Chickadee (10 page)

Animikiins climbed to the top of the bank. His face was still. He scanned the horizon to all sides, then he reached into his pouch and put a pinch of tobacco on the ground. He prayed to the spirits, the aadizookaanag.

“Please help us find Chickadee.”

C
hickadee made his way along the tips of melting snowdrifts and the edges of mush sloughs. As he walked along, he argued with himself.

“Am I the servant of Babiche and Batiste, or am I their little friend? Babiche gave me the horses to bring safely back to their barn. However, I was stolen. I am lonesome. I want to go home.”

Chickadee turned around and asked Brownie and Brownie.

“Must I be loyal to the brothers who stole me?”

The horses pawed the ground and drooled. They gave Chickadee unfocused, dreamy stares, then bent their heads down and ate some winter grass sticking up out of the snow. Chickadee let them eat. The grass was probably good medicine for them.

“No,” decided Chickadee.

He tugged the horses along, and as he walked he spoke aloud.

“My mother cries for me, my brother is lonely for me, my sister Zozie sighs. My father holds my mother's hands in his and prays for my return. My Nokomis wipes her old eyes.”

Imagining all of the grief his family felt put him in a desperate mood, and tears of frustration filled his eyes. He stopped in the trackless, featureless, sky-filled, and windy world.

“I must go to them,” he said. “The only way I know to get to them is find the river, and then follow it north.”

Once he had made a decision, Chickadee felt better. He began to trudge along in the direction of the river. The horses, sensing that he had a destination in mind, seemed to regain their senses. They followed with an eager gait and stopped spitting foam. Chickadee didn't have to coax them along. They walked for several hours. Chickadee got hungry, then hungrier, and at last so hungry that he longed for the bottom of that pot of bouyah. He imagined the stick he'd used to scrape the crud on the bottom into his mouth.

“If only there were something to
eat
,” he said to the horses. But there wasn't anything to eat. Just streaks of old snow and winter grass sticking up in tufts or crushed down in soft packs. A rabbit might be good, but he had no jack-pine root or any sort of twine to snare one. When he got to the river, perhaps he could catch a fish—if he could make a fish trap. There was a small flint and striker in the pouch at his waist.

The river seemed his best bet. But would he ever reach it? Or would he starve first, he wondered.

Suddenly, there it was. But it wasn't the frozen bridge it had been when the brothers had crossed in the night. It was swollen, gray, swift, and lethally cold. The ice had gone out, shattering trees in its violent passage, and making the river impassable all along its route.

For a long time, Chickadee stood with the horses. He watched the roiling gray water as it churned frozen slabs of ice along in its rapid flow. They lowered their heads and munched grass. Chickadee put a few pieces of grass in his mouth, just for the taste.

Discouraged, Chickadee walked along the banks, then away from the river. It was rising so fast he was afraid that he and the Brownies could be swept in. As he walked, Chickadee moved slower and slower. He was weak and tired. He turned to Brownie and Brownie.

“You're going to have to give me a ride. First you, Brownie, then you, Brownie. One after the next. I am too weak to keep on walking.”

With his last bit of strength, Chickadee climbed on top of one of the Brownies. He tied the reins of the other Brownie to his saddle, then leaned forward, tangled his fists in the horse's mane, and lay his head down on its neck.

Chickadee didn't sleep, he was just very weak. He tried to steer Brownie toward the river, but of course when a horse is left to its own devices it will go back to the safety of its barn. So late that day, in spite of his decision to escape the brothers, Chickadee found himself back at their cabin.

“Oh, yai!”

He was disappointed, but he slipped off Brownie and took off both horses' saddles. The brothers had roughly fenced in an area beside the shanty of a barn. There was enough old grass in for the horses to browse. The horses nickered and snorted. They pawed up clumps of grass from the snow. They seemed happy enough.

“Now for me,” said Chickadee. “Let's see what the mice have left.”

He went into the stinking cabin and began to rummage around among the tins and sacks where the brothers kept their food. Everything was gone, it seemed, cleaned right out. There was only a bit of flour in the bottom of a sack. Even the mice were gone. They were finding more food outside of the cabin, now, than inside. Chickadee continued looking. Finally, at the bottom of a metal box, he found two things—a striker and fire-steel, which might come in handy so he put them in the pouch that hung from his belt. He found a ball of twine, handy also, and a tiny ball of pemmican—a mixture of pounded meat, berries, and fat. Food! He shouted with joy. It was surely old and slightly rancid, but he went outside and ate it, leaning against the pole walls in the fading sun. He listened to the wind boom around him, and drank from a bowl of melted snow.

He ate slowly, appreciating every stale nibble. It wasn't much. But his stomach stopped aching and his body grew warm in the sunshine, and comfortable. To the north, a small speck appeared on the horizon. He watched as it enlarged, wavering, and slowly came into focus.

The thing was a wagon drawn by an ox. There was a driver up front, dressed in black robes, a priest. In back there were a number of huge gray creatures that resembled birds. Chickadee had heard that the white people had some animals the Anishinabeg had never seen before. He had seen a pig, a gookoosh. He had never seen the baka'akwen, the chicken. He had heard that they had an animal with a long gray snout with feet like boulders and enormous ear flaps. He had heard of the long-necked one, spotted, that could see over the tops of trees. His grandfather had once been to a city, and had seen these animals in iron houses like big traps.

Could this be one of these new animals?

Chickadee moved cautiously around the side of the house, and decided not to give himself away. The only place he could find to hide was the stack of slough grass. So he climbed to the top and lifted up a heavy mat of hay and slipped underneath. He had placed himself exactly where he could see all that went on when the wagon pulled into the yard.

Peeping out from under the hay, Chickadee saw immediately that he had been wrong about the creature. The gray wings were pieces of cloth, long stiff veils. They surrounded the faces of six white women, who also wore long cloaks of gray. Their hands were encased in gray mittens, and their feet were dainty in black lace-up boots. When the wagon stopped, they hopped down from the back. There was a small black dog with them, a serious-looking dog who jumped down to scout the area as if to make sure it was safe. At once, he barked at Brownie and Brownie, and trotted back and forth between the women and the horses as if to make sure they knew there was danger near.

Chattering like squirrels, the women in strange gray dresses went to investigate the cabin. Each ventured in and came out quickly, waving the air away from her nose.

The black robe, who wore a flat black hat and had a rosy face and twinkling blue eyes, laughed.

“We'd best be on our way,” he said. “Come along, Sisters.”

So, thought Chickadee, these were the black robe's six sisters. This was a family—an odd family who dressed much differently than most, but probably harmless. Still, he decided to remain hidden. And if not for the little black dog, he probably would have gone unnoticed.

The black dog started barking. Worse, it threw itself against the haystack. Chickadee could feel the vibrations every time it smacked into the hay below. The little dog was determined to tell its family that there was someone in the haystack. Some animal, they thought.

“Gertrude probably smells a rat,” said one of the Sisters.

“Come, Gertrude. Here, Gertrude!”

But the dog barked even more urgently, threw itself madly, insistently, until it caused the hay to tremble and slide. Chickadee had to adjust his weight.

“I saw something move,” said the priest. “If it was a rat, it was enormous.”

“Come, Gertrude!”

The Sisters called the dog to them in alarm. They did not want to see an enormous rat and wanted to leave the stinking cabin and the haystack well behind them. All of the Sisters, that is, except the youngest and most curious one.

She was small, and a brown curl the same color as the Brownies coat peeked under the gray contraption on her head.

“I'll get Gertrude, and find out what she's so excited about. I'm not afraid of a rat, no matter how big!”

“Sister Seraphica! Please!”

But Seraphica picked her way through the muddy snow and straw of the Zhigaag brothers' yard until she reached the dog.

“Gertrude, what is it?” she said in her gentle voice.

The dog went wild, hopping high and smashing its little body against the hay.

Seraphica laughed and stood on tiptoe. She peered up into the stack of grass and looked straight into Chickadee's eyes.

“It's not a rat,” she called. “It's a … boy, I think!”

The priest came running.

“Look, Father,” she pointed.

Chickadee tried to sink into the hay, but he had hunkered down as far as he could.

“I can't see anything,” said the priest.

“If it is a boy, then he's hungry,” said Seraphica. Her face was round and sweet. She had green eyes with long black eyelashes, and a small round nose. Her mouth was generous and her smile was wide and full.

She rummaged in a bag tied to her waist and took out a piece of bread. She held the bread out in the tips of her fingers. It was fragrant, fresh, and before Chickadee could stop himself, his hand darted out from beneath the grass and snatched the roll from her hand.

“There,” said Seraphica. “See?”