Timofei Osipovich blusters through the whole meal. He tells stories about the hunt that make it sound as though he tracked, cornered, killed, and slaughtered both animals by himself. The Aleuts don’t contradict him, and, as usual, Ovchinnikov only laughs. My husband sits so close to me I can feel him chewing. He says little.
Then Timofei Osipovich says, “Well, speedily a tale is spun but with much less speed a deed is done! Congratulations are in order. I ought to have said something earlier, but I wanted to wait until we were all together. To the glory of offspring!” He raises an imaginary goblet.
Ovchinnikov nods and cries, “To your health and happiness.”
I look across the house. Inessa and the other girl are watching. Inessa’s belly is big enough that it must be uncomfortable for her to get down and up from the floor. I smile at her, and she gives me a little smile before turning and saying something to the other girl. After that, they both focus on their meals. There’s no sign of the man with the scar on his chest, but I’m certain now he’s become Inessa’s husband.
Well before the sun rises, my husband is stirred from sleep to go fishing. The octopus bait awaits.
“Why so early?” I whisper sleepily.
“We have to get out to the halibut banks before dawn,” he says.
“Who’s we?”
“The koliuzhi. Ovchinnikov is coming, too, but not Timofei Osipovich.”
“They’ll be heartbroken without one another,” I murmur and stretch, and he laughs. “I wish you were staying instead of him.”
“I can tell them I won’t go.”
“No!” I cry, fully awake, thinking of Makee.
He laughs softly. “I’ll be back early. Don’t worry.”
“Kolya—before you leave—would you find Polaris and wish her good morning from me?”
“I will.” He kisses me.
Two men start digging up the earth. We’re a long way from the houses, in a huge meadow. The grass is as dry as tinder, and it ripples when a breeze catches it. But the breezes are slight today. It’s the hottest it’s been since we arrived on this coast. I’m sweating after our long walk, most of which was uphill. Women, children, and men all carried something: long-handled tools, large baskets for carrying water, and a meal. And it’s because of that meal I know we’ll be here awhile.
Timofei Osipovich and the Aleuts are here, too.
The meadow is warm and smells of the dried grass and the freshly turned earth. Copper-coloured butterflies with gold flecks on their wings flit about. Small black flies cluster around us. I brush them away as best as I can, but each one is replaced by another three.
Many of the people hover and talk while the two men dig. They overturn the dark earth in clumps, and in one, there’s a startlingly pink earthworm that squirms until it finds its way back to the cool underground.
“What are they doing?” I ask Timofei Osipovich.
“They’re going to burn the field.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know? Even old serfs like me know,” he scoffs. “It’s ancient practice.”
“So, what’s it supposed to do?”
“It makes the soil richer. The ash goes into the dirt. Whatever is growing here will grow stronger next year because of it.”
“Won’t they burn down the forest?”
“I doubt it.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you think it makes sense. It works. People figured it out a long time ago. Long before your Tsar started preaching about the Enlightenment, and stopped listening to the people.”
He sounds like my mother when my parents would disagree.
The men who are digging create a narrow ditch as long as a koliuzhi house. Then they start to curve the ends of the trench inward. Two men join them, starting a parallel ditch some distance away. They eventually curve the ends of their trench inward as well, until the two meet and form a large circle.
The Aleuts and a couple of Kwih-dihch-chuh-aht men are sent away for water. The baskets bounce on their backs until they disappear into the woods.
The women clear away dead grass. We comb with our fingers like we’re brushing hair and make a pile. When our heap grows tall, the youngest children stomp it down. They throw themselves into their task, rolling, laughing, and pushing one another. A girl shrieks when she uncovers a snake. It slithers away, children chasing it until they lose sight of it.
While they’re picking dry grass from their hair and clothing, and throwing it at one another, the water bearers return.
Then I smell smoke. An older man with a hide breechclout rises from a crouch. He’s just lit the heap of dry grass. The children cluster around the tiny flames and tease one another. How did the old man manage to light a fire? Did he bring an ember?
Does he have a tinderbox?
Smoke billows toward my face. I back away, and circle around until I come to the other side. The flames are spreading rapidly toward me, but the smoke flies in the opposite direction. People poke the fire with sticks, not stirring it up, but containing it. They stay one step ahead of the fire’s leading edge. Whenever a wayward flame extends like a tongue beyond the outside of the trench, it’s doused with water. The burning edges sizzle and black smoke rises.
The flames are cleverly shepherded into a circle that burns in on itself.
Everyone’s drawn to the fire. It’s easy to come close because it’s so contained. Right at my feet, a fern catches and flares, as copper as the butterflies’ wings, and it remains copper-coloured while everything around it turns black and grey. What strange alchemy. It should have fallen as ash. But it continues to hold its feathery shape, glowing like it’s being forged at the blacksmith’s.
I haven’t seen a calendar in many months. It’s not spring. But I know.
“Timofei Osipovich!” I call.
It’s my mother’s fiery fern. I’m certain of it.
“It shows itself only one day a year,” she’d told me. “The one who finds it will become rich.”
I hadn’t believed her. There were many ways to become rich and none of them involved finding a fern in a forest. But she’d told me to stop thinking of wealth so narrowly. “These days, that’s what they’ll tell you, but the old, old peasants, they know better. And they all say the fiery fern promises prosperity in wisdom and grace.”
Everything about the koliuzhi’s place has surprised and confounded me. I was told this land was barren and desolate and sometimes it is, but mostly it’s not. I was also told the people are brutal and unforgiving—perhaps some are but I’ve seen generosity that I’ll never be able to repay. Our Enlightenment has given us knowledge and harmony, but perhaps it’s just a raindrop falling into an ocean. Why shouldn’t the fiery fern show itself here?
“Timofei Osipovich!” I cry again. I look around, trying to locate him.
Smoke envelopes me. Ash fills my throat. I cough and choke. The smoke billows up again, a grey wall, and all I can see through it is the glow of the fiery fern. I must not lose sight of it. This thought sticks with me as I tumble through the smoke and into the fire.
Light. Smoke. Crackling. A jerk on my arm so strong it could tear me apart. I’m thrown like an old sack. I roll and roll and roll and roll. Then I stop.