chalats need food for the winter. To replace what you took.”
“We have no food!” I cry. “We have nothing to eat ourselves!”
“They know that. They’ve come to us for food.”
“Then why can’t you tell them to take me back?”
“You’ve misunderstood.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You’re staying here now. This is a trade. You’re what they’ve brought in exchange for this food.”
Makee explains the terms of the trade. The Chalat Tsar has two problems: he needs food for his people, and he wants to stop the stealing and the attacks. He thought the easiest way would be to trade us back to our own people, and to encourage us to leave. So, starting with me, the Tsar tried to exchange us for muskets and powder. According to Makee, the muskets would solve both the Tsar’s problems. They’d make it easier to hunt through the winter—and help the Chalats to protect themselves from any further attacks we might launch.
When the crew refused to trade, Makee says, the Tsar had no choice.
“The lady doctor is staying with the Chalats. One man has gone to the Cathlamets and the other will stay with the Quileutes. And you’re here.”
By dividing us up, Makee says, the Tsar ensures no village is the sole subject of endless attacks. And no single village will have to trade away much of its winter supplies to make up for what we stole.
“You can’t do this!” I say. “It’s wrong.”
Makee turns to the four men and speaks. An old man whose sunken, bony chest is visible from beneath his cedar vest says something and pauses. Makee replies at length.
When he finishes, he says, “Anna, it’s better you stay here. Besides—I’ll get you home. Maybe even Russia, if that’s what you want.”
“How?”
“The next time we see a ship,” he says, “we’ll go out to meet it. If they’re willing, I’ll trade you and they’ll take you to your home.”
Home. Maybe even Russia. There might be a way out of here that doesn’t depend on the Kad’iak. I’d never dreamed such a thing could be possible. But at what cost? Trading in human life is wrong. People are born free and equal. Our Tsar has embraced this and many other principles of enlightened thought. Slavery was abolished before my parents were born. And though the condition of serfs has improved with reforms for the state’s peasants and the free agriculturalists, I’ve heard my father’s friends arguing long and hard over how much further the Tsar must go.
Even Timofei Osipovich knows about egalitarianism, though he’d use a simpler word for it. He said on the riverbank that a person’s freedom is the most precious thing on earth.
Still, regardless of the lofty principles debated around my parents’ dinner table, Makee offers what may be the only realistic way out of this horrible predicament. My father would see the practicality of the arguments right away. I think I know what he would say.
“I want to go home,” I say, “but . . .”
Makee bristles. “You have no choice. Anyway, you wouldn’t be the first stranger whose passage home I arranged. Too-te-yoo-hannis Yoo-ett—you must have heard about him.”
I can hardly understand. “Who?”
“Too-te-yoo-hannis Yoo-ett. He was with the Mowachahts for many years. Mokwinna wouldn’t allow him to leave. But I helped
him.”
Makee speaks to one of the four men and the man disappears. When he returns a moment later, he hands something to Makee. Makee holds it out to me.
It’s one of the blunt, horn-shaped tools that I’ve seen hanging from the neck and shoulders of koliuzhi men. The dead boy on the beach had one attached to a sinew. But this one is different. It’s made of burnished metal, engraved with the same eyes, mouths, and hands that are found on the totem poles, house posts, and wooden boxes.
I take it from Makee. It’s heavy, but its weight is balanced along its length. It curves with exquisite gracefulness. Other than the silver hair ornament worn by that woman in the Tsar’s village, I’ve never seen anything like it here. Only the finest metalsmiths in Petersburg, the ones who make the samovars and tea trays for princes and princesses, could have crafted it.
“What is this?”
“It’s a . It’s a war club.”
“Cheetoolth? Did you make it?”
“No, not me. Too-te-yoo-hannis Yoo-ett made it for me. He was going to make me a harpoon too, but Mokwinna wouldn’t let him.”
“Who was this man—this Too-te-yoo—” I hesitate.
“Too-te-yoo-hannis. He’s American. He was captured by Mokwinna long ago. He spent several years with the Mowachahts. Mokwinna wouldn’t let him go because he made so many nice metal things. Mokwinna became quite rich trading them.
“But the American wasn’t happy. He wanted to go home. And when I was visiting Yuquot, he secretly asked me to help him escape. He wrote a letter and begged me to give it to any sea captain I met. Mokwinna would have been furious if he’d known. I gave it to the captain of the Lydia. I heard later that he convinced Mokwinna to release Too-te-yoo-hannis Yoo-ett.”
I turn the object over. I believe Makee’s story.
“When could we expect the next ship?”
“It’s hard to say. There aren’t any ships in winter. The sea is too stormy; later, in the spring, they’ll be back.”
“And what about the others? My husband—and the rest of the crew.”
“Your husband is with you?”
“Of course. Could you arrange his rescue as well? Could you arrange for us all to be released?”
“I can try. If I’m not successful, perhaps you’ll be able to arrange it yourself once you’re free.”
He speaks to the four men, and then the people who’ve been watching and listening. When he finishes, they all get up—Makee included—and leave me on the bench with my now-cold bowl of tea and a feeling that everything might work out after all.
When it’s time to eat that evening, I’m ushered to Makee’s side. The moustached toyon sits on his other side. A woman with two plaits as thick as the rope on the brig sets a tray of food before me.
Makee says, “This is my wife.” She’s older than me but not as old as my mother. She has a broad and certain face, lips that turn up at the corners even when she’s not smiling, and she wears a cedar dress that covers her to her ankles. There are round shells in her earlobes and bracelets on both her wrists.
“Wacush,” I say, and she looks to Makee. He says something briefly to her, and she smiles before she returns to the cooking boxes.
The tray contains fish and grease. There’s also something brown that looks like a crooked finger. I find another, and another, barely concealed by the grease. They appear to be roots. I cautiously squeeze one. The skin opens and something dry, flaky, and white appears through the crack.
Potato. It’s roasted potato.
When I look up, Makee’s smiling.
“You may also have onion and cabbage—but you’ll have to cook it yourself. We don’t like them, and no one knows what to do with them.”
“Where do you get these vegetables?”
“We take them from the Spanish garden. They left our coast many years ago, but their garden still grows. I’ll take you there soon.”
The idea of a garden of vegetables seems as strange and wonderful as boarding a ship bound for Russia. “Thank you.”
Makee’s wife returns, then sits beside me. We start to eat, sharing the food in the tray. I watch her from the corner of my eye, aware that she’s also watching me.
Later, the young woman with the crescent-shaped scar on her hand gives me a woven mat and a soft animal skin. It’s thin and frayed at the edges. The bristly brown hair has worn off in patches and it’s too small to cover me and my legs. She indicates where I’m to make my bed. When I go outside to relieve myself, no one follows, but it’s so dark, and the sea, so much closer here, roars. I take care of my business, then locate my Polaris. She’s extra bright tonight, as if all the stars she’s made of have aligned. I bid her a good night before I run back inside.
When I wake in the morning, I notice that the moustached toyon is nowhere to be seen, and when I go outside to relieve myself, I see the canoes that brought me here have gone. They’ll carry back my news to share with the others. I only regret that they have no way to tell Maria what good fortune I’ve stumbled upon. I wish there was some way to tell Nikolai Isaakovich, too. Perhaps he’d be more resolute if he knew there was hope.
“Anna?” Makee calls me to the bench later in the morning. He flicks back his coattails before he sits and tips his hat back so his eyes are no longer hidden in the brim’s shadow. “Did you sleep comfortably?”
I nod, thinking about how Maria and I had shared bedclothes when I was with the Chalats, and how even though my covering here is so thin and small, the space I had last night was unexpectedly large.
“Good. As I said yesterday, it could be some time before a ship appears, and I can’t predict whether the captain will be willing to trade. So your rescue could take longer than any of us expect.”
“I understand the situation,” I murmur. “I’m content to wait until the circumstances are right.”
Makee smiles. “You will be treated well here and though it may not meet the expectations of a Russian noblewoman, perhaps you will be comfortable enough. You may find our ways odd. Nonetheless, you will feel better if you do as we do.”
Not far from the bench where we sit, the woman with the crescent-shaped scar on her hand watches us. She’s dressed differently than she was yesterday. Her cedar bark cape is wrapped tightly around her neck, and a cord holds it around her waist. Her skirt reaches her ankles. Her feet are bare. Her hands are folded around some coils of cords.
“Go,” Makee says, indicating the woman. “Go with—” And he says a name that sounds like Inessa.
“Go where?” I ask.
He says something to the woman and she replies briefly.
“She’ll show you where we collect wood for the fire. And after you come back, you’ll go out with her for water.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Anna, you have work to do. Today, you will gather firewood and bring water with—.” And he says the name again, but I can’t quite catch it. It still sounds like Inessa.
“But—I can’t do that. I don’t know how.”
His face looks like my father’s when he’s disappointed in me. “Even a child could do such simple tasks,” he admonishes. “But she will show you, if necessary.” He frowns when he sees my expression. “You did not expect to be idle here, did you?”
“No,” I say, aware that I sound peevish but unable to stop myself. “Isn’t there other work I could do?”
“Like what?” He waits, but I’ve seen enough of the koliuzhi way to know that my accomplishments have little meaning here. Nobody is clamouring to keep a log of the stars. Nobody is embroidering dinner napkins. Nobody is conjugating French verbs or learning the steps to the mazurka.
“If you are going to stay with us, you will have to work with us.” He rises. “Everyone here has responsibilities. You will need to do your share. Now, go with her. Go, and do whatever she does.” He heads for the door and his form disappears into the daylight.
I follow the woman I now think of as Inessa. She doesn’t even look to see if I’m
behind. Her hair is freshly combed, and again, very tightly tied back. Her single plait bounces against her cape. The cords swing from her left hand as she walks down a trail that leads into the forest. Just like Koliuzhi Klara, her movement through the trees is easy, even with bare feet.
There’s wood all around us, but for reasons I don’t comprehend, she walks right by it.
As we go deeper into the forest, the ground becomes spongier, and the light dims. We tread past lofty trees and drooping moss. The sound of the sea disappears, replaced by the sighs of the wind in the canopy far overhead.
Inessa leaves the trail. I follow, climbing over rotting logs and roots that buckle up out of the soil. Ahead, she stops and drops the cords. She leans over a fallen tree. With one foot planted squarely on the trunk, she twists a thin branch until it snaps. She throws it down, then wrenches off another, and throws it onto the pile of wood she’s started.
There are so many sticks everywhere. They’re probably wet, but they’ll dry soon enough. This should be easy. I choose one—it’s not heavy—and I add it to Inessa’s pile. The next one is slightly thicker and dappled with curls of pale lichen. I untangle it from the thatch and place it on our pile.
Inessa looks at the thick branch, then me, and laughs. She kicks the branch.
“What are you doing?” I cry.
My branch shatters, flaky as pastry. It’s rotten. It could never burn.
I wander away looking for better wood. I try to find a tree like the one Inessa is working on. As I search, I hear snap after snap of breaking branches as she builds her pile. The snaps grow distant, but I still can’t find a fallen tree that’s not completely rotten. I pick up a small stick that looks good. Then Inessa calls.
“šuuk!”27
I have only one stick, but I start to head toward the sound of her voice.
She calls out again. “hitakwašie·isid! wa·saqi·k?”28
When I get back, she’s standing beside two huge bundles of sticks that have been wrapped in the cords she brought. She looks at my single stick in disbelief, grabs it from my hand, then throws it into the bushes. She swings one bundle of wood onto her back and slips a band that I hadn’t noticed around her head. The band’s attached to the bundle of wood.
Anna, Like Thunder Page 17
