Thieving Forest by Martha Conway

ornaments.
    “They serve as a reminder,” Beatrice tells her as they start down one of the many paths crisscrossing the wooded village.
    “A reminder of what?”
    “We must put our vanity behind us,” Beatrice says, and gives Susanna a significant look.
    As they walk down the winding dirt paths, all of them shaded by heavy overhanging trees, Beatrice points out various buildings: the kitchens, the washing huts, and the two-story dormitory where the single men sleep, called a choir. All the structures are made from the same rough lumber and have bark roofs the color of barn owls. The sweat huts sit in a clearing near the flax fields: two low domed structures covered in skins. As they get closer Susanna can smell boiling roots and tree bark. Two men are tending a huge kettle over an outside fire and Sister Johanna is standing nearby with three small iron kettles at her feet.
    She gives Susanna one of the kettles and smiles. Her manner seems to say, You will enjoy this and I will too. She has a wide mouth and round cheekbones and her teeth are very white. Susanna likes her. She is as good-looking as Sister Consolation but in an opposite way—dark where Consolation is fair, and expressive where Consolation is frozenly refined.
    The men ladle the boiling root water into their kettles. Then they shout, “Pimook!” Go to sweat! Two other men are heating rocks the size of turnips, which they carry in hide slings into the sweat huts. When everything is ready, Johanna leads the way into the women’s hut. The doorway is low, a covering of deerskin, and inside Susanna looks around. Under the pungent skin walls a complicated structure of willow branches makes up the frame. Benches circle the walls and the hot stones are in the middle. Although there is room for six or seven women to sit, at the moment they are the only ones there.
    “Women partake of the sweating much less than men,” Johanna is saying.
    “Why is that?” Beatrice asks.
    “Men have more ailments.” Johanna smiles. “Or so they think.”
    She tips water from her kettle onto the mound of hot rocks. Immediately a spray of steam shoots up and fills the little room. Some of the steam escapes through a hole in the roof.
    “Oh,” Susanna says, her face suddenly flushed. “That feels good.” A moment later: “You know who would like this? Naomi.”
    Beatrice frowns, looks down at the ground, and touches her hip. Susanna immediately feels bad for bringing up a painful memory and she casts around for a new subject.
    “Your English is very good,” she says to Johanna.
    “I’ve lived with the brethren for most of my life,” Johanna tells her. “First in Pennsylvania, and now here.” She tells Susanna about the natives who live in the village, mostly Delaware but a fair number of Shawnee like herself, and also some Huron and Chippewa. Any native who wants to adopt this life can live here.
    “We clothe them, we give them food, we teach English to their children, but they must give up their weapons and finery. We value what is simple and plain.”
    “Yes, I can see that,” Susanna says. Personally she thinks that the buildings are plain to the point of ugliness, and the dresses unbecoming. Johanna pours more water over the hot rocks. Susanna can feel her hair stick to her forehead. But she doesn’t mind heat, it is mud she dislikes.
    “You know, Beet,” she says, “Seth Spendlove traveled with me here. I wonder if he might escort us back to Severne.”
    “Seth Spendlove—here?”
    “Maybe he can hire some horses from the brethren, a cart.” Susanna looks down at the steaming rocks. If Seth can hire a cart they could ride in it following the Blanchard River, which meets up with the track to Severne. But if that’s not possible, they can walk. The journey would take only, what, a day and a half? Two days? Two days, that’s not so bad. But just as this plan is solidifying in her mind she becomes aware that Beatrice is proposing a different plan