The Marrow Thieves

by Cherie Dimaline

  We loaded up with every available weapon, mostly bows and arrows pulled taut with young wood and reinforced with repurposed wire. There were a few guns, ours included, some crossbows, and an arsenal of knives. There were nineteen of us without Slopper, who we made stay back to “supervise our pack-up.” Each one of our little crew was armed and ready to fight. We had all suffered beyond dignity with the loss of two of our group, and the thought of getting one of them back made us almost unreasonable with motivation.

  The mapping was the most important part, since location and surprise were our two biggest assets on this mission. Most of the morning was spent studying the route and picking out the best vantage point to wait.

  “They aren’t loading up a big convoy. They don’t think there’s much of a threat. It would be even smaller if they didn’t know about the Council,” Father Carole had explained before he ran back to his car by the main road and then rushed back to his office in town before he was missed. “But still, their ego is big enough they feel pretty comfortable. Just don’t you feel any comfort. Not yet.”

  Soon enough it was eleven o’clock. The transport convoy was scheduled for noon, so we made our way into the trees.

  “French, you need to remember these arseholes will be locked and loaded.” My dad pulled me aside as I filed past the Council, whose older or disabled members had lined up to see us off.

  “I know, Dad.”

  “And you remember they don’t think of us as humans, just commodities.” He cupped his palm at the back of my neck and held me there in his anxious grip.

  “I know, Dad.”

  “You take care, French. Don’t break cover. Just disable the drivers and wait for them to abandon the cargo, just like we planned.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m serious. Don’t go playin’ hero and rush out in sight, cause they’ll shoot you dead where you stand.”

  “I’m good, Dad. We know. No one is going to break cover. We stay in the trees and wait for them to leave Minerva.”

  It took General putting a hand on his shoulder for my dad to release me and let me run into the woods. I turned around at the edge and gave him a little wave. I wish I hadn’t. The terror on his face sent needles of adrenaline into my muscles.

  We split up close to the road and scrambled into position. Me and Derrick lit into the boughs and found leafy nooks to crouch and lay. The rest of the group lined both sides of the road along a hundred-foot stretch where it narrowed from encroaching bush into a single lane. The plan was to wait for the convoy and shoot out the tires. Then we’d disable the drivers or allow them to run into the woods, at which point we’d tie them up so they couldn’t join the ranks that would be sure to follow. It was an hour away from town, so we wouldn’t have much time before the cavalry arrived. Then we’d spring Minerva and join the main camp, who would already be on the move to another safe haven, a straight shot north from here. Before I scrambled up to my spot, Miig put his pouch around my neck.

  “For safekeeping,” he told me. “Just in case. I can’t lose this. It cannot go back to the schools. No matter what.”

  I tucked it into my T-shirt and patted it against my chest, nodding to Miig, then ascended.

  Eleven bodies flattened against the ground at the edge of the woods. They were safely out of sight, up on a slight hill from the road. That’s where Rose was. I’d made sure of it when she insisted on coming.

  “Don’t get macho with me. No reason at all for me not to fight.” She was cold around me, but too excited about Minerva to unleash any real venom as I protested her involvement in front of the others. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be all smiles and playful arm punches later on when she got me alone and let loose.

  Miig and the twins joined two of the main campers nearer the road, just before the serrated edge of asphalt began. They were crouched behind an outcropping of rocks, left over from a small avalanche off the hill years before. Chi-Boy had run up the road to the start of the vulnerable curve to scout out the convoy’s arrival.

  Derrick — with a braid almost as long as mine hanging over his neck and dangling like a vine — was in a pine straight across the road from where I was perched in sticky balsam. I caught him watching the girls in the tree line, including Rose, and when he looked over to my side I shot him the finger. To my annoyance, all he did was mime laughter, all theatrical and quiet.

  Now we waited.

  The trees here were thicker than down the road, which made this spot perfect. They threw their shadows over the road like the plaid of Minerva’s favorite skirt. Minerva. I couldn’t believe she was on her way to us right now, that we were going to get her back. We had to get her back.

  “Once she’s on the main highway, there’ll be more traffic. Then, in the Capital, well, then she’s gone into the maze.” Father Carole had spoke candidly before rushing off. “It’s now or never, I’m afraid.”

  Noon approached in a slow crouch, pulling itself along the road, warming the air to honest-to-God spring. The ground was thawed now, and the bellies and knees of those in the woods were damp. The air smelled of mud, and with the abundance of precious water everything with the potential of being green flexed and groaned and desperately began to grow. You could almost hear the leaves opening like reaching fingers, almost feel the trees pulling their posture straight.

  A long, low whistle unfurled along the cracked asphalt and landed in my lap, barely audible and then only to those listening. Chi-Boy’s signal. I stopped breathing, and the scream of quiet filled my head to bursting.

  Then, from a short distance away, came the rumble of a motor, then another, and then the gleam of glass and mirror reflecting the midday sun winked into the horizon.

  Here they come.

  Everything happened in the blink of an eye for the muscles that brought movement. In the mechanism that drove them, where panic had been woken and fear stalked prey, everything took a thousand years.

  There were two vehicles: a dusty red car with blue doors in the front and, twenty feet behind, the white van of our collective nightmare. Father Carole was right: they were cocky. Only two vehicles for the weapon that could bring them all down? I guess they still considered her just another Indian, after all. Mistaking their arrogance for stupidity was our mistake.

  They were going about eighty kilometers an hour before they slowed down to take the curve. This was our chance. The archers drew and released, and the road was littered with arrows that flew in a trained arc. Some hit the road like hard rain, one punctured the roof of the red car, and another hit the front tire.

  BANG. It blew, and the car skidded side to side before the driver got control. By then a second wave of arrows had been loosed. The side window was shattered, and a second point broke the rubber of the useless tire.

  The driver used an elbow to push the smashed glass pane out onto the road.

  “Gun!” Tree screamed from his spot, just before the driver shot at him. Hands yanked him down in time, the bullet skidding off the rock and into the gravel with a sharp hiss. The driver took a second shot into the trees. I heard a man’s yell, and General slumped to the ground, holding his right shoulder.

  My mouth was bone dry. I leveled my rifle on the branch just in front of my face and put the car in my sight. It was almost stopped now, the driver still shooting, the tire wobbling off the rim like a hula hoop. Then I saw the van speed up and try to overtake the car, to get in front and away. Before I could aim, shots rang out from the other side of the road and the van screeched to a halt, the long whine of the horn like a solid alarm.

  The driver was hit. I looked up in time to see Derrick lower his gun. He looked over at me, and I recognized that face as the one I’d worn just a few weeks ago. He wouldn’t be shooting anymore today. His one lucky shot had put him into retirement.

  The horn kept going, long and sharp, covering the sound of the passenger door opening
and the slap of hard shoes. A blond woman with a messenger bag flying out by her side dashed into the woods, shooting blindly behind her without turning back to cover her escape. Chi-Boy would be waiting for her just past the first cluster of birch.

  Now the archers released another wave, and the driver of the red car didn’t have time to back up. He was punctured with a half dozen arrows, some along his arm, the last one cutting through the meat of his neck from one side to the other. He fell onto his side, dead in a pool of his own blood in the curve of the empty passenger seat.

  Another man, a Recruiter with his whistle, shorts, and baseball hat, opened the back door and stepped out with his hands raised in the air. I saw his mouth open and close. He was speaking, but we couldn’t hear him over the thick shriek of the van’s horn.

  The twins crawled out from behind their rock with a length of rope, Miig watching their six with his revolver behind them. They scrambled across the road, still crouching a bit in case there was anyone left shooting. When they got within spitting distance of the car, they threw the rope and pretty much lassoed the Recruiter. When his legs snapped together under the rope, he fell over, his sunglasses smashing on the pavement, hat rolling off his head. The twins wound the rope fast and tight and then gave Miig the thumbs-up. Zheegwon snatched the cap off the ground and placed it sideways on his brother’s head.

  It was done. Chi-Boy ran back from the woods, the female tied at the hands and feet and thrown over his shoulder like a bedroll. Derrick was already jumping the last foot to the ground, and those who had attacked from trees were walking cautiously towards the road.

  Before I scrambled down, unused rifle on my back, I sought out Rose, spying her and Wab embracing in the dirt expanse between the woods and the road.

  We had done it. The twins, two hats for two heads now, whooped and hollered while they dragged the Recruiter off to the rocky outcropping. A couple of the main campers were already in the trunk of the red car pulling out the spare tire. Vehicles were a valuable coup, even one stuck full of arrows like a metal porcupine.

  We all met at the van, gathering around the back doors like little kids. Chi-Boy grabbed the handle and yanked. It wouldn’t give.

  “Locked.” We read his lips since the horn was still going. We must have gotten used to it.

  Miig pointed his finger to his chest and then towards the front of the van, and gave the international hand gesture for turning a key. He went to grab it from the ignition.

  Tree and Zheegwon swapped hats back and forth. And for the first time, I saw Wab and Chi-Boy for what they were as they stood there, his long arm thrown over her shoulders: a couple. I laughed my relief, knowing Minerva was here — she was actually here.

  I cupped my hands over the seam between the two back doors and shouted, “Min? It’s us. We’ve come to get you. It’s all nishin now. We’re just grabbing the keys.”

  Suddenly the long drone of the horn stopped, and it was shocking, like the absence of ground at the start of a fall. Then, like punctuation, a gunshot poked a hole in the day and all the air ran out.

  I leaned around the side of the van in time to see Miigwans, both arms shoved through the window, struggling. The driver, not dead after all, fought back. Chi-Boy ran to the other side and yanked open the door. The van rocked with fight, then there was a second shot and the van was still.

  Miig rushed back with the keys in his hand, fear imprinted between his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I was confused, and searched Miig’s torso for signs of blood. Why was he shaking? “Did he shoot you?”

  I reached out and pulled his button-up shirt to the side, looking for a hole.

  “It wasn’t me.” He forced key after key into the lock until one slid to the hilt and clicked. “He didn’t shoot me.”

  Miig met my eyes for only a second, but I saw panic there; it stitched into his iris and brought electricity to the surface. He yanked the door open, and she fell into his arms. Obviously, she’d been pushed up against the back doors, waiting for her rescue. He caught her and sank to the ground.

  I dropped to my knees beside Miigwans, grabbing at Minerva like a kid, like I never had when we were on the run. I grabbed her hand, placing it under mine and over the hole in her chest. Blood, hot and sticky, gushed out between our fingers. Her thin shirt was already soaked through.

  “You’re gonna be okay,” I lied.

  She smiled, patting my hand, comforting me, even now that my distress stemmed from her own peril.

  The blood blossomed under my knees like peonies over craggy asphalt. Minerva wore a navy blue jumpsuit. Her hair had been cut short, and I barely recognized her. The lines on her face were deep, the deepest around her eyes. She had no sweaters, no long johns under skirts, no kerchief over her head. But when she opened her mouth to speak, I knew it was her for sure. She leaned in close to Miig and spoke words in the language. They fell softly on his face. They must have been real nice words because he smiled then and closed his eyes so that the tears that welled up were pushed out onto his skin.

  Rose was weeping loudly. She dropped hard to the ground and gathered Minerva’s head into her lap. “No, no, Nokomis. Don’t go. You can’t go!” She was shaking, her eyes and hair wild on her face.

  “Kiiwen. Kiiwen, promise?” Minerva whispered, and Miig nodded. Miig took her other hand, and she began to sing, low, sweet words depleting breath that wasn’t being replaced. I knew she was going. Miig picked up the verse and sang. It was a traveling song. We were frantic but silent. We needed her! We all needed her! She couldn’t go. But she was singing her song. She’d already begun.

  The whole world stopped for that one moment, for an old lady in a jumpsuit and a weeping man covered in blood and anguish to sing a new sound into the wind, to make sure she left with the dreams so she’d have all the magic she needed.

  When she was gone, Miig placed her hand back on her chest and rubbed her arm, smiling. I gently placed her hand on top of the other and stood. Chi-Boy walked to the gathering crowd to give them the news.

  But Rose, she couldn’t let go. She picked up one of Min’s hands now, held it to her cheek like a broken bird.

  “Kiiwen,” she whispered, rocking her foster grandmother, stroking her forehead with a handful of loose curls at the end of her braid. I stayed beside her so no one would interrupt, doing the only thing I could do right now, allowing her to grieve.

  Rose looked up into my face. “Kiiwen. She says, go home.”

  I looked down at Rose, her beautiful face swollen with tears, holding the old woman’s head in her lap, still rocking her, her sticky, bloody hands trying to straighten her shirt and smooth down her cropped hair. Heavy tears blurred my vision. I was looking at Rose from the bottom of a well I couldn’t remember falling into. “What?”

  “Kiiwen, Frenchie. You must always go home.”

  KIIWEN

  After that, we did what we did best: we ran. A few of the main campers took the vehicles and went ahead with the two school prisoners and the body of Minerva. We all met up in two days’ time: the ones who drove, the main campers who’d stayed behind to pack up, and the remainder of the failed rescue crew. We left the prisoners by the side of the road a day in. They had a tin of soup each and a blanket to share, so they’d be fine until rescue, we hoped. We buried Minerva the day after, the Council holding ceremony and prayer, even in the midst of our escape. Before I could stop her, Rose took scissors to her curls. When she was done, her lighter hair bounced into ringlets around her face. She didn’t cry. She didn’t even seem to notice. She was far away with her grief.

  I picked up the scissors when she put them down and cut my own braid off to send with Minerva. Afterwards, Rose, retreating a bit from her reverie, evened out my hair for me so that it hung about an inch below my ears. I hadn’t felt so vulnerable since the day Miig had found me, half dead, sick from spoiled supplements, hallucinating.


  She kissed me when she was finished, tossing the rough edges of my cut hair into the fire. Our fight back in the valley had dissolved in the thick brew of tragedy, no more than a seasoning that we might pull out later on.

  We were broken, an almost unrecognizable bunch of mourners held together by habit and grief and a shared history of survival. But we still had Miig, our leader and Elder all rolled into one now, and we had the new campers and the Council, so we managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other. No one said, “What now?” No one mentioned that we’d lost the key to taking down the schools. If they had, we’d have crumpled where we stood, no longer able to move.

  We travelled for ten days before we were ensconced in Precambrian rock and vicious pine. Then the group moved as one machine, setting up the main camp, stringing the woods with traps and alarms. By the end of day two it was as if we’d been there all along. There was even a grey muslin flag hung at half-mast by the bent bough archway into our spot.

  My dad surveyed the work, leaning on me for support. “Well, it’s not as nice as the last place, but it’ll do.”

  Summer came on quick and merciless in the next two weeks. Wab and Chi-Boy were officially shacked up now. Clarence taught them how to put up a tipi, and that’s where they slept. When the heat brought with it summer clothing, it became apparent to all of us that Wab was expecting a baby. The whole camp rejoiced and kept her well fed and cared for. Rose tried to be happy. But mostly she was quiet.

  The Council spent a lot of time piecing together the few words and images each of us carried: hello and goodbye in Cree, a story about a girl named Sedna whose fingers made all the animals of the North. They wrote what they could, drew pictures, and made the camp recite what was known for sure. It was Bullet’s idea to start a youth council, to start passing on the teachings right away, while they were still relearning themselves. Slopper was tasked with putting that together, and he thrived under the responsibility. He even gave them a name: Miigwanang — feathers. We were desperate to craft more keys, to give shape to the kind of Indians who could not be robbed. It was hard, desperate work. We had to be careful we weren’t makings things up, half remembered, half dreamed. We felt inadequate. We felt hollow in places and at certain hours we didn’t have names for in our languages.