Free The Beaded Moccasins by Lynda Durrant Page A

forward to hear her. "Because a woman's life is hard, Mary, much harder than a man's. It breaks my heart to be the one to prepare you for your future, for all I want is your happiness."
    I sit bolt upright, half expecting to see my mother kneeling between the dark lumps of sleeping Delaware. It's a long time before sleep comes.
    ***
    We awake one dawn to the most direful cold-the bitterest, coldest morning I can remember.
    Hepte rubs mosquito grease on our faces and hands to keep our skin from cracking. Frigid wind screams down the gorge and sets the trees to shivering. It hurts to breathe. I squirm in front of a weak and quavering fire, my teeth chattering and my bladder full.
    The boys try to look brave and unconcerned, but I can see the fear in their eyes. Holding blankets and axes, the fathers go down the cliff trail with them. We hear the ice cracking as the fathers chop holes in the ice for their sons. We hear the boys scream as they climb out of the ice holes. The boys run stiff legged up the cliff trail with blankets around their shoulders.
    Their fingers are blue. Their cracked heels are bloody from running on the sharp stones. Everyone is paying attention to the boys, rubbing their feet, spooning hot cornmeal into their mouths, pushing cups of hot tea into their hands.

    Now,
I say to myself.
I need more strength.
    I pick up the axe White Eyes lets me use for firewood. "I get wood," I say in their language, "good fires for the boys."
    Hepte tries to catch my hand. "Tonn," she says softly.
    I walk quickly down the cliff trail and shed my clothes on the riverbank. I walk to the center of the river. My heart is pounding as I begin chopping. It takes longer than I think it will to chop a hole in the thick ice. I toss the axe next to my clothes.
    Now! I am already shivering as I jump in.
    The cold shocks the air right out of my lungs. I curl into a ball, and that is my mistake. The swift current sweeps me away from my ice hole.
    I can't breathe! I'm under the ice! I pound the underside of the ice with my fists. It doesn't break.
    When I open my eyes in the cold, dim water, I see an ice hole from when the boys jumped in. My hands break through the thin membrane of ice already forming across it. The current pushes me forward and the ice hole slips away from my grasp.
    I look forward again. There are four more ice holes, each one with a dimly lit column of water underneath. One of the columns has two arms and an angry face dangling upside down within it.
    A face?

    White Eyes grabs my hair as I rush by. I try to grasp his arms but my fingers don't work.
    He pulls me out of the ice hole by the hair and throws me onto the snow. I fall like a sack of potatoes. The wind freezes me to the bone.
    "Get up!" he roars at me in English. "Get up!"
    He has a switch in his hand. I watch him switching my legs. I don't feel anything.
    I try to stagger upright but my legs don't work. White Eyes hoists me to my feet and I stumble to the river-bank.
    He is already there, holding the axe and my clothes.
    "Run!" he screams at me. "Run!"
    Gasping for breath, I stumble up the cliff trail as he chases after me. I hear the switch singing against my legs, but he might as well be hitting fence posts; I don't feel a thing.
    My hair is frozen stiff. My numb and bleeding feet flip and flop like fish on the icy rocks. My teeth chatter, then my jaw clamps shut. Ice has coated my eyelashes; the ice scratches against my eyes. My fingers are bluish white by the time we reach the cave.
    Hepte is waiting. She scoops me up in a blanket and holds me tightly in front of the fire. Chickadee rubs my feet.
    White Eyes shouts at me, but I don't understand a thing. Mrs. Stewart shouts at me too, but I don't understand her, either. Grandfather pushes her out of the way and shouts some more. I just stare at them
all-my mind is as stiff and frozen as my body. Their shouting is muffled and dim, as though coming from a great distance. My eyelids start to droop. I could