The Game of Silence

by Louise Erdrich

  “I told him that the air smelled like the ice would break. Baraga said no. He insisted we go the way we came. The priest and I sat down and argued. I gave him every reason not to go that way. Still, he insisted. Feeling heavy-hearted then, I followed. Not fifty paces out, the ice went. It cracked all around us in big chunks. The whole lake ripped up. If I wasn’t so afraid, myself, I would have laughed at Father Baraga’s face!

  “‘We are going back,’ I said, and now Baraga followed me. But we were too late! At the end of the ice we saw a widening river of water. We were on a narrow piece of ice. As we stood there we saw the swift, black water, deadly cold, gnashing between us and the safe ground. Then our ice started to move! So there we were, on an ice canoe, traveling the lake. We all know and have seen these pieces of ice—they drift for a moon in the lakes, shrinking, until they go back into the water. I thought of swimming for shore, but I knew the cold of the water would kill me before I got there. We were heading for the open.”

  Everyone was silent. Even Old Tallow’s breath came quickly, and she leaned forward to hear better.

  “All that day, we drifted wide, according to the wind. But I could feel the wind changing and I had my blanket with me, luckily. I stretched it out for a sail and steered us by standing this way to the wind, that way to the wind.”

  Deydey jumped up and demonstrated his desperate stretching, and everyone laughed.

  “By afternoon,” he went on, “I thought we had a chance. Father Baraga had sank onto his knees and I couldn’t rouse him; he was praying to his good spirit. At the same time, I had put my tobacco in the water, praying to every spirit who had helped me in the past. I stayed in place with my blanket, gathering wind. Just before dusk, I managed to steer our ice close to an island. I coaxed the wind to come behind us and push us to the shore of that island. And it did. We stepped off the ice as though we were delivered there from a real canoe. Baraga staggered up the bank and kissed the ground, our mother, and then he said to me that his God had answered his prayers.

  “‘It was my spirits who answered my prayers,’ I informed him. ‘And the sail I made out of my blanket!’

  “‘Oh no,’ said Father Baraga, ‘that cannot be.’

  “‘My spirits live around here,’ I told him.

  “‘Mine is the real one, and the most powerful.’

  “And so, ridiculously, we argued in our relief and gratitude. The argument kept on the next day, and even into the next. Perhaps we needed to argue in order not to dwell on the fact that there were only two ways to get off the island. One was death. The other was rescue by a passing boat. As we were in a most remote place, the first was most likely. I hated to tell him, but after we had divided up our tiny store of food and eaten it, I began to prepare my mind for death.”

  There was a deep silence in the lodge. It was Miskobines who spoke, this time directly to Omakayas. His kind eyes held hers as he spoke.

  “You have done a great thing in saving your father’s life, and the life of this priest who loves us—or at least loves to collect our spirits! Gizhe Manidoo gave you a very great gift, but you must remember that this gift does not belong to you. This gift is for the good of your people. Use it to help them, never to gain power for yourself. For as soon as you misuse this gift, it will leave you. Mi’iw minik!”

  Miskobines had spoken very wisely, and Omakayas would always remember his words. Even as he said them, it was as though he was reading her mind. For she was thinking how much better the thing she had done was than Two Strike’s moose. Two Strike had made a lucky shot, but Omakayas had actually had a dream that saved the life of her own father. Omakayas was wondering just how she would act toward Two Strike now, and whether she would accept if Two Strike asked her to join her war party. She couldn’t turn around and look at Two Strike, but she was picturing the sour envy on her cousin’s face, and then Miskobines spoke. Omakayas sighed and looked down at her feet. Anyway, to her great surprise, when she did sneak a look at Two Strike, her cousin looked at her not with envy but with admiration.

  Two Strike’s unexpected goodwill shamed Omakayas. After all of the bad thoughts she had had about Two Strike, her cousin’s rageful heart was gallant and free of jealousy. Omakayas felt humbled. She was nothing, it was true. She was insignificant and small. But then she looked at Deydey and he looked back at her. There was a warm and shining light in his eyes. Warmer, brighter, it told her she was not ordinary. Not to him. Not at all.

  That night, Omakayas was sleeping very deeply and at first, when Angeline whispered in her ear, the sound became a part of her dream.

  “Dream for me, sister,” said Angeline, “dream of Fishtail. Tell me where he is. Tell me if he lives. Tell me that Fishtail is all right.”

  Omakayas heard her, then slipped back into her sleep. She asked for a dream, but no special knowledge came. The next morning, there was nothing to say. If only she could dream when she wanted to, not only when the spirits chose to send her messages. Perhaps she did have to go out, take the charcoal, fast for knowledge. If only she was in control of this strange gift she was given, a gift she couldn’t count on or predict.

  FIFTEEN

  ALONE WITH THE SPIRITS

  One morning Omakayas woke up to find Nokomis sitting beside her. She smiled, snuggled deeper into her blanket, and was about to doze off again when Nokomis touched her face. Omakayas opened her eyes. In her hand, Nokomis held a lump of charcoal. Omakayas’s chest pinched. If she took the charcoal, she would be sent out to the woods to fast and to listen for her spirits. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to! A thread of fear shot, icy cold, up the middle of her stomach.

  “Oh please, Nokomis,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes tightly shut and turning away.

  “You will never control this gift,” said Nokomis. “All you can do is try to understand why it is given to you.”

  “How do I do that?” mumbled Omakayas, burrowing deeper into her blanket.

  Nokomis shook her head and smiled without speaking, as if to say that Omakayas herself knew the answer.

  “I will help you,” said Nokomis, “we will do this in a special way.”

  Omakayas stayed very still, breathing hard a long while, before she finally turned back to Nokomis, took the charcoal from her hand, and slowly rubbed it across her face.

  That morning, Nokomis went off into the woods for a long time. When she returned, she took Omakayas’s hand and said to Mama and Deydey, “Your daughter is ready.”

  Yellow Kettle stood up and opened her arms. She put her arms around Omakayas and for a moment Omakayas closed her eyes and wished, deeply, with all of her heart, that she could be little again, like Bizheens. She wanted to roll up in a fur bag and sleep in her mother’s arms. But her eyes opened and Deydey was before her now. In his hands, he held his sacred pipe, which he carried in a buckskin bag that Mama had beaded for him with beautiful flowers.

  “Take this with you, keep it close,” he said.

  Omakayas was so overwhelmed that she couldn’t speak. Deydey regarded his pipe as a living being, as his grandfather. Omakayas was almost afraid to hold the pipe, but when she did cradle it against her, she somehow felt better. Deydey smoothed his hands over her hair and he kissed the part in her hair. He told her that he would be near, that he would check on Omakayas several times a day, but she wouldn’t see him. Nokomis would camp nearby, too. They would not let anything happen to her. Omakayas appreciated everything that her father said, but she couldn’t tell him that he and everyone else misunderstood her fear. She was not afraid of animals, not afraid of snakes, creeping things, or any kind of weather. She was not afraid of the dark and not even afraid of owls. She was not afraid of the cold and, besides, she would have a fire. Hunger did not scare her. She had survived hunger. No, what they didn’t understand and what she couldn’t say was what she’d said to Pinch. She was afraid of her dreams. She both wanted to know, and didn’t want to know, what they might tell her. Their power frightened her.
They were so real, so shattering, full of such joy and sorrow. Sometimes they were just too much to feel.

  As Omakayas followed Nokomis into the woods a bush beside her wobbled strangely.

  “Sss!” It was Pinch. He thrust his hand from the leaves. He had stolen strips of jerky from mother’s drying rack and something else wrapped in bark. “Sister, take these!” he whispered. Omakayas took the jerky although she knew she wouldn’t eat it. She opened the birchbark package and found an awkwardly constructed sabeys, or dream catcher. Pinch had done what he could to take care of her. Omakayas’s throat burned, her eyes hurt with tears. He wasn’t an awful brother, not really. In fact, he sometimes understood her best of anyone in the world.

  “You’ll camp here,” said Nokomis, indicating a soft place in a pine bough shelter just below a huge tree. The trunk of the pine was as big around as a wigwam. Low, comfortable branches led upward like steps. It was such a homey place to make a camp that for the first time Omakayas felt some of her anxious fear lessen.

  “I’ll be close,” said Nokomis. “I’ll bring a little water to you every day and I’ll smoke my pipe and pray.” She carried a bag that contained the rabbit-skin blanket she had made for Omakayas, and when she shook it out and placed it in the corner of the little pine bough shelter, Omakayas could almost imagine that she’d be all right, that she’d be comfortable, that nothing frightening or out of the ordinary would happen to her. As Nokomis disappeared into the undergrowth to make her own camp, Omakayas thought how most who went looking for a vision were probably hoping for an extraordinary spirit, a lightning bolt expression, an amazing protector to befriend them. Omakayas wanted the opposite. As she placed Pinch’s dream catcher over the entrance to her little shelter, she prayed for nothing to happen.

  The first day, and also the second, she got her wish. The hours passed in a dreamy fog. Omakayas was not to leave the spot Nokomis had chosen, and she sat quietly holding her father’s pipe or lay cuddled in her rabbit blanket and stared up into the boughs of the pines. When she could bear her thirst no longer she sipped from the bag of water that Nokomis had left with her. After the first day her hunger dulled to a low ache. She knew she’d have hunger pains in another day, but for a while it was not so bad. Her mind felt very clear. Every so often she wished she had something to do with her hands, but she wasn’t supposed to distract herself that way. Instead, Nokomis had taught her to sing several songs. One song was about the four directions—east, south, west, north. She sang to each of the directions at sunrise and sunset. Another song was a request for protection from the spirits. She was careful never to sing that one too loudly, in case some extra-powerful spirit whose attention she didn’t want to attract might hear. The song that Omakayas liked best was one that Nokomis had composed to that her guiding spirit, the memegwesi. If she had to see a spirit, Omakayas thought she wouldn’t mind seeing the funny little man whom her grandmother had described. But nothing happened. To Omakayas’s great relief the hours passed, not unpleasantly, in listening to the sounds of the woods and watching the slow progress of shadows and light.

  On the third day, things got more difficult. Suddenly, Omakayas became so ragingly hungry that she put a couple of pine needles into her mouth to chew. Her stomach hurt constantly now. She was dizzy when she stood up too fast. Her legs wobbled. Tears came into her eyes and welled out and coursed down her cheeks as she thought in turn of everybody in her family and wished she could be with them. Finally, Omakayas could not stand it anymore. Nokomis had told her that if things got to be too much or she was ever afraid she should tie Deydey’s pipe onto her back and climb the tree. Omakayas did exactly this, and although she was worried that she might get dizzy she was fine. She felt better and better as she progressed from limb to limb. Where the limbs formed a nest, she sat looking down at the world. She hadn’t been there long at all when she heard twigs snapping. There was a bearish grunting, a shivering croon that mother bears make, just below her tree.

  There they were, at the base—a heavy mother bear shedding patches of fur and her little winter-born cub. The mother reared up on her hind legs and stretched her neck, nose working, as she tried to figure out with her weak eyes who perched above her.

  “So, you’ve come to see me,” said Omakayas.

  Although she respected bears and stayed out of their way, she was not afraid of them. She was in fact comforted by their presence now. The mother showed no signs of wanting to climb her tree. They were only curious. And after all, it was the bear people who had taught Nokomis medicine. Nokomis had often shown Omakayas signs of where bears dug rocks or tore leaves, roots, and fruit into their mouths. She said that bears used plants to heal themselves just like humans. It was important to watch them very closely to see what plants they ate and which they avoided. The mother sniffed around Omakayas’s camp, no doubt hoping she’d find a scrap or two to eat, while her baby played by swinging himself up limb by limb toward Omakayas. He was so young he still had some of his downy baby fuzz. He climbed until he reached a branch just level with Omakayas. From there, he watched her with wide, intent, serious eyes. He seemed to be wondering just how he should treat this new animal. Was she another cub of some kind? Would she play with him? Why did she make such peculiar sounds?

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  “Hello, little brother,” she kindly said.

  The cub’s mouth opened in fascination when Omakayas talked to him. She asked him all of the usual questions one might ask of any new acquaintance—what he liked to do best of all, and what to eat, whether he had brothers and sisters and whether his mother minded if he stared at girl beings. The little bear said nothing. His eyes did not move. They stayed fixed on Omakayas with the utmost gravity. When Omakayas fell silent, he continued to look at her. He held her gaze for such a long time that she almost imagined he was going to say something himself. But he only climbed down the tree, after a while. As soon as he reached the bottom of the tree, he and his mother disappeared into the woods as quickly as they’d come. Omakayas stayed sitting in the tree. There was something about the way they had visited her so politely, and lingered in her presence, then left with a subdued quietness, that reminded Omakayas of the way people visit when they’ve come to say good-bye.

  Long after the bears had left, Omakayas sat in the tree watching the world around her. She stayed there until the sun lowered and the air suddenly chilled. Climbing down, her arms shook and her legs were stiff and weak. She had to be very careful not to fall. At the base of the tree, she crawled into her shelter. She rolled up in her blanket and decided to go to sleep without making a fire. The time is almost up, she thought, and nothing has happened! Even before her thought ended, sleep took her, and she washed beneath consciousness swift as a leaf.

  Omakayas felt herself drifting along between sleeping and waking. She let herself go. It was then that she found herself walking toward the beach with her arms full of bundles. She understood that the bears had said good-bye to her because she was going away. Then Omakayas and her family were crammed with all of their possessions into their canoes. They traveled swiftly, skimming over water, down rivers, always together in temporary camps at night. They came to a beautiful lake filled with hundreds of islands, only Omakayas saw them as spirits. Those spirits welcomed them. The family lived in this lake full of spirits. She saw her little brothers grow. Her mother and father looked at her. Their hair was white. And yet again she saw herself, traveling by land this time. A tall man walked beside her. She could not see his face. The world around them was vast, flat, endless, and eternal as the great lake around her island. The sky was huge with mountainous formations of clouds and she could see from one end of it to the other, in every direction. The grass flowed like water from where she stood and she felt herself continuing on. There was a cabin, not of cedar, but some other kind of log. A team of horses and a long birchbark bundle. Terrible sorrow passed through her but then there were children before her eyes, ten children chasing one another, plump and bold and laughing. S
ome looked like Pinch, some like Bizheens. Some looked like Omakayas herself. They ran into the cabin and came out with an old woman, a white-haired smiling woman. They held her arms and guided her along to a chair set underneath a leafy arbor. Omakayas realized that the old woman was blind, though she had a strong step, and that the children were guiding her direction. Some of the children stayed with her and some ran away. She began to talk to the children. She was telling them stories. Her hands moved, making pictures in the air. The old woman made a cawing sound and her hands flapped like a bird’s. Omakayas understood that the old woman was herself, telling about the crow Andeg she’d had as a young girl. Omakayas floated deeper, into a lightless place. Scenes appeared, events in this woman’s life—some small and some big, wrenching, full of great joy. The events occurred so quickly that she couldn’t remember them all, though she’d try time and time again, over the coming year, for the vision she received and the stories she told, the scenes of emotion, good and bad, that she endured, was the story of her life. She had been shown the shape of it.

  When Nokomis came to get her, Omakayas was sitting beneath the tree with Deydey’s pipe cradled in her arms. Nokomis sat down before her.

  “What did you see?” she asked.

  “Everything,” Omakayas answered.

  SIXTEEN

  THE RETURN AND THE DEPARTURE

  When Fishtail returned on the edge of nightfall, the water was so slick and so still that the colors of the sunset pooled, lazily motionless. He dug his paddle in the red reflection of the sun, again and again, until finally the last stroke that drove him to the island. Children playing on the dock saw him and shouted. One ran to tell the grown-ups and soon everyone was at the shore, eager but anxious. Angeline ran so swiftly that no one could catch her. Only her happiness at Fishtail’s return was uncomplicated. For others, there would be bad news.