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By Root 245 0

it whined or growled a little in its sleep, but that was nothing to worry about. Anaquot ate hungrily and watched as the woman continued to bead the velvet bag. At first, Anaquot thought it was for a baby, as it laced up the middle, but the top looked like the bottom and there was no place for the baby’s head to peep out on the world. Look more closely, said the little voice. If a baby was put inside there, Anaquot thought, it could only be sewn in for burial. As suddenly as she thought this, she imagined that she knew just exactly what the kindly-looking woman was doing. She had put the poison under the tongue of the baby so that, when it nursed, Anaquot would absorb the killing stuff through her breasts. And the poison would eventually kill the baby, too. The woman was looking forward to putting it in the ground.

I don’t know why, thought Anaquot; her heart beat crazily and her brain spun but she managed to shield her knowledge from the other woman. I don’t understand! As she pretended to busy herself with her child she thought hard, and harder yet, until the answer finally came in the shape of her lover’s eyes. She had seen those eyes on the older boy. His own son. Which would make the woman not his sister, aunt, or cousin, but his wife.

All that had happened now laid itself out very clearly before Anaquot. The woman had intercepted the message from Anaquot’s husband and found out everything. She had sent her own brother in the wagon across the ice. That was why the man she thought was her lover’s uncle had been so cold to her, so guarded. The woman had chosen a time when her husband, Anaquot’s love, was gone on the trapline. That way, she could kill Anaquot and the baby and have the bodies stiff outside the door when he returned with his load of furs. Closing her eyes in an effort to contain her fear and panicked anger, Anaquot saw the scene this woman planned: there was her lover returning through the snow, dragging his toboggan laden with bales of skins. How surprised was he to see that she was standing at his cabin door, holding their baby in her arms! How long did it take for him to notice, as he neared, her icy rigidity, her eyes staring blind and her mouth frozen open on a word? How many endless steps before his cry of greeting turned to a wail of horror? How long the quiet, how closed the smile, as his wife slowly opened the door?

I know that I have done a wrong thing, a bad thing, thought Anaquot. But I don’t deserve to die for it! The small whispering voice, which she now thought of as a helpful spirit, answered her somewhat mockingly. You don’t deserve to die? What about your little girl?

My little girl? thought Anaquot. Do you mean the baby in my arms?

The whispering laughter grew lighter and spoke. No, mother, don’t you remember? There was one who gave her life for you.

All of a sudden Anaquot let what happened on the way there flood into her—the ice, the wolves, her daughter. When she remembered, her mind cracked open. She knew that she loved that daughter more than anyone in her entire life. She loved her more than her little brother or her father, more than the baby in her arms and more, even, than her lover. She loved that daughter more than she loved herself. Her mind veered off. She knew if she absorbed the knowledge directly into her heart now, it would kill her. So she sat there humbly and let her mind be taken wherever it would be allowed to go. As she sat there, the voice returned and she grasped at its words with hope.

My things are inside of your things, my bundle is safe in yours, just like when I was inside of you, mother, when you carried me safely into life.

Anaquot busied herself among the few possessions she had brought, and while the woman continued to sew the burial shroud for her baby, she untied the bundle of her skirt. Sure enough, inside her rose red skirt there was her daughter’s smaller bundle of things, which she now took apart and examined.

There was the little hatchet that her father had made, a toy, but sharp and capable of chopping thin poles to make playhouses.