by Caleb Fox
She pulled on a doeskin dress, slipped out the door flap, walked up and down the ocean sands, searching for something, but she didn’t know what. The village where she’d lived all her life, the sands stretching to the north, the cliffs rising to the south, the great water blasted with the light of the rising sun—she cared nothing for this familiar world. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, like the air had been sucked off the planet.
Yes, she knew Aku was on the way. She knew he felt the same passion, bigger than anything she had ever thought people could feel, a force rough and crazy, like the white-frothed waves that racked the sea. She knew that when he came to Amaso, she would give him all they both wanted, they would fulfill the promise. But she felt empty now. She wanted something now.
She got an idea. She saw her father, Oghi, walking away from the hut they shared—only the two of them lived there. He was headed for the tide pools and soon would come back with his hands full of shells. He was the village seer, and he used shells as tools of divination to get glimpses of the future. She didn’t understand how it worked. Now she ran after him.
Though she called him “father,” he was no more than a dozen winters older than she, and he was the brother of her first father. Two winters ago her mother died giving birth, and last winter her father died of the coughing sickness. Oghi had never married and lived alone in a small hut about a hundred paces from the village. Though he declined to move into the village—the closeness made him uncomfortable—she moved in with him. Neither of them had any other family left.
“Father,” she called, “what are the tides today?”
Oghi meant “sea turtle” in the Amaso language, and her father knew more about the ocean than anyone else in the tribe. In a vision he’d seen himself as an ocean-going turtle. Then he learned to shape-shift into the common turtle with the smooth red-brown back and the fine-tasting green fat. Though he was a monster as a turtle, the weight of two men, as a man Oghi was slight and looked boyish, except for his ancient eyes. His hair, oddly, had been red-brown from birth. He kept track of the weather and everything about the sea for the village.
“The tides will be big,” he said. Sometimes the incoming tide pushed halfway to the village and deepened the separate fingers of the river until no one could walk across them, or the outgoing tide exposed long stretches of sand and rock, and sucked the river almost dry.
“Really big. Flood tide way upriver tonight. Go get some water. We’ll cook these mussels.”
“What about the ebb tide?”
“Biggest one in a moon tomorrow at midday. Bring back plenty of water. You’ll want to stay away from the river in the morning.”
Will I, now?
At dawn she was ready. She shoved the log off the sand into the river, stood in the water naked, and held it back against the current. The outgoing tide shooshed around her thighs. If she didn’t launch on the log, the force would take both dead tree and passenger, ready or not.
She looked at the sun, gathering itself on the eastern horizon far, far out to sea. She felt the river running out to … no one knew where, not even her father. It was against all wisdom, yes, it was. Of all Amaso people she, daughter of Oghi the sea turtle, knew that best. It was what she wanted—to be swept away by an immense force, to be taken.
She pushed the log and flopped onto it. The current seized both of them and for a moment snatched her breath away. Once, several years ago, she’d felt loss of control like this. She’d dared some other girls to climb an oak tree that stood on the edge of the high river bank, roots peeping out below. Taunting them, Iona crept further and further out on a thick limb. She was agile as a squirrel and as sure-footed. Her best friend scooted out onto the branch and—
It snapped off. The friend fell the height of two men to the flat ground and hollered like she’d been wounded mortally. Iona fell onto the sloping bank and tumbled head over heels all the way to the river sand. Her friends shrieked in fear. Iona stood up and roared like a bear, beating her chest. Not because she’d survived unhurt, but because of a feeling. During the moment of the fall—the moment that lasted half a lifetime—she had felt absolutely out of control. She exulted in it.
Now—Let it come!—she lost control again. She rushed between the banks and swept out along the tidal flats. Where sweet river met salt ocean, the log spun in the churning sea. She whirled past the last point of land and into infinity. She felt triumphant. Let fate come—she wanted whatever it brought, she wanted an enormous blast of something, she wanted to throw away her daily wisp of a life, she wanted experience, real and strong. She wanted to feel alive today.
She saw it now—the ocean was as big as the sky. She wasn’t a bird, she wasn’t a fish. She couldn’t swim in the one, couldn’t breathe in the other. She was going wherever the tide took her, and it was running toward the end of the world, wherever that might be. She was possessed wholly—she lived in immensity. She wanted to feel owned, lips, arms, breasts, legs, crotch, the heart that drove the blood, the blood itself, the place her feelings lived—she wanted to be usurped and melded into this sea, this world, this power.
She stood up on the log, wobbly.
It rolled.
She plunged deep, took two strokes deeper, held herself underwater for a delicious moment, turned, and surged upward to the light. Her head popped into the air. At that moment the log banged her shoulder. She cried out in pain. With her other arm she grabbed a stud sticking out from the log and held on hard. She rotated her sore shoulder in several directions. It sort of worked. She clambered back onto the log and straddled it.
She looked around. Grandmother Sun was well up from her watery bed, bright and strong—a strong woman like Iona.
The girl looked straight up and saw an osprey cruising overhead, hunting. It wanted fish for its belly. It had the swiftness, strength, and skill to get what it wanted.
Iona wanted a belly full of life, and she would take what she wanted.
And she wanted to stay out here all day and play and ride the tide back.
“It doesn’t look like much to me,” said Salya.
She and Aku looked from the top of a low hill across sand flats toward Amaso. The huts were few and shabby and the sands barren. The wide river split into a lot of stringy braids. She wasn’t enticed by the horizon-to-horizon immensity of water to the east. It was just somewhere she would never be able to go. The sun, straight overhead, didn’t make the place look better. She was dispirited, missing Kumu. The six men came back with the food, but, true to his agreement with her father, Kumu would wait in Tusca until he and Salya were married.
Aku said, “It’ll be fine.”
Salya humphed. She was back to wondering why her twin let their father push them to this odd place without protest. Didn’t he love the mountains where they grew up? She liked the foothills full of canopied hardwood trees, too. She was bored by what her father called the coastal plains stretching eastward from the foothills, much too flat, and boasting none of the rich herds of game of the foothills. At least the traveling party had taken a lot of meat in the foothills.
“What do you think fish and crabs taste like?” she said. “I hear they’re too salty.”
“You’ll like them as soon as you’re here living with Kumu,” Shonan said. They hadn’t heard him walking up. He gave Salya a hug. “And until then you can slow down on the grumping.”
She sort of smiled.
The three walked close to the village, the traveling party trailing. The Amaso gathered. Aku’s eyes searched for Iona.
“We better teach them to build stouter huts,” Shonan said. The homes were just brush huts, spread fingers of flexible limbs bent into the shape of cupped hands, turned upside down and covered with hides.
“They say it’s warmer here,” Shonan said, “never snows. Maybe that’s why the houses are flimsy.”
Aku said, “Or maybe it’s because the good hardwoods are eight or nine days walk back toward the mountains.”
Salya nudge
d her brother and grinned. She liked talk like that.
They approached the council lodge at the west edge of the village. “I didn’t want to tell you about this,” said Shonan. It was a shabby thing, as though nothing important could happen there.
“I’m glad our weddings will be at the Cheowa village,” said Salya.
Aku still couldn’t spot Iona.
“There aren’t enough people here,” said Salya, “to make a real blessing.”
“I told you I picked these people because they’re weak and will be glad of the safety of becoming Galayis.”
They’d heard it before.
An old man came walking toward them, bearing a pipe. A short, slight, boyish man walked next to him, Oghi the seer.
“Chalu,” said Shonan, “the chief. They don’t even have a war chief.”
When the chief came close, he made the signs for wanting a ceremony.
Aku was proficient in the sign language. “Signal him yes,” Shonan told his son.
Aku did, but his mind was on something else.
“As soon as we get our camp set up,” said Shonan.
Aku signed it.
Chalu turned and made his doddering way to the council lodge.
Oghi signed to Aku, “She’s waiting for you. You see the flat-topped rise over there?” He nodded toward it. “In the dunes right beyond it.”
Aku started running.
“Where are you going?” called Salya.
Aku turned, ran backward, grinned big, waved, turned again, and sprinted toward Iona.
Salya and her father set up their own camp and looked around. They had the same thought, but didn’t share it. We’re at our new village, but we still don’t have a home . Salya shrugged. “Hey, we’re used to it.”
Oghi walked up. He and Shonan had a short, quiet conversation off to one side. Salya saw that several digital repetitions were necessary. Then each man nodded and smiled a lot.
People were gathering in the arbor used as a council lodge.
“Go find your brother and this Iona,” said Shonan.
Near the center fire stood Chalu, holding the sacred pipe, on one side of him Oghi and on the other Shonan.
Chalu picked up an ember from the fire with two twigs and dropped it onto the sacred tobacco. Then he drew the smoke in deeply and offered it to the four directions. Shonan couldn’t understand what he was saying. He watched carefully how Oghi handled the pipe and again couldn’t understand. When his turn came, he performed the ceremony in the Galayi style. He thought, We’re not going to learn to be them. They’re going to learn to be us.
Chalu addressed the assembly, and Aku fingered his words to all the people of both groups. Shonan paid enough attention to see that it was a welcome to the visitors. “Except they’re not visitors,” said Chalu. “They will become our relatives, our children, even our fathers and mothers.” Other words followed. Shonan gathered that it was a diplomatic speech.
When Chalu handed him the pipe, Shonan smoked ceremonially and repeated some of what the Amaso chief had said. “This is a great moment,” he said. “Let us no longer call each other Galayi and Amaso. We are one people, and we will be known as the Amaso village of the Galayi tribe.”
It was well done, a good acknowledgement for both groups.
Now Shonan raised his voice. “And I have something special to add.”
Iona stood up beside Aku, who was still translating with his fingers.
“Proudly Oghi the seer and I announce to all the first blood joining between our two peoples. At the Harvest Ceremony in three moons my son Aku”—here Aku pointed to himself with both index fingers—“will be married to Oghi’s daughter, Iona.”
Aku held Iona’s hand high in triumph.
6
Chalu said, “Let me show you a good place to build your houses.”
Oghi signed the words, and Aku told them to his father.
The crowd was filtering out of the arbor, back to their huts or their temporary camp. Chalu asked Iona to stay behind while he led Shonan, Oghi, and Aku up a little hill to the north. He pivoted back, gestured to his people’s circle of huts, and said, “You see there’s no room in between.”
There wasn’t. The Amaso circle was tight, with the traditional opening to the east, and in this case to the sun rising from the sea. He turned to the north and spread his arms. “But this is a good spot.”
Shonan was on guard.
The place Chalu had picked out for the Galayi circle was fine, a wide space of dirt mostly free of trees and brush. It was bigger than the Amaso circle. The only disadvantage was being further from the river, making a long walk to get water.
Aku was surprised when his father said, “No. No, no, no.”
Chalu looked like his face had been slapped. “It’s a beautiful place,” he said. Oghi watched the war chief curiously.
“I want our peoples to live right together,” Shonan said. “We should mingle constantly. I want your people to have a chance to learn the Galayi language fast. We shouldn’t be two villages side by side. This is where we make a choice to be one people.”
“But there’s no room,” said Chalu.
“We will make room.” Shonan turned back to the Amaso circle. “I think we should build another circle just outside yours. The ground is not quite as even, but we’ll make do. And in a couple of years it will all solve itself.”
Chalu looked at Shonan, puzzled. “We’ll teach you to build bigger houses out of posts and limbs.”
Chalu said, “War Chief, we use these little huts because the weather is mild, and they’re warm enough.”
Oghi hesitated before he spoke. “Besides, sometimes a big storm comes in from the ocean and blows our homes to little pieces. If we build bigger ones, it will just be more work to rebuild them.”
“We’re going to have big families and lots of people,” Shonan said. “We’ll need bigger houses. If there are storms, we’ll just build them stouter.”
Aku thought of dragging posts from the stands of timber several miles back. He also thought of his father’s will.
Apparently, Chalu felt that will, too. “All right,” he said, “War Chief.”
Aku thought, My father will be principal chief soon.
A hard time started for Shonan’s group. He drove them to get their brush huts built in a couple of days. The huts were easy. What was hard was learning when the river was sweet and when it was salt, according to the tide. When people forgot to get water at the right time, they went thirsty.
But the days were sweet for Aku and Iona.
Iona looked at Aku’s sleeping face. He was worn out from loving her.
She put a hand on his cheek. She teased a wisp of his black hair with her little finger. She loved Aku. It was simple, it was powerful, but mostly it was enormous, bigger in every dimension than she’d ever imagined such a feeling could be.
Late this afternoon when they slipped to this sandy pocket behind a pine tree, which they did every chance they got, they lay down side by side and faced each other. Before touching her in the way that led to loving, he spoke to her from his heart. It was a small ritual they had, trading whatever words came tumbling out at that moment, even though they spoke different languages. She listened to his voice as she would to soft soughings of the wind, because she knew his intent without knowing what all his words meant. She felt like she understood the tones and shapes of his utterance.
It was awkward, and sometimes funny, not being able to talk to each other in a clear way. They could communicate about practical things through the sign language shared by the tribes. Is this your sister or your aunt? The roasted chestnuts are over there. Why does the river look deeper today than it did yesterday? With the sign language and gestures, they could fumble through speaking about such things. They also taught each other short phrases. Sometimes they tossed words into the air and shrugged. After being together for one moon and a few days, they understood sentences about half the time. All they really needed wa
s to touch, and kiss, and embrace, and touch more intimately.
After he finished talking, their ritual was that she should take her turn speaking words he didn’t understand. But she hadn’t, not this time. The moon was rising out over the sea that she knew and he did not. She felt like the white globe was floating up into her throat, and no mere words could squeeze past it. She tried to say something and only felt a terrific pressure in her chest. She pulled him on top of her and urged him with her legs and her belly.
Iona and Aku rolled onto their sides, still clasped together but spent. She looked at the last of the day’s sunlight on his face, and the glow it gave his brown eyes.
Now was the time. She knew. She was content with the reality. At the Planting Moon Ceremony she and Aku had made love for the first time. Now they had been promised that they would be married during the Harvest Moon Ceremony. They hated to wait two more moons, but that was the tradition. Among the Galayi and Amaso peoples, marriages were agreed on as much by families as the couple, because it was not just a meshing of two people, but of generations of two families.
Now was the time to tell him. Still she hesitated. Now. “Aku, I have your child inside me.”
There, simple words, singing in the air between them.
He looked deep into her eyes and saw play.
Quickly, he rolled her to his other side. The last of the sun was in her eyes. She was warmth, endless warmth. And honesty. And a hint of laughter.
He whooped. He whooped louder. The shushing of the waters, here where the river flowed into the sea, tossed his words away, made them no more than a gull’s cry.
He bellowed. “I love you!”
And louder, longer, “I love you!”
In answer a bellow tapped at their ears.
At first they weren’t sure what it was. They looked at each other in question. They got up on their knees, crawled to the top of the low dune, and looked toward the village.
