by Susan Cooper
A great snorting sob came out of me, though a man does not cry and a man does not show weakness, ever. For a few moments I pressed my face into the cedar branches and I howled like a coyote. Outside, the snow came silently down and down, burying me deeper, and I drove myself into a kind of trance of despair.
I had never known how my Manitou would come to me, but I never expected it to come as a comfort for shame. They had taught me that you can earn your revelation only by fasting or by bravery, by heroism. They were wrong.
He came as a great osprey—a fish hawk, the bird we see only in summer—and he swooped over me with the spread feathers of his broad wing brushing my face, in my mind. He called to me, and his voice sang like the throb of a drum.
“Stop this,” he said. “Stop this at once. You are Little Hawk, given life on this earth. You will keep yourself alive.”
“I can’t,” I said wretchedly. “I can’t. I’ve failed.”
“I will show you your strength,” said my Manitou. “Come. Come.”
And I was flying with him, up into the grey-white sky, swooping down over the snow-mounded treetops. The snow was no longer falling, the clouds had taken shape—towering, churning clouds full of winter, with a break in the eastern sky where the sun was beginning to glimmer through.
My arms were wings; I lay on the wind. I followed my Manitou as he banked and turned. Far below us I could see the sea.
He said many things to me, that I may not tell to you. Nobody may share the heart of a man’s vision of his Manitou. He spoke to me for a long time, high up over the winter world, and then he showed me that my vision was, for now, at an end.
“Remember,” he said. “You are Little Hawk, and with my help there is nothing you cannot do. Say it.”
“There is nothing I cannot do,” I said. “With your help.”
I knew it was true. I was smiling. I could feel the air all around me as if I were swimming in the sea, held up by the water and the waves.
“Go now,” said my Manitou. “Go as one with earth and water and air. Find your way.”
His broad wings swept by me, with a noise like the wind in the trees.
Then I was wide awake in my hole in the snowbank, in the cold air, and I was no longer the same person that I had been before.
This was how my Manitou the great fish hawk came, and is still coming. Now and forever, I believe.
The white glow inside my burrow was brighter than before. My arrow was still there, just visible in the wall of snow that had closed over it. I grabbed it, pushing up with my other hand at the pine branch above my head; snow came cascading down, and all at once I was blinking in a white blaze of sunlight. Through the gap, I saw that the wall of snow enclosing me was as wide as my forearm was long.
I shook the snow off my face and hair. Above my head I heard a short harsh cry, and as I looked up, a red-tailed hawk flew up from a pine tree branch into the blue sky, crying out twice more as he went. I knew at once that my Manitou had sent him, and that I should follow.
He was wheeling slowly overhead, in the way of hawks. I scrambled up, strapped on my snowshoes, and took my knife and my tomahawk, my bow and my quiver. When I stepped out into the feathery snow I sank into it, in spite of the snowshoes.
The hawk flapped away to the west, and was lost behind the tall pine trees. I flurried after him through the deep snow; it was very slow going, and I stumbled and fell often and was soon very wet. Nothing mattered, though, except that I should follow the hawk. I caught another glimpse of him high in the blue sky and I heard the brief faint call.
Then all at once there was more light and sky ahead, and I was out in the sunshine at the edge of a large pond, its frozen surface glaring white with unmarked snow.
Then I saw one mark on the snow. At the far edge of the pond there was a long gash that could only be the new trail of a deer.
FIVE
It was the first moment in my winter journey when I knew in my bones that I should survive. Through the will of the Great Spirit, my Manitou had found me. And though the deer who left that trail might be long gone by now, sooner or later there would be another. I knew that in the end I should return alive to my home, as a man.
I also knew that all of this would be very hard.
The red-tailed hawk had disappeared. The winter sun was halfway up the sky, so there was not much time before cold night would come again. I looked out across the pond. The deer’s track vanished over a low, snow-mounded part of the shore, too far away to investigate today. The nearer bank was steep, with big rocks and tall pines. Each rock was twice the height of a man; there was a great pile of them, as if some huge god had tossed down a handful.
I took off my snowshoes and scrambled to the top. I could see neat rows of small footprints in the snow, the tracks of squirrels lured out of their winter nests by the sunshine, and I could hardly wait to set my traps.
This was a place where I could live. I wished I could show Leaping Turtle.
In the tumble of rocks facing the woods, I found two great slabs leaning together in a way that made a natural shelter. It was like a little cave, with its back to the pond and the wind. There was a musty smell inside, and I wondered nervously whether it was the smell of bear. But a bear would be tucked away somewhere much deeper in the woods at this time of the year, lost in his winter sleep. Perhaps he had paused in here last spring, heading for the coastal rivers and the herring run, when bears and men alike can catch more fish than they can eat.
Excited, I strapped my snowshoes back on and went into the trees, and cut some big pine branches for a roof and a bed. I cut out sections of the thin inside bark of the pine tree too, giving the tree my thanks, and stuffed some in my mouth to chew. Pine bark is not filling, but my empty stomach was comforted. Then I cleared out piles of twigs and stones from the cave-house and I found a treasure. Buried in a corner were a few acorns, saved for the winter by a chipmunk or a squirrel—the perfect bait for a trap.
I grabbed the braided root-strings that were still wrapped round my waist, and with the acorns as bait I set three snares on twigs near the squirrel tracks in the undergrowth.
The light was dying. I was so tired I could hardly move, but my stomach was reminding me of the greenbrier roots in my quiver. So I picked up wood and made a fire, setting the roots in the earth underneath it to cook, and sat there for a while chewing my pine bark. The stars were blazing above the trees, and I could see the line of three stars that my father called the canoe, crossing the river of the sky. Near them, the big star that is a fish in that river was very bright. I wondered if it was the star of my Manitou. I gave thanks to him for coming to me, and I thanked my brothers the trees who were standing above me like a guardian family.
Then I burned my fingers pulling out the charred little roots, and peeled them with my wonderful sharp knife. I ate them very slowly, chewing carefully, eating bites of snow in between, as we had been taught to do when the fast ended. I think the slowness took more willpower than everything else put together. It helped me to pretend that I had food, even though I felt hungrier when I finished than when I began.
When I woke the next morning, sunlight was filtering through the branches, and from somewhere in the trees I could hear the angry chittering of a squirrel. I jumped up and headed for my snares. Two of them were broken, but a squirrel was struggling in the third. He would soon have gnawed himself free, so I smashed him on the head with my tomahawk, fast. He was a fine fat squirrel, with sleek grey fur, after his months of autumn eating to prepare himself for winter. Perhaps I had caught him with one of his own acorns, but he would save me from starving. This is the way of things.
I gathered wood and made a fire right away. Then I thanked the squirrel for becoming my food, and gutted and skinned him with my sharp knife, careful to keep the skin in one piece. While the meat was cooking beside the fire, I scraped the skin as clean as I could and rubbed it with snow—and then burned my fingers again eating roasted squirrel meat. Nothing had eve
r tasted better in my whole life.
It was a cold day; the surface of the snow had frozen hard overnight. I knew I had to make this cave into the winter nest that would help me survive, so I packed branches into the gaps between the two slabs of its roof, and stamped down the snow outside—making a dance of the stamping, to cheer up my legs as well as my mind. It was a short dance, because the leg I had bruised was not grateful. I dug a proper fire pit, lined with stones that would hold the heat, and I kept up the endless hunt for firewood, dragging a small dead tree toward my home so I could burn it by degrees.
As I reached the rocks, my eye caught a flicker of movement out in the trees. When I looked, it was gone. Then it came again—and I saw a wolf heading toward me. I caught my breath and stood very still.
Perhaps he had smelled my squirrel. He was walking carefully across the frozen surface of the snow. He was a big wolf, but his shaggy grey-white winter coat looked somehow patchy. And he was alone, which was strange; wolves are pack animals.
One of the pine branches in the roof of my cave chose that moment to fall down; it made only a small sound, but that was enough. The wolf jumped, startled, his head up, his ears high. The jump broke the icy crust beneath his hind feet, and he dropped, floundering. In a flurry of glittering snow-mist he turned and ran, high-stepping awkwardly through the deep snow.
I was sorry to see him go. We were always taught to respect the wolves, who never troubled us if we didn’t trouble them; all of us shared the same land, and though we were all hunters, there was more than enough food for everyone. But the strange solitary wolf didn’t come back.
Before I slept that night, I ate the last few scraps of squirrel meat, nibbling the little bones clean and saving them. I sharpened the end of a leg bone against a rock, so it could be an awl, and then I did something my father might have thought foolish. I took the squirrel skin and with my new awl I made holes along opposite sides of the skin, folded the bottom edge halfway up the rest, and pushed my last piece of braided tree root in and out of the matched holes, joining the sides. Now the skin was a little bag, and I tucked it behind me when I went to sleep. Inside was the squirrel’s bushy tail, saved as a toy for my baby brother.
After the squirrel, I caught nothing. Every day my traps were empty or broken, and soon I was back to chewing the bark of the pine tree. I had to find a deer. Old Running Deer, who taught my friends and me to make a canoe, had reminded us always that this great test we went through, as boys becoming men, was really a test of the hunter. At home there were our stores of plants and seeds and fruit to keep us alive through the winter, when the meat and fish ran out. But we boys on the quest for our Manitou, we had no such supplies.
“Out there alone,” said Running Deer, “your best chance of staying alive is to kill a deer. For its skin above all. You can feed yourself with a turkey or a rabbit, but when the teeth of winter bite really cold, only the deerskin will be sure to save you from death. Only your arrow, finding a deer.”
And he would make us take time every day to practice shooting arrows into a ball of vines that he tossed along the ground, or threw into the air. Then he would set up a stick the height of a deer’s shoulder and a finger’s breadth wide, and make us shoot at it from all angles.
So every morning now I went to wait on the rocks, where the wind wouldn’t take my scent across the ice, and I watched for the deer to come back. The stand of small trees behind the mounded snow across the pond were almost certainly oaks, and that was where the deer tracks I saw had been heading. It had been a good year for acorns; I had helped my sisters collect baskets of them for our mother to boil and wash and grind into flour. Sooner or later the deer would come back to nose about in the snow to find the last lurking acorn. Or so I hoped.
And one day, when I had gone so long without food that I had to force myself to stand, two deer came. I could only just see them, picking their way along the far shore of the pond toward the oak trees.
I waited until they went out of sight, and then I followed them, quick and quiet. From the look of the land, they would come back along the same path.
It was very early morning; the sky was light blue and the air was very cold. I could hear a chickadee calling, but no other bird. I squinted through the sunlight that glared up from the white snow.
And I saw the deer among the oaks, nosing in the snow, two of them, moving slowly. The bigger one was stripping the bark off a sapling, which would die as a result, though the deer of course neither knew that nor cared. The other was only a little smaller, perhaps a grown fawn; if the first was his mother, he was with her for company, not out of need. And he was a better size for me to manage, so he was the one I must kill.
I strung my bow and took out my best arrow, with a very sharp point. I had made all my own arrows, and I knew each of them like a friend. Two more were high in the quiver in case I had to shoot again very fast, though the first shot was the one that mattered. Then I stood at the side of a rock face, silent, downwind of the deer, and I waited.
And waited.
Waiting was a part of the hunt. For years our fathers had taught us how to shift the weight from one foot to the other, how to flex and loosen the sinews in your arms, how to blink regularly so that you can see with clear sight, how to be invisible and still. So I did these things by second nature, even though it was so cold.
It was the doe who came back first along the trail. She walked across the pond below me, and paused. As she stood broadside to me there her whole flank was exposed, and I was aching to let the arrow fly, but still I waited.
The younger one came running down the bank toward her in that leaping way deer have, though he was hindered by the deep snow. My heart sank because he was so difficult a target, but as he came level with me I shot my arrow, aiming ahead of him and a little high in case I caught him in a leap—and there was a flurry of snow and they were both gone, away down their trail, white tails up and flashing.
I had lost him.
I scrambled down through the snow to look for my arrow.
But when I came to the trampled patch where they had rushed away, there were speckles of blood on the snow, and no sign of the arrow anywhere. The sun had come up, bringing color into the world, and the blood was bright red; it was easy to follow the trail. I was sorry I had only wounded the deer and so brought him pain, but I was very glad to have hit him.
I began the long struggle through the snow, following the footsteps and the splashes of red. They were there every step of the way, so I knew I should find him in the end, though because he was young and strong it might take a long time. By the time I reached him, the sun was at its highest winter point in the sky and I was soaking wet from hours of pushing through the snow. I paused in relief as I saw the brown body lying under a tree.
But the big wolf had found it too. He had ripped open the deer’s belly and was tearing at it ravenously, and as he saw me he lifted his head and snarled, teeth shining out of his bloodied muzzle. Mine, said the snarl, mine! Keep away!
I was so angry that it stopped me from being afraid. I yelled at him, and grabbed for my bow. It was my deer, and I was just as hungry as the wolf.
“Get away from there!” I yelled.
The wolf snarled again. He gave a kind of half jump so that he was facing me, challenging, forelegs tense and apart, yellow slit eyes blazing over the dripping teeth. I was screaming at him now, dancing about like a mad thing, reaching for an arrow.
He paused; I don’t think he’d ever seen anything like this before. He let out a long low growl, and then made a jerky move toward me, snarling.
So I shot at him. The arrow hit him in the leg, and the snarl became a yelp; he leapt sideways and faced me again, teeth still bared. I could see the arrow sticking out of his foreleg, but it fell away as he moved; it must have hit the bone. I was still shouting at him, angry shrieks with no words, desperate now because fear was kicking in over the rage.
And for a terrible moment I thought he would leap, be
cause it would be so easy for a wolf to kill a boy—but instead he turned away. As I went on yelling and waving my arms, he loped off over the snow, limping a little, and disappeared into the trees.
So there I was, alone in the forest with the carcass of my deer. There was no sign of the doe his mother, of course. The broken shaft of my arrow was sticking out of his side. For a moment I felt remorse for having driven away the wolf; there was more than enough deer meat here for both of us, and like me, he was alone. And now I had wounded him. But there was no time to feel sorry, because I had so much to do before dark.
I did everything I remembered from our teaching, every stage, one by one. I gave thanks to the Great Spirit and my Manitou for giving me this kill, and I thanked the spirit of the deer. Then I shifted the deer so that he was tilted downward on a snowbank and I cut his neck in the proper place to bring the blood out. He was still warm. I pulled out my broken arrow, to save the sharp point. I would have slit his belly and taken out everything inside, perhaps cutting off a piece of his liver and eating it warm and raw, as I had seen my father do. But the wolf had done all those things, and the liver was gone.
Instead I did something harder: using a big rock and my axe, I broke the deer’s skull to take out the brain. This was the rule for curing deerskins, that you must rub the skin with the brain, to keep it from drying as hard as oak tree bark.
Then I pulled the deer by his hind legs to lie in a clean patch of snow, away from the bloody mess the wolf and I had made, and I skinned him. It took a long time, and I could never have done it alone without the white man’s knife my father gave me. I couldn’t hang the deer by his forefeet in the proper way, but I managed fairly well to take off his skin in one piece. When I had finished, I cut out the long sinew next to the backbone, because deer sinew is one of the most useful things there are.