Scarlet Feather

by Joan Grant

  I could not leave him here to die alone. …If I could take him back to his own people they would have nothing to offer him except pity; pity he would never be able to accept. He had sworn to make a mockery of an arrogant squaw who dared to demand a voice in the Feathered Council. If I rescued him, the mockery he would suffer even as a cripple would be more cruel than hornets. …

  “We are all the children of the Great Hunters,” I said aloud. “Their laws belong to both men and animals. I must have the courage to show T’cha the same compassion that I would give to a wounded deer. …I must send him to the other side of the water.

  I must ask someone to look after him. … “Barakeechi! Barakeechi! Because of our friendship, take this man and teach him the Laws of the West, for he is a Yellow Skin and may have no friends of his own in your country.”

  T’cha stirred. I thought he was going to open his eyes before I brought the pointed stone crashing down on his temple.

  He sighed and his body twitched. Then he was free; free of the legs that could no longer torture him. The legs were only dead meat, and he could walk in freedom.

  It was only then I realized that as I had asked the Great Hunters to take him in my name they would expect me to offer his body the proper funerary rituals. He was a brave who had died through an ordeal; he had earned the right of the cleansing fire and the protection of the Death Canoe. His body was still my responsibility even though it was dead, and my canoe must carry us both.

  The ledge was wide enough for me to drag the canoe out of the water. He was heavy, but I managed to lift him into it and there was room for me to kneel across his body.

  The canoe rode lower in the water, which added to the danger, but not sufficiently for me to be able to leave him. His head was in the stem; the eyes were shut but the jaw sagged open against the chest.

  I could feel the pulped flesh of his legs against my knees. They were still warm, and slimy with clotting blood. I had gone beyond fear into a desperate endurance. I knew that it was already decided whether I was to escape from these terrible caverns or to die with the man I had killed. If I died, Mother would be surprised to see me enter the Land beyond the Sunset in the company of a Yellow Skin.

  Steadily the canoe kept on through the second cavern. I saw ahead of me the opening into the third, and knew I had come to the Place of the Whirlpool. “It is round as a cooking-pot,” Dorrok had said. “Keep close against the wall and try to reach the opening in the far side. Keep to the side or you will be drawn down into the black water.”

  I felt the prow swing to the left and had to fling down the torch so as to paddle with all my strength to keep close to the side. If there were any rocks sticking out from the face, I knew the canoe would be torn open. Twice I felt the canoe touch the wall and fended it off with my left hand. The whirlpool was trying to pull me into its vortex, as I swept round, trying to judge where the opening was that might lead me to safety…if only I knew where it was I could make a supreme effort to break out of the circle of death.

  Suddenly I realized that at one place in the wall the darkness was not absolute…was there really a faint greyness? It might be the entrance to a tunnel…if I was wrong and managed to drive the canoe towards it I should smash it against the rock. Now…now…I thrust on the paddle and felt it bend under the strain. The canoe leapt forward… away from the whirlpool.

  The tunnel twisted like a snake; the roof was getting lower, but the light was brighter. I had come through the darkness!

  Ahead of me I saw a bar of brilliant light, close to the surface of the water. I had to fling myself flat on T’cha’s body: the splintered thigh-bones crunched under my naked breasts. The roof was so low that as we shot into the open I felt a long strip of skin torn from my back.

  Again I seemed to hear Dorrok’s voice, “Keep to the south side of the river when you come out of the darkness.”

  I seized the paddle and stroked with desperate speed; close ahead was the white water of the rapid. As I came to the crest I saw beyond it people waiting on the bank. They must have seen me, for I heard them shouting above the noise of the rushing water.

  Dorrok was right…there was a path between the cruel rocks…deep, green water such as I had often known; rocks that I could see in the clear light of day. Between two plumes of white water I shot forward into calm.

  I saw Raki running down the bank towards me. He caught me in his arms…I forgot I was a Scarlet Feather; I was his squaw who had come home to him.

  Raki, his arm round my shoulders, led me up the steep bank and past an outcrop of rock which hid us from the others who had waited there with him. I was shuddering, and my teeth chattered as though I were half frozen. He held me close, soothing me as though I were a child trying to wake from a dream of demons.

  “I am so sorry, Raki. I wasn’t frightened until I knew I was safe. It’s my body, not me, that is frightened now…don’t be ashamed of me…please don’t be ashamed. The others didn’t see I was crying, did they?”

  “They saw a Scarlet Feather who has gone to clean the blood from her wounds before she returns to receive their homage.”

  “But I’m not wounded. …”

  “There is bright blood on your back, where a long strip of skin has been torn off. Your breasts and thighs are covered with dried blood…are you badly hurt?” His voice was sharp with anxiety. “You couldn’t talk if you were badly hurt, could you?”

  I looked down, and realized that I must be a terrible sight to one who loved me. “It is not my blood, it’s T’cha’s. I had to lie on him when the roof of the last tunnel was so low. The blood-clots were like slugs, Raki.” I heard myself laughing and couldn’t stop. “Great purple slugs, that I had to crush with my breasts. …”

  “Quiet, Piyanah!”

  I didn’t want to laugh at T’cha, but the laughter shook me as though I were a tree in a gale too strong for it to withstand.

  Raki picked me up, and I clung to him, trying to stifle against his shoulder the horrible sound I was making. I heard a splash as he stepped into a small pool; and then felt the sting of sharp water as he held me under a little waterfall. I gasped as the water poured over me, and then went limp.

  “Lie still, Piyanah.” He rested my head in the crook of his arm and scrubbed me with sand and then with handfuls of leaves until my body was clean.

  Then I was lying on warm turf with him beside me: everything was safe and ordinary again. The caverns were no longer part of me; they were only a story to be told at the watch-fires of the future, for I could look at them through the eyes of a new Piyanah.

  “Shall I tell them that I killed T’cha?” I said.

  “Not until we have asked Na-ka-chek.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Waiting to give you the Scarlet.”

  “Does he know I have won?”

  Raki smiled. “He waded into the river to catch the prow of your canoe, but you seemed only to see me. Tekeeni and Gorgi and Dorrok were there too. …”

  “But they were on the other side of the caverns. How did they reach here so quickly?”

  “Look at the sun. It has travelled a long way since you went into the darkness.”

  Torch-light

  Watch-fires were flowering in the dusk when I reached the encampment of the Yellow Skins. I went alone between the carved poles of the entrance, into the circle of silent people who waited round the bier of the youth whom they had hoped would lead their tribe after his father.

  The men were naked, their bodies smeared with white ash in sign of mourning. They stared at me, their eyes heavy with hostility. They had known I was coming, for it is the custom for the victor of a challenge to say farewell to the vanquished. They hated me because I proved that the caverns were not an impossible ordeal: they hated me because they thought I had brought T’cha’s body home to them only as a further humiliation: they hated me because they were no longer confident that it was safe to despise their squaws.

  Pine torches were burning at th
e head and at the feet of the corpse, at the left hand and at the right hand, so that he should not go in darkness, whether he travelled to the north or the the south, to the east or to the west. The Chief, his face was stone, stood beside his son. Slowly he raised his right hand in greeting. He would fulfill the courtesies due to one who had gained the right to join the Feathered Council of the future, but I knew he would sooner have cut off that hand than raise it in greeting to a squaw.

  If I spoke only the formal farewell that was expected of me, no one would ever know that I had killed T’cha…except Raki, and he would not tell even Na-ka-chek since I had decided that I must come to my own decision. The Yellow Skins might kill me; claiming that it was a just vengeance for the murder of a wounded man. But if I kept silence I should always know that the integrity of which I was proud had only been strong enough to show a small flame in the darkness of the caverns, and had flickered and died at the challenge of the sun.

  I could hear my voice, but it sounded as though someone else was speaking, someone who stood close to me but was yet separate from Piyanah.

  “Chief of the Yellow Skins, Father of T’cha, I speak to you in the equality of the children of the Great Hunters. Each tribe is protected by a different totem: yet all totem-poles are but an echo of the trees which grow in the Land beyond the Sunset, and the spirit of all totems is an echo of the voice of the Lords of the Morning. In this recognition, all totems are carved from the same tree, and all men are brothers.

  “Because T’cha and I are brothers, I gave to him that clemency which he would not have denied to me. He had called on me for succour and I gave him freedom. If I had kept him shackled to his body he would have known agony beyond the fortitude of warriors. If he had lived to be old, the pride of T’cha would have crumbled under the slow drip of pity, which is the only water he would have been given to slake his thirst.

  “I asked the Great Hunters that I might judge with integrity. And when they answered, I asked that I might find within me the courage to set him free for the journey to their country. Water and rocks had crushed his legs and thighs: but it was a stone in my hands which crushed the bone above his temple.”

  A murmur spread through the watching crowd. “Death! Death to the woman who has killed T’cha! Death. …”

  Hatred was coiled like vipers in a circle round me.

  “If T’cha could speak to you he would acknowledge my friendship!”

  “Death! Death for the squaw who has killed T’cha!”

  Their hatred was a dark flood lapping closer and closer towards me. I seized one of the funerary torches and held it high above my head.

  “By this light in my hand I pledge my body and my spirit that I am not the enemy of T’cha, and that my people on the other side of the water have heard my voice calling to them to welcome him in friendship.”

  “She has killed T’cha. Vengeance! Kill her! Kill her!”

  Hatred was dark as wolves approaching a kill. The Chief leaned over the body of his son. “Speak, T’cha. Does she speak in truth? Or do you cry to us for vengeance?”

  The sudden silence was sharp as ice. The Chief was staring down at the face of the dead boy. Did he expect the mouth to open and words to come forth that would bring me freedom or condemnation?

  Slowly the Chief raised his head, but he was not looking at me nor at his tribe. It was as though he looked, with slowly increasing recognition, into the eyes of someone who stood beside me. He held out his hands, to set them on the shoulders of his son who to the rest of us remained invisible.

  Then his hands fell to his sides. He lifted his head to watch T’cha go away from him, between the mourners, between the carved posts which marked their boundary, towards the river.

  Very gently he took the torch from my hand, and held it above his head, as I had done.

  “By this torch I pledge my word and the word of my people, that on this side of the water, and beyond the water also, the blood of T’cha is the blood of brotherhood between the Yellow Skins and the Two Trees. For my son, who was dead, has come home to me, brought home as was his body, by the courage of the Scarlet.”

  Then he took from his great headdress a scarlet feather and put it in my forehead-thong.

  And I went the way T’cha had gone, and in silence the people watched me go…but Raki waited for me on this side of the river.

  I had said, “We must go to tell Na-ka-chek that there is peace between us and the Yellow Skins,” but when we reached his Great Tepee it was empty. Then I realized that the circle of the council was curiously quiet, and a solitary Elder sat smoking by the watch-fire. He looked up as we passed, and said:

  “A Scarlet Feather should be as proud of his courtesy as of his courage.” Then, as we did not answer, he added, “The Chief of the Two Trees gives a great feast in the place of his tribe. The Feathered Council wait to join with Na-ka-chek in honour of his daughter. The clothes you should both wear have been put ready in his tepee.”

  “I told Dorrok to prepare a feast,” I said slowly, “but it was only to try to make him believe I was going to come back.”

  “The Chief can command his tribe without asking permission of his daughter.” The words were cold, but the old man was smiling. “But I must not delay you with conversation, or those who wait for you will grow impatient.”

  I must have been seen leaving the Great Tepee, and some prearranged signal given: for as I turned towards our encampment the scattered torch-light began to flow into two streams, an avenue of fire to lead me home.

  From every tribe they had come, to roar against the night the chants that welcome a warrior in victory. Now I knew why Raki had said he would run ahead to tell Na-ka-chek why I had kept him waiting. He would not share this triumph with me because the scarlet feather divided us. I wanted to tear it from my forehead-thong and break it in pieces: to show them that a squaw valued her love more than their insignia.

  The sparks from the torches flared into the air like burning rain returning to the sky. Slowly I walked on, my right hand raised in greeting. The chants were like a strong wind driving me before it… “Piyanah the Warrior is triumphant…the bison call her brother. …”

  The chant of the Leaping Waters, “Piyanah is the brother of the strong river and the rapids are proud to give her challenge.”

  “The sun of her heart shall be warm even in winter, and the trees of her years heavy with fruit,” sang the Smiling Valleys.

  Then ahead of me I heard the song of my own people. My heart felt as though it would break out of the stockade of my ribs. … “Piyanah has come home to us. Piyanah to whom the white birches are calling, ‘Little Sister, take us for your canoe.’ Piyanah, to whom the arrows are calling, ‘Let us dream of victory in your quiver until we may leap from your bowstring.’”

  This was much more than a surge of sound on which I was swept along like a twig in a swift current: it was the voices of people I knew and loved. Dorrok, who had led me in search of courage. Tekeeni, whose laughter had taken me out of despair. Gorgi who had shared with me his pride and kindliness. Narrok, who had let me see his far horizon and taught me to honour the vision of my own eyes. It was at their torches I had kindled my own; their light which I had carried with me through the caverns.

  I had been unarmed, and they had given me the weapons that they now proclaimed as mine. The arrows of will; the bow of integrity; the moccasins of questioning and ambition; the forehead-thong of understanding; the shield of impassivity and hard endurance. They had shared with me their hearts, by which at last I could uphold a torch in shining company with them. I had thought that Raki and I were alone together, following the light of our single star. Now I knew that all stars are sparks from the torch of the Lord of the Morning. I knew that people do not belong to a tribe only because they need the protection of each other against famine and cold and enemies. They can give nothing until they have heard the singing. Neither have they courage, nor endurance, nor wisdom, nor the skill of a craft, until it has been sha
red with them. Each torch must be kindled from a living brand; and unless that torch seeks other brands to kindle soon does it gutter and grow cold.

  For so long I had fought to prove that I was not a squaw dependent on men, that I had forgotten that all men are dependent on mankind. I had been a drop of water, and now I was part of a great river: I had been a sapling stripped by the gales of winter, and now I was a forest: I had been a grain of corn alone in the grinding-bowl, and now I belonged to the rhythm of the growing field. I had been alone because I had been too blind, too proud, too deaf to know the company which sings beyond the cold lore of a tribe.

  The knowledge of the company stayed with me through the night of feasting. The Chiefs were men of my father’s generation, yet they were no longer remote because they were proud with feathers: they were men who had shared the judgments of the council and so could share more than mead and wild-duck basted with honey; they could share laughter and humanity.

  The Scarlet Feathers and the Braves no longer stared at me in hostility, for I had been accepted as one of themselves. Our women joined in the feast as equals, and this had not happened even in the memory of the ancestors.

  Raki nodded towards one of the Leaping Waters who was sharing a cup of mead with Rokeena, and whispered to me, “If the stars see this they will think that the time of the Before People is returned.”

  “Tomorrow they shall see that women can do more than share mead.”

  And this was so, for Father agreed that our women could issue a challenge to twenty men from any other tribe with arrows and sling shot. Whether the women won, which they did three times out of fifteen, or whether they lost, they shared the sunset meal with their opponents…who a moon ago would have mocked anyone who said they acknowledged a squaw as worthy to join in a contest with them.

  But this belonged to tomorrow, for Raki and I were still watching Rokeena and the Leaping Water.