Chickadee Read Free Page A

By the time they cached the meat near their camp, hoisting some into a tree, burying some in snow, they were warm and excited.
    Omakayas brought in the tenderest pieces of meat and began to make a feast. The rest of the family had been hunting in the next bay. Now they gathered.
    Mikwam, Ice, was Omakayas’s father. She called him Deydey. Yellow Kettle was her mother. But nobody called her grandmother yet because Nokomis, Grandmother, was still alive and strong. Old as she was, Nokomis kept up with Mikwam and joked that when she smelled the meat roasting she’d come running and leave him behind on the trail.
    There was Omakayas’s beautiful sister, Angeline, and her husband, Fishtail. Angeline had survived a terrible illness, smallpox. She had no children, and this made her sad except when Zozie came to live with her. Zozie called three different women Nimama, and nobody thought that strange.

    The whole family gathered that night. The wigwam was crowded and noisy, and everyone ate and told stories late into the night. Chickadee and Makoons curled together under one fluffy rabbit-skin blanket. Warm and full, lulled by the grown-ups’ voices, they fell into a charmed sleep and dreamed, as they always did, together.

FOUR
SMALL THINGS

    W inter and spring went back and forth that year. Nokomis said that the spirit of winter was struggling harder than usual to keep his claws of ice on the world. Still, the maple sap began to run one warm day, and the family was ready. They had already made camp at the same great stand of sugar maples where the twins were born.
    Chickadee watched his namesake hop from twig to twig in the branches of the sugar maples. He had managed to sneak away from the close watch of his mother. He had evaded his father, ditched his grandmother. He had hidden from his aunt, his uncle, his grandfather, and even his twin. There was nobody to tell him to keep hauling sap from the trees.
    â€œHaul sap! Haul sap! More sap!”

    But the real reason he’d snuck away was that he’d heard the old man Zhigaag laughing at him. Every year Zhigaag came to sugar, sometimes bringing his brutish sons. Zhigaag watched everyone work, but did nothing himself. He just complained until someone gave him sugar to quiet him, and every year the old man’s taunts and jeers grew worse.
    â€œLook at that weakling! He’s scrawny like his namesake!”
    Chickadee’s face burned with shame when he heard that, and he stumbled. He spilled some sap from the makak he was carrying. The old man gave a mean laugh. Chickadee had hauled makak after makak of sap from the taps in the trees to the great boiling kettles, taking care every time not to splash himself or spill. Now the mean remark made him clumsy with embarrassment.
    He had done nothing wrong, he thought with fury. Of course, every so often he had paused to drink the strengthening and delicious, faintly sweet sap, but everyone did that. Sap was a spring tonic. He’d been a good worker and did not deserve the old man’s comment.
    So he’d sneaked away.
    Couldn’t a boy have some respect? And a minute or two for rest? Couldn’t a boy have a little while to lie in last year’s newly warmed, fragrant maple leaves? Couldn’t a boy spend a little time gazing into the swaying tops of the maples?
    Chickadee’s thoughts turned darker. He didn’t really mind the work. It was that mean old John Zhigaag whom he wanted to get away from. A fitting name for a cranky old person—John Skunk. It was Zhigaag who called him scrawny, Zhigaag who picked on young boys with his nasty temper, ruining the good time they had running wild and sneaking bits of sugar or bannock or the choicest bits of meat. Zhigaag was always there to point them out, to catch them at their tricks, to scream out, “There they go, catch them!”
    Yes, it was Zhigaag who embarrassed him, Zhigaag who always got them in trouble. Even worse, the old man