You are free to name yourself
“But I thought you would give it to me. That’s what they said.”
Amotkan wants people to listen to themselves. You are the first.
Kai El said, “But… but… ”
This was too strange. For a moment he thought he was dreaming, instead of talking to an actual spirit. And then fear rushed in.
“You mean I won’t have a guardian spirit?”
No. I mean that you may choose your own name.
He had no idea what to say. Before he could think of anything, the Hawk Spirit disappeared between eyeblinks.
The people of Teahra Village cheered when Kai El returned. They gave him special things to eat, knowing how hungry he’d be after four days. His friends had many questions, though no one asked who his guardian spirit was, or what his new name would be. They would have to wait to find out, until the Naming Ceremony at the Autumn Feast, three moons away. Even parents had to wait. Only the Moonkeeper would know between now and then.
That night, Ashan sent away Tor from the Moonkeeper’s hut so she could talk to their son. She and Kai El settled together.
“Tell me all about it.”
She listened to a story much like others. The same story was different, though, coming from her own son. She heard the sounds, felt the fear, tasted the hunger, knew the courage.
“I opened my eyes,” Kai El said. “There was a red-tail hawk on my knee.”
“Hawk Spirit!” She hugged him. “I knew you were special! Will you be called Skaina, then, or did he give you some other name?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m the Moonkeeper. You are supposed to tell me.”
Kai El cleared his throat.
“Skaina said that I am to choose my own name.”
“What?”
He nodded.
“No! You must be mistaken!”
“That’s what he said. I am the first.”
“I’m not in the mood for your tricks. What name did Skaina give you?”
Kai El heaved a big sigh.
“I told you what he said, Mother. On the way back I decided—since it is up to me—that I’m not going to have a new name. I will still be Kai El, Sun River. I like my name.”
The child wasn’t playing. He believed himself. Her mind raced. What was she going to do about this?
Tor burst through the doorskin. Mother and son jumped to their feet. She instinctively put her arms around the boy.
“How dare you listen to the Moonkeeper speaking to one of the tribe!” she said.
“He’s my son! Of course I listened, you fool of a woman! What are you talking about, boy?”
Kai El was shaking. Ashan thought he couldn’t talk, but he did.
“Father, I found my guardian spirit.”
“So I heard. What name did he give you?”
“Skaina said Amotkan said that we—”
“The name. Just tell me the name.”
Ashan said, “Give him time, and maybe he will. Go on, son. What did Amotkan say?”
“That people should… I don’t know… stop asking spirits for everything… they are tired of doing everything for people… something like that. All I know for sure is that Skaina said I am the first. I asked and asked, and he would not tell me a name. So I decided to stay Kai El.”
Shaking his head violently, Tor said, “Well—I don’t—it just can’t—that’s not the way it’s going to be. Not my son.”
“Father, all my life, you talked of guardian spirits, and said we should trust them to guide us. I’m not going to say no to the first thing Skaina asks me to do.”
“You made a mistake. Or maybe something worse. I don’t think you met your guardian spirit. Maybe you just hid in the cliffs like that boy Nubish.”
Kai El jerked away from Ashan. He strode to his father, fists clenched at his sides, and shouted up at him.
“How can you say that? You know Tor’s son is no coward!”
The rage went out of Tor. He sat down, head in his hands.
“A man’s name… next to his family, it’s the most important thing he has. Our son doesn’t want a name. What are we going to do, Ashan?”
Kai El said, “There is nothing you can do, Father.”
Over the next three moons, his parents tried to change his mind. They suggested names, made him think about them. Especially his father, who thought a name meant much more than Kai El did. But he would not be swayed and could not be forced.
At the Naming Ceremony, he stood with other little ones before the gathered tribes. The Moonkeeper commanded him to step forward.
“I am Kai El, Sun River. Skaina, the Hawk Spirit, is my guardian. My new name is my old name because my guardian said it should be.”
Shahala people were shocked, offended, angry.
Ashan defended Kai El, speaking as the Moonkeeper.
“I told you things are different now. Why do you keep being surprised? What happens between a person and his guardian spirit is not the concern of other people. This boy is Kai El, and I suggest you call him that.”
So they did, and a few other things.
CHAPTER 24
OONE MORNING IN KAI EL’S TENTH SUMMER, HE WOKE up from a dream—such a crazy dream he couldn’t tell anyone.
It was about Tsilka’s daughters. He dreamed he had seen them naked, and they had boy-parts growing between their legs. The dream bothered him all day. Though most Tlikit little ones went around naked, Kai El realized he’d never seen those two, not that he could remember. He tried to tell himself it was crazy; it couldn’t be true. But… being daughters of a god, the twins were different from other little ones. Could they be different in that way? Part-girl and part-boy? He had to find out.
Kai El thought he was lucky when the twins left the village walking to the Great River. If they were going to bathe, he could see them naked—and prove the dream right or wrong. Of course he could be killed if women caught him peeking—but he had to know.
He followed them. But the twins didn’t go to the women’s washing place. They turned away from the trail and joined some other girls in splashing, laughing play. Kai El thought of going back to the village, but now that he was this close to water on a hot day, he might as well cool off. And maybe he’d see something yet.
Hidden by tall bushes, he stood up to his thighs in cold swirling water, leaning forward on his spear, peeking through a bare spot. The girls splashed and pushed each other, shrieking with laughter.
He wondered what was so funny about getting shoved under water? Girls, he thought, shaking his head. They’re so silly,
Something large brushed against his leg. He looked down and saw a fish the size of a grown man! A sturgeon! The biggest he’d ever seen!
His spear came up without being told, thrust out, and stabbed the monster, in one side of the flesh behind its head, and out the other.
Perfect!
With a hand on each side of the head, Kai El gripped the spear—huge—Amotkan, it’s huge!—throwing his weight back to haul it up on the rocks.
The fish leapt straight up out of the water, shook in the air, slammed back down. Kai El hung on in shock. He and the fish headed for the bottom. He couldn’t see anything in the blood-colored bubbles rushing by, except that it was getting darker fast. The thing-that-should-have-been-dead thrashed, bucked, and rolled, but Kai El was not about to let go.
What a warrior I’ll be! They’ll talk around fires forever of the boy who caught a fish longer than a man when he was only ten summers!
Kai El had never held his breath this long.
I have to have this fish. I will not let it go.
With incredible strength, it swam up the river.
The current helped one of its own, trying to sweep the boy off. Rocks scraped him. But he would not let go. The fish plunged in a twisting spiral. Kai El thought he saw many red eyes on the bottom of the river… he didn’t know what kind of eyes, just eyes.
Out of air, he th
ought, Maybe I will let go.
That was the moment when the mighty sturgeon died. It went limp, turned belly-up, flipped Kai El under, and floated downriver, grinding him on the bottom. Kai El kicked with all his strength, rose through lighter-colored water, and burst through the water’s skin into air. Gasping, coughing and spitting, the current swept him downriver, slammed him into a mass of boulders and wedged him. Water roiled and splashed. Somehow, he still had the speared sturgeon.
He heard yelling. Hauled upriver, then down, he had ended up almost where he started, only farther out in the water than anyone had ever been.
“Kai El! Kai El!”
The riverbank crawled with blurred people, screaming, crying, shouting his name.
He heard his father’s voice. “Stay there! We’ll come out to you!”
Men waded in up to their chests. Tor and a few others hurled themselves out to farther rocks, but they couldn’t reach Kai El. Men could swim if they had to, but not here: The current was too swift; it would sweep them away.
“Stay there!” his father yelled again—as if Kai El could go anywhere. “We’ll get a rope to you!”
He saw his mother pacing back and forth.
“Hurry, Tor! Hurry!”
Kai El yelled. “I’m fine! I could stay here all day!” But still she paced.
They tied strong grass fiber ropes together to make one long one, and attached a rock to its end for weight. After several throws, it caught in the boulders. Kai El took the rock off and lashed his spear and his fish to the end of the rope.
“Let the fish go,” Tor yelled.
Kai El laughed. “You won’t say that when you see it. I’m not letting it go now.”
Holding on to his treasure, Kai El was dragged through water one more time.
Oh, the ground felt good.
People were amazed by his bravery and strength. No boy had ever tried to catch a sturgeon. This was the largest one ever caught, heavier than three boys. What Kai El had done seemed impossible.
Women carried the slippery monster back to the village, cut it into steaks, and cooked them over hot fires. Everyone ate at the same time.
People went on and on with their praise.
“Best sturgeon I ever tasted, Kai El.”
“Probably because it was so old.”
“It must have been smart and strong to grow so old.”
“Believe me,” Kai El said. “It was all of that, and more.”
Girls fussed over his wounds. It was a strange feeling. He didn’t know what to make of it, but he thought he liked it. It made him feel proud to say, “It doesn’t hurt.” Although it did—every single part of him felt what he’d been through.
That night the warriors around the village fire asked him to tell his story again. He didn’t just tell them, he showed them, becoming both the sturgeon—twisting, turning, thrashing—and himself—scraped on rocks, dragged on the bottom, holding his breath, hanging on.
Kai El had watched warriors tell stories of their great hunts. Now he knew why they loved it so much.
Later Tor took him aside.
“You know, son, when you came back from your power quest, and I thought… I said… well, I was… ”
His father made a gulping sound. He just couldn’t say he was wrong.
Kai El said, “I know. You were angry. You didn’t understand. I forgave you a long time ago.”
“I’m proud of you, son. What you did today was brave. What you did three summers ago was maybe even braver.”
“It was,” Kai El agreed.
CHAPTER 25
LITTLE ONES OF DIFFERENT AGES SAT ON A KNOLL above Teahra Village, listening to Kai El’s story again. He couldn’t tell it enough for some of them, especially boys. He spoke in the new way: mostly Shahala words, some Tlikit, a few from the Firekeepers. The mixed language of Teahra had come about naturally, though there were people in both tribes who refused to use any words but their own.
“And then,” Kai El said, “they told me to let go of it! After all I’d gone through for that fish!”
Tsagaia—a Tlikit girl of seven summers, Tsilka’s daughter, Tsurya’s twin sister—listened with a drifting mind. She wondered if people would get tired of hearing the story of Kai El’s big fish before he got tired of telling it.
A girl named Nissa said, “Tsagaia, tell your part again.”
Startled, she jumped.
Others had been at the Great River that day, but Tsagaia was the only one who’d been looking when the sturgeon flew out of the water like a bird. The shy twin, she’d talked more in the last few days than she had in her whole life. She was beginning to enjoy it.
“My sister shoved me under, and I came back up. Just as I went to push her, I saw a monster leap high in the air, with Kai El hanging on. It seemed like they were up there for a day, but they hit the water before anyone could turn their head to see what I was screaming about. I ran for the village, yelling all the way, ’A fish got Kai El! A fish got Kai El!’ People heard me and came running. They almost knocked me down.”
Her sister, Tsurya, said, “When they got there we pointed to the water. It was still red. We said, ’A monster fish! It got Kai El! Save him!”’
Kai El said, “Quiet, Tsurya. You didn’t see anything. Tsa-gaia, what did I look like, hanging on up there in the air?”
She could tell that he wanted to hear handsome or strong.
“You looked like a boy who was going to die,” she said.
Everyone laughed.
“Kai El is too brave to die,” said a boy named Bot, who was seven summers, and about to go on his power quest. “Kai El is so brave that he told his guardian spirit that he was going to keep his old name.”
“I am brave, but that’s not what happened. My guardian spirit told me he wanted me to choose my own name.”
“What’s a power quest like?” Bot asked.
“You’ll see,” Kai El said, “if you don’t get lost, and wolves don’t eat you.”
“Kai El!” Bot’s older brother, Elkin, shouted.
“Just joking. It’s nothing to be scared of, Bot.”
Tsagaia couldn’t think of anything scarier than being all alone in the wilderness for days and nights. Even the Breath Ogre who sometimes choked her couldn’t be scarier than that. She liked Shahala people and their ways, but they could keep their power quests.
“You twins,” Kai El said. “You’re seven summers, aren’t you? Are you going on a power quest?”
“We are seven summers,” Tsurya said. “But Tlikit people don’t make their little ones do stupid things.”
Nissa said, “How boring to keep the same name all your life. I loved it when I got my new name… Sunrise with No Clouds.”
“Sure you did,” Tsurya said. “Your old name was ugly.”
Tsagaia wished her twin would learn to be nicer.
“It was not ugly!” Nissa said with her nose in the air. “Tsurya—now there’s an ugly name.”
Elkin said, “They’re just afraid to go out and meet their guardian spirits.”
Tsurya stood, hands on hips, and glared at him.
“I’m not afraid of anything. I just think it’s a stupid thing to do. Come, Tsagaia. Let’s go.”
“You go.”
Maybe the others would want to know what the fish looked like. They were interested in what Tsagaia had to say, and it felt good. So what if they thought she was afraid?
Her twin stamped off, with boys yelling after her.
“Water bug! Water bug!”
The taunts made Tsurya want to run, but that would show weakness. Shoulders straight, head up, she strode away. When the dung piles were out of sight, she ran for the place where she hid when things made her so mad!
No one knew about her secret place—not even her twin. The river trail left the water’s edge to skirt a rock outcrop. A path led down to a brush-sheltered finger of land called the women’s washing place. Tsurya crawled along an animal track that left the path. Her sec
ret place was just a hole in thick brush at the edge of the river. Boulders forced the current around a little pool.
Lying on a low rock, staring at the water, thinking about her twin sister—who stayed with them instead of coming with her—Tsurya grumbled to no one.
“Always the lucky one, from birth. Our mother gave her the name Tsagaia—Big Tan Cat. People love cougars. I get named Tsurya—Graceful Water Skimmer. A fancy name for a bug! I hate it!”
Tsurya watched water skimmers stride across the pool, from one side to the other and back again. Spring through autumn, they would stride and stride, going nowhere, until winter swept them away. They didn’t seem to have mates or families, or any purpose for living other than being fish food.
She caught one by its skinny body, held it up, watched it struggle between her thumb and finger. It wasn’t even a pretty bug—just a black stick with four spidery legs, and tiny flat feet that never broke the water’s skin. She pulled off a leg, and threw the crippled bug back in. It thrashed on its side. A water spider shot out from under the rock and took it.
“I am nothing like you! Nothing!”
But Tlikit people died with the same name they were born with. Tsurya would always be the bug.
She thought of going on a power quest and getting a new name, like Shahala little ones did. Her mother would fight the idea, but the Moonkeeper, Ashan, would stand up for her. The Moonkeeper liked her, and she had backed Kai El when he changed old ways.
But… to go out and be hungry, and maybe be killed, just to get a new name… she wasn’t afraid to do it, it was just stupid.
On another day, in a better mood, Tsurya went to her secret place to eat some red berries she’d found—very sweet, too few to share, with juice that didn’t stain, so no one would know.
She was sitting there, making up sounds and saying them out loud just to hear herself, when it came to her…
“Tahna.”
She loved the strong sound with a soft edge. It had no meaning in either language.
’Tahna, tahna, tahna… ”
It was the sound of herself. She wanted it for her name. How could she have it?
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