Читать книгу Raven's Cry - Christie Harris - Страница 10

IT WAS THE SPRING OF 1775.

Storms of seagulls eddied and whirled, flashed and dipped and screamed along the west coast of Haida Gwaii, a large group of offshore islands—the Queen Charlottes—lying fifty miles south of the Alaskan fringe.

Haiias and Yatz, tall Haida Indian boys, stood near the northwestern tip of the largest, northern island. A bracing wind lifted their hair. Sunlight brightened the Eagle crests tattooed on their lithe but full-chested bodies. It glinted on their copper armbands as they stood scanning the wild seacoast that stretched away to the southwest.

Haiias had brought the younger boy along the trail from K’yuusdaa village, where they were visiting. Now he glanced at him in sudden speculation. He parted his lips to speak; but closed them to watch the seagulls, and then the sea.

Offshore, the swells of the Pacific broke on the reefs in a fury at being stopped after thousands of miles of unbroken ocean.

Inshore, a herd of sea otters sunned themselves on the rocks, and frolicked in the surf.

The taller boy, Haiias, watched the embattled reefs. His eyes held a sea rover’s joy in the greatness of his sea. Then his gaze ranged farther out. He peered expectantly along the horizon.

Unaware of this suppressed excitement, Yatz watched the sea otters. Never before had he seen so many of them; and never had he seen them so nearly betraying their other, their human, selves. Little family groups caressed one another fondly. Young sea otters romped awkwardly on the rocks, tossing kelp bulbs; and as they moved, their loose glossy coats rippled in the sunlight. Play was more graceful in the sea. And treading water like human beings, mothers threw their pups into the air and then caught them with a glee that set Yatz laughing. “My heart feels good,” he said, watching them.

Haiias smiled indulgently at him; Yatz was newly arrived from a small east coast village. He turned to watch the herd, too; but his thoughts were different. His eyes lingered on the dark pelts that were so eagerly sought in the intertribal trading of the northwest coast. All the chiefs in the north wanted lustrous black sea otter cloaks. Tlingits from Alaska would give you copper for the skin; Tsimshian and Nisga’a from the nearby mainland would exchange boxes of eulachon fish grease, and mountain goat horns to steam and carve into spoons. “You see a chief’s cloak for yourself?” he teased Yatz.

The other shook his head seriously, and his eyes saddened for a moment. Then he shrugged off his foolishness. Sea otters were glad to give up their fur blankets, he knew, as long as the sea hunters made themselves worthy of such a gift, before and after hunting. “They seem so very human,” he murmured to his companion, then immediately flushed. Haiias was training as a sea hunter. “I heard of one carrying her dead pup around for days,” he said in lame apology. “They said she wailed and grieved like a human mother.”

“Mothers,” said Haiias lightly.

“Mothers,” echoed Yatz, sighing. He reddened at the other’s sharp glance. An heir to a Haida chieftainship did not betray a weak longing for his home. He hid his embarrassment in an affectionate tussle with his dog.

Then he straightened himself with pride. His home was in his uncle’s Eagle House at Hiellen near Rose Spit. There was no better place in the world to be. The world had no prouder blood, he had been told, than that of the Eagle chiefs of the Sdast’a•aas Saang gaahl lineage.

People had dubbed their clan “Sdast’a•aas” because its members were as numerous and as ever-increasing as maggots on the carcass of a dead whale washed up on a beach. Yatz smiled now at the amusing flattery of the clan name. Maggots! And Saang gaahl, the name of the noblest family in the big Sdast’a•aas clan, was equally flattering and amusing. People had named the family “Saang gaahl” because, like a saang ga diving bird, it made so great a noise with its feasting.

All the Sdast’a•aas were allowed to carve an Eagle at the top of their totem poles; all could paint an Eagle on their possessions. High-ranking members owned additional crests they used to decorate immense cedar houses which, they had long since discovered, were the biggest and handsomest houses in the world. They had many cherished crests to ornament the fifty-, sixty-, and even seventy-foot dugout cedar canoes which, they had also discovered, were the largest and by far the most beautiful canoes in the world. They had many chiefs’ names in the Sdast’a•aas families; and of these none was as honored as the Saang gaahl family’s Gannyaa and 7idansuu, names belonging like Haiias and himself at Hiellen, head village of the Sdast’a•aas Eagles.

Still the boy’s thoughts kept racing back to the east coast of Haida Gwaii. There, at his father’s house, a Raven had topped the totem poles. Raven clans’ favorite crest, a Killer Whale, had decorated the high prows of the sleekest canoes his father’s skilled hands had fashioned. Yatz sighed, only once more and very softly, for his lost Raven home and for the affection of his father’s family. A Haida child belonged to his mother’s family, and his mother was a Sdast’a•aas Saang gaahl Eagle. He belonged with her uncle, Head Chief Gannyaa, and with her brother, Chief 7idansuu. Hiellen was his proper home!

Haiias touched Yatz’s arm, startling him from his thoughts. “You saw that flash of white?” His voice was eager.

“White?” Yatz peered along the other’s pointing finger. “The breakers, you mean? The seagulls?”

Haiias shook his head mysteriously. He parted his lips and seemed to consider speaking.

“What else would be white out there?” Yatz asked him in sudden concern. An uneasy excitement stirred him.

“You have heard of the sightings, Yatz?”

The younger boy nodded, speechless. He scanned the sea with redoubled interest. Rumors had reached his village, rumors that had passed along from village to village with copper and mountain goat horns. But the rumors were too fantastic.

“Flying canoes!” he protested. “Bigger than our canoes!” It was ridiculous. Nowhere in the world were there bigger trees than Haida Gwaii cedars. So how could there be bigger canoes?

“They could be supernatural,” Haiias suggested.

“They would have to be supernatural,” Yatz agreed with vigor. There could be no canoes bigger than those his father hewed and steamed, each from a single felled cedar tree.

Sea rovers that they were, the Haida knew the whole world of real men and real canoes. They ranged north to the islands of Alaska, and southward for days and days! They knew their ships were unmatched for size and swiftness. This was why they could snatch people from lesser nations along the coast to serve them as slaves.

“With . . . blue men?” Yatz suggested lightly, shrugging off fantastic craft from another world to show Haiias his manly boldness.

But he could not dismiss the notion.

It chipped away at his mind all summer, while his adze chipped away at a Hawk dance mask, and then at a miniature canoe designed to hold whipped berries for the guests at Head Chief Gannyaa’s coming potlatch.

Most gifted of the young Sdast’a•aas princes, Yatz worked closely with his uncle Chief 7idansuu, preparing for the winter ceremonies. Sometimes the stone edge of his adze blade broke, and he turned envious eyes on his uncle’s carving tool, which was set with a piece of iron. Bits of iron, like rumors, passed along from village to village, and nobody knew where they had started.

Then his dance mask was finished, ready for paint. His canoe was almost carved too. And as he polished it to sleekness with a piece of dried sharkskin, Yatz’s eyes caressed its graceful lines and measured its prow for the placing of his Eagle design. He must emphasize the large, curved beak, the Eagle’s identifying symbol. And he must fill the space beautifully and precisely with the abstracted elements of the Eagle: wing, eye, tail, feathers. Otherwise, he could do what he liked; and the challenge was exhilarating. He ran his finger along the wood. Smooth as the inner mother-of-pearl of a seashell. He wished he could show his father. Then swiftly he hid his unseemly pride in his own work as two old, old men approached him.

Alert to fine craftsmanship and jealous for Haida reputation, the two old men examined this new boy’s work with critical care before they nodded approval. Even a prince, especially a prince, must be worthy of his good fortune in being a Haida.

The village was almost empty; villagers were camped at their ancient family summer stations, harvesting the endless bounty of the sea and the forest and the berry patches. They were gathering and preserving foods with the surging vigor of a healthy, northern people, and with the special enthusiasm of hosts preparing for prolonged feasting.

Head Chief Gannyaa’s potlatch was to be the most magnificent gathering the world had ever seen. Along with the conduct of important public affairs, there would be songs, dances, and stories, all brilliantly costumed and lavishly presented. There would be feasting, gourmet feasting; for the Haida had over two hundred ways of preparing just one of their sea foods, salmon. At this potlatch, there would be intriguing new dishes, elegantly served. And there would be gift-giving, hundreds of gifts worthy of the mighty Sdast’a•aas Saang gaahl Eagles. The family must display its glory.

Involved in his own special sphere, Yatz felt his excitement mounting. He almost forgot the flying ship stories in his pride in the preparations.

Yatz and Chief 7idansuu were so busy they could not even go salmon fishing. But they did have to tear themselves away from their paintbrushes long enough to attend a ceremony on the big Alaskan island that lay north of Haida Gwaii, across fifty miles of open ocean.

About twenty-five years earlier, the Haida had driven a Tlingit tribe from the southern part of that island. Still in the process of occupying it, they were building houses on the new sites, and raising totem poles, and inviting relatives from Haida Gwaii to participate in attendant ceremonies.

Yatz and his uncle’s family witnessed the raising of a totem pole on the Alaskan island. Then, as quickly as etiquette allowed, they left the new village to hurry homeward.

It was a still, lovely morning; and they were ready to make the dash across the open sea when they saw the swift-moving cloud. “A storm,” Chief 7idansuu predicted. “We’ll camp here and wait.” No Haida ever willingly risked riding out a storm on that treacherous piece of water.

They had not even finished setting up the camp when a small canoe rounded a point and shot towards them. Before it reached them, they had identified it as Haida.

“Chief!” the paddler gasped, leaping out. “A flying canoe!” He pointed northward, beyond the point of land, and his finger trembled. “It is not of this world. We had better hide in the forest.”

Chief 7idansuu glanced at his nephew.

Yatz swallowed cold fear, but he nodded in instant understanding. A Sdast’a•aas chief did not hide. His dignity demanded boldness.

Nevertheless, the boy at least felt a drumming in his ears as he and his uncle readied themselves for a voyage to the strange craft. Fringes of dried puffin beaks seemed to clatter like chattering teeth as he lifted regalia from a canoe chest. And he tripped on the fur cloak he carried as he rushed to the chief’s sixty-foot state canoe.

Slave paddlers shivered with more obvious panic, but they dared not disobey. The family watched with dismay, yet made not the slightest protesting murmur as a ceremonial plank was laid across the canoe, well back of the bow. In tense silence they saw the Eagle prow slice through the water.

Yatz was also tense and silent.

The canoe rounded the rocky point. Ahead, a sailing ship lay becalmed.

“A flying canoe!”

It stunned them.

“Paddle!” the chief commanded. He himself stepped up onto the ceremonial plank, and his shoulders began to sway under his patterned Chilkat blanket. His head began to move under an Eagle headdress that was hung with many ermine skins and encircled by a tall ring of sea lion bristles.

“A flying canoe!” Yatz only breathed it, again and again, wondering if he were dreaming. His blood chilled in spite of his sea otter cloak, but his steering hand did not falter. His head stayed high under its wooden Eagle.

“Paddle!” he commanded, squeaking the word. “Paddle!” he repeated firmly.

How could this be? There were no trees in the world big enough to make the canoe he saw before his eyes. It might even be a supernatural monster disguised as a canoe for some dreadful purpose. It might even be the spirit of Kali Koustli, from the Land of Pestilence.

“Sing!” he commanded; and once more his voice came out high pitched. “Sing!” he repeated, deeply.

His uncle was already singing. He was shaking his exquisitely carved bird rattle. Now he began to dance on the painted plank. And as he danced, sometimes he dipped his head, wafting a snow of feathers from his headdress, the symbol of peace and friendship.

Yatz steered straight towards the craft. He saw creatures move on it. Monster cormorants? He swallowed panic as he watched the peculiar beings scramble up and down the high, folded wings.

The canoe moved in closer. “They’re not cormorants,” Yatz whispered in awe. “They have faces like human beings.” They had beckoning hands and voices, luring them onto the vessel. To fly them off to supernatural regions?

The youth’s mind raced through a thousand stories. Long ago many young Haida princes had been spirited off to incredible adventures. Yet he had never dreamed of it happening now, to someone like himself.

The ship let down a rope ladder.

Yatz blinked his eyes and swallowed.

But his uncle, worthy of the great Haida name he wore, instantly caught the ladder. Less boldly, Yatz moved to follow his uncle. And even less boldly, their attendants backwatered from the awesome ship to wait at a respectful distance.

As Yatz climbed the ladder, his thoughts rushed back to his childhood village. His family would grieve for him, he knew, even as they boasted of his marvelous disappearance. And the Sdast’a•aas Eagles, all of them would watch for his reappearance. Perhaps he would come back with a supernatural wife and children as others had done in the legends! Perhaps he would bring a new crest for the Sdast’a•aas totem poles, a new story for feast-house telling. Yet, gaining the ship’s deck, he shrank back from the hand extended to him.

Then he stood with his uncle, dignified, silent, waiting. The canoe would spread its wings and fly off with them. Such things had happened to others in ancient days. Now they two had been chosen for supernatural adventures. His heart pounded within his rib cage.

A breath of wind ruffled the monster wings above his head.

Yatz’s darting glances caught small flutters among the feathers. Or were they feathers? Or were they a massed tribe of ghosts in ghost blankets?

Everywhere he saw iron . . . iron . . . iron.

These, then, were Iron Men, come from the source of that mysterious substance. He felt the eyes of the chief of the Iron Men watching his interest in the iron. Then his gaze, like his uncle’s, was captured by a shining stick. The stick, only partly wooden, was held by one of the Iron Men.

The observant captain noticed. He spoke to the man. And the man pointed the stick at a seagull.

The Haida watched breathless to see what would happen. Thunder leapt from the stick. Lightning flashed.

“The bird!” gasped Yatz, startled. The seagull had dropped to the sea as though an arrow pierced it. His knees went weak and he sank to the deck. The stick was a supernatural charm; the Thunderbird’s power moved through it. He strove to control his unseemly trembling, to remember he was a Haida prince.

Untroubled by a need for dignity, the slave paddlers fled in terror.

A shout from Chief 7idansuu stopped their flight. It also yanked Yatz to his feet again, and straightened his shoulders. A Haida did not show fear, especially a Sdast’a•aas Saang gaahl Eagle prince.

He saw that the paddlers had begun to circle the ship at a safe distance from it. He hoped they would escape, if only to tell the astounding tale at the coming potlatch.

The chief of the Iron Men beckoned Yatz and his uncle to follow him through a door. This astonishing canoe had a house on its back; and inside the house, Iron Men sat around a high plank eating a gruesome meal.

“Maggots!” Yatz shrank in distaste from their steaming rice. “And the grease of dead men!” He concealed his disgust as a seaman poured molasses on his rice. He was thankful they offered him none of the revolting mixture; and he was even more thankful to escape back to the open deck.

All the while his eyes were busy. Truly these were Iron Men. A strange eagerness began to tinge his fear of the coming flight to their supernatural regions. What might he not see!

Still the ghost wings did not spread themselves.

Yatz sensed that his uncle was quite as perplexed. But 7idansuu was a mighty chief in the world of real men. He did not betray his anxieties. Nor did he fail in courtesy. Having noted the pleased surprise with which the chief of the Iron Men had looked at the sea otter cloak, he now lifted it from his nephew’s shoulders and presented it to the captain.

The captain accepted it with matching grace. In obvious delight he stroked long black silky hairs that were enriched by a sprinkling of silver filaments. Then he glanced thoughtfully about the ship, and his eyes lighted on the musket. This he presented to Chief 7idansuu, who took it in trembling fingers.

Controlling a natural fear, the chief pointed it at a seagull. But nothing happened.

The Iron chief smiled and took it. He pointed it at a bird and squeezed the trigger. Thunder and lightning leapt out, and the bird fell. Then he handed it back to Chief 7idansuu with foreign words of explanation. And he looked next at the Haida youth, as if wondering what to give him. He spoke to a seaman; the seaman brought something to him; and he presented this gift to Yatz.

What was it? What could it be?

The gift was smooth and shining as a salmon, though shaped more like a yew wedge for splitting cedar. It was hard as a rock. As iron! Yatz held it anxiously by the rounded hole in its thicker end. What was this shining thing?

“Axehead,” the captain told him; and he motioned with his hands, like chopping.

A woodworker’s charm! Iron shining with supernatural power! He dared to touch its cutting edge. It was sharper than a broken shell. Harder than a pointed elk horn. But—perhaps it would not work for him, as the thunderstick had not worked for his uncle.

The ghost blankets began to stir in the huge white wings above his head.

Yatz gasped. He held his breath. Now they would fly off to the land of the Iron Men.

The Iron chief shouted orders. He indicated his guests’ departure.

They both blinked with surprise.

They were not to be carried off?

Without betraying his vast relief, Chief 7idansuu called his paddlers, who apprehensively moved in to get him. Yatz controlled himself, not to depart in unbefitting panic. But he sank down most thankfully into the real Haida canoe paddled by real human beings.

With the rest of the marveling men, he watched the amazing canoe move off. It moved without paddles as the Iron Men sang a strange song. But it did not spread its wings and take to the air, though they watched it to the far horizon. Perhaps, they decided, it waited until no human eye could see it.

And then, spurred by a wild wish to tell someone about this wonder, the crew almost lifted the canoe from the sea with mighty strokes of their paddles. They shouted and sang to give vent to their excitement. They became almost incoherent, blurting out the tale to the waiting family. They couldn’t wait to get back home to astound all the villagers.

Impatiently they sat out the storm, then dashed madly across the ocean. But to their disappointment, the villagers were still away at their fishing stations.

Yatz woke every morning before the raven’s cry roused Hiellen. If only Haiias would hurry home!

While he waited, he helped his uncle plan a new glory for the coming potlatch. Now they would present a new tale, “The Tale of the Flying Canoe.” They planned the production in a ferment of excitement. Yet no matter how they tried, they could not make the thunderstick thunder. Chief 7idansuu pointed it at a thousand seagulls. He squeezed and resqueezed the trigger. But the thunderstick just kept silent. “I have not the power to use it,” he confessed sorrowfully to Yatz.

The axehead was a different matter! Yatz gazed at it again and again in wonder. He marveled, for he had the power to use the axehead. He chipped with it reverently, and rejoiced at the skill it gave him. Even when he hung it around his neck—it had a hole for a leather thong—the power flowed through his body and into his busy fingers. He carved with a new excitement.

His uncle’s eyes shone with pride at the things his pupil fashioned. Then they strayed to the wondrous axehead, and the wood sculptor’s eyes grew wistful.

Day after day after day, the raven’s cry woke the village, and it was still an almost empty village.

Then at last the villagers returned. People listened, open mouthed, to the tale of the incredible encounter. They babbled exuberantly.

“You saw the flying canoe!” Haiias accused Yatz. “You saw the Iron Men!” He fumed with frustration and loped along the trail to the open sea again and again to scan the far horizon.

Meanwhile, winter crept towards the village. Visitors arrived for Chief Gannyaa’s potlatch, Yatz’s own family among them. Flames leapt in gigantic cedar houses. Hiellen swirled with color, with the fantastic dances of a vigorous and artistic people who had plenty of food and leisure and a compulsion to excel. Youths whipped up soapberries into a bittersweet pink froth that was piled into miniature canoes for serving; and guests sucked in the rosy dessert from tiny decorated paddles.

The potlatch was indeed the most magnificent gathering the world had ever seen. They all agreed. The enacted “Tale of the Flying Canoe” was the wonder of it. The thunderstick and the axehead were the glory of the gathering, and Yatz was highly honored. He, the people realized, he, a prince of the Sdast’a•aas Saang gaahl Eagles and a future Chief 7idansuu, had been supernaturally chosen to become the world’s greatest carver.

“My heart feels good,” he confided to his young sister Maada.

“My heart sings for you,” she told him, and followed him with adoring eyes.

The only one who viewed the axehead with some alarm was Yatz’s mother. She drew him aside one morning. “That flying canoe could have been the spirit of Kali Koustli,” she said, shuddering at what might have been. She laid a fond hand on her son’s arm, betraying how much she had missed him.

“Pfft!” he scoffed, as carelessly as though the dreadful thought of pestilence had never entered his mind . . . and as though he had never missed her. “Have no concern for me! Only good spirits have come to me with the axehead . . . and a little proper respect,” he added, grinning at Maada and Haiias.

Those two hung on his every word, now. They asked him a million questions. They looked wistfully at the far horizon, then enviously at Yatz.

“Will the Iron Men come again?” they kept imploring him.