The Four Wishes
At that time men and women wore loincloths of soft skin. Because the frost had not yet come to Wineland, they went otherwise almost naked, and needed to wear no perpetual shirts. Occasionally it did get chilly in the winter months, and then they wore blanket-robes of leather or beaver-fur. But even these were tied rather than sewn; for at night the People took them off and used them to cover their beds. - So shape-changing was possible for them as it had been for the Jenuaq in the days before King Harald Fairhair, but it was never easy: just as a rime-stiff Ice-Shirt can be donned or doffed only with effort, nakedness is its own stem honesty which resists the shimmering falseness of fabrics. - It is true, however, that the People had as many teachers of fashion in Vinland as they would have elsewhere; for the trees put on green leaf-shirts in the summer that turned ever so many colors in the end before the black trunk-chests stood bare again throughout the foggy winters when dead leaf-swirls lapped and eddied around the trees' knobby knees; the People knew how the midsummer mountain gulleys put on brook-shirts in the spring, how the blue sky put on the Cloud-Shirt; and once an iceberg had run aground near Cross-Ness and on it, trembling, crouched a white hare; they took the hare alive and presented it to their shamans and wise men, who kept it through the spring and marveled to see how its white coat
turned brown so that it was no longer any different from the hares that ran in their own forests; in short, the People knew about the various shirts, but not everyone could put them on. The best shape-changers had Power; they were Power Persons. (Kluskap was one; there were as many Others as fish in a river.) They helped the shamans fly to the Land of the Caribou, giving ointments in Their kindness so that the shamans could pull on the wing-shirt and swoop between the sunny mountains and speed above the tree-plains and ride the vsdnd high over clam-beaches and agate-beaches, listening to the brighmess of the ocean; then they could enter the kingdom of tussocks and brooks and snowbanks; now they rushed lower in the air, calling upon the Power Persons and trembling their hands just as sparrows seem to tremble in the air while never in fact deviating from their flight; and the shamans whizzed a thousand miles with meadows on every horizon, searching and searching until at last they saw the great caribou herds browsing where the grass was sweetest; and politely the shamans asked the Power Persons to shout and the Power Persons shouted and the caribou pricked their ears up and started running, running, running south toward summer, toward the trees, toward the People who wanted to eat them, so many running caribou as could not be conceived; then the Shamans were so happy and proud that they flew where the sky was bluest and looked directly into the face of Grandfather SUN until their own faces burned with light and they came hurtling home between the trees and the great stone cliffs, crying out: "J have seen themr, and they could tell the hunters where to wait for the caribou - but before and after, the shamans must praise the Power Persons Who had helped them. The Power Persons healed the sick if proper gifts were made to Them, if proper songs were sung; the Power Persons had many fine shirts to give. When red people were unhappy with the way they were, therefore, they called upon Them: they called upon Grandfather SUN, or COOLPUJOT THE BONELESS, or many Others of Whom Freydis had no knowledge; they called upon KLUSKAP. - Thus it happened once that four men set out among the trees to go to Him. The men saw Labrador tea; they saw Indian hemp. - ''Kwer they greeted those Plant People. The forest was carpeted wdth ferns that shook their rows of green blades. - ''Kwer they said to the ferns. - Behind almost every little rise was a fair lake. They sought Him from one springtime to the next, and dien on to midsummer, wading through blue-grey water, toward blue mountains, threading their way among little green islands; and they did not know where they were or where they were going, which was how it had to be because Kluskap could be found only by seeking, seeking: it did not matter where.
It was a long journey; sometimes their spirits wavered like grass on a windy clifF. They picked blueberries and wild grapes as they went; they hunted, and roasted the meat. They were never far from the sound of the sea. (The grain of the sea-waves was like the creases in an old man's neck.) - In another version of the story, the travelers had to cross seven mountains; they made their way past two dragons with flickering tongues; they sprinted under a wall of solid cloud that sometimes slammed against the ground like a hammer, in any event, their patience was finally rewarded by a blazed path; then they came to a wide river whose sunny ripples were as mysterious as wood-grain, and they walked along the river and came to a lake, and the path led them out onto a narrow tongue of land that was green with high trees; and cattails clothed them on either side; and they climbed a hill and saw smoke ahead of them, rising slow and bluish-grey through the trees, ending like entrails. Moose and caribou roamed in great herds; they were as tame as cattle. -"Could KlusKAP live down there?" said the first man, shaking the arrows in his quiver. "Oh, He has led us a long way! I am so angry with Him that I want to shoot Him!" - for he had a bad temper; that was what he wanted KlusKAP to cure him of - "Perhaps it is one of the Yellow Birch People," said the second man. "This smoke smells of birchwood. But I hope not, for they would have little to offer us but wood and sap-juice. If it is not KLUSKAP, then may it be a rich chief who will reward us well with gifts!" -for he was somewhat like Freydis; riches was what he wanted of KLUSKAP. -"I cannot guess who lives there," said the third man timidly. "But I hope they are not hostile people who will hate us and kill us!" - for it had always been his lot to be despised, so he was fearful. He wanted KLUSKAP to make the People respect him. - "Whether or not they kill us scarcely matters," replied the fourth man despondently. "We will die anyway." He prayed night and day that KLUSKAP would grant him long life.
Unlike the Jenuaq Bear-Kings, they never thought to have Power inside them. If they wanted to Change, they had to ask Someone most worshipfully.
They saw a wigwam in the trees, and the closer they came to it the taller it grew, until it was as high as a hill. It was perfect. Trees bowed themselves toward it, save only the white birch, fi-om whose bark it was made, and the blue spruce, whose boughs were permitted to line it; and birds circled above it. So tall and white it was that the men rubbed their eyes and wondered that they had not seen it before. The whiteness of it was the whiteness of the Jenuaq milk-soap with which the People longed to lave themselves; it was the whiteness of icebergs and clouds blended, but birchbark-grain ran through it so that they knew that it was the same as their wigwam-skins at
home, except perhaps more Powerful. It was painted mainly with red designs of Power (red was the highest color), but yellow and black patterns were also to be seen. Fish-spears and war-spears leaned against it. In the grass was a canoe upended (a long time later, when Kluskap left the People, He tumed it into a long shore-stone, upon which trees grow now), and His many dogs crouched silently by, lolling out their tongues and gazing upon the visitors with a gaze like shining stars (they too were to become sea-rocks), and a pretty butterfly displayed itself against the whiteness of the wigwam and changed into a bird, a seed-pod, a feather of milkweed-down, and floated away. Seeing this, the men became shy and cautious. The closer they came, the more their shadows lengthened. - In the doorway, a blanket trembled in the breeze, like the twitching of an upper lip. - What lay beyond must be some naked perfect greamess superior to the four men's naked need, but whether it was good or evil depended on the uncoverer, and the four men understood that very well, so for a moment they stood watching the blanket flap and flap in the shadows, with meaning in the flapping that they could not read because they were not Wind People and had no Power they knew nothing; they had nothing; they were nothing. Someone was watching them through the blanket; they knew that, too. Someone was watching them and waiting for them to declare themselves. The timid man and the death-fearing man found themselves washing that their joumey had a bit yet to run; that way they would still be safe (oh, there are always new things to wish!); as for the poor man and the angry man, they were so eager to put on whatever sh
irt might be provided for them that they wanted nothing but the end. Soon it would all be decided one way or the other. Soon GRANDFATHER Sun would look upon four new men.
How strange that the wigwam did not change moment by moment! Only the blanket flapped at the door. Everything else was the same.
''KweV called the angry man at last. - "Who are you?" said a deep voice fi-om inside. - "We are strangers, seeking KLUSKAP," said the death-fearing man. - The voice that the men had heard was a pale green shoot that grew inside them and spread its leaf-hands above their heads and blossomed with a single flower that was the face of their expectation. So the angry man saw a demon; the poor man, a chief who smiled; the timid man, a shaman; but the man who was afi*aid to die shivered, for it seemed to him that he looked into a skull-flower whose white petals gnashed like teeth, and in the flower crawled a fly. - "Come on in and rest yourselves," said the voice; and the four men went behind the blanket.
It was very dark inside. An old woman sat by the fire-embers. Beside her.
a young man squatted, carving moose-figures out of wood. His name was Marten. He was very faithful. Behind the fire sat Kluskap. A smoke-wdsp from the fire whirled round and round His shoulders. He was very tall and powerful and silent. He looked steadily at His guests, and His eyes hurt them, so brightly did they glitter; the four men shaded their eyes as He looked at them; one by one they looked away. They were impure in the light of His purity. - Kluskap was a thorn-bush to make them bleed; KLUSKAP was a maple tree full of sap for them to drink; KLUSKAP was a wide spruce-tree with many springy fragrant boughs, between which were soft dark spaces. In the storms of Power that few feel, KLUSKAP stood letting the rain beat dovm upon Him, sheltering those who humbly asked it of Him; later, in the hot dry times, Power-rain came down from His branches in little gushes, and sometimes it reached the Httle ones who stood beneath with hands upcupped like funnel-leaves. (As for doubters, traitors and strangers. He quenched their thirst with poison.)
"Come up to the back where it is comfortable," said KLUSKAP. - There were beds there, of soft fir-boughs. KLUSKAP lit His pipe and passed it around, and the four men smiled to inhale the smoke of His good tobacco; they sat cross-legged in the manner of seemly men, and leaned their backs against the wigwam-posts, each one of which had its own name. Just as the word Imu'ji'jmanaqsi sounds like what it is, a willow tree rising high and flowering and sending down so many green rainbows that rustle in the wind and tangle sweetly in each other, so the speech of KLUSKAP the Great Chief breathed like many green leaves as He now spoke words of benignity to His kin-friends. His manservant, dapper little Marten, made up the fire and filled the kettle. Red sparks danced in the air; they spun themselves around Kluskap's shoulders like threads. The angry man watched the sparks and they reminded him of his anger; he felt very red and flery inside; he was furious with KLUSKAP for making him come so far; but KLUSKAP glittered His eyes at him, and the man looked down at the floor, ashamed. - Old Grandmother hung the kettle up and began scraping bits of an old beaver bone into it; it was soon filled with fat and succulent flesh, for this was Vinland, where even hoofs and skeletons merely needed to be thrown into a creek to grow new bodies. (But just as Kluskap's canoe was fated to be a stone and His dogs would be stones, so in time this kettle, too, would become a stone; KLUSKAP would overturn it disgustedly and fling it into the water as He departed: it is now Spencer Island.) - Raising her hand, Grandmother bade the guests help themselves. No matter how much they ate, the kettle never became empty. They ate; they slept; they ate again. -
But the man who was afraid of death tried always to sleep with his eyes open, so that he could keep watch in case anyone came to kill him. This he could not do, so sometimes he simply pretended to sleep, looking round him through almost-closed eyes. He saw Grandmother sitting upon the floor, dragging herself slowly to and fro; she pulled the leaves off strange herbs and mixed their juices with moose-fat; she was always busy making ointments. He saw KLUSKAP going in and out; he saw Marten setting forth on Kluskap's errands. One morning he saw KLUSKAP washing Grandmother's face; her wrinkles vanished, and she became young and beautiful. Then for the first time in many years the death-fearing man was gladdened in his heart, for he could see that he had come to the end of his quest. But later a nightmare woke him, and he saw Grandmother lying asleep in the sun, seemingly dead but for her steadily heaving breast, and the pulsing in her throat; her face was very pale in the strong light. Then the death-fearing man was afraid again. He said nothing of this to his companions. And they dwelled there for many days.
"Now, what can I do for you?" said KLUSKAP at last. He said this very gently, like a hunter making soft low sounds to lure birds.
"I am angry, and want to become mild and tranquil in my temper," said the first man.
"That's easy enough," said KLUSKAP. And He smiled at the man.
"I am poor, and crave riches," said the second.
"As many as you like," said KLUSKAP pleasantly.
"No one respects me," said the third. "I wish to be listened to as a man of authority and wisdom."
"I can oblige you there," said KLUSKAP.
"I don't ever want to die," the fourth man wept. His tears fell into the kettle; he was still eating and eating desperately, because he could not exhaust Kluskap's measure. "Please, Great Chief, grant me eternal life; or if You can't do that at least let me live as long as possible."
KLUSKAP raised His eyebrows; He puffed at His pipe. "Well, grandson, you've asked a tricky thing," He said. "I'll see what I can do for you."
The next day He gave each of the first three men a little box from His medicine bag; He gave them beautiful new skin-shirts that Grandmother had painted for them; He guided them home and left them. (Perhaps they had never been away, for the People believed in acting out their dreams. It might well have been that they walked their year-journeys in a single day among the wigwams of their kin, that they had made the medicine-boxes themselves. But they believed their dreams; their dreams changed them.)
Each box contained a holy ointment, and the three men anointed themselves. The angry man became sweet and devout; the poor man became a leading hunter; the despised man became fragrant in body and spirit.
As for the fourth man, Kluskap led him into the high, dry hills. He raised him up; He twisted him into the ground; He conjured above the man's head and he became an ugly old cedar tree. - "Nobody will bother you here," said Kluskap, glitter-eyed. "I think you will live a very long time." - The tree twisted its branches in supplication; it lashed its branches in horror, but Kluskap was already gone.
A man's robe hung in tatters on that tree for many long years, eaten by vermin, pecked at by birds, until at last a great storm blew it away and then the tree stood truly naked, creaking and shivering and growing older and older and older ...
Frcydis andKUiskap
Just as low trees may join their branches together to form a sort of cave, in which the green plants swim like phosphorescent fishes against the deep black earth, so Freydis thought to screen her glowing hopes and hatred by peeking at GloOSKAP from between clasped fingers; He, of course, knew her every thought. The birds screeched scornfully at her fi-om His shirt; on His shoulders the panthers rolled their eyes.
"Well," GLOOSKAP was saying, "you've asked a hard thing, granddaughter, but I'll see what I can do for you."
"I know I am deserving, for my race ranks with the highest," said Freydis proudly. "My father Eirik was Lord in Greenland; his father Thorvald was Lord in Norway, and his father Thorstein was King of Jaederen in the days before King Harald Fairhair. And when my father first saw me he said, 'This child will be named Freydis, and I expect her to be rich in costly things on account of that name.'"
At this, Kluskap merely smiled, but she read His smile truly. Then she
CO/v^S
esteemed Him highly, for she believed that anyone who was not envious of her must deserve her envy.
"But first tell me," KlusKAP suddenly challenged her, "why d
o you want to cause such misery by bringing the fi-ost here?"
Freydis shook her head heavily. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know." She felt that she must say something further to establish her rights over Him, but a blue mist was in her head; suddenly she could not understand anything (for this was one of the things that Amortortak did to His thralls; He fed upon them fi-om inside, like a wasp upon a caterpillar, and slowly desiccated them and left them hollow until their consciousness was a dead King sitting on a chair within his dark grave-howe, everything dark and musty and evil-smelling, and all his royal treasure taken by robbers, except, perhaps, for a missed gold coin or two, over which the snails crawled and crawled, leaving black trails). - But Freydis knew that she must recover herself "I want to bring the frost here," she insisted, angelica-sweet, "I want - I want ..." But then once again she could think of nothing to say. In truth there was no reason for the sad deed that she was called upon to do.
Glooskap looked at her with His quick eyes. His long black hair fluttered in the wind. He worked His wide shoulders, never looking away fi-om her. His powerful silence made her uneasy. "I'm not sure you're asking such a thing for yourself," He said at last. "I think Someone Else is asking through you; I think I see Him in your eyes."
Wearing the Master-Sfiirt
KlusKAP had an evil Twin, for to every man has it been commanded by Odin the All-High: Over and over must you fight your brother. (If you are Younger Brother, he will tyrannize you until you rebel; if you are Elder Brother, then to defend himself against your Firstness he must learn the dark knowledge of Blue-Shirt; and you must tread him underfoot to crush his vileness.) As They lay in Their dark womb-home, which They named Mooskobe, the two Brothers opened Their glittering black eyes and conferred together as to how They should be bom. - "I will be bom as all men are bom," said KLUSKAP. "That way I will cause the least harm to Our Mother. You too should choose that way." - "Ha, ha!" laughed the Twin. "I can see that You think Yourself superior to nobody. As for Me, I know Myself; I elect to burst out through Mother's side! Ha, ha, ha!" - KLUSKAP was bom first. Then the Tvdn emerged in that hideous way that He had promised, killing
The Ice-Shirt Page 30
