The Orenda Joseph Boyden (59 page)

Once they sleep wrapped tight in their bundles, she points out the star that always leads her people north to their home. I show her where Aataentsic slipped through a hole and fell to earth so long ago.

“I can see how our world will go,” Gosling says.

I wait for her to tell me. I’ve been waiting for this all my life.

“The Wendat have suffered enough these last years,” she says, “but still it will be a difficult winter. The Haudenosaunee, though, will refuse to come onto this haunted ground.”

“Will we live?” I ask. “Will you and I and our children live till next spring?”

She nods. “We were destined to,” she says. Gosling tells me how the others who make it through winter will scatter to the winds. Some will go back with the crow Gabriel to the place he calls Kebec. Others will be adopted into the Anishnaabe of the Nipissing, and the Algonquin, and yes, the Haudenosaunee, too.

“You and me,” she says, “our family.” She touches our children’s heads. I smile. “We will know by next summer that it’s most sensible to head north and be taken in by my people on their side of the Sweet Water Sea.” She tells me I’ll never farm again and neither will my offspring or their offspring. Never again will we eke a living from the earth but instead do what her people, the Anishnaabe, have always done. We’ll go back to the forest, and we’ll live by what it gives us. She laughs when she tells me the nearest I’ll ever come again to farming is teaching my son and daughter to collect wild rice into our canoe. Gosling tells me all this as we lie back beside this lake on an island on a greater lake that itself rests upon Turtle Island. She tells me all this as she traces the patterns of stars with her finger so that in front of my very eyes warriors and deer and mythic beasts come to life and then dissipate again into the black sky.

“I’ll tell you one more thing,” Gosling says, “and that will be all for tonight.”

I nod like a little boy.

“Your family, my family, the family of Bird, we will keep wandering north in pursuit of the animals and to avoid the crows and their followers who’ll continue coming to this land. Eventually we’ll stop near a frozen salt sea because we can’t go any farther.”

I listen as she tells me the story of the Birds who will come after I am gone, how they’ll be great warriors and great hunters and great seers. On this night she makes me see that life goes on despite so much of it around us having so brutally expired. We hold each other beside this lake, the frogs’ singing gone quiet now, the fire warm, the stars turning above us in their slow and dizzying walk.

Just as I begin to drift off, I tell Gosling I’ve been dreaming about Snow Falls and I fear my quick burial of her was not to her satisfaction.

“Is anyone ever truly satisfied on the day they’re buried?” she asks.

“It’s just that I interred her so quickly,” I say, “and without what she might need.”

“Then you should do it again,” Gosling tells me. With those words, and for the first time since the troubles began, I fall into a dreamless sleep.

—

IN THE MORNING
, I head to a copse of maple whose leaves make the trees seem to shimmer in fire, and I bend to the work of taking my girl back out of the earth.

When it’s time to unwrap her from her mat and thin beaver blanket, the only one I owned, the sun breaks through the trees to shine on Snow Falls’ face. I’m stunned. She’s as perfect as she was on the day she left us. I touch her face glowing in the sunlight and see that it’s hardened to a shell. My daughter, I took you from your people when you were still just a child, and you really were a special one. I never doubted it, even on those days when you tested my patience beyond
the boundaries anyone should be tested. I touch your face once more with my hand that misses a finger.

I dig your grave deeper and line it with the robe Gosling sewed together from all the scraps of fur I’ve collected these last days, then bundle you up like you’re a child ready for sleep before putting you back in your resting place. Around you I arrange the things you might need, birch baskets and a pair of pretty moccasins, quill barrettes for your hair, sewing needles, a bow for hunting small game, and best of all, the great raven that Carries an Axe once gave you so long ago and Sleeps Long helped you stuff, its one eye sparkling in the autumn sun. I lay this across you, and it’s nearly your length, this strange object Gosling made sure to spirit away with her from that crow village. Finally, I take the small quill box holding the raven’s missing eye and tuck it between you and the animal’s wing. This eye, it’ll allow you to see in the other world, my girl. And this raven, my daughter, it’ll protect you. It will allow you to soar.

WE HAD THE MAGIC
, the orenda, before the crows came. We’d never questioned this before their claws first grasped our branches and their beaks first pecked our earth.

Most of us will admit we were taken aback by how quickly the crows adapted. When you fall asleep laughing in the evening, it’s difficult to awake crying in the sun. But this isn’t just about sadness, or pity, or blame. We’re all party to our own wants as well as to our own shortcomings.

Aataentsic, the Sky Woman and mother of the Wendat, she still sits by the fire watching with her eyes of polished shells. Aataentsic doesn’t like to give much away, but if you watch her expression close enough, sometimes she does.

And so when the crows arrived to caw that our orenda was unclean, at first we laughed. Aataentsic did, too. But she didn’t laugh for the same reasons. She’d already foreseen the nests the crows had begun to build as they plucked the odd feather from our hair or begged a strip of hide from our bundle even as we looked into their eyes. Aataentsic laughed because she is just as imperfect as we are. She laughed because we couldn’t see our own demise coming.

But hindsight is sometimes too easy, isn’t it? And so maybe this is what Aataentsic wants to tell. What’s happened in the past can’t stay in the past for the same reason the future is always just a breath away. Now is what’s most important, Aataentsic says. Orenda can’t be lost, just misplaced. The past and the future are present.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This novel has been deeply enriched by the work of many scholars, historians, and elders. The list of books I’ve consulted over the years is too long to share here but I do need to name some: John Steckley’s incredible
Words of the Huron,
and Allan Greer’s concise edition of
The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America,
specifically his chapter dealing with Jean de Brébeuf’s description of the Feast of the Dead offered me insight and sometimes the words I needed. Bruce Trigger’s masterpiece,
The Children of Aataentsic
and Elisabeth Tooker’s
An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615–1649
were very helpful to my early research. In addition to this, Emma Anderson’s
The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs,
Conrad Heidenreich’s
Huronia,
and Georges Sioui’s
Huron Wendat: The Heritage of the Circle
are must-reads for anyone wishing to fully understand the era and the people.

On a personal note, I wish to deeply thank John Steckley, Allan Greer, Emma Anderson, Conrad Heidenreich, and Georges Sioui for reading different drafts of this novel and so generously offering their insight.
Chi miigwetch
.

Writing can be pretty lonely most of the time, but I feel very fortunate to have had the company, support, and kindness of David Gifford, Gord Downie, Jim Balsillie, Mark Mattson, Jim Steel, John Wadland, Chrys Darkwater, Nick Mainieri, Julian Zabalbeascoa, David Parker, Mike Pitre, Buddha Blaze and A Tribe Called Red, Robbie and Leslie
Baker, Brian Charles, Gerald Kennedy, Kim Samuel Johnson, and William and Pamela Tozer. Also, many thanks to the Banff Centre and its Indigenous Arts program. I will thank you all personally by showering you with exotic gifts. And to those I’ve undoubtedly forgotten to mention, thank you, too.

I continue to be blessed by working with the most passionate and astute people in the publishing industry today. For all of you at Penguin, especially Stephen Myers, David Ross, and Lisa Jager, I love working with you.

Nicole Winstanley, thank you for recognizing something in me a long, long time ago. We’ve worked together from the beginning, and there’s still so much more to come.

Gary Fisketjon and Sonny Mehta at Knopf, thanks for believing in me. Gary, I had more than a few nightmares where green ink played a central role, but this novel is so much stronger because of your insanely keen eye.

Francis Geffard at Albin Michel, you’ve also believed in me from the very beginning.
Merci beaucoup, mon ami.

Eric Simonoff, wonder agent and agent provocateur, I’m thrilled to be working with a man who loves the written word so much.

And always, to my great big loud and beautiful family: without you, I’m not much.

Mom, you never cease to amaze all of us.

My son, Jacob, as well as all of my nieces and nephews, you keep me relatively young.

Amanda, you’ve always brought out the best in me. This is a splendid journey we’ve chosen together, yes?

HAMISH HAMILTON

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First published 2013

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

Copyright © Joseph Boyden, 2013

Endpapers map: “Champlain (Samuel): Le Canada,” 14 × 21 inches, published in Paris, 1664,

by Pierre Duval, courtesy of Kim Samuel.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Boyden, Joseph, 1966-, author

The orenda / Joseph Boyden.

ISBN 978-0-670-06418-2 (bound)

I. Title.

PS8553.O9358O74 2013
C813’.6
C2013-904054-4

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