Scarlet Feather

by Joan Grant

  Ninee believed in demons, and was always threatening to send them to punish us when we were disobedient. She was so good at describing them that sometimes it was difficult to be sure they would not happen. There were fat ones who hopped like toads, and thin ones with sharp teeth, who hid in thickets and were always ready to pounce when you went past. The most horrible were like enormous bats, with bloated, furry bodies, who dropped from trees and smothered you if you went out of the tepee at night without asking permission. When Mother discovered that Ninee had been telling us about demons she was so cross that Ninee wept and then sulked for days.

  Raki and I agreed that being with Mother was even better than being by ourselves. She never tried to stop us climbing trees, as Ninee did, but showed us how to swing from one branch to another and how to be careful not to rely only on one hold at a time. She taught us how to recognize all the different birds, and to imitate their calls so well that they often answered us. When we were seven she gave us our own canoe, which we kept down-river where there was a long stretch of water without a rapid. She taught us how to carve and to use bow and arrows; and always realized that Raki and I must do everything together to enjoy it.

  She was with us when we found the grizzly cub. His mother must have been killed by a hunter, for otherwise she would never have deserted him. He was curled up beside a rock, whimpering because he was cold and frightened. Mother carried him home; at first he wouldn’t eat, but she made a little bag of doe-skin and taught him to suck goat’s milk through it. He was different from other grizzlies, for he had a white blaze running from his right shoulder down the fore-leg. We called him Pekoo, and when he got used to us he followed us everywhere, and whimpered on the bank when we went out in our canoe.

  There were only three “specially forbidden things”: going too near the encampment, speaking to any of the tribe, or nearing the sound of a particular waterfall which fell into a pool in the forest. Mother said this pool was a very magical place and that we were not old enough to go there yet. As she so seldom told us not to do anything, we accepted these as being things she knew about and we didn’t; and we were nine before they began to seem important.

  We had found a new way up the cliff above the river, and had crawled along a narrow ledge until it widened enough for us to be able to lie on it. Far below we could see the encampment; the air was so still that the smoke of the watch-fire was straight as a pine, and the man sitting beside it looked small as a gopher.

  “I have got an idea,” said Raki.

  I interrupted him, “So have I!” Let’s both say it at the same time, so that we can be sure we both thought of it first.”

  He picked up a stone, as he always did when he wanted to be sure we really had thought of the same thing, and threw it as far as he could—which was a long way, for he was very good at throwing and the hill being so steep helped a lot. When it stopped rolling we both said, “Let’s have an adventure with finding out about people in it!”

  “I’m glad you had it too, Piyanah. I wasn’t sure I ought to tell you about it until I had found out if it was very dangerous.”

  “If you had done it without me it would have been dangerous…being without each other always is.”

  “Not always,” said Raki. “Remember how I found the grizzly’s cave the day you cut your foot and couldn’t come with me?”

  “That doesn’t count,” I said firmly, “because the grizzly wasn’t in it. If it had been, you might have been too silly to run away before it got cross.”

  “We needn’t bother about that, because it isn’t the grizzly day, it’s now, and as ‘now’ is when we’ve decided to find out about people we had better make a plan. The best thing to do when you start having a new adventure is to decide which the most dangerous part is likely to be, so that you will know what to do if it happens, and not have to decide when you may be in a great hurry.”

  “That’s not very difficult,” I said, “for if it’s a nice, small Danger, you go on with what you’re doing and pretend not to notice it, and if it’s an extra large Danger, with teeth or a horrid noise, you practise running, in the opposite direction, and forget it ever happened.”

  Raki sighed. “You can’t always go on doing that, Piyanah. Mother has told you, and so have I, that pretending dangers aren’t really there is quite often very silly and hardly ever at all brave.”

  I thought he was probably right, so I said, “Well, when it stops me doing the things you do, I’ll stop it, but I like being comfortable, and if I start thinking about all the things there are to be brave about, I mightn’t be brave at all. Then you might start having adventures without me…and that’s the most uncomfortable thing I can think about.”

  “Do stop talking, Piyanah. I’m trying to think.”

  “So am I; and I’m wondering at the same time.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “But you can’t help wondering if you’re doing it…and anyway it’s an important wonder. Why does Mother let us go out all day by ourselves…and at night too if we want to, except when there is a full moon: why does she let us climb trees, even unfriendly ones: why does she tell us never to be afraid of animals, even mountain lions: why does she let us have our own canoe and even go down the small rapid alone: why does she let us do nearly everything we want to, except go near the encampment or speak to any of the tribe? Why? That’s my wonder…and you needn’t be surprised that it’s important, because I told you it was going to be!”

  “Perhaps the Chief’s children are always kept away from the others.”

  “No, they’re not. I heard Ninee talking to Mother, when she thought I was asleep; she thinks it’s wicked of Father to let Mother and us live away from the tribe. Ninee only stays here because she promised she would; she says she misses being with the other squaws.”

  “Then perhaps they hate us, and Mother is afraid they would kill us if they got the chance.”

  “I don’t believe that. No, Raki, of course they don’t hate us. We’ve often been quite close to hunters, and they could easily have killed us if they had wanted to, and do you remember when we met the file of Braves, and honestly hadn’t got time to hide; they didn’t hate us, Raki.”

  “Then why did they turn away as though they couldn’t bear to look at us?”

  “Because they were frightened. I know it sounds silly, but I know they were frightened of us.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because two of them didn’t turn away, and their eyes were dark and wide open, like Pekoo’s were until he got used to us.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Raki slowly. “I’ve thought so too, sometimes, but it seemed too silly to be likely.”

  “Let’s make sure we’re right, and then instead of asking Mother why we mustn’t go near people—and that’s the only question she will never answer—we can say, ‘Why are people frightened of us?’ and she’ll probably tell us before she realizes it’s a new way of finding out the same thing.”

  “But she’ll probably say, ‘Of course they are not frightened of you,’ …and that will make us feel silly, as I did after I boasted of killing the deer with the arrow you made for me, and she wouldn’t believe me…and I thought she would have to when she saw the body. And then she found it had been dead for days and was full of maggots.”

  “Don’t think about that,” I said hastily. I hated thinking about it myself, for it had been my fault that Raki thought he had killed the deer. It had gone bounding off, and I suppose I imagined I saw the arrow sticking in its shoulder. We searched for it all day, and when we saw the dead deer…we knew it was dead because a buzzard was sitting on its head, I convinced him that it was the same one, and hurried him back to tell Mother about it before he had time to look properly. It was such an uncomfortable memory that I buried it, in a hole I had been scratching in the sandy ledge, and put a white stone on it to remind me not to dig it up again.

  “There’s one way we could make quite sure about their being frightened,
talking very loudly so that they couldn’t help noticing us, and if you’re right and they’re frightened, they will hide, or pretend to be too busy to see who we are.”

  “And if I’m not right?” I asked, feeling anxious because it had only just occurred to me that this adventure would include doing the most dangerous of all things, quite slowly and on purpose.

  “If you’re not right, I expect we shall be full of arrows.”

  “Full enough of arrows to be dead?”

  “Quite dead, I expect; but that won’t matter because Mother says the Great Hunters will welcome us to their country, and it’s more exciting there than it ever is down here.”

  “Well, if we’re both full of arrows, it won’t matter at all,” I said…and hoped that Raki thought I meant it.

  Neither of us spoke until we were climbing the path which led up from the encampment. I wondered if Raki had been as frightened as I had, or if he had even found it equally difficult not to run. Would an arrow have felt like being stung by a hornet…only even hotter and sharper? I hoped that I should never find out!

  “I am glad that’s over,” said Raki. “Were you frightened too?”

  That “too” made me love him even more than usual. “Horribly frightened,” I said, glad to be able to admit it without shame. “Nothing really happened, but it was horrible.”

  “Which did you think was the worst part?”

  “Do you mean the worst of the things that happened, or the worst of the things I was expecting?”

  “The things that happened.”

  “When the old man by the fire looked straight at us and pretended we weren’t there…he pretended so hard that I began to believe it. I thought that arrows might be quite different to hornets and so we had been killed without us noticing. I daren’t look back in case I saw our bodies lying on the ground. I pinched myself so hard that it still hurts…to make sure I wasn’t only a spirit.”

  “It wouldn’t matter much if we had been, so long as we didn’t notice being killed.”

  “Oh yes, it would,” I said. “Mother says that it’s very important to know when you’re dead…for if you don’t, instead of asking the Great Hunters to let you go to their country, you wander about, feeling lonely…and getting so cross with people for not seeing you that you get more and more disagreeable. That’s why some dead people hide in the shadows and make frightening noises to chase you away from the places where they live.”

  “Then I hope it never happens to us.”

  “It won’t, because we’ll never forget to ask the Great Hunters to look after us.”

  “Does anybody?”

  “Of course they do, or there wouldn’t be so many spirits. Mother says you don’t get anything until you ask for it. I expect the spirits were people who thought they got carried up to the Happy Country without doing anything about it for themselves: as though they were worms, and the Great Hunters behaved like hungry birds who swooped down and carried them off. Was it frightening to you, Raki…our adventure, I mean?”

  “Yes, very. My worst bit sounds much sillier than yours.”

  “Which was it?”

  “Did you notice the two small children playing in the dust near the large tepee?” I nodded, and he went on, “Well, they saw us, but they weren’t surprised or frightened, until a woman came out of the tepee; and when she saw us she ran to the children and snatched them up and fled into the tepee as though we were a pair of angry grizzlies.”

  “So small children aren’t frightened of us,” I said slowly, “but women are, and the old man pretended we weren’t there. Why, Raki?”

  “We shall have to ask Mother.”

  “She will be angry: we have done the worst of all the ‘specially forbidden things’.”

  “But her being angry won’t last nearly so long as our not knowing.”

  “We had better think about it first.”

  But we didn’t have to think, for I looked up to see Mother standing waiting for us, on the rock from which you can look down into the encampment. She didn’t seem angry, but as though she were suddenly very tired.

  “So you have been there,” she said. “I knew I couldn’t keep you away from them much longer.”

  It no longer seemed a brave adventure. It was as though we had deliberately done something mean and unkind. My eyes felt as though they had got sand in them, and I knew that if I wasn’t very careful I might cry. Raki took my hand and held it, hard. “It was my idea,” he said. “I shouldn’t have let her come with me.”

  “No, it was my idea, really it was.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “It isn’t your fault that the tribe is stronger than a woman…even if a woman loves her children very much, she can’t protect them from the tribe.”

  “They didn’t hurt us, Mother. It wasn’t at all important…we thought it was going to be a tremendous adventure, but we walked through the encampment and nothing happened.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure, Mother,” said Raki. “Nothing is changed by our having been there.”

  “You don’t want to know why you are different?”

  “Yes, of course we do,” I said, “but knowing can’t do us any harm.”

  “I was older than you are when I knew,” she said softly, as though she were speaking to herself. “Would I have been happier if I had never seen beyond the water?” She sighed, a deep sigh as though she put down something very heavy which she had been carrying a long way. “Of your own choice you have done the first of the ‘specially forbidden things’; now you shall do the third. I will take you to the Place of the Falling Water, and tell you what I saw there…and why, because of that seeing, you and I are ‘different’.”

  The Other Side of the Water

  The water of the high fall seemed only a greater intensity of the light flooding down from the full moon. It fell into a circular pool whose sides were of smooth rock. Then I realized why it was different from other falls: the pool must have been bottomless, for the smooth circle of rock was unbroken by any outlet…however deep one dived there would only be water and more water.

  “Now you know why I never let you come here,” said Mother. “This is one of the hidden places, an entrance to the country on the ‘other side of the water.’ Even the tribal Elders dare not come here at the full moon. They are afraid to see themselves as they were before they were born; they are afraid to see the Before People looking up at them. But I have brought you here to tell you my story, because it was at a pool very like this where I learned the courage to break the laws of the tribe. …

  “When I was young, the story-teller brought us legends which were much older than those told by his successor. He told us about the beginnings of things, and because I was eager to listen, he did not hide from me what he knew of the Before People.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Those who came before we can remember.”

  “Before the Totem?”

  “Before any totem. He told me that if I had the courage to look into still water, at the foot of a high fall when the moon is full, I might be able to see his legend come alive. I saw more than a legend, Raki and Piyanah; I saw a way of life forgotten by the tribes, a way of life which must make men and women find only a familiar joy in the Land without Shadows.”

  “What do the Before People look like?” said Raki.

  “They differ from us, yet they have not the faces of strangers. I saw pictures of their country beyond the water…and the pictures were more real than everyday things, not cold like lines on the wall of a cave. They must have stayed a long while in the same place, for they had built their tepees of stone, and there were wide stretches of cultivation, instead of only enough to grow corn for the winter. They wore tunics of colours we cannot make, the blue of a jay’s wing, and a dark, rich crimson, and orange of the moon in autumn. Many of their trees were different; some had fruit on them, scarlet and yellow and green, so large that one would fill your hand. There were men an
d women; I saw them walking hand in hand, and sharing their days. I knew they talked with each other as equals, and when one wept, so did the other; and it was together that they laughed, and worked, and loved.”

  “Then what made them so different from us…except the colours of their tunics, and their stone tepees?” said Raki.

  Moonlight was shining full on her face, and for the first time since she had known we had been to the encampment I saw she smiled. “That you can ask such a question shows that I am not altogether a failure. You are Redskins, male and female, and you find nothing surprising that men and women should love each other, and wish to live together through all the seasons?”

  “How could we be surprised?” I said, wondering why she didn’t go on with the exciting part of the story.

  “When I realized that men and women could live like that, I made a promise to the Great Hunters…because I knew their way of life was the same as the Before People’s, and that they wanted me to follow it again. I promised that if I had a child I would try to keep it free of the laws of separation, and that I would never leave its father, to go back to the Squaws’ Tepees.”

  “What are the Squaws’ Tepees,” I asked, “and why did my father want you to go there?”

  “The Redskins have forgotten the Before People; even the Elders have forgotten, so deeply that they cannot learn wisdom from the wild-duck, who know that the great secrets can be learned only in pairs.”

  “Then Raki and I shall learn a lot of secrets,” I said contentedly, “because we are always in a pair.”

  “How do the rest of the tribe have children if they don’t love each other?” said Raki.

  “In the early summer each Young Brave chooses a squaw, and takes her away into the woods so that she can have a child. He does this because it is his duty to the tribe, not because he loves her. I told you that the Redskins are less wise than the least of the animals!”