Spirits of the Wildflowers

by Parris Match

  The rustling of footsteps and the grating noise of the traverse began passing-by, not many yards from where Dacoh lay hidden, within an isolated isle of dense thistle and bramble, mid the deserted dry stream. By the confused clattering and clamor surrounding him, Dacoh deduced through his squinted slot, there was a multitude of people shuffling by his secreted hiding place; but he did not quiver or twitch, from fear of being discovered. Dacoh knew if he was made exposed, he would be ripped to shreds, by the overwhelming number of the filthy Rabbit People. Dacoh was a tightly held prisoner in the semi-annual migration of the Rabbit People; each fall they returned from the northland, and temporarily settled in the deserts lowered basins for the winter.

  A very young small child suddenly appeared before Dacoh, peeking curiously into the insecure underbrush; within a few feet, the little boy stared in Dacoh’s face. Dacoh did not move a muscle in his face, nor blink his eyes; the sweat of flight popped upon his skin, yet he did not tremble. This small likeness gazed intently into the bushes and then turned and quickly ran away. Dacoh tensely waited with fits of trepidation, for the terminal judgment, that never came.

  The Rabbit People finally passed Dacoh aside, both left and right, and the indistinct vibration and echoes of the departing peoples got less and less, until it lastly became quiet and still. Dacoh did not move; he awaited in dreadful expectation; he stayed immobile; he waited; he awaited; and he waited longer. The fading light of day became vacuous and ghostly from his little sandmole hole, the dim-grey menace of twilights suspense; then Dacoh warily removed himself from his hiding place, glanced guardedly around and shook the gritty dust away, moved to a brush protected eroded long time cavity, in the steep side of a tributary gulch, and settled in for the night. Prior to leaving this covert, enclosed flood sculptured, hollow space, Dacoh would bury one of his containers of water!

  Dacoh firstly spent a fitful long relentless night on the eerie lonely expanse of this barren desert, each sound in the darkly black void taken notice; the skittering rustle of the something not seen; the slight clicking of two loosened stones to meet in the cooling silence; the sharp snap of that pressed on broken twig; the fanatic whirr of predatory wings just felt; then runaway squeaks and wrested shrieks, heard shrill in the discouraging nighttime air. The innocent young man sorely yearned for the consolation of his familiar valley.

  The scant slender light of the Sun had not ascended before Dacoh was on his journey, he could not assuredly feel the least bit safe in this uncivilized barren circumstance, filled with this imagined horde of scurrying unclean Rabbit People; then the reddish-orange warning face of dawn peaked at his coming.

  When he crossed over those unavoidable gravelly mounds, he passed to the lowest eroded northerly side, making sure, no more than, his unnoticed bobbling brow, showed higher than the slight patchy summits. Keeping a squinted watchful eye for any inconspicuous specks or every insignificant movement in all directions; but predominantly to the south, where the Rabbit People resided in the lower polluted desert basins. A long extended day spent sneakily, ears set close to the face, a transient contrary coyote, to steer clear of the long-eared rabbit.

  Dacoh had already emptied one leathern-gourd water bladder and guardedly sipped on another, it be the remainder of the fourth and the last; he entirely trusted in Ahcoo’ah’s boyhood recollections for his survival. When the days light almost ended, Dacoh had left the desert, passed through a gusty dim depression in the mountain range to the northeast, and stopped on the edge of a declining rise, as Ahcoo’ah had described; looking through the evening shroud of fine dust, down upon a huge flat dry lake, in the not too distinct, still lower sunset pale, distant void. The lakebed designated as the vast sports arena of the erect sleeping giants, he would only circumvent when the full ascent of the Sun was complete. Amongst a clutch of nested rocks he slept in muted anticipation and would faithfully leave the third water-bag within a stone slot.

  In the lowest, very chilled and foggy, utmost uncertainty of neither dark nor dawn, Dacoh hesitated on his departure from his safe resting place. Ahcoo’ah had insisted that he not pass by the flat dominion of the inactive evil Spirits, until the clear appearance of the Sun was in its wholly-adorned morning splendor; for the dormant and the bored, substantial demons of the mystical past, was and is, strongly opposed to the full light of day. After while Dacoh began to readily walk around the abandoned thin saline white border of the dry lake bed, the posturing lesser giants now not seen clearly, in the level unobstructed converging distant bounds of observation, to just perceive through the layered hazy mirage mistiness of heats rising. The deserted hard flat surface was an effortless transition from the rocky vulcanian, uneven slag-terrain, he had previously covered; in long… easy…… simple… strides, he nimbly glided over the condensed and firm, level plane.

  A gigantic soaring lone mountain of impenetrable grey granite did portentously loom in front of him; that great permanent Spirit, Ahcoo’ah had etched in the dirt, and so described; but the grand Stone Mountain was far more overpowering and impressive then what Ahcoo’ah had astutely conveyed with the thin pointed stick. Dacoh widely curved to north and then to the east, alongside the mammoth stone mass, of this finely chiseled granite spearhead, piercing into the pure blue expanse of the never ending firmament; he in no way leaving the smooth sparkly, long-desiccated, outer whitish shoreline of the virtually unremembered forsaken lake.

  The towering supreme monoliths of the expelled latent Spirits, began to become more apparent in the closing distance; upstanding stone statues of layered sediment, so explicitly reviled then banished to endless time, on the unyielding nothingness of the wind-swept floor, of the bitter encrusted lakebed. Ahcoo’ah had warned Dacoh, not to disregard, nor challenge, …or deny, the eternally hateful wicked Spirits in the slightest way; but to pass them in cowed silence, hopefully to gain no brash attention, and to move forward on your life’s journey unnoticed. Dacoh could feel the possibility of the gigantic corrupt evil Spirits looking down upon him, but he dared not to peek-up and confirm his intimidated apprehension. He took quick fleeting sidled looks towards the protection of the solid granite mountain, and finally identified the likely piercing higher cut into it’s near impenetrable interior, that his ever able Ahcoo’ah had fully described. Dacoh breathed a sigh of quick relief, on escaping the demoralizing presence, of these forever apathetic inflexible shadowed pillars of illusions and vanity; yet by chance their chaotic angry tantrums, those dark furious windstorms of the Spirits of the Evil Games, should awake; not even glancing back for a single curious moment.

  The narrow introduction to the large sufferable rupture in the formidable wall of the Great Spirit, on the lower eastern side of the majestic stone mountain, was finally identified by Dacoh’s eyes; hidden amongst within, a detached mass of huge tumbled chunks of seismic-split collapsed sandstone, that had broken away by fault; to separate from the fixed base of the aspiring central Mountains’ near unchanging hard granite foundation.

  Dacoh arduously climbed and wound his way through the massive jumble of pale-pink colossal rocks, and stepped inside of the rigid illiberal canyon, separating the grey reflective lofty granite mountain, from the more soft still solid, continuous sandstone mesa flowing eastward. The closed space was a grateful calming respite for the migrant Dacoh, for the tight confines of the layered canyon, closely resembled the only gateway to his beautiful native valley, and so it appeared familiar and tolerable to him; although each vital step he took, the nearer he came to attain the hazy and veiled dangerous engagement with his destiny.

  After a moderate time, Dacoh crossed, the marmoreal stepped, time-worn threshold of a fully contained, high-walled, yet well-lit, large open space; the final resting place of an enormous display of disarrayed flat-slabs, formed of weather-seasoned aged sandstone. A random collection of long fallen, ancient etched, stone tablets alike; that stone-page by stone-page had opened themselves to the full light, and were at different chapters of separation, from the f
oremost sedentary aggregate mass of un-assayed solid rock.

  The splendidly wetted scintillating spaced granite, dressed with suspended silvery-green moss, wall of dripping and trickling water; was as Ahcoo’ah had thoughtfully illustrated; the constant gift of weeping water lightly issued, from the kindly gigantic greystone mountains’ fractured cliffs façade. Dacoh placed his cupped hands against the dribbling drenched wall and brought the pure water pleasingly to his parched dry lips; then to bathe his gritty withered face. He then positioned and propped up the two remaining leathern water-gourds in a deep crease, to collect the steadily flowing water from the highest Spirit; while Dacoh, in his hungry arrested curiosity, searching for the wonderment and the touchable epiphany, thoroughly examined the captivating background of huge un-shelved eroded slabs; to read the ancients sensible engraved manifestations in the stone of sand, amazingly surrounding him.

  With the focused effect of the Sun just past its zenith. To stand erect in the perfect light, the elusively lighted cobalt-blue surfaces, of the corroded lower walls and the many slanted facets of the collapsed rocks, were to a great extent covered with astonishing etchings of the established truth, on their seemingly blackened pages. Evident proof that this was the crossroads for countless generations of itinerant peoples passing this way. It was the collected tome and illustrated history of innumerable ancestors, whom had temporarily occupied this forever altered land; long before, their enthralled and mystified descendants; who then reverentially looked upon their wistful declarations of individual existence; I am !, I was !, I will be !.

  Dacoh respectfully touched some of the indented pictographs lightly, the engraved stick shapes of animals and of like man, so the timeless activities of the common man, did emanate a certain intrinsic power. He could sense the whispering voices from the past and beneath, filling his unquenchable hungering soul, with the affirmation of his separate unique being. Breaking his fascinated absorption in the collection of artistic graphics inscribed on the slates of stone, Dacoh was brought back to his primary duty; he had spotted the large black lined concentric emblem with the black-eyed center, that Ahcoo’ah had drawn in the sand and described, identifying the explicit canyon entrance, and the only direction that Dacoh would take to find the wonderful river valley.

  Attaching the water bags to his waistband and grabbing hold of his spear, Dacoh purposely strode through the grand portal of the chosen canyon, marked with the prominent bearing-symbol high overhead, indicating the solitary passageway to seek his and the peoples vital necessity. After wending his way through the narrow descending canyon for some time, the tightness and lack of maneuverability, began to wear on Dacoh; he knew if he met any hostile opposition, he would not stand up, by chance encountered, and fatally bleed into this unsympathetic lonely ground. The slight twists and turns, and intermittent gradual changing elevations, repeatedly limited his clear vision ahead, so he was in a constant sweat and ensnared by uncertainty. Dacoh thought of his courageous and trusted Ahcoo’ah; he owed Ahcoo’ah his unswerving fidelity; Ahcoo’ah had shared his heart with Dacoh and expressed the importance of his duty to the people, The Forgotten Ones; and he could not fall short in his commitment, to the core of his conscious soul; unforgiving personal shame, and a state of disgrace, would be his failures penalty.

  The faint bitter smell of vulcanian brimstone entered Dacoh’s nostrils. Soon he came upon an open-air stone courtyard, furnished with the shallow effervescent bubbling pool of delicately-sulfurous water, bad breath of the demons, as Ahcoo’ah had thus described; there with many various scattered pale-yellow shapes of identities, all whitish five-fingered imprints, manifest distinctive open-hands, validating their presence on the surrounding limestone walls.

  With hushed weary abandonment, Dacoh stripped everything from his stressed muscled body and lowered himself into the thin-gelatinous pool of heated to tepid smooth mini-popping water. Laying his sore and throbbing body onto the velvety gypsum-slurry, at the base of the scum-lined basin, his head propped upon its rough raised stone edge, with tiny rioting bubbles tickling his backsides. The soothing effect of the feathery-pleasurable-creamy lukewarm water over his firm tight skin, filled to a natural over-flowing distension, led him into a relaxed lethargic empty stupor.

  Gently awakening in the low tiny bubbling near to stillness, blinking his eyes to the realization of his aloneness, he washed the dust from his handsome face and matted long black hair; taking care not to get any impure water into his eyes or his ears, for it was known not to willingly ingest or to allow invasion of tainted water to any extent into the healthy sound body. Rising from the squishy lull of the relaxable warm water, the cooler air invigorated and wilted Dacoh’s natural unadorned body; he seldom felt so high-spirited and vital. He stepped decisively over to the sulfurous-mud puddle, steeping beside and below the brimmed over-flowing pool, dipped his palm into the thick and gooey, white chalky acidic, sticky mess; selected a prominent location on the wall, and placed his everlasting mark upon this land, then boldly re-inscribed his hand-painted signature with collected good measure.

  Dacoh rinsed his abused caustic hand in the diluted pool, and then started to transfer all his belongings to higher ground. It took him several trips to move up the sheer though pitted rock slope next to the pool, to a little stone elemental hollow, excavated within the level solid plane on the summit. Safe to spend the oncoming night; the eroded effect of whirlwinds and water were his willing host. Once again he soaked himself cautiously in the inviting pool of warm soothing water, climbed to the top of the upper-plane, stood spread-eagled in the brisk evening breeze, so native in his expressed bronze splendor, to pledge with, ‘Aie-ah…’ ‘Aie-ah…’ ‘Aie-ah…’: his last reverence, to the glorious reddish-golden brief descent of the disappearing Sun-Spirit. He wrapped himself tightly in the softer deerskin covering, and then nestled-down into the Spirits’ cupped stone pocket, and went to sleep.

  Dacoh awoke fully at the blurred cold hint of a yellowish dawn, after a long dream-filled journey of fearfulness, and indecisive swirls of disturbance, finally relinquished to the Spirits of the dark. He stomped the cramped fetal stiffness from his bones, gathered his well-honed weapons and possessions together; climbed down from the watchful prudent owls aerie, perched there ensconced in the rocky heights; and resumed his mission down the shadowed confining canyon, to gain the incredible river valley. Those few wispy puffs of changeable clouds, coming and then passing, through and over his head. Half-of-a-full-days constant travel brought Dacoh to the inconceivable, wonderful, cavernous gallery; Ahcoo’ah had so skillfully endeavored to describe. The arched walls of the tunneled cave, where occupied by an amazing copious display, an extraordinary mixed collection, of captivating pictographs; these foremost words and symbols preserved the charming essence of the engravers soul, were hopefully granted and deposited in this written-in-stone means of expression, by the adaptable migrating ancients.

  The sandstone concave walls were almost entirely covered with a multitude of stick-etchings, depicting all of the activities and core existence of man; and of the birds and the animals and the fish. Stone scratched imprints to plainly sketch the honored ancestors, and the revered or feared many Spirits of their world, present and long past…; and numerous other intriguing indelible carved signs, that Dacoh could not visibly interpret, nor even trace their meaning.

  The slowly passing fluffy clouds, with outlined auras of light, intermittent focused Sunbeams, entered through the long narrow slit, in the domed ceiling of the darkly tunnel; fluttering and flashing from place to position, across the adorned walls of glistening silicated-sandstone, to lyrically present an ethereal dimension to the awe-inspiring gallery. To step backward, and then forward, to see the whole inscribed story! After musingly studying the numerous messages from the past, Dacoh timidly left the supreme estate of the ancient archives and within a very short distance arrived on the precipitous ledge, overlooking the beautiful lush expanse of the emerald river-valley. Dacoh’s stopt
shallow breath was taken away; he could not believe his opened wide eyes.

  To see a dense woodland mottled quilt, by varied shades of verdant green, with a meandering silver ribbon of a sunlit gleaming stream; a splendid gift presented before him. The virgin siren’s beautiful river valley of Ahcoo’ah’s unfulfilled youthful dreams; that of, the storied far-off bygone territory, to relate to his honored ancestors of ancient times. Exceeding this bounteous beauty was difficult, if not impossible, to nearly imagine. Entities that are never regularly witnessed or physically experienced, but are only be spoken about, even by the eloquent talent of the finest soothsayers or chosen prophets, are readily set aside and ignored and seldom greatly missed.

  The foreboding near resembling replica, of the warning-tripod, shielding the entrance to Dacoh’s homeland, as Ahcoo’ah had etched in the changing sand, and so carefully described; also stood on the precipitous rock ledge overlooking the beautiful river valley. This three-footed signpost performing the same halting service of discouraging all fainthearted trespassers; the difference being the pronouncing empty-eyed skull attached to the adjoining crown, a clear ominous final threat, to any innocent intruder’s misfortune from being accidentally discovered, by the possessive uncharitable barbarous mob.

  Dacoh sat nearby the telling tripod, as an un-blinking coyote in the shadows, blending-in brown with the surrounding rock, while he warily examined the greenest valley below. From this distance he could not determine any motion or any suggestion in contrast of color, but he could faintly smell and see wisps of grayish smoke at several locations in the valley. Each footstep taken, from this position forward, would require crucial stealth; he must plan every quick movement he conceives, with well-thought-out prudence. Ahcoo’ah’s etched, symbol by symbol, life history and inspiring guardianship ends here. Dacoh would perform this vital act, in this critical drama, thus alone.