Seeds of Pine

by Emily F. Murphy

As Ermi neared the house, she saw that Wasi had returned, and with bursting heart she ran to tell him of their sorrow. His face grew sad and stern as he listened, but again, it lit up as he took her by the hand and led her to see Asa, the woman he had brought as a wife to his hut. Asa, who would be to her as a sister, one whom she would love in the place of Ninon, the child.

There are half-hours that dilate to years, and Ermi seemed to have suddenly grown cold. It was as though the vampire vixen who haunts the muskeg swamp had suddenly sapped her youth. Ermi spoke nought, only she laughed like Kayosk, the sea-gull, as he flies across Lac Wabamun, a loud laugh and bitter, like the taste of sleugh salt in summer.

She knew the unwritten laws of their tribe permitted polygamy, but she knew not that, even in his best love, a man's heart is never entirely absorbed, that no Wasi ever belongs wholly to any Ermi, knew not that this is the tree of woman's crucifixion.

And Wasi endeavoured to comfort her, but she was only silent and motionless. He told her of the great sun-dance, and of the feastings, and of how the sisters of the youths had cut little pieces of flesh from them, but the youths cried not, for they were no weak women.

Then Ermi moved around gently and prepared food for Asa, who wore a wreath of yellow blossoms wherewith Wasi had crowned her.

Sometimes, as she moved to and fro, she stopped as in a dream to look at the glowing and beautiful body of her rival. The woman was lithe as a sapling, her cheeks were like wild red roses, and her mouth was like to a bow and arrow when it is set. Asa's hair was blue-black, but her skin was almost white, for her father had been a pale face, one of the Company's men at Fort Edmonton.

But Ermi neither spoke nor complained, even when she read in Wasi's eyes strange depths of passion as he looked on the lovely stranger. A few days agone, she would have torn this woman to pieces, but there was no rage in her heart now. The world had hardened around her, and she could not cut through.

And so four moons filled and waned, and darkness and sun passed unheeded to the stricken Ermi, for the light had gone out of her life, and from the heavens too.

The women who loved her, and even Asa, tried to break her apathy, but guessed not that her wound was past all surgery—that her life was a bitter marah into which no tree of healing could fall.

Some said the sun had kissed her when she carried little Ninon to the coulee, and others said it was the touch of God, for the world has always a name for a broken heart.