The Year the Cloud Fell

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  “We, however, have survived against the Iron Shirts, the Traders, and the men of the Horse Nations, but now we are at a place that Sweet Medicine did not foresee. Now, it is not enough to defend ourselves and our land. Neither is it enough to attack a fort over here, or a group of wagons over there. We must do more.”

  The chief motioned someone forward. From within the group behind him stepped One Who Flies.

  “What is he doing here?” Storm Arriving said aloud.

  Laughs like a Woman smiled. “He helps us now. He has thrown away his blue coat.”

  Storm Arriving gaped. “Truly?”

  His friend signed agreement.

  “This man,” the keeper of the Maahótse went on, “is known to you. He is One Who Flies, and he fell from the clouds, as was foretold. Now, he has offered us a plan to help us against the Horse Nations. The plan is according to the vision of Speaks While Leaving, and has been accepted by the Council. Now, we need you.

  “From each band we will choose three times ten men. These will be joined by three times ten men from each of the allied peoples. All societies will be represented—the task before us is too great for only Kit Foxes, or Red Shield Men, or Elkhorn Scrapers. All are needed.

  “One chief from each band will join, as well, to make a war party of four hundred. This is a sacred number, and in keeping with the vision.

  “Those not chosen to go are chosen to protect the People as we move them to safety. This place is no longer safe for us. This duty, too, is an honorable task, for we will be moving deep within our lands, away from the bluecoats, but all that much nearer to the Crow People and the Cradle People.

  “Now go. Return to your lodges and prepare.”

  All the warriors stood and quickly made their way home.

  “What is this plan?” Storm Arriving asked.

  Laughs like a Woman shrugged. “No one has said, but I do not remember a war party of this size since my grandfather’s time.”

  Storm Arriving agreed. “Neither do I. I think this must be a very important war.”

  At his home he found Mouse Road crouched outside, hugging her knees, while inside his mother was weeping as she wrapped up the belongings of Blue Shell Woman. Storm Arriving knelt by his mother’s side and helped her roll up the robe and bedding mat that had been his sister’s. Her dress, her comb, her old deerskin doll, and all her other things were put in a bundle and tucked in a folded parfleche. Picking Bones Woman handed the bundle to him.

  “Take it to Good Robe Woman. Her daughter needs some new things. No, wait.” She opened the flap and took out the little doll. It was worn. Its painted face was faded, and the buffalo hair stuffing poked out from where one of its arms used to be. She closed the flap and patted the blue sign of Nevé-stanevóo’o that decorated it.

  “Give the doll to Mouse Road,” she told him. Then she turned and continued in her work.

  He took the bundle and the doll outside. Mouse Road still sat by the doorway, rocking back and forth and staring at her toes.

  “Here, Little Chipmunk,” he said. “My mother says this is for you.”

  She looked up at him and the doll he held out to her. She took it and tucked it in between her legs and her chest. Then she looked back down at her toes. Storm Arriving stroked her shiny hair and turned to go.

  “Storm Arriving.” It was Red Tailfeather, one of the four chiefs of the Tree People band. “I have a question for you,” he said. “We have decided to ask you to be a part of the war party. Do you wish to represent our band in this?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I was hoping to be asked.”

  “Good. Tomorrow we will see the camp safely on its way and prepare ourselves for our own journey. We leave the morning after tomorrow.”

  “I will be ready,” he said. They clasped wrists and Red Tailfeather went on to make his next call. Storm Arriving watched him and smiled when he saw him going to the new lodge of Laughs like a Woman.

  “It will be just like old times,” he said to himself. Then he set out quickly, for now there was another errand he needed to run. He needed to speak to One Bear before nightfall.

  Chapter 11

  Hatchling Moon, Waning

  Fifty-three Years After the Star Fell

  Fishing Lizard Creek, near the White Water

  “Do not cry, Mother.” Storm Arriving put down the long leather bundle that contained his father’s pipe and hugged his mother tightly. She seemed older than she had a few days before; more frail. She seemed as though she might disappear in the wind. He touched her chin and tilted her gaze upward. “Mother,” he said. “Please?”

  She sniffed a runny nose and agreed.

  “Good,” he said. “And you, Mouse Road. You must be a help. Agreed?” The young woman consented.

  “My mother, I have asked Standing Elk to help you as well. He will look in on you every day. If you need something, ask him and he will do it.”

  “He is a good boy,” she said.

  “Yes. He is.”

  Families around them started on their way. His own family’s whistlers trilled and paled their colors. His mother’s riding mount stamped its foot in impatience.

  “They are anxious,” he said. “The others are leaving. They do not want to be left behind. You should be going now. ‘An early start—,’”

  “‘—means an easy ride,’” she finished along with him. A tired smile touched her lips and he was glad to see it. He coaxed her whistler down and helped her onto it.

  The sky was clear but the morning wind held a chill that seemed to come from the heart of winter. He put a heavy buffalo robe about her shoulders.

  “Keep this on until the sun is a hand high,” he asked of her.

  “I am not a child,” she told him.

  “Do you want me to worry?”

  She smiled and pushed him away. “You sound like me,” she chided him. “Nóheto.”

  The whistler rose and started off. Storm Arriving ran over to his sister. Mouse Road grabbed him around the neck and squeezed. “Don’t die,” she whispered into his ear.

  He kissed her cheek. “I won’t,” he said.

  They started on their way. He pushed the rest of their meager flock into motion. The travoise scraped and bumped their way across the hard ground. The two drakes he kept for his own purposes called to their departing mates. Storm Arriving felt the hens’ answers in his chest: the low rattle that they used only in moments of great insecurity. The three hatchlings looked back, but kept close to their mothers’ haunches.

  This war plan is odd, he thought. It has always been the men who left and the women that stayed. Everything about this is backwards. He chuckled despite his concern. “Just like a vé’ho’e,” he said.

  He heard a step and turned. Laughs like a Woman stood near the whistlers, their halters in hand. “Do you still want to do this thing? Didn’t One Bear tell you what it was like?”

  “Yes, he did,” Storm Arriving assured him. But there is something important you do not know. Two nights ago, before the bluecoat attack, I had a dream.”

  “Oh, yes? What was it?”

  He hesitated, for the dream had been strong, and strong dreams were an important thing among the People. He had never had a strong dream before, and it frightened him.

  “One Who Flies was in the dream. We stood in a place where the ground was white and hard and men floated in the sky above our heads. Bluecoats ran at us, their rifles ready. One Who Flies tried to stop them but I held him back. They fired and thunder filled my head. I looked at my chest and saw that I had been struck twice.” He touched the spots and frowned at the memory. “As I watched, the wounds turned into fresh scars—like the ones of One Bear. I know if I do not do this, One Who Flies will die and we will fail.” He laughed at the serious look on his friend’s face. “It can’t be worse than what you have endured for the last eight years.”

  Laughs like a Woman smiled. “No,” he said. “It is an honorable thing you do. As long as you are
sure.”

  “I am,” Storm Arriving said. He picked up the pipe bundle that lay at his feet. “I must go. I will be back before the moon sets.”

  The whistlers shied as Laughs like a Woman raised his hand. “Do it well,” he said.

  “I will see you,” Storm Arriving said, and left.

  He jogged across the emptying campground, weaving in between the lines of families as they headed west. The sun was still a few fingers below the horizon and the day promised to be warm. As he made his way towards the southeast and the grounds of the Closed Windpipe band, he wondered if it would be worse because it was a warm day. He imagined that a warm day would make it much more of a trial than if it was cool, but one never knew.

  All across the plain, other warriors sent their kindred westward. They stood, hands on hips, their lips in stern lines, and watched their women and children go off without them. Storm Arriving understood their unease.

  The people of the Closed Windpipe band had almost all departed. One Bear’s family was just now mounting up. Storm Arriving shouted and ran. Speaks While Leaving heard him. She slipped down off her whistler. He stopped before her, momentarily confused.

  “I do not know how to greet you,” he said. “Are we courting again? Or are we friends?”

  She laughed and the sound of it made him happy. “My love,” she said, “we have been courting all along. We just had a quarrel, is all.”

  “A quarrel? It lasted four years.”

  She touched his shoulder. “But it was only one quarrel. Would you throw away a courtship because of a single quarrel?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “No. But I will never quarrel with you again. Who knows how long the next one might last?”

  “So hold me,” she said. “Quickly, before my father sees.”

  “You make me feel my youth,” he said, and hugged her—a quick embrace—and the scent of her, the thrill of her stole his breath and left him speechless. He stepped away from her just as One Bear came around the waiting whistlers.

  “Daughter,” he said. “It is time to go.”

  “Yes, Father.” She climbed back aboard her mount and tucked her knees under the first rope.

  “Nóheto!” One Bear shouted, and the whistlers moved out. The two men stood and watched as their women headed out. Last in line was the travois that carried Healing Rock Woman. The old grandmother waved when she saw Storm Arriving.

  “Hello, Son of Yellow Hawk. Have you finally come to marry my granddaughter?”

  “Soon,” Storm Arriving said to her and raised his hand in farewell.

  “Make sure it is,” she said. “And welcome back. I have missed you.”

  One Bear put a hand on Storm Arriving’s shoulder. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Storm Arriving took in a large chestful of air and sighed. “Yes.”

  “Then take those,” he said, pointing to a rope and a lodgepole that lay nearby. “We will do this up by the bones of Red Squirrel Woman.”

  The thin rope was made of buffalo hair, woven and braided tightly. It was quite long and each end was divided into two loops. Storm Arriving slung the coil over the shoulder that carried his father’s pipe. The pole he balanced on his shoulder as well.

  For his part, One Bear carried only a small leather bundle which he tucked into his shirt, above his belt.

  They walked briskly to the stream and forded it below the pond. Then they took the path that went through the woods and eventually led to the narrow, crook-back trail that would take them to the top of the bluff.

  The lodgepole was not heavy, but its length made it cumbersome and unwieldy among the rocks and switchbacks. To deal with it Storm Arriving tried shifting it from shoulder to shoulder. He tried carrying it in one hand but almost lost it down the hillside when its far end hit a rock. He tried carrying it like a bluecoat rifle, but that made the long end too heavy and it threatened to tumble him down the slope as well. Eventually, he returned it to his shoulder and resolved to endure its recalcitrance.

  When he got to the top, One Bear was already striking sparks into tinder for a fire. Storm Arriving set down the pole and the rope and turned to take in the vantage the bluff provided. He could see the People, already far to the west, a scattering of small dark shapes drawing a long, slow line of trampled grass across the prairie. Down in the camp, warriors gathered around open fires or bathed in the pond below the bluff’s cliffside. Whistlers stood or crouched near their riders. Those who rode walkers were already out hunting with their mounts. The walkers would feed this morning and laze the rest of the day, showing their swollen bellies to the sun. They would slow the war party a little on the first day, but it was better than having a few whistlers disappear in the night. Feed them today, and they would be sated for a week.

  “Come here,” One Bear said. “The sun is rising.” Sticks snapped and wheezed in the flames of the small fire. “Sit,” he instructed.

  The two men sat down next to one another, facing the fire and the rising sun. One Bear held out a small pouch of tobacco. Storm Arriving took his father’s pipe out of its bag of fringed deerskin. His mother had decorated the bag with quills and shells, and on it were painted pictures of grasshoppers and spirit men.

  The pipe itself was decorated, too. The carved bowl was painted blue and white. The pipe stem, longer than a man’s forearm, was also carved and painted with angles and shapes along its length. The two halves of the stem were tied together with sinew and wrapped at top and bottom by leather strips. Two eagle feathers were bound with red trader’s cloth to the ends of the stem.

  Storm Arriving filled the pipe from One Bear’s pouch. The chief gave him a sumac leaf to add to the bowl. Storm Arriving lit the pipe with a twig from the fire. He puffed it to life, but before drawing the smoke for himself, he turned the pipe around and offered it to the sky and to the earth, and to the east, south, west, and north in turn, so that all the spirits could partake before him. Then, holding the pipe by bowl and mouthpiece, he drew a long puff of smoke. He closed his eyes and breathed the smoke in slowly, smelling its sharpness, tasting its tang, feeling its warmth on his face and in his lungs. He let the smoke caress him and soothe him. He let it prepare him for the ordeal he was about to undertake.

  He put the bowl on the ground between himself and One Bear and offered the stem to the chief. One Bear took the pipe and drew from it, letting the smoke waft upward to coil in his hair and around his head.

  They smoked in silence, and kept their movements slow and deliberate as befitted the ritual. Storm Arriving rarely smoked—most young men did not as it tended to make them short-winded—but it was something one always did with solemnity. As he and One Bear traded the pipe back and forth, their actions took on a rhythm; a long, slow seiche that fluctuated between them like the rise and ebb of a spiritual tide. To Storm Arriving, it seemed like the heartbeat of the earth was moving him: take the pipe, draw the smoke, breathe it in, let it out, pass the pipe, and rest. He sensed his own connection to the world. He felt it around him, and he felt it within him. He loved it, and he wanted to give something of himself, to sacrifice something of his body to prove that love, to seal that love, to make him one with the spirit of the world. When the bowl was smoked out, it was emptied and placed reverently on its leather bag.

  One Bear pointed to a spot away from the fire. Storm Arriving took off his belt and shirt, and his leggings and moccasins. He sat there facing the east wearing only his breechclout. The sun was a hand above the horizon and it shone upon him with a full white light. He closed his eyes and took in the warmth it offered him while One Bear tied the rope to the lodgepole and rammed the pole deep into the ground. Storm Arriving could hear the chirrs of quarreling chickadees in the trees and the buzz of honeybees as they visited the small yellow flowers that dotted the northern slope of the bluff. He heard the whistle of a dove’s wings as it flew overhead, and then he heard the step of One Bear. Storm Arriving opened his eyes.

  One Bear knelt on one knee in front of hi
m. The pole was a few paces to the east. The rope’s middle was tied near the top and the ends trailed onto the ground. The chief took the bundle out from within his shirt and laid it on the ground.

  “Are you ready?”

  Storm Arriving agreed.

  One Bear unrolled the little bundle. Within it were two straight, finger-long sticks of cherrywood and a long, thin knife. He reached for Storm Arriving’s chest. He pinched at the skin a hand-width above his right nipple. He pushed and squeezed the skin until it bunched up between his finger and thumb. Then he took the knife and pierced the ridge of skin, side to side.

  Storm Arriving bared his teeth and held his breath so he would not cry out. The pain was sharp and hot and it made his loins pull up against his body. He blinked his eyes to clear the sudden tears.

  One Bear pulled out the knife and ran one of the cherrywood sticks through the wound. A third of the stick on either side was exposed while the center was encased in flesh. As quickly as he had done the first, One Bear made a second cut on the left side, inserting the second stick there.

  Storm Arriving felt light-headed. The pain suffused his chest. He was queasy, and could not feel his legs. One Bear stood and retrieved the ends of the rope. There were two eyelets woven into each end and he slipped the eyelets over the exposed ends of the sticks. Then he stepped behind Storm Arriving and lifted him to his feet.

  Storm Arriving shook his head to clear it, then managed to stand. The chief led him backwards. The ropes grew taut and the pain that was sharp agony became a pillar of light that blazed within him. It burst from him in a shout. He clamped down upon it.

  “Do not fight the pain,” One Bear counseled him. “Embrace it. It is part of your gift.”

  Storm Arriving tried. He took a breath and held it. He planted his feet and locked his knees. He leaned back, the ropes pulled, and Storm Arriving shouted to the sky and the sun that shone upon his face. The skewers in his chest pulled his skin away from his body and the pain shot out of every finger, every toe. It shot out of the top of his head and he shouted again, giving his pain to the world along with his flesh.