People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

  That tilted layer of black basalt at the cliff base spoke of volcanic eruption further distant in time perhaps than the appearance of life on Earth. Above it, a pebbled conglomerate told the story of a fast-flowing ancient river, heavily loaded with stones and sediments.

  At noon, when the sun was overhead and the heat most intense, the Indian youth gestured at Kesbe to rest where she was while he went off on Haewi. By the bow and quiver slung across his back, she imagined he was going hunting. Her guess was right, for when he returned and hopped off, he brandished something skewered on an arrow, a something that looked like a cross between a porcupine and a horseshoe crab. It was freshly killed. One leg still twitched.

  With an obsidian knifeblade, he gutted his catch and laid it to grill on a small fire. Grinning, he offered her some. Her first instinct was to decline, but she wanted to save her own provisions. Gingerly she nibbled at a chunk of steaming fibrous flesh impaled on a long thorn. The taste reminded her of fish, although there was a strong tang of ammonia that would take some getting used to. She thanked him as politely as she could.

  He shrugged, cut her another piece, made himself comfortable by the fire and ate his share while the aronan settled beside him. It occurred to her that this might be a good opportunity to talk.

  “Baqui hanakomi Kesbe,” she tried, remembering the first scraps of conversation she had with him. She decided to ask him again about his name. “Ba hanakomi Apinu?”

  The boy cocked his head, looking sideways at her with sunlight playing across the sharp planes of his face. “Haliksa’i,” he said solemnly. This word Kesbe knew, for her grandfather had started many a tale with this preface. It meant “Listen, this is how it is.”

  He placed one hand on his aronan’s neck. “Haewi,” he said and added, “Kesbe” as he opened his palm to her. Instead of indicating himself, he hesitated. Kesbe waited. “Ba hanakomi…Imiya,” Though he laid his hand on his chest, he spoke reluctantly, as if directly identifying himself was not proper behavior among his people.

  “Imiya? Is that your name?”

  He nodded, a solemn dip of the chin.

  “Imiya,” she repeated. Automatically she touched her fingers to her coverall front. “Kesbe.”

  He shook his head in a flurry of denial, totally bewildering her. What was he trying to say, that she didn’t know her own name? The thought came to her that he might be teasing after all he was a teenaged boy. Before the suspicion could plant itself firmly in her mind, he plucked earnestly at her sleeve, drawing her hand to him. “Imiya,” he said, making it plain that was his name, but when he laid his own fist against his chest, he spoke the other strange word.

  Kesbe sat up and took a long breath. Imiya repeated both words and both actions several times, as if teaching a very young child. He waited.

  She tried to think. There was a pattern here. You were not supposed to speak your own name only someone else could refer to you that way. Perhaps that was done to avoid being too forward, too…individual.

  She spread her fingers on her chest and tentatively said, “Apinu?”

  “Haliksa’i!” He used the expression again, but his tone and exultant nod was praise.

  Now she had the basics. If she met someone else, she would know to use “Apinu” instead of her name. They might not think she was utterly uncouth. At least she had managed to discover the boy’s name. Imiya.

  The word sounded like another one of her grandfather’s, one that meant “sky.” She smiled to herself. It was appropriate.

  She got the youth to give her more language lessons as they made their way along the high terraces. His tongue was very close to the ancient Hopi her grandfather had taught her. From the way he rolled his eyes every once in a while, she knew she was mangling the grammar.

  To help teach her the language, the boy told her the simple stories and legends of his people. One, especially, intrigued her, for it described how aronans were created. It took a long time to tell, for he had to use simple language and she often misunderstood things.

  “My tribe is the Pai Yinaye, People of the Sky,” he said as he walked beside her. “We were not always so. The Blue Star, Sasquasoha, created aronans for us to ride. I will tell you the story.

  “The wise ones of my village tell how our people emerged through the sipapuni, the birthway, into this, the Fifth World. The people brought plants and animals with them, not only those that were useful, but also those who were sacred. One of those was Sivuftotvi, the dragonfly.

  “This new world was not an easy one to live in. The people struggled. Many died. Many of the animals they brought also died. The people prayed to the gods they had known in the Fourth World, but those spirits did not answer. In desperation, they prayed to Sasquasoha, the Blue Star.

  “Sasquasoha came to the people and saw that they were starving. Corn would grow, but it needed water and the people were too weak to carry water from distant springs to the fields. They prayed to the spirit of the Blue Star, saying that they could not live on this world, their animals had died and they were also dying. None of them were suited to live in this world. The spirit of the Blue Star sorrowed for the people. Was there no creature that had come with them that could live on this, the Fifth World?

  “Everyone thought that there was not, but then a dragonfly appeared and said, ‘I am well suited for this world, but I am too small to carry water or bear loads or serve these people who call me sacred.’

  “Little Sivuftotvi, I can change you so you can do all these things,’ said the Blue Star, ‘but you must agree.’ Dragonfly was afraid, but it loved the Hopituh, the tribe who called it sacred because it was a guide to water.

  “Sasquasoha called upon the people to gather and smoke. To Dragonfly, it said, ‘How many legs do you need to walk?’

  “’I have six legs, but I could walk with four answered Dragonfly.

  ‘So, I will take two of your legs away to make you lighter and make your wings stronger so that you may bear a rider in flight,’ said the Blue Star and it took away Dragonfly’s middle legs, reshaped its body, wings and lengthened its head.

  “It held Dragonfly in the smoke rising from many pipes and, as Dragonfly was heated by the smoke, it began to swell and grow larger. Soon Dragonfly was as large and strong as the beasts of burden the people had used on the Fourth World.

  “’You are no longer Dragonfly,’ said the Blue Star spirit. ‘I give you a new name and that name is Aronan.’ To the people, the Blue Star gave the newly-created Aronan. Immediately Aronan took a rider to the river where the people could get water for their fields. The corn plants lifted their heads to the sun and grew as corn should. The people answered that they were grateful and made ceremony in honor of the Blue Star.

  “’I accept your gratitude,’ said the Blue Star spirit. Think also of Dragonfly who has become Aronan. Treat it and its children well. If it asks you for anything, you must offer it generously,’ and the people answered that they would.

  “And so was Aronan created and given to we who became the Pai Yinaye, the People of the Sky,” said Imiya solemnly. “That is how it was.”

  “Did Aronan ever ask your people to keep the promise they made to the Blue Star spirit?” Kesbe asked.

  “That is for another tale and another day,” Imiya answered, quickening his pace. Kesbe hastened to catch up, wanting to ask him more about the legend, but he told other stories and would not speak any more about the origin of aronans.

  After hiking all day and part of the next, Imiya and Kesbe reached a tributary of the Hellshatter and followed it down to the great river itself. This was the power that had carved the Barranca Madre. Even though she knew by the canyon’s depth that the Hellshatter was ancient, it had all the wild strength of a young river, heaving and surging in its gorge as it raced through the Barranca.

  Imiya flew Haewi out over the river to scout its waters and look for game, leaving Kesbe on the bank.

  From her viewpoint, as she climbed along the Hellshatter’s bould
er-strewn shoreline, Haewi Namij appeared to be an intrepid dragonfly hovering close to the crashing white water. She saw the boy leaning over the aronan’s neck, brandishing a spear cocked in a thrower.

  She knew he wasn’t after fish. The few native vertebrates hadn’t evolved to that level. He would probably bring up something wriggly and segmented. Being low on food, she would have to eat it. Well, she had already eaten some of the native food and it hadn’t killed her.

  A jet of water spurted from the river, showering both mount and rider. It was too powerful and directed to be a random wave breaking against a boulder. Kesbe blinked, not sure what she had seen. Haewi darted aloft, flinging off a glittering rainbow of mist from its wings. Again the plume erupted from the boiling surface of the Hellshatter, catching Haewi in its downward cascade.

  The aronan staggered in midair, losing altitude. Kesbe fought her way across jagged rocks to a gravelled beach. Was there a geyser buried in the bowels of the Hellshatter, erupting through its waters? She had never heard of such a thing. No. That last drenching had been too powerful and directed to be anything but a purposeful attack from something beneath the river’s surface. Could the Hellshatter host some species of unknown malevolent whale-like creature that brought down prey with a blast from its spout?

  Haewi struggled aloft, a slick and shivering rider clinging to its neck. Imiya had kept his spear. With a snarl, he hurled it down. Kesbe expected the spear to vanish beneath the river. Instead it stuck with its shaft half-exposed as the Hellshatter’s racing waters parted about an armored back.

  On the exposed dorsal ridge was something that looked like a calcified spout. It let loose a firehose blast that caught Haewi and spewed the aronan high in the air. The youth fell from his mount, twisting his body into a dive. Wings thrashing, the aronan tumbled into the river.

  Half-choked with horror, Kesbe shucked her pack, pulled out rope, grapnel and dart-pistol. She sloshed into the Hellshatter’s gritty flow, straining for a glimpse of Imiya. She saw a pair of brown feet surface, followed by a sputtering face. The boy was riding the current the safe way, legs first. She thanked whatever river spirits had chosen to sweep him toward her beach where she had a chance of reeling him in with her rope. Behind him came the flurry of legs and wings that was Haewi Namij.

  She called, but her shout was lost in the baying of the Hellshatter. She coiled her rope, drawing back to fling. The aronan lunged against the river’s hold. It tore free of the water and was rising above the spume when another blast from close behind hosed it down.

  A great crustacean tail arched from the water, its articulated plates mottled with waterweed. A stench erupted with it, redolent of the primeval muck of a pothole in the river bottom. The tail crashed down, sending a downstream wave that swamped Haewi Namij.

  A shapeless black lump of a head bearing five eyes on thick stalks surfaced in the swirling current. It looked incongruously as if a sinister patch of mushrooms had sprouted from Hellshatter, their tops glistening with the facets of compound eyes. Behind the fungoid clump of eyes was the nozzle of the water-cannon the thing used to shoot down its prey. From the head, a thick tentacle reared above water, bearing a single spiked pincer that opened as it approached the aronan.

  The youth had seen the danger threatening Haewi. He flung himself back against the current, but he was too far from his flier. A wild hooting cry of “Uruhu’ui, uruhu’ui!” broke from him to be lost in the continuing drum roll of the river echoing down the gorge.

  Kesbe fired a few useless darts then pocketed the gun and grabbed her rope and makeshift grapnel. She whirled the grapnel around her neck and cast it across the armored carapace. She hauled back, feeling the hooks bite, pulling the creature away from Haewi.

  Now she had her catch securely hooked, though what she was going to do with it next, she had no idea. The main thing now was to keep it away from the boy and his flier until they reached the safety of shore. When they did, she had the vague idea of dropping the rope and running, leaving the Hellshatter’s spawn to itself.

  Imiya yelled something at her as he waded in the swirling water about his waist. “Hotopa Wuwuchpi!” he shouted, waving at the creature. The-Beast-That-Shoots-Arrows-of-Water!”

  The wuwuchpi fired a powerful stream that punched Kesbe in the chest. She sprawled backwards, but she kept her head and her grip on the rope. Digging her heels into the grainy mud of the shallows, she hauled with her full weight on the rope. The great tail flapped sideways, flailing its swimmerets.

  From the corner of her eye, Kesbe saw the youth and Haewi stagger to shore. The flier’s wings dragged like those of a puddle-drowned moth.

  With a frustrated snap, the pincer sank back into the river. Just as Kesbe prepared to pull her line tight once more, the claw erupted from the water in a circular flailing motion that caught and wrapped the rope about itself. With a gleeful tug, it pulled Kesbe off her feet before she could decide that old Five-eyes was indeed much smarter than it looked.

  She bellyflopped into the river, her yell drowned by a mouthful tasting horribly of wuwuchpi. Its amine reek flooded both nose and tongue as she thrashed, retching. She surfaced. The creature’s side was very close. She looked over her shoulder in awe at the cathedral-arch of segmented carapace rising from the water.

  She threw herself away from it, half-crawling, half-swimming, fending off bouts of shuddering that threatened to paralyze her. Blinded by wet hair dragging across her face, she floundered to the beach. She heard Imiya’s shouts and the sound of his feet. A small strong hand grasped her elbow. She shook back her hair, thinking she had escaped when something ribbed and slimy slid along her right leg.

  She heard Imiya’s soft “uruhu’ui” fear-moan as spikes bit her knee. Panic exploded in her gut. She jerked her leg frantically, oblivious to the pain lancing through her knee. The pincers fangs dove deeper. The tentacle began to retract, pulling her with it.

  “Imiyaf she howled, feeling the boy’s fingers slip away.

  She pulled the dart-pistol from her thigh pocket and emptied it at close range into the tentacle. She clawed at the pincers leathery skin with her nails, kicked with her free leg. When that didn’t work, she coiled like an angry cat and bit as hard as she could on a fold of flesh, making yellow serum stream down to mix with her blood in runnels of orange.

  Something looming overhead made her duck instinctively. A stone crashed down on the neck of the pincer, making it jerk open. Imiya’s hand heaved the stone up, brought it down again, splitting half of the pincer lengthwise and driving its own spikes into itself.

  When the remaining spikes pulled out of Kesbe’s knee, she shrieked aloud. Nausea curdled in her stomach while black blotches passed across her vision. She let her head droop, thinking if she were just able to rest a moment, she could summon the will to move.

  From far away she heard Imiya’s voice breaking in a shrill cry. It seemed that other voices answered, although that was ridiculous. There was no one else here. Something whistled close over her head and struck with a solid thud against bone plate. She was beyond reacting, beyond even caring, as her last scrap of consciousness fled.

  She was dreaming of the Deer Dance, of the booming drum and the heavy rhythmic stamp of the Deer-Mother. Once at age twelve, she had been costumed and taught her own child’s part of the ceremonial. It had been her grandfather’s doing, afterward there had been an argument.

  She remembered Bajeloga’s angry rasp and her father’s voice speaking not in the way of the Indian but of the white. The old man had cried, “Will you take from her another chance to know the spirit of her people? The kachina dances are gone. This is the final giving of the Deer Dance. There are too few of us left now who understand the ceremonials.” He had not waited for an answer from her parents, but had swooped upon her and borne her off in her child’s beads and buckskins.

  She had danced with the solid stamp of the women all around her. She had looked up into the heavy face of the one who danced the Deer-Mother and saw a k
ind of pride different from her mother’s, a pride she had now known in the other women of her family. She had wobbled and trembled, but she had danced. Once.

  And then the two had come back to the house in Kayenta. Kesbe, still wearing her costume, flushed with effort from the dance, sat on her grandfather’s bony knee and faced her parents who sat in kitchen chairs across the table. Her mother, Lisa, was fine-boned, her face and hands delicate. In her peasant-style blouse and full embroidered skirt, she looked more Spanish than Indian. Her father, Dennis, stood up and laid his blunt-fingered hands on his wife’s shoulders. He was a short bearish man who wore plastic frame glasses and old-style shirts with too many mechanical pencils jammed in his front pockets.

  “Kesbe had schoolwork tonight,” Lisa said. “If she wants to get into the academy on Titan, she can’t let her grades slip.”

  “This was important,” Bajeloga replied softly. “To her and to me.”

  “Why? The Deer Dance is not a kachina dance and it is Zuni, not Hopi,” Lisa retorted with a shake of her head.

  “It is all part of the same tradition. And one that should not be scorned when so little is left,” her grandfather answered.

  “Tradition.” Lisa looked away. “Sometimes I think that’s the only thing that is important to either one of you.”

  Bajeloga said nothing. Kesbe tried not to squirm on her grandfather’s knee. Lisa turned to her husband, “Dennis, can’t you ask your father not to fill Kesbe’s head with tribal nonsense. That’s all she thinks about now.”

  “That’s not true!” Kesbe burst out. “I think about being a space pilot, too!”

  “Space pilots need mathematics, science, computer programming,” Dennis said. “You’ve got to spend more time on your schoolwork.”