“You can’t go on your own,” Spring Thaw said, “You don’t know the land.”
“Why not? I tramped through Scotland well enough.”
Tom planned to travel to Lake Ainslee and the branches of the Margaree River as a traveling photographer. There were French and Irish settlers there as well as Scots, all with money to spend after netting the migratory salmon and gaspereau fish swimming upriver to their spawning grounds.
In the month since the wedding, Spring Thaw had lost any pretense of being docile. She had first shown her stubborn nature over the wedding arrangements. Refusing to wear a proper wedding dress she had insisted on a doeskin tunic, leggings, and moccasins. True, the garments were finely crafted, more supple than any suede leather that Tom had ever seen. The tunic was fringed and decorated with beads and porcupine quills. Her heavy black hair, glossy with oil and entwined with more beads, hung in a single thick plait down to the embossed leather belt that encircled her narrow waist. Standing among their neighbors she was an exotic, migratory bird blown off course and roosting among farmyard hens. Certainly she and Iain made a handsome couple, walking up the aisle with a gravity beyond their years. Tom sensed that this mongrel marriage might succeed.
After their wedding, they spent a few nights camping in the forests before returning and building a cabin for themselves. He saw how Spring Thaw could apply herself to any task, both women’s and men’s work. She could trap all sorts of game, bird, animal, and fish. She dragged heavy logs from a rope stretched taut across her forehead all day, barely pausing for a rest. Then he would find her in the evening, squatting cross-legged and sewing a shirt embellished with porcupine quills. It was only in farming matters that she was ignorant but she learned quickly. One evening while Tom watched her jabbing a sharpened bone needle through the sole of a moccasin he asked her, “Where did you learn these things?”
She looked up, eyebrows raised in surprise. Tom didn’t usually speak to her directly. She took her time replying,
“My mother wanted me to learn the old ways. She said that a true Mi’kmaq can live off the forest without having to beg from the traders.” Spring Thaw paused, her dark eyes unfocused, “Then just before the time for me to choose my woman’s name, I was dragged away to the orphanage where they tried to beat the savage out of me.” She spat the last words out.
“And did you choose your name?”
“I spent a day and a night in the woods waiting for an answer from my spirit creature. When I awoke I knew my name. The Spring Thaw is when I was born, a time of hunger but of hope, too. Anyway, I couldn’t be called ‘Dimpled Cheeks’ for the rest of my life, could I?”
They both laughed.
“What spirit creature did you choose?” asked Tom.
“I won’t tell it to white faces who could use it against me, only Iain.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“But you are doubly white, in your skin and your hair. How can I trust you?”
“Well, I would imagine that your spirit would be a bird.” It would seem that she doubted him as much as he doubted her.
Now here she was speaking bluntly again. Was it disrespect or a native habit of speaking the naked truth, rather than swaddling it in layers of good manners?
He decided to make light of it and said, “If I were a bird I could fly over to Prince Edward Island, too.”
He laughed, but she frowned and said, “If you go to Abahquit you should take a proper sea canoe. Have you ever been in one?”
“No, but I can handle any sort of boat, including a canoe. What does the name Abahquit mean?” The old itch of asking about place names still needed scratching.
“It means ‘The island alongside the shore.’ My people went there for the summer fishing since the beginning of time.”
“I only intend to travel along the rivers this time.”
“But you don’t know the safe currents in the rivers, let alone the sea. You need a guide.”
“Do you have someone in mind?”
“I do. Will you meet him?”
Curious despite himself, Tom agreed.
Two days later, he was standing outside smoking his pipe in the early morning and enjoying the blueing of the sky when he felt a grip on his shoulder. He spun around to see a small, lean figure. The man grinned, strong white teeth gleaming in his sunburnt face. The tendons stood proud from his wiry arms as he folded them across his bare chest.
“Who are you?”
“Silent Owl. My sister told me to come.”
Tom recognized the dark, deep-set eyes with their uncompromising gaze.
“Well, you were silent creeping up on me. But I thought that Spring Thaw had lost all her family?”
“She found us again when she came to the Split Lake with her man.”
“Bras d’Or Lake? She never said anything about meeting you.”
“There was no need to say anything until now. I’ve brought my canoe for us to try out.”
“If you wish, but I can handle a canoe.”
Silent Owl nodded and led the way, loping down to where the river flowed shallow but fast, toward the lake. He pointed to his canoe stretched out on the bank. It was bigger than the one Tom was used to, a slender snake with a crescent-shaped prow and stern curved like a ram’s horn. At the front, a delicate pattern of geometric diamonds was pricked out in porcupine quills dyed black and green. After handing Tom a paddle, he pushed the vessel into the water and leapt into it. Tom’s first task was to climb aboard the slithering vessel. Red with exasperation he floundered in the water. Finally, he flopped headfirst into the stern and started paddling. His fumbling efforts made the canoe spin and take in water. Silent Owl leant his body over to the other side and feathered the water with his own paddle to right them. Tom sat back on his heels and watched Silent Owl’s deft movements. As Tom copied them they sped along, the canoe skimming and darting like a swallow over the water. After several miles, Silent Owl swung the boat around and they returned upstream back up the river, Tom gritting his teeth against the throbbing in his arms and shoulders. He jumped out and hauled the canoe ashore when they reached their starting point. His breath was rasping while Silent Owl was unaffected, apart from a sheen of sweat on his back and chest.
“Now we carry the canoe up to the cabin,” he told Tom. They ran up the slope holding it aloft. By the time they reached home, Tom’s legs were buckling. Spring Thaw stood waiting for them. Her brother spoke to her in their own language while Tom lowered the boat to the ground and tried to stop the tremor in his arms.
“My brother says you’ll do if you practice some more. He’ll take you on the trip.”
Tom could only stand open-mouthed. He had thought that he was the one doing the choosing.