Thieving Forest (22 page)

Naomi says, “They are calling them The Rich Ones.”

“The new group?”

“Apparently they are going back to the same village. But people are wondering where their canoes are. They don’t like them exactly I don’t think, but they envy them. They like their clothes. The tall man is called Hatoharomas. That means something like, He Draws Wood from the Fire.”

“Naomi, I had no idea you were so good with languages. When we get back you must start French or German.” She wants Naomi to think about the future. Naomi is someone who needs a dream.

“It’s easier to understand than to speak. And I’m not getting much practice speaking.” She says this with no bitterness. “I learned a new word this morning,
tsi-day-heska
. It means frog. At first I was confused because it’s the same word as stooping.”

Penelope takes her hand. She is rambling, but at least she is speaking.

“They scatter frog parts when I sleep,” Naomi tells her.

“What?”

“To keep the witch-wolf away.”

Penelope is shocked. But sure enough when their mistress calls them to retire she looks carefully on the ground until she finds, half buried, the leg of a frog. She puts it in her knitting bag. Tomorrow she will roast it for breakfast.

“Maybe I can untie you for a while when everyone is asleep,” Penelope says.

“I don’t mind anymore. I’ve learned to sleep without moving.”

“Don’t you feel cramped in the morning?”

“I don’t feel anything,” Naomi says.

That night Penelope can’t sleep. When will Tawakota decide his people are right, that Naomi is a witch who should be burned or drowned, she wonders? Whenever the next bit of misfortune occurs, she guesses, and that might be anytime. This is a hard life, a life full of misfortune. People leave Philadelphia to escape yellow fever only to die, like Sirus and Ellen, of swamp fever in Ohio. Farmers are kicked in the head by their horses or felled by trees in a storm. Whole tribes are brought down by smallpox or chickenpox or the blue cough. Women die in childbirth no matter where they live. She thinks of Aurelia somewhere in Thieving Forest with a tree stump as a headstone. Did anyone find her body? Would they bring her back to Susanna? Where is Susanna now?

Penelope hopes she’s found her way back to Philadelphia, where she has always wanted to be. Susanna never liked Ohio. But no place is safe. You make your choice and take on those risks, Sirus argued before they set out for Severne. That year the yellow fever had been particularly bad in their neighborhood. She herself, a child prone to sore throats, had nearly died from it. But after that she never had a sore throat again. Beatrice used to claim, half joking (but also half bitterly), that Penelope had passed her sore throats on to her.

The night air is warm and still and the frogs belt out their deep, plaintive cries like lost cows. Naomi is lying very still beside her. Not too long ago, Naomi’s calm acceptance would have irritated Penelope, but now it brings on a kind of frozen feeling in her chest. If she turns her head she can see sparks from a dozen small campfires flickering like so many fireflies, and although she wants to believe that she can steal out and soundlessly pull a canoe into the river and paddle it alone until she finds this fort, this company of white men, she knows that she will be detected before she even puts a paddle tip to the water. The boats are guarded like gold. There might be white men out there somewhere, Penelope thinks, but they cannot help me.

She checks again on Naomi, who at last has fallen asleep. She gets up carefully and stands for a moment looking around. Then she takes a few steps trying not to make noise. With her blanket over her head she might be any Wyandot woman, and she picks up her mistress’s kettle. If stopped, she will say she is fetching water. She does not know where Hatoharomas has set up his shelter. She passes a few shadows, men talking to each other in low voices, and smells their hemlock smoke. A fat yellow moon is rising.

As she makes her way through the encampment she sees a cluster of lilies growing near a wet hollow. It is the kind of lily her mother loved, a ditch lily. Perhaps it will bring her luck. She thinks of Susanna again. Sirus used to say that if there were any luck to be found then Susanna would find it. But to be lucky you must believe in luck. Penelope has never before had to rely on something so changeable. Her own abilities have always been more than sufficient.

When she straightens up she senses someone behind her, but before she can turn a warm hand comes up over her mouth and another around her throat. Her heart jumps.

“You are far from your mistress tonight,” a man’s voice says in English.

She moves instinctively but his grip tightens.

“Why do you lurk here?” he asks.

He is standing close behind her, his voice like breath in her hair. She can smell dirt and smoke on his fingers. His grasp is firm, but not violent. He lifts his hand away from her mouth so she can speak.

“I am looking for you.” Her voice comes out in a whisper.

“Who are you looking for?”

“The man they call Hatoharomas.”

“And how do you know that is me? Are you a witch like your sister with eyes behind?”

“No one has yet spoken to me in such good English. It stands to reason, you must be from the group who arrived today.”

He takes his hand from her and she turns around. He is still wearing an English shirt but has changed into hide leggings. A string of beads hangs from his neck. Now that she sees him, she feels less frightened. She doesn’t know why.

“Why do you look for me?” he asks.

“I come to beseech you. Please, buy my sister and myself. Take us to Sandusky where you can trade us for gunpowder. I know you will get a barrel at least.”

It is not the eloquent speech she planned but it is all she can manage at the moment. She tries to gauge his reaction but he looks at her with no expression. His white shirt shines in the moonlight. He is handsome, she notices, with his straight nose, his prominent cheekbones.

He is assessing her, too. Finally he says, “Come with me.”

He leads her to his bark shelter. She is confused by his good looks and gentle voice, at odds with his tight hold on her arm. A light seems to be rushing up her body. No, not a light, sharper than that. As they walk the smell of wet moss becomes stronger, and later whenever she smells moss she will think of him.

At his shelter a woman is sitting on a skin feeding sticks to an already healthy fire, and she moves to make room for them. It is the woman with the short fur cape that Penelope noticed earlier. Hatoharomas does not introduce her. His mother? Penelope wonders. On her arms she wears many copper bracelets, which jangle every time she adds another stick to the fire. After he settles himself on the blanket, the woman takes up a long clay pipe, lights it with a twig, and hands it to him.

Hatoharomas draws from the pipe and then passes it to Penelope, motioning for her to sit down beside him. She hasn’t smoked a pipe above twice in her life, although she likes the smell. Her husband Thomas Forbes smoked one. The great thing is that after she smokes for a while, passing the bowl back and forth with Hatoharomas, she does not feel so hungry.

For a while Hatoharomas just smokes, says nothing. A dog barks nearby and someone hushes it. At last, looking at the fire, he says, “I am told you traveled first with Potawatomi. I wonder, how did you come to be with them?”

It is possible, she thinks as she tells him the story, that Hatoharomas might have known Sirus. There are not many white trading posts in Ohio. And everyone liked Sirus. But Hatoharomas makes no acknowledgment when she says her father’s name.

“And so you and your sister the witch are the only family remaining,” he says when she finishes.

“She is not a witch!” Penelope says. “Naomi is very talented, very gifted, a musician. An artist. If you could hear her on her violin...”

“What is a vie-lin?”

“Like a fiddle. Sir, please. Naomi is delicate. She needs to live withindoors with her own people. We are not far from Sandusky. You could take us there and collect a reward.”

“You plead for your sister.”

“Yes.”

“But not for you.”

“I plead for both of us.”

Sparks from the fire fly up and dissipate in the night air. Hatoharomas puts his hands on his thighs, palms down. “Your sister’s mistress has offered to sell her to me this very day.”

The way he says this does not make it sound like a victory. Penelope waits. She feels her pulse throb in her neck.

“But with you, your mistress will not part.”

So. They want to get rid of the witch and keep the one who can knit tight stockings. Her insides turn over but she makes herself say, “We stay together. We’re sisters.”

“Would that I could always go with my brother! But this is not the world’s way.”

“I will pay you over their price when we get to Sandusky. And I can knit for you, sew. I will trade you something. I will trade you this kettle,” she says, lifting it up.

“Your sister for a stolen kettle?” he asks.

“I will be your servant, then. I am a hard worker.”

“And if I need no servants?”

She is bargaining with an empty hand, she knows this. She’s moving her pieces across the board one after the other even though she has no queen and no knight, nothing but pawns, and even the pawns are dredged up and created on the spot out of pure will.

“Then take me as your wife,” she says.

As soon as the words leave her mouth she is horrified, but she won’t let herself think about it. She is the oldest. She has to do what she can to save her sister.

“And if I have already a wife?” Hatoharomas asks.

She opens her hands. “I have heard Wyandots sometimes take more than one wife.”

At that, surprisingly, he laughs. Then for a long time he does not speak. He smokes his pipe and passes it to her but she waves it away. A sick feeling is rising from her stomach but her eyes feel wide open, held taut by small tight threads.

“This evening as I ate my meal I considered what to do and yet finished eating without deciding,” he says at last. “But now I have decided. I will buy your sister as you wish.”

“And me?”

“As I said, you were not offered, and I will not ask. This is as much as I can do.”

So they will be separated. But then how can she make sure that Naomi will be all right?

“Do
you
think my sister is a witch?” she asks.

Hatoharomas laughs again. “If I did, I would not buy her.”

He promises her that he and his mother will be good to Naomi. He says they will all meet up again at their village in a few weeks. “There I have more power.”

Penelope looks at her hands, thinking that if this man does not believe that Naomi is a witch, then it is better that she go with him rather than stay here. Safer. If that word can be applied to anything about their situation.

“You will not be unhappy with my sister. She is...” What can she say about Naomi? For some reason she does not want to lie to this man. “She was my father’s favorite.”

“Not for her knitting,” he says with a smile.

But she cannot match his gentle levity. “No. Not for her knitting,” she says seriously. “But Naomi is strong. And she understands...” What? She thinks of how Naomi looked for the scarred Potawatomi to make sure he was dead. She knew that it was important for them to see with their own eyes the end of his story. And she has an instinctive understanding of the Wyandots that Penelope lacks. The moon has moved behind the trees. Although Hatoharomas is facing her she cannot make out his expression. His eyes are dark hollows but she can tell he is listening.

“She understands something...something more than the rest of us.” She feels a lump rise in her throat. “She is a musician. An artist. It’s hard to explain.”

Hatoharomas says, “She sees more in the world than you or I.”

Penelope nods. That’s part of it.

Hatoharomas stands and gives her his hand. “I too once had a sister like this.”

Naomi is awake when Penelope returns. “Where did you go?” she asks her. “I was afraid for you!”

Penelope crouches down next to her. Naomi is holding the twig with yellow flowers that she keeps in her moccasin, the buds by this time as dry as pebbles. Mosquitoes hover above her other hand, the one tied to the tree. They bite, drawing blood. With some difficulty, Penelope unties the knot and throws the rope from Naomi’s arm.

“Look what I found.” She holds out a tuber that Hatoharomas gave her before they parted, to seal their agreement. It is a long, sweet edible that Sirus used to call a Jerusalem artichoke. A patch of them grew wild near their barn. “Eat it all. I have another one for the morning.”

“But where have you been?”

“I’ve been to see the man Hatoharomas.”

“What? Why?”

She tells her about their meeting. She tries to keep her voice even. “Hatoharomas doesn’t believe you’re a witch. It’s better that you go with him than stay here.”

Naomi is silent for a moment. Then she says, “This is the end.”

“It’s not the end! Don’t say that! Hatoharomas is better than these people here.”

“You believe him to be a good man?”