With our hunt completed, we continued regular, but much less frequent, weapons practice with Cossine and Tetepano. The practice rounds ensured that we did not lose the skills we gained, but they lacked the urgency of previous days. We had more time to talk to each other and our teachers were much less strict. Now that the four of us had shared in a kill, I found that Andacon and Osocan were friendlier to me, and we concluded the end of most practice sessions in a discussion of the husquenaugh, all of us wondering what we would face. Not knowing could be even worse than knowing, because we can imagine most anything.
The other boys’ training for the husquenaugh was minimal. They focused chiefly on weaponry and hunting skills. At least Ascopo also learned the skills of canoe making and fishing. None mentioned the spirit-world training that I received from Roncommock, and I didn’t bring it up. I was happy enough just to seem like a regular boy, reliving our hunting success and wondering about the husquenaugh. When would it begin?
Roncommock soon suggested to me that it was time for another of his lessons and we walked out to the edge of the field where it looked out over the river. He built a small fire and fed it with sacred powder from his medicine pouch. What would I become next?
I am a Falcon
This time, I became a falcon, and not just any falcon, but a duck hawk, the swiftest of all birds. The duck hawk was sitting in a tree overlooking the river when I entered her mind. I sensed at once that she was female and hungry, ready to begin the hunt.
I was hungry, but I couldn’t see anything moving yet. Then, across the river, I saw prey. A bufflehead duck— a weewraamánqueo—floated on the water, its large white patch on his black head making a tempting target. As soon as he took to wing, as long as I was above him, he was doomed.
I jumped from my perch on a tree limb high above the ground and really just sort of fell. I opened up my wings and the air underneath them pushed me up into the sky. I beat my wings and felt incredible lift and power. Within moments, I was sky-high above the river. I could see so clearly and so far!
Below me, the wide river stretched away to the horizon. The land was incredibly green, with the fresh leaves of trees. The leaves were still so new that each tree had its own distinct color, some pale green, some darker. The patchwork reminded me of autumn leaves, when different trees were red or orange or yellow, but now, in the spring, the leaves were all different shades of green.
Narrow creeks emptied into the river, and I followed their courses as winding, darker patterns on the landscape, like giant snakes crawling through underbrush. At the head of a creek, a dark swamp full of water-loving trees sponged up the water and soaked up the sunlight. Huge coppáuseo swam slowly through the creeks like mobile logs. My human mind recognized the clarity of my eyesight at such distance and was astounded by it.
The village was a small clearing in the landscape, wigwams clearly visible arranged around the central fire, from which a thin column of smoke lazily rose. The dancing circle, with its soil pounded down in a perfect circle, revolved around the seven posts, empty now of dancers. The crop fields were pale, rounded areas with irregular edges, and the platform where a child usually sat to scare away birds was empty. The canoes looked like short, thick sticks pulled up on the riverbank.
The land stretched away into the distance in every direction. Only the river and its adjoining creeks provided a direction or a boundary. Our village was a tiny place, though it supported the lives of hundreds. The landscape was immense.
But the hunt! I’d become distracted by the magnificent panoramic view.
The duck had just taken flight and was gaining height. I spiraled up higher, knowing that it couldn’t see me directly above. Two others joined it, both female and not as gaudily marked, but the male had already gained the most altitude. He was my target. His bold, black and white coloring made him stand out against the dark water below. As soon as he was high enough above the water so that I could grab him without hitting the water itself, I folded my wings against my body and began to plummet. I was faster than any arrow—faster than a spear thrown with an atlatl. I was faster than anything on Earth. I was moving so fast that I felt special structures holding open my nostrils and channeling the air so that I could still breathe at such speeds.
Within a moment I was nearly on the prey. Just before hitting it, I pulled up by extending my wings, which turned me out of the dive and up into striking position. I extended my feet and hit the back of the duck right between its wings with my open talons. It began to fall from the sky, already dead from the terrific impact of being hit at a speed it could never even imagine, let alone achieve.
Now, in a more leisurely descent of just half my former speed, I dove after the prey and snagged it with my talons before it hit the water. It was heavy and I labored with it, pumping my wings to haul it back toward a limb on my hunting tree, where I could rest as I consumed it.
Before I arrived at my tree, however, another bird was suddenly ripping past me, splitting the sky overhead. I turned and veered instinctively, but too slowly with the heavy load of duck, and the bald eagle—nahyápuw—was upon me. He flipped upside down as he passed me and snagged the duck with his feet. I gave a couple of jerks, but his talons were embedded too deeply in the prey. We started to plummet toward the water, the eagle twice as heavy as I, the duck interlocking us. I looked at his fierce eyes, huge beak, and thick, yellow talons. His black feathered body and white head were enormous. He opened his mouth in a feint toward my head. It was over. I could not win. I let go and screamed in frustration. Nahyápuw righted himself just above the water’s surface and with his big wings flapping strongly, pulled away with my catch.
I spiraled upward again, angry, annoyed, and still hungry. All the ducks had scattered, alerted by both my hunt and the eagle’s dramatic theft. I must travel to find more prey. I turned toward one of the big lakes, where I knew there would be more ducks. Swans and geese were there too, but since they were too big for me to fly with, I avoided them. As I approached the lake, I searched the skies carefully for the presence of other raptors, and, gladly, saw none. If I could make a kill, I should be able to keep it this time.
I saw a coot out on the edge of the lake, separated from the rest of the flock. It was a small, black bird with a white bill. I spiraled higher and higher, waiting for it to take off from the water so that I could catch it on the wing, but it stuck firmly to the water’s surface, swimming away into the reeds along the edge where I could no longer see it. All my waiting was in vain. I screamed in frustration again, a high “Cree, Cree!”
Suddenly, from behind me, I heard an interesting “kek-kek, kek-kek.” I looked around, and saw a small male falcon following. I kept flying, but slowed down when I heard the call again, softer this time, more friendly. The male had come closer. I flew up higher and he followed, then he turned and flew upside down underneath me, showing off his best acrobatic flight maneuvers. He was a good flyer and he had a nice voice.
He flew out ahead of me, made a loop in the sky, and came back underneath me again, this time holding out his feet. I liked him, so I responded by grabbing his feet with my own, and we began to fall. Our wings were outspread, our talons clasped together, and we spiraled down together, tumbling as we fell. Before we hit the water, we released our grip on each other and flew back up into the sky. I felt elated, invigorated by the fall and delighted with how the male executed the trick. When he flew back toward a tall tree that reminded me of my hunting tree, I followed him, and we landed in the highest branches. He had cached a kill in the tree and offered me a morsel of it, which I consumed hungrily. I stepped toward the food and he backed away from it, allowing me, the larger bird, to have as much as I wanted. He was a suitable provider too. When the time comes to raise young, which I sensed was not far distant, he would be my mate.
Flying felt so good—so easy—that I took the opportunity to enjoy it now that I was no longer hungry, and took off from the tree limb. It w
as no more effort than running when I was human. Contracting my chest muscles caused my wings to beat down and pushed me up into the sky. While soaring, I adjusted my wingtip feathers slightly to provide either lift, by opening them up, or speed, by sliding them back into a smooth foil. Moving my wings back toward my body began an angled dive, and the steepness of the dive was determined by how closely I tucked my wings against my body. My covering of feathers provided constant feedback about my speed and the angle of flight because my skin detected the position of each feather against it. My whole body responded to the feel of the air against my feathered skin.
From up so high in the sky, the peoples’ lands merged together. It was hard to tell when I left my tribe’s territory and crossed into another. I started out over my home village, but in only a few wingbeats, it seemed, I passed Ohanoak farther down the river. I swung out in a wide loop, passing far beyond where I had ever been on foot and well into the dangerous territory of the Mangoaks before I turned back. The freedom of flight was exhilarating.
The world was vast, and I was a tiny part of it. The boundaries we people set were arbitrary and barely even recognizable from a distance. If I hadn’t known that the longleaf savannah with the pocosin was a boundary of no-man’s land between tribes, I would have never known that I was in Mangoak territory. It was just land passing into more land, not a single boundary line in sight. Animals, plants, air, and water all passed through these human boundaries. Everything but men. Their presence and boundaries seemed eerily temporary.
I was beginning to tire from the long flight, and I sensed that my host falcon was ready for me to go. She landed on a lower tree branch, near Roncommock, and looked at him. When I returned to myself, I was looking back at her. She was a beautiful bird, her back the color of slate-gray rock, her creamy chest covered with rusty bars. Her sleek head was black, with a wide V down each cheek like a tattoo completely filled with dark dye. Her intelligent eyes sported a yellow rim, making them appear even larger. I saw her mate soaring high in the sky, waiting for her to return.
I was seated in the respectful position, legs crossed, hands on knees, back straight, and I bent forward at the waist until my forehead touched the ground. “Thank you,” I murmured and felt the softest whisper of air as she flew back over me to return to her mate. As I sat bent with my head upon the ground, a flight feather from her left wing drifted down to the ground beside me and I picked it up. My heart swelled with thanks and the knowledge that she accepted me to fly with her on a hunt and beyond.
“What a regal animal,” I breathed softly to Roncommock. “The whole time I was part of her, she was always right there too, unlike the ant or even the fish. I used the ant’s body, sensed what she sensed, but this was different. The falcon decided what we were doing and just showed me, allowed me to watch, while she performed.”
Taking the feather she offered, I tucked it into my hair on the left side, which had grown out a little longer since Roncommock cut it. I wrapped a strand of my hair around the feather’s base to hold it. It rode gently in my hair, brushing my shoulder when I moved my head.
“What did you learn from her, Skyco?”
“It was dramatic to kill weewraamánqueo, but then have it stolen by nahyápuw—the eagle. I thought she would fight back, but she did not. When she realized that nahyápuw was bigger than she was, and that it had a firm grip on weewraamánqueo, she let the duck go. She was frustrated, but she knew that she was no match for the bigger bird. Rather than chase after him fruitlessly, she just went out to hunt again.”
“Yes, Skyco, that is the nature of the bird. Duck hawks are hunters. Eagles are hunters, too, but because they are so much larger than the other raptors, they are also piratical, stealing away the food of others. The duck hawk knew that to hold onto the prey would result in personal injury. By letting go, she protected herself from harm. After all, there are many more ducks for her to catch.”
“Still, it doesn’t seem fair that she caught the duck and the eagle only had to steal it from her.”
“What do you think the other ducks would say to that? Didn’t the duck hawk steal from them as well? The male was part of their flock, the mate of another duck. His life was stolen from them, was it not? You could say that we steal from the deer tribe when we kill a deer or from the hickory tree when we take its nuts for food. We offer our thanks and prayers because we recognize that we depend upon those animals and plants to nourish us. We cannot live without taking their lives, but we try to avoid an overharvest, taking only what we need and never hoarding excess.”
“Isn’t that what we do with fighting, too? We kill the same number of the enemy as they killed of us so that we keep a balance. We satisfy our sense of justice and avoid escalating the violence. But how did we ever start the killing in the first place?”
“Like the birds, Skyco, the first people took from each other just as they took from the deer and the hickory tree, and we have been seeking reciprocity ever since. It is a natural process, occurring constantly, just as a predator takes its prey. The duck eats the weeds from the pond, the hawk eats the duck, and the hawk drops the carcass back in the pond where it grows more weeds for other ducks to eat. When the eagle takes from the hawk but does not kill it, it does not fundamentally alter this circle, it just adds itself to it.”
Roncommock paused briefly and then continued, “What else did you learn from the hawk when you saw with her eyes?”
“I also learned that the world is vast and without borders. When I was just human, the whole time we traveled out to the banks and back, I was always conscious of whose territory we were in. It took us days to pass through the territory of the Weapemeocs because they live along the north side of the sound. Our territory extends down the Chowan to the sound and all the way behind us to the heads of many creeks that join it. You have been teaching me to learn the boundary with the Mangoaks because they are our enemies and to enter their territory is foolish, but from up above, the territories are practically indistinguishable except where they coincide with water. As I learned before, water connects land, but now I see that water also provides the edges in nature.”
“So you understand then that where we place our boundaries is really rather arbitrary. We skirmish and move them slightly when we win or lose, but in reality, the only boundaries of land are of water, as you saw. This is one of the things that troubles me about the idea of strange men coming from the sea. What are their boundaries? Do they recognize any limits?”
I was beginning to comprehend Roncommock’s concerns, and I wondered how I was wrapped up in them. How could there be men in the sea?
“Before you worry yourself with the implications of this news, for there are important consequences as I see you realize,” Roncommock said, “I want you to reflect back on the three animals that you have become: the ant, the fish, and the falcon. Each animal’s spirit has received you and you have parted with their blessings. You can call on these spirits whenever you need their connection to earth, water, or air. They will help you to make wise decisions of benefit to you, your family, and your tribe.”
“This is why Eracano wears the pelt of an otter and the skin of a bird; they are talismans that remind him of his animal-spirit connections!” I cried in wonder as I realized what he meant. Pausing to reflect, I added, “Now I have the feather from the falcon and the teeth of a shark, but what is my talisman from the ants, teacher?”
“When you complete the husquenaugh,” Roncommock said, and I squirmed because he was assuming that I would successfully pass this greatest of trials, which came next. “When you complete the husquenaugh, you will earn the right to wear a medicine pouch. Into this pouch you must add some sand from an ant mound so that you carry it with you at all times. While not a visible talisman, the spirits will recognize the ant sand.”
“I understand,” I replied.
“Skyco, I feel certain that the spirits have something important in
store for you. You have slipped easily into their world on three occasions now, and you recognized the sacredness of the sand dune. The spirits visited you there, too. They were warning you of the arrival of white men, coming in that inlet and bringing change with them. Recall that the bear spirit fought on your behalf before,” he said as he stroked the bear tooth hanging from his earlobe. “After the busk you will meet him in the husquenaugh.”
Time for Feasting
The warm season had finally arrived. It was time to plant corn, which we call pagatowr. That season, Ascopo, Andacon, Osocan and I were allowed to perform the duties of the men in planting because we had killed a deer. Every prior planting season, we’d worked with our mothers on the women’s tasks. This time felt different, more important. Best of all, the husquenaugh was still several moons away and I had some time to relax without worries of an upcoming black drink ritual, a spirit quest, or a deer hunt. I could almost put the husquenaugh out of my mind. Almost.
“Hey, Skyco! Not long until the season of the husquenaugh, and this is your year. Ready for it?” Kaiauk came walking up with Ascopo.
“Oh, be quiet!” Ascopo said, clearly annoyed. “Older brothers think they know everything!”
I shrugged my shoulders and quietly replied, “So do older sisters!”
Pagatowr was our most important crop. We stored it for winter and it kept for the whole year. It was best in the summertime, when it was still green instead of dry, and we roasted it over the fire after soaking the whole cob, still in its husk, in water. In the wintertime, women made succotash, with corn, beans, squash, and deer meat stewed together in a pot, and they made cakes of cornmeal, wrapped in the husks, which they baked on flat stones around the fire. Every stew that the women cooked had a handful of ground pagatowr in it, I think.
Spirit Quest Page 17