Clockwork Canada

by Dominik Parisien

  “What?” Dibaabishk took a step back, eyes darting guiltily. “That’s madness. You’re barely sensible when you’re fasting, Wazhindoon. A lifeclock is too big to—”

  “Empty your pockets.”

  “Sorry? No. No, I won’t.”

  Suzette caught a smirk flit over the tall woman’s face before she affected a scowl. Wazhindoon stood, looming over the much shorter map-maker. “You haven’t a drop of guile in your blood, my friend. I can see through flesh. I can see through stone. I can see through time – I can see through you.”

  “You need a good night’s rest.”

  “God does not speak to the well-rested,” Wazhindoon replied. She turned to Suzette. “You’ve seen it. What’s it like? Beautiful? Elegant? Offensive? Tell me where he’s hidden it and I’ll mend your bones, no problem.”

  “I—” Suzette started, trying to tell herself she was unsure what the woman was asking for. But she knew. Her eyes moved to the pocket of Dibaabishk’s coat where he had stashed his golden device. The map-maker threw up his arms in frustration as she did.

  “Fine,” he grumbled, producing the trinket. Held in one hand, it was no bigger than a goose egg, layers of gold and silver metal fitted together with a jeweller’s precision. With a flick of his thumb, the smooth face swung open and revealed a mosaic of their surroundings in miniature.

  Both women drew sharp breaths in unison, Suzette clutching her side in pain after. Wazhindoon did not appear to notice.

  “You idiot,” she breathed, though the expletive held no conviction. “Does Council know?”

  “Of course not,” Dibaabishk hissed, looking guiltily at Suzette again. “They wouldn’t allocate me the parts. I – I obtained them other ways.”

  “Turn it over to them,” Wazhindoon said. “Before you lose it.”

  “I won’t lose—”

  Dibaabishk’s protest was cut off as Wazhindoon snatched it from his outstretched palm with the speed of a diving king-fisher. She stepped back as quickly, raised a pointed eyebrow, then handed it back.

  “If anyone should take this from you—”

  “I know, I know,” Dibaabishk said, turning red and putting it back in his pocket. “But until now, nobody knew about it but me.”

  “Pardon me,” Suzette wheezed, only now recovered from her unwise inhalations. “Perhaps a discussion of such secrecy – whatever it is – could be held after I’m able to hold more air than a mouse’s bladder? I’ll leave you be and—”

  Wazhindoon caught her by the forearm with her unexpected speed and ran her other gentle hand over her side. When Suzette coughed in pain, she nodded.

  “I’ll mend you,” she said, “but you’re privy to this secret now. You can not go anywhere until we have sorted out what to do about that.”

  Suzette tried to pull back her arm, but the other woman’s grip was strong. “I don’t even know what it is,” she protested. “How can I tell a thing I do not know?”

  “It’s a lifeclock,” Wazhindoon told her, pulling her firmly and smoothly towards a furred rug warmed by a puddle of sunlight. “Just like the one in your Hall of Migration. It will help guide a hunter to her prey or a traveller to his destination. It will tell you when the bears are coming out of hibernation, when the trout have come to spawn, and when a Mandimanidoo is coming to crush your boat and dash your family across the rocks of the lake’s shore.”

  “I know what a lifeclock is,” Suzette protested as Wazhindoon guided her to a sit, and then laid her flat on the floor. “But you’ve already got one. Why would anyone care that he’s got another?”

  “Nobody has to ask Council to confer with this one, do they? Anyone could use it, anywhere.”

  “That’s why I built it,” Dibaabishk put in. “Everyone would be safer with lifeclocks of their own. If Soofoo had had one, Mishiginebig would never have taken her by surprise.”

  “For such a smart man, Dibaabishk, you are a fool, born and blooded.” Wazhindoon cut the laces of Suzette’s robe and rubbed a numbing ointment on the flesh over her pained ribs. “If anyone could navigate these lands without permission, guide, nor running party, we’d be overwhelmed with uninvited guests before next season, even as half the fools were eaten by Mandimanidoo. Council keeps the lifeclock’s secrets for good reason.”

  “Council would never give any unscrupulous person the metal nor the means to bond it,” Dibaabishk scoffed. “Who would craft them but me?”

  “They would take those things.” Wazhindoon gave Suzette’s side a pat and pulled her up to a sit. It took her some effort to draw breath, but the pain had subsided. She found both the midewikwe and the map-maker looking uncomfortably at each other. Finally, Wazhindoon sighed. “Well, it has been made. There’s no unknowing a thing. Runner, what do you think?”

  Suzette stood to avoid the tall woman’s uncanny gaze. She thought of the sway the lifeclock had over her life, the lives of everyone in Baawitigong. Hunters who could not set out, travellers who were forced to stay at home. Ships that could not be turned back in time and gatherers who were caught unawares. She thought of all the times runners had come home broken and bleeding, or never came home at all.

  “I think Dibaabishk’s little lifeclock could save a great many lives,” she replied quietly. “To know, always, where the Mandimanidoo are, and to be able to avoid them? I cannot think that is a bad thing for anyone.”

  The map-maker smiled and raised an eyebrow at Wazhindoon. The midewikwe scowled.

  “The Mandimanidoo are part of God, same as anything,” she said. “They have their piece in the big story. It’s a fool who thinks they are our enemy. Smarten up, Dibaabishk, my friend.”

  “Come, Soofoo,” Dibaabishk said after a pause. “We’ll feed you before you return to Baawitigong. I think you and I might have more in common than I thought.”

  Together, they left. Over a spring supper of fish and leeks, Suzette tried to consider the midewikwe’s misgivings and found herself recalling the French word for the Manidoodibaigisisswaii: clochemar, or nightmare-alarm. Her party leader forbade her from using it. It was disrespectful, he told her. And yet how smoothly it fell from her tongue when she recalled the looming monstrosities with death-calling howls who had so nearly had her life.

  * * *

  Dibaabishk liked the word: clochemar. He adopted the term for his pocket lifeclock. La Clochemar, he called it, as if it were a wife who watched out for him and with whom he had to consult. La Clochemar says I’m to go fishing. La Clochemar woke me when Mishibizhiw stirred last night. A game of bones? Let me ask La Clochemar.

  Suzette learned Dibaabishk was a Francophile who spoke German, English, and Dutch in addition to French, Mohawk, and several varieties of Anishinaabemowin. He had been trained as a jeweller and clockmaker in Nuremberg as a youth, around the time Suzette was a wild child racing barefoot around the king’s forests near Toulouse. Yet it was Dibaabishk who began inviting Suzette on clandestine journeys into the wilderness, as if it was he and not she who was at home where the trees were thickest. In truth, he wanted the opportunity to test La Clochemar and Suzette could not resist exploring the woods unhindered by the constant threat of Mandimanidoo.

  The Autumn came with it the news that a large delegation from Versailles was bound for Baawitigong the following spring. The French had begun to fulfill their treaty obligations by supplying runners to assist with the protection of the area, and so Council had allowed a French representative to sit among their number. Suzette was assigned to the new ambassador’s retinue, much to her chagrin. She could not see the value in helping an aristocrat polish her Academie Anishinaabemowin, but Dibaabishk could.

  “I think we understand each other in matters of moral philosophy, Soo,” he said to her one day as they sat on the bank of a murky little pond. “Council cannot be everywhere. It is the responsibility of every individual to protect and defend his neighbours when he can.”

  “Did Council deny you resources for parts again?” Suzette guessed, knowing her friend b
y now.

  Dibaabishk stiffened. “They granted me leave to work in Baawitigong for two moons, with the new forge there.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  “Pretty lot of nothing it will do me. I need fusee chain and springs. Gold and copper. Loowe’s shop isn’t ready for that kind of work. I’ll need it from France. I needed credit.”

  “So get Loowe’s shop ready.” Suzette tossed a stone into the pond. “He needs tools only you can make him.”

  “I need money,” Dibaabishk insisted. “Soo, you will have the ambassador’s ear. You must petition her for me.”

  “But you just said Council denied you—”

  “Not Council, Soo. The ambassador. The French.”

  Suzette was startled by the distinction, but considered it. “Council would not like it,” she decided. “Wazhindoon is right about that. They want to control the lifeclocks. You sell even one to the French and they lose that.”

  “Yes, they would,” Dibaabishk replied. “But to try to control who can and cannot protect themselves – Soo, that is not good. It is not just. Control cannot come at a blood price. Our Council is wise, but they have lost their way with baseless ears on this point.”

  Suzette could not help but agree.

  When the first ships drew up after the long journey down Lake Karegnondi, Suzette met Ambassador LaRonde with a generous and sure smile. A full moon of celebrations flowered in the excitement that the new French presence brought, rosy-cheeked as they all were with affection for their new friends and neighbours. Within a quarter moon, the new French were adorning their belts and sashes with Anishinaabe beadwork and the Anishinaabeg were singing French tunes to their babies before bed. When Roman, of Suzette’s party, was killed after a fall during a patrol, they mourned together and thanked Roman for his protection of the homes and lives they all shared.

  In this time of hope and joy, Ambassador LaRonde grasped Dibaabishk’s hand and promised him she would write to her king personally on his behalf. He was a genius and La Clochemar a wonder, the perfect alloy of French and Anishinaabe arts, she said. They would all flourish in Baawitigong once they could perfectly anticipate the comings and goings of the Mandimanidoo. No price was too high for that dream of harmony with the land.

  But the reply that arrived with the next ship was not what they expected.

  * * *

  Suzette, like everyone, watched the mid-summer ships pull up at the docks, disgorging their passengers. Along with the usual Odawa, Mississauga, and Anishinaabeg traders and artists was a lone blonde woman with the washed-out look of laundry left out in the sun. She was well dressed in the French fashion and carrying her own small trunk. She vanished into the crowd of gawkers without speaking to anyone.

  That evening, Suzette visited Dibaabishk at Loowe’s blacksmith. Her friend sat on the floor in nothing but a breechclout, leaning against the wall in deep thought.

  “I’ve had a visitor, Soo,” Dibaabishk replied after a silence. “From over the seas.”

  “From the king?” Suzette’s heart skipped. Even all these years and miles later, the idea of reaching out to that august personage awed her.

  “From France,” Dibaabishk replied evasively. “But she does want a clochemar.”

  “Oh! That’s wonderful!”

  “Yes…” Dibaabishk seemed cautious. “But the lifeclock she wants…is not for here. She wants one to take home.”

  “What? That’s plain silly. There’s nothing in Europe to track. Rabbits, badgers, deer. They haven’t got Mandimanidoo.”

  “Soo,” Dibaabishk said in a voice that brought an ominous gravity to the conversation. “She wants to track people.”

  Suzette opened her mouth to respond and closed it again in confusion. Eventually she managed a second attempt. “But there are people everywhere over there. It would be meaningless.”

  Dibaabishk sighed. “In the same way the lifeclocks know different herds or flocks, it would know different people. Odawa from Potawatomi, French from German. That kind of thing. She – she will pay very handsomely.” He locked eyes with her. “She says her homeland is plagued with bandits and this will help her.”

  “Bandits,” Suzette echoed. That was perfectly plausible, but something had begun to rot in her belly. She remembered hunting rabbits for stew as a child – rabbits the clerks at Toulouse said were the king’s. They’d run right through her mother’s garden, eating the greens off her turnips; tiny taxmen. But Suzette had been fast and clever even then, and it was years before she was caught in the woods with the limp conies in her satchel. Years of freedom from the eyes and laws of the king… “You cannot do it,” she heard herself say.

  Dibaabishk said nothing for some time. “Her affairs do not concern me.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And her money will buy me what I need to build more, to learn more. I could make a clochemar for you, Soofoo. It would be folly to refuse.”

  “You cannot build a map that treats people like – like herds. Like prey. No matter who they are. Dibaabishk, come, this is not what you want to make!” Suzette pleaded.

  “No, prey deserves better respect than bandits do. I did question her, Soo. I am not a fool,” Dibaabishk’s voice rose in frustration, becoming defensive. “These are murderers and thieves, terrors in their own right. Should a traveller afar not have the right to avoid highwaymen, to flee from plunderers? Tell me why human lives should be any more sanctified than herds?”

  “You don’t know her,” Suzette pointed out. “Do you trust her word that a clochemar will be used only to avoid harm and bring about justice?”

  “Yes,” Dibaabishk said, standing. His reply was blunt and irrational, a sure sign he felt guilty. Suzette pressed on.

  “Go with her, then,” she suggested. “You need to – to bond the pieces to their spirits. Go meet these bandits. Then tell me if you still believe that.”

  “Council would never let me go,” Dibaabishk responded airily. “I’m disappointed, Suzette. I thought you understood how important it was that the clochemar sees production. It’s a tool of survival. It is not for anyone to say who does and doesn’t deserve to protect themselves.”

  “Dibaabishk—”

  “I’m going for supper,” he cut her off. Without meeting her eye, he pushed past her and vanished into the evening’s gloom.

  Suzette knew little enough about how the lifeclocks were made. The secrets of the map-maker’s art were well kept. Even Dibaabishk guarded this secret tight. His willingness to simply give his mysterious client some instructions came very close to a great betrayal of his craft.

  It was easy, then, for her to intervene on his behalf, telling herself she was doing it for him, for his honour. She found Ambassador LaRonde in her room at Baawitigong’s first and only European-style building; a long, stone-framed rectory that served as both the French administration centre and parish. She told the ambassador that Dibaabishk would have to return with the pale woman to France in order to get what he needed to make a clochemar.

  She did not need to say anything more. The speed with which LaRonde agreed to collude in keeping the affair secret from her fellow Council-members turned Suzette’s stomach. LaRonde promised Dibaabishk would be given the time to work in Europe and that Council would never know the true purpose of his visit.

  Even Dibaabishk was sobered by this quick and inexplicable display of power, tempering his anger at Suzette’s meddling. He was cold and formal when she turned up at the docks ten days later to see him off, but he squeezed her hands in friendly farewell. His lingering glance seemed to hold a warning for her, something that could not be said out loud. She struggled to understand what it might be, but he was departing for a world unfathomable to her. She could only hope he would make sense of the danger she felt lurking behind the smiles of those who ruled by pen and law, while she focused on her unmistakable world of moon-crowned giants roaming their shared earth.

  * * *

  In fact, she was kept so busy
during Dibaabishk’s absence that she could hardly spare him a thought. The moose-headed menace, Pamolai, remained within a few days’ travel of the big lake, Gichigami. They had to run her off no fewer than three times in four moons.

  Dibaabishk returned on one of the autumn’s last ships with the pale woman at his elbow. Suzette waited for him at the docks, but he ignored her completely. He led the woman arm-in-arm to LaRonde’s residence.

  Later that night, a young messenger met Suzette outside the Hall of Migration. “The map-maker wants to see you,” the girl told her. “At Wahzindoon’s, he says. As soon as you can.” She handed Suzette a heavy purse. Within was the original clochemar.

  Suzette crept a little ways into the bush until she was sure she could not be seen, and then flipped open the little map. It was as she remembered it: the familiar paths and rivers of the area rendered in delicate coloured seeds; badges tinier than her fingernails symbolizing vital herds, packs, and Mandimanidoo crawling over the surface like beetles. Mishiginebig, the serpent, was there, unmoving to the north of the little lake, and Mishibijiw, the sea cat, still motionless at the heart of Lake Karegnondi where she had slept these last years. La Clochemar did not show Pamolai, whose constant presence had only become a fact of life only after the little map had been built. She had recently been drawn west towards the Mississagi River and had not been seen since. A pack of wolves appeared to be hunting north of Baawitigong, but these she could avoid easily. It should be safe to travel.

  The night was young and the sky still a deepening lilac, but the woods curtained even the scarce light. Suzette, as much a creature of that place as the chipmunks and centipedes rustling through the forest floor, navigated by touch and memory more than sight, avoiding this tree or that, half-submerged shards of granite and sopping depressions of mosquito-infested mud. The trail from Baawitigong to Weashcog was well travelled but tended to be reclaimed by other creatures at night. She had no more desire to startle a wolverine than one of its giant cousins, and indeed, several times she heard the unmistakable crunch of larger, bolder creatures; too close to settle her nerves.