Storykeeper

by Daniel A Smith

  With the light fading and most of the work done, the feast began. Manaha toiled with and for her people all day. Still no one had spoken to her. Waiting until the last, she took a small portion of the stew and returned to the island and her empty circle.

  She sat watching smoke drift up from the burning lodges in the village and tried to imagine them as they once were, filled with happiness and laughter. Adding to her pain, Manaha suddenly remembered her own childhood lodge far away in Taninto’s valley.

  “Grandfather,” she slowly mumbled. “The day he died—that is how I feel.”

  “I am too tired to tell a story,” she announced to the night.

  A branch shook, and leaves rustled behind her. A smile parted her grief. Without further hesitation, she prepared a fire and waited for other listeners.

  “Is no one else coming?” she asked the shadows.

  A voice, young and uncertain, called from the darkness. “Manaha, Nanza child, daughter of Palisema, may I come closer and sit in your circle?”

  “All are welcome,” Manaha said. “Come share the light of my fire.”

  Ichisi, the youngest son of Ta-kawa, the boy who had helped gather wood and corn, stepped out of the shadows. Burning lodges in the village lit the sky around him.

  “I seek forgiveness,” he said, “for the shameful act of listening to your stories but never respecting the teller.”

  “You listened to all of my stories?”

  “From the first night, when my father doused your story-fire.” Ichisi stepped in closer. “I knew he would not let me return, so I hid.”

  “Against the will of Ta-kawa, you came every night?”

  Ichisi nodded as Manaha looked past him. “I have heard other footsteps. Are there more?”

  “At first but since the storm, I am the only one.”

  Manaha tilted her head slightly and stared hard at the boy.

  “If you thought you had only one listener,” he said, “I was afraid you would stop telling your stories. I made all those noises.”

  “One, and only one, faithful listener,” Manaha said and motioned the boy into the circle. “I am honored to have Ichisi, son of Ta-kawa, sit at my fire.” She danced about the flames as best an old woman could. Tossing in the pieces of lightning wood, she chanted.

  “I have a listener round about.

  I have a listener round about.

  I have a listener round about.”

  Chapter 31: The Swarm

  Nanza’s Journey

  Forty-nine years after “their” arrival

  I awoke under a canopy of swaying cedars with flashes of the story the old man had told the night before. “Could his tales be true?” I mumbled, not wanting Taninto to hear.

  He sat with his back to me in a shallow pool downstream from the campsite. Little Pup laid behind him at the edge of the water.

  “Little Pup, pup, pup, pup-pie-ee,” I called.

  She raced up to me, circled my legs, and headed back to the old man.

  “Come on, Little Pup, we will find our own place to bathe,” I said and turned upstream. I rounded the edge of the cedar thicket before she caught up with me.

  The stream deepened up against a small bluff. I waded in, feeling as though I had never been naked before. The sun, the wind, and the water touched every part of my body. I felt proud but awkward. Confused, yet excited to be a woman.

  “Come on in,” I called to Little Pup.

  She barked.

  “It is just you and me,” I said. “And I will not throw you in.”

  She edged toward the water.

  “You can swim come on pup, pup, pup ... pieee.”

  She bounced and barked. I slapped the water. She bounded in. We played and laughed until Taninto called. When we returned, he had put out the campfire and packed both back-bundles.

  “Here,” he grunted and handed me a strip of jerky.

  Little Pup eyed the exchange.

  “Do not give her much,” he said.

  I glared at him as I tore her off a big piece. He grabbed it from me, tore it in two, and tossed her the smaller piece.

  “For a young dog an empty belly is a good teacher,” he said and walked away.

  “Nanza will always take care of you, Little Pup,” I whispered and gave her more jerky.

  I gathered my things and chased after our guide. Little Pup took her position between us. Taninto disappeared into the tree line. I imagined Little Pup as my guide, leading me, mostly downhill, over a land uneven and ragged. I hardly saw the old man all morning until I crested a steep ridge. Little Pup stood next to him while he studied the valley below.

  “Little Pup, have you found the end of the mountains?” I asked as I picked her up.

  Taninto shook his head. Below lay just another steep climb into another forested valley surrounded by more mountains.

  Little Pup wiggled and jumped out of my arms. She barked at the sky. From over the trees, a thick black line slithered toward us.

  “Grandfather,” I said before I thought.

  “River flies,” he said as the first of them flew overhead.

  “River flies?” I mumbled. I had seen them all my life, fluttering among the dry rocks along the Buffalo River: big eyes, long thin bodies, each with four wings but never this many.

  Father Sun flickered behind their number as a haze spread across the sky. The flutter rose to a wind of wings—a sound few have heard, and none could repeat. Still they came over the tree line, flashing by like snowflakes in a black blizzard.

  I dropped to the ground and pulled Little Pup under me. The sky darkened. Taninto stood in the midst, turning his back to the swarm as it stretched out over the valley. Against the white clouds, it moved through the sky like a giant black snake.

  We watched in silence until it faded to a thin line that disappeared long before it reached the distant mountains. Gusts of moist wind followed, pushing against our backs. From where the swarm had come, the sky remained dark. Little Pup squirmed her way in between my legs.

  Taninto rushed down the hill to a patch of red berry bushes. He smashed his way into the middle of the cluster and stomped out a small clearing. Little Pup barked and jumped around him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “A storm is coming,” he said as he stripped the limbs from two of the tallest red berry trunks at the edge of his clearing.

  “Take off your back bundle and get that dog,” he shouted.

  I wanted to resist even as I picked up Little Pup.

  He swung the bundle off his back and untied his buffalo cloak. “Get out your cloak.”

  The wind blew harder. Large raindrops splattered around us. A drop hit Little Pup. She tried to jump out of my arms, but I held on tightly. Taninto spread the buffalo cloak, tail down, over the two bushes he had stripped. On the mesh of stomped limbs, he crossed the hind legs of the buffalo skin and pointed. “Sit here with the dog.”

  “Why should I?”

  “You do not have four wings like a river fly,” he said.

  Trees swayed one direction then the other and I with them.

  “Sit on the hide!” he yelled.

  With the puppy squirming in my arms, I squatted.

  He wrapped both bundles, his shirt, and his moccasins inside my cloak. “Keep these dry,” he said and pulled the buffalo hide over the stripped trunks to form an arch, sheltering Little Pup and me. He tied a short piece of rope to the forelegs.

  “Hold the rope,” he shouted over the pounding of rain against the hide.

  The wind pushed and pulled the cloak. I held on with both hands. He stood and walked up the hill. From under the cloak, I watched him stand with his back to the storm, water running off him like a rock, hard and unconcerned.

  I squeezed Little Pup. “That old man is my grandfather.”

  She whimpered and tucked her head under a hind leg.

  When the rain stopped, he stood in the same place. His head and back bent a little more. As the last of the sto
rm clouds raced to the east, he climbed to the crest and faced west. Frail and naked against the sky, he chanted too softly for me to hear his words.

  Before he came back down, I had wiped the rain off the buffalo hide. He untied it, shook it several times, and wrapped it around him. Without a word, we headed downhill. At the bottom, he kept the mountain to our left until it sprouted a line of bluffs. The bluffs turned back into a hollow as the sounds of running water flowed in from the right.

  The forest opened to a wide field. Little Pup chased small butterflies swirling up from the moist sandy soil, some white, some black. I ran after her, spotting Big Creek before either of them.

  More than a creek to my eyes, wider than the Buffalo River and much deeper, its banks were muddy and steep, lined with large trees leaning out over the water as if trying to reach their brothers on the other side. The late day sun sparkled off the creek as it rushed past a small, rocky island tangled with live trees and dead limbs piled one upon the other.

  Taninto, with Little Pup bouncing about his heels, came up from behind. “We will cross tomorrow,” he said as if he had heard my thoughts.

  I said nothing.

  “When you see these waters again,” he said, “they will have joined with the Little Red River on their way to the villages of Palisema.”

  I tossed a stone into the creek and watched the ripples race away. “Roll on. Tell them Nanza will be home soon.”

  A small stream, more rocks than water, emptied into the creek. The gentle slope of its streambed and the well-worn path to the water’s edge spoke of an old watering site shared by many, four-legged and two-legged.

  Across the streambed, a towering bluff blocked the eastern sky. Not a bluff of large boulders but layers of flat rocks one upon the other, curving up and jutting out toward the creek. Tall oaks grew under the huge shelter that bore the signs of many past campfires.

  Standing under the ancient shelter, watching the light sparkle off Big Creek, filled me with a sense of calm, a fleeting closeness to those who had stood there before. The faint echoes of lost voices slipped past like cold, dark water through my fingers. I watched and listened until the day faded.

  Taninto had built a fire in a stone-rimmed pit against a large rock near the back wall smudged black from past fires. Staring hard into the flames, he seemed not to notice me as I walked up.

  “Did you feel the ancestors?” he asked.

  Little Pup jumped from his side and ran to me. I nodded.

  “In places like this, there are listening spirits and ancient stories.” His gaze turned up to the overhang then caught my wandering eyes.

  “Remember this,” he said. “Once told, a story is never lost.”

  Chapter 32: Battle Won and Lost

  Taninto’s Journey

  July 3, 1541

  A man of Casqui, a servant of Spaniards, I stood on the grand plaza below the sacred Temple Mound of Pa-caha. Their nation once ruled over lands up, down, and both sides of the Mizzissibizzibbippi River. For generations upon generations, they killed and enslaved the people of Casqui. Now they fled from the sight of Casquis marching beside the Son of the Sun and his army.

  Except for a few unfortunates, the main town of Pa-caha was abandoned by its people. Whether brave or foolish, their heads were now impaled on poles around the mound. I suddenly longed to see Saswanna to hold her to apologize for everything I had said. She told the truth. She was right about the power of the Spanish.

  The Pa-cahas could not stop them from crossing the Mizzissibizzibbippi into the Nine-Rivers Valley. They learned the Spanish could not be frightened, even with two hundred longboats filled with warriors. They saw the Spanish cloaks of metal and their crossbows that could reach farther than any Pa-caha bow.

  The Pa-cahas saw the arcabuz weapons kill with thunder and smoke and knew of their magnificent beasts. They knew the Casquis. They knew the Spanish. It was the Spanish not my people they ran from.

  Atop their abandoned Temple Mound, flames from the bones of their honored ancestors danced with twenty or so young braves of Casqui. The braves chanted, Naffja the loudest.

  “Pa-cahas run like rabbits ... they run. They run like rabbits before Casqui warriors ... Pa-cahas run like rabbits.” The chant spread over the walls to the hundreds of Casquis gathered outside. Every Casqui warrior now believed the Pa-cahas feared them, but none more so than Naffja and the braves with him.

  Of the prisoners in my charge, only seven remained. The Spanish had cut down the elder, and Naffja’s band took the heads of the boys captured with him. Two others escaped during my struggle with Naffja and were surely dead. The survivors glared back at me.

  “Sit here.” I pointed to a place near the center of the plaza. None of them moved. I pointed again.

  “I comman ...” my words unfinished, they sat no longer staring at me but beyond. I turned to see what had bent their knees and taken their courage. A noble Spanish conquistador atop an even nobler beast emerged from the narrow west gate and raced onto the plaza with his sword drawn. The prisoners huddled together. The young Casqui braves on the mound cheered.

  Two other horsemen burst through the gate and rushed to join the first. The horses pranced and pawed the hard plaza floor as their masters surveyed the town. I never tired of watching the Spanish horses and the bold men who commanded them. After the horsemen, Spanish foot soldiers flowed in, one on the heels of another.

  Behind me, I heard shouting.

  “Burn it all!” Naffja yelled from the mound as he waved a torch. “Burn it all!”

  The soldiers quickly formed ranks and trotted across the plaza. To these Spaniards without horses, I had never given more than a glance. Their armor clanked, and their strange weapons gleamed as on that first day I saw them. As they passed by on either side, I noticed their tattered cloaks and leggings as worn as each face. Yet it seemed that whether a Spaniard walked in sandals or rode a horse. Each had a command of his given duty and a conviction of his own greatness.

  The Casqui braves waved and called the Spaniards up the temple steps. Some knelt and bowed their heads, but Naffja and others ran for the king’s lodge with torches high. The first swordsmen on the mound took positions between the lodge and the braves. The angry band turned on one of the smaller lodges and set it on fire before the will of the swordsmen pushed them back.

  Naffja attacked the scattered remains of the Pa-caha ancestors. His braves chanted “Pa-cahas run like rabbits” as they tore open more chests of the dead and smashed their bones. They threw it all on the blazing fire along with the Pa-cahas’ bodies from whom they had taken their heads. Against the smell, I covered my nose, but for the shame, I could do nothing.

  Through the smoke of ancestors, the noblest of all Spaniards approached: Hernando de Soto, Son of the Sun, with the dogs at his side. He entered the town through an unfinished portion of the eastern wall. He had led the chase after the last escaping Pa-caha. They returned without any prisoners but had found an unfinished portion of the wall through which they could easily get the horses and all the soldiers.

  I knelt and bowed to Lord de Soto. The prisoners pressed themselves to the dirt, trying to appear as insignificant as possible. Master Diego rode among the conquistadors who followed. Shadow Wind pranced as proud as any man.

  Behind the horses, weary foot soldiers and horse tenders ran to keep up. I saw Cooquyi in the pack and started across the plaza. He waved for me to turn back. I had forgotten the prisoners. Even though they had no chance of escape, they were still my duty.

  The black stallion carried Lord de Soto up the unfinished Temple Mound in a gallop. His guard of bowmen and arcabuceros charged up the steps behind him and circled the rim. More soldiers poured through the main gate and around the uncompleted wall.

  Swordsmen encircled Naffja and the other warriors on the mound and pushed them to the edge. Some ran. Others tumbled down the slope. The fire consumed the ancestors’ bones without further desecration.

  Master Diego rode towar
d me; I bowed. He laughed, leaned over in his saddle, and pulled me up straight. Cooquyi stepped from behind Shadow Wind and studied the remaining prisoners.

  “A swordsman killed the old man,” I said. “My people killed four others. I tried to—”

  Cooquyi shook his head and hands at me. Master Diego pointed at the prisoners and began giving Cooquyi instructions when loud chanting pulled everyone’s attention toward the main gate.

  Seven head warriors from the Red Council of Casqui sang the praises of King Issqui as they led his triumphant march into the conquered town of our enemy. Naffja and his braves ran toward the Council. Some danced, some boasted, but all tried to be seen.

  Master Diego finished his orders and rode toward the mound, scattering the braves. Swordsmen escorted the Red Council onto the plaza and King Issqui to the bottom of the mound steps.

  “Taninto!” Cooquyi shouted. “Master Diego commanded me to help you watch these prisoners, not to do it by myself.”

  “What did he say about me?” I asked.

  Sweat and mud covered Cooquyi’s body. His shoulders drooped. “Yes, Master said, ‘You did good.’ Little chipmunk.”

  I tried not to smile or notice the anger in Cooquyi’s voice.

  “What is your wish?” I asked. “I will follow your commands as though you were a Spanish noble.”

  Before he could answer, a clamor rattled up from every direction. The Spaniards clanged metal against metal and stomped. On top of the mound, Lord de Soto raised his arm and all fell silent. He stood in his saddle, thrust his sword to the sky, and shouted out across the plaza in Spanish.

  “I do hereby claim this land, and all Pa-caha lands are now under the sovereignty of the Emperor and King of Spain, and henceforth governed by one Hernando de Soto.”

  Cooquyi sat with his back to the words. Facing the prisoners, he held his bare right foot in his hands.