by Rod O'Grady
‘So?’
‘Well maybe they are like elephants, migrating elephants, who like to take the exact same route when they migrate.’
‘Ha ha! Elephants!’ Billy laughed.
‘And this cabin is in the way,’ added Minnie. ‘Slap bang in the way.’
‘But they’re not migrating,’ said Dan. ‘Migration is seasonal, isn’t it?’
Minnie pondered. ‘Hmm…’
‘Well, I’m flummoxed!’ announced Billy.
‘And I’m flabbergasted!’ said Minnie and they laughed.
‘Maybe they felt like seafood,’ chimed in Connie. ‘We all like a varied diet!’
‘Yeah, Bigfoots can not live by strips of bark alone!’ said Dan and they laughed again.
‘Minnie, what do you think your mom would have made of all this?’ asked Connie.
‘She’d have loved it. She’d probably have been on the deck calling to them.’
‘And throwing them bread!’ said Billy. ‘Like she did for the hawks and john crows.’
‘And the golden eagles,’ said Minnie, ‘but they never took the bread because they…’
‘They had bigger fish to fry,’ said Dan, finishing the phrase with Minnie.
‘As Georgie used to say!’ said Connie. Dan stood up and looked straight out through the shut and locked glazed doors, into the darkness beyond the deck.
‘Maybe I should put the jetty lights on,’ he said.
‘Did you hear something?’ said Connie. ‘I think I heard something.’
‘Mom, please,’ said Billy.
‘No, I did really. I heard something.’
‘What did it sound like?’ asked Minnie.
‘High-pitched call…’ said Connie.
‘So, a bird?’ asked Billy, hopefully.
‘Probably, honey.’
‘Musto didn’t hear anything, did you boy?’ Billy bent down to stroke his dog, curled up under the table, snout nestled on his front paws, with his eyes open, ears twitching, listening to every sound, inside and outside. Dan picked up his rifle from where he’d stowed it on top of the cupboard.
‘We’re all a bit jumpy, I guess,’ said Connie as she to bent to pat the worried-looking Musto.
Dan unlocked the doors, went outside, looked around with his torch and ran down the steps into the dark night. Minnie stood in the doorway looking out. She could see a movement on the jetty. She looked more closely. She could see that there was a bird, one large bird at the very end.
A moment later, and the four jetty lights secured to the top of tall posts, snapped on, bathing the bottom of the property in a strong glow.
Now Minnie could see that the bird on the jetty was a golden eagle, and it was eating a fish. It took to the air a second after the lights came on, clutching the fish in its talons. Flapping its wings it flew quickly up and away out of the sphere of golden light.
Dan reappeared on the steps.
‘Dan, I just saw a golden eagle on the jetty! Eating a fish!’
He looked down at the jetty. ‘And we were just talking about them. Your mom’s favourite bird, after hummingbirds and chickens!’ They went back inside.
‘Let’s get that sofa bed out for you, Connie,’ said Dan. ‘See if we can get some sleep.’
‘Billy, you want to sleep on the airbed in my room or out here with your mom?’ asked Minnie.
Billy looked at his mother. ‘Will you be OK on your own, Mom?’
She smiled, ‘I think so, honey, and I will have Musto for company.’
So they pulled the airbed out of a cupboard and Minnie pumped it up with the foot pump, slid it against the wall, found clean sheets and blankets, had a brief pillow fight with Billy, and soon they were in their beds.
Dan came to the door. ‘Will you two be alright? We’ll all sleep with our doors open, shall we?’
‘Yes!’ said Billy.
‘OK, goodnight, guys,’ he said, as Connie came in.
She knelt down and held her son. She kissed him and said, ‘We’re safe here Billy, and I am quite sure they mean us no harm. They are being mischievous and playful and just, well, just saying hello.’ She went over to Minnie and kissed her on the forehead. ‘You, Minnie, are a brave, brave young adventurer. Your mom would be so proud of you.’
As she left she flicked out the light but left the door wide open.
‘You wanna talk about the events of the last twenty-four hours anymore, Min?’
‘Er, I’m all talked out, Billy-Bug.’
‘Good. Me too,’ said Billy yawning, ‘but what do you think Bigfoots do all day?’
‘Well, they are nocturnal mostly, so they sleep all day or just sit around eating snacks.’
‘What, like, do they eat birds and squirrels?
‘Mostly woodland snacks like berries, and lichen, and bits of grass and fern, and bugs. A handful of crickets is most nutritious!’
‘Hmm … interesting,’ murmured Billy drowsily.
As Minnie lay in bed she imagined that Billy, Connie and Dan were all doing the same as she was – listening for sounds outside that didn’t fit with the usual pattern of night-time sounds in their tiny corner of the world, which tonight felt even more important, and even more special to her than it usually did.
Chapter Fifteen
Minnie woke in the morning to the sound of seagulls calling. She looked over at Billy who was still fast asleep. She could hear talking and quietly opened the door so as not to disturb Billy and crept out.
She smelt coffee. Minnie always thought, if she had to give a colour to a smell, coffee would definitely be brown. In the same way that cut grass smells green, but then she wondered if that was just because she knew the colour of those things.
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she entered the living room. Dan and Connie were sitting at the table looking out at the bay. They didn’t see her.
‘Look, Connie, I haven’t seen any Bigfoots,’ Dan was saying. ‘I’ve seen footprints which I’m not sure about and the howl was pretty incredible, but…’
‘And the structures you found, and the pitch on Minnie’s wounds,’ said Connie, ‘and the thumping the cabins, and the handprints on the window, and being escorted out of the forest, Dan. Explain all that!’
‘Minnie is still processing the loss of her mother, and finding these creatures, or imagining she is finding these creatures, is filling a void in her life.’
Minnie coughed and Dan and Connie looked round.
‘You’ve got to stop eavesdropping on people, you know,’ said Dan, surprised to see Minnie standing in the doorway to her room.
‘You’ve got to stop talking about me!’ said Minnie, and she hurried straight through the living room. ‘I’m moving to South Bend, Indiana!’ she called as she exited out the front door, barefoot in her blue pyjamas, slamming the door shut after her, and hurrying down the steps.
She expected Dan to come out and yell at her but he didn’t. She kept on walking down the path towards the jetty. She could feel the blood reddening her face – she was so upset and frustrated – she knew Bigfoots existed, she just knew it! She didn’t want to leave this place. She wanted to find out more about the extraordinary beings living on the forested slopes behind her. That’s what she wanted to do. She felt like her mom wanted her to do that too. She’d loved this place so much. If she’d known about the Bigfoots, what would she have done? She’d have embraced them, maybe not literally but…
These thoughts and others tumbled through her head as she walked down the slope. The sun was already warming the grassy path, the sky was pale sapphire blue, and a whispering breeze tickled the tops of the trees and rippled the watery bay. Seagulls circled and called above the jetty, and it looked like it was going to be another beautiful summer day.
At the end of the path there were three steps down to the wooden planking, and what she saw there on the jetty made her stop in her tracks.
KAAYII
Chapter Seven
Kaayii was flying over water.
He had feathery brown wings and in his bright yellow talons he clutched two green pinecones. Gliding over the long, hilly, tree-covered island across the bay, he dropped the pinecones near where the lightning strike had left scorched blackened trees.
Ahniiq was prodding him with a stick. Rudely awakened, Kaayii just looked at him, asking: why? Then he heard the girl calling out the small yellow dog’s name, ‘Musto’. He and his uncle were lying by a fallen redwood tree trunk, under a pile of brown leaves and branches. Parting the tall grass in front of them, they could see the tree where the girl had slept.
The crow was perched nearby. Shiny black wings flapped, it lifted and flew away. The two Sasquatches smiled broadly as they watched the small human girl crawl out from under the tree and look around with a confused expression on her funny, freckled face.
Two things happened in quick succession-a tree knock – klunk – rang out from not far away up the mountain. Then they heard a dog barking excitedly, approaching from down the mountain.
They watched, fascinated, as the girl quickly climbed a tree. She jumped up and grabbed a branch with her hands and then lifted up her legs and hooked her feet over the branch and somehow twisted and pulled until she was sitting on the sturdy limb. She climbed higher. Sasquatches are so strong they can pull themselves up by their arms alone. Good climber, Kaayii thought.
The dog bounded through the trees and a man’s voice shouted in the woods below. The girl shouted something back. The same man as before appeared, struggling up the short steep slope. Kaayii felt sure he was not her father, and he could sense a desperate fear attached to him. He was carrying a killing stick, and seeing it his uncle put his hand on Kaayii’s arm. They eased down slightly lower in the undergrowth. When the man reached the girl, he embraced her, and Kaayii sensed that most, but not all, of the man’s fear had subsided.
Kaayii and Ahniiq started crawling through the undergrowth from bush to tree to long grass, so they could see and hear better. That’s what Kaayii thought they were crawling closer for, but then Ahniiq raised himself up to kneeling and hurled a pinecone at the man. It missed, but only just.
Kaayii sniffed the ground and caught the unmistakable scent of fungi in the air. His long black fingers with their black nails searched the ground, pulling at the moss and grass, finding a clump of small golden mushrooms. He nudged his uncle. Ahniiq reached his open hand over so Kaayii could drop some of the egg yolk-yellow fungi with orange-tinted stems in his black leathery palm, and they ate the mushrooms greedily. The firm flesh was delicious – nutty, tangy and creamy.
Kaayii sensed the presence of his father Taashi nearby. From the underbrush on the far side of the group of pine trees where the girl and the man were now crouched down, looking at the earth, trying to identify animal tracks, his father must have thrown a pinecone because Kaayii saw one fly through the air and nearly hit the girl. The two humans started hurriedly walking away down the mountain.
As they walked away the girl was calling out to the forest, or to Kaayii – she was looking in his direction. He sensed strong feelings of joy and gratitude from her, and he could see again that faint shimmer of special energy she had all around her.
His uncle set off down the slope through the heavy brush, intentionally stepping with all his weight, each step a heavy THUD! They could hear Taashi on the other side of the retreating humans, deep in the brush, doing the same – intentionally walking with a heavy tread. The three Sasquatches kept out of sight but made a lot of noise by pushing through bushes and branches as they crashed through the forest parallel to the humans and the dog.
It was fun to smash through the underbrush without a care for all the noise they were making and Kaayii had to restrain himself from whooping with sheer delight.
They ripped down branches and they snapped saplings. They stomped heavily and Kaayii could feel the ground juddering. They kept pace with the man and girl the whole way down the mountain, which wasn’t hard as humans move slowly.
When the bay came into view through the trees and the people’s gathering place was in sight, the three Sasquatches stopped breaking branches, and crouched down and watched. The man and the girl were greeted by the small boy and a woman. Kaayii felt this woman was not the girl’s mother. He wondered where the girl’s parents were and thought maybe the deep sorrow he’d sensed in her the first time he’d seen her was because her parents had passed to the next life.
His uncle then howled a territorial howl, one of the extra long and loud ones that tells other Sasquatches that this is their mountain and theirs only. It was meant to signal that Kaayii’s clan hunted, fed and lived there, so ‘Keep Out’, unless the intention was to make friends or honour the passing of a clan member. Kaayii watched the human girl as she looked back up at the forest and he felt sure she would be drawn to the wooded slopes again, howl or no howl.
Hidden in the dense evergreen brush under the trees looking down the trail, the three Sasquatches could see the cabins directly in front of them, and beyond those they could see and smell the bay. Small waves were capping in a strengthening breeze, and across the water, bathed by a gap in the cloud cover in a blaze of sunshine, lay the green, tree-covered, hump-backed island.
Taashi nudged his son with an elbow and pointed at the island across the glittering grey water.
Chapter Eight
The three Sasquatches walked back up the mountain. Kaayii was leading them to the honey he’d found in the oak tree and as they passed silently through the woods his father dropped back with Ahniiq to talk with him. When Kaayii reached the oak tree, he waited for them.
His uncle’s eyes were clouded with worry. His father was still talking and the words he chose meant, ‘After the fire too many animals are here. Teach the wolves to take enough and no more.’
As Kaayii climbed up to the hollow in the tree, to the bees’ nest, the bees buzzed about him agitatedly and crawled over the long, dark brown hairs of his arms. He flicked them away, and reached down with handfuls of sticky, golden honeycomb.
‘I do not want to be guardian of the forest!’ Ahniiq answered through a mouth full of honey, ‘There are no caves on this side of the mountain!’
‘You will find one,’ Taashi assured him. ‘Talk to the animals. They can help.’
‘I am not good with animals.’
‘Spend time with Kaayii. He knows the ways of the animals. He was gifted by his forefathers when he was born.’
‘I know,’ murmured Ahniiq. ‘We all know.’
Kaayii dropped down from the tree and they continued in an uneasy silence up the mountain, gorging on their honey, until his father silently reminded Kaayii: you are day watcher.
His father and his uncle both touched his head with the palm of a hand affectionately and left him alone by a juniper bush, as they walked on up the slope towards the first ravine. Kaayii turned and, still licking the honey from his fingers, strolled down through the woods in the direction of the Watcher’s Place.
As he moved through the trees, he began to sense animal energy nearby. His awareness heightened, he listened with his whole being to the forest. Ahead, squirrels were chattering loudly.
Kaayii found a good, strong stick as thick as his wrist and quickened his pace. Approaching the Watcher’s Place, squirrels were chattering noisily. The crow landed nearby and communicated one thought: wolf.
Treading stealthily closer, he became aware that a wolf, and it looked like the same wolf from before, was sitting in the hollow of the Watcher’s Place, looking out across the bay.
Kaayii growled in anger – it was a growl that turned in to a howl that turned into a high-pitched scream. It got the wolf’s attention. Kaayii was pleasantly surprised by his growl-howl-roar as he hadn’t done one before. He considered letting rip with another, but thought it might bring other Sasquatches to investigate and he didn’t need them – this was a situation he needed to handle himself.
It was indeed the same big, stocky wolf, black but with brown chest markings and thos
e same staring yellow eyes. To Kaayii’s surprise the wolf communicated a thought: follow, then jumped out of the Watcher’s Place, and trotted away from him without looking back.
Clutching the stout stick, Kaayii ran leaping and bounding over branches and fallen trees, cutting through chest-high pale grass, meaning to catch up with the wolf quickly and to teach it a lesson for sitting uninvited in the Watcher’s Place. The wolf’s long loping stride was deceptively effective and it took some effort for Kaayii to catch up, as the wolf could run straight through and under brush that Kaayii had to go around.
Running after the wolf lifted his spirits. The feeling of the wind rushing through the long hairs on his arms and legs was exhilarating – he felt a vital connection to the living, breathing, throbbing heart of his forest home, and it delighted him.
He caught up with the wolf, and they ran together, Kaayii a few strides behind him. He forgot about teaching him a lesson and instead tuned in to the wolf’s energy. He was curious about why the wolf had wanted him to follow.
They came to some patches of mud left by a stream that had dried up between the all-too-brief spells of summer rain. This was not a part of the forest that Kaayii had visited before and he was wary. There was water pooling in the mud and the wolf lapped at it with his pink tongue. Kaayii knelt down and drank with him.
Kaayii had never been this close to a wolf before and thought he’d try something. He made a short clear sound, ‘Huff!’ The wolf turned and looked at him. So Kaayii stood and walked a few paces away from the pond and without looking back made the same sound, ‘Huff!’ The wolf trotted to his side and gazed up at him.
Tracks led through the mud: of deer and of mountain lion, and the much smaller tracks of squirrels, weasels and martens. The wolf fixed his gaze on a high bluff, steep and dark, tinted with layers of grey and topped with reddish rocks rounded and smoothed by millions of years of weather.
