by Rudy Wiebe
The lowering sun rises into the second day. She has stared down hour by hour at this moist lace of matted green and brown stems beneath her, her forehead propped exhausted on the stone ground. When she can think, she hears the lake of the great bear, Sahtú, breathe against the rocks below, and she feels her happiness multiplied by the length and depth of that deep, black water she knows she has climbed out of, at last.
The water is with her, snuffling between the split erosions of Sahtú’s cliffs, the mountainous bristle of grey stone that looms above her. Called Forbidden Rock since the prophecy — which not even her father is old enough to have heard the Prophet tell People, though he says he once saw him as a little boy, looked up and saw bent over him an ancient man with both eyes blind, so enormous and deep from a lifetime of looking inside himself that along the blade of his nose his face had grown into a skeleton cross. Since that prophecy of vision, no one dares to paddle a canoe in front of the Rock where it thrusts itself out of the lake, glistening like diluvial ice spired upwards into granite. So two days ago, when the Tetsot’ine came paddling south along the east side of the lake, they camped for night at their usual place in order to carry the long portage behind Forbidden Rock and thus avoid the deepwater danger before it; that night this child within her gave its first great heave of intention.
But why choose this dangerous place? “Why,” she asks, her fingertips tracing its curl once more, and feeling reluctance flutter like breath through her distended skin, “why if you truly wish to cry here first, why now abuse me and refuse to be born so I can comfort you?”
Keskarrah smiled at her when she left, and she understood him: it seems your child is like you — contrary.
And she smiles, remembering; eases herself down again, onto the length of her left side and pulls the marten-skin robe Greywing brought over her nakedness. The small animals are always ready and warm, their soft tenderness a wrap of comfort. The camp with all her People is beyond a ridge; they are living as easily as they can, this waiting a mere hesitation in their continual travel as they follow the animals, and she cannot hear them, only the slim trees whispering into the sigh of the lake. She is surrounded by waiting, and abysmally alone. If a she-wolf came now, delicate furred feet silent from rock or deep water — as she did for Copperwoman, yes come, come — she would greet her with happiness,
“Come my sister, come my mother, you have birthed so many children, come and welcome this one fearful of the world, come sing it into courage.”
The strength of the she-wolf fondles her, the wolf’s long tongue wipes away the tears along the edges of her eyes, and she feels through the ground a faint, steady beat; she is two bodies curled in and around, tight together, and gradually taken into the rhythmic, sacred power of drum. They are there, they are here, Birdseye can no longer walk, but in their veneration for her the People are carrying her, out of the exhaustion of her year-long travail, south into the winter trees to wherever she wants to stop breathing even while this little one begins; and Keskarrah is a man, he cannot help Greenstockings, nor can Broadface, hunting and hunting. But their care and love for her beat like blood in the land. Especially here in this place of fearful vision, in the beaked shadow of Forbidden Rock.
And she thinks continuously of the child, a soft heavy stone turning inside her, refusing and refusing so stubbornly hard. That too is its good and separate will, hers no longer, and her mind flares into light, she sees it already running down to water, where waves curl forwards and race back, or through flowers on tundra, and leaping over worn round rocks and tussocks of moss, such long legs and belly tight with caribou meat, mouth open in breath and laughter. She can see that, land and child and sky, carrying her, as the rigid, battering pain heaves her up onto her knees again, rocks her groans into a piercing vision of — is it herself? running as she once did? is it Greywing? is it this hard child of living stone? already grown after it has been carried for several years more at her breast and on her back? and running free in a strength possible only because she has given to it her own continual work, her intense and willing slavery? After this difficult but ultimately mere moment of birthing.
Like the moment her blood told her she was becoming a woman. “Don’t hide that, when it comes,” Birdseye warned her. “You’ll be shy, but don’t ever hide it, it’s too powerful and dangerous, men can die if they touch you.” But it came so quickly and she had to retreat into her place of separation, wait alone where the women told her to hide under a tree, two days without eating, until an old woman came laughing with a great cape of fur to cover her sitting with her knees pulled tight against her stomach — so hard and flat then, she couldn’t do that now! — and she clasped herself, sat looking over her knees for days inside that tent of fur, so warmly hooded — patience then, and wonderful rest, waiting while her body travelled within itself in its own indelible way, and other women brought her water to drink through a bone straw, but spilled most of it to make her life strong, and Greywing and other small children came with food — dry meat, but no berries whose juice is too close to blood — and she took a single bite and gave them the rest so she would always be generous — she was so patient then, at rest while the moon went through its whole cycle, and happy at the dark slip of her unstoppable womanhood. When Birdseye’s face was still beautiful, and whole.
Below her the waters of Sahtú brush dark in a long wedge under wind, swift as clouds streak towards the horizon where there is no shoreline; she has no fear of this immense lake, even when the shoulder of the rock beneath her trembles.
Not like drum, but a solid shudder. As if Forbidden Rock had spoken to the massive water, and earth which alone can contain the bottomless lake, were alert and listening too. Were considering flood, or perhaps explosion. Can a lake melt like a mountain and rain water like rocks from the sky? Greenstockings is suddenly afraid in her exhaustion. If Keskarrah were with her, he would tell her that story too, the difficult story of final deluge or volcano being spoken beneath her. What can flood them? overwhelm them? their land held so firmly in bowls of water and ice?
Before this child insisted that this was its place, she has never dared kneel here to feel this sound, nor heard this subterranean beat through her body. Though she has heard her father tell the prophecy many times:
“The Prophet was so old when I saw him, and I was only a little boy, that he had already seen everything twice, everything in the world with the one milky eye nearest his heart, and his right eye was closed, he never opened it because that way he could look inwards most clearly. When you have been given power to do that, you often see more than you want to know. It scares you to know something a little. Once, long before we had even heard of Whites, he knew something one night, here, when People stopped to continue their journey next morning, and he sang to his drum all night so that they had to stay up without sleep and listen. And in the morning he told them.
“ ‘I thought I heard,’ the Prophet said, ‘that harm would come over us, like rain running, so I sang. Listen, singing I saw strange people come to this place, people pale as meat drowned in water, with unbelievable clothes. They went into the hard belly of this rock, into a hole they pounded there, right into the folded rock. They had tools harder than rock and they tore a hole out of it with a terrible noise, the rock screamed night and day louder than anything we could have explained, you had to hear it two days’ paddling away across the lake.
“ ‘Out of that hole they pulled long sticks of rock as thin as arms, and so dangerous they shone, they melted your hand into burning air if you touched them. Then huge birds sailed down on their grey bellies onto Sahtú, and swallowed the sticks pulled from the mountain and flew away again, bellowing up from the water and roaring south, roaring who can understand where. But I saw that, it will come. Rock groans continuously. And when Rock groans it is warning us: be careful! Be careful. Strange people, more and more, strange fire, be careful!”’
Why, when the world is immeasurable and land endless, why does
this child groan to be born here, and yet refuse? Forbidden Rock continually speaks what no one, not even the wisest, has yet comprehended beyond warning. And now she must wait here, cry with the earth and its inconceivable necessity of endurance.
She sees motion between hides above her: two ravens, riding light there. Long wings hold them above air it seems, the small density of their bodies blazing on the bright sky. She surrenders her heaviness to them, they soar over green summer land quick with flowers, the blue line of twisted rivers, and high stone rivers of eskers streaming their ridges north along the flat land into the white froth of rapids, lakes foaming into green lakes. The black movement of ravens intersects inland. Are they flowing into each other, are they doubled into one mellifluous sky warmth of People curved around and into each other skin upon skin? They open, sail wide and merge again. O to be raven, o to ride north on wind, to look down along the floating spine of the world.
Under her patient woman’s hood she drank the water she was given, but only one sip through a swan bone; she wore the stick necklace to scratch her heavy hair; she wore ptarmigan feathers tied below her knee so she would run all her life. And goose feathers in her hands to make her tireless, brushing them along her folded legs, blowing through them with a puff of breath like breathing out, “o-o-o-o-o” — the centre of his green name she could not yet dream was already coming — “o-o-o-o-o-o.”
And she remains on the grained rock. Past her knees, where the sheltering hides do not touch the ground, Greenstockings sees Greywing’s lovely head, body emerge in the saddle of the ridge. She is a woman, men are watching her, and when the deer grunt their rut in the valleys the men will dare each other to ask Keskarrah for her fresh warmth, take her, find her lust or accommodating gentleness. If she lets them. She is coming with food, her long strides as strong as the voice of the rock, she fears nothing here or anywhere. But behind her another shape, an old woman, The Hook’s mother. Even as Greenstockings sees this, pain lengthens through her body again, stretches her long and groaning.
But she struggles onto her knees as she has been instructed, gasping, pushing down and pushing because her body is tearing at itself, because the child will not move, there is space for more than a man between her legs but the child refuses and the old woman is beside her, one strong hand warm on her back and the other caressing her stomach, chanting under her breath,
It is time to breathe, little child,
Come out, come out,
It is time to eat, little child,
Come out, come out, bite the sweet air,
and Greywing wipes her face with fingers of water, catching her cries in a wet hand, the ground rhythm still rocking her, throbbing in her ears with her mouth gaping for air, the water and blood pushes a thick line down her thighs into the patient moss. She clutches the two rooted trees bent over her, heaving, heaving down until she will split and all her muscles lock in cramp together, down, down. But the child refuses.
When the pain has relented a little, the old woman eases her against herself, heavily onto her right side; looking away from the lake between hides, up into spruce and shouldered rocks. Her face shines bent over Greenstockings, her eyes and mouth hunched as if in its folds her ancient skin sheltered goodness.
“Almost ready now to show you its face, this one,” she says, chuckling a little. “But it is fearful, coming here from so many rivers away.”
“From farther than that,” Greenstockings whispers through her teeth.
“O-o-o-o, over stinking water,” the old voice so quiet, as if too gentle to know. “It’s very strong, come such a long journey.”
“Will it be … worn out?”
The old woman’s hand searches hard under the furs Greywing has folded over her, exploring her belly that shimmers, teeters over an awesome recognition of coming pain.
“No, no,” she says, her other hand firm as rock against the small of Greenstockings’ back, so exactly placed, so precisely comforting. “No, this one is very strong, you can feel that. It will live longer than you both lying together.”
And for one shiver she knows thin Robert Hood again, his arms locked around her, alive or dead they will never let each other go, her legs hooked over each other into the fold of his narrow buttocks and pulling, holding him rigid, rooted inside herself as her shoulders suck in his hands and their faces are face upon face, her child must be, it will be, it started with him, the hovering, distended agony of her womb declares this to her: yes!
“…a baby’s cry beside great Sahtú,” the old woman chants her ancient birthing story, both hands fondling and circling her great gift now. “O, that is strong, it will come, come, girls cannot find such a beautiful child, no, not many fine girls, but a woman can, you can, you must look small, small and there it will be in the split print of a caribou’s hoof, that passing goodness in moss, perfect and small, no bigger than a thumb, crying for you!”
While Greywing cradles her head on her folded thighs; wipes her sweating face and feeds her blood soup. And tries to tell her other stories, talking of People now as they rest and wait, for today at least.
“The Hook talks with our father, like Bigfoot talked when he came, they sit all day and eat and talk. The Hook says, ‘We have to go farther south, to the traders,’ and our father says, ‘There are fine caribou here, we’re moving south as they move,’ and The Hook says, ‘Our guns can’t shoot without powder,’ and our father, ‘Of course, but are there no trees left for pounds, no braided gut for snares, no rivers for spearing?’ and The Hook laughs, ‘Bigfoot is near the traders, if we don’t go he’ll get all the guns!’ and our father laughs right back at him, ‘And get a bigger head too! Can’t you see, I left him to go with you? We have enough hatchets and needles and pots to carry now, if we hammer the guns we have into spearheads we don’t need to visit those traders for two years, or if we’re lucky, three.’ ”
Greenstockings has to smile; hearing in Greywing’s voice her father’s delicate needling, so exact in its explications of the land for hunters who, caribou thick around them or travelling just over the next ridge, nevertheless still cannot think further than “Kill! Kill!”
“You’ve seen the contradictions of the traders,” Keskarrah debates. “They want us to hunt caribou, as we have always lived, because they need that meat to eat too, it is too far for them to carry food from the stinking water — but they want us to live different too. They really want us to use up our lives killing small animals, as many as we can.”
The Hook says, “Small animals live here, lots of them, the traders want only their skin.”
“But who eats fox, or marten, unless they’re starving?”
The Hook cannot answer that; he doesn’t really think that tramping through snow and collecting small bodies contorted hard as rock in traps, or finding the stumps of gnawed legs, is worthy of a hunter who has travelled with the forests of caribou along ridges and down to the glacial lakes. After waiting politely, Keskarrah continues,
“Caribou have always given us what we need to live, why kill every small animal? To please Whites? Why? And destroy ourselves in winter and summer walking the tundra like loaded dogs to the traders with their fur? To get powder for guns? If we don’t use their guns, we won’t have to carry powder or lead. Iron knives and needles are very good, of course, and kettles, but Copperwoman has always given us fine copper ones.”
“But if others have White things,” The Hook insists shrewdly, “we have to have them too.”
“Why?”
“Guns are for killing, they can kill us too, very well. If our enemies have guns.…”
Keskarrah waggles his hands as if batting away the last groggy mosquitoes of summer. “We already know enough ways of killing, we don’t need more.”
“Bigfoot wants to hunt only with guns, it’s so easy.…”
“We all know that. And we also know that last winter he kept sending his young men to Thick English: ‘Give us more powder, so we can hunt!’ We have to beg Whitemuds f
or their things so we can live in our own land? Huh!”
For a moment Keskarrah’s disgust splatters about his lodge like spit; not even The Hook can find a word to say, though his mouth is open.
Keskarrah is staring up, the fire’s smoke ascending faint as prayer.
“People I think can kill themselves, trying to carry too much,” he says. “And also, there is Whitesickness. Traders won’t trade you that, o no, they don’t offer you sickness for furs or food, but often a person receives it anyway. As a gift, I suppose … something from Whites, a little extra. When I was a boy more than half the southern Pointed Skin and Cree people were killed by a blistering, bleeding sickness that no medicine could stop. Wolves and rocks didn’t give them that, neither did caribou. And the very best trader guns couldn’t kill it either.”
Hearing Greywing tell her this, Greenstockings almost forgets her body. Earlier that summer, at the place on the River of Copperwoman where, if you wait quietly at dawn, you can sometimes smell the sea, Greenstockings recognized that Bigfoot’s head had finally swollen too large for him to wear the black Whitemud hat any longer. It happened when Thick English gave The Hook a shiny medal to hang around his neck, and he in turn gave him every bit of meat his People had; while Bigfoot watched, his face blacker than the sun could burn it. Then, for the first time she heard Bigfoot interrupt her father while he was still speaking:
“These English,” Bigfoot declared then, glaring across the river north to the distant haze of Copperwoman Mountains, “have brought us no sickness. Only many good gifts.”
Deliberately her father waited; to be certain Bigfoot was finished.
“Gifts.” Keskarrah spoke finally, and continued with stunning directness, “Gifts. Given to every person who does exactly what they say. Who works for them like the Halfmuds. Gifts we then have to carry.”
“We smoke their tobacco,” Bigfoot argued, but could not look at him; Keskarrah persisted,