People of the Sky (28 page)

“Where do you go, Nyentiwakay?” I ask.

“To Aronan House. I tend the mounts of child-warriors who are in the kiva. Do you wish to come?”

Again I am torn. Like a small child, I dread being left alone, yet the thought of being near aronans repels me.

“Imiya, I think it would do you good to come. Working among the fliers is one of our duties.”

My friend speaks wisely. I can choose to wallow in the filth cast upon me or I can shake my
spirit free and step once more into my Road of Life. I sense that if I flee from aronans now, I will turn from them all my life.

“I will go,” I answer. To show my acceptance, I extend my arms so that Nyentiwakay can slip the sleeves of the robe over them. I rise with the robe on my shoulders and follow Nyentiwakay to the entrance of Aronan House.

I am greeted in a different way when I pass the threshold onto the ground floor. No longer do I receive the shouts and thumpings that the child-warriors give each other. The children of Aronan House stand back from me now, just as I stood back from Nyentiwakay in the time when I was still a child-warrior and my friend had taken the next step on his life-road.

The round solemn eyes in the young faces dismay me. I feel I am being granted an honor I do not deserve, a respect I have not earned. I long to be a child-warrior again, to cross the canyon on the back of one I loved. No. I can not think of Haewi. Do these children know what awaits them? Do I walk among them, poisoned by the knowledge and the urge to speak aloud and warn them?

Perhaps Nyentiwakay knows what is in my mind, for my arm is taken and I am walked swiftly to the pole ladder that leads up to the flier’s Quarters. Once on the floor above, Nyentiwakay gives me a spine-comb. The young initiates in the teaching kiva can not spare the time to properly groom their mounts. We must do this task for them as well as tending to the aronans’ other needs.

The task is one my hands know well, for I kept Haewi’s locking spines meticulously clean. Never did my aronans legs fail to unfold because of interfering debris. I saw that happen to other mounts whose owners were careless. Yet it was Haewi who met death early and these others still live. I close my mind against any more thoughts and begin on the first creature, Pesquit’s Dancing Water.

I coax the blue and silver aronan down from its hanging-perch, but once alighted it is still restless, scuttling back and forth. I need Nyentiwakay’s help to calm it. My friend displays the same abilities I saw used when we gentled the rogue black and amber before the Cloud Dance. Soon Dancing Water stands still enough for me to clean the locking spines on both fore and rear legs.

‘You should be able to gentle the creatures yourself,” Nyentiwakay tells me. “I do not have any unique power. It is the state of being
lomuqualt
itself that grants me this ability. Aronans can sense it. They respond.”

My throat closes. Yes, I knew this before, but I have no wish to be reminded of it now. Anger flares. I have to grit my teeth not to shout back at Nyentiwakay. Must everyone and everything continue to dwell on what I am forced to carry in my belly?

I manage to do several more aronans without Nyentiwakay’s help, but it is more by force than persuasion that I make them stand still for grooming. I straighten up, thinking I am done, when Nyentiwakay motions toward one last aronan that has come out of the shadows of a corner. Black and amber wings flutter, but I don’t need the wing-colors to recognize Kesbe’s Baqui Iba.

Does Kesbe understand that when the time comes for her to walk that path with Bacqui Iba, she will end by tearing the wings from her beloved? Should I leave Aronan House, seek Kesbe out and tell her what I saw in the cave beneath the mesa? Yet is what I saw that terrible night really the truth or, as Sahacat has said, were my eyes touched with evil? The pain is that I do not know.

Bacqui Iba tosses its head and capers over to Nyentiwakay I follow after, scolding the creature to come back and be groomed. As the
lomuqualt
turns, Bacqui Iba dips its head down to nudge Nyentiwakay’s stomach. With a deft twist of its muzzle, it flips apart the lappings of my friend’s robe.

Strong yet gentle hands capture Bacqui Iba’s head as the aronan tries to stroke Nyentiwakay’s abdomen with the plumes of its antennae.

“You know, don’t you, winged one. It is one of your kind taking shape within me,” the deep voice murmurs. My friend gives the aronan’s head an affectionate shake. It skips back. The velvet of its eyes scintillates and the minty flavor of its happiness wafts throughout the building.

“Look how it struts, as if it were the one who placed the gift I bear.” Nyentiwakay laughs again. I force a smile onto my rigid face. If I turn away, I would not see this. If I turn away Nyentiwakay will know something is wrong. My hand tightens on the spine-comb. My fingers slide along the long sharp teeth of the comb.

Bacqui Iba stops dancing and comes to me for grooming. I do the spines on its rear legs, then move to the front. It has exhausted its playfulness, I think, and I try to relax. Even as I place my comb for the first cleaning stroke, the aronan pivots away from me, ducking its head and nudging my stomach.

Rage, shame and grief boil up in me, propelling my hand in a vicious strike with the tines of the spine-comb. Another Imiya is born in that moment. He takes my body. He is screaming hateful words, chopping with the comb at the aronan s face. He is seized and dragged back.

I huddle on the floor. Nyentiwakay is wrenching the spine-comb from my hand. The other Imiya wants to lift his head to see the wounds he has made. I dread seeing what he has wrought. I dread even more to see what is in Nyentiwakay’s face.

“I was wrong, Imiya,” my friend says softly. “It is not good for you to be here.”

“I am cursed, I am blackened, I am painted with evil,” I cry and the tears spill from my eyes. I force myself to look at Bacjui Iba. It crouches defensively, mandibles extended and wings lifted. There are two small gashes across the top of its muzzle, like rips in leather.

Footsteps ring on the floor. I look numbly at Nyentiwakay. Now everyone will know…

My friend is gentling Bacqui Iba, placing a cloth across the wounds on its muzzle. “Fill the water trough,” the
lomuqualt
says sharply. I bend to lift the heavy jars, turning away from the boys who are scrambling up the ladder. Child voices demand to knew what has happened. I let the water splash loudly, drowning out the sound of their voices and Nyentiwakay’s answer.

It does not matter exactly what is said. I know my friend will protect me. He sends all the boys back down the ladder by saying that Bacqui Iba was fighting with another aronan. The creature’s reputation as a rogue makes that tale believable. But in protecting me, he has been soiled with having to lie. It is another shame added to those I already bear.

When the child-warriors are gone, Nyentiwakay rubs a healing salve onto the gashes on Bacjui Iba’s muzzle. Will he have to speak untrue words to Kesbe, telling her that her mount was damaged in an accident? Thank the gods that the other Imiya struck so wildly or I might be faced with the task of telling Kesbe that her flier had been blinded…

I move toward the ladder.

“Imiya,” the voice comes after me.

“I go to seek healing. Stay here. You must stay with Baqui Iba.”

The
lomuqualt
knows that the shock of such an unexpected attack could make the creature wary and vicious. It would not reflect well on Aronan House if Bacjui Iba bit Kesbe when she came to retrieve it.

“Go to your uncle,” Nyentiwakay says, still holding the cloth pad on the aronan’s muzzle. “Seek healing through him.”

I nod. Yes, I will go to Nabamida as I should have done before. I will tell him all. We will make pahos and pray. Under his guidance, I will make a sand-painting. That will heal me. The power of a well-made sand-painting is strong.

I find my way down the ladder and through the throng of child-warriors who seem to cast suspicious looks at me. It is all I can do not to run from Aronan House.

There came a day in the kiva when
tewalutewi
began to change even Kesbe’s perception of time itself. She was performing another perception exercise with Baqui Iba and Sahacat when the aronan began to move. The shaman was leading the creature slowly back and froth in front of Kesbe.

She expected to sense the creature moving. She “saw” much more than just that. With each step, the aronan left behind a fading scent-image of itself, as if it were a snake constantly casting off old skins. Its path was a trail of these images, superimposed over each other as if caught by freeze-frame photography.

It occurred to her that she was looking backward in time. The images were moments caught and preserved by the sense of
tewalutewi
. She could perceive the instant when Baqui Iba lifted its left foreleg and dipped its head in one phase of its gait.

The path of images was the past blending into the present. It made Kesbe feel strangely uncomfortable. For her, raised as she was in a Caucasian culture that stressed technology, time should be partitioned strictly into past, present and future. Having that distinction removed was unsettling. It yanked at the underpinnings of her physical reality, moving her into a strange mythological time where events of the past were as much alive as were the events of the present.

She remembered a philosophical question from her years in college. Could you place your foot twice in the same river without violating laws of time and space? It was strangely disconcerting to find a world in which you could.

And this, she realized, was Baqui Iba’s world, one in which time and space were reshaped into new forms by the sense used to perceive them. To the aronan, she did not exist just as a bundle of odors that had their existence strictly in the present. She was a path, a road of life that led backwards into the past, a road along which most people could travel only with memories. But for aronans and the Pai people who rode them, past and present were one. She was starting to understand what it was to be such a creature and she sensed that the understanding would lead her closer to the communion she so desired.

Yet something told her that it would not happen here in the earthy dark of the kiva. This was a training ground, intended to inhibit the sense of vision in order to allow other senses to grow. Now that her sense of
tewalutewi
felt mature, the kiva oppressed her and she wanted to take Baqui Iba out into the sunlight.

To her amazement, Sahacat agreed. “It is time to master the blending of the senses,” she said as she held the doorflap open, allowing Baqui Iba to pass by.

Kesbe had no idea what she meant by those words until she emerged with her flier at the top of the ramp that led up from the kiva. Baqui Iba gave a horse-like buck and began capering over the flagstones of the plaza.

So strong was the sunlight that its dazzle disoriented Kesbe and she closed her eyes, drawing back the corners of her mouth to use
tewalutewi
. The world-image she collected was stable and solid until she opened her eyes. The additional visual information that poured in on her overlaid
and confused the images built up by scent. With a little cry of dismay, she staggered, suddenly overwhelmed by the influx, and clapped hands over her eyes and mouth.

She felt herself stumble into Baqui Iba and drew back, afraid the creature would shy and spring away. Instead she felt the aronan’s plumes stroking and twining around her arm while a comforting scent, like the odor of sun-warmed leather, surrounded her. The narrow muzzle bumped her and the moth-tongue tickled her, as if saying, “Don’t be afraid.”

She felt herself smile as she stroked the stiff mat of bristle on the aronan’s neck. It gave her the courage to open one eye on the world. This time she felt less confused as her mind began to knit together the images created by vision and olfaction. She opened the other eye and stared around the plaza, tasting/smelling and seeing its sun-warmed richness.

“That is why your training took place in the kiva,” said Sahacat’s voice behind her. “The knowing sense of
tewalutewi
had to grow strong enough to contest the dominance of the eyes. Now each must complement the other.”

Kesbe turned toward Baqui Iba, who had begun to prance and dip its wings. It cast off streamers of scent so varied and intense that Kesbe seemed to see them as colored banners swirling from its wings. The hues of the wings and the grace and delicacy of the aronans form seemed to translate back into subtle odors. Kesbe drank it all in, no longer knowing or caring what impression was coming from which sense.

It took her several hours to achieve the integration that Sahacat spoke of. Even then, the balance was precarious and she would find herself sliding toward dominance by one perceptive mode or the other. The composite image would separate and she would have to stop and bring it together once again. But by the end of the day, she felt secure enough to ask Sahacat what the next step would be.

“Your senses are skilled in the Pai Way,” said the shaman. “Now you must learn to discipline that which lies deepest within. Meet me at dawn on the mesa-top, at the place where the Cloud Dance was given. Take Baqui Iba now to Aronan House and lead it to the mesa when you come.” She walked away.

In the house of my sister, Chamol, I seek healing. Here, in an inner chamber, by the light of an oil lamp, I chant and let the colored sands run from my fingers. A sand-painting must never be done under open sky, only here, hidden from spirits that might turn the healing powers of the sand-painting against me.

This is the second room in Chamois house to be put to such a use. The death-image of Haewi and myself still lies undisturbed in the next chamber. Nabamida has let it remain. Does he fear that it will be needed?

No. These are not the right thoughts for one who is making a sand-painting. Letting them into my mind has disrupted my chant and the flow of red sand from between my fingers. The line is no longer even. The image has already lost a small part of its power.

It is too late to begin again. I must continue. I finish with red sand and take up pale blue-green. I chant the story that I told Kesbe-Rohoni long ago when we walked the terraces, about how Sasquasoha created Aronan from Dragonfly. I did not tell her all of the story then. I must tell it all now. The one who must listen is the broken part of myself
.

The story is called Tuwahan’s Daughter and the Children of Aronan.

One day, a long time after the creation of Aronan from Dragonfly, a young man named Tuwahan took his bow and arrow and went out hunting. He could find nothing but an aronan. To him the aronans were beautiful, but his family needed jood. Tuwahan drew back his arrow and prepared to kill Aronan, but be saw the creature grieving.

“Why are you sorrowing?” Tuwaban asked Aronan.

“I am weeping because my children will die.”

“Why will your children die?”

“Because there is no one to care for them,” answered Aronan. “The ones who once sheltered them have gone and I am not able to do it myself.”

Tuwaban put down his bow and arrow. He felt sorry for Aronan. He also had children and loved them dearly. Though he could not comfort the creature, he could not kill it either, so be left to hunt elsewhere.

Tuwaban was in a side-canyon when the leaden sky poured forth rain. A flash-flood swept down the side-canyon, catching the hunter and carrying him along. He managed to grasp onto a rock, but was too exhausted to pull himself out. As he fought the surging current of the flood, he wept, for he knew he would be drowned. Aronan flew overhead and saw the man weeping.

“Why do you grieve, Tuwahan?” Aronan called.

“I am weeping because my children will die.”

“Why will your children die?”

“Became I will be killed in the flood and there will be no one to feed them.”

Aronan felt sorry for the man. The creature hovered near the rock where the hunter clung and told him to climb onto its back. Aronan carried Tuwahan above the flood until the waters receded and the sun dried the canyons.

“You are safe now, man,” Aronan said as it landed. “And your children will not die.” It flew with Tuwahan to a place that was good for hunting so that he killed plenty of game to bring borne. Aronan also flew with him to a place where the soil was good for growing corn.

Tuwahan was grateful to Aronan and said so. “Since you have saved me and my children, I will shelter yours. Shall I build a pueblo for them?”

“My children are not sheltered in a pueblo,” Aronan answered.

“Then I will dig them a kiva.”

“My children are not sheltered in a kiva,” Aronan replied.

Tuwahan was puzzled. “How then can I shelter them?”

“I will put the first one in your belly,” said Aronan.

At this Tuwahan grew very frightened, for the only thing he ever put in his belly was food. He told Aronan to go away and fled back to his own people. Aronan was very sad because the man would not shelter its children.

But Tuwahan used the knowledge that Aronan had given him of the good place to hunt and to grow corn. With this, he and his people prospered. He had many children, both sons and daughters. One day, his eldest daughter came to him and said, “Father, I have seen the strangest thing. When I was out hunting, I saw an aronan weeping. When I asked it why it was weeping, it told me it was mourning for its first child that had died because there was no one to shelter it.”

When Tuwahan heard this, he was reminded of his broken promise to Aronan. He was ashamed, but he was still afraid, so he told his daughter to have nothing to do with Aronan or its kind.

There came a time when drought dried the streams and Tuwahan and his family had to carry water to their corn. Each day they had to walk farther and each day they were weaker and more exhausted. One day Tuwahan’ eldest daughter was the water-carrier and while she was walking through the dust and the heat, Aronan came to her and said, “I can fly you to water much faster than you can walk.”

Tuwahan’s daughter agreed to this, and so, mounted on Aronan’s back, she fetched water for the corn. When she returned to her father, Aronan came with her and said, “I have carried your daughter so she would not grow weak and die under the hot sun. Will you now keep the promise you made to me and shelter my children?”

But Tuwahan was still afraid and so he told Aronan to go away. The next day the streams had dried up for so far a distance that the daughter was struck down by the sun’s heat as she walked and she died.

When the next of Tuwahan’s children went to fetch water for the corn, he met Aronan, who was weeping over the death of its second child and fearful for a third. Aronan spoke with the boy and flew him to water. When the two returned to the father, Aronan again asked him to honor his promise. Again the man refused. The sun was so hot the next day that his son was struck by a fit of dizziness while on his search for water and fell over a cliff.

Aronan came to Tuwayan, who was with his last child, a young woman.

“Will you honor your promise to me?” Aronan asked the man.

Tuwahan wept because he was so frightened. He also knew that he would lose his remaining daughter and there would be no children to follow him.

“Father, why do you weep?” asked the young woman.

The man told his daughter that he was afraid.

The daughter looked at Aronan and said, “I will keep the promise my father broke. Place your last child in my belly.”

And Aronan drew its last child from its body and placed it in the belly of Tuwahan’s daughter. Tuwayan’s daughter carried the aronan-child. When it came time for it to be born, Tuwahan’s daughter brought forth not one infant, but two, the aronan-child and a human son.

“You have come from the same flesh. You shall be brothers,” said Tuwahan’s daughter. And the boy and the aronan grew up together, the aronan giving its gift of flight to the boy. When it
came time for the aronan to birth its own offspring, the boy, counselled by his mother, was willing to shelter it. And so began the partnering of humans with aronans and it continues to this day.

That is the end of the story. For Tuwayhan, for his daughter. But not for me.

In orange and yellow sand, I draw the corn plants lifting their heads to the sun, while water brought by Aronan pours onto their thirsty roots. I draw the hunters riding out on Aronan to seek game.

The oil lamp bums low. Nabamida brings another, moving quietly so as not to disturb the rhythms of my work. Now the image is nearly complete except for the last portion. That day on the terrace, Kesbe asked me if Aronan ever asked for the gift it was promised by our people. Kesbe knows the answer by now, for Sahacat must have told her. Aronan did ask the people for the most difficult gift of all. This is what I must know, understand and accept.

I draw the image of Tuwahan, the man who feared what Aronan asked of him. I make him look like me. I draw Tuwahan’s dead children, the price he paid for refusing to honor the promise made to Aronan. I too have my dead to mourn. Haewi…

I hear the words of the story again and they come out through my own lips as I draw the image of Aronan clasping a human form to its own. My hand sweats, making the sand run unevenly. “I will place my children in your flesh,” I say, in the words of the story. I bite my lip, forcing my hand not to tremble as I make the human figure the image of myself.

And at the center of the figure I place in gold and black sand, the egg that Aronan is laying, must lay…has laid…within me.

My fist clenches, jerks. The sand pours out in a jagged line like a lightning stroke across the figure of Aronan. My chanting falters. Nabamida leans forward to see what I have done. I am already drawing back my shaking hands from the sand-painting. It will do no good to repair the figure of Aronan. What I have done speaks of the hurt that is still within me, a hurt still too strong to be healed. The sand-painting is powerless. I watch through tears while Nabamida tries to cover my lightning streak with new sand. Even he knows the attempt is useless and his hand also trembles…

I can not bear the pain in his eyes as he lifts his head to me across the ruined sand-painting. I jump to my feet and run out of the house, into the darkness that has settled over the village and my life.

The morning was crisp, the sun brilliant as Kesbe walked Baqui Jba across the plaza from Aronan House. The creature tossed its head and fanned its wings in the cool air.

“You want to fly, don’t you,” Kesbe said softly.

The answer came back in a burst of spicy scents, freshened by spearmint.

“Well, why not?” No one had said she couldn’t and Baqui Iba still had the leg-weights that balanced it for riding. Sahacat had said explicitly to lead the creature, but Kesbe was getting tired of obeying the shaman in every detail.

She was scarcely aware that she had transmitted her agreement to the flier before it dived between her legs and bounced up with her perched on its thorax. It stood poised, wings starting to vibrate. She checked herself, pulled her feet into place.

“Go!” she shouted in Pai. The word was left behind as the flier launched itself with a powerful kick of its hind legs. A rush of morning air struck her face like a pailful of cold water, snatched at her kilt as the flier arrowed out toward the rising sun.

A short distance was all she could allow herself. Sahacat would be waiting on the mesa-top.
Regretfully she turned Baqui Iba and flew a course that spiraled up along the edge of the Pai mesa to the natural amphitheater of tiers and ledges where the Cloud Dance had taken place.

She flew over the rise and saw Sahacat standing on the highest ledge. Nearby was another aronan, Pesquit’s Dancing Water. Pesquite herself sat on a boulder. She jumped up and waved happily as Baqui Iba came into view. Sahacat’s head turned sharply, as if she hadn’t expected Kesbe to appear from that direction. A frown darkened the classic Mayan cast of the shaman’s features.

“I told you to lead the aronan,” she said sharply as Baqui Iba settled and Kesbe slipped off.

“The winged one must have had other ideas,” Pesquit giggled.

Sahacat gave the girl a withering look, but that only subdued her slightly. “When I give instructions, I mean to be obeyed. I have reasons for what I say.”

“You don’t always make them clear.” Kesbe tried to keep her rebellion from finding its way into her voice.

Sahacat turned the full power of her gaze onto her. “You will fly the aronan when I say and only then. Do you understand me?”

Kesbe tried to swallow her anger, but it wouldn’t go down. “I see no harm in my riding Baqui Iba”

“You are not the one to make that judgment. If you do not wish to complete the instruction, your ‘Gooney Berg’ waits over there.” The shaman flung out her hand, pointing to the center of the mesa where Kesbe knew the plane was parked.

“You know damn well we can’t stop now,” she retorted. “You said yourself that this bond between me and Baqui Iba is too strong to break. And you’ve put too much into this to see it die now, or am I wrong?”

Sahacat’s long eyes narrowed further, but Kesbe knew she had called the shaman’s bluff. As much as Sahacat had tried in the beginning to discourage her, she was now as committed to this as Kesbe. There was a cold glitter in those eyes as the shaman said, “With your obedience, warrior-woman, we will continue.”

“You have it,” Kesbe answered.

“We will see. This next task I set you will be a test of the heart. Mount your flier.”

Feeling puzzled and apprehensive, she swung aboard Baqui Iba.

Sahacat said, “You are to fly a straight course across the top of this amphitheater. When you are midway, you must execute a dive off your mount and have it catch you.”

Kesbe shook her head, not sure she had heard correctly. “You want me to jump off in mid-air?”

“You have seen the child-warriors do it. It is an exercise in skill, but most of all in trust. You must convey to Baqui Iba what you intend to do and have the creature act accordingly.”

Kesbe felt herself begin to sweat. Her communication with Baqui Iba was still on a vague level and so far had consisted largely of emotional exchanges.

“Isn’t that a bit high for a first jump?” she asked, her voice starting to squeak as her throat closed.

“The higher you are, the safer you will be, since the aronan will have more time in which to catch you.”

Assuming the aronan understands what its crazy rider is doing and reacts in time.

“Pesquit,” said Sahacat sharply. “Show her.”

With a grin at Kesbe, the child-warrior hopped onto her mount and rode Dancing Water into a steep climb about a hundred meters above the amphitheater. She flew to one end, banked
around and soared back. Kesbe watched over Baqui Iba’s raised muzzle, grateful that her mount was paying attention.