The House

By Dawn Natelle

The daily postings will continue for a while. I already have Chapter 11 half written: Dawn.

Chapter 10 – Rabbit joins the band

The repairs to the house continued with Dan, Grey and Sun all working on it. Dan wanted to buy lumber to make the repairs, while Grey considered this a waste of 3000 acres of good trees. He finally did agree to buy two chainsaws and a commercial planer. The chainsaws meant they could fell a pine in less than an hour with the big saw, and then clean it of bark and branches with the smaller saw. The big saw would then cut it to lengths of just over 8 feet. Not using an axe to cut and section the trees would save a lot of wood.

It still took time to split the logs into planks and boards. Grey was starting to see how the wood grain ran, and would make suggestions on where to drive the wedges. Red Oak would only correct him if he was wrong, and those times began to be further and further apart.

When Sun’s auto parts shipment came in, she disappeared for a few days, and then when Grey and Dan were loading wood on Dan’s truck, they heard the sound of an engine. Sure enough, it was Sunflower, and she backed her truck up expertly and Grey started to load lumber into it.

A few days later the planing mill came in, and the deliveryman dropped it on the front lawn. There was a debate on where to put it. The basement of the house was considered. That was close, but the noise would bother Daisy.

“Why don’t you put it into one of the barns,” Daisy finally said.

“They are all padlocked,” Sun said. “I’ve tried to get in.”

“Oh dear,” Daisy said. “I don’t know where the keys are.”

“Well, with your permission we could just take off the locks and replace them with new ones.”

So Sun soon had her chisel and was snapping the lock hasps out of the wood. The first building was a stable, with 12 stalls. At one time the mill had used animals for moving wood. The second building turned out to be a garage, and Sun squealed when she opened the door. Inside was a 1983 Ford LTD sedan in what looked like running condition, a small Farmall tractor from the 40s, and an old bus from about the same generation. The latter vehicles looked like they needed work. It turns out that the car was the one Daisy had stopped driving 5 years ago after a near-accident. The older vehicles had been collected years ago, and just stored there.

The third and largest barn gained another squeal from Sun. The place was the old mill, and was full of huge and strange machines that she would be able to work on. There was a huge crosscut saw that had a 50-inch blade, as well as a smaller rip saw that could cut logs into board lumber. Grey looked up and saw that the upper reaches of the barn had pulleys and large cloth belts running across it. He darted outside, and swam through the bushes grown up beside the barn. At the river edge, he saw the stone formation that he had earlier seen from the river.

“They must have run the mill from a dam,” he said, pointing to the belts above.

“Yes, but luckily they converted to electricity at some point,” Sun said gleefully. “Everything seems to run on three-phase electric, which is what your new planer needs. I think that machine,” she pointed to a massive one four-feet wide and 12-feet long, “is the old planer. I will play with it last, since you just spent $3000 on your new toy.”

The power in all the buildings was out, but when the power company came out and turned on the three-phase unit, all the other buildings were powered as well. Most were pretty dingy, with only one 150-watt bulb in the stables, and too few bulbs in the other buildings. It probably was brighter than the lanterns that would have been used when it was mill-driven, but Sun made plans to add lighting, starting in her garage.

New locks were fixed to all the doors, with Sun holding the keys. With the new planer and chainsaws, they sped through construction with Dan and Grey getting the repairs to the burned out rooms done by early December, including repair of the back stair near the fire, and all of the veranda decking.

One morning Sun and Grey were heading towards the store. Now that they had the house closed in, they had decided that they would spend half their day working on crafts, snowshoes, and canoes. Frank had been begging for new stock for weeks.

As they got to the road, they spotted a feral dog, a German shepherd mix, chasing something in the field across the road. There were more than a few wild dogs in the area, and this one looked young and particularly mangy, a sign it was not a pet.

Suddenly a rabbit, its fur mostly turned to white for the winter, darted out across the highway. It was nearly hit by a car speeding past. Highway 7, the TransCanada highway to Toronto, was one of the busiest two lane highways in the province.

Then the dog burst out of the brush near the road, chasing the rabbit. He was not so lucky, and a speeding van clipped his hindquarters. The driver slowed for a second, then sped up and off down the highway.

Both Sun and Grey had the image of the dog being hit, and then spinning through the air squealing, and finally hitting the pavement with a thud, seared into their brains. The next two cars had seen it get hit, and pulled out around it. By then Sun was at the road, and picked up the dog.

“Is it alive?” she said when she got to the road shoulder.

“Barely, and sinking fast. Take him to the house,” Grey said, and he started singing an Ojibwe healing song that came from his heart, as he had never heard it before.

Soon the animal was bleeding on the table in the great hall, which Sun had only cleaned up a few weeks before. Grey sat down in front of the dog on one of the chairs, and Sun sat next to him. Grey put his head down on the table, still singing. It was as if he was in a coma, except for the song.

Grey found himself in a strange place, with wet red goo running onto the squishy floor and down all the walls. He saw strange pipes pumping the red out. Instinctively he reached up to one pipe, finding it soft and flexible. It was a blood vein, he realized. He was inside the dog somehow.

He ran his hand across the vein, and slowly it repaired. He looked and saw the other end, and joined the two together, and they merged, no longer showering him in blood. He worked through the cavity he was in, finding smaller and smaller veins to repair. Soon there was no further blood and in fact the body seemed to have some mechanism to remove the blood, and soon there were pink walls and floor instead of red.

He was starting to get tired, and knew that there were broken bones to be healed, as well as other things to be done. Then he felt a third hand come out from his body, to join with a smaller hand. It was Sun’s spiritual hand, which was much smaller than Grey’s. He felt her energy flow through the connection, and he was revived enough to try and repair the broken hip bones. As he was doing so, he felt another surge of energy: Sun had placed her left hand on his right hand outside of the body. Now he noticed how much bigger her hands were in real life.

With the hipbones repaired, he moved up to the spine. There was not much room here, but he crawled along the bones until he found the broken parts: one was shattered and three others broken or cracked. He fixed the shattered bone first, and then the others. He was tiring again, and he felt he was draining Sun. Finally the spine bones were fixed, but something was wrong. The nerves inside were not working. He crawled further up, to where the spinal column was working, and then slowly repaired the injury all the way to the tailbones, which flexed. He realized that the dog had just wagged his tail.

Grey stopped singing, and came out of the body. He was exhausted, but there was a living, healthy dog sitting next to him, licking his face in gratitude. Like most people, Grey was unable to resist smiling when being licked by a puppy. Sun was nearly as tired, but she got up and went to the kitchen, to find a half-pound of hamburger. She added two eggs into the bowl and brought it out and put it in front of the dog, then went back and got a bowl of water. Grey was starting to feel some energy in his body again, and he stroked the dog as it ravenously ate and drank.

“The poor thing is skin and bones,” Sun noted, as she stroked his matted fur. “He needs a bath too. “

«That was amazing,» Red Oak said to the two of them. «The student surpasses the master. I have never heard that song. Parts of it, but not in its entirety. You are truly a Medicine Man now. I can still teach you much, but it appears that you can teach me now.”

“What do we call him?” Sun asked.

“White Rabbit Chaser,” Grey said. “Rabbit for short.”

And that is how Rabbit joined the family. He only heard his full name when he did something wrong, usually with Sun shouting at him. He would come to her with his head down and tail between his legs until she finally relented and petted him. She bathed him once a week, even though he hated the soap and water. He put up with it only due to his love for her. He seemed to know the two people who saved his life.

He could almost always be seen following Grey. He didn’t needed to be taught to heel: he did it naturally to keep close to his new master. He would only leave him to go to Sun, sitting at the door to her barn as she worked within. He was guarding her.

Daisy fell in love with him, once he had been bathed and Sun had worked the matting out of his fur. In the evenings when the little family sat in the living room he would sit with his head on her lap getting petted. But if Sun or Grey were to leave the room, he would follow after, only returning to Daisy when they were back in the room.

Sun took him to a local vet, and he was checked out in return for one of her dreamcatchers. The vet said he was in good health, and administered his shots. She guessed his age at 9 months.

A few days after the healing, Sun and Grey were discussing it. Apparently Sun could see what Grey was seeing, after her third hand connected them. “It was so nice having the smaller hand for a change,” she noted.

“It is because your soul is that of a woman,” Grey said. “So naturally the hand of your soul would be smaller.”

Sun and Grey worked hard during the following three weeks before Christmas, and got four pairs of snowshoes done, and a cedar-strip canoe that Frank had sold with the promise of a Christmas delivery date. The man who bought it actually came to the house on Christmas Eve to pick it up. He was thrilled with the quality of the work, as well as meeting the builders.

Earlier that month Daisy had asked Dan to take her for Christmas shopping, while Sun was nearby. Sun noted that she and Grey tended to make gifts for one another, and she agreed to the tradition. She had knitted for years, to pass time in the evenings, and had a hall closet containing a huge collection of scarfs, mittens, and other odds and ends she could share. She only had one gift to make, and worked on it at times when Sun was in the garage working.

It was decided that Dan must come to Christmas at the house, and that meant his mother would come too, since she couldn’t be alone for Christmas. So all through the month of December Lois came to the family dinners on Sundays, and she quickly became good friends with Daisy.

On Christmas morning everyone was in the house. Rooms had been cleaned up for Lois and Dan. A huge breakfast had been cooked up in the kitchen and was enjoyed by all, and then they went into the livingroom where a Christmas Tree had been set up the night before. All the decorations on the tree were natural or from the house. Daisy had donated her collection of commemorative spoons, and they gleamed in the firelight. Grey had gathered about 50 different pine cones, and used natural dyes to color them. Sun had polished some of her smaller tools, and they were hung on the tree as well. It actually looked quite impressive.

Daisy looked at the pretty tree, with presents spread out around it. “You know,” she said. “I had a dream last night that there were children in the house: excited over Christmas, and squealing in delight with their presents. They called me Grandma. It was so special.”

“Don’t look at me,” Sun said. “I can’t have kids, as much as I would like to.” She leaned over and kissed the old lady. “But it is a wonderful dream, and I wish I had been in it.”

The highlights of the presents included Sun’s gift for Daisy: a pair of moccasins. “We call them makizins and I thought you would like them,” she said as Daisy admired them. “They are beautiful,” she gushed, and doffed her slippers and put them on. Her eyes widened.

“Oh my,” she said. “They are so soft. And so warm. I’m old, and when you get old your feet are always cold. But with these my feet are toasty warm. Let me get you my gift for you.”

She pointed out a package and Sun reached down to get it. It was wrapped in Christmas paper. She opened it, and found a large wool sweater/jacket. She put it on, and it fit perfectly. The front was a traditional scene of a man hunting with a rifle on one side and a deer on the other. Except she had altered the scene, and it was clearly a woman, shooting a bow. Sun gently hugged the woman, with her appreciation of the gift clearly in her eyes.

Daisy’s other gifts were scarfs for the men, and a knitted blanket for Lois.

This year Grey had gotten Sun a special gift. He had collected a dozen tools from her garage and replaced the old cracked and broken handles with new maple handles. Each one had an image of a Sunflower burned into it.

“So that’s where they went to,” Sun said of the missing tools as she unwrapped them from the deerskin he had wrapped them in. “I needed that chisel yesterday.”

Her gift to him also seemed to be wrapped in deerskin, but when he opened it the wrapping turned into the gift. It was a new deerskin coat, replacing the one that had been burned fighting the fire. The siblings hugged each other.

Everyone got a present from every other person, and all agreed that it was more special that the gifts had been handmade rather than purchased in a store. Even Rabbit got a gift. Grey had cut out a piece of bear fur, with the hair removed, to make him a sturdy collar, and then Sun had beaded it with his name. He allowed Grey to put it on him, and then strutted around the room, as if to say: I have clothes too now.

“Christmas gets better each year,” Grey finally said. “My first year in Canada I was alone and lonely. The next one I had Sun, and she was the greatest gift I ever got.” All the women said ‘aah.’ “Now it is like a real Christmas, with a family. My family. I love you all.”

“Maybe next year or later there will be babies running around,” Daisy said, unable to get her dream out of her mind. Even if Sun could not have children, Grey could.

Then the group hugged each other in true companionship and love.

“Oh wait,” Daisy said. “Look here!” She went to the far side of the room and removed a covering, to show six stockings hung on the wall, each with a name knitted on.

“When I was looking for gifts, I found these old stockings: man sized.”

“Sunflower-sized.” Sun said with a laugh.

“I sewed on the names, and filled them with goodies. There will be an orange in the toe, because of tradition, and then the rest are cookies and things Sun and I baked. Except for Rabbit. His have dog biscuits and a can of dog food in the toe.”

After that they sang Christmas Carols, and a few Ojibwe songs until it was ready for the Christmas feast that Sun and Daisy had prepared. Just before they all sat down to eat, Sun moved out of the room to take her potion.

“That has been amazing for you,” Grey said as he saw her. “Not even a full year, and now no one would ever think you were a man. You have stopped using the wool, haven’t you?”

“Yes. This is all me. Since the fire. I donated the wool to Daisy. “

“Is there much potion left?”

“Yes. And I still have two jars of Mooz pee. But we will have to hope that Daria comes back next year if I hope to keep using it.” Sun said.

“I sure she will. Saving her from wolves probably made her want to come back. If not, then I will have to tame another mooz.”

They went out and rejoined the others, and a grand feast was held in the ballroom. Everyone ate too much, and there was laughing and singing and gaiety among friends. All the while Rabbit sat on the floor beside Grey, only leaving when he saw a hand drop below the table to offer him a tidbit.