Windigo Moon

by Robert Downes

  “Cherished? Not even as much as a man loves his pipe,” Ashagi said, the taste of bitterness on her tongue.

  “That is something, at least.”

  “Saya’hupahu resents me.” By now Ashagi had grown petulant.

  “We both resent you,” Maza said with a laugh. “What woman wants another woman in her lodge?”

  “I am happy to have you.”

  “Yes, but that is because you are the third wife. But how would you feel if you were the first? Someday Saya’hupahu will pass to the spirit land and you will be the second wife and I will be first. Will you be happy if Kesamna’ista takes another?”

  “I will not allow it.”

  Maza waved Ashagi’s words away as if they were annoying flies. “You will have no say in it, sister. But know this, you will grow old and your beauty will fade. Then Kesamna’ista will take another wife, young and sweet, if only to keep his old cock rising. I am surprised it rises at all now. It had grown soft for me.”

  This last bit Maza said in sorrow, turning away.

  Ashagi caressed Maza’s shoulder and spoke softly in her ear. “Oh, sister, I would make a gift of it to you if I could.”

  When they finally reached their destination, everyone was consumed with the chores of setting up the new village in a valley beneath the low-lying mountains. It was a good place, Kesamna’ista declared, assuring his kin that there would be enough game in the marshes surrounding the lake to last them through the winter.

  Though Kesamna’ista lorded his power over all the villagers and acted as though he was the wisest of them all, he never knew that in the summer of her seventeenth year, Ashagi grew pregnant with his child. She took care to conceal her growing fullness, and her expanding belly only made her grow more surly. She kept to herself as much as possible, lest anyone guess she was with child, but by late summer she had to begin wearing a cloak to hide her blooming figure.

  “Why do you dress so when it is not yet cold?” Saya’hupahu asked on a day late in the Ricing Moon when the autumn sun returned in a blaze, running sideways through the trees for its brief farewell.

  “Because you feed me so little, I am thin and shivering,” Ashagi retorted. “I am always cold, as cold as a leafless tree.”

  Saya’hupahu squinted and fingered a sore tooth. “You are more of a mink than a tree,” she said. “A pretty mink and just as sneaky. Be careful of your tricks, daughter, or you will be colder still.”

  Summer gave way to fall and Ashagi eyed the moon with dread as it told its age-old story of feasting and starvation. Her own hopes were like that of the waning moon, growing thinner, dwindling to darkness. Indeed, she was filled with despair as the new life grew within her. It was as if Kesamna’ista had set his lodge in her womb, extinguishing all hope of escape. Anger bubbled within her at the thought, as if she had swallowed a hot stone and her insides were boiling with rage.

  “I want to be free of you,” she confessed one day to Maza as they gathered firewood in the forest. She no longer cared where her anger took her. “I want to go back to my people.”

  “Free? There are no cords tying you here, sister.” Maza waved to the gray-green wall of trees running far up the hillside to distant cliffs. “You can go now. Some man will find you there, or the wolves, and long before then, the spirits. We are all that are between you and them, sister. You are free to starve beyond the safety of our hands, or worse. Think on it.”

  But Ashagi had thought on it every night since she had been led from her burning village with a noose of elm twine around her neck. She had thought on every slight and every humiliation and every empty moment she ached for something more. Somewhere beyond the hills, the wolves, and the spirits, lay the hunting grounds of the Ojibwe and the knife-slim chance of a life free of Snail Eye. For the first time, hope kindled within her.

  “My grandmother would go with me,” she said, thinking of the time they had laughed together, long ago.

  “Accept it, sister,” Maza replied primly, wrenching a dead limb from a pine to add to her pile. “Your grandmother is nothing but a trail of bones by now, hidden beneath the leaves of the forest.”

  “She is not dead. I would feel it if she had passed. But if she is, then her spirit will be with me, and she will show me the way.”

  To this, Maza grimaced. “You are a child to think of such things. Her spirit? Beware such a thing does not find you. Go.” She waved to the distant hills. “I turn my back on you.”

  Maza tied her load of branches in a bundle and waddled back to their camp bearing its weight on her back.

  Ashagi lingered on in the forest, speculating on the rise beyond the trees. “Nookomis, where are you?” she murmured. But Grandmother did not answer, nor did her bright face peer from the trees. Instead, Ashagi felt the kick of Kesamna’ista’s child within her belly. Somehow, she knew it would be a boy.

  There were times then when Ashagi willed herself to love the babe growing soft within her, but always there was a wall beyond which she could not reach. Nor did she have any hate of it; she felt only nothing, emptiness, indifference, which the Anishinaabek know is the opposite of love. She could not accept the child as her own; it was Kesamna’ista who had placed it within her belly against her will. He had killed her dreams and it was his alone.

  What are my dreams now? she wondered. They were not of being a mother.

  One day, she watched in despair as a bitch of the village licked its pups while lolling in the sun. “Dog, you make a better mother than me,” she muttered.

  Back in Ashagi’s lost village, Nookomis had known the secrets of freeing a woman from pregnancy using solutions of bitter herbs and poisons as acrid as pine needles and unparched acorns. Often as not, Grandmother’s medicine caused a woman to roll in agony, biting on a stick as the deed was done. But there had been no reason for Ashagi to know of such things in her carefree girlhood, and she could hardly ask old Red Bird for the remedies of the Sioux.

  One night, she dreamed of the blue heron which had come to her by the lakeshore after her capture. It was flying far ahead down a long path through a forest that seemed as dark as her thoughts. Ashagi ran after it in her dream, only to see the bird soaring across a broad, muddy river. As the heron melted into the distance, Ashagi strained to see that there was no way across the dream river, which rolled on in dead silence. Turning, she saw there was also no way back.

  The Moon of the Acorns rose in the winter sky, and then the ordeal of the Starving Moon gave way to the Moon of the Broken Snowshoes. By then, Ashagi had no reason to explain her heavy dress. And when the last ice cracked in the spring, and with it the water between her legs, she fled down to the river and delivered the thing from her womb.

  She reflected that there was no soft doeskin upon which to deliver the babe. There were no sisters to caress her hair and serve as midwives. Instead, there was a blinding pain in a mucky clearing she made of trampled cattails, a pain that cut like a twisting knife, and then there it was, a small lump of a thing shining wet in the sun. She could not bear to look at it, knowing only that it was the boy that Kesamna’ista desired above all else.

  Again, a darkness closed in on her, pressing the sunlight from the circle where she lay with the infant. It was not yet a human being in the eyes of the Anishinaabek, existing yet without a soul. She reflected on the words of her grandmother, that an Ojibwe woman had the power of life or death over a newborn. Grandmother herself had been a twin whose sister had been killed because her own thin mother could not produce enough milk for two. It was sometimes the way of things when times grew harsh for the Anishinaabek.

  Ashagi gazed up at the mountains. She could not bear to look down at her son. With a slash of her flint she was free of the cord, and free of Kesamna’ista’s dreams as well. She knew that motherhood lived within her. She could feel it, a longing as old as all her grandmothers going back to the dawn of Grandmother Earth herself. But not with this man, nor his people. At best, she would give the silent doll a chance. She lay it
s wet form amid the cattails to live with the muskrats and the fishes and crept away.

  Much later as the sun touched the horizon, Ashagi made her way back to the lodge, aching as if with the blow of an axe between her legs.

  Old Saya’hupahu was there, embroidering the quills of a porcupine into a buffalo robe for Kesamna’ista. She gave Ashagi a sharp look up and down.

  “So it is done, then.”

  And Ashagi knew in an instant that Saya’hupahu had known all along, and with her all of the women in the band, for how could any mother-to-be hide the blush of new life?

  “Where is it?”

  Kesamna’ista came home from the hunt to hear the story of the lost babe.

  “It was born dead,” Ashagi sobbed, her face streaked with tears as her husband stood over her gaping in disbelief.

  “She is a liar,” Saya’hupahu said.

  “What can you know, old woman?” Ashagi screamed back at her, her voice breaking. As a girl she had served as midwife to many of her sister-cousins and knew it was not unusual for an infant to be stillborn.

  “I can see it in you, witch!” Saya’hupahu said. “There are few gifts that come with growing old, but one of them is knowing the truth from a lie!”

  Kesamna’ista wavered between them, not knowing what to believe. The roof of the lodge suddenly seemed very close as the world itself shrank to just the three of them.

  “Tell me,” he demanded, “was it a boy?”

  Ashagi folded into herself, clutching her arms to her chest. She closed her eyes tight and shook her head, no. But now she could not stop her tears, and they flooded her cheeks until her whole face was drenched.

  “Tell me!”

  “I could not look!” she screamed. “I could not bear it! It was my choice, accept it!”

  But Kesamna’ista did not accept it. He ran to the marsh, tearing through the cattails and slipping through the muck to find his infant son staring up at the sky, cold as a stone.

  That night, Ashagi was beaten until her head wore a cloak of blood, masking her face in gore as it ran down her shoulders. Dully, she sang her father’s death song as best she could remember it as Kesamna’ista’s blows landed again and again.

  I will submit

  to death as a warrior.

  I laugh at my death,

  do your worst to me,

  I die laughing.

  Nothing lives forever,

  Only the earth and the sky.

  Kesamna’ista had twisted her breasts and butted her with his head amid all the blows and kicks that his old limbs could muster. All the while, the young oafs and women of the band gaped at the spectacle of her misery, some laughing, and some set with grim faces amid a chorus of children howling in fright. At last, when he had exhausted himself, Kesamna’ista commanded her to sleep outside in the frost without her warm furs. But before he left her in the cold, he spat in the dirt and growled. “I see you through the eyes of your father and he is angry at what you have done.”

  Ashagi said nothing.

  “Yes, I give you the straight talk now for murdering my son. We made a broth of your father when we took your village. Do you hear me? We ate of his blood, flesh, and bones to honor him for killing Secachapa, war chief of the Santee Sioux. I myself tasted your father’s heart.”

  As Kesamna’ista’s chest heaved from the sorrow of possibilities dreamed of and now lost with his murdered son, Ashagi’s own blood and flesh and bones shook with hatred, aching to cry out for revenge.

  “Your father sees you now through me, standing bloody as your empty womb, and he is ashamed for what you have done.” Kesamna’ista’s voice was menacing. “You have dishonored him! I feel his displeasure. He is trembling for you! Angry! Do you hear me? Do you hear his words?”

  The anger on Kesamna’ista’s face turned to disbelief as Ashagi, shuddering as if she was fevered, let out a trill of laughter that roiled in her throat until it rose to a scream that sliced through the night air.

  “Displeasure? Oh, old man, if my father were within you, he would eat your liver and dig at your bones from the inside out until you bristled like gaag the porcupine!” Her voice rose on the wind, but she was was not done. “I curse you, do you hear? I call upon my father to eat your soul when you die! He will be waiting on your death! I call upon him to stalk you in your dreams! I curse you until the stars melt in the sky!”

  Kesamna’ista gaped at her with the same mole face he had made on the morning when she first saw him. He raised his arm to strike again, but the strength had been drained by an uncoiling fear. Turning, he disappeared beneath the door-flap of the lodge, leaving her to the darkness.

  That night, shivering with pain and a ringing in her ears beneath the cold stars, Ashagi gathered her legs in her arms and tried to savor her revenge. Instead, she found only despair.

  And thus came the day when Ashagi, the girl from the north country, picked huckleberries and dreamed of revenge. She had become separated from her sisters and preferred it that way. Preferred picking berries alone. Preferred doing everything alone. As far from her captors as possible. As she picked, plopping the juiciest berries in her mouth to savor, the faces of her mother, father, and brothers slowly melted into the sky of her thoughts, their vanishing wisps followed by new swells of hatred for those who had killed them. Kesamna’ista wormed his way back into her dream, and instead of the Dakotas clubbing her brothers in the raid, it was her clubbing Kesamna’ista over and over and over again with the stone used to crack walnuts. She would see him bleed, she swore. She would see him dead.

  Then she heard a scream and felt a tug at her shoulder. She turned to find a wild youth with a frightened look in his eyes and bits of pine needles and dried leaves in his hair. Another unwanted suitor, another man seeking to take what was hers to give. Maza and Saya’hupahu screamed and ran for help. But no help awaited in the village as all the men had gathered their weapons at the earliest light and set off toward the south in an uproar. Only the youngest of boys and the oldest of men stayed behind.

  Her teeth flecked with huckleberries, she gave the youth a sly, ghastly smile. His eyes widened, and she kicked him hard between the legs, shoving him to the ground. She would show him how a woman could fight. She would show him. She would show them all! Memories of the raid surged through her veins—the killing, the burning of her village—all of it exploded in a red rage. Ashagi kicked him again and grabbed a branch and ripped at his face.

  Only much later when it felt as if he would tear her hair out by the roots after dragging her through the forest did it dawn on her that her captor was one of her own tribe. When his moccasin was sucked under by the ooze of a stream, she recognized the puckered seams and quillwork that marked the people of the Anishinaabek. In the haze of pain and muddled thoughts, she almost laughed at the irony of being stolen by the Dakota and then stolen back by an Ojibwe youth, a thin, frightened rescuer though he was.

  BOOK II

  1567-1590

  5.

  RED MOON

  The woman was his for the taking.

  He had crept up on the three of them bent over picking huckleberries in a forest glade. He watched as the pretty one wandered further and further from the other two. He was almost at arm’s length from her when the one with the chinless face turned and screamed. She and an old woman of more than fifty winters turned and ran for their village, less than six bow shots away. Their cries rang through the forest as they ran.

  But his prize remained, standing still and expectant as a doe when he touched her shoulder, her eyes widening with a slight smile brushing her face as if she did not understand. Then her mouth widened, exposing a row of hideous teeth stained purple and black, which seemed poised to gnash at him. Startled, he seized the woman of the enemy by the arm and dragged her toward him, barely catching the flash in her eyes at the last instant.

  She slammed him hard in the cones and the agonizing pulse in his groin took him down on his knees. Almost as bad was the realization th
at he’d been taken by a boy’s trick. He groaned and fought through tears to find his feet. They were not there, and as she kicked him again, he went down like a toppling elm, rolling on the ground and clutching at his crotch with the pain rolling through him in waves. But the woman wasn’t through. As he finally scrambled up, she hit him full in the face with a dry pine branch as thick as his wrist. The branch snapped, tearing a piece of his cheek as it flew into the boughs of a tree.

  Again he went down, tripping over his own feet, this time on his back with the stars circling in the half darkness before his eyes. He came to in time to find her kneeling on his chest with the grin of a wolf on her lips, poised to bury the broken branch in his neck. He swung his free arm in a lopsided blow and hit her with all his strength along the side of her head. He hit her again, harder this time, in the guts.

  Through the trees he could still make out the trill of the fleeing women. Anyone in the village would hear them by now. He strained to hear an answering cry, but none came.

  The night before, he had crept up on their band, crouching in the brush as a fire burned before six lodges. The enemy had gathered for the day’s meal, and hungrily he sniffed, for he was starving. The scent of the cooking meat tortured him as he gazed, silent as a doe, from a thicket of nettles.

  He had seen the shape of the woman in the shadows beyond the fire and watched as she brought a bowl to a big man at the center of the group. Angry words were spoken; she sassed back and was cuffed. The big man tossed his food to the ground in exasperation and as she turned, he shoved her with his foot, sending her sprawling.

  Even then, at first sight of only her shadow against the firelight, he had desired her. Yet, he had counted eight men in the camp, with two of them just beyond childhood; more than enough to bring him down. And perhaps there were others, still out hunting.

  But how could they know he was only one, lost in these hills the last three days? They would think he was part of a raiding party, perhaps forty warriors or more, and they would hesitate, perhaps even hide in the forest for a day before realizing he was only one.