The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New SF

by Gardner Dozois

We Aniyvwiya like to keep everything loose and easy. Our chiefs have far less authority than yours, and even the power of the clan mothers has its limits. Our laws are few, and everyone knows what they are, so things tend to go along without much trouble.

  But there were no rules for what we wanted to do, because it had never been done before. Besides, we were going to need the help of many people. So it seemed better to go carefully – but I admit I had no idea that our little proposal would create such a stir. In the end there was a regular meeting at the council house to talk it over.

  Naturally it was Otter who made the biggest fuss. “This is white men’s medicine,” he shouted. “Do you want the People to become as weak and useless as the whites?”

  “If it will make all our warriors shoot as straight as Spearshaker,” Bigkiller told him, “then it might be worth it.”

  Otter waved his skinny old arms. He was so angry by now that his face was whiter than Spearshaker’s. “Then answer this,” he said. “How is it that this dance – ”

  “It’s not a dance,” I said. Usually I would not interrupt an elder in council, but if you waited for Otter to finish you might be there all night.

  “Whatever you call it,” he said, “it’s close enough to a dance to be Bird Clan business, right? And you, Mouse, are Wolf Clan – as is your white friend, by adoption. So you have no right to do this thing.”

  Old Dotsuya spoke up. She was the Bird Clan Mother, and the oldest person present. Maybe the oldest in town, now I think of it.

  “The Bird Clan has no objection,” she said. “Mouse and Spearshaker have our permission to put on their plei. Which I, for one, would like to see. Nothing ever happens around this town.”

  Tsigeyu spoke next. “How,” she said. “I agree. This sounds interesting.”

  Of course Otter wasn’t willing to let it go so easily; he made quite a speech, going all the way back to the origins of the People and predicting every kind of calamity if this sacrilege was permitted. It didn’t do him much good, though. No one liked Otter, who had gotten both meaner and longer-winded with age, and who had never been a very good didahnvwisgi anyway. Besides, half the people in the council house were asleep long before he was done.

  After the council gave its approval there was no trouble getting people to help. Rather we had more help than we needed. For days there was a crowd hanging around my house, wanting to be part of the plei. Bigkiller said if he could get that many people to join a war party, he could take care of the Catawbas for good.

  And everyone wanted to be an akta. We were going to have to turn some people away, and we would have to be careful how we did it, or there would be trouble. I asked Spearshaker how many aktas we needed. “How many men, that is,” I added, as he began counting on his fingers. “The women are a different problem.”

  He stopped counting and stared at me as if I were wearing owl feathers. Then he told me something so shocking you will hardly believe it. In his country, the women in a plei are actually men wearing women’s clothes!

  I told him quick enough that the People don’t go in for that sort of thing – whatever they may get up to in certain other tribes – and he’d better not even talk about it around here. Do you know, he got so upset that it took me the rest of the day to talk him out of calling the whole thing off. . . .

  Women! Mercifull Jesu! Women, on a Stage, acting in a Play! I shall feele like an Whore-Master!

  Men or women, it was hard to know which people to choose. None of them had ever done anything like this before, so there was no way to know whether they would be any good or not. Spearshaker asked me questions about each person, in white language so no one would be offended: Is he quick to learn? Does he dance or sing well? Can he work with other people, and do as he is told? And he had them stand on one side of the stickball field, while he stood on the other, and made them speak their names and clans, to learn how well their voices carried.

  I had thought age would come into it, since the plei included both older and younger people. But it turned out that Spearshaker knew an art of painting a man’s face, and putting white in his hair, till he might be mistaken for his own grandfather.

  No doubt he could have done the same with women, but that wasn’t necessary. There were only two women’s parts in this story, and we gave the younger woman’s part to Ninekiller’s daughter Cricket – who would have hung upside-down in a tree like a possum if it would please Spearshaker – and the older to a cousin of mine, about my age, who had lost her husband to the Shawanos and wanted something to do.

  For those who could not be aktas, there was plenty of other work. A big platform had to be built, with space cleared around it, and log benches for the people who would watch. There were torches to be prepared, since we would be doing it at night, and special clothes to be made, as well as things like fake spears so no one would get hurt.

  Locust and Blackfox were particularly good workers; Spearshaker said it was as if they had been born for this. They even told him that if he still wanted to follow the custom of his own tribe, with men dressed as women, they would be willing to take those parts. Well, I always had wondered about those two.

  But Spearshaker was working harder than anyone else. Besides being in charge of all the other preparations, he had to remake his whole plei to suit our needs. No doubt he had made a fine plei for white men, but for us, as it was, it would never do.

  Many a Play haue I reuis’d and amended: cut short or long at the Company’s desyre, or alter’d this or that Speeche to please a Player: e’en carued the very Guttes out of a scene on command of the Office of the Reuels, for some imagin’d Sedition or vnseemely Speeche. But now must I out-do all I euer did before, in the making of my Hamlet into a thing comprehensible to the Anni-yawia. Scarce is there a line which doth not haue to be rewrit: yea, and much ta’en out intire: as, the Play within the Play, which Mouse saith, that none here will vnderstande. And the Scene must be mov’d from Denmark to Virginnia, and Elsinore Castle transformed into an Indian towne. For marry, it were Alchemy enow that I should transmute vnletter’d Sauages into tragick Actors: but to make royal Danskers of swart-fac’d Indians were beyond all Reason. (Speak’st thou now of Reason, Will Shakespere? Is’t not ouer-late for that?)

  You should have seen us teaching the aktas their parts. First Spearshaker would look at the marks and say the words in his language. Then he would explain to me any parts I hadn’t understood – which was most of it, usually – and then I would translate the whole thing for the akta in our language. Or as close as I could get; there are some things you cannot really interpret. By now Spearshaker was fluent enough to help me.

  Then the akta would try to say the words back to us, almost always getting it all wrong and having to start again. And later on all the people in the plei had to get together and speak their parts in order, and do all the things they would do in the plei, and that was like a bad dream. Not only did they forget their words; they bumped into each other and stepped on each other’s feet, and got carried away in the fight parts and nearly killed each other. And Spearshaker would jump up and down and pull his hair – which had already begun to fall out, for some reason – and sometimes weep, and when he had settled down we would try again.

  Verily, my lot is harder than that of the lewes of Moses. For Scripture saith, that Pharo did command that they make Brickes without Strawe, wherefore their trauail was greate: but now I must make my Brickes, euen without Mudd.

  Let me tell you the story of Spearshaker’s plei.

  Once there was a great war chief who was killed by his own brother. Not in a fight, but secretly, by poison. The brother took over as chief, and also took his dead brother’s woman, who didn’t object.

  But the dead man had a son, a young warrior named Amaledi. One night the dead chief appeared to Amaledi and told him the whole story. And, of course, demanded that he do something about it.

  Poor Amaledi was in a bad fix. Obviously he mustn’t go against his mother’s wishes, an
d kill her new man without her permission. On the other hand, no one wants to anger a ghost – and this one was plenty angry already.

  So Amaledi couldn’t decide what to do. To make things worse, the bad brother had guessed that Amaledi knew something. He and this really nasty, windy old man named Quolonisi – sounds like Otter – began trying to get rid of Amaledi.

  To protect himself Amaledi became a Crazy, doing and saying everything backward, or in ways that made no sense. This made his medicine strong enough to protect him from his uncle and Quolonisi, at least for a time.

  Quolonisi had a daughter, Tsigalili, who wanted Amaledi for her man. But she didn’t want to live with a Crazy – who does? – and she kept coming around and crying and begging him to quit. At the same time his mother was giving him a hard time for being disrespectful toward her new man. And all the while the ghost kept showing up and yelling at Amaledi for taking so long. It got so bad Amaledi thought about killing himself, but then he realized that he would go to the spirit world, where his father would never leave him alone.

  So Amaledi thought of a plan. There was a big dance one night to honor the new chief, and some visiting singers from another town were going to take part. Amaledi took their lead singer aside and got him to change the song, telling him the new words had been given to him in a dream. And that night, with the dancers going around the fire and the women shaking the turtle shells and the whole town watching, the visiting leader sang:

  “Now he pours it,

  Now he is pouring the poison,

  See, there are two brothers,

  See, now there is one.”

  That was when it all blew up like a hot rock in a fire. The bad chief jumped up and ran away from the dance grounds, afraid he had just been witched. Amaledi had a big argument with his mother and told her what he thought of the way she was acting. Then he killed Quolonisi. He said it was an accident but I think he was just tired of listening to the old fool.

  Tsigalili couldn’t stand any more. She jumped into a waterfall and killed herself. There was a fine funeral.

  Now Amaledi was determined to kill his uncle. The uncle was just as determined to kill Amaledi, but he was too big a coward to do it himself. So he got Quolonisi’s son Panther to call Amaledi out for a fight.

  Panther was a good fighter and he was hot to kill Amaledi, because of his father and his sister. But the chief wasn’t taking any chances. He put some poison on Panther’s spear. He also had a gourd of water, with poison in it, in case nothing else worked.

  So Amaledi and Panther painted their faces red and took their spears and faced each other, right in front of the chief’s house. Amaledi was just as good as Panther, but finally he got nicked on the arm. Before the poison could act, they got into some hand-to-hand wrestling, and the spears got mixed up. Now Panther took a couple of hits. Yes, with the poisoned spear.

  Meanwhile Amaledi’s mother got thirsty and went over and took a drink, before anyone could stop her, from the poisoned gourd. Pretty soon she fell down. Amaledi and Panther stopped fighting and rushed over, but she was already dead.

  By now they were both feeling the poison themselves. Panther fell down and died. So did Amaledi, but before he went down he got his uncle with the poisoned spear. So in the end everyone died.

  You do?

  Well, I suppose you had to be there.

  And so ’tis afoote: to-morrow night we are to perform. Thank God Burbage cannot be there to witnesse it: for it were a Question which should come first, that he dye of Laughter, or I of Shame.

  It was a warm and pleasant night. Everyone was there, even Otter. By the time it was dark all the seats were full and many people were standing, or sitting on the ground.

  The platform had only been finished a few days before – with Bigkiller complaining about the waste of timber and labor, that could have gone into strengthening the town’s defenses – and it looked very fine. Locust and Blackfox had hung some reed mats on poles to represent the walls of houses, and also to give us a place to wait out of sight before going on. To keep the crowd from getting restless, Spearshaker had asked Dotsuya to have some Bird Clan men sing and dance while we were lighting the torches and making other last preparations.

  Then it was time to begin.

  What? Oh, no, I was not an akta. By now I knew the words to the whole plei, from having translated and repeated them so many times. So I stood behind a reed screen and called out the words, in a voice too low for the crowd to hear, when anyone forgot what came next.

  Spearshaker, yes. He was the ghost. He had put some paint on his face that made it even whiter, and he did something with his voice that made the hair stand up on your neck.

  But in fact everyone did very well, much better than I had expected. The only bad moment came when Amaledi – that was Tsigeyu’s son Hummingbird – shouted, “Na! Dili, dili!" (“There! A skunk, a skunk!”) and slammed his war club into the wall of the “chief’s house,” forgetting it was really just a reed mat. And Beartrack, who was being Quolonisi, took such a blow to the head that he was out for the rest of the plei. But it didn’t matter, since he had no more words to speak, and he made a very good dead man for Amaledi to drag out.

  And the people loved it, all of it. How they laughed and laughed! I never heard so many laugh so hard for so long. At the end, when Amaledi fell dead between his mother and Panther and the platform was covered with corpses, there was so much howling and hooting you would have taken it for a hurricane. I looked out through the mats and saw Tsigeyu and Bigkiller holding on to each other to keep from falling off the bench. Warriors were wiping tears from their eyes and women were clutching themselves between the legs and old Dotsuya was lying on the ground kicking her feet like a baby.

  I turned to Spearshaker, who was standing beside me. “See,” I said. “And you were afraid they wouldn’t understand it!”

  After that everything got confused for a while. Locust and Blackfox rushed up and dragged Spearshaker away, and the next time I saw him he was down in front of the platform with Tsigeyu embracing him and Bigkiller slapping him on the back. I couldn’t see his face, which was hidden by Tsigeyu’s very large front.

  By then people were making a fuss over all of us. Even me. A Paint Clan woman, not bad-looking for her age, took me away for some attention. She was limber and had a lot of energy, so it was late by the time I finally got home.

  Spearshaker was there, sitting by the fire. He didn’t look up when I came in. His face was so pale I thought at first he was still wearing his ghost paint.

  I said, “Gusdi nusdi? Is something wrong?”

  “They laughed,” he said. He didn’t sound happy about it.

  “They laughed,” I agreed. “They laughed as they have never laughed before, every one of them. Except for Otter, and no one has ever seen him laugh.”

  I sat down beside him. “You did something fine tonight, Spearshaker. You made the People happy. They have a hard life, and you made them laugh.”

  He made a snorting sound. “Yes. They laughed to see us making fools of ourselves. Perhaps that is good.”

  “No, no.” I saw it now. “Is that what you think? That they laughed because we did the plei so badly?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and turned him to face me. “My friend, no one there tonight ever saw a plei before, except for you. How would they know if it was bad? It was certainly the best plei they ever saw.”

  He blinked slowly, like a turtle. I saw his eyes were red.

  “Believe me, Spearshaker,” I told him, “they were laughing because it was such a funny story. And that was your doing.”

  His expression was very strange indeed. “They thought it comical?”

  “Well, who wouldn’t? All those crazy people up there, killing each other – and themselves – and then that part at the end, where everyone gets killed!” I had to stop and laugh, myself, remembering. “I tell you,” I said when I had my breath back, “even though I knew the whole thing by memory, I nearly lo
st control of myself a few times there.”

  I got up. “Come, Spearshaker. You need to go to sleep. You have been working too hard.”

  But he only put his head down in his hands and made some odd sounds in his throat, and muttered some words I did not know. And so I left him there and went to bed.

  If I live until the mountains fall, I will never understand white men.

  If I liue vntil our Saviour’s returne, I shall neuer vnderstande Indians. Warre they count as Sport, and bloody Murther an occasion of Merriment: ’tis because they hold Life itselfe but lightly, and think Death no greate matter neyther: and so that which we call Tragick, they take for Comedie. And though I be damned for’t, I cannot sweare that they haue not the Right of it.

  Whatever happened that night, it changed something in Spearshaker. He lived with us for many more years, but never again did he make a plei for us.

  That was sad, for we had all enjoyed the Amaledi story so much, and were hoping for more. And many people tried to get Spearshaker to change his mind – Tsigeyu actually begged him; I think it was the only time in her life she ever begged anyone for anything – but it did no good. He would not even talk about it.

  And at last we realized that his medicine had gone, and we left him in peace. It is a terrible thing for a didahnvwisgi when his power leaves him. Perhaps his ancestors’ spirits were somehow offended by our plei. I hope not, since it was my idea.

  That summer Ninekiller’s daughter Cricket became Spearshaker’s wife. I gave them my house, and moved in with the Paint Clan woman. I visited my friend often, and we talked of many things, but of one thing we never spoke.

  Cricket told me he still made his talking marks, from time to time. If he ever tried to make another plei, though, he never told anyone.

  I believe it was five winters ago – it was not more – when Cricket came in one day and found him dead. It was a strange thing, for he had not been sick, and was still a fairly young man. As far as anyone knew there was nothing wrong with him, except that his hair had fallen out.