by Joan Grant
The eldest boys, Gorgi among them, were fourteen. They all moved towards the fourth ledge, but at the last moment he stood back and let the others go up to it without him. They looked surprised until he pointed to another height, on a level with their shoulders. My heart began to thud. …I was determined to go off a ledge as high as any of the others, but even the fourth ledge was more than I had ever done. The ledge Gorgi had chosen was narrow and difficult…and the one above it stood above the water three times the height of a man. It looked fairly easy from where I was standing, but I knew what it would look like from up there.
If I made myself go up there, I should have to dive. If I went in flat and knocked the air out of myself, I should be pulled out of the water like a drowning toad. They would never stop laughing at me, and have much more to laugh at than my being a girl. I would be a vanquished boaster…and even Raki laughed at boasters!
Until then I had pretended to take no notice of the divers. I felt Gorgi staring at me, so I turned and looked at him. He was smiling, and there was a swagger in his walk as he went forward to climb to the ledge. Before he dived he looked down to make sure I was watching him. Suddenly I knew one of his weaknesses; he despised me because I was a squaw, and yet he longed for the squaw’s admiration. He was thinking of the Choosing: he wanted all the squaws to admire him, to envy the girl he took into the woods. It would be pleasant to be wanted by the Chief’s daughter…and he would never be able to forget that her name was Piyanah…for I would make him remember it, to his discomfort!
He dived well, and I saw Dorrok sign approval. … “I have got to go off the ledge which is higher than the others.”
Slowly I climbed the rock. Dorrok looked surprised that I intended to dive, and pointed to the lowest shelf. I took no notice and went on climbing, ledge by ledge. I thought Dorrok was going to call me back when I reached the fifth ledge, Gorgi’s ledge: then I scrambled up to the one above it.
It was a good place from which to dive, for the rock overhung the pool. The water looked very far away, and hard as stone. “Please, Raki, don’t let me go flat. Please, Great Hunters, and totem, and spirits, and everybody, don’t let me go flat…or, if I do, please let me hit a rock and be killed. …”
I dived. It seemed a long time before I felt the water part smoothly under my hands. It was dark and safe under the water. I came to the surface and swam to the bank.
Dorrok was smiling at me. “Piyanah dives better than his brothers,” he said loudly, so that all the others could hear.
I saw Gorgi swimming away from me across the pool. Now the neck-thong was no longer empty: on it was my first bear’s claw.
The Squaws’ Tepees
After I had shamed Gorgi, the others ceased to mock me openly, but they made no attempt to be friendly. The only time I was close enough to Raki for us to have spoken was when I was in a file of boys returning from practice with the fish-spear and he was with a group of squaws who were ahead of us on the path. They stood aside for us to pass; none of the boys glanced at the women, and Raki pretended to be watching a cloud as though he had forgotten he must give precedence to boys.
The following day completed the first moon of our separation, but I knew that even when he began his warrior’s training he would still have to sleep in the Squaws’ Tepee. Dorrok said that we were all to set off before dawn, one by one, as we were not to follow each other, and that before nightfall we must bring back one of the plants which only grew high on the moraine above the snowline.
Raki and I had discovered the best way up there two years before, and to my joy I found him waiting for me. We climbed fast until we found a sheltered ledge where we could talk without fear of interruption. I asked whether he had seen me the previous day. He smiled.
“When I can wade through a stream and not know that water is wet; when I feel no warmth coming from a fire, and the winds make no sound among the branches, then I shall be near Piyanah and yet be unaware of her!”
Then he asked me to tell him everything that had happened, and to hear how I had gained my first bear’s claw made him laugh as though he were really happy.
“Has it made Gorgi an enemy or a friend?”
“I am not sure, but I think he is still an enemy. Half of him hates me for hurting his pride, and the other half would like to have a squaw whom men fear…or perhaps only a squaw who is the Chief’s daughter.”
“You can trust Tekeeni; his heart is all of one colour.”
“He gave you a tooth of friendship. We must have two necklaces, Raki. Claws for vanquished enemies, and teeth for friends we have won.”
“Then I have two teeth for my second necklace, but the other thong is still empty.”
“Tell me about them…and tell me everything else too.”
“When I first had to walk across the clearing dressed as a squaw I thought everyone would stare at me. I had forgotten that women are almost invisible to men, because they have for so long been ignored! But I think nearly all the women must have gathered in their largest tepee to wait for me. They were making tunics or moccasins, or kneeling at the looms; but their eyes were bright with curiosity, all watching me, all very conscious that my body was different to their own…and wondering how much they dared do against one who might in the future choose a squaw among them!
“Ninee was sitting, wrapped in a blanket, by the centre-post. She took no notice of me until she had a chance to speak without being overheard. Then she said that my presence among the squaws was only another game we had invented to plague her, or else that her warnings had come true and our spirits had woken up in the wrong bodies. Do you remember how she used to say that we should become each other’s reflections, so that when I wanted to use my right hand it would be your left hand which moved? I gave her the squaw’s greeting with the wrong hand, and she was so startled that she called me ‘Piyanah’. I saw her stare at my arm, and knew she was trying to see if you had brought your scar with you into my body!
“Perhaps some of the squaws believe Ninee and think I am you, or else they find it more comfortable to believe I am a girl. Anyway, after the first few days they lost interest in me, and went on with their work or suckled their children as though there were no stranger among them…which is much better than when they whispered about me all the time.”
“Who shares your tepee?”
“I am with the young girls who are still ‘unchosen’; the Old Women and the mothers with small children sleep in the smaller tepees.”
“What do they talk about…are they terribly dull, Raki?”
“Most of them seem to think of nothing but the next Choosing. They weave patterns for blankets or sew beads on their moccasins, or count over the little horde of treasures which each keeps in a box by her sleeping-place.”
“What kind of treasures?”
“Necklaces and bracelets, and some have pots of bear’s grease, or oil to make their hair glossy.”
“Did you hate the first day very much?”
“Yes,” he said frankly, “I never thought it was possible to feel so helpless! Such small things were difficult…like wondering how I was going to plait my hair without you to help me. I pretended that they were a hostile tribe among whom I had gone as a spy…and it was easier when I wore my clothes as a disguise. It is going to be very difficult to learn to think as a woman, Piyanah, for most of them don’t seem to think at all! I keep on trying to remember two things your father said, ‘A man who is sure of his own judgment need not fear mockery,’ and ‘Man and woman are part of the same whole’. If they were only at all like you it would be easy, for I should be proud of being like you; but they seem so stupid!”
“They are stupid, or they would never have allowed men to make life so dreary for everybody!”
While Raki was talking we had both forgotten that we were supposed to be climbing to the top of the ridge and must not be seen together. Above us someone must have trodden on a loose boulder, for a shower of stones came down the hillside: we were shel
tered by an overhang, so the stones passed harmlessly overhead and we heard them go rattling down the slope.
We climbed up a dry water-course and every few moments stopped to listen in case anyone else had found the same route. The air was so still that voices carried a long way, and though the sky was cloudless, the sun seemed to give only an illusion of warmth, like the reflection of torches in water.
“Raki, you haven’t told me about the friendship teeth yet.”
“One is Yeena, the granddaughter of Ninee’s sister. I noticed she was much slower at weaving than the others, and I found that the loom she used had been mended with fish-glue, but so roughly that the threads kept on catching. So I made her another one, and she was like a child with a new toy. I said I would teach her to use a knife if she would teach me to weave…she was very clumsy at first and cut her fingers, but now she is quite good at it.”
We had climbed fast and decided it was safe to rest for a little while. “And the second tooth?” I asked.
“Her name is Rokeena. She fell and hurt her leg when she was six, and now she is fifteen and still crippled. She hardly ever spoke, just lay staring up at the roof or else fingered a necklace…berries they must have been, but now so old and wrinkled that they have lost their colour. I knew they must have some special value for her by the way she touched them, and when she thought anyone was watching she hid them away. Making friends with her was like taming a chipmunk, she was so timid. I think the others grudged helping her…she can’t even crawl to the scavenger pit or fetch her food, for when they saw that I always took her food-bowl to the cooking-pot they left her to me. I knew she really trusted me when she no longer hid the necklace, and at last she told me why it meant so much to her.”
And while Raki told me Rokeena’s story I felt as though I was hearing her speak:
“‘I, Rokeena, have not always been held in contempt by the Great Hunters. When I was little, your mother used to let me play with you, and she told me not to believe my grandmother’s stories about demons who are always waiting to punish disobedient children. You were never wrapped in the bandages which the other babies wore to protect them from jealous spirits who live in barren trees, but lay naked and laughing in the sun. She said you were different from other children, and that I would be ‘different’ too. One day I wanted to make a necklace, so I went to the high pasture to search for berries. I found some, red and smooth and beautiful, and then I saw others which were even more brilliant…but they were on a creeper which was growing up a dead tree. My grandmother had told me that it was dangerous to climb a dead tree; it was like disturbing a grave, for in it the tree spirit was buried. But I was proud of not believing her stories, so I climbed the tree. I got three of the berries…they found them still clutched in my hand, after I fell. You see, I had forgotten that a Chief’s woman is honoured by the spirits and so need not fear them, but Rokeena was only an ordinary little girl who had made them angry.
“‘They must have been very angry, Raki, for they have left me lying here for so many summers, and autumns, and winters. Even the Great Hunters have no pity for me, for though I have twice dragged my body out into the snow, they have told Nona to fetch me back before I was quite dead. Now there is only this necklace to link me with the girl who was not afraid of trees. Sometimes when I hold it the berries are not withered any more, and I am no longer lame. …I am the girl who was free of the high pasture, my legs can run fast, and my feet know the kindliness of moss, and the coolness of shadowed stones on a hot day.’
“Then she looked up at me and said, “You took more than milk from the woman who suckled you, Raki; you took into yourself her power of taking fear away…for while I was talking I had almost forgotten that I am being punished, and that a squaw must always feel humble to the spirits as well as to men.’”
“Oh, Raki,” I said, “I wish we had our own tribe, now, so that she wouldn’t have to lie there for seven years before we can take her away with us. Can we do anything to make her leg better?”
“We must try, because I know the Old Women have got salves, but they pretend it is useless to do anything when the spirits are angry.”
“What does her leg look like?”
“She wouldn’t let me see it until yesterday…she was too ashamed until I made her believe that it was not a punishment. It was wrapped in some kind of bandage they use for their newborn babies, the ones that have been soaked in water from the underground lake which they think will blind the evil spirits. I had to cut the bandage off with my knife, for it was too stiff with dirt to unwind…she had had it on for a long time. When I saw her leg I knew that squaws can be braver than warriors. There were sores on it, Piyanah: old sores where the scabs were ready to fall off, and open sores crusted with yellow. The leg is so thin that the foot looks like a bird’s claw, but it is not deformed.”
“Dorrok has a jar of salve in his tepee! Tekeeni had some of it put on his arm only three days ago. I can get some tonight while they are all having the sunset meal! If we hurry, Raki, I can get it before the others return.”
The loose shale of the moraine was already covered with thin snow, but soon we each found a root of the plant we needed. We saw some boys in the distance, but they were too far away to recognize us. Instead of descending by the water-course we decided to take a quicker way down, and as we dared not risk being seen together, Raki went on ahead, having said that he would wait for me in the wood above the boys’ encampment.
When I joined him, he told me that as the place seemed deserted he thought it would be safest for me to go openly to Dorrok’s tepee, so that if he were there I could say I had come to give him the plant which showed I had done the allotted climb.
The tepee was empty: at first I could not see the jar, for it had been sunk in the ground to protect it. The mouth was covered by a bladder, and while I was trying to undo the thong which held it in place, my heart beat so loudly that I was afraid of not hearing Dorrok if he came back…for I knew how severe were the punishments for theft. The jar was half full of pungent green salve, thicker than bear’s grease. I looked round for something to scoop it up in; there was nothing I dared take, so I fetched my food-bowl, though its absence would be difficult to explain at the next meal. I crossed the clearing without being seen…the few paces between the tepees seemed longer than a day’s run!
I took a handful of salve and then tied on the bladder…wishing that I had taken more care to notice exactly how the thong had been knotted. When I rejoined Raki I asked him whether I could come with him to see Rokeena.
“No, there are sure to be other women there at this time. I’ll manage somehow to see you tomorrow or the next day to tell you what happened.” Then he noticed the bowl and said quickly, “Why did you bring it in this…is it your own?”
“Yes, I couldn’t find anything else.”
“But you’ll need it tonight. …”
“I’ll make some excuse. I can say I broke it and forgot that I ought to have kept the pieces.”
“You can’t do that, or they will make you miss a day’s food to help you to remember. I know that’s true, for it happened to me. There are some broken pots behind the cooking-place: I’ll put the salve in one of them and bring back your bowl. Don’t wait for me, in case it makes them suspicious. When you find the bowl you will know I’ve hidden the salve…it will be a way of saying good night to each other”.
Outside Dorrok’s tepee there were some boys waiting to give him their plants. If I had not been busy with the salve, Raki and I would have been the first to get back…but Rokeena was much more important than annoying the boys! When I went into the tepee it was difficult not to look at the jar to make sure that I had put the cover on straight.
The food-bowl was lying at the foot of a pine tree: and as I picked it up I whispered good night to Raki.
It was three days before he had a chance to tell me more about Rokeena. “To find out if the salve would hurt her,” he said, “I rubbed some into a cut on my thigh;
it was fiery as a hornet! I decided that if I could make Rokeena think of it as a test of courage, instead of as yet another ‘punishment’, it would be easier for her to stand the pain. So before fetching the salve—I had hidden it under my blanket—I told her about the Ordeal by Fire.
“Her leg must have felt as if it were being roasted in hot ashes; but instead of crying out she suddenly went rigid, with her eyes wide open though I knew she didn’t see me. Then she began to speak; the words were quite distinct, but they sounded as though she were far away. ‘I am no longer Rokeena. I am not a squaw. I am not a cripple. I am a man who will soon wear the scarlet feather in his forehead-thong. I have scorned the anger of winter and mocked the torrid heat. I have fought for my tribe; yet when the arrow of an enemy entered my body it could not harm me, for I was beloved of the spirits and they caused my clean flesh to heal without a scar. I am not afraid of pain, for even if it comes when I am very tired I savour it as though it were good smoke. The tribe has gathered to see me win the Scarlet which will make me a brother of the fire.’
“Suddenly the power seemed to go out of her; she began to tremble and give little whimpering moans. She shut her eyes, and before she opened them again I had covered up her leg and hidden the salve. She thought she had been asleep, for she said, ‘I had a dream, Raki: a dream in which I wasn’t afraid. The spirits were not angry…I was clean. I can’t remember any more, but I know that the spirits no longer hate me. …’ Then she said, ‘My leg hurts, but it’s not a dirty, grey pain. It’s like a flame, or a shining arrow-head.’ I watched beside her, and when she went to sleep she was smiling—I had never seen her smile, except when she made her lips curve to hide her sorrow.”