People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

She took a sorrowful glance back at Bajeloga’s set face, slowly got down from his knee, whispering that she was sorry.

  “She is the only one who is willing to learn what I have to teach,” Bajeloga said pointedly. Dennis hung his head guiltily and looked away. It was not that her father wanted to ignore the tribal ways, it was that earning a living as a power transmission engineer took all his time and energy. He had done well in the white man’s world, but it had cost him his own.

  Kesbe saw a strained guilty look come across her mother’s face as Lisa saw the hurt in both her own eyes and Bajeloga’s.

  “All I’m trying to do is keep Kesbe from having unrealistic views about the past,” Lisa Temiya said, leaning on the table.

  “You deny her the ways of our people,” Bajeloga replied bluntly. “You have not prepared her for initiation into the women’s societies, nor have you taught her how to weave her hair into the squash-blossom of the maiden.”

  “Because she is a twelve-year-old girl with her whole future ahead of her, not a squash blossom waiting to be picked,” Lisa retorted. “Bajeloga, you’re not being fair to me. I’ve done everything I can to make her aware of her heritage. I’ve shared my research with her.”

  “You speak of the things of our people as dead, gone,” Bajeloga said stubbornly, folding his wiry brown arms. “Something to be studied, not lived. You tell her of the old ways, you tell her how pots were made, how corn was ground, yet there is no clay or cornmeal on your hands.”

  “My mother’s hands knew clay and cornmeal,” Lisa said, softly, but with intensity. “She also knew booze, beatings and a husband who shot himself after my sister was born. You lived through that time. You saw what happened when things broke down and we lost the gains we had made. You are not telling her the truth either, Bajeloga. The ugly things. The way our people rejected everything the outside had brought us. The way women were once again tethered to the metate and forbidden to dream. I swore that would never be my life.”

  “Then you do not understand the Hopi way,” said the old man sadly. He held up one hand as Lisa, her fine features flushed, started to come around the table. “Daughter, I understand your pain and the pain of your mother before you. I do not deny it nor do I revile your efforts to shield Kesbe from it.”

  “Then why do you paint the old life in such glowing colors that you make her wish she could relive those times? So much is open to her that would never have been possible even twenty-five years ago. I don’t want her to throw it all away for the sake of some damned…fantasy.”

  “Lisa,” Dennis said softly, putting his hands on either side of his wife’s neck. It seemed to calm her. “Perhaps we should tell Bajeloga about the move we’re planning.”

  “Move?” Kesbe asked. “Where?”

  “Off-earth,” Dennis said. “I’m getting an opportunity to move into terraforming. They need good power systems people as part of a team to terraform a new world called Chinga. It’s a good opportunity for me, Dad,” he said, turning to Bajeloga. “You know the superconductivity grid business is old technology. Terraforming would be a big step up, and we’re going to need the cash to send Kesbe to the training center on Titan, if that’s where she wants to go.”

  “And what will you do, Lisa?” Bajeloga’s gaze turned to Kesbe’s mother.

  “I’ll be part of the same team, documenting the settling and development of Chinga. It will be something new for me, but I think I need a change from what I’ve been doing. You can only get so much out of the Anasazi sites and they’ve been gone over endlessly. These will be new settlers, facing the challenge of a new world. And I’ll be there to see it happen.” Her eyes were bright with excitement.

  “And Kesbe?” the old man demanded.

  Dennis took a chair opposite Bajeloga. “We won’t be going right away. The project will take two years or so to staff up. By then she’ll decide if she wants to join us on Chinga or stay here on Earth and prepare for her college and academy training.”

  “Two years,” the old man muttered. “Two years to teach her those things that are so precious to me, those things that might be lost if she does not learn them now.”

  “Bajeloga, history is one thing,” said Lisa, with a sharp look at Kesbe, “but don’t mix it up with fantasy.”

  “She is a level-headed child. She knows what is fantasy and what is not,” said the old man. “Daughter, let me tell you once again about the taking of the eaglet.”

  Lisa shook her head. “I know about that ritual. I have papers describing the social significance, the theology underlying it, how the ceremony and ritual varied in the last century, the names of the priests, words spoken, everything.”

  Bajeloga chuckled. “Ah. Have you ever dangled by one leg at the end of a rope, reaching for the young eagle? Felt the rope slipping and burning your ankle? The hissing and flapping of the young eaglet and the feel of its down as you gather it up against your breast, feeling its heart beat as fast as your own? I was fourteen when I dangled over those cliffs, seeking the eaglet.”

  “Didn’t you think that was a cruel thing to do?” Lisa demanded. “To steal an eagle from the few nests that were left and then tie it to the top of a pueblo only to wring its neck for the sake of some empty ceremony?” She took a breath. “There are no more eagles left now. The white man’s hunting may have killed many and poisoned more, but your ritual of stealing their young could not have helped.”

  Bajeloga said patiently, “That is why I have reminded you of the eagle hunt. To you, it is an ugly thing, like the image of a woman grinding corn until her fingers bleed or walking behind her husband. But you must look and see that these things had a reason for being.”

  Lisa tossed her head. “They had a reason for being, but they were cruel. What I say probably sounds like it comes right from a pahana, but one thing the whites are right about: anyone should have the right to be what they want, no matter what sex they are. Outside these pueblos, no one even thinks about it any more. And here we are, still struggling. Isn’t it time we grew up along with the rest of the world?”

  Bajeloga looked at her. “I cannot say you are wrong. Nor can I saw you are right. What was done to women or eagles was done with the beauty of the whole within the heart. The old life was one that gave great sorrow as well as great joy, yet it gave us things we have little of now.” He paused and then his voice trembled a little. “Let me at least give Kesbe those things.”

  The conversation had ended there, for it was late and Kesbe had to get up the next morning for school. But even the excitement and uncertainty of the changes she knew were coming could not drive the memory of the Deer Dance from her mind. That experience was one of those things Bajeloga had struggled to give her.

  Now, in her dreams she danced again though her right knee throbbed at every step. It would be a disgrace to stop, even to falter, and so she danced on with the pain and the chanting around her, though someone kept touching her and pulling at her as if to take her from the dance. No, she could not sit down yet. Though her knee begged her to, she had to finish…had to finish.

  The chanting faded. The stamping faded. The beat of the drum was the boom of the river, but the shaking went on. “Wake!” Imiya’s voice hissed in her ear. She didn’t want to wake. Drunkenly she slapped his hand away, but before she rolled back into sleep, she remembered what had happened before her dream of the Deer Dance. She struggled to sit up. “The wuwuchpi.” she gasped.

  “Dead. My friends have finished killing it.”

  “Haewi Namij?”

  “Wind Laughing dries its wings in the sun. Come, you are needed.” Imiya tugged at her arm

  She tried to get up, felt a fierce twinge from her knee “I can’t, Imiya,” she said in his tongue. “Why were you hunting such a creature?”

  “I was hunting other prey when it decided to hunt me,” the boy answered. He pulled at her again. “Come.”

  “What do you need me for, now that the thing is dead? Let me rest.”

  “Hotop
a Wuwuchpi lies on the river beach, but its spirit still wanders. You and I, we have the duty,” the boy said. His head turned sharply. “Hai, my friends come. They carry you.”

  Before Kesbe could object, a group of slender figures ran up from the beach where the wuwuchpi now lay. They all kneeled about her, staring at her with solemn faces. Young faces. There was not an adult among them. Surprised, Kesbe turned to Imiya. “Where are the people who finished killing the wuwuchpi?”

  “They are here.”

  She scanned the circle of kneeling children. Most were barely Imiya’s age. She saw dark-skinned girls and boys, all bearing lances or bows and arrows. But they are just children…Kesbe almost said the words before she saw the stains of yellow on their weapons.

  Many bared their front teeth in the strange grimace Imiya had used. They lapped air as if tasting it and panted with flaring nostrils. The expression fascinated and revolted Kesbe. There was something essentially animal in it, yet she could not decide what.

  She let Imiya speak her name for her, as was proper. “This is the woman who struck the wuwuchpi and pulled it away from Haewi Namij,” he told the group. “She came on the wind, like a kachina, in a great aronan called Gooni Bug. Like the rohoni, the three-legged coyote-animal of our legend, she has no mate and sometimes does mad things, but her bravery saved Wind Laughing.”

  “Apinu,” Kesbe answered in the formal manner, too taken aback to bristle at Imiya’s description of her. Two of the taller youngsters, a girl and boy, came forward to lift her. It was then she noticed that her injured knee had been bound up with a soft cloth soaked in herbs.

  “No, I can get up by myself,” Kesbe protested as hands reached for her. The throbbing in her knee fueled an upsurge of resentment. Hadn’t she done enough already? It seemed close to cruelty to force someone still shaky from pain and shock into what seemed a totally unnecessary effort.

  The child-warriors ignored her objections, offering only physical support as she hopped awkwardly along the beach, where scattered rocks threatened to twist the ankle of her good leg. Using a borrowed lance as a crutch, she limped toward the wuwuchpi’s carcass, holding her nose.

  Imiya met her, holding two wooden wands and a pair of aronan feather-scales. “Make the paho, the prayer stick, as I do,” he said and crouched on the ground. Kesbe let herself down awkwardly into a sitting position. She was already dizzy and the smell of the carcass when she took her hands from her nose made her wonder if she was going to lose her lunch right there and then.

  Deftly Imiya joined his feather-scale to the wand with cotton twine. Kesbe’s fingers were clumsy, but under the eyes of the watching child-warriors, she made the best effort she could. Her prayer-stick completed, she lurched up on one foot again, trying to ignore the cold sweat on her forehead and the seething resentment in her stomach. What was this, some sort of ritualistic hazing? Or test of endurance?

  Approaching the wuwuchpi, Imiya climbed barefoot up the scabrous arch of the largest segment, prayer-stick in hand. “Hotopa Wuwuchpi, we did not ask permission of your spirit before we killed you. I who threw the spear, I who crushed your pincer with a rock, lay this paho upon you so that your spirit is not angered.”

  He placed the prayer-stick gently, almost sorrowfully, then backed down, slipping a little in the slimy residue still clinging to the carapace. Hands pushed Kesbe forward. “Oh no,” she protested in English. “You’re not getting me up on that thing. Imiya!”

  “It is needed,” the boy said sharply in his tongue. The hell it is, Kesbe thought and let herself collapse. The child-warriors left her alone to battle with her pain and nausea. They formed a semicircle about the monstrous carcass. More prayer-feathers were laid and chants sung.

  Kesbe became aware of the paho still clutched in her damp palm. In her world, it had no meaning. In her world, things such as this creature had no spirit or propitiate. She knew better than to believe in prayer and ritual.

  Her memories of the Deer Dance returned. She had performed in that ceremonial. Part of her clung fiercely to that knowledge. Out of the fog of pain and resentment, the face of her grandfather came to her and with it came memories. His eyes watching her in the Deer Dance. His fingers, peeling back the pinyon cone to reveal the seeds inside. His voice, telling her the old stories of animals and spirits while she listened, wishing she could believe, but knowing she was already too world-wise. The tribal legends were not true, not in her world.

  You are no longer in your world, Bajeloga’s voice rasped at the center of her mind.

  Again, she wished Morning Bird Man were there, to speak to the child-warriors, to make the prayer-stick, to understand…But he was dead, the only remains of him the memories she bore. She must be the one to push aside her pain and her disbelief, to act as he would.

  She lifted her head. The high children’s voices had fallen silent. The last prayer-feather fluttered on the carcass of the wuwuchpi. No. The last paho was here, still clutched in her hand. Holding it, she struggled to get to her feet. She felt a small strong hand at her elbow. Imiya. “Hotopa Wuwuchpi,” she said, holding out the paho.

  In the semicircle before the wuwuchpi the child-warriors turned their heads to her.

  “Come to the head,” the youth offered. “It is easier to reach.” Kesbe hobbled to the creature’s head with its grotesque mouth-parts and five sagging eye-mushrooms. Overcoming the pain and sickness that weighted her tongue, she said, “I who hooked you with a barb and dragged you from the river lay this pabo upon you so your spirit is not angered.”

  “Now turn your head and spit over your shoulder to cleanse yourself of evils,” said Imiya, demonstrating. She did.

  “Hai, it is done. Now we leave Hotopa Wuwuchpi to the spirits for the night before we take its meat.” The boy licked his lips. “Dried, it will make good jerky.”

  Kesbe’s uncertain stomach gave another lurch at the thought of that. “I have to sit down,” she said dizzily. The children caught her and carried her to a resting place that was, thankfully, upwind of the carcass.

  After a while, she felt better. She raised herself on her elbows to find the boy crouching beside her. “Imiya, why did you say we hadn’t asked permission to slay the creature? It was trying to kill you and Haewi Namij.”

  Imiya shook his head. “It does not matter. The taking of life is something that disturbs the balance of things. Even when it must be done, the one who slays has responsibilities to the one who is slain. Were you not taught that, Kesbe-Rohoni?”

  “Well, yes, I was, though perhaps in a different way,” Kesbe answered softly. Her abused knee gave another sharp stab, making her gasp and flinch. “Imiya…how far is your village?”

  “We are close,” he answered. “I will take you there now. You are too badly hurt to keep vigil with us on the riverbank.” He leaped up, calling to the girl who had helped carry Kesbe. “Pesquit, bring your aronan! We make a sling. Hurry before night falls.”

  With his hand across his breast, he groped in a drawstring pocket of his shoulder-cape and brought out a piece of fleshy cactus. “Hunters carry this against the pain of wounds. Chew,” he said, putting it to Kesbe’s lips. It had a bitter alkaloid taste and a numbing effect on her tongue. In a few moments the shooting fire in her knee distanced itself from her awareness. The only side effect seemed to be a slight rippling in her vision and a floating feeling. Even so, the cactus seemed to be a powerful drug for a youth to be carrying.

  She watched as the child warriors spread out a close-meshed net and wove the slender fronds of waterplant into it to make a comfortable hammock. At her request, they added several safety straps and lashed her securely into the sling before they harnessed it to the aronan pair. It was rigged fore-to-aft between the creatures with Pesquit’s mount in front and Haewi behind. Kesbe lay facing backward, her knee immobilized by a splint.

  With both riders aboard and Kesbe secure in the sling between the two aronans, the caravan rose off the beach. Below, she could see the other Pai Yinaye child-
warriors kneeling before the slain wuwuchpi. It was as though they marked the passing of some great and worthy opponent rather than the extermination of a monster.

  She lay back and watched the walls of the Hellshatter’s gorge drop past her as the aronans made a steady vertical ascent. Then they cleared the lip of the canyon and flew over twisted ridges, spires and strange wind-sculpted shapes until one mesa appeared and drew close. The flight seemed more than ever like a dream to her, for she was so enraptured by the formations passing beneath, beside and even above her that she had no fear of falling. The aronans glided beneath a natural sandstone bridge that seemed to sweep from one side of the horizon to the other.

  And then they were above the Pai Yinaye Mesa itself, spiraling down to a dusty plateau dotted with stands of pines resembling pinyon. Kesbe craned her head over the edge of her sling, ignoring the wind rushing in her face for a sight of the pueblo. Apart from trees, scrub and patch cornfields, the mesa’s crown appeared bare.

  Yet the girl Pesquit continued to lead the way down until they were skimming shocks and tassels of corn. Slowing to a hover, the fliers settled so carefully, Kesbe could not tell exactly when they touched down. It made her realize how precise a flier an aronan could be in the hands of a skillful rider.

  They landed near the edge of the mesa without any sign or sight of the village. Imiya slid off and went running away down a trail that seemed to vanish over the lip of the mesa. While he was absent, Kesbe asked Pesquit where they were.

  “This is Tuwayhoima, The-Place-Where-Winged-Ones-Emerge,” the girl answered. She did not say anything more until Imiya came back.

  He returned with a party of people, mostly women, who loosed Kesbe’s sling from the aronans and carried her down the trail. The way seemed very steep and narrow, more appropriate as a goat-path than as main access to a village. It wound in sharp switchbacks and around outcroppings until Kesbe saw below her, as if carved in the sandstone cliff, a great cave. It took another blink for her to be sure she saw the pueblo, nestled as it was against the rear wall of the cavern.