Thieving Forest (25 page)

Fifteen

In the morning they remember the boat.

They rush back to where they hid it. Fortunately Meera covered it with heavy branches, so the wind managed to drag it only a little ways off. But it is overturned and the oars, stashed underneath it, are missing. After a long search they find only one, and it is split at the top. Although at first it doesn’t seem as if the boat itself suffered much damage, when they heave it over they see a dent on the bottom of one side that could easily develop into a rupture.

Susanna moves her hand over it. “If we pound the dent, the surface might break,” she says. “And we have no means to fix it.”

“Holes can always be mended. It is the oar that worries me. We must fashion a new one. Did you bring a whittling knife?”

“A
whittling
knife? No, I didn’t have a
whittling
knife with me at the mission.”

“Do not make fun. You are very ill prepared. Luckily I thought.” Meera takes a small knife from her bundle.

“Why did you ask me for one if you have one yourself?” Susanna asks peevishly. Traveling with Meera, she can see now, will be like living with her sisters: the constant disappointment in her and subsequent little lessons. She is so tired of people telling her she is not good at this or that. But after a while, perhaps to make up for her irritation, Meera says, “It is good you gave the girl that collar. That is why they showed us the cave.”

Susanna doesn’t see how Meera could possibly know that, but she decides not to contradict her. Credit of any kind is good.

The morning sky holds a strange greenish light—an after-effect of the storm—and the ground is as wet as it can be outside the boundaries of a stream. When they hoist the boat up onto their shoulders it feels heavier to Susanna, and her moccasins sink with each step. There is no sign of the Stooping Indians, as she now thinks of them. As they walk she tries to catch any sound of a rushing river and silently curses the birds that chatter endlessly, drowning out other noises.

After a while they come to a shallow pond filled with straight, yellow trees that branch only at their tops. They wade through the water carefully with the boat floating between them. If the pond were a little deeper they might get into the boat, but it never gets deep enough. On the other side is a stand of swamp oak entwined with vines so dark they look black. To Susanna the trees seem like a positive boundary, one she does not want to cross.

For a while they put off the moment and sit on a rock to rest. They eat the last of the cheese.

“When do you think will we find the river?” Susanna asks.

“Soon we will hear it.”

She wonders if she should just turn around here and go back. A failed bet. She can always try to enlist the aid of the brethren to get to the Wyandot village. Only Meera would be out of luck, forced to stay with her foster mother in a place that she hates. Still, Susanna cannot make up her mind definitely, so when the cheese is all eaten she once again hoists the boat up onto her shoulder. They enter the woods by way of a little deer path that looks surprisingly used—do the Stooping Indians come this way? Soon the tree canopy closes above them and her eyes adjust to the change in light. But they have not gone more than a dozen steps when Meera, who is in front, stops abruptly.

“What is it?” Susanna asks.

“Carefully. Put down the boat.”

The undergrowth on either side is so thick that they have to lay the boat straight down on the path. Susanna looks around, trying to see what Meera has seen—ripe berries perhaps?

Then she sees. Leaning up against three young trees are three long wooden boxes. Inside the boxes are three dead bodies.

Susanna draws in her breath and crosses her arms quickly in front of her. Three bodies of three white men, each wearing a muddy blue uniform. Scouts? Certainly it is not unusual to see soldiers traveling in threes. They often came through Severne on their way to scope out new territory. Although the bodies have been disfigured, Susanna cannot bring herself to look away. Each of them has paint on their faces, one side red and one side black. Their ears and noses are pierced with bits of thick reed. One wears a shift of painted deerskin that is tied like an apron to his uniform.

Something else catches Susanna’s eye. She takes off her bonnet and covers her mouth and nose, and then bends over one of the bodies. Someone has stuck a feather into the pocket of the uniform. A green feather, exactly like the ones the Stooping Indians gave to them.

She pulls the feather out. As she turns it over her vision seems to narrow.

“They did this,” she says. “They killed these men.”

Meera takes the feather and examines it.

“This is a warning,” Susanna tells her. She is scared now, truly scared.

Meera says, “To us they were kind.”

“I think we should go back to Gemeinschaft.”

“To Gemeinschaft! No, I will not go back.”

“Listen, Meera. I can ask the brethren to come with us. I can plead for your case. You can still go to your people up north, only you’ll be protected. Think on it! The brethren do carry guns for hunting, you know. They believe in self protection.”

“Sometimes it is safer for women to travel alone.”

“That is certainly not true!”

“It is true,” Meera insists. “We are not warriors, not soldiers. Not a threat. Listen to me. I know these kinds of people. They live their way as they have for hundreds of years going from one food to another depending on the season. They know the passing of time only by what grows and what swims. But make no mistake, they will protect their land and themselves. A uniform is enough to tell them this person is a danger. As women we are not a danger. But what do you think would happen if we came back with soldiers?”

“Not soldiers. Missionaries.”

Meera shrugs her shoulders as if to say: they are the same. “They showed us the cave,” she reminds Susanna. “They did not have to do that. To us they are friends.”

“You cannot be sure how long friendliness will last.”

“We gave gifts to one another. That is a promise of goodwill.”

But no matter how much they argue, neither one can convince the other that the Stooping Indians will or will not hurt them. It has to be the Stooping Indians who did this. It is too much to believe that more than one starving tribe could live in this mossy wasteland. And yet Susanna does not even know that for certain. How can she determine the right course of action? In any case, Meera refuses to return.

“I would be a prisoner,” she says. “Nushemakw will not give me another opportunity to run away. She will see to that. Anyway, I feel sure that the river is just on the other side of these trees.”

Susanna looks at the bodies. What a desolate place to die. And after death, to be mocked with paint and piercings. She hates this wet, spongy land. Every tree seems to be watching them. The truth is, she doesn’t want to go back to Gemeinschaft either, but neither does she want to go on.

“If they wanted us dead, we would be dead,” Meera tells her.

Not a comforting thought.

The woods lead to a small dry clearing scattered with mounds that look almost like sand. After they set down the boat, Susanna bends down to touch one. It
is
sand.

How is this possible? She lets it run through her fingers.

Back before the mastodon left, Meera tells her, the Black Swamp was made up of six ancient lakes. So Nushemakw’s people say. They claim that one lake is still here, hidden and full of magic. “The person finding it will become great with power but also bewitched, unable to leave.”

The clearing, surrounded on all sides by woods, is bowl-shaped and smells like the wet trees. But there is no sign of a river. Susanna’s initial stab of disappointment turns to worry. Are they lost? Not yet but soon, if they keep going, they might be. She should turn back but she doesn’t want to go alone. She never wants to go alone, that is her problem.

“We’ve been going northwest, but now we must turn fully west,” Meera says firmly.

A blue haze seems to float in the air. Meera decides to climb a tree, hoping to catch a glimpse of Fish River. Meanwhile Susanna takes off her moccasins and scrunches her toes. They are still wet from wading through the shallow pond. She hears the faint trickle of water nearby and pulls her tin cup from her grain sack. She follows the sound to a stream almost hidden by a thick line of plants with brown fanning leaves. On the largest leaf a small frog hides quietly. Looking closer, she sees it is dead.

Meera comes up beside her. With one hand Susanna shades her eyes. “Did you see Fish River?”

“I saw to the west the red maple that grows along its banks. We are close.”

Susanna looks down at the dead frog. Nothing has changed. From here she can probably find her way back to Injured River. But when she takes a step she feels a sudden sharp pain on her ankle.

“Oh!” she cries out. Something golden rustles away in the grass.

“A snake,” she says. “It...I think it bit me!” She drops to the ground.

Meera turns quickly. “Where did it go?”

“I don’t know. Oh!” She can see fang marks above her anklebone and the skin around it is turning red. All in a moment every limb of her body seems to stiffen. “Oh! It hurts.” But Meera has run after the snake. A few moments later she returns, her face ashen. “A yellow
shixikwe
. It makes its way to water after attacking, else it dies.”

Susanna is still on the ground, cupping her ankle with both hands. “Is it bad?” she asks, rocking backward. It feels very bad.

Meera crouches down and gently takes Susanna’s hands away from her foot. She looks at the bite without touching the skin. “The poison is inside you,” she says. “Try not to move.”

She makes a travois with her blanket, maneuvers Susanna onto it, and pulls her toward a nearby stand of sycamores. The sky has become a curious shade of yellow-green, and a hazy rain begins, as soft as fog. Susanna lifts her face to it, hoping for some relief. Her ankle throbs.

“My nose feels strange,” she says. She looks up at Meera’s face, which is pinched with worry. Meera says there is a plant she’s seen used, she doesn’t know the English name, but she will look for it. Susanna watches her disappear into the trees. Her tongue begins to quiver and she touches her lips gingerly. She doesn’t want to be alone but at the same time she is aware of some new barrier rising up between herself and the rest of the world, as though some important change is happening but only to her. Her nose feels like little bubbles are popping inside.

She realizes she’s going to be sick. Leaning out as far as she can away from the blanket, she empties her stomach. Meera returns as she finishes, and wipes Susanna’s mouth with a cloth.

“I’m sorry,” Susanna says. “I was afraid to move.” Is she slurring her words? Her tongue feels very thick in her mouth.

Meera says she will dig a hole for her to be sick in, but first she must drink. She puts a cup of water to Susanna’s lips.

“
Wanishi
,” Susanna says in Delaware. Thank you. Then she leans over and is sick again.

The afternoon turns into bouts of vomiting followed by rest followed by yet another bout. Her thirst is unquenchable. Meera makes a poultice from a long smelly shaft of bugwort she found, pulverizing its knotty roots with a rock. She mixes the powder with water and crushed leaves from another plant, making a kind of wet cake. When she lays it over Susanna’s foot her ankle feels better, but soon afterward a sharp pain punches her in her middle. She crawls off the blanket and pulls off her skirt to relieve herself. Looking down, she sees with horror that her urine is filled with blood.

“Everything is coming out of me,” she wails.

Meera gives her something sour to drink. After she finishes it Susanna falls into a heavy sleep.

When she wakes it is dark. Meera is shaking her arm. “I built a shelter,” she is saying. “Can you walk?”

A low, bright moon casts a sharp shadow behind her.

“I thought I should try not to move?”

“By now the poison has run where it will.”

Susanna puts her two hands to the ground. She says, “But I can’t feel my legs.”

Meera drags her again by the blanket. Fortunately the shelter is not far off—a little structure made out of thin sticks woven over a framework of thicker branches. It is the length of Susanna’s body, wide enough for them both to sleep in, and open at either end. But when Susanna lies down her nose begins to bleed and doesn’t stop for some time. Her bowels still ache but the pain in her ankle is gone. She has no feeling there at all. Through the branch latticework of the shelter she can see broken fragments of the night sky. Clouds come and go and the moon grows smaller and smaller. The morning takes a long time coming. The air keeps getting colder.

Sixteen

When there is no sign of Susanna on Injured River, Seth leaves Gemeinschaft and returns to Severne. There he learns that Cade has left for Kentucky almost two weeks ago, and that Amos is dead. And not just dead, but brutally killed. One of the farmers, needing help with a wagon wheel, found Amos’s body three days ago propped up against the cabin door.

One of his ears was missing and his face was painted black. He was naked and all of his weapons were gone. Some Indian did it, but why? A couple of farmers took it upon themselves to bury him, not knowing if Seth was coming back or not. That was yesterday. Seth missed the funeral by a day. But he does not go over to the small walled plot where the settlers have chosen to bury their dead. He does not want to see Amos’s grave.