by Robin Moore
Now that Jake and Poordevil were back, and now that her belly was full, she felt herself coming back into the world of human feelings again. The dream with the wolf, the fantastical coincidence of finding the snow-covered deer, and the strange wolfy visions she had shared during her starvation days began to fade. But one thing remained: the joy of running, nose held high, paws touching lightly on the ground, on the night when she had run with the she-wolf. That, she would never forget.
On the following morning, Maggie and her companion made a strange discovery. A terrific ice-storm had swept through the valley in early morning, coating the trees with a thick layer of ice. The smaller branches couldn't bear the weight and hung bruised and twisted. Mid-sized trees had fallen to the ground.
When Maggie took the toboggan down into the thicket by the river, looking for dry firewood. Poordevil loped along beside her, sniffing at the icy ground. Maggie noticed that a large tree had come down in the storm, narrowly missing the Ragpicker's hut, caving in one side of the structure, shearing off part of the bark cover.
Maggie left her sled and walked over to investigate. When she knelt and looked into the interior of the hut, she was astonished to see that it was packed solid with dry leaves.
Poordevil trotted up beside her and buried his nose and the leaves, snuffling and barking.
"What is it, boy?" Maggie asked.
Strangely, the dog began to dig with his front paws, pulling back the leaves. Maggie drew her knife and cut away a large panel of bark. A cascade of dry leaves spilled out onto the wet ground. A chill wind came up and carried the leaves away, sending them spinning out across the thicket.
Then Maggie saw something curious protruding from the leaf pile: It was a human foot, encased in a weathered, pointy-toed moccasin.
Maggie sprang to her feet, "Jake!" she hollered. "Jake! I need you!"
Up in the village she heard an answering shout and a few moments later the old man came rushing down through the icy woods, his rifle held ready.
"What is it?" he asked, glancing around the clearing. Maggie pointed with a trembling finger. "Look..." Jake knelt and peered into the pile of leaves. "It's her, ain't it?" Maggie nodded.
"Well, let's pull back these here leaves and see what we kin see."
Maggie and Jake worked quickly, sweeping back the dried leaves to reveal the small blanket-wrapped figure of the Ragpicker, laid on her back in the leaves. Her hands were clasped together like the claws on a bird. Her face was covered with a strange mask made from coiled cornhusks, with a nose and mouth hole but no eyes.
"What do you make of it?" Maggie asked.
"I don't rightly know," Jake said, "I s'pose it could be some kinda burial mound. But I never heared of the Seneca buryin' their dead this way."
"But who could have buried her here, and where is Hoot Owl?" Maggie asked, even though she knew Jake didn't have the answers to these questions.
"Think we should just let it be?" Jake asked. "I don't like messin' with someone's burial."
"I don't either," Maggie said, "but maybe there is some clue here, something that will tell me something about Hoot Owl."
Then Maggie knew what she must do: She must crawl up into the leafy pile and lift the mask from the old woman's face. Maggie wiped her hands on her coat and cautiously crept forward. Poordevil sat on his haunches in the snow, watching intently. Maggie knelt in the leaves beside the old woman's head. As she moved into position, her knee struck a large birchbark box. Jake helped her set the box aside so she could reach the old woman's mask. With trembling fingers, Maggie
reached down and lifted off the cornhusk mask, peering into the face of the woman she had hunted for so long.
The old woman looked gray and cold, but well-preserved. Her face looked as if it was molded from gray candle wax. Her eyes were closed peacefully and her mouth was set in a thin, almost smiling line.
Then Maggie noticed something. It was so faint that at first she thought it was only her imagination. But then she was sure: a small cloud of warm breath was escaping from the old woman's nostrils!
"Jake, come here. Have a look at this."
The old hunter knelt in the leaves beside her and placed his fingers along the side of the old woman's neck, feeling for her pulse.
"Well, I'll be dogged," Jake exclaimed, "she's alive!"
"But how?"
"I don't know," the old man admitted, "maybe like a bear in hibernation 'er somethin'. The point is, if we're ever gonna find yer boy, we gotta get this woman woked up and talkin'. Let's git her on that sled and git her back to the cabin and thaw her out afore the fire."
Working carefully, Maggie and Jake lifted the old woman up out of the leaves and carried her to the toboggan. As they laid her on the rough wooden surface, Poordevil came over^ and began licking the old woman's face with his warm, pink tongue.
Then Maggie remembered what had happened that day by the river, when she had fallen through the ice of the Allegheny. She remembered the strange frozen dream and the hot Hemlock bath.
"Jake, I've got an idea! I know how we can thaw her out!"
As they hauled the toboggan back to the cabin, Maggie explained what they could do.
"We'll get some kind of a tub or a—I know!—we can use that dug-out canoe that's propped up against the house down the road, we can drag that in and you get some water boiling on the fire and I'll go out and collect some hemlock boughs—"
They worked furiously for the next hour, dragging the dugout canoe into the cabin, getting the pots boiling and cutting the frozen clothing off of the old woman with their knives.
She was thin, but did not seem emaciated. Maggie and Jake lowered the old woman down into the dug out and laid her out, full-length. Then they laid in armfuls of fresh hemlock branches and then water, lots of it, adding pot after pot of boiling water. Maggie fetched in buckets of water from the creek. At last, they had the dug-out filled to the brim with steaming, hemlock-tainted water, covering most of the old crone's body.
Remembering her dream, Maggie took a rag and began washing the old woman's feet, rubbing her gray limbs and watching as her bloodblush return, turning her skin from gray to yellow and at last to pink. Poordevil came over and lent his long pink tongue to the job, licking the woman's face and hair.
Jake held the old woman's head above water. At last, her eyes sprang open and her toothless mouth began to work, opening and closing. Jake gently poured a few drops of sassafras tea down her throat. Her eyes began to focus and brighten, as if she were gradually coming back from a place far, far away.
Then a voice began to come up out of her throat. At first, it was nothing more than a hoarse whisper. Jake had to place his ear down by her mouth to hear.
"She's tryin' to tell us somethin'," Jake said, "she's saying somethin' about the boy."
"I didn't know you knew any Seneca, Jake."
"I don't. This here woman ain't speakin' Seneca. She's a Lenape. You 'member, I told you I lived amongst them years ago. I kin pick out a word here and there."
Maggie took the woman's fingertips in her own and began to chafe the skin, encouraging the blood to flow. The woman's eyes were clearing now, as she glanced around in the hemlock mist. Her eyes fell on Maggie. Then her hand came to life, she pointed outside, her ancient mouth working around half-whispered words.
"What is she tryin' to say?" Maggie asked.
"I can't make it out," the old man said," We'll just have to give her time to come around, then we'll figger it out."
It took time for the old woman to move on her own but, at last, she sat up in the bath and gestured for her clothing. Maggie fetched the old woman's ragged blanket -robe and she and Jake helped her stand and slip into it. Steam streamed off the thin crone as she sank onto a deerskin spread out on the floor by the fire. Jake held a cup of tea to her lips.
Her voice was coming out plainer now, plainer and louder. Jake listened intently. At last he nodded.
"We made us a mistake," Jake said, "we left y
er boy behind. She says he's wrapped up in a birchbark box she buried in the leaves beside her."
Maggie sprang to her feet. Of course! The box she had struck with her knee.
"I'll go down and fetch it!" Maggie hollered.
Before Jake could answer, she was out the door and running through the wet fields, down into the thicket. Poordevil trotted along beside her. Maggie ran, leaping ice-covered logs and dodging through the debris from the ice storm.
Her mind was working furiously as well, churning out questions: If the old woman had survived, in some kind of hibernation, was it possible that Hoot Owl was still alive? And if he was, could they revive him as they had her?
Maggie ran up to the hut and frantically sifted through the leaves for the box. At last, her hand struck it's angular edge. She hauled it up out of the leaves. It was about the right size, big enough to hold a small child, and heavy. She could see that the lid of the box was punctured with dozens of air holes and that the whole thing was held together by strips of cord wrapped round and round. She clutched the box to her chest and dashed back up into the village.
She and Poordevil pushed their way through the cabin door and stumbled into the firelit room. Jake and the old woman were motioning for her to lay the box by the hearthfire. Jake drew his knife and cut away the cord.
When the Ragpicker lifted off the lid, Maggie gasped aloud.
Chapter Eleven
There, wrapped in a warm rabbitskin, lying on a bed of yellow cornhusks, was the little boy, Hoot Owl. He was gray with cold. Maggie carefully lifted him from the box and held her ear to his chest. Inside his ribcage, like the beating of a slow drum, Maggie could hear rhythm of her little boy's heart.
"He's alive," she breathed, "let's put him in the bath and thaw him out."
"Wait," Jake said, "let's not rush inta this. The old woman and I been talkin' and I think I understand what happened here. It's strange doin's, not doubt about that, but here is what I kin make out: This here's a root-woman and she—"
"A root-woman," Maggie asked, "what's that?"
"Well, she knows about roots and herbs and such and—"
"Like a witch?"
The old man shook his head, "Well, not what we call a witch. As far as I can figger, she don't have no magic powers 'er nuthin'. But she did do somethin' amazin'.
"See, she knows this root what grows in the woods. You chaw on this root and swallow down the root juice and it puts a body inta a deep sleep)—kinda like a bear in hibernation."
"You mean she—"
"Yep. She says they lived on wild dogs and scavenged corn all through the early winter and then the food ran out and she figgered this was the only way they'd make it through until spring. So she chewed some of the root and gave the boy some and burrowed down in that leafy hut, hopin' to sleep the winter through. Well, dag-nabit, it looks like they done it."
"She wants to say somethin', Jake."
The old woman said a few words and gestured to the baby.
"She says she's gotta hold the baby before ya put him in the bath."
Cautiously, Maggie handed Hoot Owl over to the old woman, just as she had done so many months before. But this time she would watch and would not lose track of him.
The old woman took Hoot Owl into the folds of her robe, closed her eyes and rocked him for several moments. Gradually, a faint eerie tune came up out of the old woman's lips. Maggie recognized the lullaby she had heard the old woman sing before.
Maggie knew by the expression on the old woman's face that this was more than a simple lullaby. She was concentrating very hard and was singing the song as if she were reaching into
another world, into the shadowy, slow-moving world where turtles go when they sleep in the mud, where a bear goes to dream its winter dreams.
At last, the song ended and the old woman opened her eyes, nodding to Jake. Then she handed the baby back to Maggie and gestured toward the tub of steaming water.
Maggie pulled the rabbitskin from around her boy's body and lowered his cold, still body into the hemlock brew. The old woman came and sat beside her, holding the boy's head above water as they washed and rubbed him. Gradually, his skin began to take on life. At last, his leg and arm muscles twitched. His mouth worked convulsively and then in a great gasp, he opened his mouth and let out a high-pitched wail.
Maggie lifted him up out of the bath and onto her shoulder, feeling the welcome bulk of his weight against her. She held him up at arm's length and looked into his eyes, opening now to the firelight.
"Good boy!" she said. She said it over and over until she was satisfied that he was back in the land of the living.
Just then, Poordevil appeared at the doorway. He had run outside again and in all the excitement, no one had noticed that he was foraging around outside. A cloth bag dangled from his mouth.
"What in tarnation is zat?" Jake asked. Poordevil dropped the sack on the ground.
The old woman became very excited and gestured toward the bag, talking rapidly. Jake fetched her the bag and watched as her trembling bird-like hands pulled open the mouth of the sack and drew out seven cornhusk dolls, one after another, setting them before the fire. Then she fell to talking with them and washing them with a rag and straightening their clothing, going on as if Maggie and Jake were not there.
"She's in another world," Jake murmured.
"Good thing for us she knows about the other world," Maggie said. "I think that's what saved our boy."
Poordevil crept up cautiously and sniffed the small boy. Hoot Owl gurgled happily.
That night, Jake broiled up elk steaks on the fire. Maggie fed Hoot Owl a few spoonfuls of Spook Yeast from her pouch, thinking that the yeasties would be good for him.
The old woman ate heartily and served tiny bits of meat and droplets of grease to her faceless dolls, talking away in her ancient tongue, ignoring Maggie and Jake.
The next morning, when Maggie opened her eyes, she wondered if the whole thing had been imagined. But Hoot Owl was real enough, lying in the crook of her arm, his sweet baby's breath close to her ear.
She sat up and looked around. Poordevil and Jake were there. But the old woman, and her mysterious dolls, were gone. Clutching Hoot Owl to her chest, Maggie stood and pushed her way through the doorway, letting the early morning light stream in.
Out over the treetops, she saw a strange shape, it looked to be an owl, winging its way south, downriver.
Maggie knew. It was time to go back.
She heard Jake blowing on the embers of the fire. Turning, he asked her, "She's gone?"
Maggie nodded. "I wonder if she'll be all right?"
The old man straightened up, brushing his hands off on his pant's leg.
"I wouldn't worry 'bout her, I spec she'll make out just fine. The snow will be meltin' soon and the river will be unfroze, green plants will be comin' up. A person what knows the plants will never be hungry durin' the growin' season."
Maggie stared out across the fields. The owl was gone now.
All things considered, Maggie thought Hoot Owl had come through his ordeal in fine shape: When they got down to Franny's she would put some meat on his bones, get him chubby and frisky for the summer.
Maggie and Jake spent the day drying the meat over the fire. Jake scraped and dried and fashioned the elkskin into a pack which he would carry on his back. The snow which made the toboggan slide would be gone any day now, replaced by a slurry of mud and leaves.
It was almost maple sugaring time, Maggie thought wistfully. If she was still living among the Seneca, this would be the time when the families would take their elm bark buckets and their kettles off into the sugar bushes. They would tap the sap which rose on warm days, late in winter, and boil it down to syrup which would sweeten their lives the whole year through.
When Maggie glanced around the ruined village, she remembered those times. She felt a great longing to turn back the events of the last year, restoring this place to its living state, when the colorful and c
ompassionate people she had known were still living here, still calling this place their home.
But she knew she was powerless to do that. Instead, she was faced with the charred ruins of that life. As the slush melted and revealed more and more of the scorched town, Maggie began to sicken and was anxious to be on their way.
At last, Jake was packed and had stowed the snowshoes and the toboggan in the cabin, leaving them there for anyone who cared to take them.
He drug the heavy pack out into the yard outside the cabin.
"Say yer goodbyes, girl," he said quietly.
Maggie knew what he meant. She knew that she could light one last fire for Frenchgirl and Firefly. With Hoot Owl on her shoulder, Maggie walked down to the tree and sat down beneath it, placing her back against the weathered trunk and glancing up at the scaffold overhead. A few pieces of ragged blanket flapped in the wind.
She drew out her flint and steel and kindled a small fire, no bigger than her hand, and fed it with twigs from the tree. She held Hoot Owl to her and closed her eyes and cried the last tears she had left for her Seneca companions.
Jake was kind. He didn't hurry her. He just waited until she quietly walked up out of the field and into the village. Shouldering his back, Jake stepped ahead, toward the Genesee.
"No sense wadin' the river here," he said, "We may as well walk down on this side fer as long as we kin."
Maggie nodded and they set out.
They camped that night near the bluffs of the gorge. The next day they entered the great gorge and then walked downstream, down the Genesee and out of the Seneca Country.
It was ten days of steady travel, through spotty sunshine and pouring rain, to Rory's cabin on the Allegheny.
Maggie hadn't let herself think much about Rory, or any man, for that matter. She was glad that she was alive and that she had found her boy. That was enough. And that they should get home safe and sound. But she hadn't thought much about a man.