The Orenda Joseph Boyden by Joseph Boyden

Author:Joseph Boyden
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Canada

BE STRONG FOR YOUR OWN

Now that we’re near home, I’ve sent Fox and a couple of others ahead to carry the news of our arrival. My own canoe is too heavy with the summer’s bounty. After so long, my love, I’ve stumbled upon a chance to avenge your death and the deaths of our daughters in a way I never imagined possible.

I pulled out my three prisoners’ fingernails myself, then cut slits in their necks and shoulders so they can’t struggle against the leather thongs that bind them. As our pack of canoes wends along the high, rocky banks of the Sweet Water Sea, the wind in our favour, the sun hot on our chests, I daydream not of the next few days caressing our enemies with fire, my love, but of the fishing and the hunting that I will finally do when the leaves fall, the fishing and hunting that I will finally do without the torture of knowing your life might have passed without being truly avenged.

My prisoners have been taking turns singing their heart songs. Two of them I find very good, full of images of their lives, songs of their families and their women and their accomplishments and their hopes for where they’re now heading. These two men are older, one nearly my age, and their voices are strong despite what they know comes, and they sing up into the sky with cries that are as pretty as any bird’s. We’ve found our drumbeat, our prisoners and us, and any canoes within earshot paddle to the rhythm of their voices.

It’s no surprise that the one whose song is weak is also the youngest. The other two have been urging him to show resolve. He’s not much older than a boy, though, and so doesn’t have the experience yet to sing from his heart. He doesn’t have the experience that creates his song. For a moment the other day, I caught myself trying to imagine what he now feels, so young, without the living necessary to navigate in his head what his body will soon go through. I had to stop myself from doing this, as there is no place for emotion of this kind in the next days.

Tomorrow will be our last day, and this evening we decide to stop earlier than usual. The sun hangs on the horizon of the big water, and its light, combined with the breeze, causes the poplar leaves along the shore to shimmer and dance. There’s no rush to empty the canoes and set up camp. We’re almost there. We pack and light our pipes and do the same for our prisoners, eight in all, for they deserve this much. All of us squat on our haunches on the shore and puff, no one talking as we watch the sun sink lower.

I will allow the younger warriors to do tonight’s work as they rise one by one to their duties. This is my favourite spot, my sacred place where I came to do my fast and my quest for a name when I was not much younger than the boy prisoner.

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