The Porcupine Year Read online

  “Gaawiin, I’m hungry!” said Omakayas.

  “Me too, but I’ll catch something else,” said Pinch.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A warrior does not take revenge on the helpless,” said Pinch solemnly. “I shall spare its life.”

  “Well, I’ll leave it for now,” said Omakayas, eyeing the juicy creature, “but once you suffer the removal of these quills you may decide to revenge yourself. This porcupine wasn’t all that helpless.” Pinch let his sister pluck out the quills with careful fingers, making a noise as each one came out.

  “Ow! Wah! Ow-wahee-oooh!”

  Omakayas put each quill on a piece of bark until she had a little stack, and when she was finished she meticulously wrapped the quills in the bark and put them in the pouch at her waist.

  By now the porcupine was watching them curiously, no longer interested in leaving. Quill plucked a little soft bark from the base of a green stick and gave it to the trusting creature. It made a happy little clucking sound and began to munch.

  “Perhaps,” he said in a portentous voice, “this will be my medicine animal.”

  “I will make you something with these quills, to honor your great battle with the gaag,” said Omakayas.

  “Ahhh, sister, you do me too much honor,” said Quillboy. “Way too much. I wish you’d just forget about the battle, but let’s keep this little gaag.”

  “Alas, I can’t forget,” said Omakayas. “The memory of your fierce display is burned into my heart!” It was bad of her, but she still wanted to laugh. Now poor Quillboy was pocked with little holes all over his arm and shoulders. The hole in his nose made him even more ridiculous.

  “You look like you were in a battle with a thousand miniature warriors. And they hit you with their arrows. Tiny ones.” Omakayas twisted her face to stop her laughter, but a snort escaped. She pretended to control herself. “My brother, I am in awe of the great deed you did today!”

  “Then I’m making a fire,” said Pinch. “Give me your striker. If our enemies discover us, I’ll quill them to death. I am not Quillboy, but Quill. Just Quill. The great Quill! We’re going to feast on my courage now.”

  Omakayas turned, though she didn’t much feel like killing the little porcupine. She lifted her knife one last time.

  “No! Don’t kill my porcupine! I’ll find some other food!”

  Pinch strode out into the lake until the water was thigh-deep. Omakayas was exasperated with her brother’s odd behavior and was now even hungrier. Pinch stood dramatically in the shallows and said, “Look!”

  He plunged his hand down and, to his shock, came up with a fish.

  “What?” he said, gaping at the fish in his hand. He ran to shore. “How? Look, sister! The porcupine is definitely a helping spirit!”

  Omakayas looked down at the little porcupine. It gazed shyly up at her. It blinked. You really can’t pet a porcupine, thought Omakayas. What would Quill do with it?

  Quill threw the fish at Omakayas’s feet with an annoying grunt, just like the grown-up warriors sometimes did when they killed a moose or a massive beaver.

  “It’s not that big a fish, Quillboy,” said Omakayas.

  “Did you ever catch a fish with your bare hands?”

  “No,” said Omakayas. She banged the fish against a rock and proceeded to clean it with swift expertise.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Quill.

  After they had roasted the fish and eaten it, Quill reached out and grasped the porcupine’s front paws and swung the little creature onto his head. The porcupine dug its dull claws into the mass of knotted Quillboy hair, and soon, to Omakayas’s amazement, it went to sleep.

  THREE

  THE MEMEGWESI

  As soon as they’d eaten, the two set out with full stomachs and new energy. They hoisted the canoe, turned it over, and set it on their shoulders. The porcupine, amazingly, balanced easily on Quill’s head. Its tail hung down Quill’s neck, but the quills couldn’t pierce his thick hair. Quill had made cushions of moss to place upon their shoulders where the canoe rested heaviest, and as they walked along Omakayas felt fine. This wouldn’t be so bad. Easy enough, maybe, if they stuck to the older parts of the forest along the river, where there was less undergrowth to tangle them up.

  Quill and Omakayas walked all morning. The sun was just overhead when they heard the roar of the rapids they had traversed the night before. Curious, they set the canoe down in the woods. Omakayas saw that the porcupine was still stuck to her brother’s head. She was now getting used to it.

  “That porcupine looks better than your usual hairdo,” she said.

  Quill just nodded, as if she’d given him a compliment. The porcupine held on.

  “Sister, let’s go see where we were in that rapids,” said Quill. “I’m starting to forget already.”

  “It went so fast,” Omakayas agreed. “Like a dream. I can’t remember much about it either.”

  As they walked toward the sound of the water, their words were soon drowned out by the noise. Getting closer, they began to feel a little puffed out over, then more than proud of, what they’d come through. They even turned and grinned at each other, nodding as if to say, We’re river warriors! Ahau! They felt this excitement up until the moment they broke through the underbrush and saw the river.

  Their mouths fell open. They forgot to breathe, forgot to swallow. And they knew. It wasn’t them. It could not have been them or any expertise they had. Nobody could have made it out of what they saw, not alive. A ragged and ever changing wall of water twisting with power surged out at them. It was uncanny, killing, and a terrible marvel all at once. In its mouth, there was no possibility of any life surviving. None at all. Yet here they were. Saved by the spirits, Manidoog, kept safe by the Gizhe Manidoo, the greatest and kindest one, or perhaps by the whim of the chill Manidoog who lived in the stones.

  Whatever had saved them was beyond and greater than any human strength or skill. They saw this at once and stood mute at the sight.

  As they stood there, a small figure rose on the opposite bank. To both of them, it looked at first like a small child with a hairy head. They crouched low. The little person moved his arm, as if making an offering to the rapids, and they saw that he was proportioned like a fully grown Anishinabe man. He was dressed in buckskins and knee-high makizinan, and his hair stuck out all over, like Quill’s hair. At the sight, Quill put his hand up to his head, thinking exactly that thought. You’re like me. Luckily, he remembered not to touch the porcupine. Then the little person stepped backward and was gone. Just like that.

  Omakayas and Quill looked at each other, wide-eyed. They mouthed the word memegwesi together, then nodded and smiled and looked back at the raging water. He was, perhaps, the spirit who had helped them through. Omakayas had only one thing that she could give—the red beads around her neck, the ones from her grandmother, Nokomis. They were hard to relinquish. But slowly, she took them off, crept as close to the river as she dared, and placed them on a rock where the memegwesi would surely find them once they left. Only after they’d turned away, and got back on their path, did she remember how the beads had appeared in her morning dream.

  JIIBAYAG

  The day went on and on. They got lost, and they stumbled this way and that, beneath the canoe. Finally Omakayas agreed to hide the canoe safely in the woods. She decided that they could find their camp more easily if they walked to the river, doubled back, and eased their way along the shore. They were on the same side of the river as their camp, but somehow, in trying to find easier ways to carry the canoe, they’d gone past their family. And now it was beginning to grow dark. Soon night would fall and they’d have to spend it on the cold ground. Suddenly, they realized where they were. Camp was just ahead! Eagerly, Omakayas and Quill made their way through the bush. But they stopped short, hearing from their camp the awful cries and wails, the unmistakable sounds of disaster and of mourning.

  Chilled, they grabbed each other’s arms.

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nbsp; Someone had died in the time they’d been gone—both of their hearts skipped. They froze. Who could it have been? Was it Nokomis—old and vulnerable? Surely not Mama, or Deydey, and not Old Tallow, who was tough as leather and unkillable. Not one of them. But there was their beautiful older sister, Angeline, who’d barely survived smallpox, and Fishtail, her husband, who’d nearly died back then, too. Omakayas shook now, shuddered, for she had already lost her baby brother to that terrible visitor. She did not want to climb the mountain of grief again. Animikiins, Little Thunder, and his father were also traveling with them—perhaps an accident had occurred. And there was the tiniest one, Bizheens, the little lynx with his watching eyes. He was a quiet and clever baby boy just learning to speak and even more devoted to Omakayas than to Mama.

  Dagasana, nimishoomis, Gizhe Manidoo, Omakayas closed her eyes and prayed. She knew that she could not survive the loss of a little brother, not again. But the truth was she didn’t think that she could survive the loss of anyone.

  And Quill clearly felt the same. Tears trembled in his eyes.

  “Let’s sneak up on them,” he whispered to her, “and find out who it was before we enter camp. I can’t bear it. I’m afraid my heart will burst out of my chest!”

  “Mine hurts too, already. I’m so afraid, brother, just like you.”

  And so the two crept close and hid in the bushes just outside the camp, fearful as mice, wary and timid as rabbits, horrified. Lumps in their throats, hearts beating painfully, they listened as Nokomis raised her hands in the air and spoke. From where they were, they could tell that Nokomis was still breathing quickly, as if she had run through the woods. Her back was turned from them. But she was definitely alive. Omakayas was glad she could not see her beloved grandmother’s grieving face.

  “When I found these on the rocks, I knew what had happened,” she cried, holding something out to show the rest of the family. There was a beat of silence, and then a wild cry. It was a strangled scream, a high-pitched bleat, and it came from the tough old woman who had once saved Omakayas’s life—Old Tallow.

  “Gaawiin, it cannot be!” Mama’s voice—then pandemonium. It was impossible to tell who was there and who was not. The yells of sorrow were all mixed up into one barking wail.

  “I can’t tell who died,” Omakayas was crying hard now. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I know!” whispered Quill.

  “What?”

  “It’s us!”

  “Us?”

  “Nokomis holds your red beads out, I see it now. She found them on the rock. It’s us that were killed.”

  “Let’s go.” Omakayas’s heart lifted with happiness and she strained forward, but Quill grabbed her arm.

  “No! Wait!”

  Unbelieving, Omakayas shook away from her brother. He looked crazy with the porcupine on his head, and he was actually grinning. With a sinking heart she knew that he had an idea, one that would surely get them in trouble.

  “There will never be a chance like this one!”

  “No!” Omakayas shook his arm, then punched him. She knew him well. What mischief was in his mind! It all happened so quickly—he could go from inconsolable sorrow to plotting a joke in one instant. Somehow, he could make her forget that her family’s hearts were breaking just beyond the fringe of bushes. He could make her curious about what he was thinking.

  “I’ll be right back!” said Quill. “It’s just the right time of evening to scare them. I’m going to sneak my hand into Mama’s pack and take a couple of handfuls of her white flour. We’ll powder ourselves up and walk back into the camp as ghosts, as jiibayag!”

  “No!”

  “Yes! They’ll talk about this joke so much we will be famous! Oh, they’ll never forget!”

  In spite of herself, and even knowing how stricken her family was, Omakayas did something that she would regret for many years to come. She let herself be persuaded.

  “I don’t know. Wewiib! Hurry up before I change my mind!”

  Quill was gone and back so quickly that she hardly had time to think.

  “This is wrong,” she mumbled as Quill smoothed the flour on her face and arms.

  “But very funny,” said Quill, patting the flour onto himself, turning his cheeks white, then throwing some flour up onto the porcupine, which licked its little mouth in appreciation.

  “We look like chimookomanag.”

  “Except white people don’t wear porcupines on their heads. Okay. Let’s go.”

  As she stepped into the camp behind her brother, Omakayas knew that this was a very bad idea, and yet, something in her was thrilled. It was the chance of the situation. The opportunity for a wild joke, just given to them!

  The two walked into camp.

  Quill stood with a strange, vacant, dead-spirit expression. The porcupine’s quills went up. Its eyes gleamed in the white flour. Quill moaned a little, and waited until he was noticed. Omakayas stood with him, immediately stricken when she saw that they’d succeeded in horrifying their family beyond Quill’s wildest hopes.

  Bizheens howled. Mama cried out. Deydey’s eyes flew wide open. Nokomis dropped to the earth with her hand on her chest. Angeline grabbed Fishtail. Animikiins and his father, Miskobines, stood stock-still, mouths gaping.

  But Old Tallow never missed a beat. She sicced her dogs on them.

  The dogs wouldn’t attack Omakayas, whom they loved. They knew Old Tallow had a special place in her heart for the girl. But they jumped on Quill and knocked him flat, then went off howling when the porcupine swatted them with its tail. As soon as everyone realized Quill was a real boy, not a ghost, Mama ran up and slapped him on the head and hugged him at the same time. Deydey narrowed his eyes and scowled. Angeline furiously turned away and went back into the wigwam. Fishtail, Animikiins, and Miskobines all grinned with admiration.

  “How did you get that porcupine to stay on your head?” asked Animikiins.

  Nokomis threw tobacco in the fire to appease the real spirits of the dead, to thank the Manidoog for returning the children, and because she didn’t know what else to do. Old Tallow sat motionless with a combination of disgust and relief on her face. Only little Bizheens ran up to Omakayas and hugged her.

  “Giizhawenimin. Giizhawenimin,” he said. “I really love you.”

  And Omakayas began to cry, as much ashamed of herself now as she was glad to be back, alive. Nokomis was the first to laugh. It was a tentative little snort, muffled with her hand, and she had tears in her eyes, too, so the laugh was half reproachful. But that laugh was enough for Fishtail, who let out a honk of amusement. Soon everyone in camp was either crying or laughing, and although Mama continued to pretend to strike her son he only ducked under her mock blows until she fell over, laughing too, in great relief.

  The little porcupine looked up dreamily at them all and kept licking the flour from its paws. Omakayas grew dizzy with laughter and sat on the ground, holding Bizheens, who was always ready to coo and clap when he saw people happy. His sharp, lively eyes shone in the camp light, and he threw his arms again and again around Omakayas. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her, ever, she thought, this little brother who adored her no matter what she did.

  Not long and the family was eating, dunking bannock in venison soup, talking, rehashing all that had happened to Omakayas and Quill. The porcupine was back on Quill’s head, in its accustomed spot. It was beginning to smell a little funny, and Mama said that Quill would have to sleep outside with it or wash.

  “I will choose to live with my medicine,” said Quill. “Even though my family shuns me!”

  Everyone agreed that Quill was the perfect name for him from then on. Omakayas told about the lake at the end of the rapids, about its sandy, empty shores, and it was agreed that the family would break their camp and portage to that same lake. It sounded like the perfect place to set up camp and collect supplies of dried fish, meat, and berries so they could continue their journey.

  FOUR

  BE
ARS AND HEART BERRIES

  On the other side of the lake with the golden, sandy shores, there was a broad patch of sunlit meadow, an opening in the dense pine forest. The grass was filled with juicy wild strawberries called ode’iminan, heart berries. All of the plants were either in bloom or bearing dewy fruit. Two thin, scruffy black bears were lapping and scraping the berries into their mouths, heads swinging in the morning grass. Suddenly they looked up, reared back on strong haunches, peered forward with their weak little eyes, and sniffed the breeze with their sensitive, all-seeing noses. Ah, they seemed to say, huffing and chuttering deep in their throats, it is those unpredictable ones, those creatures who sometimes fear us and sometimes kill us! After a moment of hesitation, not wanting to leave before their bellies were bursting, they groaned, jumped away, and hid themselves in the woods.

  They watched from behind the trees. Their noses twitched to catch information about the humans.

  When Omakayas came into the field, she knew that the bears had been there first. There were the tracks, the scattered droppings, the raked-up plants, and even the faint, rotten, yet somehow comforting odor of bear. She gestured to Mama, Nokomis, and Bizheens.

  “Over here, ambe! There’s lots and lots of berries!”

  The rest of the family came after her. Bizheens was now walking comically along on fat bowlegs. He carried a tiny makak made out of birchbark, a gathering basket that Omakayas had made especially for him. He could not remember berries from the year before, they were new to him all over again, so Omakayas carefully showed him how to pluck a berry with his chubby fingers and pop it into his mouth. His eyes widened with joy.

  “Minopogwad ina? Does it taste good?”

  Bizheens’s silky curls bobbed up and down. Just like Omakayas, he’d been adopted into the family. The two were taken in by the bighearted mother of them all, Yellow Kettle, and by Nokomis. Nobody knew where the toddler’s curly hair came from, but Mama was proud of its shine and beauty. She ruffled Bizheens’s hair and arranged it every morning. Deydey teased her, saying she’d spoil Bizheens, but she waved away his words and pointed at the empty black kettle. He’d best go out and find something to fill it!