Thieving Forest (24 page)

Susanna doesn’t move.

“No thicker than your thumb,” Meera says.

“I know how to find kindling,” Susanna tells her. She rises reluctantly. As she brushes off her skirt a movement flashes to her right. “What was that?” She peers at the dense thicket of ash trees, squinting her eyes.

“What?”

“I thought I saw someone. A child.”

“A child?” Meera stands up quickly to look. “What did the child look like?”

“I don’t know. I only saw a movement. Thought I saw,” Susanna corrects herself.

Meera frowns. “Maybe the Little Warrior.”

“Who is that?”

A spirit, Meera explains, who appears in the form of a child dressed in war gear—eagle feathers and paint. “He comes to those alone in the forest to warn them of danger.”

Susanna’s heart begins to beat faster. “But we’re not in the forest,” she says. “And there are two of us.”

They are both staring at the trees. At last Meera says, “Could be bear here.”

Susanna swallows. “I’m not fetching any kindling,” she tells her.

They eat a cold supper of cheese and day-old biscuits. A long pink streak forms in the sky where the sun has been, and as if on a signal insects rise out of the grass and seem to multiply. Meera pounds damp sticks into the ground and lights them with the tinder and flint that she carries in one of her pouches. They both peel dry bark from nearby trees to sleep on, and drag them into the middle of the smudge fires.

Susanna sits down on the piece of bark and puts her arms around her legs. She rests her cheek on her kneecap. Will they sleep like this, then, surrounded by smoke and fire? Is this safe? The smoke makes her eyes tear and she closes them. She wonders if Seth is still looking for her. Probably by now he has turned back. She wishes they found the river already. Off in the distance she can hear a lone wolf calling out and she thinks of her mother: “Tonight the sprites and fairies will keep us company,” she used to say when they slept in their wagon on their way to Ohio.

The sound of braying comes closer. Now Susanna is no longer sure that it is a wolf. She opens her eyes. Meera is standing with her hands on her hips looking at the trees again.

“What is it?” Susanna asks.

The cicadas, which were loud a moment before, suddenly stop altogether. The sound grows nearer. It sounds like bells. Susanna stands and tries to see what she can through the trees.

“
Kshikan nati
,” Meera says in Delaware. Get your knife.

But before Susanna can take a step, a large group of men come out from the trees. No, not all men, Susanna realizes. Some are women with children on their backs. A tribe of natives, maybe twenty of them. Meera holds out her hand to keep her still but Susanna couldn’t move if she wanted to. Her legs suddenly feel like two heavy stones. She has never seen anyone from this tribe before, of that she is certain. They are small and very ill clad, all them hunched with the kind of stoop that a poor diet creates. Their faces are wide with dark round eyes and the men wear small shell decorations woven into their matted hair.

Two of the men are carrying sticks tied with small silver bells. Between them stands a man with warrior paint on his face. He is carrying an older man on his back. The bell ringers give a final shake of their bells and the older man slides down from the warrior’s back. He raises his hand in greeting.

“
Gloucheecheechee
,” he says, or at least that’s how it sounds to Susanna. The smudge fires flicker between them. Susanna looks at Meera, who is standing as still as a cat.

“I do not speak this language,” Meera tells him in Delaware.

The chief shakes his head at her.

She says the same thing in Iroquois, and then in English, and then in another language Susanna doesn’t recognize, but each time the chief shakes his head. He wears a small smile on his face but to her mind that does not mean he is friendly. The fact that there are babies and women, though, that is a good sign. It’s not a war party at least. Although the chief is not the tallest he stands the straightest. Pockets of skin under his eyes sag toward his cheeks, which give him the look of a schoolteacher wearing round glasses.

He makes a gesture, spreading his fingers, and begins to speak for a long time in his incomprehensible language, nodding all the while. When he finishes he looks at the woman to his left, who then begins to walk toward them. Meera and Susanna press closer together and Susanna takes Meera’s arm as if to tether herself, but the woman only wants to give them a gift: two green feathers. Surprised, Susanna looks down at hers. She knows of no bird that carries such colors. She tries and fails to breathe in deeply.

“Thank you,” she says, almost without enough breath for the words. She starts to lift her dress to curtsy when she remembers she is wearing a split skirt.

The woman copies Susanna, touching her own skirt, a sheath of untanned elk hide. Meera is watching the chief. Susanna sees that he is pointing to his mouth.

“They want food,” Meera says.

“We can’t give them food. We need it for ourselves.”

“We have enough for twelve days. The journey will take only two.”

“But we are already delayed! Who knows how many more times we will be delayed!”

“We are delayed because of you. Because of the man who loves you.”

“He doesn’t love me. They came for the boat.”

Susanna is aware that the chief is watching them. He begins pacing back and forth moving a small object—a pipe?—end over top between his fingers. Consolation’s shawl is behind them with all their dried venison, their biscuits, their crackers, their cheese, their dried fruit. Susanna is carrying dried bear meat in her grain sack. Meera says, “We should give them the bear meat.”

The chief stops pacing when he sees Meera opening the sack. The meat is wrapped in a linen napkin, and at first he seems to be more interested in the cloth than in the meat. When Susanna sees how many people he has to feed and how little they gave him, she feels ashamed. By this time the children have all slid off their mothers’ backs and are staring at Susanna and Meera, but without fear. Nor is it confidence, exactly. She isn’t sure what it is.

One child comes toward her, a girl. She stares at Susanna intently. Maybe she has never seen a white woman before? There are stories back home about Swamp People, but they are giants who travel from tree to tree like squirrels. Nothing like this small girl. Her thin arms and distended belly upset Susanna, and she bends down to give the child the green pawpaw that she has in her pocket. The child has beautiful dark eyes with an adult’s expression. Her heart-shaped face reminds Susanna a little of Aurelia. After a moment the girl reaches out curiously to touch Susanna’s collar.

It is the collar with the deer tail that Old Adam gave her. Susanna has forgotten she was wearing it. Without thinking, she unties it and hands it to the child. The child looks down at it seriously, stroking the tail with two fingers. When she starts to hand it back, Susanna shakes her head and the child smiles broadly.

Meera says, “That is good, a gesture of peace, they will like that.”

The wind shifts, blowing the torch smoke away. The chief calls to the girl and she brings the collar over to him. Is he going to keep it for himself, Susanna wonders? But he just examines it and then hands it back. He says something to Meera and Susanna and points to the sky, and then to the east. The night is clear and warm. They shake their heads, not understanding. He motions for them to come with him, and they shake their heads again. Finally he spreads his arms as if finishing their conversation. With a gesture Susanna cannot interpret, the chief says something to the warrior, who leans over and hoists him up on his back. The bell ringers begin ringing their bells, and the people return to the ash thicket and are gone.

Or most of them are gone. One woman remains: the one who gave them the feathers. She makes no attempt to conceal herself, but sits down facing them just beyond the torches. Her expression is unreadable in the deepening twilight. She keeps very still. Only her loose hair lifts now and then in the wind.

“Why does she stay?” Susanna asks.

Meera says, “I don’t know.”

On the one hand it seems clear that the woman—Susanna calls her Green Feather, since she must call her something—does not mean them any harm. On the other hand, maybe she does.

“Maybe she wants to steal our food while we sleep,” Susanna says.

“They could easily have taken it already by force.”

By this time night has set in fully although the moon is not yet up. They can no longer see Green Feather but Susanna feels certain she is still there.

“You see it is a good thing I hid the boat,” Meera says.

When the moon rises they see her figure again with her back toward the trees. She sits cross-legged, her hands in her lap. Will she stay the whole night this way? Why does she stay? Susanna cannot make out her face, whether her eyes are open or closed.

They decide they must keep watch. Meera takes the first one. Susanna stretches out on her narrow piece of bark convinced she will never fall asleep, but in no time it seems Meera is pulling on her arm.

“Susanna, Susanna look.”

She doesn’t mean look at Green Feather, which is what Susanna first thinks. She is pointing to the sky. A flash of light illuminates the tops of trees to the east. After it dies it appears again a moment later like someone is throwing a lantern’s light to and fro. There’s no sound except the mild wind. Green Feather is still there, still sitting. She too is looking at the sky.

“Lightning,” Meera says. They cannot see the line of it, only the brightening treetops where it throws its light, and then for only a few seconds. But why is there no sound of thunder? For a while Susanna and Meera watch the lightning silently flare over and over again behind the trees. In its light they can see branches waving in the wind.

“Somewhere the
pate-hock-hoo-ies
are hard at work,” Meera says. “The rain spirits.” She guesses that the storm must be miles and miles away since they can’t hear it. Susanna feels a hair near her mouth and she pulls it off and then gathers her blanket more securely around her. She feels no urgency to leave. Anyway, where would they go? Not in the trees in a lightning storm. But the wind is rising. After a while Meera says, “I think that it’s moving this way.”

Susanna holds her breath. Finally, the faint sound of a thunderclap. The wind picks up significantly and one of their torches blows out. The next time Susanna looks over at Green Feather, she is standing.

“Look, she is beckoning to us,” she says to Meera.

Green Feather shouts and beckons again. Half a second later a thunderclap sounds loudly overhead. Susanna, startled by how fast the storm has suddenly traveled, says, “We have to go.”

The wind begins pulling wildly on their hair and skirts. Susanna grabs the blankets while Meera snatches up their bundles of food and supplies. At the last moment Meera remembers her iron kettle.

They follow Green Feather into the ash thicket, Susanna for her part not caring now that a tree might be struck by lightning, so eager is she to get out of the wind. But what Green Feather wants, it turns out, is to show them a cave. It’s down a little ravine, more of a stone outcropping really, but a shelter nonetheless formed by a huge piece of rock jutting out like a rooftop over a sunken piece of land. Standing at its entrance Meera peers inside. Green Feather says—shouts, really, because of the wind—a few words that Susanna takes to mean, It’s all right. It’s safe. The rain starts coming down in small hard drops.

Inside, the cave is dank and smells like limestone and animal dung. It doesn’t extend very far back, but it is high enough for them both to stand up. The bones of a small animal lay scattered in the dirt. When Susanna turns back around, Green Feather is gone.

“Where did she go?”

Meera looks out. The rain is falling hard and fast now, and with almost no pause the lightning strikes again and again. Susanna can see debris flying in the wind and thinks that she has never seen a storm to match this one. The air is loud with the cracking sound of tree branches splintering and falling. Suddenly they both gasp and draw back at the same time as lightning strikes a tree not twenty paces away. The tree lights up like a lantern and then throws out sparks. Afterward, a strong burnt smell wafts into the cave.

Now hailstones begin to shower down. The noise, if possible, becomes even more terrific. However, the lightning is moving away, and the hail soon follows. The storm is passing as suddenly as it came. Susanna can see little piles of ice on the ground—the hailstones. The rain has nearly stopped entirely when she sees Green Feather walking among the dripping trees with two or three other women. They pick up the hailstones and put them into sacks of some kind. Where did they shelter? Is there another cave? Susanna asks Meera what they’re doing.

“Collecting water,” Meera tells her.

“But they live in a swamp!”

Meera casts her a look of disbelief or disdain. “Clean water,” she says.

All at once Susanna is deeply exhausted. She moves away from the entrance to stretch out on the floor of the cave, wrapping her blanket around her. Has it really been less than a day since they left Gemeinschaft? She can feel the gravelly dirt of the cave floor against her head but she is too tired to look for dry leaves to use as a pillow. At least, she thinks, I have a good story to tell Penelope when I see her tomorrow, or the day after that.