Big News!
Deer woman walks
The last of the spring daylight filtered through the trees in the gathering dusk, but Kwe barely noticed. Her ears strained desperately beyond her own gasping for the sound of footfalls behind her, anything that could signal her pursuers were gaining on her, while her eyes reached forward trying to keep the path in sight. The forest was dense with trees and undergrowth, lacy branches of tamarack and birch tall against the grey sky with black spruce filling in the gaps between them. Dogwood and chokecherry reached out to her, plucking at her skirt. Kwe was grateful for her leggings, torn as they were the smooth hide protected her shins from these scrabbling branches that seemed to be grasping if not for her, then for each other across the path to create weak but pointed barriers which she forced herself through. The branches tugged and tangled in her black hair as if trying to hold her back, but she pushed through snapping off the thinner offshoots in her haste, and ran deeper into the woods, bits of the forest becoming ensared in her loosening braids.
The sound of her feet pushing through fallen leaves and woven branches made it impossible to know if anyone was still following her. A swarm of bees arose, blocking the now barely visible trail and Kwe veered away from them into a grassy clearing. The forest opened briefly onto a vernal pond, fog just beginning to obscure its far edge. Kwe recognized alders, and dogwood, water-willow and winter berry pushing themselves into and above the waters, a swamp filled with medicines she knew she needed. She stopped for a moment, leaning against a birch while ragged breaths pulled oxygen into her burning lungs, but she couldn’t stay. Kwe didn’t hear anything, but sounds were muffled by the fog and forest noises, and what daylight remained was vanishing quickly. She turned and ran.
Last year’s fallen leaves hid the rocks and tree roots that covered the floor of this boreal forest and her foot caught on them. She fell, arms outstretched, hands and knees colliding sharply on the rocks she couldn’t see. Lifting her head in response to a rustling in the leaves she saw a snake, dark green with yellow stripes, come out from the leaf litter and crossing her path, it stopped in front of her, raised itself and seemed to look directly at her for a few seconds, it’s tongue darting as if tasting her distress before it lowered itself and continued into the forest back in the direction from which she had come. Kwe watched the snake go and then scanned herself for new injuries. Finding only discomfort layered on old pain, she pushed up and on. It wasn’t long before she got tangled in aspen shoots and fell again, landing hard against a fallen tree. She rolled on the soft cushion of leaves and pine needles that had collected in the hollow and, with the wind knocked out of her she looked up into the fog now shrouding the small clearing. It was harder to get up this time and deciding to lie still for just a moment, she closed her eyes and didn’t hear anything but her own ragged breath.
Yes! The rumours I’ve been spreading are true. I recently signed a contract with Broadleaf for a second book. This one is about Indigenous literatures and what happened the year that I spent curating panels around books written by Black and Indigenous authors. It’s not a comparative book, nor is it any kind of lit review or attempt to create a canon. It’s just a reflection on what changes when we find other circles to revolve around. It’s one thing to read one or two books on a topic, but if you really want to understand it you have to immerse yourself. That’s why courses at college or university don’t give you one textbook. They give you a syllabus. Now, I’m not pretending that the podcast or this book are comprehensive in that way. This isn’t a syllabus. It is entirely subjective and based mostly on my own bookcase and the books I’ve added to it over time, which means that if you liked the memoir aspect of Becoming King you’ll find A Thousand Worlds (working title, don’t get too invested in it but I need to call it something) familiar. It is a reflection on that public journey we all took through my own bookcase.
Every chapter begins with flash fiction. Deer woman is a common figure, many Indigenous cultures have some variation of her and her story changes over time, new elements are added and older elements drop off or are less commonly told so I’ll begin each chapter by imagining her story and how develops and comes to terms with who she is. I was thinking about a framework for this book because I didn’t want it to just be a lit review or a straight reflection of that podcast series, and I was sitting with a friend in her backyard. We were talking about deer woman and how her story changes over time, becomes what the community needs. We talked about troubling aspects of her story that may or may not be helpful as we navigate the world we live in. We talked about empowering aspects and then the two things collided. She has so much to teach us.
Fiction is new for me. I don’t read it as much as I ought to, but thanks to my friend Robyn I’ve been reading a LOT of Indigenous horror lately and thinking about what that has to teach us about exploring the darkness within us. So I’m looking forward to this new challenge, testing myself and seeing what I can do. From the time I was little I fell asleep telling myself stories, poking and prodding the corners of the world around me. We all do it, see somebody on the bus and imagine what their life is like. Imagine the conversation between two strangers, come up with stories to explain why they seem rushed or sad or what they might be celebrating. Everything we do is story, to paraphrase Richard Wagamese ba, even the things we think of as non fiction. What else is history but the story we tell about the past? Science is the story we piece together from what we observe, poking and prodding the world around us. She’ll help us to explore these topics too.
That means that the paid portion of the substack will periodically include reflections on this process, things that have been deleted or just a snapshot of Kwe’s story and why I took it in the direction that I did. As always, you are welcome to share the emails with anyone you think might be interested. I’m not a fan of paywalls, but I do have bills to pay and books to buy so I don’t mind you sharing the emails but access to these essays on the website will stay for subscribers only.
For this first part of the story, imagining her death and birth I watched a lot of youtube videos of people running or riding through forests, I watched videos of fawns being born. I googled the plants that would be part of a boreal forest and tried to describe those landscapes. We have often have deer in our backyard, it borders on a forested area that includes a protected wetland so there are coyotes and foxes too. There are snakes and rabbits and raccoons who came right onto our deck for the dogfood we leave outside. The fiction is also kind of a memoir because I’m showing you the things that I see and as I’m sure is true with most fiction, Kwe is part of me.
So get excited, stay patient. It’s a long time from contract to unboxing. But the time’s going to pass anyway. Might as well write.
Aambe.
The day passed. Kwe and the fawn were undisturbed behind the grasses and beneath a fallen and decaying log. As day gave way to evening the doe returned to her bedding area and laid down again beside her fawn. Throughout the night a curious warmth came from the hollow beneath the tree. By this time, Kwe and the fawn had settled into the leaf litter and organics that collected in the hollow, the brittle leaves and branches of the forest that had collected there months earlier lost their sharpness over the winter months and had by this time begun to form a soft cushion. Silvery tendrils of mycelium reached out from the mushrooms on the fallen tree and into the soil. They touched Kwe and the fawn, initially recoiling from the violence of Kwe’s recent memories that were also also sinking into the soil. The fungus reached out again and felt the gentleness of the fawn’s care which brought peace to Kwe’s final hours. This combined story of violence and care is the story they passed along to other beings who live in the places we don’t see, and after listening carefully, those beings passed back instructions.
When the doe woke in the morning she felt the warmth coming from the hollow beneath the log and thinking for a moment that her fawn had not died after all she pushed her nose into the grasses and then pulled back in surprise. What she found looked like a newborn fawn slick and shiny with the residues of birth, but it was so much bigger. As she cleaned this foundling she found arms where she expected legs, hooves where there might have been feet. And when this new being opened her eyes they were at once familiar and strange. The doe stepped back as Kwe unfolded herself and stood on shaky legs, trying to find balance on two small pointed hooves while the doe watched curiously. In the morning light, Kwe saw the shadow of branches still stuck in her hair but when she reached a hand to pull them free she found only antler.