Zadayi Red (14 page)

She felt her son’s back muscles bunch up in irritation, but disregarded it. It only meant that Klandagi cared about her, and he had a right to be worried. Only she could understand her wild feelings. She loved the Emerald Cavern, but hadn’t realized how much she missed the rest of Turtle Island.

“Is the village in sight yet?” One foot after another, toward her native place.

“When it is,” Klandagi muttered, “they’ll be able to see us.”

All these years, only an hour’s walk away, her birthplace. She looked forward to hearing children playing and dogs yapping. She imagined the women huddled up and talking comfortably as they kept one eye on their broods. She wondered if the scents of hundreds of human bodies would disagree with her nose. The odors of the Cavern were earth and water.

Kanesga started to picture for her the sun falling toward the western mountains.

“Too much,” said Tsola, her voice pebbled with joy and pain. Too much because she yearned to see the sunrise and would never be able to. Even the glints of sun around the edges of the blindfold hurt her eyes.

“Tell me what my face looks like.” She hadn’t seen herself reflected in water since she became the tribe’s Seer.

Kanesga thought her mother was lovely, but she knew better than to tell her so. “You look like your name.” The word tsola meant “tobacco.”

“I’m like a leaf all wrinkled and hung up to dry.” They chuckled together.

“Far enough,” said Klandagi. From this curve in the creek he caught a glimpse of an edge of the village.

“The trees.” The two of them led Tsola off the trail and over broken ground into the pines on the mountain slope. Klandagi said, “I’ll be back.”

He padded toward an outcropping of rocks, head gliding from side to side, golden eyes glinting as they searched for prey, or for enemies. At the outcropping he slipped with cat grace between some rocks, found a crevice, and coiled where he could peer down.

In the tangerine light of sunset the village looked normal, except that the men were gathering by the council lodge. Klandagi took his time and surveyed the scene carefully. Only
his tail told of his edginess. Wariness was his way. Enemies were his job. And he hated this risk.

He pivoted his head smoothly and looked back. He had grown used to his strange family. All of them were ancient, though their bodies still looked youthful. Most of their children and grandchildren lived downstream in the village, but seldom came to visit. He felt more strange yet—more at ease being a cat than a human being.

Klandagi turned his head toward the village again, let his eyes flick over the entire scene, and then focused on the council lodge. It was a round, thatched roof with open sides. He marked swift ways in and out, and noted the nearest cover. His mother thought only of the triumph she hoped for. Klandagi saw the hazards. He forced himself to consider, now, the potential for catastrophe, the danger to the very life of the Seer.

People milled here and there. Children ran around, and some tried to ride the pack dogs.

The lodge was almost full now. He identified the four groups of chiefs treading slowly toward this once-a-year council. He noted with satisfaction that twilight was seeping into the valley.
Darkness will favor us
.

Klandagi bounded back to his mother and sister. Keeping his voice neutral, he said, “Let’s go in.”

The Seer smiled at him.

Klandagi had been making this transformation for decades, and it was almost instantaneous. Perhaps someone might have seen a hint of swirling dust, or felt a stirring in the air. A vigorous-looking and well-armed elderly man gazed back at his mother, took her arm, and led the way, alert as any hunter.

F
rom the back row of the Council House, in the shadows, Sunoya watched Talani, the Peace Chief of the host Cheowas, make his slow way through the crowd to the council circle and his place of honor beside the fire. This was the sacred flame kept since the first people came to Turtle Island. Seeing that the creatures there needed fire, Thunderbird hurled a lightning bolt into a hollow tree and set it on fire. The Immortals also sent down messengers to teach the people to preserve this fire with powerful prayers and a special ceremony. It was kept alive every hour of every day by wise men taught these ways.

Talani was aged, and like all the Peace Chiefs dressed entirely in white—shirt, breechcloth, and thigh-high boots of deerskin tanned the color of old bones. A cape of white feathers wrapped him, his badge of office. In his left arm Talani carried his white stone pipe, and in his right he cradled the wing of a white crane. His white hair was piled elaborately on top of his head, making him seem by far the tallest man among the Galayi. Men of the Long Hair clan liked to make great displays of their hair.

Sunoya and Tsola were counting on the old man, the most admired of the White Chiefs, though no longer strong in body. The twelve chiefs sat together around the fire, sunwise: White, Red, and Medicine.

Su-Li touched Sunoya’s cheek with a wing. Three elderly people, one of them blindfolded, were coming toward her. Sunoya made room and whispered greetings. No one noticed them in the smoke and shadows.

The old chief filled his pipe in a deliberate way, picked up
an ember from the eternal fire, dropped it onto the sacred tobacco, and drew the tobacco spirit into his lungs. Then he puffed it up to the sky and spoke the ritual words that asked that this smoke, which was his breath and his prayers, be carried high beyond the Sky Arch to the ears of the spirits.

His words formed a sculpture as elaborate as his hair. The Galayi loved oratory, and Talani had won his place as White Chief with the beauty of his speech, like the music of rain.

He addressed the four directions, and the special powers that lived in each. “These are the four pathways of the people,” he said, “which meet here at the sacred fire.” He gestured to it with his pipe.

He prayed eloquently for all the Galayi who lived in the green center, here and now. “We people are living in hard times,” he said, “hard times, hard times.” These last words were a dying melody.

“For the first time in the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men,” Talani said, “we are at war with each other. These are such times as bring the Black Man of Death to our young warriors; grief to their wives and children and parents; hunger during the long winters; impoverishment to many families; and worst of all, a sickness of spirit to all Galayi people.”

Talani raised his voice to a high pitch now, and his speech took on the singsong of a climax. He bemoaned living his time as chief as a man painted blue, mired in sadness and defeat. He prayed that his grandchildren would paint themselves in white, live in continual happiness. He bade all Galayi to turn their faces to the red east and to fly like eagles into the rising sun and to victory.

After a long moment of silence Talani passed the pipe sunwise. Everyone admired his eloquence.

Now each of the three chiefs from all four bands would smoke the pipe and ask the smoke to carry all Galayi prayers to
the spirits. All the people gathered behind these leaders would send similar prayers up to the sky.

Sunoya grimaced. Not every heart was good, not every prayer was for peace, and most of the prayers were feeble.

She sucked at her anger like a burned spot on her tongue.

The pipe made its way around the circle. A puff or two for each chief and brief prayers. All of the Peace Chiefs and War Chiefs were men, two of the four Medicine Chiefs women.

Sitting next to Sunoya, slowly, subtly, Klandagi transformed himself from an elderly man into a black panther. She looked fearfully at Su-Li on her opposite shoulder. The buzzard seemed to chuckle as he told her,
It’s fine, no one is paying attention.

Inaj took the pipe, smoked, and presumably prayed. Sunoya wondered what sacred thoughts could live in the mind of a man like him.

When the pipe had made its circle, Talani rose to speak again.

Before he uttered a word, Tsola whispered, “It’s time.” The Seer, Sunoya, and the panther got to their feet and made their way to the sacred fire. This violation of protocol was so flagrant that Talani was stunned into silence. Whispers scratched their way around the room. Su-Li squeezed Sunoya’s shoulder, left talon, right talon.

When people got a good look at the intruders, they dropped their jaws. Tsola was blindfolded, steadied on one side with a hand on the back of a black panther. On the other side Sunoya bore a buzzard on her shoulder and held Tsola’s arm.

Courtesy swerved like a drunk. A child cried. People spoke aloud. Some of the twelve chiefs half-rose—not a single Peace Chief or War Chief had ever seen the Wounded Healer. Every head craned toward the slight figure of the tribe’s Seer.

Sunoya didn’t know which was bigger, astonishment at the unprecedented appearance of the most powerful chief of the nation, or fear of the black cat.

“She’s not blind,” stage-whispered several people. “It’s just that the light hurts her eyes.”

“Look at the bundle.”

Tsola carried in one arm a bundle of white buckskin, held in reverence.

They threaded their way to Talani. Tsola set the bundle gently in front of the fire and asked, “May I smoke?”

It would never have crossed Talani’s mind to refuse this request from the Seer.

Tsola puffed ritually. The panther stood beside her, flicking his tail. Sunoya resisted touching the deerskin wrap again. Klandagi had dreaded taking it out of the Cavern. His predator hearing brought him people’s whispers.

“Look at her dress.”

“She’s amazing.”

His mother’s entire appearance was a declaration. Her daughters had woven a dress from the inner bark of the mulberry tree and dyed it emerald. They rubbed her high moccasins with clay until they were a deep red-brown. They dyed a red stripe in her silky, silver hair from forehead to waist, to show that she was of the Paint Clan, the traditional clan of medicine people. They made her a blindfold and colored it with brown and yellow stripes on the top and bottom and a broad band of green down the middle.

Klandagi was tickled to see the awe on the faces of the chiefs. Green signified Turtle Island, brown was the color of the underworld, and yellow represented the realm above, where the spirits dwelled. Only the Medicine Chief of the Emerald Cavern, the Seer, had the power to travel freely in all three realms, and show others the way.

She handed the pipe to Sunoya, pushed a little on Klandagi’s back, rose to her feet, and faced everyone. Seeing her full on, people oohed and aahed.

The Seer said to Sunoya, “Please give me the bundle.”

Her heart pounding, Sunoya did. She murmured, “Forgive us, Powers.”

Tsola unfolded the deerskin, lifted out the Cape of Eagle Feathers, held it high overhead, and turned it slowly in a circle in front of all eyes. The feathers were the reddish brown of the war eagle, with a wing sewn on each side of the front opening. The eagle’s golden head made a cap for the one person who had the authority to wear it, the Seer.

The people were wonder-struck. This totem was as old as the Galayi people themselves, given to them when death first came to the living creatures of Earth. It was a symbol of their great pact with the spirit beings. Over all the generations since, only the Seers had actually laid eyes on it.

Klandagi knew the people didn’t understand its true power. Some had even believed it to be an idle tale for children. He knew his mother would not put the Cape on, not as it was now.

The Seer began to speak of the totem. “Every Galayi has heard of the Cape of Eagle Feathers, but you do not know that its power has been spoiled. I want you to see for yourselves,” she said. In a mottled voice she added, “And smell.”

Klandagi looked at the chiefs’ eyes when they heard that word. Anyone could see right away that the Cape was spotted with blood and blackened with mold. But Klandagi doubted that their noses were keen enough to pick up the putrid odor.

Now the Seer called upon her own eloquence, even finer than Talani’s. “This Cape,” said the Seer, “was given to the Galayi people by the spirit beings who live beyond the Sky Arch. It is our means of communication with them.”

She hesitated. Every Galayi knew this tale, more or less, but surely none ever dreamed they would ever hear it from the Seer herself. “The Seer is caretaker of the Emerald Cavern. One of the responsibilities of the position is to fold yourself in the Cape at appointed times and listen to the wisdom the spirit beings have for us. The Cape has been our font of wisdom.”

Klandagi’s legs itched to spring. He could smell danger. He liked attacking and hated waiting.

“Now we have lost this power. For us the spirit beings are distant and weak. We are like a man lying at the bottom of a lake. He can see the sun vaguely, but it has no meaning to him. Like him, we are dying.”

She paused, letting them think about it.

“There is worse. The Cape is made of the feathers of the war eagle, as you see, and it binds the eagles to carry our prayers to the spirit beings. Since we are without it, the eagles do not help us. Why are we living in such a pitiful way? You need wonder no longer.”

Now her voice burned with intensity, and she did something stunning. She switched away from the formal style of the Galayi language used for prayer and council speech to the idiom of everyday talk. After her earlier avian flights of beauty, these words sounded rough as an axe breaking a stone, a spear thunking into a tree.