People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

  “Yes. It could make music with the others.”

  “And if it is fed with the others, that will help too,” said Nabamida. “The feast is for fliers as well as people.”

  “Can you control the creature if we bring it up to the mesa?” Kesbe asked Nyentiwakay.

  “There are many distractions. I would need aid. Perhaps lmiya could help.”

  Nabamida’s nephew looked doubtful. “Sahacat would not like it. I am only to be kekelt. It would displease her for me to work with you because you are lomugualt. And I must fly Haewi in the Cloud Dance.”

  “Sahacat would already be displeased if she knew what had happened here,” said Nabamida, with a penetrating look at Kesbe. “But I do not always agree with Sahacat’s teachings.”

  “Perhaps I can help Nyentiwakay while lmiya is gone,” Kesbe suggested.

  Again Nabamida gave her a curiously intense, though indirect glance. “That might not be the best idea.” He broke off, muttering to himself, “It is done, it is done. It cannot get any worse.” He lifted his head. “lmiya, bring a tether. We can take the creature up now with the others in the Cloud Dance and hide it among the rocks.”

  Kesbe had a sudden irrational impulse to hug Nabamida. Instead she buried her nose in the cloth, wondering if she was still feeling the effects of the scent-chemicals emitted by the aronan. It did seem odd that no one except herself was affected.

  She glanced at lmiya as he retrieved a tether for the renegade aronan. She thought she saw an odd calculating look cross his face as his eyes travelled from her to the flier, now getting to its feet beside Nyentiwakay. She took a step on her crutches, realizing she was sweat-soaked and shaking as a result of the encounter.

  “Come,” said Nabamida, kindly. “I will take you to Chamois house to wash and eat before we go to the mesa. And I will give you some clothes for the celebration.” He plucked the stiff grimy fabric of her much abused flight coverall. “You cannot go in this!”

  Chapter 8

  In the bright sunfield of the plaza before Aronan House, I tie cloth banners to the horns above Wind Laughing’s eyes. Haewi’s horns are not true horns, as those carried by the sacred beasts of the Fourth World. My teachers in the kiva say these things, but I am of the Fifth World. Wind Laughing’s horns are the only kind I know.

  The streamers billow in the wind as I bind them to my flier’s hind legs and hawktail. Though beautiful, the banners can be dangerous if they tangle in the wings during flight. I cannot choose to leave them off, the swirl and flutter as the aronans fly is part of the splendor of the Cloud Dance. If the Cloud Dance fails to reach its full beauty, the spirit of the Wuwuchpi will be angered and the rain-spirits will send only dry winds across our mesa.

  I polish the cuticle of Haewi’s legs with a cloth woven from silk of aronan cocoons. My fingers work, bringing up a shine like the gleam of an obsidian blade. I listen to other dancers chatter while they tie streamers on their mounts. Those two boys were helping me cage the aronan of Mahana’s dead brother when Nabamida brought Kesbe-Rohoni. Do they know what happened this morning in Aronan House? Did they see the path it has opened before me?

  Perhaps I already sensed what would happen when Kesbe approached Nyentiwakay and the rogue flier. If Nabamida asks me later why I failed to stop her from interfering, I will say that astonishment weighted my feet and my tongue. In part that was true. Had Kesbe-Rohoni been one of the adults in Tuwayhoima, the aronan’s scent-casting would have had no effect. All grown ones of the Pai have passed through the cycle in life called lomuqualt, the Time of the Brooding One. That a person could gather years as Kesbe has and yet not pass through the stages of kekelt and lomuqualt is as unbelievable as a child entering life without being born!

  Strange as this is, my belly tells me it is true. Kesbe-Rohoni became as drunk on aronan-scent as a young child. I already knew she was not Pai and that the rogue would sense it, yet I did nothing to halt or warn her. Is it good that the voice of my mind speaks only to me and not to Nabamida or the council? If it did, my backside would be stinging and the Cloud Dance less one rider!

  It does not matter why Kesbe-Rohoni is vulnerable to aronan-scent, just that she is. The winged one learned that when its antennae touched her. I helped Nyentiwakay untwist its plumes from her hands, but that did not prevent the creature from weaving its odor-web to draw her. The flier that belonged to Mahanas dead brother has chosen a new rider. Kesbe-Rohoni has also made that choice, though as yet she does not know it.

  And what meaning has this jor me? A person can partner with only one aronan. Ij Kesbe takes the rogue, as now she must, she relinguishes any claim on my Wind Laughing. There is also this—once she has partnership with the flier, she will jight to keep it, despite tradition or the Council of Elders. This woman is stubborn and with the hidden power of the bond driving her, she may succeed. And if she does, why then should I have to give up Wind-Laughing?

  Kesbe-Rohoni, you are the spear I hold in my hand against all who would take Haewi from me. I must guide you carefully to the strike.

  Hai! I glance up from my preparations for the Cloud Dance. Nyentiwakay, my friend who was once a child-warrior and who now walks the trail to manhood, has come from Aronan House. He flies the rogue down on a tether, thrown to him from the top level. The creature alights and walks beside the lomuqualt, who strokes it, keeping it gentled. He would not be able to control it this easily unless it had made a successjul scent-bond with someone. That person can not be the lomuqualt, for he has already been taken. No, it must be this woman. I watch how the aronan twitches its antennae, flutters its black and amber wings. Its tongue is rolled, its mandibles sheathed. It feels better, I think. It knows it will soon have a new name and a rider. Winged one, do you know you have an ally?

  The aronans who are to he in the Cloud Dance move to the mesa trail with their riders. This is the one day they walk, for the Cloud Dance must start on the ground, as do the seedlings of com before they reach skyward. Nyentiwakay joins the dancers. Black and amber wings are nearly lost amid the confusion of colors and patterns. I lead Haewi Namij and catch up to Nyentiwakay.

  Why I am a little afraid of him, I don’t know. He was a friend, we flew many a hunt together. Now his aronan is gone and he is something different. Even his body-smell has changed. His rounded belly, unhidden by the robe he wears, fascinates and repels me. I remember his body, banded with muscle, his stomach tight and flat. My stomach is like that now. The thought that it will swell when I become lomuqualt…

  “Imiya,” he says, pushing his hood back to let me see his face. His stubbly beard-hairs have retreated, leaving his chin as bare as a woman’s. His cheekbones are still prominent, but his skin has softened. His stride is proud. He has begun the next part of his life.

  Soon he will be a man. The thought echoes back to me. Soon I will be a man.

  I can’t help my stare, although I don’t let my eyes fasten on his face—that would be inexcusable. He is quiet, leading the rogue aronan. He looks down at me with eyes that are gentle, yet strangely frightening.

  I make my fear into words. They are not the ones I want. “Why does it happen, Nyentiwakay?” I burst out.

  He smiles. I look down at his woman’s belly, then at his man’s chest as he answers, “I am no weakling, Imiya. I could still wrestle you down.”

  “Why does it happen?” I ask again, wondering why my voice is urgent, nearly trembling.

  “Only those who have been lomuqualt know. There are rituals and sacrifices, but the reason must remain hidden”

  It always happens after the aronan disappears or dies, I think, but do not say. There are sacrifices.

  He shakes back his hair. It is no longer coarse but lustrous and flowing.

  I find my voice again. “When do you bring forth?”

  “Sahacat tells me that it will be shortly after the coming ceremonial. I bear well, she says, and the nymph will be strong. I hope it will also be beautiful.” His voice is eager and strangely musical not the tone
of the older Pai men that I am used to hearing.

  At the mention of Sahacat I glance around. The shaman does not approve of too much contact between those who are to he kekelt and those who are lomuqualt. The right knowledge must come at the right time in life. She may he correct, but I have still disobeyed. “Kesbe-Rohoni is an adult but she has not partnered,” I begin.

  His reply nearly stops me on the trail. To conceal my surprise, I stoop to untangle a banner that has caught on a thorn-twig as he answers, “She has been taken as partner by the rogue flier.” I regain my place beside him sending one Quick look over my shoulder to the aronan with black and amber wings who walks abreast of my Wind Laughing.

  I try to tell Nyentiwakay, “You had control over the rogue. Why didn’t you…” I trail off.

  “The attraction came from both. With a bond that strong, I could not intercede.”

  I stay silent, feeling that I could have interfered. Is it wrong, what I have done or failed to do? Kesbe-Rohoni has great love for aronans, I think they are in her dreams. The rogue was close to death from despair. Was it wrong to stand away and let them find each other?

  “I fly the Cloud Dance,” I say roughly. “You will need help with the rogue while I am gone. Let Kesbe-Rohoni learn from you how to gentle the creature.”

  “If she finds the path to it, I will do as you ask, Imiya. I will do nothing to summon her. If she is drawn, the bond will be proved. Nothing we can do will strengthen or weaken it.”

  We near the end of the trail where it opens up onto the mesa. The sun overhead falls full and warm on our faces. It casts no shadows here on the mesa-top as it does within the cave that holds Tuwayhoima. There are no shadows outside…

  I see Sahacat in a ritual cloak of feather-scales. She carries a flute carved from the end section of a flier’s wingspar. Seeing those things makes me uneasy. Though she is speaking to the rain-priest, she turns her head when Nyentiwakay and I reach the mesa. The feather-scales glitter. Her eyes glitter. I duck away with Wind Laughing, but it is already too late. She has seen me speaking to the lomuqualt. Do those eyes pick out the riderless flier from among the bright swirl of mounts and riders awaiting the start of the Cloud Dance? If so, she gives no sign.

  I fling my fears away as I swing onto Haewi. On my aronan, I am safe, the musk of flutes rises in the mesa wind. The soft hiss of rattles begins.

  Kesbe thought the Cloud Dance would be given at the center of the mesa, but instead the crowd of celebrants about her crossed to the far edge. She was borne along in a river of people who were chattering, waving and already dancing to the music of flute and drum. Gaily colored kirtles and sashes fluttered in the late-morning wind, beadwork on sleeves and leggings caught the sun. Some people wore necklaces of obsidian chips strung with a gemstone of intense green, reminding her of malachite or jade.

  She shook her hair back in the breeze and felt her leggings pull against her inner thighs as she limped on her crutches. One shoulder was bare in the style of the blanket-dress she wore as a tunic. The garment was river-blue and finely woven, not the coarse cloth she had seen in the everyday attire of the Pai. It was clearly a festival garment, though Nabamida had been oddly reluctant to answer when she asked him what the fabric was. She got a reply at last. Silk from an aronan cocoon.

  Odd how her thoughts always returned to aronans. Imiya and Nyentiwakay must have taken the riderless one up the trail before she came. She seemed to catch traces of it sage scent in the air. No, her nose could not be that sensitive. Imagination.

  The edge of the Pai mesa was not a sharp cliff but a cascade of terraces in a hollow bitten from the mesa’s rim. It formed an amphitheater facing out to the sky and the canyon walls beyond. Kesbe saw no aisles or seats, people clambered over layered beds of sandstone to find places. They filled every level but the last, which was a low and broad shelf forming a natural stage. Softwood poles with prayer-feathers atop them marked the area where the Dance would take place.

  Kesbe found that she could hitch herself over sun-warmed rock using her good leg and her seat in much the same manner as she had ascended the ladder at Aronan House. Despite the cover of her dress-tunic, she felt uncomfortably exposed. Leggings were not pants and the Pai had never heard of underwear.

  She let her eyes rove over the assembled Pai Yinaye in their festival finery, but unexpectedly found her eyes straying to the side of the amphitheater where a recent small rockslide had not yet been cleared. She imagined that it could provide hidden niches in which an aronan could be concealed yet still be able to watch the stage.

  The trill of flutes and the harsh shake of rattles drew her attention. The people around her grew quiet, expectant. Even tiny children gave one last wriggle and settled themselves. One flute wavered in a mournful call, ending abruptly with a sudden shriek. Rattles hissed. The small figures of child-warriors reeled into the center of the open-air stage as if flung. Drums crackled a sharp tattoo. One dancer turned his face, revealing himself to be Imiya. Another was a girl called Mahana.

  There were four dancers, dressed in beaded kilts. They retreated to the center of the terrace until they encountered each other back-to-back. As flutes moaned in a low disharmony, the four huddled together, arms outstretched as if fending off attack from something unseen. Drums pattered in a broken rhythm that worked against the movements of the dancers. It spoke of uncertainty building into fear and then burning into terror. It lashed their feet into frenzied stamping that fell behind the relentless pace of the drums. They struggled, grimacing with the effort while sweat streamed from their bodies.

  The dancers seemed to cower against a hostile world. Faces writhed, limbs nearly convulsed with agitated motion. The dancers couldn’t sustain the pace and gradually faltered. Their steps became drunken, they sagged, they fell and three did not get up again.

  One was left, the girl Mahana, who stamped against the drumbeat with weary steps as if weighted down. The music thinned to a single flute that kept trying to break from its doleful piping to take flight in a wild cadenza but at the end always fading. Mahana’s bare chest heaved. Sweat shined her breasts. Her throat muscles worked as she gulped air. She shuddered as if struck and fell face down.

  Kesbe tensed in alarm, wondering if it was only the steps of the dance that had felled her. Mahana lay still, slightly apart from Imiya and the other two dancers. The flute piped alone.

  It was answered by another voice, one Kesbe had never heard. It brought echoes of other sounds, the reedy tone of the Athelian oboe or the ring of the glass dulcimer. Perhaps the most similar instrument was the Terran sitar with its sliding drone up and down a half-tone scale. As she searched in her memory for a way to describe the sound, the first aronan entered the dance.

  It was the focus from which the sound came. She could see one back leg raised, moving against the body with the precise, delicate control of a musician bowing a stringed instrument. Here was the voice that had answered the flute. The aronan was playing the resonance of its own body by scraping a serrated structure on the inside of its leg against its abdomen, as a grasshopper would make its chirp. The aronan’s music was so far beyond the crude analogy that it seemed insulting to make it.

  As the flier sang with one leg, it danced with the other three and spread its wings. The wing colors were chocolate splashed with radiant orange. This was Mahana’s flier, Desqui Deva. Its name, Kesbe had learned, meant One-Who-is-Tattooed. The aronan moved in a rocking, swaying sequence of steps, pausing to flutter and dip its wings. If Kesbe had any lingering doubt that aronans could dance, she lost them, for the creature’s controlled motion could be nothing else.

  Desqui Deva stepped over the other fallen dancers until it found Mahana at the center. It unrolled its antennae to touch the girl, backed away when she moved. Again the aronan danced in to stroke the girl and this time, she stirred and rose as if the touch had given her strength.

  Finding her own rhythm to the flute’s trilling, Mahana stamped in circles about Desqui Deva. Their steps t
ook them together, then apart. Each time they lingered near each other for a longer time than they did apart.

  A flash of emerald and black announced the entrance of another aronan into the Cloud Dance. Kesbe felt a slight smile pull at her lips as she saw Haewi Namij. Imiyas flier pranced, snapping its tarsal joints like the fetlocks of a parading horse. It arched its neck and made powerful sweeps with its wings while streamers flew from its horns and tail. It too sang and its melody blended into the music of Desqui Deva. It sought its own rider, Imiya.

  Now the two child-warriors joined step with their fliers as drums woke and flutes interwove. A third aronan entered to stroke and revive a fallen dancer, as did a fourth. They moved in interlocking couples, breaking and reforming. The pattern of the dance said this was a story of the strange becoming familiar, the alien becoming beloved. It gave Kesbe the sense of being able to look back into the history of the Pai Yinaye and see how they might have first ventured to tame the fliers of the Barranca.

  Gradually the Cloud Dance changed character, becoming a small circle with the child-warriors at the center, surrounded with a counter-rotating ring of aronans. The inner and outer circles turned until each rider faced his or her mount. With a sharp drum-patter, the music halted, startling Kesbe.

  With a joyous cry, the child-warriors sprang astride their aronans. As one, the circle lifted in a controlled hover that still carried the same rhythm. More fliers appeared to the side of the stage and scuttled in, each crouching with wings folded and head tucked, beneath an airborne aronan and rider. Those in flight lifted higher while those below sprang to their feet. More child-warriors ran among them and again there was the together-apart symbolic step of acquaintance, familiarity and partnership before the young riders leaped aboard their mounts to join the circle above.

  Again new fliers entered, scuttling into place with closed wings to crouch beneath those who had lifted. With a brilliant shimmer of wing-colors, the crouching ones began to strut and flutter, each seeking a partner in the next group of child-warriors who burst into the Dance. When a creature found its rider, it too lifted, to join the skyborne circle.