by Meredith
He shook his head sharply. The danger was not the rain or the temperature—it was the distraction. I have come to get a vision, see an animal helper, and earn a name. My mind must burn with my intention.
Within an hour he began to shiver. In two hours he was shaking uncontrollably. He ordered his mind and spirit to ignore his foolish body. Instead they ignored his will. He knew that he was to watch for a sky parade put on by the spirits, but no sky was visible. He couldn’t even see clouds, but just a shapeless, shifting, formless gray mush of nothing.
Hours and hours of shaking. He gave up hoping for a vision. He thought only of getting through the night.
At dawn he appeared at the door of his home. His mother and Ninyu were outside, waiting for him.
Dahzi started to stammer something out.
“We know what happened,” said Sunoya. “Come inside and I’ll make you some tea, and then some food to break your fast.”
Dahzi liked the fire even better than the tea. He wished he could take his skin off and spread it out to dry and warm up.
He looked at his hand and noticed that the cup was the same one his mother used to brew something yesterday for another seeker. “What did you make tea from yesterday?”
Ninyu said, “You’re putting off what we have to say to each other, so I will say it. You suffered terribly from the rain and cold. Your mind got preoccupied with earthly matters like staying warm, staying alive. You didn’t have any energy to seek a vision.”
Softly, “Yes.”
“You disobeyed us. You dishonored us.”
Now firmly, “Yes.”
Sunoya said, “You dishonored the spirits. That’s why they didn’t come to you.”
Dahzi didn’t dare look his mother and grandfather in the eye.
“When you come to him with a proper attitude,” said Sunoya, “your grandfather would love to put you on the mountain.”
“That’s true,” said Ninyu.
Dahzi didn’t hear the words. He told himself, I’m ashamed. I’m angry. I’m afraid of losing my chance at Jemel.
26
Jemel sat herself down and talked sense to herself. Good sense? From a devoted Moon Woman? That was funny.
Her mother had told her the way to get a man’s genuine love, and to connect two bodies and two souls. Also, her own body told her how. It was time. She wondered whether, in true Moon Woman style, she should be flagrant about it. She decided that deviousness was also the Moon Woman style. Anything and everything, she thought, as long as I do it all the way.
When her group of men dispersed one evening, she asked Dahzi to stay a moment. Walking away, the other men traded smiles and odd looks. The request could be innocent, for a woman her age might ask a young man to do her various small favors. She could ask for turtle shells for making rattles, or for the tips of deer antlers to hang from the hem of her skirt and clatter when she danced, or other things. Intriguingly, the request could also indicate where her affections pointed.
The oldest man said, “I don’t think so,” glancing back. He was about thirty winters old and had one wife.
“Of course not. He’s much too young,” said a second, eyes straight ahead. This fellow, whose wife had died bringing forth their first child, had taken a fancy to Jemel.
The young lady herself said to Dahzi, “Meet me on the water path tomorrow morning—I want to show you something.”
Dahzi was so stunned that he could only nod.
She watched him walk away. He’d seemed sulky the last two nights, but she didn’t care. Her mind was made up.
The next morning Jemel told her mothers that she was going with two friends to get some watercress. She was fond of watercress leaves, not to put into soup or stew as her mothers used them, but to eat alone and fresh, as soon as possible after being plucked from the water. The watercress grew thick in a certain place a couple of miles up the creek, so her mothers expected Jemel to be gone all morning.
Jemel started along the water path with her friends, and when they came upon Dahzi and his guard, she invited him to join them. In a little while she pulled Dahzi off the path, under a huge weeping willow that overhung the creek. “Wait,” she ordered the guard. Jemel’s girl friends walked on, giggling.
Dahzi started to ask whether they were going to gather branches—women used the pliant willow limbs to make baskets—but something stopped him from speaking. He later decided that this hesitation saved him from a good deal of teasing.
The moment they were fully in the dense shade of the branches, Jemel put her arms around him, put her lips to his, and showed him a new use for his tongue.
Abruptly she paused and held him at arm’s length. She eyed him hard and said, “I am a Moon Woman. You know what that means.”
Unable to speak, Dahzi nodded yes.
“I want you. I want to fill you with passion and get passion back from you.”
Dahzi nodded again.
“Do you have big feelings to give me? If you don’t, tell me now, and we’ll act like this never happened.”
Dahzi squeezed out three words. “I love you.”
She cocked her head and waited.
“I adore you,” he said.
She pulled him to her, kissed him, reached for his breech-cloth, and…
That’s how Dahzi’s sexual education began. Jemel knew nothing from experience but had a lot of tips from her mother. Her body guided her to the rest. They loved each other every way people can.
Hours later, Jemel led Dahzi back to the edge of the village. He was so dizzied he thought he couldn’t have found his way home without her. The guard idled along behind them. Dahzi hated his presence more than ever.
That evening he went to her parents’ house before the time for suitors. She came out to sit with him. He felt like every eye in the village was trained on him. “I went out to cry for a vision,” he said.
“I know.”
“I saw nothing.”
“I heard that.”
“I can’t try again until the next new moon.”
She knew what he was telling her. He wasn’t a man yet and couldn’t ask to marry her.
“I don’t care about any of that. We mounted the panther this morning. Wherever it goes, we’ll ride it.”
Dahzi nodded, accepting.
Soon her other suitors arrived.
After she’d been hearing the gossip for about a week, Sunoya decided she’d better do something. She made some of the honeyed seed cakes Dahzi liked so much. When Dahzi came back from his morning excursion, she took him down by the river, a cool place they liked to talk.
After he’d eaten two of them, she said, “You like Jemel.”
He nodded. She gathered he was tongue-tied.
He believes he loves her, Su-Li said quietly.
“Lots of boys like her,” she said. “Men, too.”
Jealousy made a ring of fire in Dahzi’s heart. He swallowed the rest of his cake and said, “She loves me. She told me so.”
Sunoya took thought. Without words she said to Su-Li, If I try to cut off this flirtation, he’ll always yearn for her.
Yes, said Su-Li.
“She looks like a nice girl,” said Sunoya. “Medicine bearers can marry.”
“Yeah,” said Dahzi.
Sunoya eyed him, thinking, He’s not wide-eyed about his destiny as a man of medicine. Not anymore. And he’s not a boy now.
“Unless you want a spirit guide, like Su-Li.”
“I don’t think so,” Dahzi said. He ate the last bite of his seed cakes and rinsed his fingers in the river.
His do-wa doesn’t think so, said Su-Li.
“I worry about your future.”
“You can count on this much. Jemel and I are going to get married.” Unless one of the other suitors gets her.
“When?”
“I don’t know. Look, there’s something I have to explain. Big passions don’t happen very often. That’s what we have.”
“Dahzi…”
&
nbsp; “Wait. I know. I know the stories about Moon Women. I know the usual stuff about going with big feelings.” Now he looked at her with flame in his eyes. “But I also know about passion. It’s real. I didn’t know until now.”
“Dahzi…”
“Mom, listen to me. No one who’s lucky enough to have this big feeling will walk away from it.”
“Dahzi…”
“Mom, you don’t know. You’re a virgin.”
She flinched. The way he spoke to her was…
Easy, said Su-Li.
Sunoya controlled her breathing. “It might happen. But so much else has to happen first.”
“Right. I have to get a vision. I have to get a name. On the next new moon I’ll do that.” He couldn’t wait. She might choose someone else. “I’ll be a man, and Jemel and I will be together. We’re not asking permission from anyone.”
He let her see that in his eyes.
Sunoya waited. For two days she noticed that Dahzi and Jemel came back to the village about midday, not together, but one shortly after the other. She wondered how Jemel gave her family the slip so easily.
Dahzi found the morning’s breakfast still on the coals and wolfed it down. He’d been away since dawn. Sunoya watched him with a smile.
Then he stretched out on his robes for a nap.
“My son,” she said, “I want you to have whatever you want. If you want Jemel, I want her for you.”
Now he opened his eyes, held hers briefly, and closed them again.
“I wonder if you’re forgetting that you were born to be extraordinary.”
He looked at her and she held up her webbed fingers to show what she was talking about.
He closed his eyes again.
“Tsola and I believe you were born to be the one who gets another Eagle’s Cape for the people.”
“Mom,” he said in disgust.
“I know about prophecy,” she answered. “Ninyu knows. Tsola knows.”
Dahzi sat up. “Mom, I’m only thinking about one thing, getting a name and getting Jemel. After I marry her, my future might be… besides Jemel, I don’t know, some fairy tale. But Jemel and I love each other.”
He threw himself down and turned his back to her.
Sunoya thought about it. She mourned about it. She talked with Su-Li about it. On the second evening she did what she had to do. She walked gently to Jemel’s family’s house and slipped by the girl and her group of suitors quietly. If Dahzi shot her a look of alarm, her back was to it. She ducked into the open door and greeted Jemel’s parents. Invited, she sat. She asked for the pipe and sent puffs of smoke to the sky. This smoke my breath, this smoke my prayers.
She took confidence from Su-Li on her shoulder. Then she spoke the words that had to be spoken.
The next morning at first light, before Jemel could slip out again to meet Dahzi, her father and brothers marched her out of the village.
After he waited half the morning by the water path, Dahzi came home. His eyes were heat lightning flickering. “Where is Jemel?”
Sunoya heard a tone her son had never used to her before. She sighed a little sadness, like a sip of death.
“Her father and brothers have taken her to live with relatives.”
Now Dahzi’s voice was a lash. “Where?”
“The Cusa village.” She watched him absorb the news. “You know it doesn’t matter where. She’ll be well guarded.”
He gave a curdled cry. “Why-y-y?!”
“Because you are too young, both of you. You especially. You can’t support a wife and children, not yet. In a few years you’ll be a good hunter, or a good medicine man, and you can have a family. Not yet.”
“Damn it, I—”
“Dahzi!” She cut him off sharply. “Be glad her father and brothers simply left. They wanted to give you a beating. First I tried to talk them out of it, then I had to use a threat.”
Everyone knew medicine people could make good on their threats.
He let out a roar.
“Get a vision. Earn a name. Become a man. Make a life for yourself.”
He bellowed and stomped out.
FOUR
A Strange Journey
27
Dahzi woke up to the shush of the river and the lilac twilight. He didn’t know where he’d been all day. Stomping and rampaging until he exhausted himself. Cursing Jemel’s family. Cursing his mother and his fate. He hoped he hadn’t cursed the spirits, but he couldn’t remember.
Now he had a reality to face. He didn’t want to go back to his house, the place where he grew up, but hunger and cold drove him there.
He didn’t speak to anyone. He ate, went to bed, and ate again without even the words “thank you.” He didn’t sleep that night. Instead he tossed and turned, fretted, steamed, stewed, and somehow around the edges of his fury thought things over. He wanted to do something so dramatic that the whole world would give him Jemel.
That morning he watched for his chance, rolled up his pallet of robes and tied them, and picked up his spear. He hadn’t yet made himself a war club.
He strolled casually out of the village and headed up the river. He had made up his mind. He was going to kill Inaj.
Kill his grandfather! Kill the man who led a war against the Socos, Dahzi’s people, for nearly two decades. Kill the man who killed his father.
Yes, slaying another Galayi was the forbidden crime. But Inaj did it. Maybe Dahzi inherited the desire to kill.
His mother said being born with webbed fingers controlled his destiny. Maybe having the blood of a killer in his veins controlled it.
And it will make me a hero.
The trouble was, he didn’t see how to get close enough. This was the planting season. Inaj was probably at home—the governor of a village had to stay home most of the time. Dahzi couldn’t even think of marching straight into the Tusca village and killing its chief.
On the other hand, Inaj might be out leading a raid, maybe against one of the tribes that lived along the ocean to the east. Again, maybe the raid was against the Socos. He’d stolen women right out of the fields before, just to mock the villagers.
The truth was, Dahzi didn’t know where Inaj was. But he knew where he would be in half a moon. Then the entire Tusca village would migrate west over a couple of ranges of mountains and turn north to the headwaters of the Soco River and over the divide to the Cheowa village. For the Planting Moon Ceremony. So Dahzi knew where his chance would come.
He walked in a foul mood for a day and a half and came in late afternoon to where the trail from the Tusca village met the river. He looked lingeringly at the big waterfall which had saved his life, and his mother’s life. Twenty winters ago, when Sunoya managed a difficult ford of the river, Inaj and his men jumped in right behind her. As they were crossing, the frozen waterfall collapsed into the river and swamped them.
Dahzi took the trail along the right bank of the river and angled up alongside the waterfall. It was beautiful now, full of sprays where it splashed against rocks and spumed away downward, catching glints of sunlight here and there. It almost improved his mood.
Above the waterfall the mountain got steep and the trail was slow going. Dahzi walked up high above the falls, back down to them, and up again. He stood and peered ahead to the ridge, down to the falls, and around the woods. He imagined the ambush, one bloody fantasy after another. In the end he thought this might be the place.
He walked to the ridge and then angled up the brushy slope. He’d seen shadows in an outcropping of limestone that meant a cave. That would keep the spring showers off and would provide shelter while he waited. He needed to check the lay of the land thoroughly. He needed to spot hiding places. And he had to practice with his spear—he would get only one try.
He knew it was wicked. But maybe he was born to it. He knew the odds were long. He didn’t care. Heroism and Jemel beckoned. Wickedness? Death? Without Jemel there was no life.
Dahzi made snares from the loose bark of vines and c
aught a rabbit on the first day. The second day he went hungry except for some tea. On the third morning he waited quietly near the river at first light and watched the deer come to water. When a buck stepped close, he let fly with his spear and hit it right behind the shoulder blade. In a flash he jumped on it and cut its throat with his blade.
He stood over it with strange feelings. Jubilation, because he had done it—this was his first deer. Elation, because now he had food, enough to last him until the Tuscas arrived. Regret, because he had killed.
He reminded himself that no animal died before its time. Deer resurrected themselves from their spilled blood. He knew that. He sang the prayer that would appease the king of the deer.
Then he set to dressing out his kill and carrying the meat up to the cave.
That night, when he was roasting the liver, he suddenly became aware that someone was sitting on the boulder behind him.
Dahzi’s heart jumped in his chest.
“Never mind me,” the fellow said. He talked fast, like he was jittery. His accent was Tusca, which didn’t ease Dahzi’s mind.
“How did you get here?”
“Back in there, yes, back in there.” He pointed into the recesses of the cave, and Dahzi saw that a skinny man might slip through. He wondered how big the cave was.
The stranger worked his lips, making little sounds that weren’t quite words, and then were. “I sleeps here a lot.”
Dahzi moved so that the firelight shone on the man. A slight figure, unkempt, badly dressed, and filthy, grinning with an odd enthusiasm and bouncing up and down on his haunches. Sometimes Galayi went crazy and lived alone in the woods. Maybe the fellow was one of these.
Dahzi extended the rest of the liver to the man on the tip of his blade. “Want something to eat?”
“Don’t get much meat.”
The man reached out with a mangled hand. The four fingers were glued together, the skin melted, maybe by a burn. The thumb opposed them like the claw of a crab.
The fellow held the meat with his claw, inspected it from all angles, and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth.
A crazy hermit, thought Dahzi. “What’s your name?”
