by Meredith
What did he need to do to come back with 108 feathers, wearing the red zadayi outward? What did he need to learn to be the best possible hunter, so he wouldn’t waste his days searching for food? What did he need to do to arm himself against enemies?
He had to learn all he could from Awahi, the man who sang to eagles, for sure. He would also trade somehow for a war club and get some practice using it. He knew the trick was to swing the head so that it had some real force at the moment of impact, and not just be a falling stone. He would get a start on learning that skill.
Waiting was a good time to think, but Zeya found his mind drifting away. He wasn’t much worried about any of these difficulties—they seemed trivial. Instead he fantasized. He pictured himself in the blankets with Jemel. He imagined the first child they would have. He imagined several people greeting him respectfully as The One Who Dwells in the Clouds, especially Jemel’s mother and father, who had acted scornful to him. Also one of her older brothers. That fellow wanted to become Red Chief and carried himself with an arrogance that put him far above Zeya. But below The One Who Dwells in the Clouds.
Somehow Zeya got lost in his fantasies and woke up chill in the middle of the night. If the deer had come in the twilight, they were gone now.
Between first light and dawn he remedied that. Two does pranced lightly down the path, stopping every few steps to sniff the breeze. Though Zeya was upwind of them, maybe they caught a remnant of his smell from yesterday. They acted wary, so wary that he risked a throw before he should have. His spear struck true. One doe down, the other bounding away.
He sang the prayer that would keep the king of the deer from making his joints swell, cut off the meat he needed, built a fire, and started drying it. His adventure was off to a good start.
In three days he was back in the Soco camp and in his mother’s hut. She almost burst into tears when she saw him.
“What’s wrong, Mother?”
“Oh, Toma went hunting with two of his nephews and didn’t come back. It made me afraid for you.”
“Where did Toma go?”
“He’ll turn up tomorrow.”
“Can’t Su-Li find him?”
“No luck with that yet.”
Zeya was sorry, but he had a plan for today. He had to go to the Cusa camp and talk to Awahi.
“Grandfather, the spirits have called me to find one hundred and eight eagle feathers. I am asked not to name the purpose, but please believe that my heart is good.”
Sunoya told the man who sang to eagles, “He’s telling the truth. He’s walking the red path.”
The old man was sitting in front of his brush hut, facing the morning sun. He looked so frail that Zeya wondered how he managed to sing vigorously for several hours. When he sang, he accompanied himself on an instrument made of one string stretched on a length of wood. His own body seemed to be made of no more.
“A hundred and eight?” His voice cracked, which it never did when he was singing.
“Yes, Grandfather.” He threw a look at his mother.
She got up. “I’ll leave you two to talk.”
Awahi watched her go, his lips twitching and damp. Su-Li pivoted on her shoulder and watched the two of them.
“Maybe you can do it,” Awahi wheezed, “maybe you can. Do you know how the war eagles nest?”
“I know nothing, Grandfather.”
“Each pair mates for life. Here at their home during warm weather, they build three or four nests at different aeries, sometimes more, all very high and hard to get to, so they’ll be safe from predators. Like you. They like rocky ledges, usually, and they make the nest bigger across than a man is tall, and higher than his waist. Some years they use one nest, some another.”
He smacked his lips together oddly. Zeya felt a great distance between himself and Awahi, Eagle Voice, a chasm made by the passing of winters.
“They are here now. Every spring they rebuild whatever nest they choose for this stay, with twigs, moss, bark, and grasses. Then the female lays eggs, usually two. Now she’s sitting on them, while the male hunts and brings her food. He likes the balds for hunting, not the valleys, where the thick forest blocks his vision.”
Zeya gaped, but didn’t even think of speaking.
“After about one and a half moons the eggs hatch. Then the birds take turns, one stays home and the other hunts for the whole family. Most of the time the bigger chick will live and the smaller will die, sometimes killed by its brother or sister.”
Zeya almost exclaimed at that.
“The nature of every animal is different,” said Awahi, “and every one is what it should be.
“After about another two moons, the baby bird will be fledged out enough to fly. You may enjoy watching the young in their first flights. Then the mates teach their offspring to hunt. And finally, like all good parents, they kick him out so he can make a life for himself somewhere, and they head south for the winter.
“Right now the mother is sitting on the eggs. If you go near the nest, you’ll be attacked by two birds whose wings spread further than you are tall. Their killing dive is the fastest movement of all the animals. Their talons can bring death to a wolf.” He gave a wry smile. “You’ll want to try the nests they are not using this year.”
Zeya’s fears relaxed a little.
“You know about the one pair near your own village.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“Near my village there are four nesting pairs, and I’ll draw a picture and show you where they are. In the mountains above the Emerald Cavern”—he inclined his head to indicate that he meant the ridges right above where they sat—“there are three pairs. And near the Tusca village”—he paused, gave Zeya a sad smile—“dangerous for you, there are two.”
He slipped into his hut and came back with deer hide and some charcoal from the fire. He sketched quickly. “This is the Cheowa village.” He drew the creek leading to the Pool of Healing and the entrance to the Cavern, and the ridges above.
“You can see this nest”—he made an X—“if you walk the ridge top and then look down to the right of the first creek.” He diagrammed the location of three nests along these ridges, and then made a more elaborate picture with four nests marked near his home village. “I don’t remember much about the nests in the Tusca region. I was there only once as a very young man. They’re in the first mountain range as you travel toward the Soco River, that’s all I know.”
“Su-Li,” she said, “I don’t think we’ve let Zeya see your yes and no.”
Sunoya smiled at her son. “This is really complicated.” To Su-Li, “Show him no.”
From his perch on the snag the buzzard shook his head back and forth with comical exaggeration.
Sunoya chuckled. “Do you think you can guess yes?”
Zeya said, “Why didn’t you tell me? All these years…”
She shrugged. “We didn’t need the signals. You do. Now he’s going to teach you some more complicated ones.”
Su-Li glided down like he was going to land on Zeya’s extended arm. At the last moment he cut a sharp turn and wing-flapped off straight back the way he came. Then he landed in the top of a snag, looked at the two human beings, and beamed a message down to Sunoya. What does he think that means?
“Okay,” Sunoya said to Zeya, “this is the first signal, and he wants you to guess, see how well you two communicate just by intuition.”
Zeya considered, Straight toward me, straight back.
Sunoya looked at her son quizzically.
“Uh,” said Zeya, “he’s telling he wants me to follow him that way fast.”
Sunoya made a face. When she transmitted Zeya’s guess to Su-Li, he shook his head back and forth and gave out the loudest croak Zeya had heard from him.
“Exactly the opposite,” said Sunoya. “That signal means danger is coming from that way.”
Zeya mumbled, “Danger coming from that way.”
“Now, Su-Li, show us that one again.”
Su-Li repeated the maneuver, ending up on the snag.
“Big one. Swoops right down at you, doesn’t land, and flies back the way he came, that means there’s danger coming from that direction.”
Zeya nodded.
“He feels grumpy about doing this,” said Sunoya. “He says it’s our fault we have to make up these dumb signals. We messed things up so human beings can’t talk to the other animals, or understand them.”
Zeya knew the story, the time the other animals got mad at people and decided to send diseases against people and wipe them out. Except for the intervention of the plants, it would have worked. When human beings made peace with the animals, they still lost the ability to talk to other creatures.
Sunoya said, “Now, how can you tell him, ‘Go the way I’m showing you’?”
Su-Li lifted off the snag, zoomed right at Zeya like he was going to land on his arm, and at the last moment veered sharply off to the right.
“You see it?” said Sunoya. “That’s the way you should go.”
“The way I should go,” repeated Zeya.
Su-Li ran the maneuver again, this time cutting off hard to the left.
“You understand?” said Sunoya.
Su-Li landed on Sunoya’s arm.
“Now give him a signal for, ‘There’s a cave over that way,’” said Sunoya.
Su-Li cocked his head, then cocked it another direction. He hopped onto the ground—they knew he hated being on the ground. He picked up a rock the size of a small finger joint in his beak. He flew up, circled, and hurtled back toward the youth.
Zeya stuck out his arm in the routine way, wondering what on earth was going to happen.
Su-Li flapped and hovered at the last moment, didn’t land, but dropped the stone into Zeya’s hand. Then he flew off up the hill.
“Yes,” said Zeya, “the stone means a cave, and he’s flying toward it so I can follow.”
Sunoya checked mentally with Su-Li and said, “You got it.”
They went over the signals several times. “Your life could depend on knowing this,” said Sunoya.
At long last they looked at each other, tired. Zeya said, “Are we finished?”
Sunoya thought and said, “One more. Su-Li, give him something that means, ‘You’ve completely misunderstood what I’m telling you and are doing exactly the wrong thing.’”
The buzzard nodded his head a couple of times and launched from Sunoya’s arm. He flew well up the mountain. Sunoya wondered if he was thinking something up. Suddenly he whirled and dived straight toward them. At the last moment he flung his wings out against the wind for a quick stop. He hovered for an instant above Zeya’s hand and deposited a gob of white goo in his cupped palm.
Zeya hooted.
“Now follow through. What direction is right?” said Sunoya.
Su-Li wheeled another way.
“So the gob of droppings followed by a new direction,” said Sunoya, “that means, ‘You’re headed the wrong way, dumbhead, follow me.”
33
Toma whimpered. He despised himself for it, but he was beyond all self-control.
Inaj slid his obsidian blade firmly down Toma’s inner thigh. Toma gave a little yip of pain. A finger’s length of blood oozed out.
With even greater concentration Inaj made another cut, creating an L from the end of the first cut. He looked Toma in the eye. No exclamation of pain this time, but Inaj could see that his subject wouldn’t hold out much longer. With a sure hand he made a third cut back up Toma’s thigh. Then he gripped the bleeding flap of skin and slowly pulled it back.
The victim screamed again, a ululating wail.
“I hate that sound,” said Wilu.
Zanda snorted.
Inaj looked up into Wilu’s face. He said, “It’s unworthy of a man. But you can steel yourself so you don’t hear it, if you want to. I myself enjoy the screams.”
When Inaj got to the end of the parallel cuts, he kept pulling, tearing away the untouched flesh near the groin. When he exposed the red muscle beneath, he said, “There’s the real meaning of ‘naked man’.” Toma’s other thigh already showed a patch of nakedness the size of a man’s hand.
“We know there are things you haven’t told us,” Inaj said.
Toma babbled. Every time he tried to talk a lot of gibberish came first. Inaj was disgusted by him. Gradually, the man had made enough words that Inaj and Zanda pieced some of it together. Toma had only heard part of the conversation, he claimed. Guard duty was watching, not eavesdropping.
Zanda said, “Let’s go over it again, what we know. Klandagi came in the shape of an old man.”
Toma nodded.
“He left in his panther shape.”
“Y-e-e-s.”
“He gave Zeya a mission.”
Toma nodded.
“To gather eagle feathers.”
Another nod.
“Why?”
Toma shrugged.
“You didn’t hear that?’
Inaj gave the ripped skin a vicious little tug.
Toma wailed. Tears ran down his face. “No,” he said in a quaver.
“He’s supposed to gather the feathers alone.”
Nod.
“No guard.”
A shake of the head.
“What’s he supposed to do with them?”
A shrug.
Zanda said sharply, “Why are they doing all this?”
Another shrug.
Inaj said, “I don’t think you’ve told us everything.”
He started a new cut, this time straight across the knee cap.
A good while later, having shed a lot more blood but learned nothing more, Inaj stood up and handed Wilu the obsidian blade. “Entertain yourself with him, then kill him.”
“Let’s just kill him,” said Zanda.
“I want to watch Wilu play with him,” Inaj spat out. He sat on a small boulder.
Wilu made a cut under one of Toma’s nipples. By now the man was too weak even to whimper.
Zanda smiled at his father.
As Inaj, Wilu, and Zanda walked back to the Tusca camp, Inaj said, “To be hideous to your enemies”—this was one of his favorite lines—“what would be more enviable?”
Wilu paid attention. His admired his father and followed him in order to learn. And he felt slighted. When Inaj stepped aside as Red Chief of the Tuscas—he wanted to give himself entirely to fighting—he had not supported Wilu as the new Red Chief. He had spoken for Zanda, and Wilu’s younger brother was elected. Wilu pretended not to mind.
Sometimes his father’s fierceness made Wilu quail a little, and he was ashamed of that. A warrior’s greatest strengths were to be relentless and fierce.
Inaj smiled at the night. “You know,” he said, “Sunoya and Ninyu have just made their big mistake.”
Zanda and Wilu nodded.
Inaj seemed to be thinking out loud. “I will send four men against the whelp who pretends to be a medicine bearer.”
“Father, let me kill him,” said Zanda.
“Maybe,” said Inaj. “I will send three other men first. We know where the nests are. Our warriors can find him.” They walked several steps while Inaj thought.
“You and I, though, we will go on a visit to see my brother in the Cusa village. Hah! The sanctuary village.”
Cusa was well known as a peace band. If any person committed a crime, the victim’s clan brothers would go after him. But if the man reached the Cusas before they caught him, even if he was from another tribe, he was given sanctuary. Then the wrong would have to be set right without a beating or bloodshed. Inaj despised the Cusas. They lived deep in the southern mountains, far from the enemies to the east or west. According to Inaj, they let the other bands do their fighting for them.
“Hah! Won’t my brother be surprised.” Inaj had never visited the Cusas. “And a fine irony. When the pretender brings the feathers there to seek a blessing, if he lasts that long, you will make him a gift of death.”
>
34
Earlier that same morning Zeya, the man once called The Hungry One, now Dweller-in-Clouds, packed his travel gear in two slings, on one side a hairless elk hide and two pairs of moccasins, on the other a wrap of dried deer meat. He was his own pack dog, but it was a modest load—Zeya meant to move fast.
Zeya adjusted the slings on his shoulders. He paid no attention to his mother, who could tell stories about old times forever. He picked up his spear and his war club from where they leaned against the brush hut.
His mother hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t forget. From here to village edge your name is Dahzi. Every step after that, it’s Zeya.”
“Yes, Mother.”
She held him at arm’s length. “People will see you leave. You never know what…” She avoided speaking of Inaj by name. “People don’t know who Zeya is. Pays to be wily.” One last hug. “Go.”
Zeya held out his arm. It was a delicate moment. “Su-Li,” he said.
“When you’re out of the village,” she said, “I’ll send him after you. It’s good to keep some things secret.”
Zeya strode away smiling. He liked his new name. For several days he’d been calling himself Dahzi Zeya jokingly. He liked it. Hungry Citizen.
He intended to hunt feathers and not deer. He could gather wild onions, rose hips, chestnuts, acorns, and other wild food as he went. He didn’t need to take the time to stalk deer, butcher them out, and dry the meat, so he told himself. Zeya would hunt feathers on a thin belly, he would use the urge in his stomach to drive himself harder. He would have 108 feathers before anyone knew it—he would stun Tsola with the breakneck speed of his triumph.
His fellow villagers looked at him as he walked past. A few nodded, no one spoke. He had been disgraced when Jemel’s family marched out of the village to keep their daughter away from him. Probably they thought now that he was headed to the Cusa village to try to see her, and be humiliated again.
Let them think so. Deception is good.
But cover his trail? Walk the hard way through the forest instead of taking the trail? He didn’t think so. He didn’t expect anyone to follow him. If they did follow on such a well-traveled trail, they wouldn’t be able to pick out his moccasin prints from scores of others. And when he crossed the river, he would lose them. He chuckled. The imaginary “them.” His mother was a worrywart.
