I FIRMLY BELIEVE I DID nothing extraordinary by helping with the birth of those twins. On reflection, I’m sure the women already there would have succeeded without me. But I doubt they could have managed without the calming influence of Syawa. He was the one who truly saved three lives.
So the question rolling in my mind was this—why did he want people to think it was me? Was this his way of turning me into the mystical creature he claimed me to be? Because that’s exactly what happened. The villagers considered the miraculous birth to be both confirmation of the power of the Great Seer and proof of my Divinity. I would have laughed at the notion had it not frightened me so.
A gray, stormy sky prevented us from leaving the next day, but it also gave people from far and wide an opportunity to come pay us tribute. Thus began my instruction in the delicate art of Gifting.
It was so very complicated. We hauled out all the pelts we’d collected and gave these to people to whom we were obliged—those who’d given us food, lodging, or other considerations. But we also had a pile of gifts others had given us, and I asked Syawa how we could accept these things when we must travel so lightly. He smiled and said to refuse a gift insulted the giver, but once the gift was ours, we could do with it what we would. As we gave away most of the things we’d been given, he insisted the important thing was to maintain a balance between those giving gifts and those receiving them.
Oh, but there were treacherous subtleties! For example, I wanted to give the young mother a couple of soft rabbit furs, but Syawa said I’d already given her the greatest gift and to increase her obligation would only shame her. It was hard for him to explain such complex concepts through gestures, but he patiently assured me that if we gave the wrong sort of gift to someone, we might insult that person, and if we gave no gift at all, we might actually be acknowledging that person’s high status or wealth, which would be a compliment. The wealthiest person, Syawa insisted, was the one who ended up with nothing.
I was confused and must ask many questions. If a gift given to me was mine to do with as I pleased, why had Hector raised such a fuss about my giving away food back at that first village? Syawa smiled and said the sharing of food was not so much a gift as an indicator of a personal relationship, but, in any case, it wasn’t Hector who’d refused my family food—it was Syawa. He went on to tell me Hector had begged to be allowed to provide enough food for all in an effort to avoid a fight like the one which occurred, but Syawa, for whatever reason, flatly forbade him to do so.
I was shocked by this revelation. Why had Syawa denied my family food? Was he punishing them for the way they treated me? That seemed plausible, especially when I saw how pleased he was by the homage I was receiving. ’Twas almost as if my elevation in status was his gift to me. But how could I possibly enjoy such a powerful gift when, given the importance of balance in the Indian world, I knew I must, sooner or later, give Syawa an equivalent gift in return?
Thinking of balance also made me wonder about the relationship between the French traders and the natives. Every merchant I’d e’er known exchanged goods for only one reason—to make a profit. This motivation put the traders at a distinct advantage when bartering with people who exchanged goods primarily to maintain a balance of wealth and power. I wondered—how did the Frenchmen explain this contradiction to their Indian sons? And when they explained it to them, how could they look them in the eye?
The stormy spring weather continued the next day, making Hector increasingly restless. He arose in the morning from the furs of whichever girl had been lucky enough to catch his eye the night before, and he prowled the village like a cat, looking up at the gray, roiling clouds resentfully. He talked with Syawa about leaving in spite of the rain, but Syawa pointed out that our progress would be so slow and the process so unpleasant it would be just as well to wait.
Watching Hector pace, I wondered about the other news I’d learnt, that he had killed the brutish savage at the bottom of our stairs. I was not surprised to hear he was capable of murder, but I was shocked to hear he had killed one of his own comrades-in-arms. If the others in that war party had discovered the murder, they surely would have knockt out the brains of both Hector and Syawa. It seemed such a risky thing to do, so inexplicably motivated.
But then again, everything about my situation was inexplicable. How could Syawa have known I was up in that loft? Yes, he was an accomplisht storyteller, but was he truly more than that, as the Indians believed? I puzzled o’er the “Vision” about the birth of those twins. It could have been a Vision, as he claimed, or it could have been simple observation and reasoning—he might’ve seen the heavily pregnant woman, deduced she was having twins, assumed the birth would be difficult, and hoped that I might be of some assistance. Was Syawa truly a visionary, a prophet, or was he just an extremely shrewd man who knew how to manipulate impressionable minds?
Either way, he was special, and the more I knew of him, the happier I was I’d agreed to join him.
That afternoon, Syawa and I were checking on the young mother when the French priest arrived. He had come to bless the twins or some such thing, and when I shrank back, Syawa asked what was wrong. I gestured for him to follow me out into the drizzly day, but once there I hesitated, unable to explain in gestures how my father had harangued us all to be staunchly anti-Papist, anti-French, and anti-authority—and this priest was all those things.
I didn’t get beyond explaining that the priest was from a different country than mine before Syawa stopt me to ask how many countries of people there were. I said I didn’t know, but there were many, many—all with different languages, customs, and religions. Syawa frowned. He said in the two years he had been traveling, he had seen extreme differences amongst the people of this land, but now I was telling him those differences just went on and on. How, he wondered, could so many different peoples e’er achieve harmony and balance?
I stared at him, stunned speechless. For one thing, I couldn’t believe he thought the differences between savage tribes were significant, because, as far as I could see, these people were all pretty much the same. But the other, far more startling thing he’d said was that he had been traveling for two years. Two years?
Before I could question him about this, the priest emerged from the hut and asked to speak with me. I shrugged. Syawa watched intently as I gestured a translation of everything that was said, but the conversation was difficult because the priest’s English was so halting and I was still unwilling to let him know I spoke French.
He began with standard pleasantries, inquiring after my health and congratulating me for assisting in the miraculous birth, the fame of which had spread to the trading post. Then he put his hands on mine as if bestowing a blessing as he asked again if I was being held against my will. I pulled my hands away to translate his question and my answer, assuring him I was not. Syawa’s eyes flashed from the priest to me and back again.
I’ll say this for the priest—he was brave. He glanced at Syawa as he offered me sanctuary, promising that if I but said the word, he and his fellows would see to it that I was ransomed, rescued, and returned to the bosom of my family.
Instead of getting angry as the priest must have expected, Syawa just smiled. He looked at me, tipping his head and raising one eyebrow. “Now everyone wants you,” he said. “What will you do?”
Memories of Philadelphia flashed in my mind, but only for an instant. I trusted my new friends far more than I could e’er trust a French Papist. I told the priest that Syawa and Hector were my family now, and we were returning to our people. Syawa’s eyes shifted to the priest.
“I not wish make trouble, my child,” the priest said cautiously whilst I gestured a translation. “But I fear you know not what is to come.”
“No man can know that, can he, sir?” I interrupted. “Unless, of course, he’s a prophet.” I glanced at Syawa and smiled. Neither Syawa nor the priest smiled with me.
“What I say,” the priest continued slowly, “uh, saying, is I hear talk—your companions come from people by the ocean—the Great Ocean.”
I blinked, my hands motionless in mid-air. I knew of the Great Ocean because when I was small my father had a book with a map of the known world. He had shown us Ireland, where he was born, and the vast ocean he had crossed to come to America. The Great Ocean, called the Pacific, was easily twice the size of the one my father crossed, and it was all the way on the other side of the world.
“Did you know this?” the priest asked gently. “Did you know how far you must to go?”
“Well,” I said weakly, “I, uh, knew it might take two years.”
The priest bent down and picked up a stick to begin drawing in the mud. He drew the colonies, asking where I was born. I told him Boston, and he drew an X there. He drew an X for Philadelphia, adding the mountains of Pennsylvania, the great freshwater lakes, and a few of the larger rivers along the way, including the one we were on. He put another X to mark where we were on that river. His drawing covered a good ten feet of ground.
“Now, you see—this is the distance you travel already,” he said, pointing along his map. He continued drawing, moving to his left as he added lines, lines, and more lines. He drew rivers and mountains, going e’er farther away from me.
By this time a crowd was gathering, and I noticed Hector had returned. He and Syawa exchanged a few words, both watching the priest warily, suspiciously, as if afraid he was conjuring something or casting a spell. I would have explained, but my gesture language included no signs for “drawing a map.”
When the priest was finally finished, he put another X on the ground and stood up to look at me. He was, by that time, some forty or fifty feet from where I stood. I stared at the space between us, the distance very clear. The priest was telling me I had traveled a few hundred miles and that I had a few thousand miles to go. I swallowed hard.
“Now do you see?” he asked, wiping his muddy hands on his muddy black robe.
I nodded slowly. Syawa put his hand on my arm and asked me to translate. I sighed and gestured that the man was telling me about the journey to come.
“Is he a seer?” Hector demanded of Syawa, who passed the question on to me.
“No,” I gestured. “He just a man.”
The priest smiled ruefully. He dropt his stick onto his drawing and lifted his chin. “I thought you should know,” he said quietly. “And my offer of protection is good. Consider it.”
After the priest left, I tried to explain his visit to Syawa and Hector, but the only part of my translation they understood was that the priest wanted me to stay with him. The part of the priest’s message that stuck with me, of course, was the true scope of the journey ahead, but I think Syawa interpreted my new distress as a sign that I might actually be considering the priest’s offer. He reminded me that I was free to do as I would. He then told Hector to prepare to leave the next day, rain or shine.
I had a hard time sleeping. I wisht I could talk to Syawa about all that was bothering me, but my thoughts were too complicated to explain in gestures. Every time I closed my eyes, I kept seeing that huge map on the ground, the awesome distance between us and our destination. I knew Syawa and Hector had traveled a long way, but I ne’er dreamt their journey covered thousands of miles. And for what? For me? It simply wasn’t possible. It made no sense.
And then there was the challenge of making that trip myself. What had I gotten myself into? How could I hope to cross an entire continent? And what would life be for me if I somehow managed to make it? I honestly couldn’t imagine. Moreover, my companions were scarce on speaking terms, thanks to me, and if the tension of the last few weeks continued for the next two years, the journey would be unbearable.
Lying in that strange wigwam, I began to look at my parents in a whole new light. Their journey had been every bit as grand and impossible as the one before me, yet they had, after a fashion, succeeded. They made no secret of the distance they traveled, the sacrifices they made, and the suffering they endured, but I guess I’d ne’er really understood their story. No wonder my father drank. No wonder my mother lashed out at everyone who came near, threatening to beat all comers to a bloody pulp.
And then there was Gran, whose life had been a whirlwind of religious and political wars, with every scheme she concocted to improve her lot leaving her worse off than when she started. She married for love and lived in a pig-sty. She wed her daughter to a nobleman and was exiled. Every day was unending struggle, ’til her wits were addled and she died in whimpering exhaustion.
Life is very hard.
I must have slept, because then it was morning and I opened my eyes to find Syawa lying beside me, staring with questioning eyes. “Are you ready?” I mumbled. He smiled and I smiled back.
The sky was still gray, but at least it wasn’t raining. We said our farewells and Hector started up a trail away from the river, but I said I must first stop by the French trading post.
For once, Syawa said nothing. Hector snapt that we would go nowhere near that place and continued in his original direction. Neither Syawa nor I followed. Syawa nodded in assent, and he and I set off for the trading post. In a moment I heard Hector behind us, his angry breathing short and shallow. I imagined I could hear Syawa’s heart pounding in his chest as he wondered if I was going to claim sanctuary from the French. I wisht I could allay his fears, but I knew I would ne’er be able to explain the details of my plan any more than he had been able to explain the subtle intricacies of gift-giving. All I could do was trust him to trust me.
The Frenchmen were surprised to see us, but masked their emotion with well-rehearsed smiles. LeFevre greeted us with what passed for genuine enthusiasm, tho’ neither Syawa nor Hector was in the mood for pleasantries. Syawa was stone-faced and Hector was snorting like a shackled bull.
The priest approacht me with outstretched arms. “Welcome, my daughter,” he said. “You come to us. Bless you. You making the right decision.”
I smiled but side-stept his embrace as I headed toward a stack of trade goods. “No, sir,” I said. “I have not come to stay with you nor ask for your assistance. I have come to trade.”
The priest was nonplussed for a moment before turning to the headman, who eyed me critically. “So you want to trade, do you?” LeFevre said with a veiled smile as he slipt behind the counter where I stood. “Then by all means, let us trade.”
I looked o’er the implements before me—guns, knives, swords, axes. I picked up a well-formed hatchet, the steel head thick on one side, razor sharp on the other. I weighed the handle in my fist, noting the sleek curve of the polished hickory, judging the balance. ’Twas an excellent hatchet—the finest I’d e’er seen. “This’ll do,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
LeFevre pursed his lips, his eyes amused. The salesman who’d failed with me the other day was sitting on a barrel behind the headman, enjoying this unique encounter, whilst a half-breed hovered in the shadows, made nervous by my glowering companion. E’en without looking, I knew Hector was gripping the handle of his stone blade.
“That’s a fine hatchet, mistress,” LeFevre said. “In fact, I fear it is too fine for you. I’m sorry to say you cannot have enough hides in that small pack to pay for it.”
“I do not expect to pay for it,” I said with a smile. “I expect you to give it to me.”
“Now why would I do a foolish thing like that?” the hard-bitten trader asked, more amused than e’er.
“Because you have much and I have little and you must surely want to show what a great and generous man you are,” I said, repeating a small part of the lesson I’d learnt from Syawa. Then I switched to French and added, “Also because you would not want me to tell your customers how you have been cheating them.”
The priest’s mouth dropt open as the headman’s smile turned into a look of surprise quickly followed by outrage. The Frenchman on the barrel jumped to his feet, the boy in the shadows disappeared, and Syawa and Hector both stept forward, one on each side of me. Hector’s knife was in his hand.
But I hadn’t moved nor had I stopt smiling. LeFevre assessed Syawa and Hector, recovering his composure slowly. He signaled to his friend to sit down as he looked at me with new respect. “So you speak French,” he said in his mother tongue.
“I do.”
“And you have heard us say things you did not understand.”
“I understood perfectly. You give the people here a reasonable exchange of goods for their furs only so long as they accept a drink or two with the transaction. When they want more liquor, as they always do, you make them pay back all the goods you gave them in exchange for the rest of the jug. By the time they sober up, one of your colleagues has taken the furs upriver to . . . New France, I suppose? At any rate, the people here generally have little more than a headache to show for all their trading.”
By the time I stopt talking, the headman was furious, but the size of Hector’s blade and the singular focus in his eyes kept him in check. I was amazingly calm. Just as I had been during the performance at the Feast, I was the sole spot of stillness in an emotional maelstrom.
“What are you suggesting?” the headman asked.
“I am suggesting you give me this hatchet as a gift, and I will give you the gift of leaving this place without explaining to the local citizenry what it is you do here.”
The man looked into the distance, his lips in a tight line. He was angry, but he was also considering his options. “So what is your point, eh? You do not care if we cheat these people, so long as you get what you want?”
“I am not stupid,” I said emphatically, immediately reminded of all the times Hector had called me so. “If I force you to stop cheating these people, I know ten more traders will swarm in to take your place. I am but a girl. I cannot change the way the world is. But I can change things for you.”
The trader’s nostrils flared. “And I can change things for you, too, I think. What is to stop my friends from following you into the woods and chopping you up with that very hatchet? Eh? Why should we not just kill you three where you stand?”
I looked ’round the trading post, where numerous Indians were wandering about. Some had followed us, others were there to trade, and others had their own reasons for being there. I gave the head trader a scolding look. “These people think my friend is a god. How do you think they would respond to his murder?”
The priest gasped. “Comparing a man to the Almighty is blasphemy!”
“And murdering three innocents can only lead to bigger problems,” I said pointedly. “I would think you, sir, of all people, should know that.”
LeFevre looked down at the hatchet, scratched his neck, and sighed. “So. You have your hatchet, for all the good it will do you. Take it and go.” He spat on the ground beside the table.
Hector raised his knife, eager to avenge the obvious insult, but I gestured for him to stop. I smiled at Syawa, who was watching my actions intensely, not alarmed so much as deeply curious, and I stept o’er to pick up a leather pouch with flint, steel, and spunk. Speaking in English with my grandmother’s Irish brogue, I said, “Well, now—if yer gonna be like that, sir, I’ll just take this fire-starting kit, too.” I smiled in my most flirtatious manner.
As angry as he was, he was still a Frenchman, after all, and he smiled in spite of himself. “Is that it, then?” he asked dryly, one eyebrow raised.
I nodded, turning to go, but the priest stept forward. “My child,” he said in French, “if you are determined to go on this mad journey, I beg you, please—spread the word of our Lord amongst the heathens. Tell them of the grace and salvation available only through Jesus Christ. Make your life mean something! Tell them!”
I glanced at the knife in Hector’s hand then looked back at the priest, frowning. “Why don’t you make your life mean something, sir? You seem like a decent man. Tell your countrymen not to cheat these people. Tell them of the peace and harmony available only through a balance of wealth and power. Tell them!”
I turned and walked away, my pack on my back, my new things in my hands, my companions following behind.
Hector passed me almost immediately and we walked in silence ’til we reached the top of a ridge well away from the trading post. There we stopt to look back into the river valley at the tiny figures that had just been part of my daring little drama. I slipt my pack off my back to tuck my fire-starting kit inside. The hatchet I held out to Hector.
He stared at it, puzzled, then looked me full in the face, right in the eye, for the first time since our meeting in the loft. At that moment my heart began pounding as furiously as it did when last our eyes locked. This time, of course, I knew I had nothing to fear from Hector, but still I found myself struggling to control the quaver of my voice as I said as clearly as I could in his difficult language: “I gift you ax for ax I break.”
Hector took the hatchet and looked at it, the cold stone of his face momentarily flushing deep scarlet. Without looking back at me, he nodded, tucked the hatchet into his waistband, and walked briskly away.
I did not yet understand the rules of Syawa’s world and had ne’er really accepted the rules of my own, but, for now, at least, none of that mattered. Syawa, Hector, and I were going to be in our own little world for a long, long time, and I felt ’twas up to me to make it a pleasant one. By replacing the hatchet I broke, I hoped to restore the balance of our traveling threesome.
But when I turned to Syawa, he wasn’t smiling in approval as I expected. For a fraction of a second, I saw a flash of something odd in his eyes, an emotion I did not recognize. It was akin to sadness, but it was so much more than that, filled as it was with longing, despair, and what I can only describe as excruciating pain. Then it was gone and he smiled broadly as he put his hand approvingly upon my shoulder. I grinned like a tail-wagging pup whose master has deigned, at last, to pat his head.
Our balance restored, we resumed our Journey.