when we hear about it. First they say there’s only one god. If that’s true then the white god must fight with himself. Anybody with ears and eyes ‒” he’d always pause here for a tiny ironic smile ‒“knows about the god in the thundercloud whose voice speaks blackly to the quiet gods in the lake and the summer creeks. And the god of the gentle winds has no love for the god of the blizzard that tears the trees in half and buries the earth. Anybody knows there’s the good gods and the wicked gods, the guardian spirits and the demons. We must listen to the good gods to keep them on our side: they will help those who listen for them. Remember that, little one. But we must also help the gods. Sometimes the demons are too strong and the good gods go into hiding. That is a sad time for the world.”
“What about heaven?” Lily asked, remembering Maman’s assurance that her mother dwelled there.
“Your Mama, who was the dearest White Womens in this world, is not in heaven, little one. That Millar, he tells me heaven is a pretty house with beads and ornaments on it, up over the moon and the stars. That is silliness. The good gods would not build their house up there; they live here in the green world and in the stars themselves. Your Mama’s body is under the earth, but the guardian gods have taken her spirit with them. Wherever they are, she will be also. If your eyes and ears are listening to the good gods, you will hear her voice among theirs. In that way she will always be near you.”
“How do you know the good gods will speak to me?”
“Ah, that is easy. Because you sing their song, and you dance, and you are happy even when you’re sad. And you make Old Samuels happy.”
“I can’t dance,” said Lily.
Old Samuels paused to light his pipe. Lily thought he was finished talking for the day. “But you can. I hear dancing in your voice every day.”
Lily did not like to be teased. For a while she sulked and avoided Old Samuels. She waited in the woods by the gravesite for a demon to whisper something outrageous to her. The old man took no notice. He stayed his usual time and without saying goodbye made his way across the field towards his great-nephew at the edge of the bush.
One night, alone in her loft, Lil woke to the harvest moon igniting the straw at her feet. She caught herself humming:
Hi diddle dum, hi diddle dare-o
Hi diddly iddly, hi diddle air-o
Hi diddle diddly, hi diddle um
Soon she felt the presence of a second part in flawless harmony with her own. She stopped. Her mother’s voice continued, as clear and crystal as the moon’s.
Lily was often alone, and had been as long as she could remember, even when Mama was alive. She was not lonely though. She could sit close by her father for hours while he chopped wood or repaired tools without the need to speak. Often she hummed, sang songs or made them up as she watched whatever scenes were played out before her. By herself in the fields she would lie on her back and dream the clouds into shapes of her wishing, or follow, minute by minute, the extravagant exit of the sun as it boiled and dissolved or tossed itself on the antlered tree-line and gave up its its blood in sunset. The few acres that defined her world pulsated with sights, sounds, smells, with the dramas of birth, struggle and demise. And now there were the guardians and the demons to listen for, the good gods in their hiding to be heeded and helped.
“This bush don’t go on forever,” Old Samuels said that spring, sensing restlessness in the girl. “Half a day’s walk towards the sunset and you’ll come to the River of Light that’s been flowin’ there since the last time the wild gods stirred the earth and created it over again. Two days walk towards the North Star where that river begins and there’s the Freshwater Sea of the Hurons, bigger than the lakes on the moon.” Lily had been dreaming of water ever since the first snow had widened the woods in October. In the midst of the bush, beyond the last blazed trail, she would suddenly imagine before her a stretch of blue, unrippled water, without edges or end, clear as cadmium. Then a crow would caw and the snow-bound trees pop back into view. In the early spring the bubbling of Brown Creek below the East Field would unexpectedly become magnified in her mind as if it were a torrent ripping out the throat of a narrows, roaring until Lily stopped her ears, fearing that she had somehow transgressed, that the demons had indeed inherited part of the earth.
“You’re like Old Samuels, little one. Sometimes you know.”
“I’ll ask the guardians to bring back your eyes,” Lily said.
“So I can see all the wickedness and foolishness again? It’s not like olden times any more. Two days walk south of here and they say you’ll come to roads chopped through the bush, and White Mens drives his wagons on roads made of dead trees, and Chatham is bigger than ten Ojibwa villages”
“Why does Papa go to Chatham?”
“I like your Papa. He’s a good White Mens. I tell him my name is Uhessemau, but he says ‘I can’t say that so I’ll just call you Old Samuels.’ I like the name Old Samuels, so I keep it. Redmen don’t fuss about names; we have many names before we die. If I die with Old Samuels, well that’s okay with me.” The old man puffed on his pipe, but he didn’t answer Lily’s question.
One evening Papa returned at dusk, his haversack full of store-bought bacon and sausages. The fresh provisions were not for storing though. “Start packin,’ Lily. We’re goin’ up to Port Sarnia to watch the ceremonies.”
It was Indian summer. The leaves had turned but not fallen. No wind disturbed their glow in a sun that blazed with more hope than heat. Along the forest track, purged of summer’s mosquitoes, autumnal shadows stretched and stilled. Air in the lungs was claret, bracing. Papa measured his practiced stride to hers, and she floated gratefully in his wake.
They had left home while the sun was still a promise in the east, following the line that linked the four farms to the north. Lily had never been north of Millars’ farm, never seen the River. The beaten path, so familiar to their feet, soon disappeared. There was just enough light to see the blazes, newly slashed, that marked the bush-trail ahead. They were going north, through nowhere to somewhere, at last.
Just as the sun bested the tree-line far to their right, they were joined by Acorn and Sounder. The young men slipped behind Lily without a word. Only when they stopped much later for a drink from a shallow spring and a brief rest did she notice that they were not in hunting attire. Their red and blue sashes against the white calico of their capotswere dazzling, even amongst the maples and elms. Like Papa they carried haversacks stuffed with supplies. Sounder, as usual, grinned broadly at Lily, giving her a glimpse of the merriment that must have once quickened the eyes of Old Samuel himself. Acorn, according to his custom, nodded at her impassively, with no change of expression. Lily stared at the grimace of the black squirrel peering out of the fur on Acorn’s shoulder.
To Papa they spoke in Pottawatomie, the language their parents had adopted when, according to Old Samuels, to utter a word in Attawandaron or Petun meant death. There was no one alive now who remembered those sweet, sharp sounds. Lily thought sadly of her mother’s forgotten lullaby tongue. While they rested, Sounder chattered away to Papa like a jay. Already Lily could pick out some words; the pitch of rising excitement was plain. She detected “presents,”“white soldier”, “big river” and “village”. Papa replied laconically, half listening as he did with Lily. But he was happy. His large hands cradled the back of his head, his eyes glowed with something remembered and anticipated. Lily found herself beside him and put her hand on his knee.
Sounder switched to English. “Little-maiden-with-the-goldenrod-hair is a brave walker, no?”
The ghost of a hand bent over hers…
“Big white general only give presents to womans with black hair. White generals plenty fussy ’bout presents.”
…brushed and settled.
“Sounder like all womans; give presents to everybody.” His eyes danced at the thought. “Even Acorn,” he laughed, and did a little jig around his unimpressed cousin. “Ready to move?” Papa asked, in Acorn’s direction.