Tull could feel the threads of iron that bound him to this place: the ugly memories, dark and desperate, of his home; the sweet sense of fulfillment he received in passing the inn; the echo of release from standing on this very street; the warmth and joy he felt in the presence of Ayuvah. Each was a thread in the tapestry of his life; each bound him to this place, defined his being, even as he struggled to escape such definition.
Wayan’s hands were sticky with soup, and his face was dirty. A small stream washed down through the hills and crossed the street under a culvert next to Caree’s house. Tull took Wayan to the stream, dipped the end of his long black breechcloth in the water and began sponging the child's face.
Wayan asked, “Tull, will you take me away?”
Tull wanted to. He wanted to save Wayan now, as much as he’d hoped to be saved as a child. But he couldn’t do it. He hugged Wayan to his chest. “No, I can't take you now. I’m going on a long trip. It’s too dangerous. It’s no trip for a child.”
“I can’t be here!” Wayan shrieked. “I will get hurt from Jenks!”
“He’ll hurt you, but worse things can happen in the mountains,” Tull said. “There are Mastodon Men in the mountains who would eat you. Besides, Jenks is growing soft in his old age; maybe he won’t treat you as badly as he treated me. Just watch out for him when he comes home from hawking his junk, especially after a bad day. If he hunches his shoulders when he walks, run and hide from him—far away from the house. Keep away till after dark. Let him work his rage out by beating the dog. And if he catches you when he’s in a bad mood, stay far away from his feet so that he can’t kick you. After he beats you, he’ll want to apologize. He’ll want you to hug him so that he’ll know the apology is accepted. If you don’t hug him, he'll get mad and beat you some more—so give in quick! Understand?”
“Yes,” said Wayan.
“Good boy,” Tull said, setting Wayan down on a rock.
He wiped the soup from Wayan’s face with the wetted breechcloth. “You’ll get by all right. Now, go home. Jenks is feeling sorry for himself, now that I’m gone. He’ll want to give you something nice so that you’ll like him. If you’re smart, you'll let him.” Tull stood up to leave.
“I’m smart,” Wayan said, and Tull patted his head.
Wayan clung to Tull’s legs as if he were just learning to walk. His lower lip trembled, and his green eyes were wide with terror at the thought of returning to the house.
Tull considered a moment. He didn’t know if Wayan could understand how Jenks wanted to control them, wanted to force them to love him. The old man had even gone so far as to give them names that a Neanderthal could never pronounce, forever keeping their mother from correctly uttering her sons’ names. Jenks was a sick, selfish man, but Tull didn’t know if he could describe the illness to a child so young. “One last thing,” Tull said. “Never talk about running away, or Jenks will chain you to your bed!”
Wayan didn’t answer, just looked up with eyes wide with guilt, as if he’d done something wrong. Tull reached down and pulled up Wayan’s pant legs. The boy had a shackle on his right leg. The same shackle Tull had worn as a child.
If Jenks had been in striking distance, Tull would have killed him. The shackle was thick and heavy, but it was only iron. Tull grabbed it with both hands, and such was his wrath that he pulled it hard enough to snap the hinges. For years as a child he had struggled to break that shackle, and instead he had only bruised and broken his leg against it.
Caree Tech was still crooning “Threads of iron, have sewn me to this house” narrowing in closer and closer to the end, where the threads would have sewn her to her task. Tull knew Caree must have been reminiscing about her sister, taken by slavers years before. Always the song ended with “Threads of iron, have sewn me to this oar. Threads of iron, bind me evermore.”
Tull picked up the broken shackle and headed toward his parents’ house, leaving Wayan by the stream. The words to the song hummed through Tull’s head, “Threads of iron, have sewn me to this town.” He walked past the bastard children jostling and playing tag by the inn, past the fabric shop and spice shop.
“Threads of iron, have sewn me to this street.” And he imagined that with each step he was bursting the threads of iron that bound him to this place, snapping the filaments that bound him to his father, to his mother.
“Threads of iron, have sewn me to this …” and he reached his father’s house with its crowd of gawking Neanderthals still standing outside the door.
Inside, Jenks was roaring and tossing furniture. Tull kicked the door open.
Jenks shouted, “What are you doing back here?” His face was red. His nostrils flared and his whole frame shook with rage. He rushed forward. When he was within arm’s reach, Tull lashed out with the broken shackle, slamming it into the side of his father’s head.
Jenks dropped, blood spattering from a gash in his temple. He lay on the ground, motionless.
Tull didn’t know if the man was dead or alive. He didn’t care.
“Threads of iron do not sew me to this family,” Tull said. Jenks rolled to his belly and began shaking his head, struggling to regain consciousness. Tull felt a little blood running from his nose, and he wiped it with his sleeve. He threw the shackle to the floor and looked at his mother, quietly standing in a corner, waiting for Jenks’s tantrum to subside.
Tull said calmly to his mother, “I’m leaving with Scandal the Gourmet. I’ll be back in a few weeks. You and Jenks are dead to me now. But if I come back and find this shackle on Wayan’s foot again, you’ll both be dead to the rest of the world, too. I’ll kill you both myself.”
Jenks said groggily, “He’s my son. I own him. I’ll do what I want.”
Tull spun and headed out the door, trying not to limp, trying not to let his father see him limp, and he found Wayan sitting by the stream where he’d left him.
Very obedient boy, Tull thought.
Wayan lunged forward and grabbed Tull’s leg when he got near, and clung to him. Tull ruffled the boy’s hair, touching him softly, and said, “Good-bye.”
“I love you. Only,” Wayan said, and he let loose of Tull’s leg.
You are only a child, Tull thought. How can you love anyone?
Deep inside himself, Tull felt something was wrong. He could not tell Wayan that he loved him in return. He was not sure if it were true. If Tull really loved Wayan, wouldn’t he have done something before now? In spite of the powerful kwea that seemed to press Tull away from this part of town, wouldn’t he have stayed at home, protected Wayan, at least have been something more than a stranger?
It should not be so hard to love, Tull thought. Even stupid children do it. Tull did not know what to say to the boy.
Tull pried the child loose. Several Pwi were still watching him, and in the crowd Tull saw Chaa, the old Spirit Walker, being supported by his wife.
Chaa walked forward, put his arms around Tull’s neck and whispered in his ear, “When I entered you, I saw your loneliness and rage. You must put this aside. There is no sin greater than loneliness; no vessel can be as empty as a life without love. You cannot any longer be no-people, unfamily. Would you be willing to choose a new family from among the Pwi? Would you become a man of the Pwi?”
“Can this be done?” Tull asked.
Chaa nodded. “There is a ceremony for it, an old ceremony that has not been performed in my lifetime….”
Chapter 6: A Man of the Pwi
That night, 160 Pwi gathered on the banks of the Smilodon River a mile east of town to witness the ceremony that would make Tull one of their family. A dozen bonfires lit the scene, and flame-lit smoke rose up in clouds, casting red light upon the water. Bullfrogs croaked in the bushes, and bats wheeled about beneath the redwoods.
Freya, a small moon, was nearly full, and its pale blue light shattered the darkness. The night was clear. In the sky above, one red drone—an ancient war machine left by the Eridani to ensure that the inhabitants of Anee never took
to the stars—plodded in its orbit, a long red tube of light, brighter than a comet.
Tull chose Chaa to be his father and Chaa’s wife, Zhopila, to be his mother—which would make Ayuvah his brother and Fava his sister. They were best friends, so the arrangement made sense, and Ayuvah’s family was one of the best in town.
From childhood, Tull had always dreamed of being a member of a family like this. The word Pwi means both family and person. As far as the Pwi were concerned, to be one was to be both.
Amid the light from bonfires that reflected in the river, each mother from among the Pwi brought out a favorite piece of leather and told the group why it was special: “I planned to make a coat for my child from this leather,” one woman said, “and so I have worked it till it is very soft.”
“My brother painted a piya bird on this leather,” another said, “and so I think it is beautiful.”
“My son killed the trees-on-head that made this leather, before he left for the House of Dust,” a third woman said, and tears streamed down her face as she spoke of the lost boy. It was only old pain, and her husband comforted her while she remembered the son who had died.
Chaa inspected the gifts of leather and agreed that each held kwea—a memory of power, of pain, or of love—and therefore, the gift was sacred because it was also a gift from the heart.
The Pwi gathered together and sewed the leather into a great bag. The river was alive with the croaking of frogs and the startled calls of night birds; a cool thermal wind crept down the river channel from the mountains.
When the bag was sewn, Chaa stood before the Pwi in the guttering torchlight and said, “No two men walk the same world. Kwea shapes each man’s perceptions. Kwea shapes his loves and fears, and because of this it is often not easy for the Pwi to understand one another.
“Here, we have Tull Genet, a man who has been Tcho-Pwi, and he is hard for us to understand, for he sometimes thinks like a human. Yet I say that he is Pwi, and that it is right for us to adopt him into the family.
“My grandfather taught me that all things are connected: when a man plants wheat in a field he makes bread from it, and it is easy to see that the man would not exist without the bread, and it is also easy to see that the bread would not exist without the labor of the man. If you are awake to the connections, then certainly you will see that the man and the bread, they are not separate, but are one thing. They are two parts of a greater whole.
“But the bread and the man, they could not exist without the wheat. And the wheat cannot exist without the rain and the oceans and the sun and the soil and the worms within the soil. And both the bread and the man who eats the bread become connected to all of these things, and they are not separate, but part of a greater whole.
“You are rain and soil and sunlight and wind and oceans. Always there is an ocean throbbing in your veins, and when you exhale, you add force to the winds, and when you work in a field on a hot day, the sweat of your body rains upon the ground, and when you are joyful, you release sunlight in the twinkling of your eyes.”
Chaa said, “We are not only connected to all things, but to all. other. people….
“You have known Tull for many years, and each of you feel kwea for him. It is right that he become one of us, that he become Pwi.”
Then Chaa leapt back and shouted to the crowd, “Who will be the midwife?”
Old Vi, a woman who had served as a midwife for most of the villagers shambled forward. Tull hadn’t realized how old she had become in the past few years. Her red hair was going white, and the hard edges of her body had become soft.
Chaa bowed to Old Vi, and presented his ceremonial dagger with its blade carved from a carnosaur’s tooth. She took it hesitantly.
Tull stepped into the bag of leather, and all the Pwi set great stones in the bag, sewed it closed, dragged it to the river, and threw the bag in.
The bag floated a bit for a few seconds, and the air was forced to the top. But as air leaked from the bag, the weight of the stones made it sink. Tull began struggling to tear the bag open, searching for the weakest seams, the thinnest leather, even as the air escaped.
The hot air in the bag smelled of brine, sweat and flesh. The stones quickly sank into a pile near his feet, and the air bubble began shrinking at the top of the bag.
Tull tried pushing against both sides at once, using hands and feet, head and buttocks, to rip the seams, but the bag was too large. So he returned to pulling at the weakest of the seams, struggling to find thread or leather that would tear. He worked at it for several minutes, and the pocket of air kept escaping from the top of the bag, even as warm water trickled down near his feet. He had to arch his neck to grab a hasty last breath.
Suddenly, all of the air hissed out in a rush, and Tull suspected that a hole had opened near his head. He scratched with all his might, worrying the seams, ripping fingernails, as he tugged at the leather. He struggled to hold his last breath.
That’s when he realized that the ceremony had gone awry.
I’m going to drown, he thought, even as I struggle to be reborn. Won’t I look like a fool?
His heart pounded in the silence, and he stilled himself, wondering what to try next. His lungs were burning, his fingernails bled, and he grew dizzy. He could hear only the sounds of the river washing past the bag, felt it bump the muddy river bottom as it drifted downstream, out to sea.
Suddenly he felt a tug, a push as someone touched it. The bag budged a bit up from the river bottom, and then lifted quickly, as if pulled from the water by many hands.
Tull gasped for air, but none could pass through the wet leather. He gasped frantically, sucking in the breaths he’d let out, hot and unsatisfying. His head reeled, and sweat formed on his brow.
Suddenly, light pierced through the darkness, a slit opened. Old Vi stood above him. She had sunk her knife into the bag near his face, and Tull shoved his face forward, sucked the air desperately. Water spilled from the bag, widening the gash in it.
Tull wriggled out on his belly.
As Tull lay gasping on the ground, he saw that the bag had a leather rope tied to the top, so that it would not have gone downstream. It was an umbilical cord, binding him to the tribe.
Now the Pwi circled him, holding burning brands of wood from the fire, so that he could see their faces, and they stood smiling at him. He saw love on their faces, and joy, and remembrance of children born before. His new mother was shedding tears, much as if she had birthed him herself. The woman who had lost her own son beamed proudly, and Tull realized, To her, I am her new son.
“It is a boy child!” Vi shouted in mock surprise, raising her knife triumphantly. “Very large—the biggest I have ever delivered!”
The Pwi laughed and cheered.
With great ceremony Old Vi dragged the leather bag and its towline to the river and heaved it out into the water. “May this cord never be severed!” she cried.
The Pwi raised their hands and shouted, as if it were a solemn oath.
Fava was beside herself with joy. She twisted her hands together, holding them so tightly that her knuckles turned white and her nails made half-moon crescents in her palms. If the ceremony had been less solemn, she might have danced her happiness on the shores of Smilodon Bay.
She was happy for Tull, for he had the family he always wanted. She was happy for the Pwi, who’d gained a strong, new son, and she was happy for herself for the new possibilities of the future. There were so many things to be happy about that Fava was sure one Pwi could not contain it all.
Surely now that Tull was Tcho-Pwi no more, his heart would unlock itself. He would settle in Pwi Town to live among Pwi neighbors, play with Pwi children, and surely now he would see that he should marry a Pwi, a woman like Fava.
Fava was so excited that she nearly missed Chaa’s pronouncement.
“A new boy is born into our family,” Chaa announced, his voice frail and shaken. Everyone quieted to hear the name Chaa would give Tull. The name was very importa
nt, a portent of the type of person Tull would become. “I have walked the path of his future, and I shall call him Laschi Chamepar, Path of the Crushed Heart.”
Fava’s grin fell, and her heart pounded in fear. It was not a formidable name for a Pwi; it was not the name of an animal or plant—like Chaa, the dark crow of magic and wisest of birds; or Fava, the pear, most generous of trees.
A name should describe the qualities of the person named, or the qualities the person would develop. Tull stared hard at Chaa, and the Spirit Walker’s face was still drawn in horror, even though he tried to remain smiling like a Pwi.
Then Fava understood: the name described the person Tull would become, a man with a crushed heart.
The Pwi came forward and hugged Tull, welcomed him into the family, all of them talking at once.
Fava hugged him, tried to console him. “I have seen you watch Isteria,” she said, pronouncing Wisteria as best she could, “that human girl. Now that you are Pwi, you should look at girls among your own people,” and Tull blushed. By Pwi standards he was obscenely old to be single, as was Fava.
Twice, Fava knew, Pwi girls had set their belongings on Tull’s doorstep, asking him to marry him in the manner of the Pwi, and he had left the belongings on the doorstep until the girls took them away. Fava had been one of those girls.
An old man hugged him and reminded, “I have two daughters, and they both need a husband; perhaps one wife would not be enough for you?”
And when the marriageable girls in the village hugged him, Fava could not help but notice how some hugged him with passion, so that their breasts pressed firmly against his chest. He would be able to feel their soft curves, and Fava knew that it was not done by accident.
Some Pwi left early, for they still sorely mourned the deaths of Denni and Tchar. But others sang and danced, guzzling beer from a barrel until the air smelled sour and warm, ripe, and sticky; then they spun madly and jumped into the air until they could no longer stand.
Spirit Walker Page 6
