Mahingan simply nods, satisfied with the man’s strange words, and returns to his soup. But the random animal story only frustrates me. What the blazes is he talking about? Is he mad?
“Do you know me or not,” I blurt, respectfully adding “... sir.” For crazy or not, the man is my elder.
“I know you.” He sets down his bowl. Wipes his chin. Takes his time.
I’m near bursting with impatience. “What’s my name, then?”
He just stares at the fire.
“My family—who are they?”
Again, he simply waits. Picks his teeth.
“You don’t know.” I yell. “You don’t know anything!”
Mahingan jumps to his feet and lunges for me, but his grandfather’s touch holds him back, settles him down.
“Mishomis,” Mahingan pleads, “he cannot talk to you that way.”
The old man turns his dark eyes on me for a second and ’tis as though he’s looking into my very soul. “I know you.” He looks back at the fire. “The question is, do you know you? What is your name?”
I know it. Feel it rippling round the back of my mind.
“Tell me about your family,” he says.
I want to name them. The knowing swims just beneath the surface. I can almost reach it. “I’ve dreamt about them,” I say, ashamed that’s all I’ve got.
The corners of his eyes wrinkle slightly. “Good. That is good.”
“My father ... and my sister,” I continue, recalling the knife dream. “I was younger. He was teaching me how to whittle, and I cut myself.” I finger the faint scar on my hand.
“Scars can teach us many things,” the man says. The fire pops and crackles in the silence.
“That’s all.” I shrug. “Why can’t I remember any more than that? I could leave now, if only I knew where home was.”
“Patience,” the old man repeats. “The answers will surface.”
“But when?”
He waits so long to answer, I think he’s not going to. “You wait as long as it takes,” his voice speaks, breaking the silence. “Be still, watchful. And when it is time, act.”
“Like the crane,” I say, as a few pieces of this puzzling man fit together.
He nods and returns to his soup.
CHAPTER 15
“Today, you will go with Mahingan,” Grandfather Wawatie says.
The muscles on Mahingan’s jaw tighten. He’s biting his words, so he is. He looks me over, his dislike as cold and clear as the blue sky. He tries to reason with his grandfather. “He probably wants to get going, him. Find his family, I mean.”
I do, of course. Only, I’ve still no idea which way leads home. I glance at the thick forest on either side of me. I had hoped Mahingan’s grandfather might give me some answers. But all he’s given me are riddles. Stories. Even the most direct questions got no results. “Where are we?” I’d asked over our breakfast.
“We are here,” he’d finally answered and chuckled with Mahingan as though I’d asked a most ridiculous thing.
Outside their small, bark-covered shelter, the old man slips an empty bag across his back and secures his snowshoes—great netted hoops—beneath each foot. “You are an extra pair of eyes and hands,” the grandfather tells me. He ties their dog to the toboggan. “We will check the nets along Flat Rock. You two check the beaver lodge.” He eyes the bright sky. “Maybe the snow will hold off.” With that, he turns and disappears into the field of gray trunks and white-capped firs.
“You don’t have to take me,” I offer. For I’ve no desire to spend the afternoon with Mahingan, either. “I can stay here.”
“And steal our food,” Mahingan snaps. “You eat with us—you work with us.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he does have a point. After all, I did take his rabbit. He’ll not let me forget that. And they’ve fed me a few meals. I’ll stay the day. Hunt with him. Pay my debt. And maybe later get some kind of information from the old man. Even if he doesn’t know me, surely he knows where the nearest town lies. I watch where the man has disappeared into the forest and it occurs to me that maybe they’re lost, too. After all, there’s only the pair of them in the middle of this wide wood. Maybe they’ve no idea where we are, either.
“Carry this,” Mahingan orders, interrupting my thoughts. He tosses me what looks like a paddle. I catch the long wooden handle and notice it ends in a scoop. A shovel of sorts. “And you can pull the toboggan, too.” He hesitates. “Unless you’re too weak from your last hunting trip.”
I’m not fully recovered, but I’ll not tell him that. “Fine,” I say, lowering the toboggan from where it rests against a birch tree. I slip the rope over my shoulders and settle it across my chest. “But I may need help pulling it when it’s loaded up with all my game.”
I don’t know what I’m talking about. Sure, haven’t I been in the woods over a week now and all I’ve found is Mahingan’s rabbit. Still, he doesn’t know that.
“Well, when I kill my bear, it will be so big, we will need two toboggans to bring it home,” he brags, so full of himself. “Grandfather will surely give me my father’s knife then.”
I wonder why his father isn’t using his own knife, but, more than that, I wonder what else might be lurking in those trees. I glance at him. “There are bears here?”
Mahingan snorts as he walks ahead, easily cutting a trail with his snowshoes.
I’m not afraid—I mean, I’ve heard about bears, great giant beasts. I didn’t mean to sound so nervous. ’Tis just a question, is all.
CHAPTER 16
I’m panting like a plough horse as I trudge through the heavy snow, dragging this blasted toboggan behind while Mahingan scurries along on his snowshoes. For such foolish-looking contraptions, I admit they do seem to make walking easier. Mahingan barely sinks in the snow at all, while I’m here up to my knees, heaving great foggy breaths as I forge ahead, inch by inch. He’s taking me through the deepest drifts on purpose, I swear he is.
After what seems like hours, we arrive at a clearing in the wood with two hillocks in the center of a frozen river. The larger one is near double the size of the smaller one farther downstream. Mahingan takes off his snowshoes and, picking up his ax, strikes the ice near the smaller mound’s edge.
With a few good chops, he soon hits water and chips at the hole until it’s about a foot and a half wide. He climbs onto the mound and swings his ax at the branches between his feet.
“What are you doing?” I have to ask, as frigid water starts to gush from the holes. The thatch is sure to collapse.
“Trenching the dam,” he says, barely winded from all his chopping. “Cut a hole here and the water level inside the lodge lowers.”
“So?”
“So the beaver will come out to fix the dam—and then I’ll catch him.”
I realize then that the larger stick-covered hump is the beaver’s home. If this huge pile of muck and twig is its nest, I can only imagine what size of creature lives in it.
“Well?” he says, looking at me expectantly.
“Well, what?” I shiver just looking at that gushing ice water. There’s no way I’m going anywhere near it.
“Bang the lodge,” says he, like I’ve any idea what he means. He rolls his eyes and gestures at the main lodge. “Climb up there and hit the lodge with the shovel. Scare it out.”
“How do you know it’s even in there?” I ask, stalling, for there’s no sense in me risking a climb over a river for naught. He nods at a small opening on the top of the lodge where slight steam escapes like a wee chimney. Something is living in there.
Steeling myself, I gingerly step on to the lodge. A few skinny twigs snap under my weight. “Will this hold me?” I stomp my boot. The thatch underneath seems sound enough. Making my way to the lodge’s midpoint, I whack it with my shovel.
What if the sticks collapse?
What if I fall in the river?
Or worse yet, fall through the nest?
A vision of me swa
rmed by a hive of angered beavers freezes me for a second. “What do beavers eat?” I ask, trying to sound like I’m just making conversation.
“Yellow-headed boys who ask too many questions,” Mahingan answers.
CHAPTER 17
I’m starting to think this is just some elaborate trap Mahingan is setting to land me in the river again. I glance at the beaver lodge beneath my feet, at the thick, silent woods around us. No one to hear me scream. I could die out here and no one would be any the wiser.
But it seems Mahingan has already forgotten about me as he turns and lies flat on his stomach by the hole in the ice. I grip the shovel tighter and beat the lodge with all my might. The sooner it’s out, the sooner I can get back on land.
Taking off his mittens and pushing up his sleeves, Mahingan thrusts both arms deep into the frigid water. He is mad, that one. But just as I’m about to ask what in God’s name he’s doing, he lets out a yelp and starts thrashing about.
The beaver! It’s got him!
Shovel in hand, I clamber over the lodge back to the shore, sure Mahingan will be dragged through that ice hole any second. But as I reach him, I realize ’tis Mahingan who’s doing the dragging. With reddened arms, he pulls the beaver’s limp body out of the water and triumphantly raises its slick, steaming carcass overhead. I’ve never seen anything like it. Part fish, part fur, mostly fang. I swear, ’tis as big as a fair-sized dog with a flat tail like a paddle. Glossy, brown fur covers its body, and from its front paws hang wee gloved hands while the back ones dangle, webbed and razor sharp. Two great, orangey teeth curve over its chin like scythe blades and I wonder if they can cut through bone as easily as wood. I want to touch it. Poke it with a stick. But I can do nothing but stare in awe. Mahingan’s chest puffs up like a bellows. Still, I have to give him credit, he did catch it. Barehanded. With my help, of course.
“Did you choke it?” I ask.
“Drowned it,” he brags. “My father taught me that they hold their breath long, but not forever—”
With a shriek, the beaver gasps back to life and I jump. Apparently, it can hold its breath longer than Mahingan thought. Thrashing in Mahingan’s grip, the beaver whips its body side to side, whacking its heavy tail against Mahingan as it scrabbles with its claws. One snags Mahingan’s thigh and as he flinches, the beaver sinks its front teeth deep into his bare forearm. Mahingan screams and drops his catch. I’m not sure how hurt he is, but my mind is on the beaver running for the ice hole. Raising the shovel I swing it hard and catch the animal on the back, once, twice, three times. Bleeding and stunned, it drops.
“The ax!” Mahingan gasps. I grab it and stand over the beaver, now lying in the snow a foot from its freedom. From its home. I hesitate. What am I doing? I’ve no idea how to kill it, or even if I want to. Do I cleave it in two? Chop off its head? The ax weighs heavy in my hand, for I can bring myself to do neither. Whimpering, the beaver starts to come to.
“Do it!” Mahingan yells. He’s clutching his arm, limping toward me. “Finish it!”
But I can’t.
Snatching the ax with his good hand, Mahingan deals the death blow in one quick motion, bringing down the blunt end on the animal’s head, stopping its heart. Forever.
“Well,” I clear my throat, trying to hide the sick feeling that’s come over me. “We hunters sure showed that beaver, didn’t—”
Mahingan’s glare is biting cold and my words dissolve. Despite the blood staining his thigh and dripping from his forearm, he leans over the beaver and whispers something. A prayer, I think. And I realize then that he felt it, too. The awe. The guilt. And yet, he did what had to be done.
“You are no hunter,” he says, swaying as he rises to his feet. “A true hunter respects its prey. Kills swiftly, with gratitude.” He looks me over. “What are you? Cruel or just a coward?”
I glance at the bloodied beaver carcass, my eyes burning, and look away, ashamed of both what I couldn’t do and of what we did.
CHAPTER 18
Blood from Mahingan’s wounds drip into the snow where he kneels. The cuts are deep, especially the one on his arm. Even after he binds it with moss and a strip of hide from his pack, it doesn’t take long to bleed through his sleeve. He pushes himself up, only to stagger again after a few steps. He’ll not make it home, not like that. But he won’t listen to me. Won’t let me pull him on the toboggan.
After a half-hour of stumbling, he falls again—only this time he doesn’t rise. I run up and kneel by him, roll him over on his back. “Mahingan ... Mahingan, can you hear me?”
His eyes roll in his head and before they focus on me, he’s already trying to stand. Grabbing his other arm, I shift him onto the toboggan behind me, settling him next to the beaver.
“Lay down,” I say. “I’ll pull both your carcasses home.”
“I don’t need your help.” He tries to stand but can’t. Still, he won’t give up.
“Right, then,” I stand over him arms folded, “keep pushing yourself until you pass out. Night’s closing in and I’ve no idea where your camp is.”
I can tell that needing my help is more painful than any injury. Gritting his teeth, he finally leans forward and loosens the ties over his boots. “Here ... take my snowshoes.”
I step onto the webbing between the hooped wood frame and tie the thick, leather strings around my boots. With these, we’ll be home in no time. But, as I step forward, the frames clatter off one another and I end up face first in the snow. Mahingan snorts on the sled behind, but his laughter is cut short by his pain. Still, it’s enough to make me even more committed to doing this right. How hard can it be? He made it look so easy. I concentrate on one foot, step gingerly on the snow, but, as I move forward, I forget about clearing the other foot and, once again, end up blowing snow plugs out my nose.
“Widen your stance,” he says from his seat.
“Widen your stance,” I mutter. “I’ll widen your stance for you.” I want to take these blasted snowshoes and hit him over the head. He thinks he’s so perfect.
I go slower this time, find a rhythm, and swing my feet around to clear each shoe before stepping down. I stagger a few times, but I’ve got the hang of it. Leaning forward, I push against the toboggan rope. The sled’s load is tripled now with Mahingan on it. For a slip of a thing, he’s as heavy as a load of lumber.
I’m surely steaming after a good hour of trudging and pulling. I wonder how much farther it is to camp. “Are we almost there?” I ask, breathless, but there’s no answer. Stopping, I glance back to find Mahingan unconscious. I call his name and he mumbles in reply.
How long has he been out? I look back at our tracks in the snow. How far have I gone off course?
Again, it seems I have nothing but questions. But one thing is sure. Night is seeping in. Given the sliver of moon, I know ’twill be dark soon. Very dark.
Something flashes among the trees just ahead and turns. I’d know those golden eyes anywhere. It blinks and stops a few paces farther to look back. It wants me to follow. And so I do. Though I lose sight of the wolf among the trees a few times, ’tis easy enough to track him. Even in the twilight, dark paw prints dimple the bluish snow. I can follow him, but I wonder where he’s leading.
Two boys and a beaver to boot, delivered right to the den’s door—his hungry pack would love that, now, wouldn’t they?
CHAPTER 19
I follow the wolf’s trail over a small hill. I’m growing weary now—and wary. It probably wasn’t wise to use all my energy to follow a wild animal rather than build a lean-to. I’m sweating and I know how quickly I’ll chill, once I stop moving. We have to find shelter. A rock or bluff, anything to get us through the night. As I crest the hill, a shiver ripples up my neck. Not from cold, but from recognition. I know this place, this clearing. I’ve been here before. The wolf is nowhere to be seen.
Following my instincts, I veer to the left by a great boulder. Just ahead there’s a fallen log. I see it clear as day in my mind’s eye, and then,
there it is. My heart races. I know this place!
I start to run and trip over the blasted snowshoes, but it doesn’t matter. None of it does. With renewed strength, I drag that heavy load up over the ridge, sure that a dwelling is nestled just on the other side.
And ... there it is. The shanty.
Enormous logs stacked seven high form the wide walls, interlacing at the corners like fingers in prayer. Above them squats a snow-capped roof with a wide chimney peeking through. The great mound reminds me of the beaver lodge.
Have I been here before?
Maybe, but the darkened doorway and dead cold chimney assure me that no one lives here now. I drag the sled to the entrance and try to rouse Mahingan.
“I don’t need your help ...” he mutters as I ease him up off the sled. Ignoring his protests, I open the door and lay him on the bunk to the right. I know this place like the back of my hand, I swear I do. The rough-hewn floorboards, the barrels stacked in the corner, the grindstone, even the hodgepodge of pots and kettles left along the ten-foot timbers that frame the great sand-filled fire pit—all of it looks familiar. The room itself is thirty by forty, most of it bunk beds. They line the side and back walls. Whatever family lives here is surely large. The place reeks of smoke, musty woolens, and the tang of old sweat. Just the smell of it gives me a flash of knowing. Bars of a reel. Weathered men laughing round the fire. I can almost snatch the memory, ’tis so near the surface.
Mahingan moans. Remembering will have to wait.
I check his thigh through the tear in his leggings. ’Tisn’t too bad. The long scrape seems shallow and is already crusted over with blackened scab. But the gash in his arm is deep. The moss he’d put on it seems to have helped a bit. If nothing else, the cold has slowed the bleeding, but his hands are like ice and his lips tinged with blue around his chattering teeth.
Blanket ... where would I find a blanket?
Sure enough, I spy one on the bunk above him, but even its wool is chilled. We need a fire. Now.
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