Zadayi Red

by Caleb Fox

For more than a day, except that daylight was unknown in the Cavern, they chased ideas, tested possibilities, anticipated difficulties, devised and threw out tactics, created strategies. Tsola roasted some deer meat Klandagi had brought in his jaws. He complained about cooked flesh being pallid stuff.

  At last they considered themselves finished. All three were exhilarated and frightened. Tsola said simply, “Then I will see you tomorrow afternoon.” The time of the Council of the Planting Moon.

  Sunoya nodded and rose.

  “We will change everything,” said Tsola. Her face hadn’t looked so young in Sunoya’s lifetime.

  “One way or another,” said Sunoya.

  Su-Li launched from her shoulder and wing-flapped through the corridors of stone, longing for oceans of air. Sunoya picked up her son. Alongside Klandagi she padded after her airborne companion.

  17

  At dawn the next day Sunoya shook her head and opened her eyes. The faint light crept through the leaves of her brush hut. “This is it,” she told Su-Li. Her voice sounded weak even to her.

  The buzzard had nothing to say.

  She propped herself up on an elbow on her pallet of buffalo hides and peered at him. She poked fun at herself. “How come, no matter how early I wake up, you’re always aiming that eye at me?”

  The red-gold eye glinted.

  Dahzi stirred and cried. Sunoya picked him up and rocked him. “No need to wake everyone,” she said softly. The rest of the family was in brush huts on each side of her. He wailed again.

  “You’re hungry. Okay. I’ll go next door and wake folks up and get you something to eat.”

  When she came back, she put Dahzi on a knee and fed him corn mush. “You know what?” Sunoya said to her son. “Today is Momma’s big day.” She spooned him another mouthful. “Momma and Grandmother Tsola are calling up a regular thunderstorm of change. You just watch.”

  A buzzard couldn’t smile, in amusement or otherwise, but Sunoya thought he wanted to.

  Su-Li squeezed his perch with his talons, fluttered his wings, and gave her a look. She knew he didn’t like being trapped in the hut. “So you’re hungry, too.”

  She tapped her shoulder. With one flap Su-Li landed there, and she stroked his feathers. “My guide,” she said and gave him a wry smile, “red-faced and eats the dead. You get along, then.”

  She reached for a piece of dried meat and lifted the hide door of the low hut. Su-Li waited. “Dak,” she called. The dog rumbled up for the meat. Sunoya tossed it far out the door, and the dog pounced on it.

  Su-Li hopped out the door awkwardly and took wing before Dak noticed him. Every day they went through this routine. Su-Li couldn’t be killed—he wasn’t mortal—but it wouldn’t be fun to get his tail feathers pulled out, or his wing broken.

  Back in the dimness Sunoya held up her hands and looked at them. She was feeling wild and crazy. “I was born webbed,” she said. Even alone she didn’t mention that both hands were once like that. She picked up Dahzi and shushed him. “You’re webbed. Together we’re going to change the world. I’m starting it today. I’m going to raise you to finish it. And if I mess it up, well then, the people will remember me as a failure the size of Bald Mountain.”

  Holding Dahzi, she crawled through the low door and looked up into the bright sky. Her eyes lanced up to the buzzard, his wings angled up as he glided down to the river. The crisp light of the early sun glinted on their black and silver undersides.

  Su-Li raised his beak from the river water, and falling drops gleamed. He took a couple of awkward steps—the ground was a graceless place—flapped his wings, let his scarlet head slide forward, and lifted off. After a night cooped up inside, winging into the air made his blood pump. The sky was his escape from the world of mortality. It was limitless.

  Su-Li spread his wing tips and arced to the left. He sliced across the river, looking down. He could do this service for Sunoya easily. With all the Galayi assembled here for the ceremony, she wanted him to keep an eye out. Gathered together like this, over a thousand strong, the Galayi were probably safe from other tribes, and surely no one would violate this sacred ceremony. But because of Tsola’s plans for today, Sunoya asked him to keep a double-sure lookout.

  Su-Li wing-flapped higher, so he could see far up and down the river. Four clusters of houses dotted the stream over a couple of miles, thick-walled buildings of wattle and daub. Sunflowers and knotweed grew on terraces, corn closest to the river. This was the home of the hosts, the Cheowa.

  Between these villages clustered the camps of the other three bands, each several hundred people. They slept in brush huts and slurped food down fast, eager to spend as much time as possible visiting relatives and friends, flirting and courting, dancing and singing.

  Su-Li sailed as slowly as he could, cruising one by one over the mountain slopes behind the camps and villages. He flapped his way across the river and lifted on the warm currents that swooshed up the mountainsides. He saw no signs of enemies.

  As he cruised over the main Cheowa village at the mouth of Emerald Creek, he stayed high. He looked down at the council lodge and wondered how Tsola would fare there this evening. He had a sudden memory of a boy in one of the camps flinging a stone at him with a slingshot yesterday. Idiocy.

  The life of these particular human beings grieved him. They lived in ignorance, fighting with each other and with all the other animals.

  He let the warm winds carry him above the ridge and up the creek. No signs of danger. He could see a louse in a person’s hair, and smell more keenly than that. There was no way he could miss enemies crawling close.

  He flew on to the Cavern and the Pool of Healing, checking on Tsola. Three figures walked slowly down the trail toward the mouth of the creek, where the big village was. Su-Li would keep a close eye on their progress.

  He sailed on to the mountain divide behind and rose in widening circles, higher and higher. He relished the cool air, the sun on his red skin, and the lift beneath his wings. If he did not have a mission from Sunoya, he would have roamed the sky for the sheer pleasure of flight. From here he could see mountain ridge after mountain ridge. Though he couldn’t see it among the hills east of the mountains, the Tusca village sat there, a week’s walk away for human beings. Over one ridge to the south and a day’s walk along the river was the Soco village, and much further southwest the Cusa village. He could have flown to all of them, spent the night in a tree in the Cusa village, and then winged back in half a day. Freedom to roam.

  At last he drifted back down the ridge on the other side of the creek. No danger anywhere, and the three figures continued their slow pace to the creek and to the council ground.

  He coasted toward the camp of the Socos, where his companion lived. She was walking slowly toward the main Cheowa village, going to the council early. She looked up at him and held up her arm as a sign. He spiraled downward and landed on her shoulder.

  All safe, he told her.

  She cleared her throat and answered in words. “Except in the hearts and minds of human beings.”

  Su-Li said without words, The Wounded Healer is on her way.

  18

  Every step is an adventure,” said Tsola. “A threat,” corrected Klandagi. He walked alongside her in his panther shape. He enjoyed this irony. What an odd sight his family was—a woman about a hundred winters old making her way down the trail alongside Emerald Creek, her younger daughter of about seventy winters, and a black panther. He had no time to savor it, though. His eyes, ears, nose, his entire being were hunting for danger.

  His mother, the Seer, fingered her daughter’s sleeve on one side and rested a hand on the cat’s back on the other. She wore a blindfold.

  The panthers of this country were tawny, but Klandagi preferred to garb himself in the color of the felines of ancient stories, black as obsidian, dark as his heart. He wasn’t used to being scared, and he hated it.

  He was nervous about what was behind him, too. He had decided it was essential t
o protect the medicine bearer, so Dahzi was wrapped in a robe and held in the arms of Klandagi’s other sister, deep inside the Emerald Cavern.

  Tsola knew how upset her son was. Even blindfolded, she planted her feet with a firmness that said, Never mind that now.

  She gave a giddy little laugh. Strange and wonderful—she was truly in the outside world. For decades she’d lived deep in the Cavern, visiting only its mouth to see her family, and then only in the dark of the moon. The world of the Cavern opened the door to wonders of the spirit world but deprived her of the joys of Turtle Island. In place of the open air, the far-reaching sky, the smells of blossoms, the sounds of birds, the wind, she had solitude, darkness, confinement, and sterility. Except near entrances, nothing grew in caves.

  She was grateful for her son and daughters. Since she’d been a mature woman before she became the Seer, she’d had a husband and children.

  Sunoya had a harder road to walk, a child but no husband, and no experience of love between a woman and a man.

  “Tell me what everything looks like.” This was to her daughter, Kanesga.

  The panther interjected, “Su-Li is circling above us, keeping a sharp eye out.”

  Tsola cuffed him, half affection, half exasperation.

  After a moment Kanesga began to describe the craggy ridge tops, the green mountainsides, the new growth on budding trees and bushes.

  “Planting Moon,” said Tsola. She had not planted, felt the loamy earth in her fingers, in more than half a century. She felt girlish.

  Kanesga drew a word picture of the blue sky and dazzling white clouds that cupped the mountains, and multitudes of birds fluttering from tree to tree. Of all Earth’s creatures, aside from her own people, Tsola loved birds the most. Maybe I’m lucky to be blindfolded. Seeing might be overwhelming.

  She felt her son’s back muscles bunch up in irritation, but disregarded it. It only meant that Klandagi cared about her, and he had a right to be worried. Only she could understand her wild feelings. She loved the Emerald Cavern, but hadn’t realized how much she missed the rest of Turtle Island.

  “Is the village in sight yet?” One foot after another, toward her native place.

  “When it is,” Klandagi muttered, “they’ll be able to see us.”

  All these years, only an hour’s walk away, her birthplace. She looked forward to hearing children playing and dogs yapping. She imagined the women huddled up and talking comfortably as they kept one eye on their broods. She wondered if the scents of hundreds of human bodies would disagree with her nose. The odors of the Cavern were earth and water.

  Kanesga started to picture for her the sun falling toward the western mountains.

  “Too much,” said Tsola, her voice pebbled with joy and pain. Too much because she yearned to see the sunrise and would never be able to. Even the glints of sun around the edges of the blindfold hurt her eyes.

  “Tell me what my face looks like.” She hadn’t seen herself reflected in water since she became the tribe’s Seer.

  Kanesga thought her mother was lovely, but she knew better than to tell her so. “You look like your name.” The word tsola meant “tobacco.”

  “I’m like a leaf all wrinkled and hung up to dry.” They chuckled together.

  “Far enough,” said Klandagi. From this curve in the creek he caught a glimpse of an edge of the village.

  “The trees.” The two of them led Tsola off the trail and over broken ground into the pines on the mountain slope. Klandagi said, “I’ll be back.”

  He padded toward an outcropping of rocks, head gliding from side to side, golden eyes glinting as they searched for prey, or for enemies. At the outcropping he slipped with cat grace between some rocks, found a crevice, and coiled where he could peer down.

  In the tangerine light of sunset the village looked normal, except that the men were gathering by the council lodge. Klandagi took his time and surveyed the scene carefully. Only his tail told of his edginess. Wariness was his way. Enemies were his job. And he hated this risk.

  He pivoted his head smoothly and looked back. He had grown used to his strange family. All of them were ancient, though their bodies still looked youthful. Most of their children and grandchildren lived downstream in the village, but seldom came to visit. He felt more strange yet—more at ease being a cat than a human being.

  Klandagi turned his head toward the village again, let his eyes flick over the entire scene, and then focused on the council lodge. It was a round, thatched roof with open sides. He marked swift ways in and out, and noted the nearest cover. His mother thought only of the triumph she hoped for. Klandagi saw the hazards. He forced himself to consider, now, the potential for catastrophe, the danger to the very life of the Seer.

  People milled here and there. Children ran around, and some tried to ride the pack dogs.

  The lodge was almost full now. He identified the four groups of chiefs treading slowly toward this once-a-year council. He noted with satisfaction that twilight was seeping into the valley. Darkness will favor us.

  Klandagi bounded back to his mother and sister. Keeping his voice neutral, he said, “Let’s go in.”

  The Seer smiled at him.

  Klandagi had been making this transformation for decades, and it was almost instantaneous. Perhaps someone might have seen a hint of swirling dust, or felt a stirring in the air. A vigorous-looking and well-armed elderly man gazed back at his mother, took her arm, and led the way, alert as any hunter.

  19

  From the back row of the Council House, in the shadows, Sunoya watched Talani, the Peace Chief of the host Cheowas, make his slow way through the crowd to the council circle and his place of honor beside the fire. This was the sacred flame kept since the first people came to Turtle Island. Seeing that the creatures there needed fire, Thunderbird hurled a lightning bolt into a hollow tree and set it on fire. The Immortals also sent down messengers to teach the people to preserve this fire with powerful prayers and a special ceremony. It was kept alive every hour of every day by wise men taught these ways.

  Talani was aged, and like all the Peace Chiefs dressed entirely in white—shirt, breechcloth, and thigh-high boots of deerskin tanned the color of old bones. A cape of white feathers wrapped him, his badge of office. In his left arm Talani carried his white stone pipe, and in his right he cradled the wing of a white crane. His white hair was piled elaborately on top of his head, making him seem by far the tallest man among the Galayi. Men of the Long Hair clan liked to make great displays of their hair.

  Sunoya and Tsola were counting on the old man, the most admired of the White Chiefs, though no longer strong in body. The twelve chiefs sat together around the fire, sunwise: White, Red, and Medicine.

  Su-Li touched Sunoya’s cheek with a wing. Three elderly people, one of them blindfolded, were coming toward her. Sunoya made room and whispered greetings. No one noticed them in the smoke and shadows.

  The old chief filled his pipe in a deliberate way, picked up an ember from the eternal fire, dropped it onto the sacred tobacco, and drew the tobacco spirit into his lungs. Then he puffed it up to the sky and spoke the ritual words that asked that this smoke, which was his breath and his prayers, be carried high beyond the Sky Arch to the ears of the spirits.

  His words formed a sculpture as elaborate as his hair. The Galayi loved oratory, and Talani had won his place as White Chief with the beauty of his speech, like the music of rain.

  He addressed the four directions, and the special powers that lived in each. “These are the four pathways of the people,” he said, “which meet here at the sacred fire.” He gestured to it with his pipe.

  He prayed eloquently for all the Galayi who lived in the green center, here and now. “We people are living in hard times,” he said, “hard times, hard times.” These last words were a dying melody.

  “For the first time in the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men,” Talani said, “we are at war with each other. These are such times as bring the Bla
ck Man of Death to our young warriors; grief to their wives and children and parents; hunger during the long winters; impoverishment to many families; and worst of all, a sickness of spirit to all Galayi people.”

  Talani raised his voice to a high pitch now, and his speech took on the singsong of a climax. He bemoaned living his time as chief as a man painted blue, mired in sadness and defeat. He prayed that his grandchildren would paint themselves in white, live in continual happiness. He bade all Galayi to turn their faces to the red east and to fly like eagles into the rising sun and to victory.

  After a long moment of silence Talani passed the pipe sunwise. Everyone admired his eloquence.

  Now each of the three chiefs from all four bands would smoke the pipe and ask the smoke to carry all Galayi prayers to the spirits. All the people gathered behind these leaders would send similar prayers up to the sky.

  Sunoya grimaced. Not every heart was good, not every prayer was for peace, and most of the prayers were feeble.

  She sucked at her anger like a burned spot on her tongue.

  The pipe made its way around the circle. A puff or two for each chief and brief prayers. All of the Peace Chiefs and War Chiefs were men, two of the four Medicine Chiefs women.

  Sitting next to Sunoya, slowly, subtly, Klandagi transformed himself from an elderly man into a black panther. She looked fearfully at Su-Li on her opposite shoulder. The buzzard seemed to chuckle as he told her, It’s fine, no one is paying attention.

  Inaj took the pipe, smoked, and presumably prayed. Sunoya wondered what sacred thoughts could live in the mind of a man like him.

  When the pipe had made its circle, Talani rose to speak again.

  Before he uttered a word, Tsola whispered, “It’s time.” The Seer, Sunoya, and the panther got to their feet and made their way to the sacred fire. This violation of protocol was so flagrant that Talani was stunned into silence. Whispers scratched their way around the room. Su-Li squeezed Sunoya’s shoulder, left talon, right talon.