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Updated: May 11, 2025
I ought to have punished him a little for what he did to Nukewis, but my heart was too full of happiness and my Mystery. And perhaps it was punishment enough to have me staying there in the village with all the folk bringing me presents and neglecting Waba-mooin. I think he was glad when we set out for my own village in the Moon of the Sap Running.
There was a great roaring as of wind and the girl bending over me, wavering and growing thin like smoke. Twice I saw the great head of the moose thrust among the hemlock boughs, and heard Nukewis urging and calling me. She lifted my hands and clasped them round the antlers of the moose; I could feel his warm breath.... He threw up his head, drawing me from my bed, wonderfully light upon my feet.
He moved out once or twice to feed, and I crept after him to gather grass seeds and whatever could be found that the girl could eat. We had had nothing much since leaving the camp at Crooked Water. "And by and by with the hunger and anxiety about Nukewis, which was the name she said she should be called by, my thought was not good any more.
We seemed to move through the storm. I could feel the hairy shoulder of the moose and across his antlers Nukewis calling me. I felt myself carried along like a thin bubble of life in the storm that poured down from the Adirondack like Niagara. At last I slipped into darkness. "I do not know how long this lasted, but presently I was aware of a light that began to grow and spread around me.
I ate I could eat now that I had had my Vision and grew strong. All the upper mountain was white like a tent of deerskin, but where we were there was only thin ice on the edges of the streams. "We stayed there for one moon. I wished to get my strength back, and besides, we wished to get married, Nukewis and I." "But how could you, without any party?" Dorcas wished to know.
"It was my Mystery," said the Onondaga; "my Vision that came to me out of the fasting and the sacrifice. You see, there had been very little food since leaving Crooked Water, and Nukewis " "You gave it all to her." Dorcas nodded. "But still I don't understand?" "The moose had begun to travel down the mountain and like a good brother he came back for me.
Nukewis lifted me up and bound me to his antlers, holding me from the other side, but I was too weak to notice. "We must have traveled that way for hours through the storm until we reached the tall woods below the limit of the snow. When I came to myself, I was lying on a bed of fern in a bright morning and Nukewis was cooking quail which she had snared with a slip noose made of her hair.
As we watched the flame lick it up, all thought of killing went out of my head like the smoke of sacrifice, and my thought was good again. "When the meat she had eaten had made her strong, Nukewis sat up and crossed her hands on her bosom. "'M'toulin, she said, 'the evil that has come on you belongs to me. I will go away with it. I am a witch and bring evil on those who are kind to me.
"'Who says you are a witch? "'All my village, and especially Waba-mooin. I brought sickness on the village, and on you hunger and the breaking of your vow. "'I have seen Waba-mooin, I said. 'I do not think too much of his opinions. "'He is the Shaman of my village, said Nukewis. 'My father was Shaman before him, a much greater Shaman than Waba-mooin will ever be.
Then we sat in our places on either side the fire, and she made me cake of acorn meal, and we made a vow as we ate it that we would love one another always. "We were very happy. I hunted and fished, and the old moose fed in our meadow. Nukewis used to gather armfuls of grass for him. When we went back to my wife's village he trotted along in the trail behind us like a dog.
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