The Orenda

by Joseph Boyden

  As our men all along the ramparts continue aiming down from our better vantage, the Haudenosaunee begin to pile up, and more and more start retreating to the tree line, falling back and then stopping to fire at us, covering their others who in turn run to them. In this way, the siege ends for now, the sudden silence falling like a blanket over us. I watch Fox’s mouth move but I can’t hear him. It’s as if someone’s stuck cattails in my ears.

  WILL HIM TO WAKE

  When it’s quiet enough to do so, we women head into the fresh air again and watch as our men swing open the gates so that a group of warriors can make their way out. I wonder what they’re doing and why they’d want to leave the safety of the palisades until they begin returning with bows and arrows and knives and shining wood in their arms. There must be many dead out there. A few men stand up on the ramparts, shouting out, celebrating the retreat of the enemy. My baby wakes with a start and begins to cry.

  “Hush, my girl,” I say as I rock her. “Why don’t you and I go find your father and wish him a good morning?” As if she understands, she stops crying.

  Many are dead on our side, too, I see as I walk along the palisades, looking for Carries an Axe. Men have begun to collect the bodies, dragging them to one of the buildings where I guess they’ll keep until it’s the right time to bury them. I picture all of the dead men inside the building, stacked like ears of corn on top of one another. Again, my fear that Carries an Axe is gone washes over me. I can picture him in there, his body squeezed between French and Wendat warriors. I need to stop being stupid. The Haudenosaunee might come back any time now, and I want my husband to see his daughter, if only briefly.

  A group of Wendat are talking and smoking pipes up ahead. I ask them if they’ve seen Carries an Axe. One with a large cut above his eye, the eye itself swollen shut, points to a ladder. I look up and recognize my man’s fine legs as he stands watch, peering over the fence.

  When I whistle, he looks down, and a smile spreads across his face. He says something to the man beside him and scrambles down the ladder.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” I say as he gently takes our daughter. His cheeks are blackened from the smoke, and the paint on his face needs tending. We go toward the river where it’ll be safest and find a patch of grass to sit upon.

  “Our child needs a name,” Carries an Axe says.

  I nod, taking her from him and telling him to lie back and rest his head on my lap. He looks exhausted. “She’ll find her name,” I say. “There’s no need to worry about that right now.”

  Within a few breaths, my husband’s fallen asleep, his chest rising and falling deeply, his eyes darting beneath his lids. The baby begins to stir, and I put her mouth to my breast. In the distance, somewhere outside the village in the forest, I hear the sound of wood being chopped. It makes me wonder. My head tingles when I gaze at my husband, and it feels as if I can’t breathe deep enough to get the needed air in. I want this feeling to go away. I whisper to Carries an Axe, “Please be careful.” I want to wake him up, but he needs the sleep. Still, even though it’s selfish, I will him to awake.

  A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE TO BE

  After the morning’s vicious attack, our day is spent tending to the wounded. More and more come to us, and we’ve opened the large dining room of the refectory since it’s the biggest available and as removed from the palisades as possible. French and Huron alike moan out or lie unconscious on blankets or furs or simply on the cold wooden floor. A few of our countrymen who’ve been trained in such things do their best to treat the burns and the bullet wounds, the bodies pierced by arrows. Ultimately, though, the most we can do is offer a little comfort and water to drink.

  Several of our sauvage women have come in to try and help, the sorcerer Gosling included.

  “What does she hope to do,” Gabriel whispers, “shake more sand from their bodies?”

  When she sees us looking at her, she smiles, one that appears genuine. She’s bending over a warrior who took wood shrapnel to his face and eyes. She’s asked another woman to hold him steady as she plucks long slivers from his cheeks and around his eyes as he shakes but remains silent. When she stands to stretch, leaning back, I can’t help but notice that her stomach seems to be rounded. She couldn’t be. Surely she’s too old. But it’s hard to tell with these people.

  So far I’ve counted thirty of our own dead since the battle began last night. Another twenty or so lie too wounded to be of service. By my estimation, we’ve already lost a third of our men.

  “How much longer do you think we can sustain such assaults?” Gabriel asks, as if he’s read my mind.

  I look around the room and see Isaac knelt to a wounded Huron, speaking to him while he holds his hand. “Let’s get some air and talk,” I say.

  The sky remains low and seems to threaten rain. “Wouldn’t a good storm be a blessing,” Gabriel says. “Especially if they plan to launch more flaming arrows against us.”

  I only partially listen. “I don’t think we’re going to survive this,” I say.

  Gabriel stops walking.

  I turn to him. “I don’t mean to be fatalistic, but I’ve heard how many of the Iroquois roam out there. They’ve already done great damage to the palisades. It’s just a matter of time before the defences collapse or burn up.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Gabriel asks, frowning.

  “That we prepare to leave our earthly bodies and be welcomed into Heaven. If we are captured alive, it’ll be very difficult for a couple of days.” I can see the fear flash in his dark eyes. “It will be especially diffi-cult for Isaac. But I ask you to be the one who prepares him. He seems to have gained resolve. We must keep it that way.”

  Gabriel nods. “I’ll speak to him again this evening.” Clearly, he wants to say something more.

  “If ever there was a time to talk,” I say, “it’s now.”

  “Would it be a sin,” Gabriel asks, “if indeed the worst comes in the next while, that we ask Isaac to man the ramparts in order to bring our men comfort?”

  “But that’s a very dangerous place to be,” I say. “It’s far too easy to be killed in the thick of it.”

  He nods. “I know,” he says. “But if Isaac were to die in the helping of our soldiers, wouldn’t he ascend to Heaven that much quicker?”

  Now I understand Gabriel’s line of thinking. “And it would save him the hellish tortures that he’s already survived once,” I say. “But is it immoral?”

  The two of us walk again, contemplating this as axes ring out in the wilderness, reaching us on the wind.

  THE DEAD BELOW

  All day we’ve listened to the Haudenosaunee out in the forest, chopping down trees. “Are they building their own village?” Fox asks.

  “Maybe they’ve decided to live in peace with their new neigh-bours,” I say. Despite our laughing, neither of us can figure it out.

  I look down at all their dead below, most of them stripped of anything valuable now, their bodies starting to bloat in the afternoon warmth. There’d been talk of hauling them away as they’ll begin to stink by tomorrow morning, but it makes more sense to leave them there where the living will have to trip over them as they try to get close to our walls.

  “How many are there?” Fox asks. “I’ve counted over fifty, but I got lost after that.”

  I tell Fox I haven’t counted, but obviously we’ve killed more of them by far than they have of us. They’ve come with such great numbers that they knew they could risk this loss in order to test our resolve.

  All in the village have been tense today, as all are expecting another attack. Nothing so far, and as it gets closer to dusk, I know the enemy’s decided to wait until the darkness of night. We’re left to sit here, straining our eyes as we stare into the forest, the Haudenosaunee felling trees.

  —

  OUR EVENING MEAL consists of the same ottet we’d normally eat on our summer voyages. Fox reflects out loud on some of his favourite trips. Still, he says, his most en
joyable by far was the one when Snow Falls chopped off my finger. I smile, but I’m preoccupied.

  “I’m willing to bet that as soon as it’s dark enough,” I say, “the Haudenosaunee will launch another flaming arrow attack.”

  “I’ll take you up on that,” Fox says. “They’d never be so predictable. My bet is they’ll try another big assault.”

  We agree to wager our best pipe, and sure enough, just as dusk settles to darkness, the flickering of arrows overhead and landing in the village begins once more. The attack seems twice as large as yesterday’s, arrows coming in heavy and hitting longhouses too quick for us to put the fires out. Already it appears most of the village is on fire or in a smoking ruin. With the women and children and old ones in the crow house, I’ve ordered our water-bearers to stay close by it. It’s all we can do now.

  “Looks like you won this one,” Fox says.

  “Unfortunately, I think we both did,” I say as Haudenosaunee rush out of the darkness, their shining wood booming and arrows striking against the palisades.

  This assault’s so heavy we no longer have the luxury of waiting with our heads down between rounds of fire. All of us now stand and pour everything we have onto them. I’m running low on arrows and decide to reload my shining wood. As I squat down and finish ramming the stick into its mouth, Fox grunts and crouches beside me, holding his side, the long shaft of an arrow sticking out of him.

  Laying down my weapon, I examine him as he grimaces. The arrow has pierced the sturgeon tattoo on his stomach and its tip pokes out of his back.

  Fox tells me that the arrow must have shot through the crack in the palisades. “All I felt was a punch and the burning.”

  It’ll be easier to continue to pull the arrow through him than pull it out. “Hold on to a log,” I say. He does, facing away from me. Taking my knife, I trim away the feathered fletching.

  Hoping that it hasn’t pierced his liver or his stomach, I begin to pull, and Fox moans out. It doesn’t want to move. Firming both my feet, men all around me shouting and fighting, I pull hard as I can, and the arrow begins to move before it slips right out of him. He collapses onto his stomach, and I stand to fire my shining wood at a Haudenosaunee below me, chopping with his axe at the wall. I can see I’ve shattered his shoulder as he spins down to the ground, crying out.

  Bending back to Fox, I reach into my pouch and take fingers full of tobacco out, stuffing it into the wound that pours blood out of his back. I then cut a strip of hide from the pouch and stuff it into the hole to slow the bleeding.

  “Turn around,” I say. I do the same to the front of him. I believe that the arrow didn’t strike anything vital, or Fox would have already gone still. Instead, he pushes himself up to standing and asks for his bow.

  For a second time, we repel their attack, sending them scurrying back to the woods, our war-bearers roaring. Looking around, though, I see we’ve lost many more.

  Fox tugs at me, pointing to the crow house, smoke still rising from the partially burnt roof. “That was close,” he says as we watch people fill buckets in the little river and pitch water onto the roof and walls.

  The world goes quiet for the rest of the night but nobody sleeps. The only noise we can hear as the sun begins to show is a few wounded Haudenosaunee singing their death songs, the crows soon joining in the chorus with their morning chant.

  IN THIS TIME OF GREAT TROUBLE

  I stand in the house of the crows, the roof partly burned away so the sun’s rays now sparkle across the water pooled upon the wooden floor. Christophe Crow stands in his place on a small platform, facing us. Above his head, he holds dried ottet in his hands, formed so carefully that it’s round as a moon.

  My girl, you are so pretty. You are so fragile, and yet I see in your outstretched arms the strength you’ll one day possess. I’ve never seen a head of hair so thick and shiny in a child only just a week in this world. Will you help me pray to Aataentsic that your father survived the night?

  People who follow the great voice begin to crowd around us, lining up to take a part of him into their bodies. Christophe Crow told us earlier that we need to prepare to die soon if this is what the great voice decides.

  Sleeps Long, standing beside me holding her own baby in her arms, scoffed at that. “Has he so little faith in our men who stand outside and protect us? Maybe he should stop hiding in here.” Now, as the people come to eat from Christophe Crow’s hand, she pushes away. “I need air,” she says. “Meet me outside and we’ll bring some food to our husbands.”

  I watch as the people, those from their faraway land mingled with ours, wait anxious in the line to take the bit of food into their mouths, as if worried there will be no more when they reach the front. The faces of those who take the ottet and turn from the crows seem sated, even calm. It’s then I make the decision. I will take some of this food into my mouth as well, this food that Christophe Crow has tried to get me to eat for so much of my life. I will take this food if it helps to protect my husband. The crows always say if I speak what I need to the great voice, if I take his body into mine, then he will answer my prayers. And so I line up, and I pray to you, Great Voice, that you protect Carries an Axe in battle, and you push our enemies out of our land, and you allow my husband and me to grow old together as we watch our child bloom along with the three sisters.

  As I get closer to Christophe Crow, I repeat my desire over and over, and when it is my turn and I stand in front of him, his hand holding a piece of the ottet torn off the moon, he looks down at me, confused.

  “You are willing to accept the Great Voice?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “In this time of great trouble,” he says, “there’s little room to act like a child.”

  I look up at him.

  “I normally wouldn’t believe you, and instead think you were playing another game with me.”

  “I worry my husband will be killed today,” I say.

  Christophe Crow’s eyes change then. He nods, and as he holds out the ottet, I open my mouth.

  —

  I FIND MY HUSBAND alive and talking with his mother and father near where we sat yesterday. Sitting down with them, I begin to cry. This makes me feel weak, but Carries an Axe holds me while his parents look away, holding each other. Both my husband and his father look exhausted, their faces strained beyond their years. An arrow glanced off Tall Trees’ arm and he wrapped it in a bloody bit of cloth one of the hairy ones gave him. Carries an Axe is proud that nothing has touched him yet. “Don’t worry,” he says, “their arrows can’t find me.”

  We lost many war-bearers last night. I listen as the two men talk, but I’m so tired I fear I’ll fall over and crush my child.

  “Here,” Sleeps Long says, reaching out for my girl, “let her visit with her relation.” Cradling her own daughter in one arm, she takes my daughter in the other. Carries an Axe takes me, and the two of us lie back in the grass, drifting off as the spring sun shines down on our faces, dreaming we’re not in this strange village of war but home after a good day of planting.

  THEY WILL SOON SHOW US

  All of us who still stand in defence of the village, maybe half the original number now, had fully expected the Haudenosaunee to do one more great push as the sun broke. I had feared this more than anything because I was sure it would have broken us. But by noon, the world remains quiet, the odd arrow slicing its way in, hitting dirt or the side of one of the buildings left standing.

  No one’s slept for more than a few moments at a time for the last two days. The sentries are so tired that some have begun seeing the enemy in the shadows or hearing them climb the walls.

  Now that we have a chance to walk about and calculate the damage, I see how well the stone structures at each corner of the pali-sades have served us. The French placed many of their shining wood in each one, and the constant firing down upon the enemy from their protected position is what has saved us this far from being overrun. The bodies piled below them prove their worth. T
hese are something I won’t forget.

  But the palisades themselves have suffered miserably. Stretches of them have been hacked or burned so that a group of focused men could push their way through. Those with any strength left work to repair them, tying the weakened logs together and digging new posts in behind the damaged ones.

  “Why do you think they’ve gone so silent?” Fox asks as we take our turn as sentry once more on the ramparts. He’s pale from loss of blood. I look at the dead below, their number doubled since yesterday. Indeed, their bodies have begun to stink. The Haudenosaunee, I realize, won’t leave until this is done.

  “I imagine, old friend,” I say, “they’ll soon show us this new trick they’ve been working on.” I look behind me at the smoking ruin of the village.

  With the sun already passing its height, we sit and wait, our heads nodding in the spring day, a beautiful one with a slight breeze. I’ve collected as many arrows from the dead as I could find, and my shining wood is loaded. Fox sleeps beside me. I know my friend, though. He will awake suddenly, as if he has no idea what dreams are.

  Down the ramparts I hear a familiar voice cry out. Opening my eyes, I see that it’s my new son, Carries an Axe. He points to the field and shouts. We’re in for it again.

  Fox and I stand. He’s slower than me with his side clearly paining him. His leg’s bright from the blood seeping onto it. I look across the field and see something I’ve never even imagined, a wooden palisade as wide as four men with their arms outstretched, slowly making its way across the empty field.

  “What are we witnessing?” Fox asks.

  It’s then I can make sense of it. The Haudenosaunee have strapped together a great shield of logs to protect their advance, the men behind lifting it and walking it, putting it down to rest before lifting it and walking it forward again. My stomach sinks further when I see a second one emerge from the forest.