The Orenda Joseph Boyden by Joseph Boyden Read Free Book Online Page A

cover him with bark. My father and his brothers, they stood guard over his body all through the snowmelt. And all this allowed everyone to say goodbye properly. But how do I say goodbye to my family? I didn’tknow they’d be taken away so suddenly. So quick. Despite the dreams, I didn’t know it was the morning when I awoke on the trail that today would be the last day of my family’s life. The sun shone bright on the snow, and braver winter birds came close in the hope I’d offer them a tiny scrap of deer fat. It’s only now I realize they came to forewarn us of what soon approached. But we paid no mind, for we didn’t expect to find our enemy in our winter place, so far away from his own home. But he came. And he took. And now he wants to become my father. But what he doesn’t yet know is that I have special gifts, and it won’t be long before I’m ready to show them.
    I’ve stayed up on my perch, hoping the people in this longhouse will forget about me, forget that I exist. Those first few days when I arrived, I planned to try and escape, but the one named Bird watches me too closely, even though it appears he doesn’t. Now I know I can’t escape, and a death song begins to form in my head and I try to find the song by humming just under my breath, but it won’t come to me. I want to be with my parents and my brother. I don’t want to be here surrounded by those who slaughtered them. I am trying, now, to learn how to die.
    The deepest night is when I sneak out of my warm robe to go outside and relieve myself, only having to do this every other night since I barely drink any water or eat any ottet. Despite how quiet I am, I know Bird awakes and listens for me to return. He can read my thoughts. He knew about my wanting to slip away. He knows about my wanting to die. He’s a smart hunter. He watches everything. But I watch, too.
    Early, early, before the light today, he awoke. I didn’t hear him right away but felt the cold on my face when the door to the longhouse opened, and when I searched for his form in the dark I saw it wasn’t there. I considered running away into the storm blowing outside but soon slipped back into bad dreams, flashes of things that scare me. Wolves. Being alone and lost in the forest. The spirit that lives under the water. And then I awoke to cold on my lips and the smell of sickness in my throat. I opened my eyes to see the bearded man hovering over me like a great charcoal bird, his eyes burning and wet, his whispersspitting onto my face. He held my father against my mouth, against my lips, as if to take the breath from me. My father didn’t want to do this to me. I know it. And so I began to scream, to struggle to get the Crow away from me, biting his hand hard until he let go, and when I screamed again it’s as if he flew backward, my father flying away with him, too. He just sprang backward like he wasn’t human at all, disappearing to the ground below.
    I crawled from my robe and peered down to see Bird crouched over the Crow. I could tell by the tension in his body that Bird was preparing to kill him. And despite not wanting to, I opened my mouth, and in a voice I hadn’t used in many days, I spoke aloud, my throat strained from the lack of water and the lack of talk.
    I told Bird that my name is Snow Falls and that this Crow had stolen the spirit of my father, that he kept him imprisoned in the glowing being around his neck, that if Bird killed the Crow now, my father would be his prisoner forever and I could never become Bird’s child. I don’t know where the words came from, but they came, and I watched the killing tension ease in Bird’s shoulders. I told him, finally, what I’ve been dreaming, what only right then I could put words to. An illness was slipping into this village, into this very longhouse, and even if he killed the Crow now, it was too late to stop. It had arrived. Killing him would only make things worse. The words, they poured out of me and were