Peacemaker Read online

  chapter seven

  SOMETHING USEFUL

  The visit of the two messengers to Atatarho had not made things better. When Holds the Door Open and Burnt Hair had related what happened to the gathering of everyone in their peaceful village, the shock that everyone felt was like a blow from one of those clubs in the gauntlet. There could be no return. They were truly on their own. If anything, their mission to speak with the cruel chief had just made things worse. If they did go back to Onondaga, none of them might survive the gauntlet. But if they stayed in Kanata, after the passage of two moons Atatarho might still send his warriors to attack them.

  Okwaho shook his head and opened his eyes to another day. No matter how long he stayed in bed, nothing would be different. His best friend would still be gone. And their small village, even though they had tried to find peace, was no longer safe.

  He thought again about the decision he and Tawis made that day—to go out, just the two of them, to the stream. Had it been his idea or Tawis’s? Like so many things they did together—used to do together—it had been as if they were one mind in complete agreement. They hardly had to speak to know what their plans were that day. Go fishing.

  As always, their mothers had not forbidden them to go out beyond the safety of their little walled village. After all, they knew, as did every mother of their nation, that to tell a young person not to do something could have the opposite result. To forbid a child any course of action might waken that small voice within that would eventually lead to their doing the thing they were told not to do.

  To go fishing would be safe. That was what they’d foolishly believed. Without the voice of Atatarho constantly urging his young men to go and raid their enemies, they’d imagined that war would not touch them. They would have peace in their new village. The two of them could venture out on their own and not be in danger.

  What a fool I was! Okwaho thought. Believing in peace?

  He felt the anger in him growing again. Anger at himself as well as at those who took his best friend from him. And as the anger grew, the face of Atatarho came into his mind. A man so filled with anger that it twisted his body. Was that how he would eventually look?

  Okwaho shook his head. The anger inside him was like a spiderweb, trapping his thoughts. He wiped his face with the palms of his hands. Enough! He had to do something.

  He swung his legs out over the edge of his sleeping rack and dropped lightly to the floor of the longhouse. He unhooked his wooden spoon from his belt, where it always hung connected by a rawhide cord with a toggle at the end of it.

  Okwaho knelt by the cooking pot, dipped out a spoonful of venison soup, and ate it. In addition to the deer meat there was corn and beans and squash mixed in, along with the seasoning of salt and dried sassafras leaves ground and stirred into the stew to thicken it. He also tasted the hint of sweetness from the maple sugar his mother sometimes added. The soup was warm and good and he felt its warmth in his throat and then his belly. Good food was truly a medicine. For a moment it almost made him forget his anger and regret. Almost.

  He ate more of the soup, feeling the strength of the deer that had given its life enter his own body, feeling the love that his mother put into every meal that she prepared. Perhaps his father was out hunting right now, seeking more game to sustain them. And his mother was surely doing something useful as well. Perhaps she was smoke-tanning a deerskin or working on a pair of moccasins.

  While he, Okwaho, was doing nothing for anyone.

  What could he do to be useful?

  The stockade wall, that was it. He’d heard Burnt Hair talking about how it needed to be reinforced on the side toward the sunrise.

  He poured some water into his spoon from the clay pot set off to the side and drank it. He wiped his spoon dry with the corner of his loin cloth and then stuck the toggle back under his belt.

  It was a bright day. Elder Brother Sun was giving his warmth gladly to the earth. Okwaho smelled the scent of the smoke from fire across the compound where his mother and some of the other women were sitting next to a set of racks where deerskins were drying. He nodded at his mother, who nodded back to him before going back to her task of softening deerskin by chewing it before stitching it into the uppers of moccasins. Bird Flying, the mother of Tawis, was there too. She did not look up at him. She almost never looked at him now.

  Okwaho bit his lip and continued walking. Three men were working on preparing a post to be added to the stockade wall. One of them was Burnt Hair. Okwaho went over to them. He didn’t need any instructions on what had to be done. While they were scraping the post, which was as thick as Burnt Hair’s muscular thigh and twice the height of a tall man, someone should be readying the hole into which its base would be dropped. Okwaho knelt by that hole. It was not yet ready. It had only been dug down to ankle depth and would have to be at least four times deeper to hold the stockade post in place. A stick that had been shaped from an oak branch into a spoon-shaped digging tool was there on the ground. When any sort of tool was left out that way, Okwaho knew, it was meant for someone to use.

  He began to dig, sometimes reversing the digging tool to use its sharpened other end to loosen soil and pry out stones. As he did so, a new song came to him.

  Digging, digging

  I am digging

  Stones rise up

  As I am digging

  He piled the earth to one side of the hole, the stones to the other. Those rocks, pounded in around the post, would hold it even more firmly.

  As always, the song made things easier. He was not sure how many times he repeated the words, but soon the hole was deep enough. His part of the job was now done. Lifting a post into the hole took at least two grown men.

  Okwaho stood and looked around. What else could he do? He walked along the row of posts already in place. When he pushed against them they all held firm—except for one. It moved slightly. It needed earth and stones packed into the ground on the other side.

  Okwaho went out and walked along the wall. From the other side he could hear the men working. He located the loose post, placed his digging stick next to it, and went to find stones of the right size. It took some time. He had to walk into the forest till he found a hill with loose stones. When he returned with a heavy armload, he placed the stones on the ground and knelt to begin work. However, just as he was lifting the first stone to pound it into the earth he’d loosened at the base of the post, he heard something. Two men talking softly on the other side of the wall, not aware that he was there. Burnt Hair and his father, Holds the Door Open. Okwaho started to say something. It wasn’t right to listen in on other people talking without their knowing.

  But then he realized they were talking about Tawis and him.

  “There still must be something we can do,” Burnt Hair said. “Were we wrong to decide not to try to plan a raid against them?”

  Yes, Okwaho thought. Yes. Go raid the Oneidas and rescue Tawis!

  “No,” Holds the Door Open said, his voice firm. “We moved to this place to escape from war. If we raided, it would have made all our efforts meaningless. Tawis is young and strong. They will not treat him badly, I am sure of that. They were raiding—just as our people have done for more years than can be counted—to get young people to adopt and take the place of others who were killed in warfare. He may be safer among the Oneidas than here in Kanata if Atatarho does send his warriors to attack us. In time, Tawis may become one of them and even forget his life among us.”

  Those words felt like a knife being stabbed into Okwaho’s heart. Could Tawis really forget his old life, forget his best friend? He bit his lip.

  “That may all be true,” Burnt Hair said. “But what worries me more is how your son is taking this. The two of them were so close, it was as if they had one mind. They were always laughing and doing things together. But now Okwaho walks about as if a dark cloud has come to rest around him
. Even if his friend one day no longer remembers his old life, Okwaho will not forget him.”

  Okwaho put the digging stick down, taking care not to make a sound. He stood up and walked away from those voices that usually gave him comfort but now just deepened his feelings of hopelessness and anger.

  chapter eight

  CARRIES

  Okwaho walked back around the far side of the wall—away from his father and Burnt Hair. Trees and bushes had been cleared away for more than the distance of a long spear throw all around their village. As Okwaho walked, he looked toward the edge of the forest nearest him. At any moment the silence of the forest might be broken by a war cry. Or the swish of an arrow as it came flying through the air toward him.

  He finished rounding the stockade wall and walked back through the gate.

  Nowhere is safe, he thought.

  That thought, too, made him angry.

  The little ones, the six other children of their village, were heading toward him, carrying armloads of sticks they’d gathered from close to the stockade. All of them were much younger than Okwaho, and seemed free from care—for now.

  With Tawis and Clouds Forming gone, Okwaho was the senior young person in their little village. None of the others were over seven winters old. All of them looked up to Okwaho and sought his guidance.

  Before Tawis had been taken, Okwaho had enjoyed such attention. He’d been kind to those children, tried to provide a good model for them just as his elders did for him. He’d even told them stories and sometimes sang songs. But now the anger twisting inside made him impatient. When he spoke to those children, it was never more than a few words.

  The biggest of the little ones, Muskrat, came up with an armful of sticks.

  “’Kwaho?” Muskrat said, dumping his small armful of sticks on a pile near the central fire. “What should we do now?”

  Okwaho stared at him.

  What is the matter with you? Are you stupid? That was what he thought of shouting as Muskrat looked up with trusting eyes. It was only with great effort that he held back those hurtful words.

  “Gather stones,” he said, pointing with his lips in the direction of the corn field. “Birds.”

  “Nyah wenha, ’Kwaho,” Muskrat said. “Thank you. I will do a good job of keeping watch.”

  A smile on his face, Muskrat turned and ran toward the corn field, followed by the five other little ones who had held back respectfully when their leader came up to Okwaho, but now were shrieking in delight.

  Shooing away birds was their favorite thing to do. It had once been that way for Okwaho back at the big village when he was their age.

  Just as had been done at the big village, a small platform had been built in the middle of the corn field. It was a man’s height off the ground and just big enough to hold either one grown person or two or three small children sitting in the midst of the several piles of stones that were all just the right size for throwing. When flocks of crows came, looking to pull up the tender new shoots of corn, those stones were used to drive the birds away. That platform also provided a vantage point for whoever was up there to watch for any threat that might be approaching. Doing that work was not just fun, it also made the little ones feel important.

  As Okwaho watched them disappear down the hill toward the corn field, he shook his head. It seemed so long ago when he was enjoying life and free of care like that.

  I will never be happy again, he thought.

  He went back into his family’s longhouse and climbed onto his sleeping rack. He felt tired, but was sure he would not sleep.

  I will just stay here for a short while. Then I will go try to find something else to do.

  Yet when he closed his eyes, the Sleepmaker found him.

  He was not sure how long he slept, but when he woke, it was dark outside. He’d slept away the rest of the day. Something had wakened him. What was it? Then he heard it again. A clear, strong voice.

  A stranger’s voice coming from somewhere outside. And that voice was being answered by the murmur of other voices in response. Okwaho slipped on his moccasins and walked to the door of the longhouse

  “That cannot be,” a loud voice said. Burnt Hair.

  “It is what was said,” the stranger’s voice replied.

  “Then perhaps it is so,” a calm, very familiar voice replied. Okwaho’s father, Holds the Door Open.

  Okwaho pushed the skin door covering aside and looked out. Some people were sitting in a circle around the council fire. Others stood gathered around to listen. It looked as if it was everyone in their village. He knew all of them except for the stranger they were all looking at who sat cross-legged by the fire.

  It was hard not to look at him. Not only was he a large, strongly muscled, good-looking man; there were finely drawn blue tattoos on his body. Fish designs decorated each of his cheeks. A bird that looked to be a blue jay spread its wings across his chest. Concentric circles were drawn around his arms and legs.

  It was impressive. Many men and women had tattoos, but this man was the first he had ever seen with so many. Such designs were not just meant to look good. They always signified something deeper. If an image came to someone in a dream, it brought power once it was cut into that person’s skin.

  Having so many tattoos meant that the stranger Okwaho was looking at had much determination and courage. It was a painful process to get a tattoo. First the shape was traced on your body using a piece of charcoal. Then, with either a sharpened bone or a thin-edged piece of flint, the picture would be cut. Painful as it was, that was not the end of it. While the wound was still bleeding, charcoal dust or a special mixture that included the color blue would be put into it. For days after, the one tattooed had to endure not just the pain, but also the constant itching that couldn’t be scratched without ruining the design.

  Holds the Door Open nodded at Okwaho and then at the ground next to him. Okwaho’s mother, Wolf Woman, sitting with the other headwomen across from Holds the Door Open, nodded at her son. Okwaho walked over to sit next to his father.

  Okwaho had always felt close to his father. But it was a boy’s uncle, the brother of his mother and thus of his own clan, who was supposed to be the most important man in his life. Every father still cared about his own son. Also, Okwaho’s father had no sisters who had survived to adulthood. So Holds the Door Open had no nephews. He had also been the lifelong best friend of At the Edge of the Sky, Okwaho’s uncle. Their friendship had been as close as that of Okwaho and Tawis, a tie of brotherhood stronger than blood. Until At the Edge of the Sky was killed by enemy raiders, the two of them had shared the duties of teaching Okwaho.

  “Tell us again,” Holds the Door Open said to the stranger. “Let my son hear your story.”

  The tattooed man nodded. Then he gently clapped his hands together and spread them out to either side. “It is worth telling often,” he said. “So I, Carries, will tell you again. And this time I will tell you more.”

  The man who had just named himself as Carries did not have the accent of an Onondaga. His accent identified him as a member of the Longhouse Nation closest to the sunrise direction—the Kanienkehaka, the People of the Flint Stone.

  Carries leaned forward and smoothed the soft earth around the fire. Then with a long index finger, he drew a rough circle. Then he made a mark below it. “This is the Beautiful Lake and this is our village, four days’ walk from here. It began there.”

  Okwaho listened closely as Carries described what happened five moons ago. He and three other men of his nation had been fishing by the shore of the lake, which had finally become free of ice with the coming of spring. They were sitting by a fire they’d made, readying their fish traps. Suddenly, one of the men had dropped the fish trap he was holding and picked up his bow and arrows.

  “Look!” he shouted. “Look!”

  There was something far out on the water to
the north. Was it a floating log or a strange water creature? Then they made out what it was. It was a man in a canoe coming from across the lake. They all picked up weapons. Those on the other side of the lake were of the Wendat Nation. Enemies. But as that canoe came closer, the man with the bow and arrows lowered his weapon because what they saw was so strange. That canoe looked to be made of white, glistening stone. The man in it was not holding a shield or dressed in the armor made of slats of wood fastened together that the Wendats sometimes wore into battle. All he had on was clothing made of white buckskin—almost the same color as his canoe. His arms were spread wide open, showing he held no weapons. And though he was not paddling, the wind blowing at his back was pushing him and his canoe that seemed made of marble toward the four men on the shore.

  Carries laughed. “It was only when he got much closer that we saw his canoe—even though it was not like our dugouts—was not made of stone. It was pure white because it was made of birch bark. But, still, the way he came toward us, arms open, chest exposed, surprised us. You know how it is these days. The first thing when you see a stranger is to guess that he is an enemy. The second thing is to kill him before he can try to kill you.”

  Carries turned to look at Burnt Hair and Holds the Door Open. “Again, I must thank you for allowing me into your village and not killing me when you saw me. I had heard your little village was one opposed to fighting. That is why I came here first.”

  “Huh,” Burnt Hair snorted. “We can always kill you later.”

  “He is joking,” Holds the Door Open said.

  “A little,” Burnt Hair said, making a serious face. Then everyone laughed. Teasing was always a good thing—a way to lighten the atmosphere and sometimes remind someone they were not more important than anyone else.

  Holds the Door Open reached into the fire and pulled out one of the ears of corn that had been roasting there. He handed it to Carries. “Here,” he said. “Sharing food with you proves that you are welcome here as a guest.”