by Rod O'Grady
Although they had been looking they hadn’t yet found any good caves on High Ridge or on the slopes on the bay side of the mountain. His grandmother couldn’t manage the climb to their new home, and his father had carried her up to the high ground on his back. He had built her a place to rest, but not having a warm cave to sleep in at night and shelter in the day had been too much for her, and she soon became too frail to move from her sleeping den.
They’d all piled pine branches around a very old, fallen redwood trunk and pushed grass and leaves inside to keep her warm and dry. Two clan members would always sleep with her in their arms to keep her warm. It was usually her two sons Taashi and Ahniiq. To ease the passing of her spirit they would sing the ancient songs of love and of the forest and of the passing from one life to the next.
They all knew her time to pass would soon come and, that evening, when Kaayii’s father emerged from the sleeping den and stood with his head hung low, the clan knew her spirit had left her body. Ahniiq hurried over and crawled into the den. Kaayii, his mother Yumiqsu and his little sister quickly gathered around Taashi and held him tight.
The moon had risen, and was glowing pearly white in the ink-black sky. Kaayii helped the others dig the earth away in the spot they had chosen, using sticks and their hands. Small rocks and stones were gathered in one pile and the rich, red-brown earth in another. When they’d dug out enough earth, they lifted her body from beside the sleeping nest and carried it in silence to its resting place.
It was close to a small quartz outcrop, amongst a stand of poplar, spruce and pine trees, with a clear view across the bay to the island. They laid her body on its side and arranged her limbs with her knees bent. They placed her favourite stick and a small piece of crystal quartz in her hands.
They all helped to pile the earth over her body and placed the stones in a circle on top. Kaayii’s father and uncle carefully planted a young pine sapling on top of the pile of earth, and pressed it firmly into place.
The birds fell quiet, the wind died away, the trees stood still, nocturnal animals kept a respectful distance, and silence reigned.
Kaayii’s father stood alone on the grave. Looking up to the sky, his face wet with tears, he pulled his massive hairy shoulders back, filled his lungs, and howled at the moon a mournful cry of grief and loss that resonated through the forest and beyond.
When the echoes of his voice had died away, they covered the earth with moss like an emerald green blanket and as they worked together they hummed one musical note, the same note, repeated long and low, over and over and over.
That night the Sasquatches sat around under the trees, close together. Silver patches of moonlight patterned the forest floor through the pines. There was no hunting.
Sensing animal energy nearby, Kaayii looked at his sister. Coyotes, he silently told her, and she held his hand tighter. Seconds later the silence was ripped apart by a high-pitched yowl, ringing out clear and strong. They all stood up as seven coyotes trotted into the clearing. Four of the coyotes had a limb of deer meat each in their jaws and they dropped them at the edge of the clearing. They were a pack of identical light-brown, long-legged coyotes with big erect ears, a narrow snout and teeth bared in an anxious grin. They held their heads and tails down meekly. Then they all lifted their heads and howled together a solemn and respectful song. When they had finished they ran off, swiftly and silently, into the forest.
If other animals left offerings of meat the Sasquatches always ate it with gratitude, and they were just settling down again on their patches of moss and grass to eat the deer meat, when the slow methodical, heavy thud, thud, thud of a bull moose was heard. His massive antlers, branching to fourteen points, and fully seven feet from tip to tip, swept low and wide from his long slim head. Threads of moss and strands of grass dangled from the points. His ears swivelled keenly and his bulging black eyes looked sorrowfully at each member of the clan, communicating sincere symapthy to them all for the recent loss of their oldest family member.
Kaayii’s father stood and approached the moose. He touched his head. Over eight feet tall at the shoulder, Kaayii’s father looked him in the eye. Extending his huge black hand he gave the moose two big plant bulbs with waxy green leaves attached. Soon white spittle oozed from the moose’s mouth as he chomped down on them, and Kaayii’s father gently led him away so he wouldn’t dribble on their clean sitting place.
Chapter Three
Low light sparked in silver shards off dew-covered grass and ferns lining the trail. Newly woven spiders’ webs shimmered between the branches of the juniper bushes as Kaayii and his father walked down the mountain to the Watcher’s Place before dawn, bringing the remains of one of the deer legs with them.
Daytime forest creatures stirred. Mice scurried through the yellow meadow flowers, crows and blue jays chattered tetchily at each other in the vivid green branches of the hemlock trees.
Kaayii knelt to suck water droplets off the grass, and to let his father walk about two ‘throws’ ahead of him. He sensed that his father was still grieving and needed time alone.
When they reached the Watcher’s Place his father dumped the deer leg on the grass and asked silently: where? Kaayii pointed directly down the slope. Placing his feet with care, his father walked down the trail and looked at the footprints still clearly imprinted in the dark soil.
He climbed a nearby pine tree pulling himself up with his massive arms, shoulder, and back muscles hoisting himself into the ‘V’ of a strong branch. Kaayii sat on the grass and started eating the deer meat. His father’s weight made the pine tree creak and groan, swaying back and forth as he moved high above, looking down on the trees, the cabins by the bay, and across the water to the mist-shrouded island and hills beyond.
There was a large pile of open brown pinecones near the Watcher’s Place. A squirrel must have collected them and picked out the pine nuts.
Knowing that people might see the pile and be curious about it, Kaayii took up a short branch and started clearing black and grey pinecones. A squirrel in a tree nearby chattered angrily at Kaayii.
His father dropped to the ground from the tree, landing softly and rubbing the sticky pine resin from his hands onto his hairy arms and chest. Sasquatches love the scent of pine resin. He joined Kaayii and, grabbing the deer leg, he started to eat. Taashi passed bits of meat to his son, tearing them off the bone with his teeth. He wiped his mouth with the back of his huge hand, and looking at his son he spoke, and his words meant,‘With people in this forest, our clan must journey on.’ His father’s speaking voice was so gruff, so deep, close and full that it resonated in Kaayii’s chest, and it thrilled him. Taashi looked at his son, and Kaayii grunted in agreement, ‘Hmm…’
They sat together, tuned in to the forest, alert to every sound and sensation carried by the wind, the earth, the living plants and animals; eating wild onions and meat as the sun rose. The flat light in the shadow of the mountain lifted. His father put a hand on Kaayii’s knee and communicated one thought: people, and Kaayii too sensed the approach of human energy.
They rose to stand behind separate pine trees in front of a dense, dark tangle of bushes, tall grasses and underbrush. Kaayii’s pine tree was only half as wide as his chest and his father was three times as wide as the tree he was standing behind, but they knew that against the backdrop of tangled underbrush they were virtually invisible to people.
It was the same girl and a man. Kaayii saw the killing stick in the man’s hand. Focusing his attention on the man, he sensed there was not a strong connection between the man and the forest.
Kaayii’s father silently told him: stay, as he moved to a group of tall bushes. Kaayii could hear the people talking. The girl had sat down right by the footprints and they were looking at them as they talked. The girl was talking louder and seemed to be getting angry with the man.
Kaayii watched his father reach up and twist a green pinecone off a branch. Leaning out from behind the tree, he took aim, and lobbed the pinec
one. It arched through the air hitting the man on the shoulder. They argued more and Kaayii sensed the man was now fearful as he quickly turned and, followed by the girl, he walked away down the slope.
Good throw, Kaayii told his father when he joined him in the hidden mossy nest.
His father dozed beside him in the Watcher’s Place when, ink black and silent, the crow swooped out of nowhere, down through branches, and settled softly right in front of Kaayii’s face on a bouncing bough. Vivid yellow crow eyes looked at black Sasquatch smiling eyes that blinked in greeting. ‘Oosh,’ said Kaayii.
The crow communicated one thought to Kaayii: wolf.
Without waking his father, he stood and followed the crow as it flew off through the trees. He began to sense ‘wolf’ and scanned the slopes all around. The crow cawed from somewhere at the edge of his hearing. He ran. It was a leaping, bounding run, pushing aside branches and shouldering away saplings. He cut across trails and leapt off rocky outcrops. He was a blur of energy darting through the trees.
Suddenly, there ahead on the trail, stood one black wolf. The wolf’s coat was thick and shiny with brown patches on the chest. He had twice the bulk of a coyote, with a broader snout and smaller ears. He looked so sturdy, strong and proud that Kaayii stopped one throw away to assess him. The wolf calmly stared at the Sasquatch. We are many, communicated the wolf.
As are we, Kaayii told him. Why here? he asked the wolf.
An image of high flames licking at tall trees entered Kaayii’s mind from the wolf.
Kaayii bent down and lifted a short length of tree branch as thick as his wrist. With it he pointed north and as he did, he told the wolf: go, go away.
The wolf did not go, it did not turn and run away, as Kaayii had directed, but fixed him with his bright yellow eyes, then in a trice he turned and padded away, not due north, but down the slope towards the bay. Kaayii threw the heavy stick at the retreating wolf. It thumped in to a pine tree near the wolf’s head and the wolf stopped and turned slowly to look at him, its thick, long black tail flicking angrily. Then it lolloped off down the trail, and round a bend, disappearing into the underbrush.
That night when Kaayii and his father returned to the meeting place his father made him describe what happened with the wolf to the whole clan as they sat around eating berries, onion plants, mushrooms and deer meat. His uncle Ahniiq stood up and told the clan: I will fight them!
Yumiqsu stood, put her hand on Ahniiq’s shoulder and made him sit down. Ahniiq stared at Kaayii and threw a mushroom at him to get his attention: show me this wolf.
When the clan dispersed, either to hunt or to rest, Kaayii took his father’s hand and led him to the edge of the clearing. It was a warm night. They stood in dappled moonlight under the trees. Kaayii chose his words carefully and their meaning was, ‘We can not leave this place to the wolves. People are close by.’
Taashi turned to look at his son. The moon sparked briefly in his black eyes as he blinked.
‘Ahniiq will remain here to balance the forest.’
Kaayii loosed his grip on his father’s hand and placed the palms of his hands flat on his father’s massive chest and looked up into his face.
‘Ahniiq does not love this forest. He holds too much anger from the fire to love this new place.’
Taashi held his son’s earnet gaze. ‘You choose your words well, Kaayii.’
Gazing up at the half-full moon, as white as a puffball mushroom, his father’s voice rumbled in the depths of his chest.
‘When we see the moon is full, we go. Ahniiq, he stays.’
Chapter Four
Before dawn Kaayii left the clan among the dense pines on High Ridge and walked down to the Watcher’s Place. He could tread very softly when he wanted to and when he did so the animals of the forest would go about their business foraging, feeding and fighting – doing whatever their instincts led them to.
A raccoon rambled by, crossing his path, his eyes set in a mask of black fur, his grey-and-white ringed tail twitching as he marked out his territory with his raccoony scent.
An owl swooped, ghostly grey and silent, flying low over Kaayii and disappearing into the forest, its night hunting done.
He heard a grunting in a bush followed by a ‘teeth clicking’ sound. Kaayii found a short branch and threw it at the bush. An angry black porcupine backed out, proffering its dozens of white-tipped quills. Kaayii moved on.
A flash of colour caught his eye as a pine jay with vivid bright-blue wings and tail, and a crest of black feathers on the top of its head, flitted from branch to branch in a mulberry bush, pecking at the fruit. Kaayii reached up and plucked the dark ripe berries, thanking the bird for showing him.
He took a longer route than usual to the Watcher’s Place, one that avoided the first two ravines. As he walked, he began to sense the busy energy of bees nearby. He waited, then he saw them, coming and going, collecting nectar from the fluffy white blossom of the green clover carpeting the forest floor.
He followed the hum of the dancing bees from the alders they were foraging under, all the way back to their nest in a hollow halfway up an oak tree, not far from the Aspen Grove.
Kaayii climbed up and carefully reached in to break off some of the waxy, sticky honeycomb. The bees crawled all over his arms but his covering of long hairs meant they couldn’t sting him. Climbing down with his hunk of honeycomb dripping from his hand, he supped on it greedily, licking at the sweetness as it oozed through his fingers.
He was still sucking his fingers clean when he settled down in the Watcher’s Place. Nothing much happened that morning, but as he was about to doze off his uncle Ahniiq approached, communicating one questioning thought: wolf?
Kaayii led him the same way the crow had led him the day before, jogging through the pines, oaks and beech trees, leaping over bushes and fallen branches.
Kaayii retrieved the stick he’d thrown at the wolf from where it lay beneath an alder tree, and they set off together through the dew-heavy grass, and cobwebby underbrush, following the dark wolf’s tracks.
The crow swooped down, settling on a branch. Kaayii asked with his mind: wolves? The crow flew off cawing, as if asking the other creatures the same question.
They followed the trail of scent markings the wolf had left on trees and outcrops of rocks, claiming the territory as his, and each scent marking they met angered his uncle more.
Between the trees flashed a view of the bay as they jogged along a winding trail, following the tracks and the scent. The track abruptly cut away up an incline. Before long they had looped back round to the Aspen Grove. They stopped on the edge of it. No sign of wolf and the forest was quiet. The tracks skirted the outside of the grove.
There was a strong odour of wolf at the Giant X. It had lingered there, leaving its scent on both of the pine trunks. This enraged his uncle, who raced ahead of Kaayii, headlong in to the thicket where the wolf’s tracks clearly led.
Kaayii stopped abruptly, sensing animal energy, but it was not wolf, it was dog. A second later the yellow dog was running towards him through the aspens.
Kaayii sprinted in to the thicket after his uncle, catching up to him he grabbed his arm: people!
Ahniiq stopped and turned, searching for movement, for people. They crouched low in the brush and listened. Peering down the slope through the branches of trees they could now see the dog sniffing around under the Giant X. Then the girl and man appeared, walking through the brush towards the aspens. Ahniiq glanced at Kaayii: people!
Ahniiq hid behind a redwood tree, the wolf now forgotten, and peered round it fascinated by what he was seeing. The man and the girl looked closely at the Giant X, the marker for the start of Sasquatch territory. Trotting to where the wolf had laid its scent, the dog sniffed the pine trunk and backed away, alarmed by what it smelt. Then it followed the Sasquatch scent through the brush up the slope.
Ahniiq stepped out from behind the tree and hurried towards the dog. Kaayii broke cover and on all fours, keepin
g low to the ground, raced his uncle to the dog. Hidden from the sight of the people they crashed through the brush. Ahniiq was about to scoop up the yellow dog when Kaayii leapt forward and grabbed the dog out of his hands. It barked in surprise but Kaayii held him firmly. Kill it, was Ahniiq’s one command.
The dog yelped and wriggled in Kaayii’s strong arms. Ahniiq watched the humans intently from behind a stand of pines as Kaayii grappled with the dog. He put the dog on the ground, holding him down, and looking in his eyes communicated: friend. Then he let him go and the panicked yellow dog disappeared into the brush with its tail between its legs.
Searching among the leaves and dead branches that littered the forest floor, Ahniiq picked up two rocks in his massive hairy black hands. He smashed them together. CLACK! They watched the humans’ reactions. As they didn’t immediately turn and start walking back the way they came, Ahniiq clacked them together twice more. CLACK CLACK! The humans were still just talking! Kaayii couldn’t understand why they weren’t retreating. Ahniiq was now muttering and rocking from side to side – a sign of his increasing agitation.
Ahniiq leant against the nearest tall, slim tree, pushing with his hands on the trunk with his arms out in front of him and rocked the tree back and forth until roots started to snap with a dull, muffled clunk under ground – clunk, clunk, clunk. Finally there was a cracking and a crashing as the tree gave up its grip on the earth and violently smashed through branches, flattening saplings, and thumping on to the floor of the forest with a loud WHUMP!
The man and the girl were leaving now, and quickly. The forest fell deathly silent and the two enormous Sasquatches disappeared into the undergrowth without a sound.
