Thieving Forest (41 page)

“Those farmers just hated us, to say such things,” Naomi tells her. “What do they know about babies?”

“They don’t know beans from bird’s eggs, as Penelope used to say.”

“Susanna, think of it, if you marry Fishhook we could have babies together!”

But Susanna doesn’t want to think of the babies she might have with Fishhook. Only Naomi would be able to conjure up a world where they would be lovely. A small white feather, detached from somebody’s clothing, floats toward them at a slant.

“I’ve found what I wanted,” Naomi says, watching the feather drift down.

“What do you mean?”

But the ill woman has finished interpreting dreams now and is trying to stand. Two of her assistants help her, and when she’s upright she says something in an important-sounding voice.

Naomi bends toward Susanna. “She is going to tell us all her last desire in the form of a riddle. Whoever solves the riddle gets a prize.”

“What’s the prize?”

“The winner can choose her own prize,” Naomi says. She listens to the woman and frowns. “I don’t really understand it. She says a thing alone, or maybe she means single. Something unique, but not unique.”

The woman repeats herself: a thing unique but not unique, a thing alone and not alone. Tomorrow there will be feasting and a dance to celebrate the woman’s cure, but the excitement for this night is over. Before they leave, the woman’s attendants hand out gifts: white beaded bracelets for the women, and for the men, small beaded necklaces. Naomi shows Susanna her bracelet. The white beads are irregularly shaped but pretty, and she runs her fingers over them. As a captive, of course, Susanna did not receive one.

She gives Naomi back the bracelet. “Tell me the riddle again,” she says.

All the next morning Susanna tries to guess the riddle, but in truth she has never been very good at solving riddles. Sirus used to tell them at supper sometimes, and Beatrice usually guessed before Susanna could even work out all the parts to it. But Nadoko confirmed what Naomi said, that anyone who solves the riddle could name her own prize.

The drummers begin drumming again as soon as the sun rises, and they continue without stopping while the women cook food for the feast. It will take place in the clearing just beyond the old elm tree near the center of the village. Late in the afternoon Susanna walks down with Nadoko, Naomi, and Onaway, all of them again dressed in their finest clothes and jewelry. A feasting hut has been erected—four slim poles and a bark roof—and the drummers sit cross-legged in front of it, pounding on covered kettles in their laps. Women holding buckets of dyed grease are painting their faces, and one man laughs as a woman bends over him but without missing a drumbeat. Next to him two men hold tambourines on long sticks with stones or pebbles inside, which they shake or turn or strike on the ground.

For a while Susanna stands with the others watching the musicians, and they discuss if they want to go into the feasting hut now or wait a bit. The clearing is already crowded. Some men are wearing traditional Wyandot costumes—sleeveless tunics, embroidered breechclouts, and leggings that stop above the knee—while others wear English coats with brass buttons. All the women are wearing long decorated dresses like Naomi’s.

Naomi and Nadoko decide to go into the feasting hut while Onaway stays with Susanna who, as a captive, cannot go in. There are a few logs rolled out as seats, and Susanna helps Onaway to sit down on one. Her eyes are bright and happy, and curve like little crescents when she smiles. She must have been very pretty when young, Susanna thinks. She looks at each passing face but she does not see Seth or his friend and she does not see Meera. She also looks for Tako. The afternoon is unusually warm and the air carries the scent of cooking meat and smoke. She notices a group of men standing off to the side playing some game, and she watches them for a while. A pair of painted bones is placed in a bowl and then tossed up into the air. When the bones come down the men look at them, and then there is much debate and some arguing before they are tossed again.

The ill woman and her two attendant girls are sitting in a little three-sided gazebo made of willow branches not too far from the feasting hut. Today the woman is dressed all in white and her hair is dyed vividly red. Susanna spots Detsukwa nearby among a group of men. He catches Susanna’s eye and nods to her but does not smile. Their first hello.

Suddenly she has an idea. “I’d like to guess at the riddle,” she says to Onaway. Onaway does not understand her at first, but when she does she cocks her head and lifts her shoulders as if to say, Well all right! As if this will be just another entertainment to enjoy.

The gazebo smells like roses, and Susanna notices pink petals scattered on the ground as they enter. The ill woman turns her face toward them and Onaway speaks to her. Then it is Susanna’s turn. She puts her palms forward in supplication.

“
Tiyeme-dutay dasya-nay
.” My language is of the Delawares.

The woman nods. “
Dinaytay-ri
.” I know it.

The girls in their beautifully embroidered waistbands look at Susanna calmly. She cannot guess by their expressions whether they know the answer to the riddle or not. She begins speaking in Delaware:

“I am a white woman with red hair. Unique in this village but not in the world. I am alone here, but if you consider the whole world I am not alone. Therefore I am the answer to your riddle. Unique and not unique, alone and not alone.”

But the ill woman begins shaking her head even before Susanna has finished. “The answer is not a white woman,” she says.

Susanna’s heart sinks. “A white woman with red hair?”

“You are the only one with red hair in this village?”

She thinks of Naomi. “I am...I am the only captive with red hair.”

“It is not you. I did not know of you. You have not guessed the riddle correctly.”

The woman turns her face away. Some of the red hair dye has stained her neck and Susanna stares at the spot. She could be lying. She could have changed the answer now that Susanna has guessed it. Susanna wants to stay and press her point but Onaway takes her arm.

“A white woman like myself,” Susanna repeats. “The answer fits the question!”

Onaway begins to lead her away, patting her arm. She looks at Susanna’s face and Susanna can feel her sympathy but that only makes her feel worse, her hope crumpling up in a wad. Then all at once everything crumples.

Seth is dead. And her chance to guess her way out of captivity is gone. She walks out with Onaway into the clearing where a few young boys are running around lighting torches, but as far as Susanna is concerned the celebration is over. She helps Onaway sit down again, thinking: Somehow I’ll have to run away on my own.

She feels a push from behind. “Hello!”

“Tako! I’ve been looking for you,” Susanna says. Despite her disappointment a nugget of pleasure comes up when she sees his face.

“I went with the hunters. Brought down a deer.”

“By yourself? Really?”

“Well...” he shrugs, pulls a face, and says a few words in Wendat that she takes to mean, Why not? There is a familiar line of dirt along his jawbone. He looks very young.

“Tako, listen. I wanted to ask you about this.” She pulls one of the cherry buttons from her pouch.

Tako looks at it, nodding solemnly. “
Tudedi
,” he says. Button. Then he grins at her as if making a joke.

“Did you give this to me? Did you find it and leave it on the rock? Or did someone ask you to leave it there?”

“
Oui
,
non
!
Oui
,
non!”
he says.

She tries several ways of asking him, but he makes each of his answers into a joke. Finally, she gives up. “This
tudedi
, it is for you,” she tells him. She wants to thank him, to tell him—what? How much he helped her? But he would only make a joke of that, too. So instead she just repeats, “For you.”

Tako closes his fingers around the button and laughs. Then he skips off between bodies in the crowd and is gone.

Onaway says something to Susanna and points to four men wearing traditional Wyandot dress, who are beginning to dance in front of the drummers. This is the oldest dance, Onaway tells her, and the most important—sacred, Susanna understands her to mean. As she watches she thinks it looks like the same dance that the Stooping Indians danced after their rabbit feast. The same dips, the same swerves, except now only men are permitted to dance it. She thinks of Light in the Eyes, and of the small boy learning to play the flute. In this village there are more rules, but there is also more food. But even so she would rather go back to the Stooping Indians than stay here. If she could find them.

At last Naomi and Nadoko return from the feasting hut, and Naomi presses several strips of spiced pork into Susanna’s hand. Her fingers are slim and strong and Susanna can still picture them curved up over taut violin strings.

“Nami,” she says. “I’ve been wanting to ask you. What was that last song you were playing on your violin that morning, back in the cabin?”

“The day we were taken?” Naomi stops to think. “It must have been Bach.
Sleepers Awake
?” She hums a few bars.

“Yes, that’s it! I was trying to remember.”

“There are things I’ve wondered, too. Where was Aurelia? Somehow she wasn’t in the cabin with the rest of us when they came in.”

“No, she snuck out to feed her hens.”

“And what was Beatrice doing?”

“Burning the porridge?”

They laugh. “We shouldn’t make fun,” Susanna says.

“I know, I know,” Naomi agrees. But she’s smiling. Beatrice always burned the porridge. Always.

“Here,” Susanna says, pulling the last cherry button from her pouch. “I want you to have this.”

“No, no,” Naomi tells her. “You should keep that.”

“Please, Nami.”

Naomi hesitates, and then she takes it and hugs Susanna. Her hair, her clothes, even her neck smells Indian. The dancers begin a new dance and now women and boys are allowed to join in. Nadoko leads Naomi into the circle, and Susanna watches them appear and disappear among the dancers.

Naomi is someone else now, she has to admit that. Even if I stay here, she thinks, that will still be true.

Suddenly there is a commotion: the ill woman is being carried out of the gazebo. With a flourish the drummers stop drumming and the woman’s attendants help her to sit in a special chair in front of them. One girl, not an attendant, walks behind the others carrying something on a large wooden slab. More meat for the feast? But instead of going into the hut, the girl presents the platter to the ill woman.

Naomi and Nadoko hurry up to them. “Can you see from here?” Naomi asks. They help Onaway to stand and move closer for a better view. And then all at once Susanna can see what is on the platter: it’s the head of a bear. The Wyandots’ pet bear.

She turns to Naomi. “It’s the bear!”

Even from this distance she can make out its one crooked ear. Its fur looks darker, especially at the bottom where it is wet with blood. Its eyes are open. Something—a rock?—is keeping its jaws apart, and Susanna fancies she can even see a sliver of tongue. But even more astonishing: Meera is the one carrying it. Susanna can see the side of her face. She looks very solemn.

“How could they do that?” she asks Naomi. “That bear was a pet.”

Naomi’s expression doesn’t change. “It wasn’t a pet.”

“They kept it in its own pen!”

“Yes, like Saul, or any other farm animal.”

“Saul was a pig, this is a bear!” Susanna looks at Naomi, and then at Nadoko, and then at Onaway. None of them seem the least disturbed. Nadoko says something to Naomi.

Naomi turns to Susanna. “The bear is being honored. He is part of an important day. The girl with the platter must have guessed the riddle and the bear was the answer. Something unique and not unique—I understand it now. The bear is unique in this village but not in the world. She is clever, that girl.”

“She’s the one who traveled with me through the Black Swamp.”

“That one? But she’s so tiny!”

Susanna looks around: doesn’t anyone feel the way she does? Only she can’t tell what she feels most: pity or horror or fear. Naomi is wrong, she thinks, that bear was a pet. It was tamed and taught tricks. And then they killed it for a mere fancy, a riddle. Somehow that one fact seems more important than all the others. She can’t help but feel that her status is not much higher than a pet bear’s. Anything could happen to her here. Anything. The fact that Meera is connected to it makes it only feel worse.

“
Yawi-tsi-no-ha daya-nos
,” Nadoko says. “
Notsi-raya-gyahac. Hao-she-e
.”

“The girl will cook the head and the woman will eat from it,” Naomi translates. “And then she will be cured.”

Susanna watches the woman go into the feasting hut, and when she is gone the drummers begin drumming again. After a while people turn back to each other, laughing and talking. It’s getting to be twilight now, and men have begun drinking whiskey out of glass jars. Nadoko pulls her little fur cape closer around her shoulders, gesturing that it is time to go home.