People of the Sky (10 page)

Instinct told Kesbe the shaman was neither boasting nor lying. She heard the soft rustle and click of scorpion tails as Sahacat turned around. She lay rigidly and shut her eyes.
I never was very good at getting shots, either
, she thought.

She braced herself for agony, but felt only the dry touch of hands on her throbbing knee. Sahacat’s touch seemed to grow warmer, with a pervasive heat that enveloped the pain and withdrew it. The hands burned and tingled against Kesbe’s skin while Sahacat drew her breath in deep sighs.

Curious now rather than afraid, Kesbe cracked open one eyelid at the pair of brown hands encircling her leg. On the back of each one, perched as though it were some exotic decoration, was a tiny scorpion. Kesbe almost jumped off her pallet.

Trembling, she held still, unable to take her eyes off the two scorpions. She noticed that each had a double tail and each pair of tails was arched forward over the arachnid’s head, its stinger buried in the back of Sahacat’s hand. The healer’s touch now felt like fire-heated brick. At the point where Kesbe could barely stand it, Sahacat released her.

“There are two points where the spikes have pierced bone,” she said throatily. “I will pack the wounds with a special herb.” Kesbe nodded and closed her eyes again, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. Her knee was entirely numb, she felt only pressure as the healer worked.

She expected Sahacat to instruct her on the care of the wound and how long it would take to heal, but instead the shaman plucked the twin-tailed scorpions from her hands, dropped them back in their bag and said, “You wished to ride Haewi Namij during your journey with Imiya. Is that true?”

Kesbe blinked. The question was abrupt and had nothing to do with anything else that had happened between her and the healer. Then she wondered how Sahacat had known, for she hadn’t actually asked Imiya to let her ride.

“Yes,” she answered slowly, too dazed to deny it.

“And it is still your desire to ride an aronan.” It was a statement, not a question.

Kesbe eyed Sahacat. Something about the woman made her wary, although she couldn’t see what harm such an admission would bring. After all, it was true. “If my leg heals.”

“It will. When it does, however, you should make all effort to recover the great beast in which you came and depart again. For this reason have I healed you. Heed my words. Leave the fliers of the Pai Yinaye to the Pai Yinaye.”

With this she swept out of the room with a swish of robes like the feathers of a great raven.

It is night, but the village is still alive with the excitement brought by the stranger. I should be sleeping with the other children and their fliers. Something troubles me. I walk the path to the house of my uncle, Nabamida, my mother’s eldest brother. He is the one who disciplines me when I am wayward and who counsels me when I feel as I do now. I bring a gift of rolled waferbread, still warm from Chamol’s pit-oven
.

Tradition does not say I have to bring such a present, but I wish to please my uncle. Since my mother and father are dead, my uncle has done more for me than tradition requires. He is a good man. I wish to please him
.

He, his wife and I eat the waferbread together by the fire. His wife has other things to do in the house. My uncle takes out a clay pipe and smokes. His face is round and friendly. He wears his hair bound back in the manner of the Blue-Green-Water Clan to which he belongs. Around his mouth and beneath his nose he has a goatee, whereas most of the Pai Yinaye men lack hair
on their faces
.

The Blue-Green-Water Clan is very important, Nabamida has told me. Legends say that this clan was once a separate people before the Emergence to this Fifth World. They brought much-needed knowledge about foods that grow in the wild, things that the other clans, being farmers, had forgotten
.

My uncle waits, letting me start when I wish. He already knows the story, but he wishes to hear it again from my own tongue. I tell him. It all comes in a rush—the thunderstorm, the strange woman, the journey, the killing of the
wuwuchpi.
He takes his pipe from his mouth and regards me gravely. I thought she was a spirit, I say. I did what you and my teachers have said, to honor and help the spirits. Even if she was not a spirit, he replied, you have done right
.

The next step in your initiation will begin soon, my uncle says. It has been decided that you will be among the next group of the
kekelt.

My face flushes with excitement, yet my belly rolls with dread. To be
kekelt!
It is one step closer to becoming a man. It brings closer the time when I will lose Haewi, yet to be chosen early is an honor. I will leave behind the life of a child-warrior
.

I vow that I will take whatever trials put to me and I will learn all that I can. I would serve the spirits as a priest. Perhaps even as a Kiva Chief
.

Even as I look down my Road of Life, my thoughts turn back to Haewi. What will happen to my aronan
?

I think of my friend, Nyentiwakay, who has preceded me through the coming-of-age ritual. I ask my uncle if Nyentiwakay is now a man. No, my uncle says. There is another step to be taken first. Nyentiwakay was
kekelt,
the fledgling, as I will soon be. He is now
lomuqualt,
the brooding one. I will see him at the next festival
.

My uncle finishes his pipe. He tells me that the council meets at sunset the following day to discuss the matter of the stranger. They will want me to speak. I must go home to my pallet beside Haewi and sleep. I take leave of my uncle and go
.

In the morning after her visit from Sahacat, Kesbe woke to the sound of a guttural shout that penetrated the cliff-town of Tuwayhoima. Chamol, coming in with some cornmeal porridge, said, “That is the village crier announcing a council meeting.” Kesbe listened, but her command of the Pai Yinaye speech was so precarious that she could not understand the crier’s call.

“The meeting will be at sunset.” Chamol helped Kesbe to sit up so she could eat.

“Will you go?” Kesbe asked, thinking it might involve the entire community.

“No, I am still too young. It is the older men and women who form the council.”

Kesbe tried the porridge, found that it had strips of jerked meat mixed in with the cornmeal. Chewy, but good, she thought, deciding not to ask what sort of a creature the meat had come from. She already had a good idea.

Chamol cocked her head to the door, as though listening. “I hear the tread of sandals. We have a visitor.” She lifted the skirts of her blanket-dress across the high threshold of the doorway and disappeared.

“This is Nabamida of the Blue-Green-Water Clan,” she said, returning with a stocky, round-faced Pai Yinaye. “His name means Man-Who-is-Always-Glad.” Nabamida’s beaming smile was visible through his goatee, his manner expansive.

“You have chosen well for hospitality. My niece Chamol keeps a warm hearth and bakes excellent sapiki-bread.”

Kesbe let Chamol introduce her in the proper manner, responding with “I-am-I” when it was
her turn to speak. She gave herself a little praise for remembering that amenity of Pai speech, but uncertainty crowded in again when, instead of offering a handclasp or other gesture, Nabamida bent close to her and took a strong and audible sniff. She found herself stepping back from him.

“Uh…excuse me,” she said in English, trying to control the outrage and irritation that arose in her

He’s
smelling me like a damned dog! Is he going to shove his nose in my crotch too
?

Though the Pai could not understand her words, her voice-tone made the message clear. Nabamida stood off from her, his eyes narrowed, though not angry.

“Have patience,” she heard Chamol say to him. “She does not know our ways.” Then Chamol laid her hand on Kesbe’s arm and took her aside, speaking seriously and patiently as she would to a young child.

“What you did, Kesbe-Rohoni, would be considered very rude if you were Pai,” she said. “Because you are not, allowance must be made, but it would be easier for us if you would try.”

“What…did I do, exactly?” Kesbe stammered.

“You denied Nabamida greeting by the sense of
tewalutewi
. You withdrew the scent of your body from him.”

“I was embarrassed. I thought I’d smell terrible. I haven’t had a chance to wash,” she said lamely. “And he’s a man.”

“That a woman should not smell like a woman before a man? That is a strange thought.” Chamol cocked her head to one side, bird-like. “Tell me, then, woman-from-the-sky. Do your kind have no smell?” She paused and added, “Do you find our Pai scents unpleasant?”

That one was hard to answer and got harder the more Kesbe thought about it. But she realized that although the odors of the Pai were strong to the point of pungency, there was nothing dirty, no fecal or urine smells that would have instantly repulsed her. “No,” she answered, feeling she had given an honest reply.

“Then why should you fear that Nabamida will dislike you for your scent?”

Kesbe shrugged, admitting that it was her own problem. “If he’s not offended, I can try it again,” she said, attempting not to sound too stiff.

She found that Nabamida was willing to make allowances and restricted his olfactory inquiry to a few quick sniffs above the belt-line. Kesbe responded in kind. The gentle look in Nabami-da’s eyes and the tolerant half-smile visible through his goatee helped dispel Kesbe’s uneasiness.

“So where do you come from, Kesbe-who-has-no-clan?” Nabamida’s eyes were kind yet piercing. “It is clear you are not of the Pai Yinaye.”

She sighed. “It would be difficult to explain exactly. I come from a village outside the Barranca. A great distance.”

“Beyond our Mother Canyon? But our Mother Canyon is the world. There is nothing outside.” Nabamida stroked his goatee with one finger. “Well, we will discuss it at the council meeting tonight. That is why I have come Imiya will be there to speak and of course you must be also.”

Kesbe looked down at her bound-up knee. “Imiya’s friends can carry you,” Chamol offered.

Somehow the idea of arriving at an important council meeting in the same way she had entered Chamois house did not appeal to her dignity. “If I have a staff I can lean on,” she said, “I can carry myself. At least part of the way.”

Nabamida, it turned out, was a bow-maker and skilled in working wood. With an obsidian knife, softwood poles and woven cord, he began to fashion her a pair of crutches complete with arm supports and hand-holds. He worked quickly, deftly, taking as much care with these crutches
for a stranger as he would with a bow for the tribe’s best hunter. Kesbe found her respect for him increasing as she watched his craftsmanship.

While Nabamida worked on her crutches, Kesbe used the time to learn more about the Pai and their ways. Some things she gained by questioning, others she discovered when she blundered and was corrected by gentle scolding. She found that her boundaries of personal space were much larger that those of the Pai and she had to stop herself from bristling or retreating when someone got too close.

Chamol had also chided Kesbe when she asked to be carried to a remote part of Tuwayhoima’s cavern so that she could relieve herself privately into some convenient crevice. Instead she was told that human wastes were not to be carelessly discarded. Chamol showed her a ceramic collection vessel set into the ground in a shelter nearby. She found that the Pai version of the latrine even had its own equivalent of the flush. When the job was complete, one used a stick with a flat wooden plunger at one end and squashed the result into a patty that dried rapidly in the heat. Then ground clay was dribbled on to aid in desiccation and discourage flies. The result after several uses was an innocuous material composed of layers of clay and dried manure. This could be burned for fuel or else broken up and spread on the cornfields.

Carrying the honey-bucket might not be too bad a job among these people
, Kesbe thought. Though she had found the squatting position awkward especially with her bad knee, it definitely reduced the need for tissue.

Nabamida had her crutches done by late afternoon. When Kesbe tried them, she found she had regained a reasonable degree of mobility.

Toward sunset, she set off, escorted by Nabamida and Chamol, to the council meeting. It was held in a large stone chamber at the lowest level of the village. The floor was partially sunk below ground level in the manner of a kiva, but the entrance was to the side instead of by trapdoor from above. The steps were so steep as to be almost a ladder and Kesbe had difficulty negotiating them with her bad knee and her crutches.

Despite her injury, she thought she might be one of the less infirm attendees, since this was a gathering of the village elders. However even the most ancient of crones and patriarchs, despite their wrinkles, were surprisingly spry on the steps.

Kesbe was directed to sit to the side, near a blanket-wrapped Imiya, who was with the other child-warriors. Despite the flow and bustle of people into the chamber, the boy had an abstracted look on his face, as if turned far inward. She took her place quietly without speaking to him. Chamol, after seeing Kesbe safely to her place, left her with Imiya.

She had dreaded the moment when all the heads would turn and the stares would fasten upon her as the alien curiosity to be discussed in this gathering. Instead, the elders exchanged quiet talk and lit their pipes. No one appeared to be leading the group. All sat silently wrapped in blankets while a haze of smoke gathered overhead.

Kesbe was surprised when she picked out the taut-skinned face of the healer Sahacat from among the lean leathery visages. Perhaps it was not age alone that entitled one to a seat at the council.

A tremulous voice rose from the group. “As our smoke gathers above us to become one, so must we. We have come with many minds, yet we must move together.” The speaker was the oldest one of all, with papery skin so fragile it seemed it would tear over the prominent bones. Kesbe could not make out the sex of the speaker, either by appearance or by voice.