Tsuga's Children

by Thomas Williams

  Nearer, the old woman’s smell grew stronger. To Arn it was like the first puff of air from the paunch of a deer as his father’s long knife cut it open to free the tripes from the body, or the way the very leaves could hold and keep the news of a black bear’s passage through them, so the hairs on the back of your neck stiffened almost before you could remember what the smell meant, and then when you knew, and looked around quickly for your father, it seemed that your stiffening hairs and not your nose were what had told you. To Jen it was the smell of small animals just after being born, a vixen licking her still-damp kits deep in a moist cave. She had smelled it in the early spring when it came in a warm wave of air.

  Closer and closer they came, the old woman’s body never moving at all, just the regular, even breaths. They had thought they were getting used to the old woman’s presence in the cabin, but now, at night, when everything was asleep, on this strange quest they knew must be guilty because they were so quiet about it, she seemed to loom above them.

  Arn held the candle up before the ancient sleeping face. If the eyes had opened at that moment, Arn was sure he would have died of fright. But the eyes didn’t open. The wrinkled face shone, brown as polished wood, shining squares and diamond shapes and triangles cut by the deep cracks. The old woman’s mouth was closed, her lips folded and collapsed at the outer edges. Gray hairs curled and straggled from a black mole on her sunken chin.

  And then as if in a dream Jen found her own shy arm reaching out toward that face. She came closer, closer, till she felt the warm, rich air of the old woman’s breath on her hand. She reached toward the brown, wrinkled eyelid and lifted it up from the sunken eye.

  What they both saw then was so strange that in their wonder they almost forgot to be afraid, for in the eye was no pupil or iris but a clear lighted glasslike globe in which they could see with the clarity of a bright winter day green spruce trees and a great crystal waterfall, and behind the wildly flashing water a dark mountain. Over its gray rock, black clouds rolled and climbed against a dark sky.

  When they had seen the waterfall, the mountain and the clouds just long enough so they would never forget them, ever in their lives, Jen let the old skin of the eyelid settle once again. With a long glance at each other, but not a word, they crept back from the old woman, put the candle out, and climbed back to the loft, where they slept, each one, a sleep full of dreams of the ominous beauty of a mountain, surging clouds and falling water.

  2. Tsuga’s Black Gate

  Early the next morning Jen and Arn woke up to hear Eugenia putting wood on the fire beneath the hissing kettle. It was cold, bitter cold even on the loft. They kept their bedclothes around them right up to their noses, not wanting to make the jump out of their warm beds into their frosty clothes.

  But then all at once they remembered what they’d seen in the middle of the night, and they were both amazed and a little frightened by what they’d done.

  “Jen,” Arn whispered across the partition between their sleeping places. “Jen, do you remember what I remember?”

  “Yes,” Jen whispered back. “It must have really happened.”

  “I think we’d better not tell,” Arn said. “What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure why, but I think so too.”

  “Come on, children,” Eugenia called up to them. “I can hear you’re awake. It’s hot porridge, cornbread and honey for breakfast!”

  That sounded good, so they gathered up their nerve and were soon down the ladder in front of the warm fire, both of them, toasting themselves on one side and then the other. The old woman hadn’t yet returned from whatever mysterious place she went before dawn, but both Jen and Arn cast an occasional guilty look at her place on the wooden bench by the fire.

  Tim Hemlock soon came in from the barn, knocking the snow from his outer moccasins by the door where it could be swept out with the round rush broom. He had milked Oka and the nanny goat, cleaned up and fed Oka, Brin, the pig and the goats. He put the two buckets of milk on the cooling shelf in the pantry where it was coolest in the cabin (but not freezing), and before he could take off his deerskin parka the door opened again and the old woman, all in brown deerskin, glided in as smoothly as if she had no legs. Just as always, her wrinkled, brown old face without any expression except that look of the very old that seems to say, “How heavy the sky is to hold up,” she went straight to her place on the bench and sat down.

  It was as if she had no idea the children had seen into the depths of her eye.

  The days grew colder and shorter as the winter came down upon them from over the dark bulk of Cascom Mountain. Cold squeaked in the rafters, in the window frames, in the frost-white hinges of the door. For a hundred miles the evergreen trees turned from green to almost gray in the terrible cold. Those trees that lose their leaves in winter creaked their bare branches against the cold sky. The snow came and came again, until the paths to the barn and outbuildings and to the storage cave in the hill were almost tunnels in the white. Tim Hemlock, when he went hunting for the meat they began to need more desperately than in any winter they had ever known, moved across the high snow on his longest, widest snowshoes. In the late afternoon, just before dark, he would come back exhausted, his eyebrows white with frost until they melted in the warmth, hang up his unfired flintlock rifle on its pegs, remove his ice-stiff leggings and parka to hang them by the door. The children knew how tired he was from the cold, the deep snow and the long journeys he had made. His face grew thin and gaunt, and one place on his cheek where he had once been frostbitten turned bright red as he sat slumped before the fire. It made the children afraid to see their father so tired, though he pretended to be cheerful when they sat down together for supper, even though the portions were growing smaller day by day.

  One day when the sky was nearly black even in the middle of the afternoon, when a blizzard was hovering over Cascom Mountain ready to come howling down, he came in exhausted, limping from where he’d fallen and hit his knee on his snowshoe. Eugenia got him a bowl of hot potato soup, and he blew his tired breath across it, holding its warmth in his cold hands. He seemed too tired even to speak, but finally he said to Eugenia, “We’re going to have to slaughter the pig.”

  This was a big disappointment to the Hemlocks. They had paid the Traveler many moccasins and several knives for the little piglet he had brought them the year before, hoping that it would begin to fatten on the fall mast and corn. But this pig ate and ate and never grew very big or fat at all. He was a rangy, long-snouted pig, more like a wild pig than a domesticated one.

  “There may not be enough feed for Oka and Brin, and we can’t live without them. We just can’t feed the pig any longer,” Tim Hemlock said. “I don’t think this blizzard will hit till tomorrow night, so we’ve got to do it in the morning first thing.”

  “There won’t be much fat or meat on that pig,” Eugenia said.

  The old woman looked from one to the other as they spoke, just her eyes moving in the dark old sockets.

  So the next morning, just after first light, there was blood in the snow, bright red as it dissolved down into the crystals of ice. The pig died quickly, never knowing, stunned by a sledge hammer, then bled as he hung from his hocks on a tripod of saplings. Arn helped with the skinning and the cutting of the lean meat. Eugenia and Jen saved the entrails and all the blood they could. Nearly everything was saved, even the four split, pointed hooves, for what could not be cured or boiled down would be eaten, fresh, and what could not be eaten fresh was put into a wolf- and bear-proof cache at the roofpeak to be frozen by the winter itself. But when they had finished, that afternoon as the first stings of the blizzard began to be felt, they had gotten very little meat from the pig, and even less of the precious fat that gives energy against the cold.

  Arn and Jen thought about the pig. They hadn’t ever got to know him very well, the way they did Oka and Brin—especially Oka, who was Jen’s favorite. And now the pig was no more, just chops and lean roasts, uncured bac
on slabs, spareribs, parts for head cheese and sausage casings, a skin to be made into leather, and marrow bones. Jen wondered if the other animals knew what had happened, if they would miss his company in the chilly dark barn. Especially she wondered about the goats, whose bright eyes with their strange oblong irises seemed to know more than they said. The pig’s pen was empty; they must all know that.

  The winter never let up at all; it seemed to the Hemlocks that it had already lasted for years. The jerky, the smoked and pickled venison, the smoked salmon from the river and the frozen pork were soon gone. All the nourishment had been tried from all the marrow bones. They had flour, some cornmeal and some dried vegetables, a few potatoes that had sprouted and were wrinkled and punky. Oka’s and the nanny goat’s milk were terribly important to them. Tim Hemlock had to spend most of his days out searching for game because he didn’t want to think of slaughtering Oka or Brin or the goats. They all knew he would, though, if he had to.

  “I don’t know where the deer have gone,” he said to Eugenia one night when the children were asleep. “They haven’t yarded up this year in any of their regular places. They’re just gone. Nothing seems to be out this winter—not a moose or a fox, not a rabbit, not a red squirrel, not a white-footed mouse, not a partridge. All the animals seem to have gone from the forest.”

  As he spoke, the old woman’s eyes were upon his tired face. Tim Hemlock hadn’t tried to speak to her with his hands for a long time, and now he just shrugged hopelessly, as if he could think of nothing to say. Eugenia could see how tired he was.

  The firewood corded beneath the eaves was getting low, too, so they burned the wood sparingly now, and the cabin was not cheery and warm as it was most winters. There was never a fire in the forge next to the barn. It seemed the forest they had known so well had forsaken them. It was their home and it had always been stern but bountiful to them, but now it was barren, nothing but cold snow and mute frozen trees.

  In December the paths between the barn and the storage cave did become tunnels, cold blue light filtering down through the snow ceilings. While this protected the paths from the harsh wind, they were breathlessly cold inside, like the middle of a block of ice.

  It wasn’t the happiest Christmas that year, though they tried to make the best of it. Tim Hemlock cut the top from a balsam fir, just the top that stuck up out of the snow, and brought it into the cabin, but they couldn’t decorate it with candles because they had no tallow. Jen and Arn got the parts of the manger scene from the loft and set it up at the left of the tree, the baby and his parents carved from wood, as were the goats and cows. The little dolls looked cozy and warm in the hay-filled manger. To the right of the tree they set up the small circle of carved wild animals with the deer and the smaller tree in the center, the tree a branch cut from the balsam fir. But they had no saddle of venison, their traditional Christmas dinner. All they had was potato and corn soup with dried chives in it, and some bannock.

  After dinner, when they sang “Silent Night, Holy Night,” Eugenia could not keep the tears from her eyes. Tim Hemlock, as he always did on Christmas Eve, went into the back sleeping room and put on the cape of deerskin and the deer mask with the antlers, then entered the main room walking slowly and sedately like a deer. He silently looked around the room, then took a place at the table. Eugenia took the maple-sugar doll she had made that morning, holding it carefully on the wide blade of a knife, and presented it to the deer, who tasted it, then removed his costume and divided the candy doll among them all. The old lady watched all this with her bright old eyes, and accepted her piece of the candy with a nod.

  They were gathered around the fire and it was time for a story, so Tim Hemlock told them a story he had heard from his grandfather, about Tsuga, a great hunter of the Old People, whose other name was “Wanders-too-far.” Jen and Arn knew the story by heart, but they always liked to hear it because while telling it their father changed. His eyes grew brighter, and an excitement came into his voice and gestures that made him seem more like them.

  “It is said,” Tim Hemlock began, “that the Old People never saw their gods, only heard their voices in water, wind and thunder.” He went on with the old story, telling them how Tsuga, hunting far into the wilderness, came upon a strange mountain and climbed up into its valleys, where he came to a gate of black stone. The deer trail he was following stopped at the stone. Some versions of the story, Tim Hemlock’s grandfather had told him, said that the stone was hung on great hinges, others that it was a teetering stone that could turn on its fulcrum. Tsuga reached forward to touch the stone and heard the voice of thunder, so he drew back, afraid, because the thunder was all around him though the sky was blue.

  In spite of his fear, Tsuga was still curious, for he had always gone over the next ridge to see what was on the other side, crossed the widest rivers, followed his quarry until he found it. He stood trembling before the stone gate, then reached forward to touch it. To his wonderment it turned slowly, opening into blackness from which a deep voice came. “Where are your children?” the voice asked in the sad tones of the wind. “Where are your children?”

  “They are safe at home,” Tsuga managed to say, though his voice trembled.

  “There is no safe place,” the windy voice answered.

  “Why can’t I see you?” Tsuga asked, his curiosity overcoming his fear.

  “Your eyes see only that which you must kill. Where are your children?”

  It was more wind than voice now, and it faded into the sound of an autumn wind in the trees as the black rock slowly turned shut again.

  Tsuga returned to his home place, a journey of many days. He read the sun for direction by day and the stars by night, not stopping except to eat cold jerky and bannock when he grew weak from hunger. Bear, deer, wolves and all the animals of the wilderness showed themselves to him without fear, as if they knew that he would not stop to hunt them. He neither strung his bow nor unsheathed his knife on the long journey, and when he reached his home he found that all his foodstores had burned and his family was near death from hunger. Although he was so weak himself he could hardly string his bow, he knew that he must find food for them. Just as he turned from the entrance to his hut a dry wind came through the trees with a long sigh, and a graceful white-tailed deer, a doe, stepped from the forest, its eyes sadly upon him, to wait for his arrow.

  “All the rest of his life,” Tim Hemlock said, “Tsuga sought to find the Black Gate again, for it was the one passage he hadn’t traveled through, but he could never find it. When his children’s children were grown and he was an old man with white hair and wrinkled skin, he went alone on a long hunt from which he never returned. The people said he must have found the Black Gate at last.”

  Wind cried at the cabin’s small windows, and a puff came down the chimney so that the fire hesitated for a moment in its climbing. Tim Hemlock was silent, his eyes staring thoughtfully beyond the warm room. Arn wondered where his father’s thoughts had gone, and just for that moment felt lonely.

  After they were in bed, where all of them except the old lady went early in order to save firewood and keep warm, Eugenia said to Tim Hemlock, “But why is that old woman here? She just sits there and never says a word and eats what little food we’ve got. Why did she have to come this winter?”

  “She eats very little,” Tim Hemlock said. “And we couldn’t turn her out into the cold to die.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t mean that! But if she’d only gone away in the fall! Why did it have to be this terrible winter she came here?”

  “I don’t know. When I try to ask her who she is and where she came from, she won’t answer. She doesn’t seem to understand the questions. But they’re simple questions in that language. Maybe she’s just an old wanderer who’s survived all the rest of her family. If she lives through the winter, she’ll go on to somewhere else. She believes that she’s paid for her keep with those boxes and mushrooms, you know.”

  Eugenia sighed. “Yes, I know,
but what good are all those powders?”

  “Found things,” Tim Hemlock said. “Wild greens, mushrooms, tubers and herbs. There’s so much we don’t know.”

  “But what do you talk about with your hands? Couldn’t you ask her?”

  “She tells me riddles. She won’t answer my questions.

  I’ll have to find them out some other way.”

  “What questions?”

  “I hardly know the questions, and you wouldn’t know the answers,” Tim Hemlock said. He seemed so weary and sad, Eugenia tried not to show how his answer had hurt her.

  But the children, on the loft, heard their mother and father talking, not the words but the unhappiness and danger in their voices. Their mother and father were unhappy and it was not just because the Traveler hadn’t come and the winter would be long and hard. They had both wondered why they hadn’t told about what they’d seen in the old lady’s eye. The reason, they both knew, was that they didn’t want to upset their mother and father in any way.

  “Arn,” Jen whispered, “are you awake?”

  “Yes,” Arn whispered back.

  “It wasn’t a very happy Christmas, was it?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder what Tsuga’s children were like,” Jen said.

  Arn thought awhile. “Maybe they were like us. But I guess not. They were Old People. And maybe the story’s just made up anyway.”

  “Maybe the old lady is one of the Old People,” Jen said.

  “Did you ever see her tracks in the snow?” Arn said. “They’re funny-looking. They’re moccasin tracks, but they point in, sort of, and don’t look right.”

  Jen said nothing for a while, and then she said, “We’re the only children we’ve ever known. Maybe other children aren’t like us.”

  “When you were just a baby a stranger came by here. I was five and I can remember. He said he had a little boy just like me.”