by Meredith
“Are you laughing at me?” she asked the buzzard.
He didn’t answer.
“Or them?”
I have a do-wa, too, he said, but it was never forty feet.
24
Jemel was a Moon Woman. She’d known that since she could remember, and it never bothered her. In fact, she liked it.
The people told all sorts of stories about Moon Women and how crazy they were. The first Moon Woman got the name because she stared at the reflection of a full moon in a pond until she lost her mind, walked into the water, and drowned. Most of the stories, though, were about women falling in love with men—wildly in love—and what trouble that brought everyone. One Moon Woman got so crazy that she ate her children. Another turned into a coyote and did nothing but howl at the moon for the rest of her life.
Jemel had heard these stories as often as any Galayi girl did. However, her mother changed everything—she made a point of subverting the teachings. According to her mother, these stories were just a way of getting women to give up whoever and whatever they really wanted. They made love seem like something that made you crazy—it took you over entirely, body, mind, and spirit, and brought you to a terrible end. Mother pointed out that the Galayi word for “moon,” u-do-su-no, was very much like the word for “crazy” or “lunatic,” u-nah-su-no.
Mother had another way of undermining the stories, maybe a better one. It was common Galayi wisdom not to get too excited, not to hope too hard, not to be eager, not to display emotion, and in fact not to feel it, to damp it down. Mother deliberately taught Jemel the opposite. When Jemel wanted something—a cloth sash for a dress, paint for her face, dyed porcupine quills to make a decoration—Mother always said how great that would be, and reminded Jemel constantly of how much she wanted it. Sometimes Jemel got what she wanted, and experienced a big vibration of thrill. Sometimes she didn’t, and disappointment burned her gullet.
When Jemel got hurt that way, Mother would say, “This is life. Pain and joy—both are real, both are sharp. Feel all of each one. Then you’re alive. If you mute the pain, mute the joy, you’re a ghost shadow.”
Mother also said the stories about Moon Women were a way of making girls marry men they weren’t interested in. Most Galayi marriages were arranged by the families. A love match was rare, and usually an object of sly smiles and predictions of woe.
“Jemel,” her mother said a hundred times, “what you love, doesn’t matter what it is, or who it is—that’s your heart and spirit, that’s you. Don’t let anybody talk you out of it, don’t let anybody get in its way. Otherwise you live with a hole in your heart.”
Then she would give the little girl a kiss and say, “The one I love is you.”
Jemel was her mother’s only child—her sisters came out of her father’s other wife—and she got lots of attention.
Until her mother died, when Jemel was twelve.
As Jemel got a little older, she started putting together a bigger picture than what her mother actually said. She came to understand that Mother had been unhappy all her life. What if I wasn’t Mother’s biggest love? What if she wanted someone else and didn’t get him? Or something else?
The child Jemel had gotten hints of the story, but the teenage Jemel asked questions and put it all together. At sixteen Mother had fallen madly in love with a man her own age. Both families were dead set against the marriage.
In the end Mother’s lover was sent to another village to live with relatives. On the journey something happened to him, and he was never seen again. Mother was trapped into marrying her older sister’s husband. But Jemel, said some of the whispers, was the daughter of Mother’s lover, not her husband.
This kind of arranged marriage was the Galayi ideal. The man Jemel was raised to call “Father,” Katya, was a good husband and a good father. But he was like the other men of the village, and apparently all the Galayi people. He loved his wives in an amiable way, and the marriage turned into a sort of bargain—we’ll have sex sometimes, we’ll make a family, and we’ll run a household and raise children, make a good life. There was no wild attraction in Katya’s kind of love. Passion was ruled out. Even today Katya had a comfortable marriage to two of Mother’s sisters. Grown children lived with him, and plenty of grandchildren. It was a contented life.
What Jemel wanted—she knew this by the time she was twelve—was a grand romance. She kept her mouth shut about it. She’d already heard that she was a lunatic.
The hardest part of her life so far was waiting three entire winters after she turned twelve and watching her friends become women and be courted, while she remained a child.
She learned from the experience. She watched her friends flirt with various men, their own age and older, and saw the pointlessness of it. They liked some suitors better than others, disliked some, may have dallied with some, being careful about the time of the moon. But a feeling of ritual and convention infected the process. These weren’t affairs of the heart—they were a kind of commercial display. The woman went to the man considered most appropriate.
Jemel thought long and hard about how her friends could play such a foolish game, how they could marry into comradeship instead of passion. Maybe they were thinking that they could still have fun with anyone they wanted in the bushes. Jemel thought that was a dumb way to live. She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t want to.
Before Dahzi could slip out of the house, Sunoya said, “You said you wanted to learn the aktena. Your grandfather said he’d teach it to you. Go right now—he’s waiting for you by the river.”
The boy’s body language said, “Aw, Mom.” He wanted to practice the ball game or work on his weapons skills. Learning medicine felt like a bore. Almost all the men his age—he was nearing twenty—had gotten their visions, had gone to war. They were doing something for the people.
“Don’t forget what your life’s calling is,” she said to his disappearing rump.
Waste of breath, Sunoya and Su-Li said to each other at the same time.
“Aktena is want you want to learn?” asked the albino shaman with a sly smile.
“Yes,” said Dahzi. After a moment’s thought, he really was curious about this one.
“It won’t get you a lover,” said Ninyu.
“I know. It’s for women to make men fall in love with them.”
“You might call it love,” said Ninyu. “All right, sit down.” Dahzi’s guard stood nearby and kept his eyes and his ears on the world at large.
“You generally do aktena at the new moon, because the spell lasts until the next moon begins. Enough time to have a lot of fun in the bushes. Here.”
He handed Dahzi a smooth, rounded river stone used for grinding and spread some apple seeds on the big flat stone in front of him. “Grind these up,” Ninyu said, “very fine, like dust. They have to go into tea without being noticeable.”
Dahzi set to it. The potions, charms, and other things he learned couldn’t remain theoretical. He had to be able to make things that worked. Or he supposed he did. He wished he was learning to fight. If he got to be War Chief, he could get even with the man who had made his entire life miserable.
After a while, Ninyu said, “That’s very good. Now pour it into that tea.” He set a clay cup in front of Dahzi, with a little sassafras brew in the bottom.
The youth stirred the two together and saw that the seed powder wasn’t conspicuous.
“Now the woman must put some of the blood she makes once every moon into the water.”
Dahzi gaped at the medicine man.
“You won’t have to explain to any woman how to do it. Every woman wears a piece of mulberry cloth at that time to soak up the blood—you know this—and she can wring a few drops in.”
Ninyu enjoyed the look on Dahzi’s face. He was a good-looking boy and needed to be inched down once in a while.
“Any kind of tea will do.” Ninyu pantomimed a wringing motion and then handed the cup with mock ceremony to Dahzi.
“That’s it. You want to do some drills?”
The question caught Dahzi rising to run off.
“I guess so.” He sat back down.
“You need to drill,” said Ninyu. “Every potion and charm your mother and I have taught you, they have to be done exactly right. When you’re calling in the big powers of the spirits, you can’t make a mistake. You could get the lot of us hit by lightning, or make every woman in the village barren.”
Sunoya had said the same. Dahzi wouldn’t have stayed with Ninyu any longer, but he had decided that today was the day to ask again.
“So I guess I’m a medicine man.” He held up the webbed fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand.
“You were born to it.”
“And medicine men go on vision quests.”
“Sure. Extra sure.”
“Then I want to go now. Let’s do the work.”
“Why now? What’s your reason?”
My friends have all done it. They’re getting war honors. They’re getting women. They’re not babied by a guard.
“It’s just time.”
“The spirits decide.”
“If you ask them.”
“Is this about war honors?”
“You know it is.” A man needed the medicine of a vision to fight, to risk his life in the face of an enemy.
“That’s not your path.”
“I choose my path.”
Ninyu reached out and touched the webbing between Dahzi’s fingers.
“Is this the Medicine Chief talking, or my grandfather?”
Ninyu felt uneasy. “Why do you want to fight?”
“You know,” Dahzi said. War honors were the beginning of manhood and the door to marriage.
That didn’t satisfy Ninyu. “What enemy do you want to fight?” There were plenty of raids against the coastal people to the east and the prairie people to the west.
Dahzi spat it out. “My other grandfather.”
The words fouled the air, like a rotten smell.
“He’s evil. He killed my father with a spear. He beat my mother so bad I came early, and she died giving me birth. He wants to kill me.”
Ninyu said, “Inaj is the reason our village and theirs have been at war since you were born.”
“He thinks I’m the reason—that’s what I hear.”
“An infant making people kill each other, how likely is that?”
They were quiet for a moment. Ninyu felt like he couldn’t breathe. His grandson breaking the greatest of taboos, to kill another Galayi. His grandson destroying the power of the child of prophecy.
He said with forced calm, “Inaj is not Ahsbingah, you know. He’s just a misguided man.”
“I want to kill him. That is what I owe the Soco people, for twenty years of trouble.”
“It would destroy you. Never mind that he would kill you. If you won, your spirit would die.”
Dahzi made a bitter face. “I choose my path.”
Ninyu quelled his feelings. “But not with my help.”
Dahzi stared into space, looked at his guard, and twisted his mouth.
Jemel held still while one of her mothers pinned her hair high on her head, creating great sweeps and loops of glossy black. Earlier Jemel had scented her hair with mint leaves and rubbed it with oil. Jemel was draped shoulder to ankle in her first dress woven of mulberry bark, beautifully dyed. The women of the family had prepared for this event well in advance. Tonight was the ceremony when their daughter announced that she had become a woman. The sign of her new status was her hair and dress.
Jemel led the way out of the house and began her procession around the village. Her family followed, and her mother lifted up the first voice in the honor song. Her entire family raised their voices, too, and then neighbors and other families joined the parade. Soon half the village was walking behind Jemel and the other half singing along. It was the first great occasion of any young woman’s life. On the walk she glowed with her secret. She intended to find passion.
Over the next few weeks Jemel stood outside her family’s home, as custom required, and received men visitors in the evenings. She found that she liked being courted. The attention flattered her, and at the same time it tickled her. But this courting didn’t matter. She was playing, waiting for the one man she would be crazy about.
One evening when she was flirting with several men, a youth walked up and joined in. She’d seen him around the village but had never paid attention to him—it was the young man who never went anywhere without a guard, Dahzi, the son of the medicine woman Sunoya. Suddenly she saw him in a new way. His body was lithe, his smile teasing, his eyes soulful. She had no idea whether he could give her what she wanted, to be loved greatly, to be adored.
During the next quarter moon she kept an eye out for Dahzi, learned his habits, put herself where she could watch him without being seen. It was an exciting game. Just looking at him made her chest get tight.
Dahzi started coming around every evening, sitting in the circle of the men who surrounded her, or sometimes behind them. She never spoke to him, never let her eyes make contact with his, never let herself appear to notice him.
By the time of the new moon he was staring at her the way a sunflower gazes at the distant sun.
Dahzi watched his mother prepare the potion. She poured hot water into a cup, dropped something into it, and set the cup against the wall of their house to steep. Dahzi thought he recognized what Sunoya was dropping in, some red vegetable scrapings.
“You’re sending someone on a vision quest.”
“When they go on a quest, women prefer having me guide them.”
Dahzi knew what the vision path was. Tonight was the full moon, the time to begin. A male seeker would wear nothing but a breechcloth and moccasins. He took nothing with him, not a weapon, not a robe. He left between first light and dawn and went wherever his heart took him. He found a place that was solitary—it was important to see no one else. This place should feel good and right. That was all the shaman could say about it.
Dahzi didn’t know much about the customs for female seekers.
“Is the tea for the seeker or for you?”
Sunoya looked up at her son. She was intrigued—he was showing interest in a woman’s quest. “Me. I follow along on the quest. I see what the seeker sees.”
“I want to seek.”
“I know you’re impatient for your chance.”
“Sure.” His tone told a bitter story.
“When you’re ready emotionally, either your grandfather or I will be glad to help you. It will be an honor.”
Dahzi pictured himself performing the ceremony. A small space, with no room to walk around. No eating or drinking. During the day he would pray to the spirits for a vision. When he wanted to, he would sing a song. The spirits liked to hear Galayi voices raised in song.
He had pack-ratted bits of information from his friends. He knew how. He was ravenous to go, ravenous to get an animal helper, ravenous to earn a name.
“I am ready,” he told his mother.
She stirred the potion and said nothing.
“Mother, I want to go on the mountain now. Will you help me or not?”
“Not yet,” she said. “And not your grandfather, either.”
“Why not?”
“Hating Inaj is not a reason to seek a vision.”
She wondered again: One grandfather is Ninyu, a good man, a man of medicine. The other is Inaj. Has Dahzi inherited both? Are good and evil warring within him?
25
Silence was all he needed, absolute silence. He slipped out from under his fur robes, went to the door, opened it, and slid into the darkness of the night. Toma sat back against the wall, groggy as usual. Instead of tapping his shoulder, in one quick motion Dahzi stuffed a squirrel skin into his mouth. Then he bound the guard’s hands with leather thongs. The hide absorbed Toma’s protests almost entirely. In moments Dahzi was gone.
He was very satisfied. The family’s
two dogs were in the hut, accustomed to people going out at night to pee. Dahzi was always glad to be away from dogs. Even Su-Li, if the buzzard woke up, couldn’t follow him in the darkness.
Dahzi started up the Soco River, his mind entirely empty about where he might go. He felt happy, his legs springy. He kept thinking, No guard. He was elated about that. He would never need a guard again—he could take care of himself.
About dawn he saw some stony cliffs rising above the pine trees on the other side of the river. When he studied the cliffs, he realized that a war eagle’s nest hung over the edge of one of the lower shelves.
Perfect. The eagle felt like a good omen.
He splashed his way across the river. Since he first crossed it on the back of his mother’s pack dog as a newborn, he’d waded it at low water several times. The river was rising now, the spring runoff flowing in, and he had to swim a few strokes in two different places.
Odd that he was leery of dogs. Maybe he picked it up from Su-Li. The buzzard had seen them in packs, and said they were vicious.
On the far side he scrambled up the mountain like he’d seen elk bound up. He climbed above the shelf with the nest and looked at the home of the war eagles.
It was empty—too early in the year for the grown birds, eggs, or fledglings. He noticed several feathers in the nest, white near the quill tip, brown below. He thought they were beautiful. He knew, though, why the people didn’t gather them for decoration. One of the old stories told about a man punished by the eagles for approaching their nest. He was a long way above the nest, and above danger.
So. He would do his own vision quest. Was he not the medicine bearer? Why would he need help?
He chose his small space, prayed and sang all day long. He kept an eye on the weather, though. Sodden clouds were bunching up on the peaks and ridges. By mid-afternoon he could smell rain, and the drizzle began just as the sun dropped out of sight.
He began to wonder whether he should have done this by himself. His mind shook a finger at him—arrogant.
He dreaded the night. Since he had a bare chest and no robe, the wet and cold could be miserable.
