by Joan Grant
“I’m going to take his scalp, and get another for Raki.”
I leapt down the steep slope, and Gorgi and Tekeeni followed me. The Black Feathers were trying to escape, otherwise I think we should never have been able to reach the place where I had seen my enemy fall. I caught him by the hair and pulled back his head, ready to slit his throat if his eyes moved. His jaw lolled open and his eyes were empty as white stones. It is more difficult to take a scalp than to skin a beaver. …I cut too deep and tore away half his ear. The bone of the skull was white and clean with only a single streak of blood.
“They’re gone,” said Gorgi. “He must have been the last of them. He was a brave man, Piyanah, to have been the last to run.”
“He’s not a man,” I said passionately. “He’s less than an animal…do you think I would take a man’s scalp?”
But I knew I lied. This coarse, strong hair was more than the scalp of a Black Feather, more than the sign that I could enter the ranks of the Young Braves. He was all the men who had jeered at me, all the men whom the squaws feared when they were taken into the woods after the Choosing. He was my father and my grandfather; he was the Elders without wisdom, and the Scarlet Feathers who had never known the loneliness of squaws. I must get another scalp for Raki. …
“We must follow them. Look! Dorrok and the Brown Feathers are following them…none of them must escape!”
“But we must obey Dorrok’s orders,” said Gorgi. “He told us that we were to stay on the ledge and watch the eastern cleft.”
“You needn’t come with me…if you’re afraid. You needn’t come with me if you don’t want to join my tribe…you can make your own tribe, where there are no squaws to lead you into danger!”
But they were obedient to Dorrok, and I was too proud to turn back when I realized they had not followed me. It was very dark, and the scalp tied to my belt was sodden and smelt of blood. The trees were black as crows and stood watching me. A clot of blood fell out of the scalp and I felt it crawl down my leg like a slug. I wanted to throw the scalp away, or bury it under a stone so heavy that I couldn’t remember it even if I tried. But I knotted it more tightly to my belt, to remind myself that I was now a Young Brave. I should have to stay in the woods until daylight and then tell Gorgi that I had searched for a Black Feather to kill as I had promised.
I heard a sudden movement and swung round. The Black Feather must have lost his weapons for he caught me in a wrestling hold…it was one that Raki had taught me, so I was able to break free. He had a strong rancid smell: there was no moon and I could only see him as a dark shape against the darker trees. I dared not run for he would know I was a woman. …
I drew my knife, but he must have heard me for in the next hold he twisted it from my hand and I heard it clatter against a stone. I tore his ear, that sudden twist of Gorgi’s, and felt it strip from his head. He tried to bite through the big vein in my neck, but I twisted my head and his teeth sank into my shoulder until they grated against the bone. If only he would kill me before he realized I was a woman!
He tripped me, and I felt his knee pressing up under my ribs and then his hands thrusting towards my throat…breaking my grip on his wrists…and I knew I could not answer the death hold. Blood roared in my ears as though I had dived too deep…I was going to die and he would take my scalp. Would I still be mutilated on the other side of the water…would Raki recognize me in our little valley…would he grow old and I have to wait so many years for him?
Suddenly the terrible pain in my chest slackened, and I heard the Black Feather cry out. His head was being bent backwards across a knee behind his shoulders…thumbs, strong beautiful thumbs I loved, were driving into his eyes. His hands suddenly released their hold on my throat and I rolled clear. I heard his neck snap: as Raki’s hands bent it backwards over Raki’s knee.
And I was no longer Piyanah the Brave, I was a girl, crying because I had been frightened and now was so very happy. And Raki was saying that he was never going to let me fight any more battles. Then he picked me up, and carried me further into the woods.
New Magic
No longer fear among the dark trees; but a peace I had not known since we were children. Here the only shadows were delicate as the small, singing leaves of the white birches, and instead of the slow glisten of blood there was the clean ripple of water over stones. Piyanah the Brave belonged to the land of shadows: I was Raki’s squaw, and we were free in love.
I watched him soak in the stream the bandage I had used to bind my breasts, and it reminded me that my shoulder was throbbing where the teeth of the Black Feather had torn it to the bone. I wondered how we got here. …Raki had carried me and then we had walked uphill along the bed of a stream. I was naked and my body was clean, so he must have washed off the blood.
The water cooled the heat in my shoulder, and Raki’s hands were sure and gentle as he held open the edges of the wound to let the coolness drip into it.
“Did you take his scalp, Raki?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I hated him…a scarlet hatred strong as fire. I had never felt that before, Piyanah; it’s rich meat, for it made me grow up in a night. We’re both grown up, Piyanah. I am a man and you are my woman…and this knowledge is stronger than any other law, for it is the great law of the Hunters.”
“But will Father recognize it when we go back to the tribe?”
“We’re not going back—yet. The Brave is allowed to take his squaw into the woods. Do you mind being my squaw, Piyanah?”
I laughed up at him. “Have I ever wanted anything except to be with you, my Raki? We have both killed an enemy and taken his scalp, so we are both Young Braves…a double right to be together, for Piyanah the Brave takes Raki for his squaw.”
“That pretence belongs to the tribe, not to us. You are my woman, Piyanah, do you understand? My woman!”
He was so solemn that I wanted to tease him a little. “May I speak the name of the man who honours me with his attention, or should I keep silent and follow five paces behind you as a dutiful squaw must?”
“You need be obedient only if I think you are running into danger. If the Black Feathers come back, you will stay with the squaws. You would have been killed if I hadn’t found you in time.”
“But Braves have to risk being killed.”
“I might let you fight beside me, because I promised that neither would keep the other waiting in our little valley…but I’m not going to leave you in danger again. You need never obey anyone but me, Piyanah, and I won’t order you to do things unless I see that courage has deafened you to discretion.”
Dear Raki! I had never heard him talk like this, and I found it enormously enjoyable. “What will you do if I am not obedient?”
“You will have to be,” said Raki.
“You mean because you are stronger, that in a wrestling you would win? I have learned two new holds that I haven’t shown you yet.”
“It is not because I am stronger: it’s because I am a man, your man.”
Why did I love Raki more than ever before? The skin of his back was smooth as birch-bark and the muscles rippled like water. There was a frown between his eyebrows, and he was staring at a tree on the far side of the glade because he didn’t want to look at me. A pulse beat in his temple as though he had been running, but he hadn’t moved since he came up from the stream.
“I’m glad it was you and not Gorgi who found me,” I said. “I’d much rather be here with you than with him.”
“So should Gorgi be glad…if he values his scalp!”
“How rude of you, Raki,” I said, trying to keep my voice serious. “Just because I’ve scalped a Black Feather it doesn’t mean I’m going to start scalping my friends.”
“You wouldn’t have had the chance: I should have taken Gorgi’s scalp if he dared to bring you up here!”
“But I have often been in the woods with Gorgi.”
“Well, you’re not going to do it again. Do you unders
tand? That’s an order, Piyanah.”
“What a pity I’m so bad at being obedient!”
Raki was no longer staring at the birch tree: he was looking at me and the expression in his eyes was different from any I had seen before, hot, and fierce, and rather bewildered at the same time.
He caught hold of me. “You’re going to learn to be obedient, now…and you’d better learn fast if you don’t want your friends to be killed. You are my woman?”
My arms were round his neck, and under my hands the smooth skin of his back was vivid and exciting. … “I have always been your woman.”
My heart was thudding as though I had been racing uphill, but above it I could hear his heart.
“We needn’t wait to share a star before we become one person,” he said softly. Then my body and his weren’t separate any more; the joy of them burst into warm, brilliant flame, and we were part of this new flame. In its light we could see each other closer and more clearly than ever before, and the joy was so sharp that we cried out, and let it lap over us in waves of warm light, warmer than the sun, softer than the depth of beaver pelts.
Then there was a peace, and a belonging that was the end of loneliness.
The dread of going back to the tribe kept on trying to creep into the glade, and in silence we fought it off. Neither of us wanted to kill anything, so Raki went to collect some fungus, the kind that can be eaten raw. When he came back he was whistling, and carried a bundle tied up in an old tunic.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“Gorgi brought it.”
“Gorgi…but how did he find us?”
“He tracked us here, and when he saw you were wounded he went to tell Dorrok, who said that we needn’t go back for three days and told Gorgi to bring us some food.”
“That was nice of Gorgi,” I said warmly.
“Yes, and clever of him to follow our tracks…especially as he can only see out of one eye.”
“Was he hurt in the battle? He was all right when I left them.”
“But not when I did! I hit him…hard. I tried to stay with the squaws, but I couldn’t when I saw the fires and knew the Black Feathers had come. I only reached the encampment when they had fled. …I couldn’t find you and thought you had been killed. I was searching among the dead when Gorgi told me you had gone into the woods. He didn’t believe you meant to try for another scalp; that’s why they let you go alone. I told him—with my fist—that he was a fool. He followed as soon as he could, to help look for you.”
“Which was nice of him, Raki, and nicer still to make things all right for us with Dorrok.”
“Yes, I suppose it was,” admitted Raki grudgingly, “though he deserves a lot more than a swollen eye for letting you go alone.”
“Is his eye very bad?”
“Not nearly bad enough,” he said unfeelingly; “in a few days it will hardly show at all.”
“Perhaps he didn’t follow me because he was afraid of losing his scalp…to you.”
Instead of being angry Raki only chuckled, “Even Gorgi isn’t that much of a fool!”
On the last evening before we must go back to the tribe, we were lying in the tall grass beside the stream. The trunks of the white birches were warm with sunset, and even the birds sounded drowsy, as though they had been practising our new magic.
“Do you think the Before People knew about it too, Raki?”
“I expect so: Mother said they knew all the secrets of happiness, so they must have known about this.”
“It’s terrible to think of generations and generations of people being content to live apart, just because they had forgotten something so beautifully simple.”
“They can’t have forgotten all about it, or there wouldn’t still be a legend about two people becoming one star.”
“But it would have been such a waste of time to wait until after we’re dead.”
“Do you think our people will understand when we tell them, or will it be difficult to explain?” said Raki.
“I hadn’t thought about that. Perhaps it will be difficult…it sounds almost silly if you try to say it in words.”
“Being a star sounds silly if you don’t understand what it feels like.”
“Yes, I suppose it does…sitting up in the sky, twinkling or getting yourself wrapped in clouds.”
Two chipmunks were chasing each other along a branch. Suddenly I noticed that Raki was watching them intently. “Piyanah,” he said slowly, “those chipmunks…and us…and the Before People. Do you think it could all be the same magic?”
I thought for a moment and then said emphatically, “I don’t think so: anyway I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the squaws going into the woods…for if it was, they wouldn’t be glad to come back.”
“You must be right,” agreed Raki, “for if they had found our magic the men would never let them go back to the Squaws’ Tepees.”
“But we’ve got to go back. …”
“Yes,” he said, “we’ve got to go back. I thought last night of Rokeena and Gorgi and the others. …The Before People have given us a secret we’ve got to share, for it’s terribly important to have a secret from which a real tribe will be born.”
“Shall we be able to use our magic again before we become Brown Feathers?”
“I don’t think so. But we’ve got two heavens to remember now, this birch grove and our little valley. We can’t live here and in our ordinary days at the same time. …I couldn’t bear to stay with the squaws if I let myself remember this magic, and I couldn’t bear you being with Gorgi and Tekeeni unless you forgot it too, until we can be together all the time.”
I tried to comfort him. “It will be only another year, now that we have become Young Braves so early.”
“Do you remember how you felt when I said, ‘Only seven years’?”
“I know, Raki, but if I didn’t say ‘only’ I might cry…and that would spoil our last night together…and it ought to be easier now that we’ve got so much more to remember, and so much more to look forward to.”
Yet a year seemed longer than all the rivers of Earth, when, soon after dawn next morning, we came in sight of the encampment: Raki the squaw, and Piyanah the Young Brave, each with a scalp of a Black Feather knotted to his belt.
Death Canoe
I thought that the funerary rites would have taken place before our return, but, though the enemy had been buried by Naked Foreheads, in a disused clay-pit which would henceforward be taboo, the last of our dead had only just been brought back to the encampment, so his companions had waited for him until they could all go together to the land of the Great Hunters.
Seventy-three of our Braves had been killed; they lay in a semicircle between the Totem and the watch-fire, wrapped in their blankets as though resting before dawn. If the friend of a Brave killed in battle puts a hand on his cold forehead and speaks loudly, for it is difficult for the dead to hear, the words of the message will be carried by him beyond the sunset; and if a falling star is seen in the West it is known that the message has been faithfully delivered.
I wished I had thought to consult Raki as to whether we ought to ask one of them to tell Mother we had not forgotten the Before People. Was it easier for the dead to hear the dead than the living? Surely she could hear our voices when we spoke to her without the sound going through the ear of a corpse? But we could not be quite sure. She would be sorrowful if all the others who had gathered to welcome our Braves received news of the living, and she alone had no word from her daughter and her foster-son.
The encampment was hushed except for the sound of logs being split to make the funeral pyres down by the river. I went to lay my bow at the foot of the Totem, to thank him for sparing my life and to tell him that I had fulfilled the dedication of my arrows in the blood of an enemy. I decided to try to find a messenger before taking the scalp to the Tepee of the Elders: if the dead saw it knotted to my belt they would recognize that I was now a Young Brave and so had the right to cla
im the privileges of a younger brother.
Only five of the dead had been scalped: they must have followed the fleeing Black Feathers into the woods, for I knew that the enemy would not have had the chance to snatch a trophy in the turmoil of a losing battle. These five bodies now wore new scalps, of bear pelt, to show that they were mighty hunters and had died in victory. The fur had been stitched to the flesh of the forehead. Little fires of aromatic twigs had been lit on each side of the row of Braves, but the smoke did not keep away all the flies: sometimes I had to brush them off before I could recognize the face they covered.
The Scarlet Feather whom I had watched smoking by the fire while we waited for him to give the signal for battle had taken his calm with him into death: the eyes were closed, and his strong hands still held the bow and the tomahawk which he would carry on his long journey. I did not like to disturb him, so I went in search of another messenger.
I saw a boy who had often speared fish with Gorgi and me: he must have died by a single blow from a tomahawk. His neck had been severed and was now carefully stitched to the shoulders with narrow strips of raw-hide, so that he should not stand before the Great Hunters as a cripple. I was afraid to put my hand on his forehead in case the head lolled to the side: I was ashamed of this dread and hoped he could not hear my thoughts.
The arrow had been taken from the eye-socket of Dorrok’s friend whom I had seen die early in the battle, and a white stone, painted to look like an eye, put in its place. The lips were drawn back from the teeth and he looked as though he were snarling. I was sorry, for he had always been a kindly man, and his friends beyond the sunset might think he had grown ferocious, before he had time to make a spirit body to wear instead of this fading dream of flesh.
I did not realize that Barakeechi had been killed until I saw him lying between two Brown Feathers. His face was unmarked, but decay had made blue stains round his mouth, as though he had been eating elderberries. I drew back his blanket and saw an arrow wound above his left breast. I saw something move…there were maggots in the wound, maggots in Barakeechi who had always been more ready with laughter than any of us! He was kind and brave, and he had been going to join our tribe of the Feathers…his death was far more real to me than any of the others.
