Norseman Chief (10 page)

At first I wondered about the cage.  In the state in which he spent these last fifteen days, there was no risk to him escaping.  At his most lucid moments when he was only able to scream out about the frightening hallucinations he saw before him, Kesegowaase would have been lucky to claw his way one or two fadmrs across the ground.  But during the second night of his captivity while I watched half-asleep under a briar, a bear came to sniff at the bars.  The bear’s great, black nose breathed the stench of the boy in and out – Kesegowaase had soiled himself many times already in his drunken state.  The beast rose up on his hind legs, bringing his forepaws down with the force of a longboat’s keel in the waves on the frame nearly a dozen times.  My father’s saex was drawn, gripped tightly in my hand, but the walls held and after a time the bear ambled away for easier prey.

On the morning of the sixteenth day, after a full night of a cold, driving rain, his guard came back.  This time however, the young man left a large skin filled with water next to a nearby tree after giving Hurit’s boy the paste.  The rest of this day passed like the rest, with me leaving for a short time to gather some roots or snare a rodent for a meal.  When the sun was descending to the west at the time the guard normally came back, the woods was noticeably silent.  I thought he had been delayed but when the night fell around us, it was clear that a new phase of the trials had begun.

During the night Kesegowaase began to leave the drunken spirit world and emerged, in fits and starts, from the stupor.  His body writhed in awkward contortions as he shouted, mumbled, and drooled.  He rolled over onto his stomach and jammed his face into the dirt, wet from the rainstorm, took mouthfuls, gnawed on pebbles and even swallowed much of it.  It was an awful spectacle.

He survived through the morning without the guard’s return.  Kesegowaase was quietly sleeping until the sun was quite high, then as if out of nothing, he was reborn.  From my hiding place I could tell his eyes were scanning his surroundings as he lay sinking into the shit-filled muck.  “Is anyone there?” he called out.  He sounded tired, but there was, quite astonishingly, a new strength in the voice.  Once again he summoned to the forest, “Is anyone there?”

Kesegowaase’s head began to stir around, studying his prison.  When he moved the rest of his body the first time, it looked painful for he winced, but then I realized he made a face at his own sickly smell, wrinkling his nose, dry heaving.  He gained his composure, blinking.

The cage was too low to stand or even sit up so he grasped one of the bars and pulled himself through the sucking mud to the end nearest his head.  That portion of the “A” framed structure was the door he had been shoved through.  He would certainly not remember it since he was already fully intoxicated by the time his young warrior brought him to the clearing.  So much so, the man had carried him the last seven or eight English miles and then thrust the boy in using his shoulder.

Four tightly lashed cords held the cage door closed.  Kesegowaase fumbled with them as if relearning how to use his fingers, methodically working them loose until the door tipped down, splashing into the water-logged ground outside the prison.  He wormed his way out, steadying himself on all fours for a long moment before using his home of the past sixteen days as a crutch to pull up to his full height.

The boy, for I guess he was still a boy since the full twenty days had not passed, leaned against the structure, blinking, and doing his best to focus his vision on his surroundings.  Slowly he scanned the entire clearing, pausing for a short time on the bulging water skin next to the tree.  He licked his lips at the sight, but demonstrated restraint, caution.  Kesegowaase had learned something while his mind was away.  He no longer took the welcome sight of what might be water at face value.  He did not show the unblemished trust of a child.  I could see his mind turning over the events of the past days.  Did he recall any of them?  Did he even know how long it had been since he was truly conscious?  Unlikely.

He eventually completed his scan with his squinting and blinking eyes.  I found that he paused again looking directly at where I lay hidden.  I was confident he could not see me, but still he squinted toward me.  I was frozen in place, controlling my breathing as if I were stalking prey for my evening meal.  At last the boy closed his eyes, cupping his hands to his ears, tilting his head like Right Ear so often did to hear something a little clearer.  Now I held my breath.  Still the boy leaned there with his eyes closed, now moving his hands from his ears and waving them to and from his nose, sniffing the air not unlike an animal of the wild.  Could he smell me?  Certainly not, I told myself.  Yet his actions caused me pause.

Shaking his head now Kesegowaase said, “Your head does not feel right, boy.  Did I just smell . . . color?”

His first step was broad and sure, but ended in failure as his leg crumpled beneath him.  Kesegowaase toppled into the muck, cracking his right knee on a great, gnarled root which snaked its way across his path.  “Oshkiniigikwe Glooskap!”  An odd, yet humorous curse, I thought, since he just called the god Glooskap an adolescent girl.

The rest of the day was more of the same as the boy’s mind recovered from his stupor.  After sniffing the water, he eventually sipped some from the skin.  Yet weakness from starvation was setting in by the time dusk settled upon us.  He was much thinner than when he came out from the village just over two weeks ago.  His cheek bones looked like they jutted from his drawn face.  The boy needed food or he may be dead by morning, I thought as he wearily leaned against a great tree with deeply ridged bark.  The snows had left only days earlier so there were no wild fruits or berries to be had – nothing that he could easily lay his hands on.  This was a trial to be sure!  I wondered how the other boys were doing and what made the tests of those whose mothers made the weak spear throws easier.

Is this why Ahanu wanted me here?  Of course, this is one of the reasons Hurit was so happy I would come.  I could secretly gather something for the boy to eat.  But the chief was clear when he told Hurit that I would watch over Kesegowaase that I would not interfere.  She had agreed to his terms.

Was I being dense?  Did my old friend truly want me to involve myself without using the words?

Yet if I did help, I would forever weaken the boy.  Surviving would not be worth it if Hurit, Ahanu, and I knew he received aid out here in the wilderness.  Kesegowaase too might even know if he came upon a squirrel with a freshly broken neck, a fresh trickle of blood from its nostrils.  I decided it would be better for him to die with the type of true honor that comes from the trials than to live with shame of deception his entire life.

But what if he did survive without my help?  Forever after and no matter what I said, Hurit and Ahanu would suspect that I may have helped the boy live long enough to become a man.  Even if their words said they believed my pleadings, their minds might seize upon the idea that the whole trial was tainted.  What should I do?

At the end of my struggle I sighed, calling out, “Kesegowaase.  I am Halldorr, the Enkoodabooaoo.  I am here, but will not help you.  You came to this place as but a boy.  If you expect to survive to manhood, you will rise up, feed yourself, and live.  Take your place among the men of your people such as your father, Kitchi, your grandfather, Ahanu, and the countless other great men from your tribe.”

With a heart now confident in my decision I plunged deeper into the trees toward the village, not taking another glance back to see how he responded, if at all.  Over my shoulder, I shouted, “I leave you now.  Prove to yourself that you are worthy of one day leading this nation.”

. . .

Two young women had just finished washing every inch of Kesegowaase’s body – a body that was still very much alive!  He survived his trials, returning on his own nearly one month earlier.  When he came into the village for the first time as a man, I could barely recognize him.  The skins he wore for clothes had been thoroughly cleaned so that not even a hint of the stench or soiling marks remained.  Over top his clothes he wore the unmistakable hide of a newly killed bear.  His face appeared as if it had filled out from when I saw him nearly starved to death just days earlier.  The boy’s, well, the man’s gate looked forceful, purposeful, and confident.  Kesegowaase had survived!

It was to be a full moon tonight and groups of unmarried women were preparing the newly made young men for the ceremony that would finalize their initiation into adulthood.  There were six groups of twos scrubbing, scraping, and buffing the men.  A seventh pair of women was unnecessary as the last lad had died while yet in his cage.  His keeper said that the boy expired right before his eyes as he forced more of the paste into the boy’s mouth on the fourth day.  The boy, I forget his name for it was so long ago, began thrashing all about in the tiny confines until all at once his body went limp.  The guard’s ear immediately went to the small, thin chest where no heart beat was heard.

Kesegowaase used all the restraint he could muster to dampen his own enthusiasm so as not to appear childlike while telling me of the events that transpired since I last saw him dying next to the tree.  I sat on a log absent-mindedly whittling a stick with my saex listening to his tale as the un-betrothed women wrapped pristine, newly tanned, buckskin leggings at his calves.  “I was so tired Halldorr, exhausted like never before.  I lay there not knowing it at the time, but I was probably going to die from starvation.”

I admired my handiwork which amounted to no more than a sharp wooden spike.  “And what stopped you from dying?  Other than just food, I mean.”

“That’s just it; it’s hard for me to say.  I think that Glooskap spoke to me.  It must have been him anyway.  I heard words, but it took several of them before I could tell they were spoken to me and in my own language.  They sounded far away, distant, as if a tree spirit spoke them to me.”

I smiled, now digging the point of the stick into the earth.  My eye caught a flash of the side of one of the young woman’s breasts.  It was a pleasant sight, plump, young and full for it was not sunken from the toll a child takes on a woman’s body.  But then I thought that this woman may someday be Kesegowaase’s wife and such looks would dishonor him so I returned my thoughts to the yarn he told.  “Could you not recognize the voice?”

“Yes and no.  I mean it sounded familiar, but my mind was still half in the spirit world.  I suppose it was a voice of the gods with whom I visited the previous days.  I probably recognized it from that.”

“So you heard Glooskap speak to you.  What did he say?”

Holding his arms out at his side while one of the women cinched a new breechcloth around his waist, Kesegowaase gestured animatedly with his hands, “He told me to be like my father and grandfather.  They survived the trials!  I should feed myself if I expected to do the same.”

“Sounds like fairly obvious advice.”

“No, no, no Halldorr.  If your people do not have a ritual like this, then you don’t know what it is like to come out of the spirit world.  I would have died without it.”

“We have a similar ritual, it’s called telling lies around the mead table.  We usually come out of this spirit world the next morning with bruises on our knuckles and faces.  So did food fall from the heavens like in the story of Moses I told you about?”

The man scoffed at me.  “No.  I stood up after Glooskap’s speech.  My legs each looked like a quaking snake, they wobbled so much.  I walked out of the clearing, tripped over a rock, toppled down a hill and landed on top of the largest tortoise I have ever seen!”  The women rose to leave.  They said nothing; rather, they gathered their cleaning implements and ducked out through the door.  He watched the prettier of the two leave before continuing.  “I held the armored beast in place with one hand, grabbed the nearest stick I could find, and shoved it between his plates into his neck.  His large head popped out a time or two while he struggled to live, but in the end he died in a matter of moments.  Killing him gave me knew energy.  I tucked the beast under my arm and returned to the clearing to start a cooking fire.  He roasted for over an hour while I gathered some roots to give me strength.”

“Have you told Hurit how close you came to death then?”  I wondered this because when I returned I told the lie to both Ahanu and Hurit that the boy appeared to be in good health and was safely out of the wysoccan haze.

“Why would I?” the man asked.

“Because she is your mother.”

Kesegowaase shook his head, “She
was
my mother.  I am a man and a man does not, should not run home and tell his mother of every little event of his life.”

I nodded for the young man was correct.  The trials had seemed to achieve their aim with this one.  “And the bear hide?  I cannot believe you’ve shown restraint for an entire month and not told anyone how you came to wear it.”

For the first time ever, I then heard a laugh that I would usually expect to hear from his grandfather, Ahanu.  It was mischievous, yet wise.  “I am quickly finding it is sometimes beneficial to let the mysterious stories people tell suffice for an explanation.  My own people are creating myths about me that may or may not hold any truth.”  He was of his grandfather’s blood.  My old friend Leif would like his wit.