The Key to the Indian (11 page)

S
ilence and darkness.

Omri breathed deep to calm the fear. The air caught unpleasantly in his throat and nose for a split second, nearly making him cough, then struggled into his lungs. It was full of strange smells, so strong they were almost tastes. The principal one was smoke.

He found he was lying on his back. He stared upward. He perceived some light now, but despite the open-air cold, it wasn’t starlight. A dull reddish glow from somewhere away to his left showed him, after some moments, that far above his head was an arched roof made of bark.

As his ears became sensitised to the quiet he realised there were sounds. Seemingly from several directions at once came loud snores. Nearer, there were other breathing noises. A slight rustle, as if someone turned over in sleep. A night bird cried. Then, far away but still spine-chillingly, a wolf howled.

Omri cautiously rolled over, then sat up sharply. His eyes had adjusted now. Some way down what looked like an endless tunnel, running off into total darkness, he could see a fire, burning low. By its faint, ruddy glow, he could see, at regular intervals along the tunnel, posts as thick as the thickest oak trunk. Between some pairs of these hung things like curtains, but they were not of cloth. One of them hung near him and he touched it. It was made of some stiff but smooth stuff, with ridges, a bit like paper. He couldn’t make out what it was.

He felt a draft of cold air. Instinctively he put his arms around his body. Then he looked down at himself and got a shock.

He was naked.

His first instinct was to hide. He scrambled over the earth floor and ducked under the curtain. Beyond it was deeper darkness, but he could make out a sort of room with a raised section against the wall. On this was a mountain range covered with fur in the shape of a sleeping giant.

Omri stared all around, feeling the beginnings of panic. “Dad!” he whispered as loudly as he dared.

There was no answer. Omri felt intensely vulnerable with no clothes on. Cold air embraced his skin from head to foot.
He felt a sudden longing to go home. He hadn’t reckoned on this – being separated from his dad, it being night, so dark and cold, so strange, so lonely.

He made himself start to think.

He was in a longhouse, he knew that much. He remembered reading that the longhouses were very long indeed, with many families living in partitioned compartments on either side of a wide central aisle with a number of fires down the middle. This must be Little Bull’s compartment. He was expecting them. He wouldn’t have just left the man-doll lying anywhere. He would keep it near to him. Perhaps it was him, lying asleep under the furs?

Omri stood up beside the raised section, which he realised was a sleeping platform. The top of it was over his head. That made him try to reckon out how big he was, compared to the people here. If a full-sized person was lying asleep under these hides, he himself must be about sixteen or seventeen centimetres high. That gave him a great advantage over people who brought to life plastic figures only eight centimetres tall.

He needed Little Bull – if it was him – to wake up, to take care of him.

He ran from one end of the platform to the other, a distance, to him, of about twenty metres. There seemed no way he could climb up on to it. Then he almost bumped into something at one end – a basket, upside-down. Standing up close, he could smell it – a flowery, dryish smell, like hay but sweeter. It was enormous, with little woven braids crossing around its sides in a pattern. Omri explored it by touch. The
weave was stiff, quite strong enough to make a ladder for him. He clambered up, feeling the woody edges firm under his hands and feet. Soon he stood on the gently sloping bottom of the basket, and now there was another sweet smell – Omri recognised it – it was a herb his mum used for stuffing chicken. Sage.

From here it was an easy step on to the platform where the mountains of fur were, and he knew at once he was at the head-end of their sleeping place because he could feel, against his bare skin, a coming-and-going warmth – human breath. He reached forward and touched flesh.

It twitched. He felt it with his hand. It was a nose. What if it weren’t Little Bull’s? He had to take a chance.

He moved his hand, feeling for the eyelid. The eyelashes brushed his fingers. They were opening! Now he saw the faint reflection of light in the white of an eye.

The next moment there was a violent movement – an eruption among the hides – and a hand shot out and seized him.

He got a terrible fright, and for a moment everything seemed to go black. Then, as the warmth of the hand permeated his cold body, he heard a familiar voice.

“Om-Ri?”

The voice was now deep and powerful, a man’s voice, though it was kept low. Omri realised he had never heard or seen Little Bull full-size before.

“Yes! It’s me, Little Bull! I’ve come!”

The hand released him and Omri became aware of the big
man lying on his side, looking him up and down. Then he heard a deep-throated chuckle.

“You forget to bring clothes?”

“I had some when I started.”

“Ah,” Little Bull murmured. “Twin Stars must have a plan.” He turned over where he lay, shook someone lying asleep beyond him and spoke some quiet words. There was another eruption among the skins, and Omri, looking far up, saw Twin Stars sitting up behind Little Bull, her hair tumbling around her startled face. He shrank down, covering himself with his hands.

Twin Stars peered at him, put her face against Little Bull’s shoulder and giggled. She spoke to Little Bull, who said, “Wife says, when day comes she will greet you and give clothes. Father also have bare skin?”

“I don’t know where he is.”

Little Bull chuckled. “I know.”

He thrust his hand among the furs that wrapped him and Twin Stars, and Omri heard the sleepy protesting whimper of a small child who must be lying between them. The next moment Little Bull’s hand emerged with Omri’s dad in it, naked as a jay-bird. Omri heard him gasping for breath as if he’d come out of deep water.

“Omri! Are you there?”

“Yes, Dad!” Omri hissed back. “Shhh! Don’t shout!” Luckily the shout was a small shout to match his body.

Little Bull gently set Omri’s dad down beside him. “I’ve nearly suffocated! I thought I had no face again! I couldn’t
imagine where I was or what was happening. It was like being trapped in between two damp hot-air balloons!”

“I think Tall Bear was cuddling you under the skins,” said Omri.

“He needs his nappy changed… God, it’s cold out here! Where are we? Why are we nak’d?” His father always said ‘naked’ as if it were the past of a verb ‘to nake’. It was a silly family joke and somehow it made Omri feel better.

He almost laughed himself. “I think Twin Stars forgot to put clothes on the man-dolls.”

“Maybe it was a protest at having to break the taboo and give us faces! Where are all the things we were supposed to bring with us? We’ve got some spare gear if we could find those. It was you who was touching them.”

Omri led the way back to the place on the floor where he had first ‘arrived’. Now his eyes were used to the dark (though they were stinging because of the smoky air) he could see a shape on the ground.

“Look – there they are!”

He and his dad fell on the box and the sleeping bags and dragged them under the curtain. Just as when the little people came to them, the things they had brought were in scale. Omri silently thanked the magic as he groped in the box and found the torch, the candles, some tinned food – and a couple of sweaters.

“How are we going to open these tins?” Omri asked as he struggled into his sweater. “Oh, of course – the tin-opener on your knife.”

“Is the knife there?” asked his dad with sudden anxiety.

“Isn’t it in your pocket?”

“My poor idiot, I haven’t
got
a pocket, have I?”

“Dad! Does that mean all the stuff you had in your clothes isn’t here? The matches?”

“Nope.”

A thought struck Omri. “What about the wampum belt?”

“If we had brought it, would it be our size or Little Bull’s?”

“His. It came from here.”

“How could it bring us and then disappear? It must have got lost on the way, when I lost my shirt.”

“Dad!”

“Don’t blame me.”

“I don’t, but I bet Little Bull will!”

The sleeping bags were there, however, and they lost no time in carrying them to the foot of the sleeping platform, and crawling in. Omri was shivering so much his teeth chattered.

“Dad… Why is it night here?”

“It’s the same time difference as always. It must be nearly morning though – ten a.m. our time in England would be about five a.m. theirs.”

“So why am I so tired?”

“Well, it can’t be jet-lag, can it?” said his father dryly. Omri snuggled down into the sleeping bag, curling his icy feet round each other. His dad said thoughtfully, “It isn’t so scary the second time. But I still find that weird sensation – that feeling of going out of much more than just your body – quite
unnerving. And then finding myself clutched to that baby’s stomach with his hot little hands… No doubt it’s just the beginning. I wonder what’s in store for us ‘come the dawn’.”

“I’m glad you’re with me, Dad,” mumbled Omri.

“I wish I had my Swiss army knife.”

A short time later, the wolf howled again, but Omri wasn’t awake to hear it.

Neither Omri nor his dad felt themselves being gently lifted and laid in a safer place. In the morning they woke to find themselves in a vast room, curtained-off on three sides and walled with slabs of bark on the fourth. Omri could see what the curtains were, now: they were dried corn-husks plaited together.

Tall Bear, a giant one-year – old, was gazing at them from above. Little Bull was behind him, restraining him by holding his hands firmly to his sides.

Omri stared at Little Bull. He was of course huge, but also very handsome. His head was shaven above his ears and his plaited hair fell from the crown; he wore earrings, which presumably had always been too small for Omri to see, hanging from holes in his ears, large enough for Omri to have put his fist through. His torso was bare and tattooed into faint, curving lines, crossed with several necklaces of leather, beads and shells. He was smiling.

“You sleep much,” he said. “Long journey! Now it is time to greet you.”

He lifted the baby and stood aside. To Omri’s – and his
father’s – intense embarrassment, they now saw Twin Stars looming above them. She was holding a wooden basin. She sat down on the edge of the bed and, before either of them could realise what she was doing, she took a piece of soft cloth out of the water in the basin, squeezed it, and began to wash Omri’s father with it!

He was so overcome, he couldn’t move. He simply stood there with his eyes tightly closed. Omri tried to escape, but Little Bull blocked his flight with a hand as big as a five-barred gate. He turned against it and watched, abashed, as Twin Stars dried his dad and – began to dress him!

It was like a ritual. As she did it, she was murmuring soft words in her own language, like a chant. She fastened a belt around his waist, then gave him a long piece of doeskin, butter-yellow and flexible as satin, indicating that he should draw it between his legs and hang the ends over the belt. Then she helped him step into a pair of leggings. By this time he had got over his shame, and was actively helping, fastening the leggings to the belt himself. The moccasins were circles of soft doeskin with braided grass to tie them around the ankles.

When that was done, the moment Omri had been dreading arrived: Twin Stars turned to him. She had his clothes in her hands.

“I – I’ll do it myself, Twin Stars!” he croaked. But it was no use. He had to go through the ritual wash first, and be dried, and spoken to, and then he was allowed to dress himself. He was aware of his father standing near him chuckling under his breath.

“It’s no use being ashamed,” he said quietly. “This is their way with guests, I imagine. We just have to go along with it. It’s – er… it’s really not so bad.”

“Dad!”

“No, I mean – we’re all far too prudish about our bodies.”

Little Bull, who had gone away for a while, returned. “Wife say, not easy to make small clothes. Polite now to say good words to her.”

They both thanked Twin Stars and said the clothes were beautiful. Which they were. But their chests were left bare.

“Is there anything for up top?” asked Omri’s dad, touching his chest.

“No. Mohawk men wear nothing there.”

“Even in winter?”

Little Bull picked up a large piece of fur-covered hide from the bed, and threw it across his shoulders as a cloak. “When winter comes, wife will make fur clothes,” he assured them. They looked at each other.

“We won’t be here in the winter,” Omri said.

“Meanwhile we’ve got our sweaters.”

But when they put them back on, Little Bull let out a roar of laughter. Twin Stars hid her face to hide her giggles. They stared at each other, and then, without a word, took the sweaters off again. Neither of them could have explained it, but even at the cost of being cold, it didn’t look right or feel right to wear non-Indian clothes.