Anna, Like Thunder

by Peggy Herring

  Pain undulates through my body, a cat’s paw scuttling across the surface of the ocean, a serpent with two heads pulling in opposite directions.

  The old woman with the ladle disappears.

  The path is so wide and clear that I begin to doubt the certainty with which I set off on this journey. It’s unnatural. The trees, the undergrowth, the moss, the mud—they’re here—but they’re far off the path, a distant shadow that means nothing. But then all trails change with the seasons, don’t they? Perhaps I just can’t recognize this path yet.

  The trail begins to climb. It’s easy at first, just a slight incline, but then it becomes steeper. Rocks have forced themselves through the earth. They’re teeth that chew up the path. Still I follow, setting one foot in front of the other, trusting that this is the way to go. Then the path turns sharply and climbs in the opposite direction, and I doubt myself once more.

  For a long time and a short time, I keep walking. My feet are cut and bruised. They’re on fire. What happened to my boots? My bones ache and press against my skin as though trying to break free just like the rocks on the trail.

  I turn with the footpath again. Something ahead glitters.

  It’s my silver cross. I should be surprised, but I’m not.

  I must recite the incantation first. I picture my mother’s face, her rosy lips. I don’t really need them. Ever since I promised, I’ve never forgotten.

  “Earth, earth, close the door

  One necklace, nothing more.

  Earth, earth, I command

  One necklace in my hand.”

  I open the clasp and once more fasten the chain around my neck.

  The pain comes in waves like the surf, roaring up my body, then falling back down again in a rush of sand and stone. The old woman’s hand is like my mother’s—cool against my forehead and light as a feather. I don’t need the medicine in the ladle. Her hand will cure everything, and as long as she leaves it there, I can bear this pain.

  “Where’s Kolya?” I ask. Or, I want to ask.

  “It’s too soon,” she says. “Relax. Don’t be afraid. You’re doing very well.” She resumes humming.

  She drips more medicine into my mouth. There’s always more, and each time, it sets my mouth on fire. Sometimes, she gives me water so cold I think my teeth will crack. She rubs a salve into my hands. She’s trying to be careful, but my skin will peel like I’m an overripe peach if she doesn’t stop.

  The pain in my abdomen is like lightning. It cuts from side to side, top to bottom. My spine is going to break. My head, too heavy for me to move, is filled with thunder.

  The old woman faces the thunder with me. “No, no, no,” she says gently. “No. You’re too early.”

  Who is she talking to? There’s no one here but me.

  The old woman’s face disappears. I can’t see her anymore but her hands flutter over my body, the wings of butterflies in a sunny meadow. Another hand—it’s made of iron and it belongs to no one—is squeezing me out of my own body. The old woman pushes apart my knees. The pain explodes.

  She touches my woman parts. I should be ashamed, but I feel only desperately afraid that she’ll leave me. “No, my child,” she coaxes, “there’s lots of time.”

  “Kolya!” I scream. Or, I want to scream.

  Her hands clamp around my legs. She’s stopped humming.

  “Are you so determined, then?” she says softly. “Is there no talking sense to you, little one?”

  How is it that I can understand what she’s saying?

  The old woman pulls. It’s me and it’s not me.

  The western horizon grows dusky. The path enters a dried-up meadow. As darkness creeps in, the stars leap out one by one. Sirius. Arcturus. They’re the brightest stars this evening. Pretty blue Venus sparkles near the horizon and the faint light of Jupiter flickers on and off. Eventually, it will be dark enough that Jupiter will remain alight for the rest of the night. If I had my telescope, I could count his moons. My Polaris isn’t visible yet, but she will be soon.

  I see Vega, Altair, and Deneb. These stars form a perfect triangle. When we were married only a few days, Nikolai Isaakovich pointed it out to me. “All the navigators know it. Don’t you?” I knew the names of the stars, but I’d never seen the triangle they formed, never heard a name for it. There are so many possible combinations of stars in the night sky, they could never all be seen, never all be named.

  “Then I shall name it,” he declared, “and I shall name it after you, Anna Petrovna.” He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me close. All summer long, the starry triangle revolved overhead and with each degree of rotation, I fell more deeply in love with my husband.

  It takes only a few more minutes in the meadow before my Polaris reveals her beautiful face. She’s clear and especially strong tonight, as if she knows I need her. As soon as I see her, I feel the tiredness slip off my shoulders like a too-old mantle.

  I stretch out my arms and make fists, and then count. I line up Deneb with two distant trees, and as soon as it falls out of alignment, I turn north and walk.

  It takes a long time and a short time to cross the meadow. The grass is stubbly, but my feet feel nothing. When I reach the edge of the meadow, there’s no choice but to enter the forest again. I look through the bushes for a path, but I can’t find one. Eventually, I give up and just push my way through, and then I’m among the trees.

  High overhead, the wind plays music in the canopy. There are the usual heaps of mossy, fallen logs, grey shadows whose outlines I can still see. Some of the ground is boggy, and my feet sink into the muck. But the way forward feels easier now that I know my direction.

  I stop and look up every once in a while. If there’s enough of a gap in the trees, I see dear Polaris shining down. She gives me courage.

  “Anya!”

  Nikolai Isaakovich bends over me. His face, like the old woman’s, fills my field of vision. I can’t see anything else. His eyes fill. “Anya, what happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I try to say, but the words are nothing but a hiss. “Where were you?”

  “I can’t hear you.” He seizes my arms.

  I cry out. His hands burn.

  “Oh God!” He lets go and turns away. “Do something!”

  The old woman is back with the ladle. She offers me medicine, but I won’t open my mouth. I can’t take any more pain.

  “Anya—we have a son! Did they tell you?”

  Then I notice, for the first time, that my body is different. The lightning pain inside has gone, and my stomach has collapsed. The thunder has left my head, and now it’s so light it could float away.

  “The baby is fine, Anya.” I hear tears in his voice. “The baby is fine.”

  The baby. I start to shiver.

  My husband pulls the cedar blanket up to my chin. “Timofei Osipovich is worried.” He gently tucks it around my neck. “He carried you back here. Did you know that?”

  Timofei Osipovich carried me across a beach. I bounced along, his shoulder cutting into my belly, until we saw the koliuzhi. And then he fired a musket to scare them.

  “You must not worry anymore.” He lifts my hand but gently this time. He holds it to his chest. “I’ll take care of you.”

  “The baby?” I cry. Or try to.

  “Just rest, Anya,” he says. “I’m here. I told you I’d come back and I did, and I’m here now.”

  I climb for so long I must be on a mountainside. The trees are more spread out. The canopy is thinner. Night is here, but with the forest becoming less dense, the light from the night sky makes my path slightly more visible. What lies ahead, I don’t know yet. A meadow? A lake? A beach?

  I quicken my pace. Then, the underbrush thickens. The trees are shorter and even more dispersed. I’m close to the edge of the forest. I can’t see beyond the shrubs. I push aside the branches and step out of the blackness.

  A wave rolls from my toes all the way up my body and ends in my head, where it washes back until it
reaches my toes again. It’s not water. It’s fear.

  “Kolya!”

  I’m on a cliff so high above the sea that if the masts of six schooners were stacked one atop the other, they still wouldn’t reach my feet. I grab onto the brittle branches behind me. The wind whips my face.

  Moonlight reflects off the surface of the ocean, which builds, then falls in lines of foam that crash against the foot of the cliff I’m balancing on. Far below where I stand, boulders as big as carriages face the waves, but they’re submerged with each upsurge. The sea roars like a monster. Something—a log?—smashes against the base of the cliff with a hollow thud that reaches the soles of my feet. The land shudders.

  I desperately want to step back. But the bushes have knit their brittle fingers together and they won’t allow me.

  “Kolya!” His name flies into the wind and is lost.

  The old woman has changed my medicine. Now it’s warm and sweet like honey. I crave more, but when the ladle is finished, she turns away. She does not offer me another drop.

  There are men’s voices at the door. They’re talking. I close my eyes. Trying to understand their words empties me.

  Makee. In his beaver hat.

  “Anna,” he says, “how are you feeling?”

  I meet his eyes for a moment. They’re wide with worry. I quickly close mine. It takes too much effort to be in his gaze. He calls out in his language. I hear the rattling of shells or bones. There’s somebody singing.

  “You must rest,” he says. “These are terrible days. You must get better. Your son is counting on you.”

  I remember the day I was swept under the wave when the brig ran aground and we were all running to shore. What everything sounded like from beneath the water—the roar of the surf and the people’s voices calling out. Makee’s voice sounds like that—though I know he’s here, he could be in another world.

  “I have good news. The ships are coming. There’s an American ship at Mokwinna’s.”

  There’s drumming, loud as thunder. My bed shakes, my bones rattle.

  “You can go home, babathid. Floating woman, you have a destination.”

  “Makee—I’m sorry,” I say. Or at least, I want to say.

  “Get better, Anna. The ship is on its way.”

  I lean back, pressing into the bushes, and when I do, a curtain is drawn, and the night sky opens. Where is my beloved Polaris?

  There. She glimmers. Draco the Keel is sailing a never-ending circle around her. The sea tosses him, but he can depend on her. She is the tip of the mast on the ship that will traverse the northern hemisphere forever.

  Of the countless possible combinations of stars, I found this one. My ship.

  It’s arrived.

  It rocks gently. The sail billows.

  “We’re here!” I cry. I wave. I stand on my toes and my arm sweeps the sky. “Can you see me?”

  The ship is lifted on a wave and plummets down the other side. A rooster tail of spray splashes its deck. Its sail swells, then flops, once, twice, before filling again. The ship is tacking. They’ve seen me.

  The boat swoops down. “Here!” I cry. But it sails past. It missed. A wave of grief washes over me. “Come back!”

  The wind drives it away. Then the sail flops once more. It’s tacking again. The ship swoops back down and blackens the sky.

  It’s close. Closer. The bulwark is almost out of reach but—I jump. It takes a long time and it takes a short time. Then my hands close around the bulwark. A wave throws itself against the hull and water sprays and soaks me. I throw my leg over. I pull myself onto the deck. I look up.

  Polaris glitters.

  AFTERWORD

  After Anna died in August 1809, the surviving Russians continued to live among the coastal First Nations. The record tells us that her husband, Nikolai Isaakovich, died in February 1810 from a combination of consumption and a broken heart. Kozma Ovchinnikov and two Aleuts also died of unknown causes at unknown dates.

  On May 6, 1810, the US vessel Lydia, captained by Thomas Brown, approached the shore near Tsoo-yess. The man known in the novel as Makee immediately took Timofei Osipovich out to the ship where they were surprised to find another of the Russian crew, Afanasii Valgusov. He had been traded to an unidentified First Nation community on the Columbia River and subsequently traded to Captain Brown. Makee then brought to the vessel as many of the Russians as he could and traded for them. The negotiations were not easy. Makee asked a higher price for two men, one of whom was Ivan Kurmachev, fictionalized in this novel as a carpenter to explain the higher asking price. In the end, in return for each person, Makee’s people received five blankets, five sazhens (about 35 feet) of woolen cloth, a locksmith’s file, two steel knives, a mirror, five packets of gun powder, and the same quantity of small shot. In his account, Timofei Osipovich Tarakanov calls this an outrageous sum, but when measured against what would have normally passed hands when trading a slave at that time and the trouble to which the Makahs, Quileutes, and Hoh went to feed, clothe, and house the Russians, it is not so outrageous. Though it took a year and a half, Makee kept his promise. The Lydia took the surviving Russians back to Novo-Arkhangelsk.

  Makee is identified in the Russian account as Yutramaki, a name whose pronunciation somehow eludes Anna and the Russians. Furthermore, this intriguing man appears in The Adventures of John Jewitt, Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston, During a Captivity of Nearly Three Years Among the Indians of Nootka Sound in Vancouver Island, where he is named Machee Ulatilla. In the Jewitt account, Makee plays a key role in Jewitt’s rescue, just as he explains to Anna when he shows her the metal cheetoolth.

  Yakov and the apprentice Filip Kotelnikov were not among those rescued by the Lydia. The people with whom Yakov was living after Anna’s death traded him to Captain George Washington Eayres, commander of the American vessel Mercury. It is not known what happened to him after that time, but it is likely that he did not return to the Russian-American Company but instead worked for the Americans. Filip Kotelnikov was sold to “a distant people.” Despite his revulsion for the Hoh people when he was first captured, there is evidence to suggest he married an Indigenous woman and had children and may have lived at the Russian Fort Ross in California for many years. There are Kotelnikovs living still in California; the surname can also be found in the Seattle area.

  Maria, to whom I assigned the fictional job of cook, was among those rescued. She also has an extraordinary postscript to the story. The oral tradition of this incident, recounted by Ben Hobucket of the Quileutes in the early 1900s and finally published in 1934, states that Maria lived with the Hobucket family until the rescue Makee arranged. But several years later, a Russian ship returned to the mouth of the river looking to capture Quileutes as slaves. The curious Quileutes who paddled out to the ship without this knowledge were startled to see Maria on deck. She shouted in the Quileute language to the people in the canoes, telling them of the ship’s intent. “Go away from this place!” she called. “If you come aboard, you will be carried away as slaves. You will never see your people again.” According to the Hobucket account, the people heeded her advice and returned to shore.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I came across this story more than ten years ago at the Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site in Victoria, BC. There was a display about Pacific west coast shipwrecks, and in that display, a single line about the Sviatoi Nikolai. That single line said that a Russian woman had been onboard, and that as a result of the wreck, she was probably, in 1808, the first European woman to set foot on the Olympic Peninsula.

  Because of where I live, because of my Russian ancestry (my mother is Russian), I was instantly curious.

  The story is not well known. It took me a couple of years just to find Anna’s name. When I discovered that she hadn’t wanted to be rescued, I became hooked.

  But, very quickly, I realized that telling Anna’s story would mean writing characters who were Indigenous and representing them in my na
rrative. As a non-Indigenous writer, this felt especially daunting given the history of non-Indigenous writers misrepresenting Indigenous people and the terrible legacy that has left behind.

  So, I first stepped back from the story and tried to inform myself about this legacy. In studying cultural appropriation, I thankfully ran into the work of Dr. Jeannette Armstrong (Syilx-Okanagan). Her 1990 essay, “The Disempowerment of First North American Native Peoples and Empowerment Through Their Writing”3 became a foundational document for me. In it, Dr. Armstrong asks non-Indigenous writers to imagine creating new works that are courageous and honest about colonialism and imperialism. This, she writes, would require tackling and explaining the roots of the racism that’s inherent in many of the structures and practices that still exist today. She challenges non-Indigenous writers to interpret the prevailing thinking that sustains domination—instead of trying to interpret Indigenous stories. She likens this to a process of turning over and examining the rocks in one’s own garden while leaving your neighbour’s garden alone.

  As I worked, I imagined Anna and those rocks. I gave names to her rocks. Colonialism. Imperialism. Individualism. Unfettered pursuit of wealth. Spiritual void. Disconnection from the land. The Enlightenment. Serfdom. The Napoleonic Wars. Globalization. I let Anna kick at the rocks and, when she was ready, turn them over—or at least peek underneath.

  Anna’s rocks had an immediate effect on the Makahs, Quileutes, and Hoh River people who took her and the other Russians into their homes for a year and a half. That effect ripples out and reaches across the decades, touching us even today. History still characterizes the Russians’ experience using the terms “captivity” and “enslavement.” However, even a cursory glance suggests this choice of words is flawed, and that using them only serves to keep the rocks firmly in place.

  In seeking a respectful way of writing Indigenous characters, I approached the Makahs, Quileutes, and Hoh River people first through their tribal councils. Through various means, and not always through the councils, I received help that allowed me to glimpse history, language, and culture through an Indigenous lens. I hope this view is reflected in the narrative. But I know this information does not qualify me to speak on behalf of any Indigenous people. This is a work of fiction, and I have endeavoured to represent the Indigenous characters with as much integrity as I am able, and always from Anna’s point of view with all of her assumptions and cultural baggage.