To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

   — I’ve been watching them since morning, Samuelson said. — They’ve been making their way down through those alders, off the mountainside.

   — You sure it’s them? Tillman asked.

   — Hard to believe, but it’s so. That girl’s got pluck, you’ve got to give her that, Samuelson said.

  The woman & dog made their way towards us. They leapt several streams of the river. Soon only the largest channel of the Wolverine would separate them from us & they would be within speaking distance. As we watched, however, the woman & dog turned from our direction, began to travel upriver, parallel to our course.

   — Where’s she going? Doesn’t she see us? Tillman asked

  Samuelson shrugged, said he guessed she wasn’t rejoining our party after all.

  Tillman shouted & waved at her, but she did not turn in our direction.

   — What do you care where she has been or where she goes? Pruitt said. — She’s not our concern.

  While that may be true, I would be curious to learn how she survived her ordeal.

  May 2

  Nat’aaggi met up with us this morning. She came across the Wolverine in a small skin boat, called a baidarra as in Russian. The dog sat in the bow while she knelt, paddled from the stern. She navigated the swift, gray water expertly, avoided the large slabs of ice that continue to float down the river. Just as she reached us, she swung the bow upriver, sidled the boat alongside the shore. Samuelson stepped into the river to his knees so that he could grab the side of the boat as she neared.

   — Well done, woman. Well done, he said.

  It is unusual for Samuelson to express this kind of surprise & admiration. I believe it wasn’t just her boating skills, but that we were seeing her again at all.

  The dog leapt ashore first, nearly knocked Tillman to the ground in happy greeting. The dog then ran about our legs, rubbed its head against us, sniffed at the packs we had set down on the rocks.

  Tillman offered his hand to assist Nat’aaggi getting ashore, but she did not notice or chose to ignore it, climbed from the baidarra on her own.

  Where had she gotten the boat?

  Samuelson said it belongs to a band of Midnooskies who camp on the other side.

   — They wouldn’t come with her. They’re afraid of us. Haven’t seen our kind before — ‘red hairs on the face.’ Seems that’s what they call us. Red Beards.

  None of us has shaved in many weeks, so are all looking bushy. Amongst us, only Pruitt has true red hair, but compared to the near-black shade universal among the Indians and the mostly bare faces of their men, our appearances must be unexpected.

  We dragged the boat away from the river’s edge. Nat’aaggi gathered her belongings. She offered to carry some of our supplies in her own pack, but we explained that our stores are so diminished that we need no help

  As we once again began our day’s walk, we asked Nat’aaggi about her journey. How had she survived when the ice washed out of the canyon? Where has she been these many days?

  Samuelson translated as she described how she had left us in the night, hid until dawn, then walked downriver until she could reach the dog. She knew the ice would soon break. She continued until she came to a wall of the canyon where she thought there were footholds enough — narrow ledges, spindly spruce trees sprouted from the rocks — where she could perhaps climb out of the canyon. She did not believe the dog would be able to follow, however, so she retraced our entire way back down the canyon.

  How did she travel over the weakening ice?

   — She says she is lighter & can run faster than we giant Red Beards with clumsy feet, Samuelson said.

  Below the canyon, she & the dog were able to climb the hillside where the Old Man had sent down the avalanche upon our camp. As she traveled up the valley, she heard the river ice come washing down in a great roar.

  I asked how the travel went in the high country.

   — Not easy, Colonel. The toughest land she’s ever passed through she says.

  According to Samuelson, she & the dog had to cross several fingers of a glacier, jumping over great crevasses. In other places, she had to navigate steep, rocky creeks. When she tried to climb higher into the mountains, she ran into snowstorms & ice fog.

  Boyd spoke up then.

   — She ever seen any sign of my wife up there? When she was traveling through that mountain fog, did she cross paths with a woman?

  Nat’aaggi shook her head.

   — Why did she back come up here with us at all? Why didn’t she just go home?

  Pruitt’s tone was blunt, even insolent, but I shared his interest.

   — I do not want home, she said. — I want to see.

  It was unexpected. Not just to hear her speak English, haltingly but with clarity all the same, but also the sentiment she expressed.

   — If that is all she wants, she could go just as easily on her own, Pruitt said.

   — If you believe that, you are a fool, Samuelson said.

  An Indian traveling alone through another tribe’s territory is likely to be taken as a slave. For a woman, the danger is all the more certain. Her best chance is to remain with us. It likely explains why she waited until she was in our sight before she approached the Midnooskies with the baidarra.

   — What then of all her skills & bravery, of which you speak so highly? Pruitt asked Samuelson with some condescension.

   — She’d last longer than most, Lieutenant, I’ll tell you that.

  May 3

  We subsist on very little each day. When we are fortunate enough to come across game, we eat every morsel down to bone, so that we are like a plague of locusts on this lean land. Tillman shot a porcupine yesterday, for which we were most grateful.

  & salt! Any one of us would trade our boots for a teaspoon of salt. One takes it for granted at the table back home. Now that we have been without it for many days, we thirst for it as if for water.

  Boyd’s health, remarkably, has improved. He remains thin, but seems to grow stronger from the walking. Lieut. Pruitt, on the other hand, is low in spirits, weak of energy.

  I am hopeful to reach the mouth of the Trail River drainage in the next day or two.

  With Tillman questioning & Samuelson translating, we learn more of Nat’aaggi’s life. Her mother was a Midnoosky from the lower Wolverine River, her father a Russian–Eyak creole. They were both dead before she was old enough to talk, though she did not say if their deaths were related. She was taken in by her uncle’s family, who treated her as a servant. Many times she ran away, often surviving for entire seasons on her own along the Wolverine River, though she had never come so far north as the canyon. Each time she was found by someone in the family, she was brought back, beaten, & misused.

   — No selnaw, she said. I am no slave.

  This explains why she fled with the stranger who came for her. She yet contends that he was an otter man, that it is his fur she wears across her shoulders.

  It puzzles me that she can be so self-assured & clever, yet hold to such absurdity.

  Sophie Forrester

  Vancouver Barracks

  April 26, 1885

  Oh that I never saw that bird again! Such strange behavior, the way it pecked at my bedroom window.

  I was preparing for bed last night and had drawn the curtains when I heard it thump onto the sill. And then came a flapping and beating against the window, an awful, startling noise! I could not imagine what it could be, so that I did not want to look out into the night. Silly nonsense, I told myself. I will not cower in my own house. I pulled back the curtains.

  I wonder if its twisted leg contributed to its odd manner; perhaps it had difficulty clinging to the narrow sill, although that still does not explain why it would seek to perch outside my bedroom. When I first opened the curtains, the raven flapped its wings and squawked for some time, its bad leg held out to the side, but then it seemed to settle, only
to commence pecking at the glass. I laughed at first, though with a touch of nerves. Such an unexpected, and almost amusing, way for a wild bird to behave. Why are you knocking at my window? I asked aloud. Do not think I am going to let you in.

  Yet it continued with its steady and hard rapping, and the sound became more and more horrible. I feared the bird would crack the pane. I tried to shoo it away, sweeping my arms at the window. Could it be somehow trapped on the sill? I took my candle and leaned closer to the window to try to see out into the darkness. The raven stopped its knocking and cocked an eye toward me.

  I then noticed something most peculiar. I could not make it out at first, and then thought it only a matter of light and reflection. However, as the bird remained still, its eye turned steadily toward me, there could be no doubt. A bird’s eye ought to be flattened in shape, with a dark iris surrounded by a dark-gray sclera, and entirely unmoving in its socket. Yet this eye was round, with white sclera, and it rotated about in the socket. It looked nothing like a bird eye, but rather that of a mammal. More to the point, a human.

  It causes me a shudder to think on it this morning. Last night, I shut the curtains and retreated to bed. What else could I do? It would be preposterous to wake Charlotte over such a trivial matter, and certainly I wasn’t going to go out into the dark in my nightgown to chase the bird away, although more than anything I wanted it to leave. I pulled the covers up to my chin, the candle still lit at my bedside, and waited with dread to hear that horrid tapping again. Yet all was quiet.

  I remained awake far into the night, but never did I hear another sound at the window. I confess it was with some apprehension that I went to open the curtains this morning, and I had to make myself do it in one quick motion. Such relief to see the bird had gone!

  If only I were mistaken in my observations, but I cannot imagine how. I saw it clearly, and now even in the light of day I cannot chase it from my brain.

  I have slept most of the day, but I have yet to recover from my sleepless night. I intended to sit outside for a while, but have been unable to move from this bed all afternoon. Even the broth and bread Charlotte kindly brought me at noon does not sit well with me. Though I do not complain to anyone, I am quite uncomfortable. My stomach cramps, and there is an acute pain in my left side, but I am not bleeding, and I hold on to that fact. If only I had experienced carrying a child before. Might I then know if a sensation is normal, or that I should be alarmed? Do I fret too much, or not enough?

  April 28

  This grief is intolerable

  April 30

  Such pathetic instruments, this diary, this pen in my hand. What can they do but slice into the wound, flay and pin my sorrow to the page like a dissected organ? I would rather throw it all away, every page, every pitiful hope.

  May 2

  “You must be strong, Mrs Forrester. You’ve got to deliver this poor little thing, or it will be your death, too.”

  Mrs Connor, my unlikely angel of mercy, who came in the night and wiped at me with damp rags, offered small sips of water, while Charlotte cleaned the mess. I did not expect it, but Sarah Whithers blanched and ran from my bedside at the sight of my bloody legs. Not Mrs Connor. Five miscarriages, two stillborns, three live births. She should be decorated with more medals than her husband, she said, her pride matter-of-fact. She survived. She implies that I will do the same.

  “You’ll have all of the labor, Mrs Forrester, and none of the sweetness. No, it isn’t fair. It’s a grim business, but it’s not up to us, is it? We must never forget it. Our lives are not our own.”

  Is there nothing we can do? I begged. Please tell me there is something? I’ll do anything, but please save my child.

  Oh Allen, I have lost our baby.

  May 3

  There was hope. I did not imagine it, and Dr Randall does not deny it even now. I might have been so fortunate as to bear the child to term.

  “But fate came to visit,” the doctor said.

  Fate. With crooked leg and black feathers. If it had never appeared at my window, would you be with me, little one? Would I even now feel your movements below my ribs? Would I still be dreaming of the day that I would be allowed to hold you and kiss you?

  I am a fool to court such thoughts. A hollow coincidence, surely, that the beak struck the glass just as your heart stopped beating.

  Your forehead. Your heart. The small flutter of your life. You. You. You are gone, yet still I address you. Still I wait to feel you and know you.

  Dr Randall says it is unlikely I will ever give birth to a living baby. If I try, he says, it could be the end of me. My womb, so ill-formed for motherhood, could rupture. I could bleed to death.

  May 5

  I despise my own propriety. It keeps me to this bed, docile and quiet, hair brushed and pinned, bed clothes smoothed neatly over my lap. I mark the days. I eat. I breathe. I say thank you and please and feign sleep. Yet it is all a lie. In my heart I am something else altogether. I am burning with grief. I should be out in the rain, barefooted and wild. I should roar and claw at the sky. I should rip open my gown and bare my breasts and bare my pain and plead and rage.

  It is a selfish daydream. Who am I to claim such boundless sorrow? This heartache, acute and true as it may be, is slight compared to all of this world. Five miscarriages, two stillborns, three live births, and Mrs Connor is one of our fortunate. She is not disemboweled in the snow. Her hands have committed no atrocities. She believes in God.

  It is remarkable how we go on. All that we come to know and witness and endure, yet our hearts keep beating, our faith persists.

  Lieut. Col. Allen Forrester

  May 5, 1885

  I do not know whether to count it as bad luck or good that we cross paths again with the Old Man.

  Yesterday, we continued to walk upriver even after the sun went behind the mountains. We aimed for a small thicket of spruce we could see upriver. I am certain we must be near the valley of the powerful tyone. Also, Nat’aaggi spotted tebay on a nearby mountain. Samuelson believes the animals are less than a day’s hike away. We plan to set snares for rabbits, then search for the village while others go after the tebay. The spruce forest will provide firewood & more shelter than the open riverbed.

  As darkness neared, Boyd was the first to spy firelight in the forest. We discussed whether we should avoid the strangers or seek them out with hopes of finding food.

   — Nat’aaggi says we should be careful. When we passed through the canyon, we came into a new land.

  Did she refer to a new countryside, or a new tribe of Indians?

   — More than that. She says we walk towards the land of the dead. From here on, nothing follows white man’s rules. The old stories live. This is where her otter husband came from.

  It seems that, out of ignorance, these people attach some superstition to the upper stretches of the Wolverine River. Such fearful beliefs mean little to me. More urgently, we are in need of food, so I decided we would seek out the campfire.

  Darkness came on as we entered the forest. There was the occasional scent of cooking meat.

   — Now that’s something worth sniffing out, Samuelson said.

   — It could be goose they’re roasting. Or something far worse, Tillman suggested. — These here aren’t any blanket Indians. Don’t forget about those bones? Why would there be children’s bones, gnawed and scattered about like that?

  None of us had an answer.

  When we reached the camp, we found no sign of tent or hovel, only a large campfire positioned in a clearing surrounded by tall spruce trees.

  I called ahead a greeting.

  Our eyes adjusted to the light & shadow. We could see there was a solitary person crouched beside the fire. A slab of meat was speared through by a stick, held close to the red coals.

  As we stepped into the clearing, the figure turned his head, lifted his face to us, pushed back his hat. The firelight lit up the bronze face, black shadows in the deep lines, so th
at it looked like a mask carved with a sharp blade.

  Tillman cursed. After all his shenanigans, I was no more pleased to see the Old Man. How is it that he, elderly & bent at the back, could have traveled faster than us up the river valley without our notice?

  He beckoned us towards the fire.

   — First, ask him what kind of meat he’s got cooking there, Tillman said.

   — He says we should taste it, tell him what we think it is, Samuelson said. — Seems he cooked it just for us. Been waiting for us to come along.

   — No God d —— d way I trust that devil! Tillman said.

  I had to agree. We remained at the edge of the firelight.

  Samuelson, however, did not hesitate. He strode towards the Old Man, unsheathed his knife, knelt at the fire, sliced off a hunk of meat, bit into it.

   — Some fine mutton here, gentlemen. Flank meat off a tebay. I wouldn’t pass this up if I were you.

  It was then I realized Nat’aaggi was no longer with us. I was sure she had followed us into the trees.

  Tillman asked how can we trust the Old Man when he has tried to kill us more times than not.

   — Not to worry. He says he’s not so hungry as he used to be, Samuelson said & roared with laughter.

  It was not a comforting answer, yet our hunger was greater than our mistrust.

  We joined Samuelson at the fire. He cut away pieces of the meat, handed them to each of us. The meat fell apart in my mouth, smoky, warm, roasted to a crust on the outside, rare & juicy inside. I don’t know that anything has ever tasted so good.

  The other men were similarly ravenous. We took every portion handed us. When the meat was gone, I apologized to the Old Man for our greed, explained that for many days we had eaten only flour paste & strands of rabbit meat.

  The Old Man waved off my words, pointed to a nearby tree. In the darkness I could just make out two shoulders & a rib cage hanging from a branch.

   — He says he’s got plenty to share.

  We consumed most of a side of sheep tonight. We ate until our stomachs were distended. Roasted more meat. Sprawled by the fire in a stupor. The Old Man sat on his heels, watched us.