Kahnawake, Quebec
August 1744
“I told you, I’m not staying.” Catherine Stands-Apart drew back from her sister’s touch and planted her feet wide at the edge of their mother’s grave. The freshly turned soil pushed between her toes. “I only came to say good-bye.”
Bright Star put her fists on her hips and frowned. She had thirteen summers to Catherine’s ten but acted as though she held all the wisdom and authority of a council full of clan mothers. “You can’t leave. This is our home.”
Catherine’s gaze traveled across the burial ground and past cornfields to the rows of shaggy birchbark longhouses. The Mohawk village of Kahnawake was tucked between wooded hills and the southwest bank of the St. Lawrence River, opposite the island of Montreal. Beside the village was the French fort of St. Louis, where a black robe baptized Mohawks into the Catholic faith and a garrison of soldiers watched for any British who might try to attack Montreal by coming up the river.
“Yah. It was my home.” Catherine and her sister had been born here, along with their little brother, and had lived in one of the few European-style homes suited to just one family. They had stayed there even after the divorce that sent their French-Canadian father away. He had lived nearly two miles from the village ever since.
“You know we can’t stay alone in the house without Mother,” Bright Star said. “We must move into the longhouse with our clan. They are our family, too. We have many mothers.”
Defiance swelled in Catherine, and she shook her head, beaded strands of hair clinking together. She had one true mother, named Strong Wind, and Strong Wind was buried here in the earth as of two sleeps ago. Despite all their efforts to revive her, she had died of the spotting sickness, along with four others from the Wolf Clan. They had caught the illness from the soldiers at the fort. Smallpox, the French called it.
Catherine rubbed the burning from her eyelids, then peered up at her sister. “You are my family, but you will marry within a year and start your own.”
“What about our brother?” Bright Star asked. Joseph Many Feathers, who preferred to be called by his Christian name, had only four summers and ran wild in the village.
“He will stay with you in the longhouse with everyone else.” Catherine was fond of Joseph, but in only one or two more years, he would follow after his uncles and learn to be both hunter and warrior, gone from Kahnawake for months at a time. “He won’t miss me.”
Bright Star’s heart-shaped face drew to a sharp point at her chin. “He will. You are his sister.”
But Catherine felt like she couldn’t breathe every time she thought of living with five or six other families under one roof. She wasn’t used to the closeness, or the noise, or the smoke from so many fires. “I told you, I am going to live with our father. He needs me.”
“He chose his path.”
A sigh rose and fell in Catherine’s chest. “He did not choose for that steel trap to take off his hand.” If he had both hands, he would have been able to hunt and trap for his family, and maybe Strong Wind would not have divorced him. “You have all these people, Bright Star. Papa has no one. If you had seen him today when I told him the news about our mother—”
“You should not have done that.”
“He deserved to know. And I miss him.”
He missed her too, he’d said. He needed her. She was old enough now to help him with cooking and laundry and anything else. “Come live with me again,” he’d pleaded. “You’re as much my daughter as you were Strong Wind’s, aren’t you? You have just as much French blood in your veins as Mohawk. I would never take you away from your mother, ma chère, but now—must I live alone to the end of my days?” That didn’t seem fair.
“His blood runs in my veins, and I choose to live with him. Awiyo. It is good.” Her eyes were the same blue as her father’s, a sign they belonged together. Once Catherine was there to help, he wouldn’t drink so much anymore. Life wouldn’t be nearly as hard for him.
Beyond Bright Star, women stooped in the fields, black heads shining in the sun as they harvested corn. Children ran shrieking through the stalks to chase away the crows that swooped and squawked overhead. Catherine would never do that again if she lived with Papa. He had a different idea of how to live. He said she could help him run his trading post. She could help him with so many things! She would not forget Strong Wind by living with him, but perhaps she could forget this twisting pain of looking for her mother around every corner and never finding her.
Sweat beaded on Bright Star’s brow, and her dark eyes glittered. Bits of corn silk stuck to the fringe of her buckskin dress from her own labor in the fields. “Your place is here, with your mother’s people. Don’t you remember what our mother said about that man you want to live with? He is selfish. He cares only for himself.”
“Totek! Be quiet!” Catherine clapped her hands over her ears. She did not remember Strong Wind saying those words and did not want to. If she could bring any memories back, it would be of her mother singing to her or telling her stories. But all she could recall of her mother right now was the way she had looked with those blisters all over her skin. They had been everywhere. Her arms, her hands, her face. It was horrible and terrifying. Catherine had to leave this place, or she would go mad with seeing the sickness in her mind every time she thought of Strong Wind.
Bright Star pulled Catherine’s arms down to her sides. “You are who your mother is, not your father. This is the way of things. What you want to do, it is not done.”
Catherine turned away, weary of her sister’s constant disapproval. It was a weight that bowed her head like a tumpline attached to a bundle of furs. She would be glad to shed this burden by moving away from here. But she could not convince her feet to leave the spot where her mother’s body rested. Not yet.
The noise from the fields grew shrill and gleeful with children’s voices. Women laughed and sang. Joseph burst from between two rows of cornstalks, a gourd rattle in his fist. Catherine waved at him.
He ran to her, his brown body naked save for a breechclout. Damp black hair clung to his neck. “We are supposed to chase the crows! I am very good at scaring them away. See?” He shook his rattle and shouted at the sky. “I am fierce, yes?” He grabbed her hand, and the dirt from his palm rubbed hers.
“Tohske’ wahi. Very fierce,” Catherine said. “I need to tell you something. You and Bright Star are going to live in the longhouse from now on, and I am going to live in a different house. With Papa.”
Joseph wrinkled his nose. “Where? Why?”
He was too young to remember much of Papa, and Papa never took pride in him, which Catherine could not explain. Fathers prized their sons. But her father wanted her, though she was neither male nor firstborn. She was special somehow. That was why Strong Wind had named her Stands-Apart. But Papa preferred her Christian name, Catherine. So did she.
Joseph tugged her hand. “Where are you going?”
A gust of wind swept over her, smelling of cooking fish. “It’s not far. I can come back to visit you. Hen’en, everything is fine.”
He looked at her with large black eyes that seemed to measure what she’d said. Then a shadow flickered over his face, and he squinted into the sky. “Crows!” he shouted, releasing her hand. He scrambled back into the field, shaking his rattle. “Wahs! Go away, crows! Wahs! No corn for you!”
Bright Star crossed her arms and bent her head toward Catherine, her thick braids swinging. They were many shades of brown, like walnut shells, the same as Catherine’s hair. Porcupine quills fanned tall and straight from the back of her head. “You say you will visit? Maybe I will not want to see you, a sister who rejects her people.” Her voice quivered like a bowstring pulled too taut. She used her words like arrows. “Well were you named Stands-Apart, for you stand too far apart from us. Go away, then, and stay there.”
Something ripped inside Catherine. She stared at the mound of dirt that covered Strong Wind and wanted to fling herself upon it, arms open wide to soak in the summer sun baked into the earth. She wanted, one last time, to pretend that warmth was her mother’s embrace. She wanted to feel loved again. Right now, she felt alone and shamed.
So she pointed her toes away from the grave to put Bright Star, and that pain, behind her.