by Joan Grant
The deep water looked no larger than a long canoe and the crag towered into the sky above it. Could Raki see from up there that only a quarter of the pool was safe and that in the rest the treacherous rocks lurked just beneath the surface? Could he see them, or would the cloud shadows make him misjudge the colour of the water?
Dorrok, Gorgi, and Tekeeni were close to me, but I did not notice Narrok until I heard a quiet voice say:
“He will not fail, Piyanah. He has not betrayed his eyes nor the light of his heart, as I had done. I was divided between the will to die and the will to live; that is why I was caught between the two sides of the water until you and Raki brought me fully to life again.”
“He’s ready!” It was a shout from someone in the crowd.
The height seemed to have made Raki look shorter and broader. Narrok gripped my arm: “In a moment he will be climbing out of the pool to stand beside you. Steady, Piyanah, give him your courage to keep him steady.”
A groan went up from the crowd, as the body hurtled through the air, too close to the rock-face. Blank, unbelieving horror swept over me in a dark flood. I saw blood pouring like smoke through the water of the pool. Why does no one run forward to save Raki’s body? I can’t move. Why doesn’t Dorrok go for me? Why are they letting a strange Chief touch Raki? Raki, whose face is only a pulp of red flesh. …
I heard my father’s voice, very far away yet solid as stone, “The Yellow Skin failed, Piyanah, but Raki will win!”
“The Yellow Skin?” I wanted to cry and laugh and scream with relief. The arm dangling from that crushed shoulder, from that dead body which T’cha’s father carried in his arms, was not Raki’s! It was yellow…it was not Raki’s!
“Quiet, Piyanah!” Dorrok’s voice, sharp and authoritative. I realized with shame that a convulsive sob had burst out of me.
“I’m sorry, Dorrok. I didn’t know that two men were going to dive. …I thought it was Raki. Why are they waiting, Dorrok?”
“For the blood to clear from the pool. It will not be long now.”
A desperate call for help formed into words inside my head, “Great Eagle, please remember your rock and give the power of your wings to Raki. Great Fish, make him wise in water. Great Hunters, protect him, protect him…”
Raki stood far above me on the towering pinnacle; his hands stretched above his head as though he was thanking the Lords of the Sky. Slowly, so very slowly, he plunged down through the air; his body curved like a bow, his arms steady as gliding wings.
“He is going to do it! He is going to!” Dorrok was exultant.
I saw Raki flash by into the green water. I heard a shout of acclamation go up from the watching thousands. I saw him break surface, shaking the water from his eyes.
Then I felt his arm, wet and real and alive, round my shoulders. I was trying to thank the Great Hunters, trying not to fling my arms round him, trying to say calmly, “I knew you were going to be safe, Raki.”
But most of all I was trying not to weep for joy; because our happiness was safe between our hands though I had thought it crushed to pulp at the foot of the Eagle Rock.
PART FOUR
Squaws’ Choosing
The winter through which Raki and I waited as Scarlet Feathers for the first spring moon, in which we should become the dual Chief of a new tribe, had the quality of that pale quiet of early dawn which divides night from day. Since childhood there had been barriers to separate us; now only time kept us apart, time which flowed steadily as a river without rapids, knowing neither spate nor summer drought.
Our women stayed in the small encampment we had built for them away from the Squaws’ Tepees, and the thirty who had gone with us to the Gathering had now been joined by five others who would make with us the journey to the South. It was agreed that the men should also number thirty-five, near our own age, so that each squaw should have a chance to take a husband. There were, besides Dorrok, two older men who wished to wear our tribal mark on their foreheads, Tenak and Hajan, Scarlet Feathers with whom we had become friends on our way home from the Gathering. Tenak chose to come with us because he was always eager for adventure and thought that in the South we might find a tribe even more ferocious than the Black Feathers: Hajan because every year he spent several moons away from the encampment to explore country into which our people never penetrated. The North and West were familiar to him, and he also knew of a high pass over the mountains far to the South, to which he would act as our guide.
We hoped that as many girls as possible would find husbands before we made the journey, but neither Raki nor I had expected that all thirty-five would be chosen by Braves who were eager to fulfill the conditions of marriage under our laws. Perhaps it was not only the squaws but also the call of far horizons that made them so eager to be accepted. No longer could young men wrestle with each other to see who should have the first choice of squaws; now they must play the same part as the males of the forest, using their feathers, their songs, their prowess to beguile the female; as though they were turkey cocks or stags instead of Redskins, who used to be so proud of being aloof.
Gorgi’s choice surprised me. It was the girl called Cheka, whom four years ago I had seen gralloch a stag.
“You must not quarrel with her, Gorgi,” I said, “or she will take your hunting-knife to spill your bowels while you sleep. Is she still so greedy for the smell of warm blood?”
“No, Piyanah,” said Gorgi gravely, “I have made her forget her father, or at least the memory is fading—though it has been slow as taking a blood-stain out of white leather.”
“Her father? But surely she never knew his name?”
“It does not need a name to make a totem of hatred. He must have been very cruel when he took Cheka’s mother into the woods, for it left the woman crazed with hatred. Cheka only joined us at first because she wanted to learn how to use a bow so as to revenge herself on men. It was not deer she gralloched, but the man who was her father; not fish whose bellies she slit open, but the belly of the nameless man who had driven her mother mad.”
“She hated Raki as she hated all men?”
“No, because she knew him as the ‘not-man.’”
“And were you a ‘not-man’ also, Gorgi? How did you make her long to put her arms round your neck instead of her hands to your throat?”
We were sitting on a fallen tree by a frozen stream, and, until I became interested, I had been drawing pictures in the snow with the end of my bow. Now I paused and looked at him.
“Tell me, Gorgi, does she think of you as a ‘not-man’ too?”
To avoid looking at me he pretended to be absorbed in taking a thorn out of his foot.
“Would you be shy, Gorgi, if you had tamed a mountain lion?”
“Yes, if it followed me only when I was running away! I expect it sounds very funny, Piyanah, so laugh if you want to; but I will tell you the truth even if it makes you want to laugh. I don’t know why I chose Cheka. It was after I realized that no one except Raki ever meant anything to you—as a husband, I mean. I was jealous of Raki, and angry with you for preferring him to me; and being angry and jealous made me lonely. And Cheka was lonely too, for the other girls didn’t like her, perhaps because they thought she was savage, or else because they recognized she was more beautiful than any of them. I did everything I could to make Cheka admire me; if I thought she was watching I would do the most dangerous thing—a dive the others said was impossible, or a rock climb that made me sweat with fright. I wore new tunics and put bear’s grease on my hair. I made a canoe for her. But she remained indifferent. Then I fell out of a tree, of all the stupid, ridiculous things to do, and hit my head on a stone! It was noon when I fell and nearly sunset when I woke up; and I thought I must have died and gone to the Hunting-Grounds! My head was on Cheka’s lap and she was kissing me and crying because she thought I was dead.”
He sighed, “Women are difficult to understand, Piyanah, even when you love them. It was after she loved me that she told me
about hating her father. Now she can’t even see someone else clean a dead animal without feeling sick—much less do it herself.”
I wasn’t sure what to say about Cheka, so I said, “I’m glad Rokeena has chosen Tekeeni.”
“Yes, I always thought she would after he stopped her being ashamed of the scar on her leg. They are like each other, Rokeena and Tekeeni, kind and loyal, and not very clever.”
We sat in companionable silence for a while and then Gorgi said suddenly, “There is a question I have wanted to ask you for a long time; and if it’s one you don’t want to answer—well, could you forget I ever asked it?”
“Of course, Gorgi.”
“Do you and Raki know exactly what men and women do when they go into the woods? I mean, have you done it yourselves, not just been told about it?”
“Yes, Gorgi, we have.”
He gave a long sigh of relief. “After the Black Feathers?” I nodded and he went on, “Tekeeni and I thought you had, though we didn’t know much about it then. At the Gathering some of the warriors from other tribes talked about women—usually it was after the feast when they were drunk. They boasted a lot, but they didn’t say anything practical. Cheka says she wouldn’t be frightened of me, but I keep on remembering the man who drove her mother mad. I’d kill myself if Cheka went even a little mad because of something I did. Is it dreadful for squaws, Piyanah?”
“It’s lovely for squaws—if both people love each other. You have only to watch deer, or chipmunks, or even gophers, to see they both enjoy the magic. It only becomes squalid and dreadful when it gets snared in the cruel briars of taboos.”
He looked so solemn that I tried to make him laugh.
“Lying down is very pleasant when you do it on moss or beaver pelts, but horrid if you do it on a thorn bush. Cheka’s mother got thorns, but Cheka won’t.”
“Thank you, Piyanah, for telling me,” he said fervently, “and could you tell Cheka too?”
“I think she’ll have to wait to find out for herself. Raki and I discussed whether we should tell the others and he said no, because if we did they might refuse to wait until the spring moon. It’s only fifty-three days now, so it won’t hurt them to wait a little longer.”
“But why should they wait?”
“Because,” I said firmly, “women whose bellies are big with child might be difficult on a journey. I want us to find our place of the corn-growing before we have babies.”
“But you and Raki didn’t have a baby,” objected Gorgi.
“That was very thoughtful of the Great Hunters; but now we know that babies are one of the things which happen when you use the magic we mustn’t expect them to look after us again. Of course it may be quite a long time before they decide that the child Raki and I are going to have is ready to be born, but I don’t think it’s fair to shout to the child and say, ‘We’re ready for you,’ unless we are. And I shall be too busy helping Raki, until we get the tribe settled, to be able to think enough about what kind of body our son would like, and how he would want to be born.”
Na-Ka-Chek
Na-ka-chek had gone to the pool of the falling water, there to tell my mother that at the fullness of the growing moon his oath to her would be fulfilled. I knew he believed that the dark water would suddenly become thin and luminous so that he could see through it into her country, as though he, from a narrow cave, looked on a scene of brilliant sunlight in the far distance. He would recognize her among the shining people, and call to her for a sign to show him she had remembered, and forgiven.
I had often tried to tell him that the Land beyond the Sunset is not remote, that those who dwell there can walk with us in close companionship, though their voice is silence and their laughter the dance of the leaves. But this he refused to believe, saying, “I have made a vow, Piyanah, and only when it is fulfilled can I call to her again.”
I knew that my mother loved him, and so would not wait on vows. She would not think of him at the pool of the falling water, but in solitude she must so often have tried to comfort him. So every night, as the moon flowed up the current of the sky, I went to the Great Tepee where he had lived alone with his thoughts of her. I talked to her aloud, though I knew that her people did not depend on sound for hearing.
“Mother, make him believe that you are close to him, as you are close to me; not only when I am in danger, or pain, or sorrow, but also in the ordinary days. He is staring down into the pool which took your body from him: a light gleams in the dark water; for a moment he thinks it is a faint reflection of the torch you are carrying through the echoing caverns which separate your country from this little earth. He is calling your name to guide you to him. Then there is silence, for he knows that the light is only the reflection of a star; a cloud drifts over the moon and the wind is sorrowful among the trees.
“Don’t let him be alone any more, Mother. He is only austere because he dare not remember the joy he threw away: he is only aloof because he is so very lonely. I used to think he was cold and without understanding. …I hated him, Mother, for I thought he was trying to take me away from Raki. I thought he was jealous of our happiness because he had lost his own. But he was not harsh because we were strangers, he was harsh because he thought we were part of him; and it is difficult, Mother, for a Scarlet Feather to be kind to himself.
“He has often said to me, ‘The courage of your mother was so much greater than mine; and I betrayed her. Her wisdom was like a sun, and I tried to make her blind.’ He thought you would only accept him if he gained even more endurance, that you could love him only if he gained the wisdom of a hundred Elders.”
I knew that she heard me, and yet each sunset showed me that he had not heard her: I waited for him in the forest clearing through which he would pass on his way home, and then when he did not come I went back to the tepee among the lengthening shadows.
On the fifth night I knew she was so close that she was almost tangible. Was it a shadow, or could I see her standing by the entrance? Then she was moving ahead of me past the silent tepees, and I followed her. Above the encampment she paused, by the rock beyond which she would not let us pass when we were children. I knew she wanted me to take off my clothes and leave them on the rock: for insignia which set people apart from each other did not belong to the path by which she was leading me.
The moss was cool and deep under my feet which were echoing the rhythm of her going. I was secure because she took me with her, as Raki and I had not been secure since we were children. Now I was running, swift and effortless, for I knew she tarried to keep pace with my mortality.
In the sound of the falling water there was singing, slow and measured. I went forward gently, no longer impatient, for the sound was free of time. In it there was the eagerness of fire yet no urgency, for this light need not tremble with the effort of giving heat unsparingly before the kindling-wood cut short its span. Here was growth without death, joy without sorrow, swiftness without tiring, for yesterday and tomorrow linked hands and knew themselves twin sisters.
Then I was standing near the foot of the fall, and could see Na-ka-chek through a mist of spray. He was sitting cross-legged, deep in thought. Or had he fallen asleep, for his head bent forward as though bowed by the weight of the feathered headdress. Another mist was rising beyond the fall: a bright mist like sunlight seen beyond a curtain of rain. In this mist there were people…two people, and they were young yet rich with years.
I knew that for them the moon shone always between the same two trees: and they were timeless. I could not see them, yet I knew their arms were warm about each other: I could not hear them, yet I knew they laughed, and whispered the sweet truths of lovers united.
I knew that my voice, my sight, my hearing had become a bridge between them, though this in a manner I could not understand: and that my recognition would carry the reality even to the waking Na-ka-chek, whose body wore feathers by a pool while his spirit gloried in his freedom.
Slowly, as though still half-asleep
, he stood upright. He lifted the feathers from his head and took off the heavy ceremonial robes. Naked and strong as a tree, he stood with his hands upstretched towards the sky.
“Great Hunters, I am no longer alone!” Warmth, and strength, and security were in his voice. Then he threw back his head and laughed; strong, resonant laughter of a man in whose heart gladness is an urgent spring which must gush forth.
He looked round, as though startled by the sound of his laughter; as was I who had never heard it before. He saw me, but without surprise, finding it natural for me to be there, as Raki would have done.
“It is not usual for a man to laugh because he rejoices that he was a fool…and I have been very foolish, my Piyanah…but what does it matter, now that I have come home? Narrok can see without eyes, but I had eyes and refused to open them. It is good not to be blind or proud or lonely. It was foolish to climb a mountain by a precipice when there was a smooth path to follow, but it is good to reach the peak. It was foolish to make a journey in winter, when the river would have been easy for canoes after the ice had melted; but even the fool may rejoice when he reaches the valley. Sit here beside me, my Piyanah, and hear why your father knows he was a fool and in that knowledge has found rejoicing.
“I caused myself, and all those under my authority, to suffer, to strive, to choose always the more difficult of two ways: and all this I did to try to become worthy of your mother. The scarlet feathers in my headdress, and your feathers and Raki’s also, I strove for so that I might have something worthy to offer in exchange for her forgiveness. I was going to offer her my pride, my courage, my endurance, and the honour of my tribe; the courage, and enterprise, and freedom that you and Raki have won, and the future of your feathers, in exchange for a single word of recognition. I must give everything to her, and then perhaps, if it were enough, she might allow a bright gleam from her sun to pierce the darkness of the pool which hid her from me. So many fine and sonorous protestations I have made to her, here in the last five days…and none of them she heard!
