Читать книгу People of the Mesa: A Novel of Native America - Ardath Mayhar - Страница 8

Chapter Five

The visit of the Anensi came with the first of summer. It enlivened the talk about the evening fires for many weeks, and the things for which the Ahye-tum-datsehe had traded were enjoyed for far longer than that. Among those matters were the parakeets that Ra-onto had traded to Uhtatse for his feather blanket.

That had been a hard choice to make. Uhtatse had been given the blanket by his mother, and he hated to lose it. Yet he traded at last and presented the birds to Ahyallah.

She was very pleased with his gift. The creatures’ bright plumage and their shrill chatter filled her with joy, as she twisted yucca fibers with fur or feathers for the men to weave into blankets. She kept their cage near, whether in her room in the pueblo where she worked in winter or outside beneath a big piñon where she formed her fibers when the weather was fine.

She swore that the new blanket for her son would be a small price to pay for the pleasure she took in her new pets. And, indeed, it seemed that her fingers flew more swiftly to the accompaniment of the twitters of the parakeets.

It seemed to Uhtatse that he alone had been changed by the visit of the traders. Not only had he seen his own world with new eyes, but he had also been made aware that something was missing inside him, something necessary to his task of keeping his people safe. He felt, he smelled, he saw acutely, and he could interpret those sensations accurately. Yet he now knew that he lacked something vital, which had only now been revealed to him as he went about the mesa with Ra-onto.

The land itself did not speak directly to his heart, as it seemed to do for the old One Who Smelled the Wind. He had seen the man pause to bend over a plant, as if listening to some inaudible word it spoke. He had thought it strange and had not understood. Now he knew with sudden certainty, that it was the plant and the soil in which it grew that spoke to the Elder.

The Old One heard what was spoken with no lips and said with no tongue. Uhtatse knew with equal certainty that he had never heard such words, not even after all his effort at sensing his world.

It was as if, in leading Ra-onto about the mesa and pointing out the places where rabbits nested or magpies roosted or deer browsed, he had looked at those things with different eyes. He had recognized in them and in the trees and shrubs about him capacities that he had never attributed to any but men. With that new vision had come the understanding that he lacked the ability to know them.

It had troubled him ever since. He had gone to his elder and asked him for advice, as soon as the problem was clear in his mind. The One Who Smelled the Wind had not been able to help him.

“Each of us must find the Way for himself, young one. For me it was as if a snowflake fell from the sky onto my head, opening my eyes and ears and heart to all things. It has been harder for you, as I have seen. Yet I cannot tell you how you must proceed from here. I believe that you will learn what is needful, however.

“You are perceptive, apt for the task in all other ways. Even as you stand, you will become a better than excellent Smeller of the Wind for the Ahye-tum-datsehe.

“If you can only achieve the higher perceptions, you will become such a master as we have not seen for many generations.” The old man sighed and laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder as if in apology. “It will come to you,” he said, his voice hopeful.

So it was up to Uhtatse alone. He had suspected that might be true, from the beginning. He was now forming a notion of the thing that might be hindering his search.

He had shed blood. Not since his childhood, it was true, and never since his training began. Even when he was being taught to hunt, he had not killed often, and yet it had been done, all those years ago. Now it seemed that the acts must be atoned.

He went to Ki-shi-o-te, when he was certain of his course, and said, “I must purify myself. The shedding of blood, of rabbits and deer and birds, when I was young, is a barrier standing between me and the things I must learn. I must clean from my spirit all the small deaths that I have caused.”

The old man looked into his eyes and nodded. “I will tell your mother. Go, now, Uhtatse. Purify yourself and return, if the gods will have it so. And if we do not meet again, go with my affection. If you were my own nephew I could not feel more love for you. You have great potential for usefulness to our people. I hope strongly that you will survive and return to us.”

He went away along the top of the mesa, avoiding the fields where his kin worked and the older pit houses, sunk into the earth, where a few of the people still lived. Shut into his own mind, he did not sense anything around him, but that did not mean that he stepped carelessly or injured anything that grew or crawled on the earth. Habit guided him safely amid the hazards of the way, and intuition took him far from the haunts of his kind to a point at which he could look away over long stretches of lowland.

It was a sharp cliff, thrust out into the space above the canyon below. The wind whistled between the teeth of rock that fluted its face, and the summer sun could not warm away the chill of the air. Not even a juniper grew near that perilous edge, as Uhtatse went over it, finding purchase with fingers and toes as he descended the sheer face.

He did not fear that a rotten bit of stone might collapse beneath his questing toe. Guided as he was, he knew that he was not meant to die at the foot of this precipice, before he found the answer to his problem.

Some ten of his own lengths into the gorge, he found the spot toward which he had been impelled as the shaft is cast from the atlatl when the hunter makes his throw. It was a shallow niche, just tall enough for him to stand. It was floored with sharp rock, which had pattered down over the years from the arch of sandstone overhead. It was too narrow for positioning the arms comfortably, and he was forced to hold them tight to his sides, hands folded over his belly.

In that terrible spot, hundreds of feet above a tumble of deadly boulders and splits of stone, he settled himself to await his purification.