Windigo Moon

by Robert Downes

  “Shh-shh . . . we live on an island now,” Misko said. “No one can reach you and the enemy lives far away.”

  “They have come for me, Husband! They have come in my dreams,” Ashagi whispered in the darkness, tears washing her face.

  “Then I will kill them in your dreams,” he said. “See? They are dead even now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sleep. I will watch over you.”

  “Will you, Misko?”

  “Always, until the stars fall from the sky.” His hand caressed her hair. “No one can hurt you now.”

  “And you are here for me,” she said, slipping back into slumber. She said it many times on many nights. It was like a spell, or an incantation. It was a charm at the heart of every man and woman joined together. You are here with me.

  Almost as comforting was the medicine provided by the Old Man, who gave her a knife with a copper blade.

  “The blade is dull, for copper is a dull metal, which does not care to be sharpened,” he told her, laying the knife in her hands. “But its point can stab well enough and I have given it a spell of protection.”

  Ashagi concealed the knife of moss-green, hammered metal beneath her tunic when she took to the forest each day, fingering its dull edge from time to time to relish the comfort of its magical power.

  Then, too, the new chief, Naabese, was careful to post guards when the women of the band did their planting or gathered firewood. For although an attack on the island seemed slight, each summer brought the threat of small bands of enemy warriors, perhaps no more than six or eight young men, who went adventuring on a lark, harassing villages and picking off members of the Anishinaabek who were caught alone in the forest. Naabese’s own half brother had gone missing when he was still a boy, and it was suspected that a party of Wendat raiders had taken him.

  As the years rolled on the cycle of the seasons remained unchanging: the sugar bush, the rice, the nutting trees, the winter hunting grounds, the starving spring, fishing season, the war parties, festivals, and migration. All that, and the eternal search for food.

  Only the people of the band changed, passing into this world and out to the next. Misko and Ashagi had adopted the child they had found dancing on the beach on the day of their homecoming. They had named him Niimi, Dancing Boy, after the way they had first seen him, dancing alone on the sand in his anguish.

  But though he claimed Misko and Ashagi as his father and mother, Niimi was the son and brother to all who survived in the band; as with every child of the Anishinaabek, he was welcomed in every lodge to sleep and eat wherever he pleased.

  17

  THE OBSESSION OF LONE GOOSE

  To be mihopeca was not always a blessing. Even though she had been accepted as a sister of the Amik women, who embraced her despite her beauty, still Ashagi drew the attention of men like bees to a grove of flowers. Young men and old from all down the lakeshore and around the island passed by her wigwam to flirt and make fools of themselves, promising gifts and whispering sweet words when Misko had gone off hunting or fishing.

  Ashagi was in the full flower of her womanhood. Her hair had the silver-black sheen of a raven’s wing, her posture straight as a pine, her hips jutting beneath her tunic like an inviting cradle. Her lips were both mocking and sensual. And her eyes were given to a certain flashing that made men take a step back in awe. The hearts of poets rose among them, and all agreed that the women of the north must surely be among the most beautiful of all the Anishinaabek.

  It was true that the Anishinaabek valued a woman most for her skill at sewing, preparing game, cooking meals and raising children, or so they claimed. But the men of the Anishinaabek were not blind. Eya, in fact the men of the Anishinaabek were legendary as wife stealers, and it was a sport which brought much trouble, even murder now and then when a cuckolded husband lost his sense of humor. But Ashagi looked through them as if they were invisible, and the words they spoke were as if in the voice of her tormenter, Snail Eye, Kesamna’ista; flat, at best, even hateful.

  Yet none was as smitten as Bezhigo’nika, the same Lone Goose who had burned for her from the moment they met. Following the plague, Nika had wintered with his dead wife’s people, a band of only six survivors. He had returned to Kitchi Minissing in the vain hope that Misko was dead of the red disease and that Ashagi would be there for the taking.

  Alas, it was not to be.

  Thus, two springs rolled by as Nika resumed his place among the Amik clan, carefully crafting a reputation as a warrior. Nika hoped that his feats in battle would sway Ashagi’s heart and she would forsake Misko for him.

  But this was not to be.

  “He pesters me,” Ashagi confided in Minose. “He appears behind every bush and lodge, smooth-talking like a nightwalker and hounding my heels like a dog.”

  “Ah, you are bragging now, sister,” Minose replied. “You have the big bull elk in your power and secretly, you are happy of it.”

  “I’d be happier with a porcupine for a cushion,” Ashagi said, tearing up. “I fear for Misko.”

  “Misko has eyes on him.”

  “Yes, but he cannot watch his own back.”

  “Then you must watch it for him.”

  As for Nika’s babble of his skill as a warrior in the hope of winning her, Ashagi would hear none of it. It was a ridiculous plan of the sort that men often devise, being ignorant of the ways of women. By his second summer with the village, Nika had led two raids on the enemy, each lasting more than a full cycle of the moon. He had taken a small party of eight warriors on his first raid, vowing to avenge Ogaa’s fatal expedition. They had fallen upon a Dakota hunter and his family at the western end of Kitchi Gami and had killed them all. Nika brought back three scalps to his credit and began campaigning for the post of war chief of the coastal Ojibwe.

  “After all, Misko does not want it,” he said to all who would listen. “It is his right as his father’s son to claim the honor of war chief, yet he shows no inclination.”

  Soon, Misko heard that Nika was impugning him as a coward who would not take up his father’s war club, but he shrugged it off.

  “I have seen what it takes to harangue men down the raiding path and it is not for me,” he said to Ashagi.

  “You have no argument with me,” she said, looking up from her sewing.

  “Always it is blood for blood with no end to it,” he grumbled on. “When we kill an enemy they come creeping back around for us. Then back we go to kill again. I see no wisdom in it, no gain. I’d rather go hunting. Hunting is what the Anishinaabek do best.”

  “Eya, but if I were a man I would do anything to avenge my clan,” Ashagi replied. “If I had a club above the heads of my enemies I would strike a blow for my father and mother and all my sisters and brothers until every last one of those demons were dead.”

  “Well, you are more a bloody warrior than me,” he laughed. “The wolverine still lives within you.”

  “Eya, I have a bite,” she assured him, “but have no fear, you are still my warrior. You have conquered me, Miskomakwa. What more could a warrior ask for?”

  “A fine cut of meat from an elk’s rump.”

  “You are an elk’s rump,” she laughed. “Now you have everything.”

  “Ehn, I have even that which I do not desire,” he replied. “Many ask when I will take up my father’s post, but I have no heart for being ogichidaa. My mother told me that from the time he was young, my father burned with the need to prove himself a killer. He was a poor hunter, but a good man-killer. It made him a grim man, always dour and unable to find sweetness. It was as if there was a lynx within him, clawing to get out.

  “So I would not care to be the wet nurse of young warriors,” he concluded. “Let someone who is a greater fool take that path. Let it be Nika. Perhaps he will be killed for his trouble.”

  But Nika’s insinuation of cowardice could not go unanswered. That, and Misko knew that if he ever hoped to become head man of the Amiks, he had to prove himself as a
warrior, for any sign of weakness would undermine the slim authority he might hold in the band. Although a head man’s role was to advocate for peace when possible, still, he had to be warrior enough to defend the village when the ogichidaa and his men went off raiding.

  Nor would the men of any village heed the words of a chief who had not shown himself to be a brave, even dangerous, man. This was especially true when it came to controlling ambitious young men and the hotheads of the band. Only a man who was feared as a warrior could wield the authority to resolve disputes, cool angry tempers and point the way in a crisis.

  In this, Misko was not yet considered a “big man” who shouldn’t be crossed.

  “I must take part in the raids if I want the clan to follow me,” he said to Amazo one day as they were out checking snares.

  “Oh, they like you well enough,” Amazo said.

  “Yes, but I would rather be obeyed than well liked.”

  “You must be both, brother, but there is only one way to prove yourself if you wish to be obeyed.”

  “Sadly, it is so.”

  “Then think on this.” Amazo held Misko’s gaze. “You have not yet punished those who killed your father and his men, nor those who destroyed your wife’s village. If you wish to prove yourself, there is your path.”

  Thus, Misko led his own raiding party of fifteen warriors, pointedly not inviting Nika to join them.

  The way of raiders from every tribe on the Great Turtle Island was to hit and run with overpowering force, taking no chances. They surprised a lone hunter in the country of the enemy and made an easy kill, holding his arms behind his back as a blow to the top of his skull took him out. They had laid in ambush for him along a trail from his village, taking him as easily as scooping an egg from a nest. The men stood frozen in a sunlit glade with the captive bound in their arms, all silent except for the singing of birds and the buzz of a deer fly. Yet every man’s heart quivered in his chest like a war drum, beating as if to burst.

  The hunter’s eyes glared as stark and unblinking as an animal caught in a snare as they held him, reflecting no expectation of mercy. He was a small man of perhaps thirty summers, bundled tight with his mouth set in a grim line. No words were spoken, only the nod of Misko’s head, do it.

  Nor was there any remorse, for every man knew that the same death might be his own fate in the forest one day. To kill an enemy was as natural as taking a deer. It is what men did to prove themselves as men. Men who killed every day of their lives, be it fish, deer or fowl, had no scruples against taking the life of an enemy. Men were killers, women were life-givers; it was the way of things. That, and as all the Anishinaabek knew, the enemy was not of the True People, they were vermin, insects. And they deserved extermination.

  Misko had heeded the words of his father, who said that a raider must kill quickly and cleanly, taking no time for sport lest the enemy’s brothers were lurking within bowshot. “You must appear as if by magic out of nowhere, strike like a panther and disappear, leaving no trail or trace,” his father had told him as they sat by a fire long ago. Once, Ogaa said, he had been on a raid as a young man and had taken a hunter. They had tied the man’s hands behind his back and stuffed moss in his mouth. Then, after pissing on his face until he was nearly drowned, they had taken turns beating him to jelly with their clubs. “But while we were amusing ourselves, a band of the enemy crept up on us and buried three arrows and a spear in the backs of our men,” Father said as they sat by a fire long ago. “We barely escaped. Two more of us were taken on the way home with the enemy biting at our heels.”

  Misko was careful to heed the lessons of his warrior father and to share the honors for the kill, giving the scalp to a young warrior whose father and brother had died in Ogaa’s raid.

  “The spirits of my father and brother will rest easy now that a blow has been struck for them,” the proud killer said that night as they huddled in a grove of spruce trees, sleeping without a fire to remain hidden from any enemies who might be searching for them.

  “Ehn, it is good,” Misko said, dozing.

  “Is your own father resting easier now, brother?”

  Misko thought a moment, then shook his head. “Ogaa will not rest until we kill twice as many of the Sioux, and that is beyond my patience.” He pointed to a patch of stars glimmering beyond a clearing in the trees. “Look up,” he said. “He walks there now on the trail of his enemies. He will chase them until the mountains fall. That is the kind of man he was.”

  Misko and his raiding party spent a week harassing the hunter’s small village, hoping to waylay those who ventured out for firewood, water or food. It was a place close by the massacre of Ogaa’s warriors, and he was sure that it held some of the men who had killed his father. But the fight had gone out of the enemy and those in the village balled up in silent terror with their spears bristling out like that of a porcupine.

  Misko and his warriors fired volleys of desultory arrows throughout the night, once hearing a yelp when a shaft pierced a lodge. Eventually, they turned for home, all agreeing that it had been a good raid and that Misko had led them wisely. Making a kill was a fine thing, but escaping home alive and unharmed to their women and their hearths was of even greater importance to any raider. Still there had been a bitter flavor to the victory.

  “Will you take his head to honor your father?” one of his warriors asked when the dead man lay at their feet.

  Misko was careful to compose his face, knowing that his brother was digging at him.

  “No,” he said, waving in dismissal. “It is yours.”

  Like the Old Ones long gone, Misko’s father had been a collector of heads, and since Ogaa’s own head had been taken by the enemy, it would have been simple justice for Misko to have taken the hunter’s skull as a trophy. In other days, he might have done so. But there had been a scandal in the village involving Ashagi, and Misko had no desire to kick up the ashes of it again.

  Several moons ago, while he had been away on a hunting trip, Ashagi had taken his father’s collection of skulls and tossed them without ceremony on the bone pile near the beach where the band emptied their bowels each day. His father had painted each one with care and they were among his most cherished possessions. They rested in a place of honor on a shelf in their lodge, with one topping a pole outside the entrance to frighten evil manitos from their door.

  “These are gifts that I give to your children and your children’s children,” Ogaa had often told Misko when he was still a boy.

  So he was furious when he arrived home and found what Ashagi had done, and though she sassed him at first, his voice rose to such a temper that she was reduced to trembling.

  Yet she would not make an apology.

  “I hate them,” was all she would say. “They are our enemies and they look down on me at night. I feel their eyes on me and will not have them. I am afraid they will creep over me.

  “Besides,” she added, “these are old things and we are a new thing. They no longer belong with us.”

  Misko gazed on his trembling wife who looked suddenly small and folded in upon herself like a frightened child. She expected to be beaten, but it was not to be. Nor did Misko dig through the bone pile by the shitting beach to retrieve the skulls, for in truth, he did not care for them anymore than his wife did. They reminded him of his father. But the whole village had heard Misko’s angry voice, as if to shiver the bark from Ashagi’s lodge, and her transgression became the gossip of the band for days.

  Yet Misko’s fate was far graver, for among the Anishinaabek, a husband’s place was to be mild and good-natured in the lodge of his wife, as he was, in effect, her guest. But on this occasion, Misko had lost his manners, and the morning after his outburst, the village clucked like a roost of pigeons, all chirring at once over his bad behavior. He was mocked for days for raising his voice, ridiculed and belittled without mercy, as these were the tools the Anishinaabek used to keep wrongdoers in line for petty offenses. Shamefaced, Misko had gone huntin
g for several days to avoid the taunts, while Ashagi spent more time than usual foraging in the forest and tending to her fishing lines.

  Eya, and then the waving tongues among the wicked had babbled on about how Misko had failed to beat his wife when she so well deserved it. And what kind of man was he, who would let his wife do such a bad thing without beating her? Misko treated his own wife like a child, they said, allowing her to do whatever she wished. She had become like a man with a cock and Misko had become like a woman, they said, and so on.

  Thus, Misko was happy to return to the village without the enemy’s head, yet with the acclaim of the band for the success of his raid. Ashagi was there to greet him at the door of her lodge, head bowed and wearing a new tunic she had sewn, embroidered with copper-green quills and a belt of small white shells. She lifted her face in a wan smile as he drew near and their eyes met, searching. He had never been so happy to see her.

  But Nika scowled at his rival’s victory and soon fled west with a vow to achieve even greater deeds. It was as if they had become two gamecocks, strutting feathers and drumming their wings as they circled. Nika returned that fall with the boast that he had killed three men of the enemy.

  “Three men? Your scalps are small and thin; they are the hair of children,” Misko scoffed when Nika displayed his trophies to the band.

  But even the hair of children was enough to impress, for anything that caused the enemy grief was cause for celebration. And though Nika was not well loved among the band, none could deny that he was a cold man-killer and would make a good war chief.

  “Look at him, tattooed like a demon! Who else should lead us? He is a man killer!” This, from the young men of the village, with the only restraint being that perhaps Nika had shown more fury than caution on his raids.

  Nonetheless, Nika lived in a state of sweet agony. Not from pining over his lost brother, who he had loved as a son, but for Ashagi.

  The pain of his desire for Ashagi weighed on him like the slabs of limestone lining the cliffs above Kitchi Gami, and no matter how hard he pushed against it, he could not free himself from thoughts of her. Worse, it was shameful for a man to have such thoughts over a mere woman, and at times he cut himself out of mortification and to rid his flesh of desire.