SelfSame by Melissa Conway Page B

the strength to accept it gracefully.
    “What is your name?” Enid asked.
    The girl looked down at Bluebird, who enunciated, “Spotted Fawn.”
    Spotted Fawn repeated the English version of her name and smiled proudly at Enid, who couldn’t help but respond in kind. Enid put her hand on her chest and said, “Enid.”
    “Ee-nid,” Spotted Fawn said.
    The next hour or so passed getting to know Bluebird and Spotted Fawn. Enid was acutely conscious of her state of dishevelment after the rough journey and finally asked her mother if there was somewhere she could go to freshen up.
    “Are you able to walk?” Bluebird asked.
    “Yes. I am well now,” Enid replied, hoping it was true.
    Bluebird grabbed up some items and held Enid’s arm as she guided her out of the longhouse, trailed by Spotted Fawn. Outside, there were several more longhouses spaced some distance apart, and smaller domed wigwams here and there. Beyond the structures and the wooden palisade surrounding them, a wide field stretched into the distance, dotted everywhere with flat-topped mounds of earth covered with the remains of the corn crop. Elizabeth had told Enid the story of The Three Sisters, which gave spiritual meaning to the indigenous agricultural system combining corn, beans and squash. At least a dozen women and even more children were out in the fields picking over what was left of the harvest.
    The day was crisp and windy, with dark grey clouds that blocked the sun periodically. The inhabitants of the village went about their business, but Enid felt their eyes follow her. A few women paused to call out pleasant greetings to Bluebird. Men were scarce; probably they were out hunting and fishing – or perhaps, like the men of Enid’s own village, they’d gone to war.
    “You may be my daughter, but to the people here, you are a stranger,” Bluebird told her. “You must prove your worth before they will accept you. You must learn to speak the Haudenosaunee languages.”
    Enid nodded.
    Several children ran up and spoke with Spotted Fawn as Bluebird led the way to a secluded place along a narrow, fast-flowing river. When they got to the bathing spot, Bluebird flapped her hands at the children and they ran off giggling.
    If Enid wasn’t also Sorcha, she might have had a typical colonial woman’s reticence about being seen in her undergarments. As it was, she didn’t hesitate to strip down and step into the frigid water. It took her breath away when she squatted in a sandy depression that seemed to have been hollowed out for the purpose of bathing. She grabbed handfuls of sand and quickly scrubbed her skin and hair. It was a deeply chilling, painful experience, but when she’d dried off and dressed in the linen leggings and soft buckskin dress her mother handed her, the worst of the shivering began to subside.
    The moccasins were too big, so she wore her own battered leather shoes. She gathered up her soiled garments and they went back to the longhouse as one of the drifting clouds sprinkled them with a fine powder of snow. Inside, Spotted Fawn shyly offered to comb her hair. More and more people came inside the longhouse as the afternoon waned. The fire pits that ran down the middle of the cavernous space were soon sending clouds of aromatic smoke up to the vents in the ceiling as family after family prepared their evening meal. Enid was not ignored; she saw many eyes directed her way, but her mother’s privacy was respected and no one intruded on their meal of steamed fish, beans and some kind of potato-like tuber.
    “I was adopted into the clan not long after arriving here,” Bluebird said. “My clan mother was a good woman and I have many sisters I will introduce you to tomorrow.”
    Enid was in the midst of a most foreign environment, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, sights and sounds, but felt strangely as if she’d come home. That is, until a stocky warrior walked in through one of the doors and headed straight for them. His legs were