I rose from the folds of the warm Earth and followed Memdewi. My brother. I followed across flatland, across rolling land with its kneehigh grass brushing bare against my legs. I followed through the ringing heat of the brown hills. I followed through the trees, always the trees. We moved through the trees into the mountains. Memdewi spoke softly to me of Musege. Musege, power of power. Musege, Eagle in the Sky, Sparrow on the wing, Goose floating on the lake. Musege, swift poison of the rattletail Snake. Musege, blackbass Fish that can climb the highest mountains on the back of a stream. Musege, small Beaver that can drop a tree high as forty men. Black Bear covered with grizzled fur arms that can squeeze the heart from a man’s body, Musege. Redlegged Coyote who talks to the night in ancestral language, he alone cries when the Sun has fallen from the Sky, he alone sings up the new-day, Musege. Red Cat, Mountain Cat, that can drop a buck Deer full on the run, and with one stroke of his paw slash the soft belly open to the Sky. Red Cat, Mountain Cat, heavier than a man and running up the face of a tree like the small gray Squirrel who weighs less than a Turtle’s egg, Musege. Heart of the Beast, Musege. Heart of the Fowl, heart of the Fish, Musege. Beyond all Indian medicine, Musege. Beyond the spear, the knife, beyond all muscle, Musege. Fish flying out of water to kill the small greenwinged Bug. An arrow of Ducks flying upstream, Musege. An arrow of Ducks flying, Musege. An arrow of Ducks, Musege. An arrow, Musege. Arrow, Musege. Musege.
We came to the place where all waters flow westward. We had climbed far through the trees. Our path was now always before us. We were headed down from the high place. Before us everywhere the mountains themselves flowed west. Memdewi spoke to me in that high place going west. He spoke of how Deer was sly. How Deer was swift. How Deer never let an Indian get above him. Always Deer stayed higher than the Indian. Always he would see the Indian. Always he could smell him. Never had an Indian taken the life of Deer by coming up beneath him. To take the life of Deer the Indian must become Deer. Never does an Indian kill Deer, the Indian cannot break Musege more powerful than his own. Only when the Indian has become Deer can he take the other’s life. Only when the Indian steals Deer’s Musege can he break the other life. The Indian must be sly. The Indian must be swift. The Indian must be sly to become Deer, he must be swift to capture Deer’s Musege. One power can break another, then there will be killing. Then Indian is ready to take the other life. He is prepared to take new life into his own. He is prepared to eat flesh, flesh of his own flesh, power of his own power, blood of his own bones. He becomes stronger. Becomes a hunter.
We traveled lightly on our feet. We were high above Deer. Always behind and above. Deer left his signs in many places. Where he had slept the night past he had scraped the ground clean, the weight of his sleeping body leaving a print in the Earth about three arm lengths across. Memdewi stooped to study this place where Deer had spent his night, he was quiet for long moments before he spoke. “He is many,” Memdewi rose, brushing the Earth from his knees. “One powerful buck, three younger ones, their women number about thirty, most of them have a fawn following behind, maybe two. They stay close together. Traveling fast. They did not wait here long. They stay close together, they know not their bodies are being hunted. But they move fast.” He turned his head to the Sky, “The weather will go heavy. We cannot see it yet in the clouds, but Deer knows it will go bad, he can smell it. The white days are coming soon. Deer does not want to be caught. He is sly. He travels fast from high ground. There will be a storm. Come. He is swift.”
Down before us the valleys spread out in the distance beneath the high clouded Sky. But Memdewi studied only the ground before him. His eyes traveling quickly from hoofprint to hoofprint. Then he stopped. The trail his eyes had been following flowed into another. There were three directions that merged, then ending where they all met, only one path led out There was one path now, the ground it passed over worn to pebbles and dust. The one path was filled with many tracks. The track of Deer was still before us, a track long as the middle finger of a man and wide as an elbow. These Memdewi traced out in the dirt, for they were faded and broken beneath the prodding of new tracks, similar tracks, only at their narrowing tip they became pointed and curved in like a quarter Moon. “Is it Deer of two different families?” I heard myself ask. “Has Deer’s brother come to lead him from us?” Memdewi pushed himself erect, never shifting his gaze from what led out before him, his eyes filling all gooves impressed into the Earth by his brothers, “Deer has been here. He stays close together and moves fast. Since his time there have been others here. Those who are heavy as a man that travel near to the ground. Ogul. The Sheep of the Clouds. The sheep is close. This is the road to his water. Come. He is swift.”
The trail dropped down between the sharp edges of broken rocks higher than trees. We heard the water everywhere in our ears before we saw him. Scattered across the granite crags in high places everywhere the Sheep of the Clouds stood motionless and alone, their four legs struck close beneath them, anchoring the black hooves to the bulges of bald rock, causing the thrust of their bodies to tilt out against the Sky at their backs. The water was everywhere in our ears. The blood ran in my feet. Memdewi held his body so that it did not move. His eyes left the trail dropping off before him. His eyes looked in four directions to the sound of water running everywhere. The sound of water that seemed to be the very breathing coming from the Sheep of the Clouds. I put one silent step forward, Memdewi’s hand came up behind him and stopped me in the chest. The two movements released a scraping sound of hooves clearing on rock surface, and there he was, the Ram, his blunt face jutting before the strong thrust of his body. Behind him everywhere in the Sky big white clouds puffed and sailed, blowing his razor gray coat in whipping streams off his back. The sound of water was everywhere in our ears. From the sledge of his head struck the fierce spiral of horns, carved from the boneheart of rock, knifing outward in a full circle as he stood in high places, throwing the full weight of his shadow across the width of the trail dropping down before us. If Memdewi’s fist was not in my chest I would have fallen like a cut tree, dead from fear. But Memdewi’s fist was not in my chest, he was gone silent as a Worm in mud, quick as a Bird, down the trail between the rocks and out of sight. I stood alone. My blood did not think, it screamed the sound of water everywhere in my ears as my body crashed through the barrier of the shadow cut from the boneheart of rock. I did not look back. The towered rocks sank in on the trail from all sides. Then ceased. Before me on the blank face of the mountain a waterfall lashed below into the valley like the long long silver flick of a horsetail. Memdewi was standing in the shaft of Sun bursting through the clouds, “You were brave Ayas. You did not run Little Antelope. The salt in your mouth did not make you cry out. If you had run you would have been dead.” He came toward me in the sound of water everywhere and slapped his hand around my neck, his brown face open, filled with shining white teeth, his face laughed, loud his laughter came, he threw his head back and laughed high, he could not stop, he turned and looked at me again, the laughter coming louder, scattering the dry spit at the corners of his mouth to the wind. He leaned his head on my shoulder and I could feel his body sob with laughter, “The Great Sheep. The Great Sheep thought we had come to challenge him. He thought those following him had come to take his women. It is that time of year. So he chose his high place. He chose a place high and strong to show how high and strong he is. It is that time of year. It is the Season. He did not care if we used his trail to the water. He thought we had come for his women. That is why he did not run. That is why he stayed to fight with his crown of horns carved from the boneheart of rock. It is that time of year.” Memdewi could not stop the laughter as he spoke. “You were brave. The salt in your mouth did not make you cry out. You did not run.” I could feel him stiffen, his body became quiet, the laughter died in his stomach, he stood up, “But will you be brave in the tree with the stoneknife in your hand? Will Ayas be brave in the tree with the stoneknife in his hand? Will Little Antelope? Be Brave?”
Memdewi stretched his arm full out, pointing down the waterfall to the bladetop of the trees in the valley below, “He is there. There Deer waits.” He flung his arm down and gazed straight to the Sky, “He moves fast. He moves close together. He moves in front of the weather. He is sly. He is swift. We must not think now. We must follow our bodies. Our bodies will lead the knife to our brother’s throat. We must be sly. We must burn from our bodies all things Indian. We must burn the sweat of our days into the Sky. Then we will be free. Then we will be swift. Our bodies will lose the smell of the Indian. We will be as new born. Our brother will not smell us until we are on his back and the stoneknife is at his throat. We must be swift.” He turned and followed his feet running, into the rocks and down among the first trees that came small up the mountain. He took the stoneknife from his side and slashed the low pine branches reaching toward the ground. He bent, with his rock his hands made a flame. The flame grew in twigs and pine-needles. He threw the cut branches on until he built a fire that cracked and spit the breath of a steady white wall of smoke off its back. The wind caught the smoke and blew it over his brown body. I could not see him. He was drowned in the white breath of fire. Overhead the puffed clouds tumbled and knocked into one another. Then he appeared. Stumbling from the smoke. His eyes clamped shut and his mouth twisted closed. Then the eyes and mouth exploded open and he gathered the fresh air deep into his lungs, letting each gulp out like wind rushing through trees. “Deer can smell the Indian. But I am sly. I do not walk with the smell of an Indian. I smell of all things growing in the forest Sun. I smell of all things growing green. I smell of the forest. I am the forest. My medicine cannot be broken. But you Ayas, I can smell your Indian body from here. I can smell your brown scent like the Coon can smell the yellow scent of Skunk. You must be sly.” I followed the wind around to where it was blowing the smoke, suddenly the wind shifted and the blanket of white blinded me. I closed my eyes and mouth but still the sweet smoking green pine cut up my nostrils and seared me deep in the head, burned me behind the eyes, stung me like the sting of a Bee through the throat. No longer could I hold my life breath down. It exploded from me, letting the smoke stream into my body, choking the life from me, knocking me to the ground. Memdewi reached down and pulled me from the drowning cloud, pounding my back, pounding the smoke from my lungs. I could see his face through the red sting of my eyes and his words were clear, “You smell of wood. You are a forest. Sly.” He moved off. I followed. I followed his moves. There were no words. I followed my body. I was swift. Where the leap of the waterfall ended itself in the smooth quiet of a pond a grassy meadow spread out and disappeared in the trees. Memdewi swept the long grasses with his eyes then scooped a handful of the pebbled Deer droppings scattered along the stream running from the pond. He crushed one of the droppings between two fingers. Over his shoulder he looked into the trees. Always the trees. He held his hand out to me. From his open palm I took a dropping, running it back and forth between two fingers until it was broken down to dust. It was warm in my hand. Deer was near. It was the time. Again I moved behind Memdewi. But he did not move into the trees. We stayed beyond them. Always on the outside. Always moving within their arc. For many hours we followed the trees, watching them change color, shape, height, then we were in them, deep in their belly. Above, the fast Sky was gone. Disappeared. Eaten by the swirl of branches feeding off all high places where there once had been open space. Green leaves eating air. Below. Memdewi swung onto the back of a thick trunked crawling oak, humping his way up and out of sight in the thick sucking leaves. Another oak stood nearby, its fat trunk leaving the ground slowly until it vanished in the strangle of its own swirling branches. I hooked my fingers into the gray slabs of bark and clawed my way up into the shield of leaves, pushing along on my belly until I straddled the high hump of limb arched over the width of worn path running beneath the shelter of the tree. The leaves were cluttered about my body so closely I could not see to the sides of me. My vision was trapped. I could only look down. I stared down at the Earth beaten bare from the weight of many Animals. Soon the trail would be filled with him. He would be moving swiftly in front of the weather. He would be coming through the trees. Always the trees. Close to me Memdewi waited, his brown body hidden, twisted dark on a broad limb, buried beneath a sky of speared green leaves, unobserved, sly. Memdewi waited like me, the spiny bark biting his silent skin, his knees banged up against the strong limb his body clutched, the feeling in his tightened legs gone cold, then dead from holding one position, motionless, like the roots of the tree that unknowingly supported the insignificance of his weight. Like Memdewi I wanted to scrape the nails of my fingers along my legs and rouse the life back into them, but to move was to betray, and straight ahead the white flashed on the trail. Down and straight ahead the trail sprung brown bodies. Moving beneath the sky of trees. He came. Deer was everywhere on the trail, making a sudden confusion in the silence. The slash of white marking his throat and rump flashing brilliant in the deep green. The first to come and show himself cautiously on the trail laid out before him was a young buck. His short horns spiked in a crown up between the long broad ears darted back along his head. He came sniffing with the muscles of his eyes working everything unknown before him. He came beneath the snake of my body clinging to the overhead limb, the stoneknife exposed and waiting, the length of its blade cocked an inch from my chin. I could feel his weight beneath me, his presence shook the air, the bone handle of the knife screamed in the hot sweat of my hand. My body loosened. And he was gone. Passed on. His scent swirling in the air behind him. But he was not for me to take. His flesh was young. The meat of age had not pushed the bone full from his head to form the bladed male weapon of antlers. “You must take the antlers longer than your arm,” Memdewi’s words had taught me. “You must take the antlers tall enough to be tipped up on the ground for your body to pass beneath into Man. You must break his Deer medicine. Capture his Power. Pass the length of your body beneath his antlers and you pass into the Power of Man. You become strong as Deer. You have been sly. You have stolen his Musege. You have stolen the Musege of your brother. You are as strong as your brother. You can stand with your brother. As a Man.” Deer passed beneath me swiftly now. The hornless females sleek and certain in their movements filled the space of the trail, the fawns stamping close at their sides. Then they passed. Only one female remained. Standing in the center of the silence where a Bird did not sing. Her body turned away from me, the white slash of her rump dazzled against the strong brown line of her back. The flesh of her ears tightened and flicked at the silent heart of the forest. Her whole body strained back down the trail she had just trod. Then she spun around, the entire bulk of her strength carrying her suddenly under me and out of sight, springing the trail behind her in a moment of emptiness before he appeared, coming with all the Earth beneath his feet, the air drumming blind through the bone speared antlers thrust high from the brown force of his head. The quick muscle of his presence knocked the life from under me. The blood jumped from my head to my heart. The tall blade of his antlers scraped the belly of the limb my body clung to, cutting the scream from my throat deep back into the forest as I crashed onto the blunt strength of his back, the stoneknife going hot in my hand flashing in quick strokes above his shoulder, slashing beyond into the throb of life-blown neck, slashing and jabbing until the knife cut so deep my hand sunk and burned wet into the heat of blood, the knife digging the twisting through spewing flesh, trying to stop the pulsing body from plunging further into the forest, trying to break the power of the legs still strong, carrying my wild heart screaming further into death, the stoneknife at the end of my arm lifting and cutting away at the strength that bore me blindly beyond my own power, the stoneknife striking deep and straight at the center of power until I felt the body beneath me give way, suddenly slump and dive, crashing down into all the small things of the forest floor, sending a hard spray of leaves and broken twigs up all around it into the roaring, dying air. I came down with him, sh
ifting my weight high onto his side, saving myself from being trapped and crushed beneath his falling force. He was down. I felt his power throb under me. I felt his Spirit calling him. Calling him to rise up. Calling his muscles to lift him, bring him up from the forest floor, escape the stoneknife I was driving into his neck, rise up and put his muscle to the wind, flow with all water, sing with all Birds, power of strong legs running, strength from blades of bone growing from the head. I heard his Spirit calling him. I heard his Spirit singing. I heard myself crying in my fear, the tears running on my cheeks in fear that his Spirit would win, would urge him up, carrying him proud away, the muscle of his rump twitching, the wind drumming blind between his high antlers. I heard my own sobs, felt all my strength coming from my body to my arm to the stoneknife I drove deeper into the gaping wound of his neck, the blood swirled and smeared up above my elbow, streaking across my chest, splashing in thick stains through my hair as I cut deep into flesh, forcing the knife of my fist even further, further through flesh, further until all the flesh was cut out and there was no flesh, just Spirit, and I chopped its pumping roots, keeping his body down, keeping the fear that was breaking out of my chest in sobs from breaking out of my head into dreams, from breaking out of my bones into darkness, where I was alone with the stoneblade of the knife, in death.
Rabbit Boss Page 29