The Marrow Thieves

by Cherie Dimaline

  “Well,” he said, joining us in our squinty examination of the woods. “North it is.”

  He turned to start the jog back into the cover of bush. My feet wouldn’t move.

  “No.” I barely recognized my own voice.

  The others, slowly following Miig, stopped and turned until finally Miig did as well.

  “What’s that, French?”

  “I said no. I’m not going north.”

  The rest of my little family looked at me with curiosity. Something had changed. Whether it was this second huge loss or the life I’d taken with all the speed of vengeance back at the cliff, I wasn’t sure. But there was no more north in my heart. And I wasn’t sure what I meant to do until I said it out loud.

  “I’m going after Minerva.”

  ON THE ROAD

  Everything was different. We were faster without our youngest and oldest, but now we were without deep roots, without the acute need to protect and make better. And I had taken up a spot that’d opened up in the middle of it all, somewhere between desperation and resolve.

  We’d decided to find the resistance, and we knew there was a pocket of it near Espanola. We needed information to figure out which school Minerva would have been taken to. Chi-Boy and Miig never questioned the plan. We moved the same way as always, Miig as our leader, Chi-Boy as the scout, but now I was with them, helping to shape our path forward. After all, I was the one who had put us here. It was a burden so heavy I could barely sleep at night for lack of breath. What if I was leading us to our deaths? What if we were walking into a place full of more trickster Indians? What if there were no Indians at all? Instead of sleep I counted the stars and kept six on the individual breathing of each remaining member sleeping in their tents around me.

  The weather was shifting fast, and you couldn’t see your breath anymore, not even in the hour before the sun rose. Miig and I were out collecting water from our tarp traps when we found the first sign that we were getting close.

  “French, here.” He motioned me over to a thin elm in front of a semicircle of pine. He pointed out a small dent in the side of the trunk. I bent closer and the dent turned into a scar, and then the scar revealed itself to be a series of deliberate cuts.

  “What is it?”

  Miig ran his fingers over the marks and gave a short laugh. “Huh, I think they’re syllabics.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That is our written language.”

  I reached out to feel the language on my skin for the first time since Minerva had breathed her words over my forehead when she thought I was sleeping during her nightly check-ins. An arrow, a line, a couple of dots.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know syllabics. Isaac was the linguist. But I do know it means there are Nish close by who do.” He sounded more hopeful about an impending meeting than I would have imagined, especially after the last one. Maybe he felt something in the tree that I didn’t.

  The next day we spent taking stock and repacking our gear. We needed to know exactly what we had if we were getting close to Espanola. And we needed to make sure there was nothing unnecessary left in our packs. Speed and agility were the benefits of a tighter group, and we needed both now.

  “Hey, French, you want to come with me to look for mushrooms?” It was Rose. Something about her voice made my neck prickle. It had to be her voice because there was nothing exciting about looking for squat fungus in the bush.

  “Sure.” I tried to play it cool. We didn’t have much time to hang out these days, not with the ferocious pace I’d set and the breadth of my self-assigned duties: moodiness, anxiety for the safety of every person, insomnia …

  “S’go then.” She motioned to me to follow with a tilt of her head, her long hair loose against her faded grey t-shirt. I got up from where I’d set up by the tent to count and recount ammo and followed her through the pines.

  The forest was quiet in here, like a room so full of small voices it hummed with silence. We walked for almost an hour, just listening, enjoying being close to each other without the distraction of the others and the reminder that we were so much less than before.

  She stopped short in front of me, and I almost slammed into her back.

  “See mushrooms?”

  She shook her head. “No. But I smell something.”

  I opened my nostrils and tried to inhale slowly. She was right: there was something else there, something different in the woods.

  “I think it’s water.” Her voice was a whisper, as if she could startle the water and it would rush off into the denser bush, leaving us behind.

  We walked in a small circle, sniffing at the air like dogs. Finally, she chose a direction and we rushed forward.

  The trees were dotted with scabs. They sat like blisters on the smooth white of birch. They caught our hair as we passed, combing it across our skin. We left a few strands there, and I was happy in the leaving.

  I followed her to the smell of water, ecstatic, almost crazed with hope and the small bundle that was building to a fire in my chest.

  She moved ahead, pushing through the dense bush like a coyote. I was seconds behind her, muscles pumping, face smiling, watching her break free and throw arms forward and back in wide strides. She was so beautiful. I wanted to catch her, and I wanted to watch her flee. I could find no satisfaction in my intentions; they were too tiny for the wholeness of her and who I was with her.

  I loved her. The certainty of the feeling was clear and bright and brown and lean and it hit me in my throat so that breathing became weeping. And then she screamed from the other side of the trees.

  My pace doubled, eyes stinging. I jumped through the bush where she’d disappeared. I was ready to fight, fists already heavy. I was a man then, not a sixteen-year-old too skinny and awkward for real strength. And there she was, breathing so heavy her shoulders heaved up and down. She was standing still in a clearing, and I pulled up beside her, grabbing her elbow both to stop myself and to take measure.

  “What? What’s wrong?” I could barely breathe. I bent forward, hands on my knees, to catch my breath.

  Her voice was high with excitement. “Water. Real water. And I saw a fish right there.” She pointed somewhere in the middle where the water tore into frills around rocks.

  It was a thin brown brook, pulling itself like a ribbon across the curve cut into the rock just ahead. It didn’t rage or wave or crash. It bled from somewhere up the hill and carried itself with quiet grace across the tortured ground, over the glassy rocks, feeding bundles of greens with tenacious roots, some pulled from the split earth and dangling under the cool surface like old ladies dipping vein-bruised legs into a pool.

  I fell to my knees, crunching into the early spring crust of leaves and dirt, laughing. It was too much. It was too much. Her and the bundle I carried for her and the water and the bush and everything. Everything made to ache and splinter and seek and throb by the loss of our parents, our homes, our words, our Elder and our RiRi, our safety. I laughed until I was crying, and she moved closer, pulling my head to her legs so that I leaned there at first, then clutched at her. She pushed a slight hand into my hair, brushing the branches and leaves out of its length. I pulled at her legs until she fell to my side, and I reached, taking as much of her as I could in my too-skinny arms, pulling her into my chest, warm from the bundle burning there.

  There were sounds now that came from a memory of my uncle. My uncle and his old stereo and his army of battered cds lined up on the kitchen counter, two stacks of cooking pots as bookends.

  He slurred even when he was sober, which was hardly ever. He pointed with palsy-fingers. “Grab one there, boy.” He dropped his arm and took a swig from a brown bottle. “And make it a good one, by the Jesus,” he growled before taking another swallow.

  Mom and Dad were back in the house still, trying to figure out what was g
oing on. They’d sent me and Mitch to our uncle’s cabin out by Huron since there were whispers of danger and missing kids. I was young enough to remain silent most of the time. Mitch was old enough to be loud, so Uncle preferred my company. Even now Mitch was running wild with our cousins somewhere outside.

  I grabbed a thin plastic case from the middle of the stack, the way Uncle had taught me to choose a card when presented with a fanned-out deck. I hoped this one was the good one he’d asked for. I carried it to where he sat on a low stool with his bottle and belly fighting for room in his lap.

  He took another deep gulp and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, setting the empty bottle on the ground by his feet. “Let’s see here.” He took the CD from my hands and struggled to focus on the cover. “Ho, ho!” He smiled real big, and I released my breath. “Oh boy, you some kinda seer or something?” He lowered his gaze to my face like a lion stooping to smell a daisy. I shook my head.

  “I think you must be. This here …” He held the case up so I could see a bouquet of hands reaching for the sky or each other, on a pink background with white letters behind them. “This here is exactly what we need.”

  He took two tries to get onto his feet and took a minute to unplug some things and plug in others, and then finally the stereo whirred to life. He deposited the shiny disc, pushed some buttons, and picked his selection, then turned to face me where I’d taken his spot on the stool. He closed his eyes and straightened his back up against the counter and waited for the music to begin. “Pearl Jam. Real tradish, these boys.”

  It started with an echo turned inside out, and a small yell like a man captured. Then the bottom fell out and he escaped and I tumbled along on his release. Snapping drums, a flexing of sound, and a high threading of guitar over a smoother cadence and then the man sang.

  Wrapping up and then throwing off. Wrapping up and then throwing off. The sounds were relentless, and I wiggled a bit on the stool, uncomfortable in its strength.

  “Whaddya think, boy?” Uncle yelled over the high whine stacked on deep bottom notes.

  I thought for a long while. Long enough for the song to start to spiral back into its first echo, and I answered as honestly as I could manage.

  “It sounds like if grey could make noise.”

  That’s what I heard here, now, beside the water with this beautiful girl pulled into the bony shell of my arms. I heard capture and release and a high whine over something that echoed off the trees growing downwards towards the brook like pious monks in all manner of fancy dress, voluminous green silks peeking out of their austere brown habits.

  How could anything be as bad as it was when this moment existed in the span of eternity? How could I have fear when this girl would allow me this close? How could anything matter but this small miracle of having someone I could love?

  And I kissed her and I kissed her and I didn’t stop. I had no way of knowing things would shift again, that I wasn’t as alone as I thought after all.

  FOUND

  For the second time in what seemed to be a very long life, I was woken up by the crash and yell of confrontation just outside my tent.

  “Oh, hell no.” I jumped up this time, gun already in hand. “Slopper, don’t move.” I crept to the flap, heard Rose cursing outside, and unzipped it enough to get a one-eyed peek and to push the barrel of the gun out. Instead, a barrel poked in from the outside.

  “Shit.”

  “That’s right, boy, I’ll be taking that.” Someone yanked the zipper up and over the curve, and the flap folded inside. The man, his face covered with a red bandana and dark sunglasses, pulled the gun out of my hands. “Now put your hands right up in the air where I can see them.”

  I was furious with myself. Disarmed while I was still on my knees. It was like I hadn’t learned anything since RiRi. I raised my hands, palms out, to face height and folded myself up and out of the tent. I stood my ground in front of my captor, keeping my gaze narrow and pinned on my reflection in his shades.

  He stood tall, and I couldn’t be sure if he even bothered to look at me until he said, “That’s right. You can give me the evil eye all you want, boy, just keep those hands in the clear.”

  Still staring, I yelled out, “Chi-Boy?”

  “Yeah,” he answered from somewhere to my left.

  “Everyone okay?”

  “Okay. We’re all here.”

  A second man came into view, his face similarly covered, and pulled Slopper out of the tent behind me. The boy grumbled and flopped onto the ground beside me, pulling the second man over with him.

  “Jesus, kid. Be careful.” This one was female. Hard to tell with the getup they had on, layers of dark clothes and faces covered. The one guarding me laughed a bit.

  “Who are you?” I was pleased to hear my voice remain steady.

  I got no response except to be pulled by my sweater across the clearing and pushed to sit beside the rest of the group. I saw two more bandana-clad intruders; these two held crossbows at waist height, not really aiming them anywhere, though they were loaded.

  Everyone looked to be fine, not tied up or roughed up. Slopper was placed beside me. Our captors stood in front of us, lined up in their bandanas and sunglasses.

  “French,” Miig called to me from the other end of our lineup. “Remember that carving in the woods?”

  “That’s enough, old-timer.” The female guard kicked at the sole of Miig’s shoe.

  I looked down the line at him. He pointed at the intruders with his lips.

  I raised my eyebrows. These were the people who’d left the carving? The ones who knew the old syllabics system?

  He nodded, and we leaned back into our respective places.

  I cleared my throat. “I think you’re who we’ve been looking for.”

  No answer.

  “We need help.”

  One of the figures holding a crossbow snorted. “Don’t we all, little cousin. Don’t we all.”

  So Miig was right: they were Indigenous.

  “Maybe we can help each other.”

  The woman answered this time. “We don’t need help from anyone. Nobody helps nobody no more. And we certainly don’t need help from you. Probably working for the schools. Little snitches, looks like.”

  I addressed her, shrugging. “How do we look like snitches? Do we have new clothes or good weapons? Are we too well fed?”

  She glanced at Slopper, whose shirt hem didn’t quite connect with the waistband on his jogging pants.

  “Lady, we’ve seen snitches.” I paused, lowering my voice a bit, readying myself to yell it out. “We’ve killed snitches.”

  They all looked over at me now. There was no boastful pride in my face. Just five and a half years of hard living.

  One of the guys with a crossbow leaned into the female to whisper, and she turned and jogged away from the camp.

  Rose shivered against my shoulder, and it was the first time that morning I’d realized she was right beside me. It was warm now, coming on May by Miig’s calculations, but the mornings were still bitey and she was in her pajamas — an old T-shirt and a cut pair of long johns. Keeping my eyes on the guard directly in front of me, I slowly raised my arm and placed it over her shoulders, drawing her into me, the other hand still raised at face level. There was no protest from either of them.

  “Getting real sick of these mornings,” Wab grumbled.

  Just then the female jogged back. Behind her, an older man followed. His face was not covered at all, and he was very clearly Nish. In fact, there was something about him that was familiar beyond the general. I flipped through the pile of faces in my memory but couldn’t solidly place him. Maybe we’d run into him for a day or a meal out on the road?

  “So, who are you then?” He stood in front of us, hands clasped at his back so that his impressive paunch greeted us first. His question wasn’t unf
riendly.

  “Miigwans Kiwenzie, anish de kaz.” Miig spoke first, giving him his full name. The man opened his eyes real big.

  “Get up, please.” Then he gestured to the guards around him. “Help them all up, please. These are our guests, not our prisoners.”

  “Coulda fooled me.” Wab was still bitter as she stood, brushing the grass off the back of her faded sweatpants, the initials of a university she’d never attended stamped across the seat.

  “And help them pack up camp. They are joining us for breakfast.” He turned on a heel and left the same way he came, without waiting for a reply from any of us.

  “What if I don’t want to join you for breakfast?” I challenged, stepping into the space between me and the guard who’d disarmed me earlier. I was still sore about that.

  He laughed into his bandana and then pulled it down to reveal a smile wide with white teeth. “Come on, little cousin. I’ll help you pull up camp. Later on I might even let you have your gun back.” He pulled down his hood and revealed a head of long, dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck.

  I flushed hot. Turned out this guy was not much older than me, and his arrogance was unbearable. “I’m not your cousin.” It was all I could manage before he cut me off to address Rose, still at my side.

  “Though I’d much rather help you.” He gave her one of those big smiles. “But I’m sure you are quite capable.”

  “I am very capable,” she responded before walking back to her own tent. I was a little upset that she hadn’t given him more attitude than that.

  “We don’t need your help at all.” I tried to lace my words with poison, but that only made him laugh.

  “Suit yourself.” He wandered off to chat with his friends, several of whom had also pulled down their bandanas.

  “Asshole.” It was under my breath, but I still said it.

  I packed quickly, shoving and stuffing instead of folding away. I placed bags puffy with chaos by the doused firepit and joined Miig at his site. I rolled up his tent around the pegs while he carefully folded his blankets.