Black Bird
Five Nations Territory (Modern-Day New York)
It had been a week since the French girl stumbled upon his canoe, and Black Bird still wasn’t sure what to make of her. His first impression was that she was beautiful. Not in the traditional way, he supposed. She was beautiful in the way a fine vase was, its ornateness almost secondary to its fragility. She was a delicate, frail thing, to be sure, more than he had ever seen of a person. She struggled to carry the canoe with her thin, pallid arms, and she always looked as if a stiff breeze would knock her over. And though she had proven more of a liability than anything else in their travels, he did not see her as a nuisance. Rather, he felt some strange instinct to protect her, a feeling he was wholly unused to.
Perhaps because of this strange new feeling, or perhaps because he had nothing much to say, the two had hardly spoken since their fateful meeting. What he had said to her usually came in a warning, like when she almost walked straight into a patch of poison ivy. He quickly realized that she was completely and utterly helpless without him, and though a part of him was annoyed by her dependence, he also found some sense of worth in his new role. At first, it was purely reactionary, to prevent her from harming herself. As the days went on, though, Black Bird felt more and more compelled to teach her about the world around them.
“This is Ajidamoowanow,” he would tell her, picking a small bunch of the plant’s fern-like leaves and holding them in his hand to show her. “In our tongue, it means ‘a squirrel’s tail’.”
He held one out to her, and the French girl opened her palms to receive it. She studied it intently in between her hands, using one of them to prod the leaves gently with her finger.
“It does look like a little squirrel’s tail,” she said.
“That’s why we have named it so,” he explained. “You would call it yarrow. The leaves are soft and feathery. And you can always tell it is yarrow from the smell it makes when you grind it. Here.”
He took her hands in his, and ground the leaves gently in her grasp. Then he lifted her hands to her face so she could smell it. Oddly, her cheeks turned pink as he did this. He wondered why white skin worked the way it did—it didn’t seem to stay its usual pallor all the time. When she was tired after a day of dragging the canoe across land, her face would grow bright red. Was this the same as the pink? Was she exhausted, somehow, by his touch? He wasn’t sure.
The girl lowered her face to her open palms, and inhaled the crushed yarrow deeply.
“It’s so strong,” she said, a curious wonder lighting up her soft, rounded face.
Black Bird nodded.
“Remember that smell in your mind,” he told her. “You should always know how to find this plant in the wild.”
“Why is it so important?” She asked.
“It’s a powerful curative. Ideally, we will gather some, grind it, and dry it as a powder, but even if it’s fresh, it can be used to stop bleeding. It can be made into a tea that can help with stomach pains and indigestion, and in large enough batches you can make an ointment to protect yourself from fire.”
“Fire? Like, you won’t burn?”
“That’s right. Sometimes we call it Wabanowganzh instead. The Wabanowin are healers among my people, and this is their signature medicine, hence the nickname Wabanowganzh. They make the ointment of yarrow before their ceremonies and cover their bodies in it. They leap through fire and walk across hot coals for their rituals.”
As he spoke, he noticed that the girl always listened intently. Her orange-brown eyes always lit up with an intense focus. It gave Black Bird a strong impression—she knew that she was helpless. She knew that this world was a great mystery to her, and she did not want it to be. She was not content to be ignorant. She knew, as the late Professor Härkönen had taught him, that complacency was one of the greatest evils man indulged in. And it was this determination in her eyes that began to endear her to Black Bird. In many ways, he saw himself in her, in the fire of ambition hidden within that feeble, sheltered girl.
Still, besides these brief lessons, the two hardly spoke to one another. At least for the first week. Then one day, as they rowed down the river, the girl suddenly began to talk.
“So what’s your story, then?” She asked him.
He craned his neck to look back at her. She looked to him like a young deer, innocent and doe-eyed. He had learned by now that her name was Anne-Marie, though he knew little else about her. And while there was something about her that captivated him, though a curiosity burned in him to learn more about her, he fought against it. His instincts told him to distance himself as much as he could, to remain strangers to this girl. After all, he knew all too well what fate had befallen all those close to him. He wasn’t strong enough to lose anyone else he cared about. If he could not care at all, then, he could never feel the pain of that intimacy, even if it meant forgoing the love and joy that came with it. It was a trade-off he was more than willing to accept, still reeling from his fresh scars of snake bites.
“Don’t have one, really,” he said, dismissing her with a shrug. “I’m afraid I’m not very interesting.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true. A boy like you, traveling alone, to New England of all places? That’s at least odd, wouldn’t you say?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Anne-Marie raised an inquisitive eyebrow. Black Bird tried to ignore her gaze, but his prevarication seemed to only intrigue her more.
“Well, don’t you think we ought to get to know one another, if we’re traveling together like this?” She asked him.
Black Bird shrugged again, keeping his eyes on the river ahead.
“Not really,” he said. “We’ll part ways as soon as I find a place to drop you off. It’s too dangerous for you to come on my journey—I’ll find some French fort or somewhere that’s safe.”
“I told you already. I can’t go back to New France.”
“And why’s that?”
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Nothing from the girl. Black Bird turned back after a few seconds, and saw that her eyes were lost in the waters around them, her hands gripping her dress, knuckles white. Something he said struck a chord with her, and Black Bird felt a pang of guilt.
“Guess you’ve got a story, too,” he said. “But I won’t ask you to tell it. I can respect your privacy, see?”
He turned back to the front, keeping his mind on the rhythm of his paddle.
“Do you know the Wendat people?” Anne-Marie suddenly asked.
Black Bird’s grip tightened around his oar. He saw his father’s corpse lying still in his deathbed. He felt the comb in his hands as he brushed the dead hair. He mourned again for a life he would never know, for a heritage he could never hope to claim.
“I’ve heard of them,” he said, trying to not let his bitterness show.
“A Wendat man saved my life,” she said. “More than once, actually. And all I did in return was ruin his. I just wanted to help, you know, to thank him. I… I bought him a weapon as a gift, only to learn that I practically declared war on him. That’s what it means, in their culture. And I got him killed because of it.”
Anne-Marie caught herself.
“I… I’m sorry for rambling,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You probably know all about it.”
“You’re only half right,” Black Bird replied.
“What? What do you mean?”
“The gift of a weapon can be a declaration of war,” he explained. “Just as it can be a declaration of peace. You just did it wrong.”
“I… I don’t understand.”
Black Bird stopped rowing for a moment. He scooted towards her in the canoe. Despite his subconscious telling him to close himself off to her, he found it harder with everything she spoke. It was more than just his desire to teach her—he found his chest swelling with a fervent pride for his father’s people, for his people, as he spoke of their culture and customs.
“It’s all about expectations,” Black Bird told her. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that your gift to him was a surprise.”
“Well… yes. Of course it was.”
“That’s the issue. He wasn’t expecting the weapon.”
“I don’t understand. What’s the difference?”
“Imagine for a second that two nations are at war. We can say my people, the Odawa, and the Wendat, just for example. Now, let us say that we have grown tired of fighting, and wish to make peace. The way we would do this is through a gift of weapons, same as your gift. One of our chiefs would bring a tomahawk, and one of theirs, and mutually they would give their axes to each other, and then bury them in the ground. When you solve an argument, in my father’s tongue, he would call it ‘burying the hatchet’. This is highly symbolic—it shows that there is no need for these weapons, and that there is significant trust in giving another nation your weapon. But what you have to understand is that this is an exchange—it is mutual, and it is communicated beforehand. If we were at peace with the Wendat, and we sent a messenger to deliver him an axe, it would be very different. We would be declaring war with him by showing him he has need to use this hatchet now. Does that make sense?”
“I… I think so,” Anne-Marie said. Her eyes told him a different story, though—they sat thoughtfully, laden with his words, all the while burdened by some other worry.
Black Bird turned, planning to leave her to her thoughts, but she spoke again.
“So that’s my story,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Says who?” Black Bird said. “You told me that of your own volition, and now you demand the same of me?”
“Why not? You speak of a mutual exchange, so let’s exchange mutually. You ask me a question, and I’ll ask you one. And we both promise to answer truthfully.”
“And why would I agree to this?”
“Because you’re not as aloof and standoffish as you want me to think,” she said. “You’re a kind person—I can tell. Plus, despite your skill with the language, I’ll bet you haven’t actually spoken to French folks that much. Maybe the riff-raff traders that come by your village, but there’s a whole other world you have no idea about. And you want to learn about it, just as much as I want to learn about you.”
“Hmph.”
Black Bird returned to his oar, and began rowing down the river again.
“Well?” Anne-Marie asked impatiently.
“Hold on,” Black Bird returned, annoyed. “Let me think of a question.”
The two sat there in silence for a while. Black Bird hoped it would last forever, but he could feel the girl’s hot gaze burn onto the back of his head. He came up with something quickly, just to rid him of the discomfort.
“So you killed a Wendat man,” he said. “But that’s not a death sentence for someone like you, is it? That’s a nice dress—I’ll bet you come from money.”
Anne-Marie looked down at her clothes, and her face reddened again. What did that mean? Black Bird wanted so badly to know. Was it embarrassment? Perhaps. She looked at her own clothes as if she had no idea they told the world exactly who she was, like she had never even considered it.
“I’m a noble,” Anne-Marie explained. “Well, I was a noble. Not all that noble, though. There are levels, layers, a hierarchy among us. My family was really at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak.”
“Ah, the lowliest of the high-borns. Such a horrid fate, I’m sure, to be the envy of the thousands still born beneath you. And what of your noble family now?”
The girl wrung her hands in her lap.
“They’re dead,” she said, pain in her voice. “Our house was crumbling even before I was born. Before my father passed, he practically sold my brother and I to another family, in the hopes that they’d salvage the last shreds of our reputation.”
She looked out to the water, and Black Bird saw an endless well of suffering in her amber eyes.
“I was supposed to find him there,” she said. “My brother. But… I don’t know what happened. The Iroquois, they attacked the fort. There were bodies everywhere. I could smell all the blood…”
Tears welled in her eyes, and began to cascade down her lily-white cheeks.
“I… I am a horrible sister. I looked through that horrid maze of corpses, and a small part of me hoped I would see my brother. I just… I just wanted to know for sure, you know? But he wasn’t there. And I feel so guilty now for running. What if I left him behind? What if he needed me? He’s always looked after me, ever since I was a child. And I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. And the wondering and the worry hurts more than anything else.”
Anne-Marie could keep herself together no longer. She burst into tears, cradling her face in her hands. Black Bird stopped rowing. The canoe slowed to a lull, pulled lightly by the meager tow of the stream. He sat there for a while, at the other end of the canoe, giving her space and time to grieve for the first time. As she sobbed, he thought back to the carnage of White Sky’s village. The frantic cries of his friends and neighbors, the stink of gore and ash. Those memories were a mirror to hers—all the same pain, all the same heartbreak. His mind screamed at him to shut himself off from them, to abandon the girl to her own sorrow. His heart wouldn’t let him. Her anguish, her sorrows—they were just the same as his. How could he not feel them, too?
Still, he could not comfort her. He didn’t know where to begin. There was nothing he could say to change the past, and at the end of the day, they were still strangers to one another. Nor could he cry along with her—his tears had been spent already, and all that was left was a void inside him. All he could do was sit there as she cried.
He sat on one end of the canoe, she on the other, an infinite distance between them. They were worlds apart—that much he knew. A French girl of noble blood, a Turtle Island boy born with nothing. A hapless child stumbling through the wild, a battle-scarred veteran of its many horrors. And yet, despite all, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they shared something more powerful. That haunted look in her eye, one that told him she had seen the ugly of this world. She had everything she held dear ripped from her, just as he had. Perhaps, despite everything, they were one and the same.