The Birchbark House: Chapters 9–11

“Some dreams are so powerful they are beyond our humble ability to comprehend,” said Deydey.

And, yes, she had now donned her coat!

Instead of the dyed quills Grandma used so skillfully, Ten Snow had sewn the bag with trade beads bought in precious packets at the company store.

It was harder, more exacting work than she thought.

When I was just a little girl, said Nokomis, her voice lilting high, and dropping low, her voice far away, I was told by my grandfather, who I lived with, who raised me, never to fish the dark side of the lake.

He was stingy with me.

Omakayas stopped to watch her grandmother step along with such care and dignity she seemed to be crossing a rushing stream on small stones.

Around the middle of the night, everybody stopped to partake of the feast—a big kettle of venison and corn soup was brought in by the fire and children were sent back to houses and lodges for birchbark makuks and tin bowls.

Although the visitor’s body was taken to the farthest end of the island, although everything he’d touched was burned, including the lodge he’d stayed in and the blankets he wore, although the generous family who let him in purified themselves in the sweat lodge, burned all of their belongings, and threw themselves upon the mercy of the mission, fear abounded in the settlement.

Although the visitor’s body was taken to the farthest end of the island, although everything he’d touched was burned, including the lodge he’d stayed in and the blankets he wore, although the generous family who let him in purified themselves in the sweat lodge, burned all of their belongings, and threw themselves upon the mercy of the mission, fear abounded in the settlement.

Had the visitor left another, more horrible visitor behind? Sickness? Death?
Angeline’s face was taut with worry.

Although Nokomis sat next to Mama in a stupor of exhaustion and did not at first speak to Omakayas, she nodded encouragingly at Angeline, who slept easily now, her fever broken, her hands limp on her blanket.

She held him when he melted into a troubled sleep. When his breath rasped. When his cough deepened.

Opening her eyes, she knew at once what had happened and the bleak knowledge made her shut her eyes again.

Back in her own blankets, she immediately sank into a fierce oblivion.

Often, in her mind’s eye, she saw Neewo’s tiny makazins, forlorn in the firelight, as they sagged, tipped over when in his fever he kicked them off.

She kept badgering Old Tallow to bring her a mirror, but the old woman refused until one day Angeline screamed at her, shockingly, that she wanted to see herself.

Pain and loss showed in deep furrows around her sister’s mouth.

She made a stronger concoction, burned sweetgrass braids, fanned Omakayas, too, but the deep cold seemed to have seized her heart.

“Don’t sleep now,” said Tallow gruffly, “the sky is clear. Your brother is sliding on the lake. Go out. Be childish.”

Eventually, as though from far away, Omakayas felt the tentative brush of Tallow’s tough, creased palm, and heard the rustle of her clothes as she got up and quietly left.

One day, he notched his counting stick and spoke to Omakayas.

His eyes flashed and the shadow of a grin twisted on his face, the intrigue of the old Deydey who’d never been sick.

The chess set was always reverently kept in its own blanket, hidden in a corner of the room with the medicine bags and Deydey’s ceremonial clothes.

He did not allow his family to come and watch him, for those who gathered were often rough: layarounds, drinkers, wintering voyageurs who idled their time with gambling and trader’s rum.

She usually had more luck with her sharp lance, but claimed that out of hunger her arms were weakening and her aim with the razor-keen instrument was off.

Even her snares, set so cleverly just where a rabbit usually wanted to and needed to hop, yielded almost none at all.

“You are mixed blood,” jeered Old Tallow, pleased to be in a mock exchange of insults, “wisikodewinini, half-burnt wood. Am I speaking to the white half or the Anishinabe?”

Nobody could, for after a few weeks of kind weather the earth had frozen with a vengeance, and spring seemed far away.

Nanabozho waited and waited a long time for Muskrat to come up to the top of the water. When he floated up to the top, he was dead from his exertion.

He sat above the fire on a thick twig perch Deydey had fastened between the mortared stones.

Omakayas groped for her stick, but suddenly the yellow dog had it in his teeth.

With that, Old Tallow brought the blunt end of her ax down on the yellow dog’s head.

“I dreamed last night,” she told him. “And now you must do everything just as I say.”
Deydey listened intently.

Deydey knew when Grandma dreamed, especially in this extremity, it was a true dream and must be followed.