by Parris Match
Ahcoo’ah, as all Story Tellers, determined and fixed time with the inclinations of the Spirit of the Sun; when the rising Sun, on its journeys to the south or to the north, was positioned at particular locations on the notched escarpment, Ahcoo’ah would know how to advise his people on their course of action and proper conduct. While the Sun-Spirit traveled to its farthest point, the days and nights got colder and more quiet in the valley, however the over whisping puffs and sudden swirls of new snow, from the white pluming crests of the three highest immortal mountain peaks, seldom fell last to the ground.
The people of the valley awoke to this beautiful brisk clear day; the women went to the communal cooking hut and started preparing the food for the family. Because of a generous harvest and a large amount of dried preserved meat, The Forgotten Ones had plenty of stores to see them through the winter. A continual flow of fresh cool water, an abundance of food, sufficient firewood, closeted shelter from the heat or the cold; The Forgotten Ones were a fortunate and prosperous people. Then why were so many of them suffering the floodtide of fever, night-sweats, cramp and pain, and the devastating sorrows of hastened death?
Dacoh left his cave and joined the rest of the family; upon eagerly entering the common area and passing the cooking hut, the just-pubescent slender Eebee, sister of Eeboh, ran up to and fondly handed Dacoh a gourd filled with corn mush; with bits of dried deer meat, that had been soaked overnight, sprinkled over the top. Eebee, a few years younger than Dacoh, completely infatuated, had idolized him from nearby for several lunar phases, but he took little to no notice, not a turn of his head; the seemingly undetectable scent of natural selection did not exist.
He strolled near to the outer almost complete circle of rocks, missing but one single stone seat, surrounding the central fire-pit, squatted down and began to eat. Soon, Hoocoh, the lame one, joined him, followed by Eeboh, Oocaie, and shortly by all the brothers of the tribe; for the separate women and younger children stayed gathered together around the cooking hut. The morning Sun slowly warmed the misted earth, followed by the musty smell of the last vestige of dew rising from the village floor; Dacoh felt the skin on his back tighten from the comforting heat and stretched as if praising the generous sky. Wisps of risen smoke above the cooking hut ascend lazily into the air; and the men, women, and children ate their morning meal, with a low continuous familiar murmur circulating through-out the people. As the family finished eating, Ahcoo’ah appeared from behind the nearest men’s lodge and proceeded to the center of the meeting area, standing beside the dormant ringed ashes of the fire-pit. All of the men arose from where they were seated and sat again, before Ahcooah, within the assemblage of delegated rocks; the women moving closer but not entering the privileged sphere of the twelve-elder and the first of this recent morning was silent.
Ahcoo’ah placed his open distorted thumb-less hands against his chest, tapping it lightly, and said, “I, Ahcoo’ah, Story Teller of the People, regretfully known as The Forgotten Ones”, and then touching his lips, “speaks to you”.
As the beautiful song of the birds, the soothing sound of falling water, the gentle whisper of the trees, the low murmurs of the wind; even in silence, the clear fluent tongues of the Spirits, here or there.
“My brave Brothers, and dear sisters”, continuing his rhythmic cadenced narration, Ahcoo’ah introduced his hereditary authority; “As before me; Dahmoh’ah, Aiedoh’ah, Ohbeh’ah, Hahdoh’ah, Camoo’ah, Oceh’ah, and the honorable father of all Story Tellers of The Forgotten Ones, Bahcoo’ah; speaks to you”. “The morning is exceedingly beautiful, ample water is provided, food is plentiful, the precious gemstones in the pouch of the Spirits, are enclosed and secure”, as Ahcoo’ah cupped his gnarly hands together. Then pointing to the climactic apex of the eastern boundary of their land, notched stone cogs in the passage of time, the fortress wall between them and the exposing barren desert, the dusky golden-rose closed curtain of the escarpment, Ahcoo’ah presented; “The praised ascending Sun-Spirit reveals himself, in the fore-promised position in the sky; we are a very fortunate people, even in our grave trying sorrow”.
Ahcoo’ah went on; “Our brave brothers returned from the hunt, safe and unharmed, and will seek again, on another suitable day”, “They have met our competitive savage foe: The foul Rabbit People, and chased them away”, “The unclean Rabbit People should never be allowed to trespass into our valley”. Ahcoo’ah continued; “To assure our quiet seclusion, Dacoh and three brothers will go to the gate of the valley to look for any signs of intrusion”, Ahcoo’ah instructed again, “For our cold winters appetite, Hohceh will take twenty of the family to the foothills above the valley to harvest the sweet fragile pine nuts”; “So say I, Ahcoo’ah, Story Teller of The good Forgotten Ones”.
On finishing his account of the concerns of the people, Ahcoo’ah left the circle of stones, and disappeared behind the clustered men’s wickerups to let the people plan their day.
Dacoh stood and announced; “My brothers; Eeboh, Oocaie, and Haado, will go together with me to the gateway of the valley”. After Dacoh spoke, Hohceh continued; naming six men including Hoocoh, and fourteen women to go and harvest the delicate added pine nuts.
The people obediently separated to prepare for their tasks of the day; collecting; weapons, containers of food and drink, and many deer skins. The deer skins were to spread under the trees to catch the hand fallen nut-cones, to crush and first-cull the good from the bad, and then form into deer-skin sacks to transport the pine nuts back to the village, where a final selection would take place. The soft shell pine nuts could last through the short winter season if dryly stored; generations of their wandering people had been saved from a winter’s starvation by the availability of the timely sustainable pine nuts, in their long-suffering difficult trek, through the uncultivated wilderness.
Meeting, back in the circle; Dacoh led the group on the first traveled main path from the village; walking through the cropped fields, where nothing but the crackling chaff of harvested maize, and mounds with twining vines of yellow and orange squash remained; leading the line of followers towards the northern fringe of the lowered basin of the placid pond. Crossing the sallowish meadow, almost besides the drying out reedy marsh, in the deep-pressed peat, once sodden trench, since more of the hollows water level had declined. Climbing the hillside from the opposite shore, along a twisted pathway, well-worn in its steep rocky slope, they approached the deciding fork in the trail; one going north to the upper tumbled landslides ascent, gaining the mountains green lap; the other to the east, headed for the narrow hidden sidelong gate, the sculptured sandstone portal site, the only passageway through the grand escarpment-wall. As Hohceh’s nut gatherers went up the winding ridge-path to the foothills; Hoocoh, sadly turned, and watched Dacoh and the three brothers disappear over a rocky rounded rise, longing to be included in their fraternal manly company.
Dacoh, Eeboh, Oocaie, and Haado, always under the browered eyes of the looming escarpment, marched down the dry wash for almost the end of the morning’s shadow, before seeing the especial very tall partition of rock where the sole gate was located. On nearing the sedimentary wall, only at the last moment, was any penetration apparent, where an angled opening into its solid interior became clearly visible; a thin fissure from one isolated rupture, through the sandstone escarpment, some moderate distance in length, exiting the sheltered valley, and entering the wide barren desert beyond.
The brothers went into the narrow crack in the face of the wall, single file, for you could touch each side with out-stretched hands; then widened into a smoothly carved, twisting and spiraling, sculptured canyon. It took three respites from tough labor to pass through the gate, for piles of rubble and huge boulders, at interval, fell in their way, and must be dexterously climbed down to continue on their journey. Each descending footfall the brothers took, they were astutely alert to their surroundings, looking for a slightingly displaced rock or scuffs imprint, or any little sign of trespass.
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bsp; Soon after leaving the only actual entrance to the valley, laid a small sunken lifeless lake, deep-set in a whitish-curdle-sided bowl, with a steep closely-set chalky-white rocky shore, filled with putrid sulfurous deadly water. Rounding a bend, catching sight of the highly sunlit sapphire lake, passing beneath and along the foot of a huge rock sloped out-cropping, where high above hung a clear display of bleached skeletal bones; the brothers in unity, heads bowed, avoided glancing in its direction, and purposely ignored this obvious final warning banner. Carefully top-stepping from stone to stone to stone, above the highest scum-dried water mark, to leave no perceivable trail in its painted crackling crust, they crossed to the other side of the lake; then entered millenniums’ dry sandy spillway, passed between two low hills; and the almost boundless barren rolling desert opened before them.
Dacoh and his brothers stood silent, staring across the broad high-desert, to the brief hazy thin mirage of mountains to the east, far…, far…, far…, in the distance; hardly visible through the suspended powdery dust-blur and the still shimmering, rising heat. They crouched and sat down next to the symbolic-sign that warned the Rabbit People to stay away from their private valley; a tri-pod of wooden poles, secured with strips of hide, with an array of bird and animal carcasses, including more splayed rabbit, hanging from its cross-members; was meant as a clear signal, not to pass beyond this point or position. The discerning brothers squatted, where they stood patiently, yet passively, while the Sun-Spirit reached into the afternoon doze; blinking lizards eyes fixed upon the blur of the motionless desert, looking for any indication or movement of the Rabbit People; but they detected nothing.
Not far from this spot, where the brothers stayed their watch, lay the place that the stranger from the south was discovered. The astonishing alien stranger was found, in late spring, propped against a muddled fresh blown sand dune, incoherently speaking a peculiar babbling tongue. To find that pasty stranger; dressed in a remarkable extraordinary garment, clothing his entire body, from wrist to mid-calf, with exception of his pallid lesser legs and bare feet, and never seen wildbush of hair covering his lower face. Because of the repeated legendary tales from the awe-inspiring ancients, incredibly related to them by the imaginative faithful Story Teller; the mysterious alien stranger, was carefully transported back to the valley; to be presented before Ahcoo’ah.
Rising to their feet, the brothers started back to the secluded homeland of their valley; retracing their soft steps around the pungent foul-smelling lake, beneath the telling bleached bones, through the blocked stone gate up to the hidden valley, arriving at the same marked junction in the beaten path, very late in the day.
Dacoh and Hohceh had agreed; to place one rock upon another than a third atop, where the well-worn pebbly paths divide, as an object of signal, to be left separate by the first one returning. The set rocks were still in-place, so the brothers decided to wait on the cusp of the spur; for Hohceh and the other members of the family, to return from first harvest of the pine nuts. Soon thereafter, the weaving lined formation of gatherers were seen, slowly moving down the pathway, burdened by the bulging stuffed sacks, that were filled with the day’s harvest.
Hohceh, leading the troop, first met and spoke aside to Dacoh; “Aie”, Dacoh softly replied, and then turned to Eeboh and said, “Eeboh, my brother”; and then pointing up towards the last turn in the path, continued, “Eebee, your dear little sister; is withering from the sweating sickness”.
Eebee lay in restless prostration on a shouldered sling, her blotched and blighted, petals and stems, flopping unruly arms and legs dangling, stretched on a paired spear between two willing brothers; a substantial difficult burden from the mountains heights, but she would be returned to her village, for her to surely die. Eeboh, with a heavy heart, replaced one of the men carrying his sweet maiden sister, and all of the dutiful people continued down the well-worn beaten graveled pathway, towards their chambered homes in the quiet beautiful valley, beneath the compassionate Spirits’ hospitable gaze.
On the Third day, Eebee died, from the wet shaking sickness. As was customary, her young body, as well as the personal possessions she had touched, were transported, going down the well-traveled trail of tears, towards the southern end of the valley, to the mournful funeral rites and stone kiln of the Spirits; to be placed resting upon a huge sanctified pile of collected thatch, and burned till her present substance was no more; respectfully tended by the wailing women of the family.
Dacoh and his brothers had been told the stories many times; from early childhood, they listened to The Story Teller repeat the history and traditions of The Forgotten Ones. All reference to the world and its pulsatory predictable nature, were kept, maintained, and relayed through time; conveyed by the venerated sagacious Story Tellers. First there was Bahcoo’ah, then Oceh’ah, followed by Camoo’ah, Hahdoh’ah, Ohbeh’ah, Aiedoh’ah, Dahmoh’ah, and finally Ahcoo’ah. Sometimes during a somber day or late into the night, by the flickering, so flickering, fire-light; the men squatted round the full councils’ circle, or in smaller groups, inside the woven shell of a smoke-filled or dusky men’slodge; The Story Teller or his practicing brother novitiates would rhythmically pass on the life blood of the family.
It was not gently raining; the blustered winds from the west, which passed about the highest peaks of the mountains, blew small amounts of newly fallen rare snow over the valley; descending, fluttering, and melting before it reached the ground. Wispy clouds of light grey mist in the aspen grove, ghosts swirled and danced in the erratic, high to low or low to high, unpredictable currents of wind. It was very cold and very quiet in the little village.
Dacoh and his young brothers sat in a select closed wickerup, huddled around a small compact fire, bent to a chill, getting through this cold dreary uncomfortable day.
Oocaie spoke first; “Aie”, “My brothers”…, “Remember when we last traveled to the three peaks of the Great Spirit’ mountain”. Oocaie was the jester of the family, always good natured, full of fun; aping the animals and the other members of the tribe with inborn agility, making all around him laugh. He had lost both his mother and father in early summer, from the very nearly eradication of the showy spring cluster, of The Forgotten Ones, caused by the withering, wet cold, shaking sickness; but had soon banished the drooping sorrow and regained the open smile of humor; retelling the learned stories in his own amusing special way.
The practicing story tellers knew that a portrayal and narrative could not be told twice between two full moons, without being reminded and challenged by boisterous, “Hoots”, from his attentive sensible brothers.
Oocaie began his story; relating how eight of the brothers had gone to the forest, in the middle of summertime, two years before. They had taken enough dried meat to last three days; by chance their needful hunt was not met with direct success.
Deep set, at close quarters, tall forested from mountain-side to mountain-side, penetrating canyons that reached into the heart of the Spirit mountains; were cooler than within the more open air-heated scatteringly forested foothills; free from the hot deserts exhausted rising breath, calmly persuaded by the sonant speaking Spirits, meandering sporadic breezes blowing, lowly whispering through the needled branches of the taller thick prominent pines.
The fresh warm smell of the wooded hollows and tree-covered slopes was unforgettable; the tangy pitch-pine aroma of the trees, retained in your vacant chest, pleasantly recalled in a moment of closed-eye query; the sweet whiff of the drying grass, coming from a partially hidden, distant, directly bright lighted, little meadow, drawing you anxiously forward, before it came into full view.
The welcoming Spirits’ exceptional gift of a limited dripping pendent spring, kindly compressed from their rugged rock face, seldom profusely flowing, near never to reach the deserts low floor.
* * *
On approaching the one particular, large-pine-tree bordered, mountain tall-grass yellow meadow, the brothers would stealthily circle that place, hidden in
the shadows of the dim surrounding forest, stalking their useful savory prey. Diligently searching for the timid elusive white-tailed deer; eyes and ears perked to every slight twitch, a loosed pine cone dropping, every sharp snap of a dried out branch, or any changing shadow shapes. With the exception of the soft moccasin squish upon the thick bed of the pine-needles brown quilt, no traveled pathway to certain success; not another sound other than the chirping of the flitting birds, or the shrill inquiring squawk of the provocative, singularly curious, wicked-hearted raven; a well-aimed small rock, just missing this ebon feathered irritating tattletale.
It was decided to spend the night on the edge of one such meadow, so the brothers collected firewood, and started a small central fire; only as visual courage from the hoots of the unknown, over-loomed by the very tall shadowy giants of the forest, and they settled in for the murky time of spooks and gloom.
As the last sense of perceivable twilight passed into darkness, Oocaie, said; “My faithful brothers”, “Tomorrow, let us climb to the top of the World”, “Our brother, Dacoh, has never been there, and He should see the end, the final abyss of the earth”.
Oocaie continued forebodingly; “We should sleep now, for on the new day, DACOH…, our brave little brother, will witness where the fearful evil Spirits go; to always sleep in dread, FOREVER”. Dacoh laid awake far into the night and slept fitfully, not understanding the full meaning of Oocaie’s words.
The penetrating early morning light flickered through the cone-bearing bristly branches of the stately pines, then burst upon the fragrant yellow grasses where the brothers had laid their heads; little had to be done before they could be on their way. Shaking the night away; collecting their belongings; the brothers started the long trek to the top of the mountains. They would need to proceed to the end of the precipitous walled canyon before starting their steep climb; Oocaie in front, for he was the initiating leader of this revealing adventure. Stopping at a trickle of water, bleeding-out of a protuberant dampened rib of the mountains solid rock overhang, the brothers filled their leatherngourds with the higher Spirits’ cold delicious pure nectar, in anticipation of the impending strenuous hike to the uppermost crest of the rugged mountain range. Oocaie pointed to a place where the brothers would begin their impetuous brash ascent.
