Maiden from the Sea

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  Nasook called, “Genevieve, Gen-ev-ieve!” His disembodied voice beckoned her from a deep, dark hole. She lifted the crying baby from her nape sack and held her against the warmth of her neck, as she followed his voice echoing her name.

  “Where are we going?” she called, her voice moving in waves. She was tempted to go back and take her chances with Luke, but Nasook was pressing on, urging her to follow. She stopped to lay her whimpering baby against her breast to suckle. She turned a bend, her eyelids narrowing against a beam of light coming through a crack in the roof of the cave. In the long, hazy light she caught sight of Nasook rounding a turn and going out of sight. She followed as fast as she could, her breath coming in short gasps, the thought racing: What if Luke saw us disappear into the cave? She imagined him catching up with her, passing her, and filling Nasook with gunshot.

  A scream echoed through the cave. Genevieve hurried toward it, keeping Patience Elizabeth tight to her breast. She stopped. A scream sounds the same on any tongue, she thought. It may not have come from Nasook. She hurried ahead, then stopped still in the gloomy light. She recoiled, staring in horror at the sight of Nasook’s head sticking out of a quagmire, as if a giant slug had wrapped itself around him, sucking him down inside itself—only his head left to be digested. Nasook’s eyes shifted in fear.

  Genevieve pulled Patience Elizabeth from her breast. She slipped off her cassock and tightened it around the baby. She laid her precious bundle down between two slanted rocks. Genevieve searched for something that Nasook could grab hold of and pull himself free. She found a slime-soaked log and rolled it across the bog marsh, lodging one end in a rock cleft. She lay across the other end. Nasook, his eyes grateful, lifted his chin and anchored it on the log while he worked his arms up and out of the bog. Quivering under the weight of damp, black bog, he pulled himself clear. He stood up, shaking himself like a wild dog, his cassock and body stained with mud.

  They both turned to Patience Elizabeth’s cry. Genevieve rushed to where she lay kicking her garments away in the cold air. She tightened the clothes around the little body and gathered the baby to her breast.

  “We almost to opening,” Nasook said, cautiously sniffing the air and hurrying. “I smell basdic—smoke! ” The acrid sting hit Genevieve’s nostrils as Nasook dashed outside. He hurried back, his eyes in shock. “My people’s mamateeks ashes. They caught by storm of white man. They gone! Canoes gone! Boobishat—fire—in trees.”

  “What are we going to do?” she choked, her hands over the baby’s face as she ventured outside the cave. Charred remains of Indian articles lay strewn everywhere. She drew in a sharp breath as she recognized Mother Teehonee’s necklace, its eagle feather singed, lying broken on the ground. Genevieve’s hand went to her side and down to the gold coins from the shipwreck in her leggings. Nasook’s coins remained in the cave.

  Nasook dropped to his knees and began to dig frantically. “There’s another opening to beach where one of my people’s canoes be. The canoe will mark our way on water to new place.” He pulled a large slate stone away and slid down the opening. His voice came between sharp intakes of breath: “The elders dug through here for escape. It narrow and low, and if other end of cave be filled with fire and smoke we die.” His eyes took on a dark, desperate look and Genevieve knew there was no other way.

  Nasook seized her hand. The baby let out a wild, frantic cry as Genevieve squeezed her tight to her neck and climbed down after Nasook into a pit that led into a narrow passageway. Nasook slid his hands up to pull the flat stone in place. Now the underground was in darkness, the damp scent of clay in Genevieve’s nostrils. Her mind burned with the fear of getting stuck as she moved through the low, narrow tunnel, clutching her baby with one arm and holding on to the hand Nasook extended behind him. They moved slowly, relieved there was no sign of fire. At last, they came to a glimmer of light.

  They crawled out of the narrow passageway to a beach smoked in fog. Genevieve sucked fresh air as she lifted Patience Elizabeth to the bracing breath of the sea.

  Canoes lay on the beach entrenched in hollows in the sand. Red ochre, as thick as blood, stained the wet sand. The Indian people were nowhere in sight. Nasook sighed, a frown deepening, as if he knew what the disappearance of his family boded. Without a word, he helped Genevieve and Patience Elizabeth into a canoe, careful not to overturn it. Nasook knelt on moss-covered ballast stones and, leaning back on his feet, he seized a narrow-bladed paddle. He began to paddle, his lips tight, his silence as thick as the fog. Genevieve did not try to penetrate it with her questions.

  Fog started to burn off the water, and the sun came through, its rays a stream of gold on the dusty waters. The sea’s sounds filled Genevieve’s ears, drawing her to its movements. She had never gone far in a canoe and now she wondered if there were creatures in the deep ready to surface. Nasook had told her that his people believed in a monster devil from the sea. They claimed that it had once struck the canoe of two brothers, its many long arms striking at, and snapping, the craft, punishing the occupants with its killing grip.

  Genevieve settled against the canoe as Nasook paddled it into the open sea, turning the boat counter-clockwise against the wind. A bad omen, she thought. That’s what the sailors on Captain Greeley’s ship would say.

  Luke, watching from the shore, shook his head; his lips tightened against one thought: A bad omen.

  Chapter 14

  Escape to Mamasheek,

  Isle of Avalon—Tik-na-n-og

  Genevieve tucked Patience Elizabeth inside her cassock and stayed as still as possible so she would not overturn the canoe as Nasook traced its path through the sea, tacking the waves to gain leeway.

  After a long time, a dark island that had appeared smoky in the distance loomed out of scattering mist clearly marked against grey sky. A cliff rose high and steep above the sea surging against the island. A small beach stretched in the shadow of the cliff.

  The canoe scraped against land, and Nasook laid down his paddle and jumped out, keeping his hand on the bow. “Mamasheek!” he proclaimed with a slight smile.

  Holding her daughter to her breast, Genevieve climbed out of the canoe. Wet sand sloshed under her feet as she stood looking back to the cove she had left. The land rose in a blue tint, the cove a black shadow in its mouth. What kind of a place have we left the cove for? she wondered, fear clutching her heart. Are there places here to conceal us from an enemy? She tightened her arms around Patience Elizabeth. The baby let out a distressed cry, her body stiffening. Genevieve hoped this was not an omen that trouble would follow them.

  Nasook pulled up the canoe, scraping it over rolling pebbles until it was out of the reach of high tides. Then he overturned it, leaning it against a large rock, so there remained an opening. “For Teehonee’s shelter,” he said, “until we find spot to settle.”

  Water from a recent rainfall trickled down the steep cliff beside a lagoon in from the beach. Brown ducks, a trim of green around their necks, swam in the shallow waters. In a stream to the side of the lagoon, water spilled like saltwater eels over rocks, twisting and turning as it made its way into the sea. Goose grass tickled the water, making it laugh as clear as a child’s chuckle.

  Nasook dipped a birch container he called shuwán in the lagoon and brought it to his lips. He spat quickly, his mouth twisting in distaste. “Mássoch—salt water! We look for fresh water inland.”

  Nasook lifted his eyes to a sunbow arching over the blue waters. “Luke and bad father think we drowned,” he said optimistically. “We live in grove without fire, unless fog come, until fishermen gone way they came; we hold babe between us for warmth. I go look for my people when safe.”

  Genevieve looked at the ducks. Her stomach growled like a dog ready to pounce.

  Nasook caught her look. “My people pick greens and berries in summer. They hunt birds’ eggs. Apponath eggs help feed us if we find some. Mayb
e not on this island. When apponath fly many moons before I live, he carried away one of our babies. To punish him, Great Spirit told him to walk and paddle water to find fish for food.” His face clouded. “My people lost to me; maybe they all killed. I show you something from a long time ago. Come. White men take big birds and eggs. Soon all gone. They like take Red Men. Make them all gone.”

  Nasook reached for her hand and they followed a narrow trail past daisies and harebells whispering in grass. A broken skull lay in clay like a vessel discarded. “Head of white man,” he said without expression. Then in long grass under layers of tree bark he showed her the corpses of elders and others who had been killed. Leathery skin lay tight around bones; eye sockets were dark holes from which grass and fernery sprouted. The ribs reminded Genevieve of the skeleton of a ship.

  “It long time ago, but I know it. Men killed first.” Nasook’s eyes were sad. “Then women and children come running—and die.”

  Genevieve imagined the movement of the children, their flesh soft and brown, their laughter as light as a gentle breeze on alder leaves, laughter that turned to cries as they were flung against rocks, their heads broken. She picked up the bleached skeleton of a bird, imagining a child once floating the frame like a boat through laughing water, tipping and disappearing while the child reached to find it and lost her balance. She felt glad to be a white woman whose body had joined with a Red Man’s flesh. Indian blood would be carried in the veins of white people and held through her.

  Genevieve looked at Nasook, and for the first time she saw his eyes pool with water. The tears spilled down his cheeks. She knew he was thinking of his people whom he had never met, but also of Kisa and those gone—maybe forever—from his sight: Teehonee, Badisut, Amet, Whooch, and Odusweet.

  Words, not her own, tiptoed across Genevieve’s mind. A past is the background we lean against, for it holds people to whom we belong. If we don’t remember the past, the present won’t mean as much. The present survives through the deep hardships of the past, proving that the future is possible.

  “The hand of the white man will hold the hand of the Red Indian,” she promised Nasook as they walked back to the beach. “Your daughter would hold your seed and pass it on.”

  Without saying a word, Nasook took her hand in his and held it tight to his heart.

  She looked down at her swaddled baby nestled against her and smiled at the big, dark eyes like daisy centres in her dainty, golden face. She shuddered as a cold breeze swept off the water. But it was the feeling that her baby was not as safe now as when she was wrapped inside her body that brought a second shudder.

  With Patience Elizabeth asleep in the cradle of her arms, Genevieve and Nasook wandered over rocks sticking up from bare ground to paths that led to marshes and wide meadows where they filled their mouths with wild berries. The sounds of flowing water came like human voices splashing over the little island as the couple climbed layers of rocks raftered against each other, each ledge lifting the next into a higher place until their jagged edges fitted into a plateau on the highest cliff Genevieve had ever seen. The powerful height made her legs tremble as she looked toward the cove of the graves, now a mere smudge.

  They crossed a low grove centred on the other side of the island. Here Genevieve followed Nasook past talus up a dizzying steep slope, over a scape of loose clay, leaving their footprints. Close to the top, Nasook stumbled over scattered rocks to get to level land. There he found a growth of small fir and spruce trees. Among them were dead trees that were leaning or had fallen to the ground.

  In a little valley distant from the cliffs, Nasook rigged a hammock for Teehonee between two trees, using old fishermen’s nets he’d found on the island. He fastened a net over the hammock to protect the baby from scurrying creatures. While Patience Elizabeth slept in it, Genevieve helped Nasook haul fallen trees to use as a barrier against the wind. Nasook shook his head. “Not enough. I go find something.” He hurried away. When he returned, hours later, he carried a rusted axe he had sharpened with a stone. He sweated as he used it to fell evergreens to build his family a shelter. She hoped that some day when danger had passed, Nasook could lay sods for a new house, a home for his family. Amidst the smell of new wood and the sweat of his body, he came to her, his heartbeats quick and strong.

  Genevieve felt her own body yielding, moistening, tightening as they came together. She settled in the soft sway of exhaustion, hoping they would not start another baby—not yet. Her belly had rounded full and taut for many months around Patience Elizabeth. Now it had settled back between the arches of her hip bones. She did not want it to be rounding again so soon. She wished she knew where to find a plant root to keep her from starting life while answering the call of her body. She’d heard the women in Madame’s maison in France talk such things. But there had been no cause for her interest then.

  Nasook drew her, still naked, to her feet, led her by the hand down to a lagoon. “Lie on it.” His voice was gentle. “It a cradle to hold you. We begin our swim in sea of our mother’s body. Our people believe earth’s body began in sea, the body that began all living creatures.”

  Genevieve sat on the sandbar. She shrieked at the first touch of salt water on her toes. Goosebumps rose on her flesh as she moved into the lagoon. Slowly, she slid down to where the water covered her shoulders, its fluid face meeting her solid one. The water warmed around her as it moved with her. She glided through it, touched the sandy bottom with her toes, and stood up.

  “Walk out so your legs not on ground. Lie on back. You not sink,” Nasook urged her. “You be wet to earholes and not to eyes.”

  She looked for courage to trust the water, feeling again her struggle to swim when she fell from the Tempest. The lagoon’s buoyancy swept her off her feet. She felt its salty kiss on her lips, her body in its embrace. Her head splashed under water swells and she came up sputtering. She screamed in terror.

  “Move arms and legs,” Nasook called against her ears crackling with water.

  She lay on the water, surprised at not falling far beneath it. It slipped around her, and she become part of it as Mother Ocean cradled her in a soft flow—two hearts beating in rhythm.

  Finally, exhausted, she found the seabed beneath her feet and made her way to higher ground. She waded ashore, feeling the hot lick of the sun on her wet body. She stretched, wet and naked, on the beach. Without thinking she mouthed Nasook’s word: “Homedish—It is good!”

  Nasook came to her with water dripping from his body like golden jewels. He slipped down on her, his salty lips tasting her mouth, and then her tongue as if it were a scallop. His lips travelled her whole body until she peaked on a wave of pleasure that seemed to consume her whole being. Nasook’s sounds of relish excited her as she explored him. They finally slipped into sweet exhaustion. From a sleepy distance, Genevieve heard Patience Elizabeth’s awaking cry and the swift movement of Nasook’s feet in sand as he ran to bring their child back to her breast. After she had cleaned Patience Elizabeth’s bottom, she started to wail. Genevieve discovered a welt on her skin, likely from the sting of a stout in the wad of grass she had used to wipe her. She settled the baby with a cool wet leaf and laid her between them.

  They lay on the warm sand with their feet facing the sea. As the tides rose and water rolled to their armpits, Genevieve lifted Patience Elizabeth into the air. The baby’s brown eyes sparkled as she was lowered and her feet touched water. She shuddered at first; then her fat little legs danced like fish among the waves. She grimaced as salt water splashed on her lips. Genevieve jumped up with the baby and ran to wash her face in the stream of fresh water cascading over the cliffs.

  Nasook grew silent and deep in thought as he sat back on his heels and looked toward the cove they had left. “I go back,” he said suddenly. “My people may not be killed, no bodies on ground. They may be captured and taken across sea. People there look in faces, laugh, try to take
my people’s words and put new words on tongue. If not find people, I get coins and tools, and food you brought from shipwreck to cave. I take salt.”

  “What if fishermen or pirates catch you?” Fear almost suffocated her words; they could barely be heard. “If Joe is dead from where you struck him, Luke and fishermen from the Dark Wave may come after you.”

  “I go when night comes and I come back when clouds down on water,” Nasook promised.

  * * * *

  genevieve wished nasook could have gone while the ocean glistened under sunlight. Instead, he paddled away from the island after nightfall into a world that swallowed him, leaving her facing the open mouth of the sea, its damp breath and a moonless night pulling her and the island inside a dark skull.

  Nasook didn’t come the next day. He wouldn’t have been able to guide his canoe through a sea butting the rocks, its waves exploding into cold, white flames before receding into a seething, white fire.

  In the twilight of another night, Genevieve, trying to allay a piercing longing for Nasook, held Patience Elizabeth close. An unfamiliar sound caught her ear. She turned toward the rustling and caught a glimpse of the back of something or someone hooded, and in a long, black cloak, in the shadows of a cliff. It waddled around the cliff and disappeared, leaving in her ears the sound of a low croak. She froze, thinking, A very little man. A gnome, perhaps, come to guard the treasures of pirates hidden on the island! She shook away her wild thoughts and hurried to the open bough and birch shelter Nasook had built. Night deepened, filling in the last pinholes of light. The wind died and the world fell silent as if the day’s breath had been snuffed. The moon came out and she lay awake facing the great albino eye in the black face of the sky. The quiet stealth of dawn banished her fears of a strange creature finding her. She turned to her baby stirring from sleep. “It’s just you and me in this place—no one else,” she murmured. Genevieve lifted Patience Elizabeth to her breast, comforted by her sweet breath and warm body.