People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

  She was only beginning to fade into sleep when she heard a scratching on the outside wall of her chamber. Again it came, sounding as if someone were scraping the masonry with a twig. She got up, threw her blanket over her shoulders and went outside. As soon as she pushed through the doorflap into the cool night, she caught a whiff of sage mixed with pepper.

  Against the night-grayed wall of the pueblo, she saw a shape that she wouldn’t have wanted to approach had she not known what it was. Baqui Ibas foot was lifted to scrape the wall again. Instead the creature scuttled to Kesbe, touching and teasing her with its antennae.

  “Sahacat thought I would disobey,” she murmured, her face against the aronan’s muzzle. “It never entered her head that you might. Have you come to seduce me away for a midnight ride?”

  The answering swirl of scents and flavors infected Kesbe once again with excitement. Tossing her blanket back behind the doorflap, she placed one foot against the short thick mat of hairs on Baqui Iba’s shoulder and swung on. The aronan maneuvered its way between the adobe buildings until it came to an open plaza fronting the ledge that cradled Tuwayhoima.

  Kesbe sat there for a minute, looking up. The sky was moonless, but the sapphire glitter of the stars seemed to light a pathway through it. She saw Baqui Iba’s antennae curl forward, sweeping and tasting the air. She drew back the corners of her mouth and sucked air over her tongue, savoring the clarity and crispness of the night. She shivered, but it was not with cold.

  The rising keen of Baqui Iba’s wing vibration rose to a full-throated roar and then suddenly she had plunged into a fast-flowing river of air that pummeled her face and body as Baqui Iba took a plunge into blackness. For an instant the dark seemed like a wall that they would crash into, for she could not see beyond. Then the moment of fright passed and exhilaration took its place as she supplemented sight with her mastery of tewalutewi and was able to look ahead through the night.

  She found a wilder and richer world blowing at her. To her eyes, the peaks and canyons were static silhouettes against the backdrop of night as Baqui Iba bore her past. But in the wind hitting her face, everything was alive and moving. She tasted the canyon’s flesh in the smell of granite and sandstone and drank its essence in the aroma of pinyon and other pines. The air itself tasted like glacial meltwater. It had a startling icy purity, yet it was not cold.

  The aronan’s own scent, pouring back over her from the wind of its flight, had altered. She had no name for this odor as she had for all the others. It was sharp and clean as the wind, yet as delicate as the faintest floral perfume. It made her want to throw back her head and sing, not caring if she was horrendously off-key. It made her wish she too were an aronan and flying side by side with Baqui Iba in its dance through the sky.

  And then, in the rush of wind and soaring sensation of flight, came a strange condensation of perception into language. For the first time the channeling of essences to the receptors high in her nose and her mouth gave birth to words in her mind.

  Baqui Iba told her.

  Then she did throw her head back, filled her lungs with wind and sang one of her grandfather’s Hopi songs. Tears spilled from her eyes but were caught and flung away by the headwind before they reached her cheeks. She let her whole body speak her joy, trying to pour forth her message in the same way the aronan had done.

  the aronan answered.

  Baqui Iba climbed until the stars grew so bright Kesbe might have thought she could pluck them from the vault of the sky. There it flew in a slow triumphant circle, gradually gathering speed until it peeled out and with a wingover, tumbled into a steep dive. Down it plunged until Kesbe felt as though the wind might tear her off. The aronan rocketed up into a wild series of loops, spins and turns and more aerobatics that she had no name for.

  She clung tightly, but she had no fear, knowing that if she were unseated, Baqui Iba would have her again before she had fallen several meters. With each powerful stroke of its wings, each turn and twist of its body came the message, I will not let you fall. I love you

  And then, after a moment at the top of a loop when canyon and sky seemed to have changed places, the wild flight ended in a long quiet glide with air whispering over the aronan’s wings.

  The strange burning ache in Kesbe’s body was gone and she felt only a peaceful quiescence, as if she had indeed been loved deeply and well.

  They landed on the mesa above the village just before dawn to rest from the flight. Kesbe, wearing nothing but her short kilt and sash, shivered in the early morning air.

  the aronan told her and when she did, Baqui Iba gently swung its wings closed, protecting and warming her. She lay on her stomach, her head on her folded arms, the rest of her beneath the wings. She felt as though she could fall asleep, but dawn was close. Soon the flier would return to Aronan House and she to her quarters in the pueblo.

  Baqui Iba wafted her a vortex of aromas in shades of mint. It was a question, but not the simple query of a spoken language. Embedded within were many shades of meaning that made a simple translation, even into Pai, seem ridiculous. She could not speak the question, but she could feel it, smell it and feel her body move to it.

  Baqui Iba asked her.

  “Yes,” she whispered aloud, finding that speaking helped to focus and direct her message She struggled to bring a more aromatic range of notes into her own musky pungency in order to bring across the intensity of her own answer.

  Another message came in a three-dimensional interweaving of odors.

  “But yours is so wonderful. Mine must be very drab and dull. Perhaps even unpleasant.”

 

  Kesbe gave a deep happy sigh and fell silent, drawing her finger languidly through the sage-scented fuzz on Baqui Iba’s shoulder. “I don’t want this time to end, beautiful winged one”

 

  Kesbe’s only reply was to snuggle further under the wings.

  came an unexpected question from the aronan.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she had a good reason,” Kesbe murmured, then yawned. “She just wants to show she can control me.”

 

  A cold note of alarm entered Kesbe’s comfortable drowsiness and she spoke louder, though she knew the aronan gathered her meaning not by sounds but by the accompanying scent messages of her body. “You mean she might have had a reason after all? I thought your wings seemed strong enough.”

 

  This was an alien and unsettling thought. She recalled that some species of insects did shed their wings at certain times in their life cycles. And there was the mystery of Haewi Namij, whose one wing was found by the child-warriors apart from the rest of the creature’s remains, as if it had broken off before the aronan fell…

  No, that had to have been an accident, she told herself, yet she had to work hard to drive away the remaining doubt.

  “Dear winged one, you don’t know what will happen as you grow older?”

  came the answer.

  “And that uncertainty doesn’t worry you?”

 

  Kesbe was intrigued by this point of view, which was radically different from hers.

  <“How do you know that any
…change…is right?”>

  I can’t explain. Is this different with you?

  “Umm…somewhat,” she said carefully. “Sometimes we humans don’t welcome the changes that come.”

  How strange…and sad, was Baqui Iba’s answer.

  “Never mind,” she said, crawling out from beneath the wings and taking her seat once more on the creature’s forequarters, “Your wings are strong and the flight was beautiful.”

  They flew down from the mesa, landing in the crisp pre-dawn on the ledge that held Aronan House. Regretfully Kesbe alighted from the aronan. It startled her by asking,

  “From you?” Kesbe was puzzled.

  The aronan’s scent-tone was almost smug. Even one such as the shaman can not hide herself from me.

  “Baqui Iba, what do you mean?”

 

  The sound of sandals crunching on gravel startled Kesbe. She lost the last of the aronan’s message as she whirled to see who was coming. They were still distant, hidden by a bend in the trail that ran between the pueblo buildings.

  “Go!” Kesbe whispered to the flier, fearing that the shaman had detected her disobedience.

  Both exchanged quick caresses before Baqui Iba turned and opened its wings for the short flutter up to the second level of Aronan House.

  the aronan sent as it launched itself.

  With a whir of wings it was gone. She heard it land on the threshold of the flight-door high on the walls of Aronan House. With a sigh, she turned away for her own walk back to her quarters.

  Kesbe was never sure why Sahacat chose the next point in her training to bring in Nyentiwakay. She suspected that it was because the shaman somehow knew she had achieved full communication with Baqui Iba.

  She, along with Sahacat and Baqui Iba, met Nyentiwakay in a small enclosed courtyard carved into the cave floor plaza of Tuwayhoima near Aronan Kiva. She was still heady with the previous days’ achievements and could scarcely pay attention to anyone except her aronan.

  She saw a smile cross Nyentiwakay’s strong yet gentle face. The lomuqualt rose from a stone seat, placing one hand on each of the two partners, as if becoming a living representative of the bond between aronan and rider. Her belly pressed, full and solid, against her robe.

  The lomuqualt turned quizzically to Kesbe, who felt self-conscious under the gaze of those joyful yet solemn eyes. “Sahacat brought me to answer your questions.”

  Kesbe sent a baffled look toward Sahacat. She had not asked the shaman any questions she had not been able to answer, although there were a few she would not.

  “Have you no questions, then?” Nyentiwakay asked. “You must. All who are entering this part of their life road have at least one. Have you not asked Sahacat the purpose of your training?”

  Kesbe felt taken aback. That was one thing she had not asked the shaman. She had given up trying to demand information from Sahacat. She knew now by experience that when the shaman thought the time was proper to give such knowledge, she would impart it. The other reason was that she thought now that she knew the answer. Developing her sense of tewalukwi was one step toward strengthening and deepening the partnership with her aronan. The ultimate goal was the opening of full and free communication with a creature whose mind was very different from her own. When she explained this, she found the task of translating the ideas to the Pai tongue difficult, but at the end Nyentiwakay seemed to understand.

  “So that is all?” the lomuqualt said, with eyes that seemed to twinkle with a strange suppressed mirth. “You truly think you have undergone such learning and changing in order to exchange mere words with your aronan beloved?”

  Nyentiwakay chuckled. There was a resonance to the lomuqualt’s laugh that seemed odd for a woman. Kesbe at once felt out of her depth and a little bit foolish. “I have explained it poorly, Nyentiwakay,” she said, remembering what she and Baqui Iba had shared during that flight in darkness across the Mother Canyon.

  The lomuqualt sent a reproving look toward Sahacat. “Shaman, you have not done justice to this initiate.”

  “I do not deny her the knowledge,” said the shaman coolly. “I give it to her now, through you.”

  Kesbe turned to Sahacat. She felt a warning prickles on the back of her neck. “What is this I haven’t been told?”

  “Something you will need, now that you are well on the way to becoming lomuqualt,” the shaman answered. “You flew Baqui Iba last night, thinking I would not know. Again you disobeyed me. You are too advanced now in your training for me to stop you from progressing on. I will give you the answer you have been seeking. It is true. I have not told you the ultimate purpose of your training. Nyentiwakay will tell you now.” Sahacat stopped, flung her hair back over her shoulders. “Whether it is gift or punishment, you shall decide.”

  “Why Nyentiwakay?” Kesbe looked from the shaman’s closed visage to the face of the lomuqualt. “What does she know?”

  Nyentiwakay’s mouth thinned and a worry line appeared between the eyes. “This is wrong, Sahacat. Such teaching should be done with guidance and love.”

  “My ways are my ways,” the shaman answered, her gaze as sharp as the edge of an obsidian blade. She turned and walked away.

  Kesbe leaped to follow her. She felt fingers on her wrist drawing her back and struggled to free herself. Nyentiwakay’s grip was surprisingly strong. “Sit, warrior-woman. It is no good going after her. Sit here, beside me.”

  An icy trickle of fear was starting down her back. Thoughts she had put aside began to reappear. Themes from the Pai stories and legends, hints from the Cloud Dance came back to her. The bond between aronan and human was an intimate one. How far that intimacy went was a question her mind had rejected, sealing it away until the flight with Baqui Iba. And now…

  “Give me your hands,” Nyentiwakay said and, because she could do nothing else in her mixed fright and confusion, Kesbe held out both wrists. Nyentiwakay placed Kesbe’s palms firmly on the warm rounded mass of the lomuqualt’s belly. “This is the ultimate purpose of the partnership between human and flier. Feel it.”

  Nyentiwakay held her hands in gentle entrapment. Something moved inside the lomuqualt’s stomach, Kesbe felt a slow rolling motion. She was bewildered. What did Nyentiwakay’s pregnant belly have to do with…

  “A baby,” she tried.

  “Do not pretend that you lack wit, Kesbe-Rohoni. It is a child of the Pai Yinaye, yes,” Nyentiwakay answered. “But not a human child.”

  Again Kesbe’s mind screamed denial. She tried to jerk away, but Nyentiwakay still held her palms against that swollen belly and the thing it contained. The tiny smoldering ember of a truth she did not want to know burst into open flame before her face, searing her with its reality.

  This gentle, laughing woman was carrying something inhuman—not a baby but the spawn of an arthropod. What must it look like curled up inside a human body? A huge larva?

  “Why are you afraid, warrior-woman?” The low resonance of Nyentiwakay’s voice brought her attention back to the lomuqualt’s face. Kesbe’s jaw opened, but the reply she tried for would not emerge.

  “Are you afraid that what lies here is evil? That it is a worm that feasts on my flesh?”

  Kesbe couldn’t answer, for she was shaking too hard and tears stung the corners of her eyes.

  “When the nymph began, yes, it was a tiny grub. But so begins a human child,” said the lomuqualt softly. “The nymph does not feed on unwilling flesh, but takes only what my body provides.”

  Now Kesbe felt not only shock and revulsion, but deep pity for Nyentiwakay. As the lomuqualt’s eyes met her own, she felt Nyentiwakay’s fingers releasing hers. She snatched her hands away, wiping he
r palms down the side of her leggings. “Who has done this to you? Why did you let them do it?”

  Nyentiwakay extended open hands to her, but she could only back away. She tried to get control of her voice, to give comfort and reassurance to someone who must be in great mental and physical distress from the parasite within their body. “There are things that can be done, Nyentiwakay,” she babbled. “It isn’t too late Healers in my world can remove the grub from you. It isn’t too late if we can reach Gooney Berg…‘

  Steeling herself to touch Nyentiwakay, she reached for the lomuqualt’s wrist Nyentiwakay put one hand up in a sharp, almost imperious gesture. “Warrior-woman, I do not understand your fear. It makes you speak nonsense. I would not be rid of the aronan-child I bear. Say no more of this.”

  “But you don’t know what is happening…” Kesbe broke off. It was useless to argue. Obviously Nyentiwakay had been drugged or duped into becoming a human caterpillar in which an aronan had laid its egg. What would happen when the parasite matured and sought its way out of the lomuqualt’s body? Or would it consume its unknowing host from within?

  Was that the fate Sahacat had planned for her?

  Yet the memory of the flight on Baqui Iba still remained with her. Baqui Iba had said it loved her. The thought had lifted her with joy then, but now it drew cold streaks down her back. Love from an aronan—what did that really mean? Was it the affection of the wasp for the caterpillar that quivered beneath its sting? No! How could she doubt? The creature loved her far more deeply than anyone of her own kind had ever done.

  She would seek out the truth from the one who knew it. Baqui Iba.

  Chapter 19

  Kesbe’s resolution took her as far as the plaza before Aronan House, then she faltered, confused by doubt. She could not bear the thought that what Baqui Iba might tell her was the same thing Nyentiwakay had said, the idea that so frightened her.

  As for entering Aronan House…She wished there was some way she could call Baqui Iba down without having to go among creatures that looked upon her as a walking receptacle for their larvae. She remembered how she had laid an odorous trail to lure Baqui Iba back to the mesa. She felt sweaty enough to do it now, but she wondered if the creature would read in her smell a message to come or a message to stay away.