Then the dancers stepped backward and stood in line, all breathing heavily as they got their breath back, and the young women of the village took center stage instead. Without my noticing they had all changed into clean white robes, with their hair neatly brushed and divided into short plaits.
The drums fell silent and the women began a song they knew, a beautiful and simple song that recognized us as interlopers but also welcomed us, as I later learned from Hoopoe’s translation.
White moon in the morning,
when two rivals
share one sky.
White moon in the morning,
when a stranger stands
in a new country.
White moon in the morning,
when two big lights
polish the earth.
White moon in the morning,
when a shadow falls
twice as dark.
The effect of this song, which they sang in unison while standing perfectly still, was so peaceful after the frenzy of the dance that I thought I would soon return to my dream, and walk once more with the animals in paradise. But this did not happen. Perhaps the influence of food and drink and smoke had diminished. Perhaps my tiredness overwhelmed all my other feelings. At any rate, for the next little while I did nothing except continue to lean against Natty while more songs poured through me, often closing my eyes to rest, sometimes looking from the faces of the women to their slim arms, and their bracelets, and their anklets, and the white feathers stuck in their black hair, then away to the river that ran beyond them, then resting again.
Resting, and after a while waking to see the menfolk rise to their feet once more, and to hear the drums returning with a stronger rhythm, which told them to form a circle around the women and to move in a clockwise direction, while the women moved in the opposite way. As these two wheels turned, everyone repeated the same few words over and over, which ended every time with the dancers all clapping their hands together. Hoopoe later translated this for me as well:
All men must die
No one knows when
If the time is due
Hearts fill with joy.
If I had known this meaning at the time, I cannot say whether it would have made me sad or cheerful. As it was, the words swept me forward with such a feeling of gentleness, I think it might have carried me until dawn and even beyond, if Hoopoe had not abruptly tired of it, shooed the dancers away, and stepped toward us. As one of the women turned to go, he seized her by the hand and brought her with him.
With his other hand he took hold of the necklace, lifted it over his head, and returned it to me.
“Thank you, Mister Jim,” he said, the silver gleaming in his eyes as I returned it to my satchel. When it had disappeared he made a little bow, with sweat beading through his face paint.
“It is full of secrets,” he said.
“It is—” I began, but he interrupted me. I could only imagine he had been debating some difficult matter with himself, and had now hastily resolved it.
“We will sleep now,” he said, glancing away to his friends, who were all trooping back to their tepees with their shoulders slumped and their weapons dangling at their sides. “We are finished here.”
I wanted to thank him for what he had shown us, but while I was still searching for words he suddenly added, “This is my wife Sees the Wind,” meaning the woman he held by the wrist. Although I could not make her out very clearly in the torchlight, I should have said she was younger even than me, and like a girl in her white dress.
“She is yours for tonight,” Hoopoe said next. “It is our custom.”
This astonished me so much I may even have scrambled backward a little on my blanket like a spider; I certainly felt Natty stiffen beside me and move away.
“It’s not our custom,” I said in a fluster.
“Take her,” said Hoopoe, jerking his wife’s arm as though he expected me to grasp it.
“I cannot do that,” I told him, and looked at him straight.
“Why not?” he said bluntly.
I could only repeat myself. “I cannot do that.”
In the pause that followed I hung my head, not able to meet his eye any longer, and half-expecting Natty would say something. Something that strengthened what I had implied about our customs at home. Or something more personal, about her own feelings. In the end she did neither, but gave a long sigh ending in a hiccup that might have been a laugh.
“Truly,” I said yet again, “I cannot do that,” and to show my determination I climbed to my feet. Hoopoe was scowling, with his eyes bulging a little in their sockets; Sees the Wind was biting her lip and wincing away.
“You do not think she is beautiful enough,” he said accusingly.
“She is very beautiful. Beauty is not the reason.”
“Or too old.”
“Certainly not that.”
“What then?”
“It’s…” I glanced down at Natty, leaning back on the rug with her arms braced behind her; she was smiling, enjoying my discomfort.
This decided me. “Natty would not like it,” I announced.
“I think—” Natty leaned forward but I did not want to hear what she thought and now it was my turn to interrupt.
“I mean it would be a betrayal,” I said. I have no idea whether Hoopoe understood the word for he continued scowling. Natty certainly knew its meaning, however, and I thought must be surprised by it, because she did not finish what she had been ready to say.
In this moment of advantage I took a step toward Hoopoe’s wife and shook her by the hand, which I thought would be polite. When I had released it again I stooped down and took hold of Natty’s hand; it felt much softer in my grip and to my relief did not pull away.
“Now,” I said, speaking in the same decisive voice and tugging Natty to her feet. “Show us where we can sleep. We must not speak like this again.”
After another silence Hoopoe allowed himself to relax a little; whether he felt the strength of my argument, or simply dismissed me as ungrateful, I did not mind. I was too adamant, and too tired as well. He stared at me a moment longer, but soon nodded and lifted one arm to point out a tepee that stood on the further side of the village.
“You will stay there,” he said, speaking quite neutrally. “It will be your home.”
“Thank you,” I said in the same level way. Then I bowed toward White Feather, who all this time had remained lying on the ground, staring at the dying embers of the fire. When he did not acknowledge me, except to twitch his cloak of feathers more comfortably around his shoulders, I led Natty away, and together we made our way to the lodge with Hoopoe following.
I paused outside the tepee and laid my hand on his arm. This caught him off guard and he began to smile. As I smiled back, he once more touched the satchel hanging around my neck; despite what he knew, I thought he was acknowledging that I had some authority, even if it was only borrowed.
It did not occur to me until we had said goodnight, and Natty and I had stepped inside, that he had made us a present of his own home and henceforth would sleep elsewhere himself, perhaps in the chieftain’s tent where we had eaten our meal. I felt grateful for this, and at another time would have been interested to see what sort of possessions he owned. But my weariness was now so great I merely groped my way forward until I came to a heap of soft material that felt like blankets, where I fell down on my back. Natty sank beside me and pressed her face into my shoulder.
“Betrayal?” she whispered, as the silence lapped around us. “What is there to betray?” This could have been an accusation, or at least a question, but it was not. There was laughter in her voice; happiness.
For all that, I told her, “Friendship.”
“Friendship?” The warmth was still in her voice and I felt it soak into me.
“You understand perfectly well, Natty,” I said. “It’s your idea.”
“It is?”
I opened my eyes as wide as possible, t
o discover whether I could drag myself more fully awake. I could not. I saw the moon glowing through the skin of the tent, its hard light diffused into an overall glow, and felt the world losing every clear shape.
“You do understand,” I said again, and rolled onto my side and took her in my arms. Whether I held her in fact or in my dream I am not sure.
CHAPTER 15
Her Kill
To the best of my knowledge we lived with White Feather and his tribe for a little over two years, from the late autumn of 1802 to the early part of 1805. But as soon as I say that, I run into a thicket of questions. Why did we stay so long with our new friends? Why did we not merely recover our health, learn how to reach the coast, and a harbor, and a ship to England, then set out once more on our journey?
Did we lose our hunger for home, or were we frightened of the dangers ahead? Were we lazy?
None of these things. We stayed because we were happy to stay; because we forgot ordinary calendars; because we felt as safe as Hoopoe had told us we would be; and because we enjoyed living with our friends.
And having begun this account of our conversion as a catalog, let me continue in the same way to describe how we managed our affairs:
we continued living in the tepee that belonged to Hoopoe, where I stored my necklace for safekeeping with never a suspicion that anyone might want to remove it;
we wore the same clothes as everyone else in the village and began to understand their language, and soon our bodies grew as lean as theirs, our skins as sunburned, and our hair as ragged (although it was chopped short by Hoopoe’s wife Sees the Wind, who quickly recovered from the insult I had given her);
we learned their names—the simple evocations such as Blue Lake and Bright Moon; those describing appearances such as Cat Face and Small Hands; and those describing habits such as Eats Bones and Never Turns Round;
we made particular friends—with Hoopoe above all, but also with others I cannot do justice to here and so will not even name because they exist at the margins of my story;
we shared whatever land-work was necessary: haymaking in summer, planting in spring, and harvesting in autumn;
we learned how to fish, by making contraptions of grass and flag-stems to throw into the river (but never chasing an alligator, except as observers);
we learned how to hunt on dry land, by tracking or by climbing trees to spy for dust-clouds that showed where herds of deer might be gathered;
we studied the stars and learned how to navigate by their lights;
we read the wind.
And in all these ways, as I say, I gradually lost my longing for England—even to the extent of thinking our shipwreck had been a blessing in disguise, because it had brought me to a new life that made me happy.
My father faded from me, as if the moon careering through the heavens above me was not the same that crawled across his square of window;
the marshes where I had wandered as a child, the marshes I had loved—they also faded;
London faded;
the Island faded;
most surprising of all, Black Cloud began to shrink from me. His threats I could never forget, the memory of how he had pounded on my head in our prison and seemed overflowing with violence. Neither could I shake off the things we had seen in the Black Bay, and found by accident in the desert. But the kindness of Hoopoe and the rest made these things remote, like nightmares I only remembered from time to time, with all their colors washed out. Although I knew Black Cloud must be searching for us, I believed that Hoopoe had built a sort of invisible wall around us, which would protect us for as long as he decided it should.
No one spoke of these changes in us but everyone accepted them, in the same way they accepted that the sun would shine on some days and there would be cloud on others. Yet at the same time everyone wanted to teach us more about their lives, and so made every day seem like a step in our education. Our re-education, I should more properly say.
Natty and I were separated for some of these lessons, with Natty being taken by the women to learn cooking and weaving and suchlike, while I was instructed by the menfolk in making spears and arrowheads, and the sharpening of blades etc., which she was not encouraged to know.
And we accepted this division willingly enough, for the sake of politeness. But in all matters of hunting and tracking we insisted we remain together, saying we would need to combine our skills when the day came for us to wake from our dream at last, and continue our travels.
I shall mention one instance of our collaborating in this way, as a proof of what I mean and also an example of how our life proceeded under Hoopoe’s guidance. It is a single story dating from a few weeks after our arrival in the village, and must be allowed to stand for many.
Our purpose was to kill a bear, which we were told was done at the end of every autumn so that a hide could be presented to our chieftain to keep him warm during the months to come. No matter that White Feather seemed as content with nakedness as he was with clothes: custom was custom, and must be observed.
The expedition was led by Hoopoe, who warned us when we set out, and not for the first time, that of all the creatures in our vicinity bears were the most dangerous, because they were the strongest and had the worst tempers. Up to this point, all I knew of these creatures was what I had learned from seeing their scratch-marks on tree trunks, or watching them work in the river, scooping up their meal as easily as if it was water itself. But this had given me a good idea of their power and savagery, so I paid special attention to Hoopoe as he prepared us for the hunt.
The first question he asked was how we might lure one of these beasts to a place where we could have the advantage over him—which he then answered himself by saying we should appeal to the same force that drove other bears into the open to catch fish: namely, their greed. In particular their greed for honey, which they preferred to everything else.
The next part of this operation was simple enough, thanks to one of the children in the village for whom Hoopoe had a special affection; I think he may have been his son, but did not like to ask, in case it reflected badly on Sees the Wind, who was evidently not his mother. This boy, who was probably ten or twelve years old, had the good plain name of Runs Fast, and spent so much of his life foraging in the wood nearby that he might as well have been an animal himself—always with twigs in his hair, and mud on his face and knees, and some sort of egg or nest or other natural treasure in his hands. He would know where to find a bear and a bees’ nest close together, said Hoopoe; we would take him as our guide.
On the morning in question we entered the wood where it grew closest to the village, with Runs Fast immediately proving true to his name by shooting ahead of us. Hoopoe called him back and told him for today at least he was called Runs More Slowly, which the boy did not think funny. To present the scene more accurately I should also say that Hoopoe himself was freshly painted from head to foot with his own red and pink and black and white bird-colors; Natty and I, and the six young warriors accompanying us, were bare-faced, wearing our simple leather tunics and moccasins, with spears and tomahawks in our hands.
At first, and despite his warning, Runs Fast slipped among the trees with such rapid twists and turns I thought we still might not be able to keep him in sight. But remembering Hoopoe’s warning, he always stopped when he seemed just about to vanish, and waited for us to make our more laborious way among the leaves and moss-beards.
While we remained in this part of the wood, where we had previously hunted and which we knew how to navigate, we took our bearings from tree trunks and boulders I now thought of as friends. Indeed, at one point I stopped and pressed my head to a favorite oak tree as I had seen others do, and listened for whatever advice it might give me. I heard only the wind breathing in the branches above my head, but perhaps that was all I was meant to hear.
When we came to a different territory, and our familiar trees gave way to laurels growing close together, with their branches often entangled, ou
r path became more difficult.
And soon there was no path at all, only a series of little obstacles we leaped or lunged or fell across, while Runs Fast squeezed ahead, then halted and beckoned us to follow. I am sure we would have persevered without this encouragement, but I have to say it helped me; I thought I was following a spirit of the wood itself, like the innocent in a story.
Eventually these laurel bushes shrank away and we broke into a different kind of country, with small oak trees growing more separately now, and a covering of ferns underneath them that seemed thick and impenetrable at first glance but in fact allowed us to pass very easily. After another half-mile in this green gloom, with Runs Fast always bouncing ahead and showing the way, he brought us where he wanted: a clearing about fifty yards wide, which was surrounded by oaks on all sides. The sun shone very brightly here, and the air had a peculiar freshness and sparkle as it shimmered off the vegetation.
When we burst through the last of the ferns we found Runs Fast standing at the foot of a tree directly across the clearing, pointing upward to the place where a branch had snapped off; here we saw a gash in the trunk that was coated with dark brown gum.
I recognized it at once as a bees’ nest, but did not even have time to say so before Hoopoe and his men bounded forward, slashing at the tree with their weapons and calling for me and Natty to join in. Hoopoe, in particular, went about this work in a kind of frenzy, climbing into the lowest branches and really pounding at the wood with his tomahawk. The bees he dislodged in this way, that soon began to crawl over his face and hands and must have stung him very painfully, seemed not in the least troublesome to him. If one happened to land on his eye he brushed it away, but otherwise kept hacking and smashing as if the bees’ wings and stinging tails were only raindrops.
After a few minutes he gave a throaty shout. A moment later he had taken hold of the prize—a dripping mass of honey the size of a large cat, which he hoisted above his head until some of the gold trickled down his arms and into his hair, before he brought it to us on the ground and we pressed forward to admire it.
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