by Joan Grant
I was lying on the bank of the stream, enjoying the feel of the grass, warm and alive against my skin, while Raki plaited a rope from strips of raw-hide which had been part of the deer he had killed a moon earlier…the flesh we had made into pemmican and the sinews I was keeping to sew winter tunics and moccasins. As I watched him I wished that I could draw his face so that people in the future would know the colour of his thoughts. The pictures we had seen in a cave were only a few scrawls of red chalk, and yet the bison were so alive that I could almost feel the ground shudder under their thundering hooves. I should draw Raki’s nose and forehead in a single line: the shadow under the cheek bone would be difficult, and the listening stillness of the eyebrow. …
He leant down: the straight black hair swung forward and hid his face; and I got up to push the logs nearer to the centre of the fire, whose heat was soaking down through the sand to a teal wrapped in leaves and clay. Then I remembered the water-jar was empty. There had been very little rain, and now that the flow over the rocks was only sufficient to keep them glistening with moisture, we drew our water in the shade of a rock that guarded the pool below the meadow.
As I bent over the water my reflection stretched out her hands to me and I smiled at her. The polished surface rippled, though there was no breeze. I thought, “If Nona saw this, she would say my spirit was in danger.”
The water was smooth again: suddenly I realized that what I was now seeing was more than my own reflection. The girl was like me, yet older…and she wore the Feathered Headdress. The lips moved, and though I could not hear her voice, I knew what she was saying:
“You must follow the way of the Feathers; you cannot hide from them, Piyanah, for you are only the girl I used to be. You were born to the Feathers; though you cannot see them, they are part of you, as the pinions of the eagle are in the unhatched egg.”
The pool quivered, as water in a cooking-pot trembles with the heat. I saw my own face looking up at me, with fear in the eyes.
Clearer than the call of the blue jay in the tree above me I seemed to hear my father’s voice:
“You cannot escape the future, for with the past it is the other half of the present. They are the two wings by which the bird of the spirit flies to the Land without Shadows.”
I answered him as though he were standing beside me, “Raki and I are not bound by the past; we are children of the present, and the future is our own! We are secure because we are together. We are bound by no tribal laws; we are free to live. Why should your ambition bring down our swift joy like a roped bison?”
In the listening silence it seemed that all the things I had ever feared came out of the shadows of the trees to watch me. The sunlight had grown cold, and the stream was weary as slow tears.
I heard Raki calling me, shouting that he had found a wild duck in a snare, so that tomorrow we should feast like the Chief of seven tribes. As I ran towards him, the thoughts which had come to haunt me slid away behind the barriers I had built against them. There was no longer a cloud over my sun; Raki’s hand was on my shoulder and he was laughing down at me.
I wanted to tell him about the ghost in the pool, but the memory of how my father had nearly taken him away from me made me afraid. Hidden in my mind was the fear that something even stronger than the love between us would call him back, for I knew that if he had heard the voice as I had heard it, we should be setting out to cross the pass, every step bringing us nearer to the desert of seven years which we must travel alone.
A few days later I was standing on a rock waiting to spear a fish when again I saw the water tremble. For the flash of a dragon-fly I saw the woman…then flung my spear at her so that she was hidden by the spreading ripples. I told myself she was not Piyanah of the future, she was only a dream of my father’s, looking up through the water in search of a mortal who would give her breath. Yet I found myself speaking to her as though she were a real person:
“Poor Piyanah of the Feathers, you will never be born; because I, Piyanah, who is eleven years old, am stronger than you. You and your feathers belong to the land of dreams, and you will never be able to make me fulfill your destiny. You can’t understand me because you are only a legend…I belong to the firm earth, where trees are rooted and I can hear Raki laughing.”
After that day I filled the water-jar only where there was a flow, for I dared not look into still water. It was the first time I had ever concealed something from Raki. I knew in my heart that he wanted to bring the Before People alive; he was like a carver who sees a totem pole hidden in a tree, calling to him to release it with his knife. He had seen the old truth hidden in the past, and he wanted us to bear it into the present, even though we walked as mourners under the burden.
Dark Smoke
Through the mellow autumn days we made ready for the winter. Enough firewood to last until spring thaw was stacked beside the shelter, and beyond it we had dug a pit, in which our hoard of nuts, and pine-kernels, and roots, were stored in dry sand protected from the weather by branches.
As the corn ripened I hung the cobs from the roof, and though the pemmican we had made was rather harder than usual, it was quite good to eat if soaked for two days and cooked very slowly.
Already there was a chill in the air before dusk, so I pulled on a tunic when we went up to the top of the ridge to watch the sunset. Suddenly Raki stopped, tense as an animal scenting the wind. To the east, in the Uninhabited Country, a column of dark smoke was thrusting up towards the evening sky.
I thought it was a prairie fire, and said unconcernedly, “It’s a long way off. Even if it spreads, we shall be safe, for it’s beyond the river.”
“It will not spread…unless the man who tends it is careless.”
Even then I saw no menace in the smoke. “I expect it’s only a hunter…and there’s nothing to bring him here.”
“Does a hunter need to cook for three hundred?” While he was speaking I saw new threads of smoke rising up near the first fire. “They must be a strong tribe, Piyanah…and they have come out of the East!”
I tried to reassure him. “Perhaps it’s only one of the tribes who used to trade with our people in the summer. They must have crossed the plain from the West without our seeing them.”
“We have watched from here every dawn and sunset since we made this our place of the corn-growing, and we have never seen smoke. You know that a tribe does not travel without lighting a fire every night, and the swiftest runner could not reach there from the western horizon in less than two days. That fire has been lit by people who are so strong that they need not conceal their numbers—and they have come out of the East.”
“But no one lives in the East.”
“The Chief told us that the Carrion Crow also had children.”
“The Black Feathers! Raki, they are only a legend made to frighten children.”
“Would the Braves be honoured by the tribe if there were no enemies?”
“You think the Black Feathers are real?”
“Do spirits need to build cooking-fires?”
“They’ll never find us here, Raki. Even if they go to the Lake of the Wildfowl and see our snares they will only think a hunter had been there and forgotten to take them up.”
“They may not find us, but if they travel southwards they must mean to cross the pass. By tomorrow night we shall know if we have to go back to warn Na-ka-chek.”
“We can’t go back! Not now, Raki, not when we’re so happy. We must hide from them. We can’t seek Father’s protection after we ran away from him.”
Suddenly I realized that Raki was angry. “We could leave the tribe when it was secure; but would you let our people be massacred because you were too proud to return?”
“But, Raki, even if we have to tell them that the Black Feathers are coming, they can’t keep us there. It would be against the laws of the tribe…we could be driven out, but not kept there against our will.”
“The Chief, your father, will not run away from his enemies.
Our Braves protect what is rightfully their own, and I shall fight with them.”
“Then you must promise to let me fight beside you. You won’t tell me to hide with the squaws…promise me that, Raki, and I’ll do anything else you want.”
For the first time since we had seen the smoke, he smiled. “Of course we shall fight together. We do everything together, and your bowstring could sound no war song in a squaw’s tepee.”
“Will the Black Feathers be very terrible? The story-teller said they are twice the height of ordinary men; their teeth are filed into points because they eat flesh warm from the kill, and the fingers of their women are taloned and can rip open a man’s belly like a eagle feeding on a gopher.”
“I expect they have grown in the telling. We needn’t be frightened, at least not very frightened, for I expect we shall both be killed. Does it matter very much if we live here or in the Land of the Great Hunters, so long as we are together?”
“They might kill you, Raki, and forget to kill me. The story-teller said they killed all the men and children and carried off the women who were not too old.”
“You shall wear a breech-clout and I’ll paint your face with the tribal marks before battle. You are nearly as tall as I am, and we wear our hair the same way, and your breasts are too small to betray you. If I am killed first, you will just have to go on fighting until you join me.”
I felt comforted. Now that I accepted the fact that Raki and I were both going to be killed, I found that death wasn’t frightening, if we both met it together. It was too dark to watch the smoke any longer, so hand in hand we went down to our little valley.
Before going to sleep we had decided that as we could do nothing until the direction of the fires next evening told us whether the Black Feathers intended to cross the pass, we should try to keep what might be our last day in the valley un-shadowed by fear of the future.
“We must be careful not to think that this might be our last day,” said Raki when he woke. “We must keep it as a memory to feed on if we are ever joy-hungry…as though it were bread to take on a journey.”
“If we do have to go, Raki, we had better take bread with us; it’s easier than anything else. We can pretend we’re only baking it because we want to take it on an adventure which will be too exciting to bother with looking for food.”
“Yes, we had better make bread…it will be the first we have eaten here.”
Together we stripped the cobs into the round hollow of a rock which served as a grinding-bowl. Then, while I kneaded water into the meal, Raki scraped an opossum pelt with a sharp flint to remove the fat, and began to scour it with gravel before pegging it out to dry. I wondered why he bothered to do this, until I realized that it was part of his plan for keeping today away from tomorrow.
Everything must go on as though nothing unusual had happened. I must make myself believe that day by day we should see the stack of firewood getting lower, and count the corn-cobs to judge how many must be saved for the spring sowing. I wondered if he would remember to cut withies for snow-shoes; yesterday he had said that it was time we made them.
I tried very hard to copy Raki, but I kept on finding myself thinking, “This is the last time we shall be able to watch the shadow of the twin pine cross the meadow. Perhaps a patch of wild corn will grow here, year after year, when a storm has blown down our shelter and scattered the grain over the blurred furrows. When the snows melt, the fish-traps will be washed away, and our fur robe that I made from so many little skins will rot, and every autumn be buried deeper under the dead leaves.”
“Are you burning the fish you will catch tomorrow on today’s fire?” said Raki.
“I am sorry. I started thinking about the rest of the corn, wondering what was going to happen to it. We were so sure that we should winter on bread of our own planting.”
“I think we always eat of our own planting, Piyanah: though the food may be life, or death, or victory, according to our seed.”
“Will it be cold on the other side of the water?”
“I think it will be like Earth, only more beautiful. You have only to look at the reflection in still water to see the spirit of a bird, or a rock, or a tree. We shall be able to fly like birds and swim like fishes. Do you remember how you always wanted to see into the cave at the bottom of the pool where Mother would never let us swim? We can go to that cave now…when ‘now’ is after we have been killed. Do you remember what it felt like before we ran away? There were so many things which might happen that it was like trying to steer a canoe down a rapid when the river is so high that the rocks are hidden; yet we came into calm water. Try to go back to that moment when we stood looking down the cliff and heard the ice-packs growling below us. Do you remember how the climb was much easier than we thought it was going to be? We laughed while we were crossing the river…do you remember how we could see each other laughing, though we could not hear our voices? As soon as we crossed the river we heard spring coming back…everywhere the sound of the earth being born again. Then we found this valley. Don’t you realize, Piyanah, that what is going to happen to us is only the journey here over again? You are frightened now, just as we were frightened when we crept out of the tepee and started off alone through the forest. And when we see the Black Feathers coming towards us we shall only be standing looking down the cliff, and the battle will be the climb. I think we shall be afraid of seeing men die while it’s actually happening, but our own death will be crossing the river…and we laughed when we crossed the river, Piyanah.
“Whoever stands first on the far bank will wait there for the other. Even if the country on the other side of the water is strange at first, we shall feel our spirits getting used to their new freedom, like streams when the ice melts. Then we shall find ourselves in another meadow, the Place of the Garnering of the Corn; and we shall see each other in the light of our single star. We shall be so close that it will be like being one person, and we shall never have to grow old, or be afraid any more.”
“Can the place we go to after we are dead be just like this, Raki? I don’t want it any better, I want it exactly the same.”
He smiled. “Wouldn’t you prefer the pool a little deeper so that we could dive into it, or the shelter set so that it faces the morning sun?”
“No, Raki, not at first. I want everything to be just as it is now. You can change it afterwards if you like, when I’m used to being dead.”
I threw down two corn-cobs. “I even want those to be there, just as we left them. I’ll pick them up after I am dead. You won’t forget about the cobs, will you, Raki?”
“We will ask the Totem to arrange it for us.”
Hand in hand we stood before the twin tree. “O great spirit who knows us on both sides of the water! If we meet death without shutting our eyes against him, and cross the water without fear, may the Great Hunters let us return to this place, and may we find it exactly as we see it now. May we stand here together and say, ‘Tomorrow and yesterday are one day: Raki and Piyanah are one star’.”
It was sunset when we reached the head of the pass. We stood in a pool of warm light, looking back at the plain which was already nearly engulfed by shadows flowing down from the mountains. A day’s journey behind us we saw the smoke that to us was more terrible than the cloud which is the forerunner of a tornado.
“There is no chance of their turning back now, is there, Raki?”
“None. The river crossing will delay them, for they must go half a day up-stream before they find a place to ford. They are travelling faster than I expected, so we must make full use of the moon, resting only between sunset and moonrise, and in the darkness before dawn.”
When running had become a weariness which grew into pain, the journey took on the unreality of a grey dream, in which the only sound was the soft padding of our feet as I followed Raki, further and further away from happiness.
On the third day we hoped to see one of our own people who could take on the warning more swiftly, but the
re was no sign of man in the blazing autumn of the woods. Last night we had seen smoke between us and the foothills below the pass, and knew the Black Feathers would give no further sign of their swift approach.
The river was low and water curled lazily between the rocks, but we were both so tired that it was difficult to swim across. I hoped that the enemy would arrive before I stopped being tired, for then it would be easy to die unafraid. Already I felt separate from the girl who still ran on and on although her moccasins seemed to be made of stone: my spirit would be free with Raki, and her body would be glad to lie in the quiet earth, knowing that it would not have to carry me any further.
At sunset we dared not rest, for we knew that if we fell asleep we should never wake at moonrise. It was too dark to find the track through the forest, so we had to take the longer way beside the river. The water held an echo of daylight, shining through the dusk like the track of a snail.
We saw the watch-fire through a cleft in the rocks which guarded the east side of the encampment. The flaps of the Squaws’ Tepees were closed, but two of the Elders were still sitting by the fire. They looked up as we passed, but made no sign of recognition.
My father was standing beside the Totem; he remained impassive as the carved wood while he watched us running towards him. I was panting so hard that I couldn’t speak. “Are you tired of each other’s company that you have returned to me?” he said.