Her dream now is no longer the dream of marriage. In her dream she does not have to marry ever again. She wants to run a store in Philadelphia with her sisters. She prefers Philadelphia because, after Thomas Forbes, Severne became the place of her failure. She dreams of leaving.
She is almost too dazed to take in the irony of this as she stumbles along the forest path that takes her farther and farther away from Severne. She is tied by the wrist to a native woman, who pulls her sharply whenever she trips. They turned west out of Thieving Forest and almost without a pause in the trees entered the next forest, this one with darker ferns and a rockier path. If it has a name she does not know it. Vines hang down from the elms on either side of her and roots as hard as stone push up through the ground. Walking is a test of avoidance and balance. The thick tree canopy casts them into a prolonged twilight, and Penelope can get no sense of passing time. She and Naomi have been separated, each tied to a different woman. They are no longer with the Potawatomi. They have been traded to the Wyandots for a few muskrat skins and a horse.
It came about suddenly. Just as the scarred Potawatomi was leading Beatrice away, another Potawatomi with small round cheekbones like early apples told Penelope and Naomi to come with him quickly. A band of Wyandots and their horses had been spotted nearby. The Potawatomi carried one of the sacks with the Quiners’ belongings over his shoulder, and he said to them in English, “Your sister traded for a horse but will be lucky to get one muskrat skin for the two with me now.”
In this way Penelope learned that Beatrice hadn’t been killed. She is grateful for that at least.
As they walked into the forest the Potawatomi signaled for them to be quiet, and he packed his rifle as they walked the last few yards, disturbing a family of bobolinks that scurried for cover. They came out of the trees to see twenty or so Wyandots sitting on tree stumps and rocks. One man was rearranging the bags on a horse and turned his head in surprise. The Potawatomi raised his rifle and shot under one horse and then over another one, perhaps to show how little he cared if these animals lived or died. A tactic. The horses shied and tried to take themselves off but the Wyandots caught them by their manes and stood possessively next to them, two to a horse. After a long negotiation—during which Naomi’s arm was repeatedly squeezed and Penelope had her loose hair fingered by several of the women—the Potawatomi ended up with the largest horse and an armful of pelts. He then pushed Penelope and Naomi toward the Wyandots, and Naomi fell over an exposed root into the mud.
Everyone laughed. She stood up, blinking, the left side of her dress smeared with black.
About two dozen Wyandots make up the group, more women than men, plus a handful of children. The women are slender and attractive with dark hair and light coppery skin. Quite a few of the men have plucked all the hair from one side of their head and wear skin kilts decorated with the Iroquois symbol: )(.
Penelope was given to a thin woman with a long, beakish nose who wears a necklace of dyed porcupine quills. Every so often the woman strides ahead and then jerks Penelope up by the arm in a show of power. Naomi is with this woman’s sister or daughter—it is hard to guess their ages. They both wear wrap-around dresses and share a dog for protection. Toward the rear of the group the horses walk without riders, their rumps slapped by one of the three men who guard them if their pace becomes too slow.
In Severne the Wyandots are said to be horse thieves. But the farmers called all natives horse thieves. Penelope’s main worry is this: how can she and Naomi prove their value? Only if the Wyandots believe that they are useful will they be fed and kept alive.
When they come to another clearing, the women begin to search for groundnuts. Penelope and Naomi are untied and told to help. Penelope wants to impress them by finding more nuts than anyone else, but her Wyandot mistress keeps scolding her for straying too far. When she thinks no one is looking she hides one in her pocket.
Back with the others she empties her apron of nuts and is pleased to see that Naomi has found a good many as well. Out of the large pile Naomi and Penelope are given only one each. They eat them quickly, and then Penelope licks the inside of the shell. One man laughs at her.
“Gwi gishgama,” he says, and pantomimes a big belly. He thinks she is fat? Penelope blushes and looks at Naomi, who looks back without expression. Both of their dresses are torn almost to shreds. Penelope’s armpits are wet with sweat. For her part she thinks these Wyandots odious and uncouth. They use no water pouches but drink straight from puddles with their hands.
As the sun is setting they come to a stream too fast and deep to wade across, so the men fashion rafts by cutting down dry saplings and overlaying them with brush. When Penelope and her mistress are settled on one, two men sitting on the bank push them off with their feet. But by the middle of the stream the raft is a good three inches under the water, and although it does not sink entirely Penelope’s legs get soaked to the bone. By this time the sun has sunk below the horizon and she cannot make out if the vines on the opposite bank are grapes or poison ivy.
They disembark, abandon the raft, and walk only far enough to get clear of the line of scrub along the water. This is where they will spend the night. The women begin peeling dry bark from the birch trees to make little shelters. Their dogs, excited and hungry, run back to the stream bank and stand there barking.
Naomi and Penelope are told to build a fire and carry up water. They are made to understand that they will do their mistresses’ work for them every day: fetching water, making the fire, cooking. If they do all this to their mistresses’ satisfaction then they will be fed.
“We will starve to death, then,” Naomi says in a flat voice. She has finished her chores but not quickly enough and has been given no food. Her red hair has come out of its braid and is hanging loosely down her back.
Penelope puts her arm around Naomi’s shoulders. They are sitting a ways back from the fire, farther away even than the dogs. A few bright stars are out, and bats swoop in jagged circles above their heads. She gives Naomi the groundnut she has been saving. Taking care of her sister is now her first responsibility. She pulls off her wet stockings and stretches them out beside her to dry. She tries not to despair although there is no chance of escape and nowhere, in any case, to escape to. They might run miles in any direction and find nothing but more wilderness. She thinks of Severne, a long way behind them.
“We must submit to them entirely and do what they tell us. Maybe some opportunity will come.” If we live long enough, she thinks.
Naomi lays her head against Penelope’s shoulder. “I’m so hungry,” she says.
It is no good wishing she had something more to give her but Penelope wishes it anyway, feeling in her pocket as if some morsel of corncake or nut might still be lodged deep in its corner. Can it really be that just this morning they were all in their cabin? And now one sister is surely dead and the rest have been traded around like horses. Penelope thinks of Susanna. She is all right at least.
Penelope kisses the top of Naomi’s head. Back home Naomi usually ate her supper quickly in a rush to get back to her violin, but she has no violin now. They are sitting on the moist ground, and one Wyandot woman passing by takes pity on them and gives them a blanket to share. Some hours later, when the camp is still and there is no sound except for the rushing stream behind them, Penelope wakes to find that Naomi has thrown off her portion of the blanket and is sleeping on her side with one arm over her head, just as she always slept at home.
The next day the Potawatomi attack.
They come in the morning after most of the Wyandots have bathed in the stream and are drying themselves and their clothes near little campfires scattered around the clearing. A layer of cottony clouds is spread out above them, peeled back in one spot like someone starting on an orange. Penelope feels stiff and bruised all over. When she checks her stockings she finds bits of debris sticking to them but at least they are dry.
On impulse, she shows them to a young Wyandot woman nearby
. She asks, “Do you like?” Like all of her sisters, she knows some Iroquois from working in the store, and the Wyandots speak an Iroquois dialect, Wendat, with a few Algonquin words mixed in and once in a while some French.
The woman, shorter and younger than Penelope with a thick cloud of loose dark hair, comes over to feel a stocking. She runs a cupped hand down the length of it. Her heart-shaped face reminds Penelope a little of Aurelia.
“Skanotawa,” the young woman says, signaling with her hands to show that she is smaller than Penelope.
“I can ravel them out and knit them to fit you,” Penelope says. She mimes what she will do. “But you must help me find my knit bag. Ajera. Bag.”
The knitting bag, she hopes, is in the sack of their goods tied to one of the horses, part of the trade. The young woman has to speak with two older women and a man before she is allowed to untie the sack.
“I wonder if we could get your violin, too,” Penelope says while she and Naomi watch the young woman go through their belongings. “You could play something.”
“It isn’t there,” Naomi says. “The Potawatomi kept it. Besides, I don’t have my bow anyway.”
“Maybe you could fashion something, a flute or a drum...”
“A flute! You must be mad. What would I do with a flute? Just because I play the violin doesn’t mean I can play the flute.”
The problem is that Naomi is not much good at anything other than playing her violin. Back at home almost every task she did had to be done over again by someone else. She undercooked beans and made watery butter and her stitches were always uneven and loose. Even Susanna can sew a better seam than Naomi. Penelope watches the young woman take out their mother’s blue pieced bed quilt, their candlesticks, a bag of tea. Soon the Wyandots will knock down their bark shelters and bank their fires and be on their way. Her mistress will no doubt start looking for her, if she isn’t looking already. Several loud birds call out to each other. Later Penelope recalls that a couple of Wyandot men stood when they heard that and looked toward the stream, which is half-hidden by trees and brush.
At last the young woman comes to the knitting bag and she holds it up to show Penelope. But before Penelope can even nod, a rushing sound comes up from behind her like a sudden, fierce wind sweeping through the trees. She turns to see a group of men running toward them waving hatchets and knives.
Her first impossible thought is that white men have come to take her home. But that lasts less than a second. These men aren’t white. It is the group of Potawatomi from yesterday. Everything becomes chaotic as shouting breaks out from several areas at once. Two or three Wyandot men begin herding the women and children to the other side of the clearing where they can escape into some woods, while others engage the intruders. Penelope’s throat seems to close up in fear and she has to push her breath to get it out. She reaches for Naomi’s hand just as Naomi is reaching for hers.
“We must stay together.”
She’s not sure if she says this or if it’s only something she thinks. She tries not to look back as they run with the other women toward the trees. Although the gunshots are not frequent—reloading takes time—the arrows are flying nonstop. Before they get to the end of the clearing there is an earsplitting sound and the woman running on the other side of Penelope falls, her skull split open by gunshot. Blood spurts up the side of Penelope’s dress and later she finds bits of skin in her hair. A whiteness comes over her like a spell. Her legs are moving but she feels herself fading. She makes a noise and stumbles but Naomi pulls her forward before she can fall to the ground.
“Stay with me,” Naomi orders her.
They enter the woods and stop beneath a huge oak tree with dead limbs intermixed with living. For a moment Penelope bends over with her hands on her ears, thinking she is going to be sick. The men’s cries are horrifying. After they catch their breath they move deeper into the woods, but what tree anywhere could protect them? Now Penelope stops and really is sick, and afterward she does nothing but take a step back. It is Naomi who wipes her mouth for her on the sleeve of her own dress. Then they stand pressed together looking back through the trees in the direction of the fighting. Penelope’s arm moves with each breath Naomi takes, in and out. Her own breath leaves in spurts, and when she inhales it feels like a gulp.
Then, just as suddenly as it started, the sound of fighting is over. Gradually the noises of the forest—birds, insects, a brief knocking on wood—resume. Only now Penelope notices all the women sheltering under this tree or that with their children. No one moves. After a little while an older Wyandot with pockmarked skin comes with his hands raised to signal their victory.
As they make their way back to the clearing, Penelope sees the young woman with the heart-shaped face crouching between two trees, still holding Penelope’s knitting bag. Penelope looks down at her hands. She is still holding her stockings.
Back at the clearing the women scatter to help the wounded. The air smells of gunpowder and blood.
“They must have been following us all this time,” Naomi says. She means the Potawatomi.
She goes from body to body and Penelope follows her. They are searching for the scarred Potawatomi. Without saying it aloud, they both want to find him among the fallen.
Sure enough there he is, lying dead on his back. His eyes are open to slits and there are two arrows in his chest, one with a broken shaft. The scar down the side of his face is in shadow. Blood trickles out of his ear.
Penelope stares at his face. This is the man who killed Aurelia. She doesn’t believe in fate but she feels avenged.
“Do you think he wanted us back?” she asks. “Do you think that’s why they attacked?”
Naomi looks at her in surprise. “They just wanted more horses,” she says.
The Wyandots spend the rest of the day in the same clearing tending the wounded and burying the dead. Naomi and Penelope have been given the task of breaking up walnuts and mixing them with water. Naomi’s fingers feel empty without her violin. She picks up the shallow wooden bowl and begins grinding kernels. The women are burying the dead west to east while the men cut up a horse that was shot by mistake in the fighting. The stench is terrible.
“My legs ache,” Penelope is saying. “And my back. And my shoulders. Everything aches.”
Naomi says, “You sound like Beet.”
“But my aches are real.”
They smile at each other—they are too hungry to laugh. If at first they felt a slight thrill from surviving the battle and seeing their enemy dead, that thrill is gone and they are left with their empty stomachs and their aches and pains and worries. Naomi’s arms feel heavy but her head feels light, as if emptied of all her thoughts and dreams as well as the music she kept so carefully stored there. Everything is gone, that’s how it feels. Even music cannot help her.
Her sisters would be surprised to learn that Naomi’s dream is not the dream of giving concerts or teaching the violin. She does not want to play for anyone else, and she certainly does not want to listen to others play badly for her. She thinks of music as her own private world. No, her dream has always been much more mundane: she wants to marry. But she wants to marry a man who, as she puts it to herself, understands music. This is her way of describing a person who can experience more than just the scrabble of livelihood. She wants beauty in her life. She wants a companion who can appreciate beauty and mystery: the sound of Haydn, the sound of birds flying in after the winter, the sound of a narrowing creek. It’s hard to explain to others and in general she does not even try. Only her father, she thought, understood.
She sits on the ground pounding walnuts with Penelope until a woman with dried blood on her hands comes to take their bowls. With a short spoon she begins feeding the mixture to an infant in another woman’s arms.
“Why are they feeding that to a baby?” Penelope asks.
“Its mother must be dead,” Naomi guesses.
She watches the baby struggle to suck the spoon. Here in this wast
ed clearing there is no beauty whatsoever. The afternoon sky has turned dark and the stark trees around them are good for neither fruit nor wood, just scrub put down to block the view. The Wyandot women work hard and their hard lives show in their faces. They have nothing, Naomi thinks, except the battle of living one more day. No beauty. No music. She looks down at the hard, permanent calluses on her fingers. And what does she have? Her dream of marriage seems as far off as Sirus and Ellen, as far off as the sun.
A short while later, a tall Wyandot comes over to question them about the band of Potawatomi: how many of them are there, how many guns, are there women and children among them? He speaks broken English and a little French. His name, he tells them, is Tawakota. Naomi can see he is a leader by the way the others address him.
He leans over and touches a spot on top of her lip.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” he asks.
“A mole,” Naomi tells him. She does not know the Iroquois word. The mole is light purple, unusual, and people often remark on it. “I’ve always had it. Je l’ai toujours.” She does not want him to think she is ill. She knows too well what would happen then.
Tawakota turns away and directs two women to cook the slain horse. This will take some time, so he must think another attack is unlikely. In the evening, Penelope and Naomi are given none of the cooked horsemeat but are allowed to drink some of the broth. Afterward Penelope’s mistress gives them two worn deerskin dresses to wear in exchange for their aprons. Their old dresses are badly torn and stained with blood and dirt, but Penelope tucks them into her knitting bag anyway. She pulls out her needles and begins to make over her stockings for the young woman with the heart-shaped face.
Before they go to sleep, Naomi braids her hair into one long plait and binds the end with a rubbery piece of grass.
Thieving Forest Page 13