Читать книгу People of the Mesa: A Novel of Native America - Ardath Mayhar - Страница 7

Chapter Four

It was, indeed, a busy evening. Fires bloomed about the Talking Place, as all the groups living on the mesa converged there to be near the traders. The Anensi camped together, the women putting together shelters of hide and pole, with practiced ease, while the men squatted beside their opened bundles, bragging about their wares.

The smell of roasting meat filled the air, together with that of baking tubers and stewing vegetables from the gardens. Beans and squash simmered together in big jars to which red-hot stones were added from time to time to keep them at boiling heat.

The children, wild with the unfamiliar excitement, forgot their rigid training and ran about, getting into the ways of their mothers and being cuffed by their impatient fathers if they interrupted the haggling over the trade goods. It seemed strange to Uhtatse that those who possessed such a wealth of shell beads and woven goods and birds and salt and items for which he had not even a name might want or need anything the Ahye-tum-datsehe had to barter.

The pottery and the baskets, the dried foodstuffs, the carven wood pieces that were made in the winter seemed terribly familiar and valueless. He could not imagine their having any worth for others. But the Anensi had come a very long way for this trading. There must be things they wanted and needed, or they would not have troubled themselves with the harsh journey over harsher lands to get here.

That gave Uhtatse a different idea of his world. It held much that was not confined to the mesa top, it was evident. At times, as he lay upon one of the cut stones that still waited to be added to the Talking Place, he found himself dreaming of going away from the mesa, down to the lowlands with these people. He knew the Anensi were seldom troubled, even by the Kiyate or the Tsununni, for they traded with everyone. Even those distant and warlike people needed the things they brought from the east, the west, and the south. If he should go with them, he could see the world they were telling about, down there about the fires.

Listening with half his attention to the men talking just below his perch, he dreamed of the wide water they spoke about. That was a strange notion, he felt—water as far as one could see! In this arid world, that seemed almost impossible, and yet he did not doubt the words of the speaker.

And those cities of stone far to the south—he would love to see how men went about building their own mesas and living inside them, instead of making low stone houses on the tops of the ground. Yet, as he listened, he found that he had no wish to see some of the ceremonies those people practiced. The words of the man below his stone perch made his skin crinkle, as they told of sacrifices of living men and women to the harsh gods of those distant ones.

A soft sound caught his attention. He turned his head to see the tall boy he had noticed earlier standing beside the stone, his dark gaze fixed upon him.

“You may come up here, if you like,” said the young One Who Smelled the Wind.

With a nod, the other sprang up to land softly beside him on the boulder, whose surface was still warm from the sun. “You do not dance with the others,” said the stranger. “You do not run with the young ones. You are, I think, one who is in training to be an Old One.”

Such quick understanding was unusual, and Uhtatse warmed to the boy. “Yes. I have been chosen to learn to be the One Who Smells the Wind. I have been learning my craft for a year, now.”

“I thought as much. I, too, am in training and will be Shaman, when the time comes. But I do not know about One Who Smells the Wind. What will your task be, when the time comes?”

Uhtatse looked down into the fire below the stone, thinking how best to put words to his complex and unceasing task for one who did not understand what it might be. Carefully, he said, “We live here always, high above the lands below. All that threatens the People, besides wind and weather and predators, comes from the low country.

“Always, there is one who is tuned to the world about us so closely that he can feel at once any change—in any THING. A strange presence crushing the grass or brushing through the oak trees of the Middle Way, a restlessness among the deer or the fowl of the air, a strange scent on the wind or a sound that does not belong in the world we know will serve as a warning to the one trained to know. He, in turn, warns the People.

“Our One Who Smells the Wind was one of those who met you, as you came up the mesa. He is a great protector of the People. He knows even when the Kiyate move on the plains, down there, for he can feel the troubling of the air where they go. He can smell the grease on their bodies over a great distance, and if they turn toward our place, we know and can prepare to defend ourselves.”

The Anensi boy frowned. Then he smiled. “That is a skilled and valuable work, in a way not unlike that for which I am in training. I am Ra-onto. What do they call you?”

“Uhtatse.”

Ra-onto made the sign for peace and friendship. Uhtatse did the same. Then, formalities done with, they lay together on the rock and looked down at the firelit scene below them.

“And are you a great hunter, as so many of your people are?” asked the Anensi.

Uhtatse grunted. “When I was a boy, my uncle taught me to use the atlatl and the spear, and I was not bad, if not good either. But now I cannot kill.”

Ra-onto turned onto his side and stared at him, his dark eyes shining in the firelight. “You cannot kill? Not anything? Not even a rattlesnake or a tarantula in your blanket?”

“Nothing. I cannot pick a leaf from a tree or even crush a blade of grass, if I can avoid touching it. To do that is to divide myself from the world. If I did so, the mesa and the creatures on it would not speak to me, and I could not hear, even if they did. I cannot help my mother to pull the weeds from her gardens. I cannot pick a flower in the spring. Yet, in return, I can see and hear and feel things that it is not given to many to understand. It is a fair trade, I think.”

Ra-onto nodded. “It seems to be. What can you feel now? Or is there too much noise and bustle here?”

Uhtatse had not tried sensing, in such circumstances. It was an interesting thought, and he felt that he could try. He stared away from the fire, down into the darkness behind the great stone where he lay. He opened his ears, his nose, his heart to the words of the light breeze blowing chill across the mesa top.

He felt a great owl swoop to pounce upon an unwary mouse in the grain field. A deer stirred, reaching for another nibble of oak leaves down in the Middle Way. The feel of the small herd around that individual came clearly to Uhtatse. A buck and two does and this single yearling.

Magpies quarreled softly in their roost. The water rippled in the wind across the catchments. Everything fitted together with seamless ease, nothing troubling the air or earth, the water or the creatures living in any of them.

“All is well,” he said. “I had not tried doing that before. I am glad it can be done, even in the middle of such confusion—it was as if my mind could close its door-hide, shutting out the light and the bustle.”

The other boy looked impressed. “I can see that you do, indeed, have a rare gift. One that I would like to share, if that were possible. Yet, moving as we do, it would not work for us. Things must be familiar always, for such magic to work its best.”

As he thought about the words, Uhtatse found that he agreed. Amid ever-changing surroundings, one could never hope to find that attunement necessary for his work. This made him realize how very different must be the life that Ra-onto lived. He wondered, in turn, if the boy might not find the mesa interesting. “Would you like to come tomorrow, with me? I will show you the mesa, as very few ever know it.”

Ra-onto’s eyes brightened. “I would, indeed, like to see your world through your eyes. I will go.”

Uhtatse rolled again onto his belly and looked down at the men, still talking quietly of things he would never see or smell or feel. But he no longer had a desire to follow the Anensi on their journeying. Something about the conversation with the boy at his side had given him a new appreciation for his own place and people. It was as if he had seen them all, for an instant, through the eyes of Ra-onto.

Now the chants that accompanied the distant dancers sounded fresh to his ears. The pots simmering beside the fires glowed with a new beauty. The very texture of his turkey-feather blanket almost felt unfamiliar to his fingers, as he rolled the stuff between them, feeling the twisted yucca fiber that caught bits of feather in every winding, forming the fluffy warmth. He had never thought of the way it was made, even while watching his people form the strands and weave them into cloth.

“I will show you the mesa,” he murmured to Ra-onto, “as you have shown it to me.”