He wove through a thick stand of tall fern, hearing small animals scurry off at his approach.
I must take the finest feathers, he told himself. They will see the great warrior I am to be. They will show our people there can be no dishonor in Pojucan.
Aruanã moved quickly until he came to a tangled growth so dense he had difficulty getting through. He cried out as thorns pierced his flesh, but he was already too deep into the brush to backtrack and so decided to push ahead. It took longer than he expected, and as he struggled along, he saw through a rare break in the trees that the sun was near the middle of the sky.
He had finally got through this barrier and was moving quietly on the thick carpet of rotting vegetation when he found Macaw.
The bird was on a low limb of an enormous tree, facing the opposite direction. Without a sound, Aruanã fitted an arrow to his bow, took aim, and released the string. This time he did not miss, and the bird toppled off the branch. With a whoop of joy, he ran to collect Macaw, and saw that he had long and magnificently hued tail feathers.
“Forgive, O Macaw,” he said as he plucked them, “that I leave you so weak. This night your glory will dress the rattles of our people.” When he’d finished, he laid the bird to one side, carefully wrapping the feathers in two palm leaves to protect them on the journey back.
When Aruanã reached the village, he was disappointed to discover that his father was not in the maloca. He greeted Obapira, but when her back was turned, he hid the palm leaves near his hammock. She was not to be the first to see his beautiful prize. He went in search of Pojucan, and was strutting through the clearing when he met two boys, sons of an elder in another maloca.
“We watched you,” one said. “Your walk told much.”
“What did you see in it?”
“The steps of one who is pleased,” they both replied.
“I was alone in the forest where Caipora lives and have returned without harm.” One of the brothers said quietly, “We saw the palm leaves.”
“You will see them again before this night has ended,” Aruanã said. “Can you show the same?”
Their long faces said it all, but it was not every day that he could make those who had teased him squirm. “Did you find the feathers?”
“Macaw did not fly where we went in the forest,” one said. But almost immediately his face brightened, and he added, “We found something else, far better than feathers.” He looked at his brother, who nodded vigorously. “Come. Share with us!”
They had plundered a nest of bees, bringing back a honeycomb, which they had hidden near their maloca.
Before today, these boys would have led those who taunted him. Was he now experiencing the first result of success with Macaw?
They asked him to tell what he had seen deep in the forest, and then confessed that they had gone only to its edge. He was shocked that they’d admit such deceit at a time when they had been told to prove they were ready to be men. When he said as much, they looked genuinely scared, and begged him to tell no one.
He heard noises from the other side of the maloca: It was time for presentation of the feathers!
He should never have dallied this long, but they had kept pressing the sweet nectar upon him. He stood up, wiped his hands against the palm fronds of the maloca, noticing as he did that many people were already drifting toward the clearing. He ran to his house, grabbed the palm leaves in which he’d wrapped his feathers, and hurried outside.
Aruanã made his way to the front of the crowd gathered at the hut of the sacred rattles, where his age group had been ordered to sit. The boys who had shot Macaw were placed apart from the others. Aruanã saw only two with palm leaves before them, and ten boys who had often made his life a misery looking very gloomy.
Naurú was in his hut, the light from the fire within glowing dimly at the entrance. At several points in their lives, men entered that place to seek help or receive messages from the spirits, and they invariably faced such consultations with dread, never sure of the outcome.
Tonight, long before he showed himself, he had started chanting and shaking his rattles, louder and louder, the sounds mounting above those outside, the voice issuing from the small, twisted body remarkable in its power. A mantle of urubu feathers — only he was permitted the covering of the black vulture, bird of death — was slung over the hump on his back, and the sight of him in it was enough to make those closest jump back when he suddenly burst out of his hut. He halted a pace from the nearest group of men, turned his eye upon them, and moaned hideously, all the time shaking three rattles. From his neck hung a long chain made of hundreds of teeth drawn from the jaws of enemy warriors.
Naurú moved with a sort of hop toward the larger group of boys. He danced up and down before them with such ferocity that several began to whimper. Next he turned to those with feathers, stalking round them rather than dancing, circling several times, muttering and shaking the rattles when he paused opposite a boy, looking him over thoroughly before placing a rattle on the ground in front of him.
Aruanã was last to fall under his scrutiny.
He was enormously relieved when Naurú put a rattle down and backed away, but he grew worried again when the pagé went directly into his hut, the abrupt departure seeming to Aruanã to have something to do with him.
Naurú returned quickly, however, with a supply of tabak and lit the dry herb with an ember from the fire. He sat on the ground between the boys, and sucked at one end of the roll of smoldering leaves, filling his lungs.
The elders had elected Tabajara to speak, and he now stepped forward, his feather adornments more resplendent than on the previous night.
“O Great Pagé, Voice of the Spirits of our people, I ask to be heard.”
Naurú puffed at the tabak and insolently blew smoke in the elder’s direction before announcing, “They will listen.”
“Believe, O Naurú, when our people were told that the sacred rattles had lost their feathers, every warrior wanted to take their bows.”
A chorus of agreement greeted this statement, and Tabajara waited until it had died down. Naurú continued to sit, puffing away at the roll of tabak, looking on disinterestedly.
“But Naurú saw another way . . ..”
“It was the wisdom from Voice of the Spirits. It told of others to find feathers for the rattles. First we did not hear.”
“You question Voice of the Spirits?”
“Never.”
“Then, why were your thoughts weak?”
“They were not weak but small. As small as the thoughts of those Naurú appointed to find Macaw.”
“There was a reason.”
“We saw the wisdom of it.”
“But not at first?”
“Not when boys were called to do the work of men. We feared the anger of the ancestors, O Great Pagé.”
“Was it not they who asked, when they saw it was time for these boys to begin the work of men?”
“This was what we came to understand.”
It was a ritual, this banter between elder and pagé, similar for every age group that approached initiation. To impress the boys, it sometimes went further, with Naurú seizing the opportunity to make a fool of the elder chosen to speak. But Tabajara was adept at meeting Naurú’s provocations. He now lashed out at the boys without feathers: “I do not see one feather of Macaw! What kind of men will you be?”
None dared a response.
“I have seen such men,” Tabajara told them. “Even the smallest girl in the malocas laughs . . ..
“They are the men who hang in their hammocks when the hunt is called, the men who hide when the enemy is near, the men who run from the fire in the sky. Look around you. Do you see such men?” Several shook their heads. “You will not find them among the Tupiniquin. Tell them, O Great Pagé, where the men without the spirit of men are.”
Naurú was on his feet, a little unsteady from the effects of the tabak, which he had been inhaling furiously. He moved to the boys,
so close that spittle dribbled from his lip hole onto the nearest one.
“They are taken into the forest,” Naurú said. “Such men cannot hide their fear from the shadows. See Caipora with them, Caipora with her one leg, leaping as high as the trees. ‘Dance, coward! Dance!’ she demands. ‘Dance for Caipora!’ And Jurupari, he with the teeth of Jaguar and claws of Hawk. How Jurupari hungers for such miserable things! See the fire in his eye glow. Hear his stomach growl.”
Naurú now launched into a grisly cautionary tale replete with inhuman beasts and demons, monstrous figures of that other world where cowards — and young boys who didn’t bring feathers — might be tormented.
When Naurú had finished, Tabajara walked over to the boys with the feathers, motioning the one farthest from Aruanã to rise.
“O Voice of the Spirits, here is a true son of Tupiniquin, a boy who will be a man among us!”
Aruanã grew excited as he waited his turn, but he felt a deep sadness also: This night of all nights he wanted his father here — to see him praised in this way.
The two boys had presented their feathers, and now Aruanã was called. He stood up quickly and went to the elder and Naurú.
“Son of my maloca, Tabajara is happy that you have feathers. Your eye is good, your arrow true, your path that of a warrior-to-be. Let us hear where Macaw was found.”
“Farther than I have been with our hunters.”
“I saw you leave the maloca before the sun woke. Those who came back with nothing were still in their hammocks. Tell me, boy, were you not afraid of the darkness?”
“I left when hunters leave.”
Tabajara smiled. He was pleased with the boy’s answers. Last night he had had doubts about this son of no-warrior. It was good to see that he’d been wrong.
Naurú was not pleased. Here was bad blood, this son of a man who had denied a way of the ancestors. But he had found Macaw, and it was difficult to speak against him.
“Yes, boy, you were lucky this day.”
“And swift, too,” Tabajara hastened to add.
“Let the boy show his feathers!” he ordered.
Aruanã carefully removed the bindings around the palm leaves. His hands shook, such was his excitement, for he knew that the eyes of every man and boy present were upon him; and, he knew too that the feathers of the others were nothing against those he had brought.
He unrolled the leaves with a flourish, his eyes bright with anticipation. Aruanã gasped in horror. The dazzling feathers of Macaw had become the worst pluckings from the wing of Heron!
“My feathers! Where are the feathers of Macaw?”
The men of the clan first greeted this incredible scene with silence. Eyes turned to Naurú and all willed that he act quickly to appease those offended.
To the surprise of all, the pagé began to cackle, and danced a wobbly jig before the boy, slapping his sides. He laughed until tears streamed from his eyes, and when others saw this, they began to laugh, too. The brothers who had lured Aruanã to their honeycomb, and other boys who had been in on the scheme to change the feathers, laughed as loudly as the adults standing behind them. As Naurú’s mirth increased, so did everyone’s, all but Tabajara.
The elder was furious. The boy had made a fool of him, in front of every man of the village. He grabbed Aruanã by the arm. “My anger, boy, is as nothing to the furies of our ancestors at your foolishness.”
“O my father, it was not like this! Some of the boys tricked me. They took the feathers that I brought.”
“Quiet, boy! Do you not see that Naurú will speak?”
The pagé had stopped laughing and was advancing toward him, with terrifying malice. “We heard that this boy went deep into the forest.”
“I did this, O Great Pagé, and I found Macaw.”
“Silence! If it is not a lie, why did Macaw’s feathers get changed to the pluckings of a Heron?”
Tabajara watched him quizzically. What was in Naurú’s mind?
“What do you say, elder?” Naurú asked.
“I saw feathers of Heron,” Tabajara said. “But the boy said the others changed his feathers.”
The men groaned, and several cried out, “O Great Pagé, we beseech you: Hear what wrongs the spirits of our village. Hear this night, or heavy is the fear in our malocas.”
Naurú picked up the sacred rattles and began to shake them, letting the rattles tremble and moaning as if he was in great pain. Suddenly, he stopped. “It is Gray Wing,” he announced. “The ancestor’s name Gray Wing.”
The crowd whispered the name, though no one knew this “Gray Wing.”
Naurú’s voice was entirely different from his normal tone. “We see Gray Wing gone to fight the enemy. Tupiniquin make war at sunrise when Cariri lie in their hammocks. Long is the battle. Gray Wing is a prisoner.” He paused. Then:
“On the second night, Gray Wing shows the enemy no courage in Tupiniquin. He runs from their village.”
Several cried out: “This is no-warrior. Here is his son — come to the ancestors with white feathers.”
Aruanã tried to flee, but Tabajara stopped him.
“When we met last, I warned about this man,” Naurú said, now in his normal voice.
“We heard, O Great Pagé,” the men answered. “What has come of my warning?”
The elder shoved Aruanã aside. “We have met to know how it will be done,” he said.
“Now is the time!” a man called out.
“Find Gray Wing,” another said. “Kill him!”
“No!” Aruanã screamed. “He is not Gray Wing. He is Pojucan, my father! Pojucan, warrior of the Tupiniquin!”
The few who took notice of this outburst jeered at the boy.
“You have heard,” Naurú said, addressing Tabajara. “Let no-warrior be taken. Let him be silenced!” He turned abruptly, picked up the rattle near Aruanã, and disappeared into his hut.
The meeting broke up. A group of men went to Tabajara, for, as elder of the maloca, it was his duty to lead them to no-warrior. Others began to drift toward the opening in the stockade.
Aruanã was forgotten, in front of the pagé’s hut.
O Father, he wept, can it be? Can the one Aruanã has loved be a warrior without honor?
Aruanã ran toward the main clearing, where a group was gathered outside his maloca, and he now saw one of them approach him.
“We must go quickly,” the man said. “Your father waits.”
“They will kill him,” Aruanã said. He recognized the man as the Tapajós prisoner. “I cannot bear to watch.”
“They will not find him.”
“He will be in his hammock.”
“Your father is gone from the village, and I am to join him,” Ubiratan said. “Where is my father?”
Ubiratan motioned for Aruanã to follow him to the side of the stockade farthest from the opening. There he helped the boy over the long poles and then hauled himself up.
In the small forest where the boy had seen the otter, Ariranha, father and son met. The Tupiniquin told Aruanã that they were to journey to the lands of the Tapajós, but that nothing would prevent the boy from remaining in the village.
“I hear my father,” Aruanã said simply.
II
June 1491 - April 1497
Thus did Pojucan and Aruanã of the Tupiniquin and Ubiratan of the Tapajós begin a journey across half a continent.
The two men carried their bows and arrows and clubs, stone-headed axes, a few sharp cutting tools, a small supply of manioc, and their most powerful charms — the teeth of a jaguar and a shell necklace.
They had struck inland that first night, following the big river upstream, a direction Ubiratan felt must eventually lead to a waterway that flowed into Mother of Rivers.
In the days that followed, they crossed many rivers and forests. They picked their way up escarpments; climbed out of valleys to cross mountains that gave way to more forests and streams. Some days food and game were plentiful; others they woul
d find nothing, not even water.
They moved with quiet deliberation, ever watchful of dangers: insects, reptiles, hostile tribes. Before nightfall, if they had been on the move, they would seek a place to rest, and occasionally made a crude lean-to shelter, like the ones abandoned by the nomads, whose traces they found: no more than palm fronds resting against a branch, good for a night, maybe a week or two, never more. Sometimes, though, their terror got the better of them — the tracks of men, the distant rooting of a big herd of peccaries that could rush a frail shelter, ripping and slashing at anything in its path — and then they slept in the trees.
Pojucan was nominally the leader, but it was Ubiratan who guided the way. He would study the heavens, using the most brilliant stars as his guide to determine their position. He knew that the Great Rain would soon be upon them: When it was over, he believed they would be near the lands of the Shavante, who lived below the Tapajós.
One night, three new moons after the start of their journey, Aruanã lay listening to the men. He was stretched out close to the fire, and would often be asleep long before them, but this night he stayed alert, for he was curious about Ubiratan’s talk of a great pagé among the Tapajós.
“You fear Naurú,” the boy heard Ubiratan say, “who is known in only one village of the Tupiniquin. But the pagé Tocoyricoc is known to the farthest place where Tapajós live, and even farther.”
“‘Tocoyricoc’?” Pojucan said, with difficulty. “It is a strange name.”
“‘He-Who-Sees-Well.’ It is his own word. He came to the Tapajós before I was born — from a land where the sun sleeps. His wisdom is more than any our elders show. He was very old when I left, but he may still live.”
Ubiratan had more to say about this Tocoyricoc, who had lived in malocas built of stone, in villages that clung to mountains closer to the sun than any in these parts.
“Even before he went to live in a cave near our village,” Ubiratan said, “he would go to the forest alone. He fears no spirits between the trees, because he does not believe they are there.”
“Aieee! Now I see a fool. All know there are spirits. Unless. . . It has been known to the Tupiniquin — the evil that hides in the shape of a man.”
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