People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

  Kesbe eyed Sahacat. Something about the woman made her wary, although she couldn’t see what harm such an admission would bring. After all, it was true. “If my leg heals.”

  “It will. When it does, however, you should make all effort to recover the great beast in which you came and depart again. For this reason have I healed you. Heed my words. Leave the fliers of the Pai Yinaye to the Pai Yinaye.”

  With this she swept out of the room with a swish of robes like the feathers of a great raven.

  It is night, but the village is still alive with the excitement brought by the stranger. I should be sleeping with the other children and their fliers. Something troubles me. I walk the path to the house of my uncle, Nabamida, my mother’s eldest brother. He is the one who disciplines me when I am wayward and who counsels me when I feel as I do now. I bring a gift of rolled waferbread, still warm from Chamol’s pit-oven.

  Tradition does not say I have to bring such a present, but I wish to please my uncle. Since my mother and father are dead, my uncle has done more for me than tradition requires. He is a good man. I wish to please him.

  He, his wife and I eat the waferbread together by the fire. His wife has other things to do in the house. My uncle takes out a clay pipe and smokes. His face is round and friendly. He wears his hair bound back in the manner of the Blue-Green-Water Clan to which he belongs. Around his mouth and beneath his nose he has a goatee, whereas most of the Pai Yinaye men lack hair on their faces.

  The Blue-Green-Water Clan is very important, Nabamida has told me. Legends say that this clan was once a separate people before the Emergence to this Fifth World. They brought much-needed knowledge about foods that grow in the wild, things that the other clans, being farmers, had forgotten.

  My uncle waits, letting me start when I wish. He already knows the story, but he wishes to hear it again from my own tongue. I tell him. It all comes in a rush—the thunderstorm, the strange woman, the journey, the killing of the wuwuchpi. He takes his pipe from his mouth and regards me gravely. I thought she was a spirit, I say. I did what you and my teachers have said, to honor and help the spirits. Even if she was not a spirit, he replied, you have done right.

  The next step in your initiation will begin soon, my uncle says. It has been decided that you will be among the next group of the kekelt.

  My face flushes with excitement, yet my belly rolls with dread. To be kekelt! It is one step closer to becoming a man. It brings closer the time when I will lose Haewi, yet to be chosen early is an honor. I will leave behind the life of a child-warrior.

  I vow that I will take whatever trials put to me and I will learn all that I can. I would serve the spirits as a priest. Perhaps even as a Kiva Chief.

  Even as I look down my Road of Life, my thoughts turn back to Haewi. What will happen to my aronan?

  I think of my friend, Nyentiwakay, who has preceded me through the coming-of-age ritual. I ask my uncle if Nyentiwakay is now a man. No, my uncle says. There is another step to be taken first. Nyentiwakay was kekelt, the fledgling, as I will soon be. He is now lomuqualt, the brooding one. I will see him at the next festival.

  My uncle finishes his pipe. He tells me that the council meets at sunset the following day to discuss the matter of the stranger. They will want me to speak. I must go home to my pallet beside Haewi and sleep. I take leave of my uncle and go.

  In the morning after her visit from Sahacat, Kesbe woke to the sound of a guttural shout that penetrated the cliff-town of Tuwayhoima. Chamol, coming in with some cornmeal porridge, said, “That is the village crier announcing a council meeting.” Kesbe listened, but her command of the Pai Yinaye speech was so precarious that she could not understand the crier’s call.

  “The meeting will be at sunset.” Chamol helped Kesbe to sit up so she could eat.

  “Will you go?” Kesbe asked, thinking it might involve the entire community.

  “No, I am still too young. It is the older men and women who form the council.”

  Kesbe tried the porridge, found that it had strips of jerked meat mixed in with the cornmeal. Chewy, but good, she thought, deciding not to ask what sort of a creature the meat had come from. She already had a good idea.

  Chamol cocked her head to the door, as though listening. “I hear the tread of sandals. We have a visitor.” She lifted the skirts of her blanket-dress across the high threshold of the doorway and disappeared.

  “This is Nabamida of the Blue-Green-Water Clan,” she said, returning with a stocky, round-faced Pai Yinaye. “His name means Man-Who-is-Always-Glad.” Nabamida’s beaming smile was visible through his goatee, his manner expansive.

  “You have chosen well for hospitality. My niece Chamol keeps a warm hearth and bakes excellent sapiki-bread.”

  Kesbe let Chamol introduce her in the proper manner, responding with “I-am-I” when it was her turn to speak. She gave herself a little praise for remembering that amenity of Pai speech, but uncertainty crowded in again when, instead of offering a handclasp or other gesture, Nabamida bent close to her and took a strong and audible sniff. She found herself stepping back from him.

  “Uh…excuse me,” she said in English, trying to control the outrage and irritation that arose in her

  He’s smelling me like a damned dog! Is he going to shove his nose in my crotch too?

  Though the Pai could not understand her words, her voice-tone made the message clear. Nabamida stood off from her, his eyes narrowed, though not angry.

  “Have patience,” she heard Chamol say to him. “She does not know our ways.” Then Chamol laid her hand on Kesbe’s arm and took her aside, speaking seriously and patiently as she would to a young child.

  “What you did, Kesbe-Rohoni, would be considered very rude if you were Pai,” she said. “Because you are not, allowance must be made, but it would be easier for us if you would try.”

  “What…did I do, exactly?” Kesbe stammered.

  “You denied Nabamida greeting by the sense of tewalutewi. You withdrew the scent of your body from him.”

  “I was embarrassed. I thought I’d smell terrible. I haven’t had a chance to wash,” she said lamely. “And he’s a man.”

  “That a woman should not smell like a woman before a man? That is a strange thought.” Chamol cocked her head to one side, bird-like. “Tell me, then, woman-from-the-sky. Do your kind have no smell?” She paused and added, “Do you find our Pai scents unpleasant?”

  That one was hard to answer and got harder the more Kesbe thought about it. But she realized that although the odors of the Pai were strong to the point of pungency, there was nothing dirty, no fecal or urine smells that would have instantly repulsed her. “No,” she answered, feeling she had given an honest reply.

  “Then why should you fear that Nabamida will dislike you for your scent?”

  Kesbe shrugged, admitting that it was her own problem. “If he’s not offended, I can try it again,” she said, attempting not to sound too stiff.

  She found that Nabamida was willing to make allowances and restricted his olfactory inquiry to a few quick sniffs above the belt-line. Kesbe responded in kind. The gentle look in Nabami-da’s eyes and the tolerant half-smile visible through his goatee helped dispel Kesbe’s uneasiness.

  “So where do you come from, Kesbe-who-has-no-clan?” Nabamida’s eyes were kind yet piercing. “It is clear you are not of the Pai Yinaye.”

  She sighed. “It would be difficult to explain exactly. I come from a village outside the Barranca. A great distance.”

  “Beyond our Mother Canyon? But our Mother Canyon is the world. There is nothing outside.” Nabamida stroked his goatee with one finger. “Well, we will discuss it at the council meeting tonight. That is why I have come Imiya will be there to speak and of course you must be also.”

  Kesbe looked down at her bound-up knee. “Imiya’s friends can carry you,” Chamol offered.

  Somehow the idea of arriving at an important council meeting in the same way she had entered Chamois house did not appe
al to her dignity. “If I have a staff I can lean on,” she said, “I can carry myself. At least part of the way.”

  Nabamida, it turned out, was a bow-maker and skilled in working wood. With an obsidian knife, softwood poles and woven cord, he began to fashion her a pair of crutches complete with arm supports and hand-holds. He worked quickly, deftly, taking as much care with these crutches for a stranger as he would with a bow for the tribe’s best hunter. Kesbe found her respect for him increasing as she watched his craftsmanship.

  While Nabamida worked on her crutches, Kesbe used the time to learn more about the Pai and their ways. Some things she gained by questioning, others she discovered when she blundered and was corrected by gentle scolding. She found that her boundaries of personal space were much larger that those of the Pai and she had to stop herself from bristling or retreating when someone got too close.

  Chamol had also chided Kesbe when she asked to be carried to a remote part of Tuwayhoima’s cavern so that she could relieve herself privately into some convenient crevice. Instead she was told that human wastes were not to be carelessly discarded. Chamol showed her a ceramic collection vessel set into the ground in a shelter nearby. She found that the Pai version of the latrine even had its own equivalent of the flush. When the job was complete, one used a stick with a flat wooden plunger at one end and squashed the result into a patty that dried rapidly in the heat. Then ground clay was dribbled on to aid in desiccation and discourage flies. The result after several uses was an innocuous material composed of layers of clay and dried manure. This could be burned for fuel or else broken up and spread on the cornfields.

  Carrying the honey-bucket might not be too bad a job among these people, Kesbe thought. Though she had found the squatting position awkward especially with her bad knee, it definitely reduced the need for tissue.

  Nabamida had her crutches done by late afternoon. When Kesbe tried them, she found she had regained a reasonable degree of mobility.

  Toward sunset, she set off, escorted by Nabamida and Chamol, to the council meeting. It was held in a large stone chamber at the lowest level of the village. The floor was partially sunk below ground level in the manner of a kiva, but the entrance was to the side instead of by trapdoor from above. The steps were so steep as to be almost a ladder and Kesbe had difficulty negotiating them with her bad knee and her crutches.

  Despite her injury, she thought she might be one of the less infirm attendees, since this was a gathering of the village elders. However even the most ancient of crones and patriarchs, despite their wrinkles, were surprisingly spry on the steps.

  Kesbe was directed to sit to the side, near a blanket-wrapped Imiya, who was with the other child-warriors. Despite the flow and bustle of people into the chamber, the boy had an abstracted look on his face, as if turned far inward. She took her place quietly without speaking to him. Chamol, after seeing Kesbe safely to her place, left her with Imiya.

  She had dreaded the moment when all the heads would turn and the stares would fasten upon her as the alien curiosity to be discussed in this gathering. Instead, the elders exchanged quiet talk and lit their pipes. No one appeared to be leading the group. All sat silently wrapped in blankets while a haze of smoke gathered overhead.

  Kesbe was surprised when she picked out the taut-skinned face of the healer Sahacat from among the lean leathery visages. Perhaps it was not age alone that entitled one to a seat at the council.

  A tremulous voice rose from the group. “As our smoke gathers above us to become one, so must we. We have come with many minds, yet we must move together.” The speaker was the oldest one of all, with papery skin so fragile it seemed it would tear over the prominent bones. Kesbe could not make out the sex of the speaker, either by appearance or by voice.

  “It is the Sun Chief,” said Nabamida, as if sensing Kesbe’s curiosity. Something made her ask if the speaker was male or female.

  “We do not ask that,” answered Imiya’s uncle in soft rebuke. “One who becomes Sun Chief has gone beyond being either man or woman into becoming spirit.”

  Next to her, Imiya was getting up, having been bidden to speak. He told first of the wuwuchpi’s attack and the reprisal that led to its death. He spoke not only of his own part in the incident, but of the other child-warriors’ and Kesbe’s.

  “It is good that the son of a rain-priest has lived to speak this story,” said one elder, when the boy was finished.

  “It is good that Haewi Namij was saved from death. Fliers are of great value to our village,” an old woman added.

  “It is good that the meat of the wuwuchpi is hanging on our drying poles and will feed us this winter,” said another.

  “Yet consider this,” said the Sun Chief, taking a pipe from a wizened mouth. “The killers of Hotopa Wuwuchpi did not ask permission. A life was taken in anger and fear. A balance has been upset. The son of a rain-priest should understand that.”

  Nabamida spoke for the first time. “It is known to all here that one life must give way for another. That is the world’s way. The boy Imiya has told you that prayer-sticks were laid on the body after death and the proper words were said. Do these acts not restore balance?”

  The Sun Chief’s benign yet powerful gaze swept across the row of child-warriors. “Did all whose weapons touched the flesh of wuwuchpi lay pahos and pray for the slain?”

  The young voices replied in chorus. Yes, those things had been done.

  “Were the pahos well made? Were they left for a full night before any meat was taken?” asked the Sun Chief.

  Imiya and the other child-warriors answered that they were. Nabamida faced his nephew. “Do you believe that the spirit of Hotopa Wuwuchpi is now satisfied?”

  Imiya thought for a while. “There may be a little anger left. We will make sacrifice to the spirit of Hotopa Wuwuchpi.”

  “And the stranger, she-who-has-no-clan?” The husky voice of Sahacat was heard for the first time in the gathering.

  “She is not of the Pai Yinaye,” said Nabamida. “She is not bound by our ways.”

  “By coming among us, she has influenced us,” Sahacat answered. “She is bound by that.”

  “Had she not come, Imiya and Haewi would have been food for the wuwuchpi,” countered Nabamida.

  “The good resulting from her actions I do not dispute. I ask only if she understands the true meaning of what she did.”

  Imiya glanced sideways at Kesbe. She knew she had been the last to place her prayer-feather and had come close to refusing. She had done it without belief, almost with condescension. Was this what the boy would say?

  Imiya spoke slowly. “She made a paho and placed it beside mine. She chanted the right words and she finished the ceremony even though she was wounded.”

  The Sun Chief fixed her with eyes made colorless by age. “You made a paho and prayed for the spirit of the slain?”

  “I did what Imiya asked of me. I thought it was important to him,” she answered honestly. Murmurs went around the room, even though the stranger was not of the Pai Yinaye, she had prayed, made a paho.

  “Have you done what you thought was right?”

  Kesbe met the ancient eyes with a steady stare of her own. “Yes.”

  “Then the spirit of Hotopa Wuwuchpi will be satisfied.” The Sun Chief settled back. “And we of the Pai Yinaye are grateful that you acted to save the life of Imiya and Haewi Namij” A smile broke the sternness of that infinitely wrinkled face that was neither man nor woman. “To the leader of the Aronan Kiva, I ask, shall we make celebration in honor of the death of Hotopa Wuwuchpi and the life of the hunters?”

  A craggy man who looked to be in his late sixties arose, his gray-streaked hair flowing loose across his shoulders. “To the Sun Chief, I answer that the Aronan Kiva will prepare the celebration.”

  “To me it seems that the Pai Yinaye have been given a gift by this stranger,” said Nabamida. “Should we not offer one in return?”

  Again the Sun Chief’s gaze went to Kesbe. “I se
e in your eyes that we can give you something.”

  An aronan. The thought nearly shaped itself into words on her lips. She held the desire back, hoping the Sun Chief had not seen it. Instead she answered, “What I need, honored one, is the help of your people. My own flier sits on a distant clifftop. It was hurt in the thunderstorm that brought me here. I need your help to heal it and make it fly again.”

  The elders murmured and gestured among themselves until they reached agreement. All of the village youths would be sent, along with ropes, tools or anything else required to rescue Gooney Berg. First, however, the tribe would perform a ceremonial so that Hotopa Wuwuchpi’s spirit might truly be put to rest.

  After another round of pipe-smoking, the meeting concluded. People filed out, pausing to glance and nod at Kesbe as if she were not a stranger but a friend. Sahacat halted beside her long enough to say, “Keep to your choice. It is well-made,” before she disappeared into the night. Kesbe was too weary to answer or to object when Imiya and several of the other child-warriors lifted her and carried her back to Chamois house.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Kesbe dozed, lulled into continued sleep by the dark of the windowless adobe room. But at last the variety of smells coming through the doorway teased her awake. There was the ubiquitous scent of baking sapiki waferbread, but other aromas blended in reminded her that this was a feast day. Once she had recovered her crutches, maneuvered herself upright and run one hand through her tangled hair, she hobbled across the clay floor, looking for Chamol. The smells led her outside.

  Bright sun dazzled her after the dimness inside the pueblo. She had to squint tightly to see Chamol stooping beside a domed earth oven Nabamida stood by. Both offered her greeting. She answered, not letting herself be visibly startled by the grimace that appeared briefly on both faces. The tewalutewi expression she thought to herself, wondering what Chamol had meant by “the knowing sense.”

  She leaned on her crutches, letting the sunlight bathe her. The wounded knee was stiff and still throbbed, but the pain was no longer acute. From where she stood outside Chamois doorway, she could see activity throughout the Pai Yinaye village. Women hurried toward the mesa trail, bearing steaming bowls on their heads. Masked dancers trotted past her in a rustle of feather-scale cloaks and ankle rattles. The sound of tools rang in the plaza, where workers were building the pieces of a great pavilion to be assembled on the mesa for the celebration.