Читать книгу The Strong Current - Robert Day - Страница 9

When he was born in the hay cutting moon of 1791, he was given the name of Otci, or Hickory Nut, for the plentiful amount of edible hickory nuts that fell that autumn. His village of Attaugee was provided with a good harvest to help feed the people that winter. As it had always been among the Alabamas, who were a part of the great Muskogee nation, most of the other male infants took the names of their clans or from some distinguished personal trait which would follow them in life. Otci’s mother rejoiced in the harvest, which to her was an augury of what her son might become.

Otci was one of the twelve initiates seated in the thicket in front of Nokusi Fiksico or, Pitiless Bear, the old warrior and their teacher. It was a fine, bright morning deep in the trees where they had gathered, as they had over the past fourteen days of the blackberry-ripening moon. On this day, Nokusi was speaking to them in his commanding way so that he had all ears. He was talking of the famous chiefs of the Muskogees, of how the great Alexander McGillivray—son of a white trader and a Wind Clan princess, who spoke in the white man’s tongue as often as his own—had unified the nation. His cunning had no equal. It was he who kept the English, Spanish, and Americans so occupied in trying to outmaneuver each other for the favor of all the councils that the towns came together and held. Nokusi kept them attentive in every lesson, whether it was of the rituals they were soon to undergo, or of hunting, or of the disciplines of warriorhood, or of killing their enemies. His word was established because his strength was known.

As Nokusi spoke, Otci noticed Tumchuli’s nodding head. From the outset of their training, he had doubted if his companion and fellow initiate, the mild one they called “Slow Fat,” could make it to the Busk day, when they would be brought in as men and warriors. Nokusi must have had the same reservations. If there was anyone who could give poor Tumchuli a sharp, hard edge, it was he. Otci watched the lesson-giver lean to the side and slowly lift his arm without interrupting a word of his talk. As he stretched his arm all eyes followed as he tightened his hand to a fist. Thumb held middle finger as the first knuckle rose. He held it there still facing them as he drew to the close of the sentence. Then like a trap springing on an unwary prey, he let it go against the innocent’s forehead. Whap! Tumchuli was instantly fully awake, dizzy and shamefaced. No one uttered a sound until a grin of satisfaction slowly spread across the face of the old warrior. Then birds were spooked from branches above as eleven young voices howled in laughter.

As they began to quiet down, it seemed to Otci that their teacher knew that they were ready for a break. The boys had been at it since the sun lit the morning with the first purple glow in the east. But their teacher took a deep breath and said, “Relax now. I want to tell you two stories. Maybe Tumchuli can stay awake to listen.”

The first tale was of Pasikola, the Rabbit, and of his endless trickery since the Old Time Beings saw the land for the first time. Otci had heard many of the Rabbit stories. Everyone is a fool for the Rabbit or made so by his constant deceit.

So, Nokusi, or Bear, began. “It was an unusual day that Pasikola was going about his own business. He had played so much mischief on everybody that they all wanted to kill him. Rabbit and Wolf had once been friends, but tricks had ended that. Wolf had set about to snare Rabbit one final time. So it was that Rabbit was walking across a field of cornstalk stubble one day when he saw something shake a bush nearby. He stopped, then stepped a little closer to see what it was. Whatever was there was well covered, so he moved still closer. Then they jumped from behind the bush and rushed Rabbit. It was Wolf, his new nemesis, and Heron, whom he hadn’t liked from the start. Well, Pasikola was faster than those two and he bounded away through the trees with both in close pursuit. When he came out of the woods Rabbit found a hollow log. He hid inside and lay very still. Wolf came into the field but couldn’t see Rabbit. So he went over to the log and sat down.

“Now when Wolf sat down Rabbit thought he could distract him. He looked up to see there was a hole in the log and that Wolf’s testicles were right over it, so he reached up to tickle them a little. Wolf said, ‘It’s always the same. I miss catching that Pasikola again and now ants are crawling all over my balls. Everything torments me. Damn these ants!’” An outburst of laughter both shrill and hearty from the initiates sounded through the trees. Bear paused a moment to let them have their fill.

“When Wolf stood up to brush the ants off,” Nokusi continued, “he spied Rabbit through the hole. Wolf squirmed into the log and snatched Rabbit. ‘Aha! I’ve got you now! You’re not getting away this time!’

“As Wolf pulled Rabbit out of the log, Heron arrived. They found a tree branch on the ground and tied Rabbit to it, forelegs and hindlegs. ‘We’re going to carry you to the wide water in the east, where the men of the sea foam are! They’re a pretty hungry set of men, and they are hungry now, and we’re going to exchange you for gifts. Then we’ll be rid of you for good!’ Wolf said.

“Heron laughed in a cruel but happy way and said, ‘And you will be thrown in the pot to boil for their supper!’

“Rabbit sulked and said, ‘Oh, me! My days are done and I’m through with making it so miserable for everyone. I’ve been a rascal and now it’s caught up with me. I guess I’m ready to be thrown in the pot.’

“Now Rabbit knew of the white men but pretended that he didn’t. ‘But who are these people that you’re talking about?’ he asked.

“Wolf said, ‘They are the Nokfilalgi who’ve come over the big lake and washed up on the shore. They are of the sea foam, white and ever drifting. And they’ll skin you from head to toe in an instant!’

“So Wolf and Heron hauled Rabbit east, and when they got there they showed two Nokfilalgi what they had to trade. Rabbit said to them, ‘It’s true. I’ll be a delicious meal, all right. But before you cook me, I have one last request. Please give me some of your tobacco. I would like one final chew.’

“So the men untied Rabbit and gave him a small twist of tobacco. He chewed it like it was his very last meal. Then he looked up and spat tobacco juice right into the eyes of both men. Quick as a snake, he picked up a gun dropped on the ground, pointed it at Wolf and Heron and said, ‘Now Wolf and Heron, I’m going to shoot you!’ He fired it between them to send them bounding away in terror.

“Pasikola had gotten another laugh and he laughed as he ran away while the men cursed as they pawed at their eyes. The scamp always escapes. And that, they say, is why the Nokfilalgi are here in our country, looking for that Pasikola!”

The boys laughed again, slapping their knees. Otci caught his breath and looked at Nokusi, the Bear, who scanned the group and smiled. That was something he had never seen, and he was glad to see the lighter side of the man who was the most revered in Attaugee town. Humor is like love, he thought.

Otci knew Bear had that extra capacity. He had long wanted to become a man like Bear. He was loved by all and, indeed, feared by many. He had taken more hair of their enemies than any warrior, so they said when they gathered by the great fire. None of the beloved men, the elders in Attaugee, could remember anyone who had taken more. And here the initiates were, sitting in a semicircle around the man as so many of the warriors in the village had before. He was the master, they were his charges. When they had quieted, Bear spoke again. “So now Pasikola is on the loose again. And he will be back, I believe.” He paused briefly and looked at the small fire pit at his feet.

“In fact, he may be back in another form. The kithlas are among us. You know them. They are the prophets, the exalted ones among medicine makers and healers. They are the seers. They divine and conjure. But you have to watch them. Many years ago I was among the initiates. There were ten of us. We had gone through the rituals as you will, and all of us were brought in at the Poskita, on the Green Corn Day. I received my warrior’s name then. I remember it all very clearly.

“It was just five moons since the Poskita on a day when we were with some of the older men. We were playing chunkey. We heard some commotion and then we were called out by this visiting kithla. His name was Eno. We went down to the river and saw him there with a group of warriors.”

Bear’s demeanor changed from the open expression he wore during the Pasikola tale to one of a somber, deliberate nature. His eyes dropped to the ground, then rose back up to them, as if he was trying to gather a deeper thought. He spoke in a serious way.

“The prophet stood with arms folded. Black buzzard feathers hung from his shoulders in two heavy clumps. He was a slender man, but his thinness was hardened by fasting, and in his muscle and sinew as well as in his vision he was as hard as hickory. But the feathers made him look broad-shouldered and larger than he was. Aptly dressed these kithlas are, wearing the implements other medicine men use to clean the wounds of warriors hurt in battle. I believe they mean to clean our thoughts and beliefs, too. He stood there dark, menacing, and strong. He stood apart from the rest. I thought he was also a thief, like our friend Rabbit. When he spoke the black paint on his face broke against the shine of white teeth. His bloodshot eyes beamed with uncommon luster. A thin slit of red running down the ridge of his nose gave his face a wicked expression. He glowered at us. He was ignited by his own inner fire.

“We had all taken his talk. He had drawn the circle around himself. He sat us down. He had laid out four rods to the directions of the wind, had built his own fire within the circle and fed it alone, one stick at a time. It was grave, what he was doing. He was conjuring. He didn’t let the boys bring him wood, but gathered it himself. He was apart from us and as resolute as a panther is in rising silently to its feet when the unwary footfalls and brush-rattling of its prey alerts it.

“Long Person, the river behind him, seemed to speak for him. A swift current full of many days of rain boiled past under a gray, close-hanging sky. Whole trees, parts of trees, all that the earth surrendered to it, bounced and ran in the flow. The river’s broad face was set deep in trouble, possessed and transformed. The river was furious. Here we were in the dense thicket of this man’s appetite. He wanted to show he could bring the river under his own control. He told us he had brought the rain to the Abeika country, to the north, and now it was here.

“We knew the rains had fallen so heavily that the river would rise and cover everything, that the flood was going to be great, that probably the corn would be lost this time and that there would be much mud in the fields.”

The old warrior took a breath and looked off into the trees. After a moment he sharpened his eye and returned to the twelve young initiates. He knew he had their attention. He knew he could take them anywhere. But he was incorruptible. There was only his knowledge and the straightness of his true talk.

“The prophet’s fire jumped eagerly and mischievously as if it were laughing at us. The reflection of it sparked across his face, yellow flashing on black. But we began to smell the river and its own intent. There were two things there, the prophet and the river. And the river had run its current long before the medicine ever was. We could smell the water and it was like the smell of a corpse long dead. It was sweet yet foul. You know yourselves, my young warrior boys, how the senses speak to your other intellect. Just as with Idjo, the deer. The female deer picks up the musk scent of the buck and goes to him. If you sense some danger, you are alerted by your senses which inform the mind. Like Idjo, you recognize something and you remain alert, ears up to the wind.

“The prophet had spoken to the stream. He had ministered unto it, had chided it to obey him. He had commanded it to rise as I tell you to rise and go. It was his star-bright knowledge, bestowed to him by Esaugetu Emissee, the Master of Breath, to conjure by. The prophet’s chanting and dancing and herbal ministrations had filled the Long Person with anger. Because he knew. He had interpreted. He had tasted everything and had thrown out what was not clean to him. Not to Master of Breath—to him. Only the purified for him! He thought his medicine was as pure as the fire. It was we who were polluted. And we and the miko and the elders, too, must be made clean to hear him. That was his talk.

“But we had begun to comprehend, too. And he continued to speak. I tell you, he had done a dangerous thing. ‘Listen,’ he said. So we listened. We hung there like fish drying out over the smoke pot. “And the river rose quickly, without so much as waiting for the clouds to break and the sun to shine upon it. It rose like a wrathful, vengeful giant, full of anger and darkness and running fast.

“We asked Eno the prophet, the kithla, for an answer. He replied that yes, he had brought it on. The miko would now listen and admit his talk in the council because his talk was straight. But he didn’t understand that the corn in the fields here and across the river was the people’s corn, and the deer we hunt was the theirs, and the clay the women take from the banks to make the bowls and pots was really the theirs, and the river in flood would ruin all of that.

“‘The river rises by my command,’ the man in buzzard feathers said, ‘and so it will lie down by it also! I have thrown my sabia, my magic crystal, into it and it danced on its surface!’ His words were quick. They cut through us. He looked out over us with eyes that narrowed in satisfaction. And as we spoke to him I could sense the water slowly pulling away at the bank, creeping higher, consuming more, just like him.

“I knew my traps were gone. Few things in the Long Person but the tie snake can keep its place in such current. In my journeys upon the river since, I have never been more afraid of it, or seen death on its face as clearly as I did then. And the cold winter rain of the Wind-Blowing Moon made its waters numbing to the touch.

“We had done nothing to offend the Long Person, we told him. We had not been irreverent. We had all bathed in it, offered unto it our prayers and took from it our visions. Yes, we had done all those things like our fathers had done. We had chewed the pasa and the auchenau, drunk the black drink, and sung our chants just as the warriors had done. It was his act that had stirred the river.

“‘Yes, and it will hear me again,’ the kithla said, with arms folded on his chest. ‘When the morning comes, this river will find a new humility in my command.’

“To the last one of us, we caught the fumes of his talk. It was a danger to let him speak so. Does Master of Breath permit one man to invert his order? Is the prophet’s word the last? And are we not the ones who fill the corn bins?

“It would not do. We were responsible to the elders. There was already rancor in the town from the kithla’s visit. So when we returned we told Hothliboi, the warrior leader in Attaugee, and he went to the miko’s lodge. The elders met and deliberated. By late afternoon, they decided. Hothliboi and his warriors seized the prophet—and I was with them—then took him down to the flood’s edge and tied him to a sycamore there. Save yourself and the corn by your great power, we told him. We built a fire for him to conjure by, then left him. We left him there to stop what he had brought on us.

“A hard wind came up that night. We came back the next morning. The tree was gone. The river was rushing over the spot where it had stood. So we went down the river to find him. The current was so strong and swift. It rolled us. We flew like hawks over its face. We didn’t paddle, just guided the canoes. That’s all you need to do when the current is so bold.

“Down by the mouth of a small creek we found him. Some strips of red cloth from his medicine bag hung from the branches of the tree. He was still bound at the base of the tree. His face was rigid in death. His eyes were tightly closed. His mouth was agape as if still gasping for the last breath. His tied hands tightly clutched the vines around his chest. Long Person had disposed of him quickly. It took the breath from him to make the drowning fast. No one could have survived long in that water.”

The Bear stopped speaking and gazed away to compose his thought. The twelve boys, young men almost, who had come down from the central fire of the village to receive their training, sat in the thrall of the master. They looked at his face drawn away into a distant, mystical reverence. Here was the knowledge of man and the nation embodied in one mind, one heart. He had pulled them into his vision so easily, so completely that they were held in place seeing by his eye, awaiting each lesson like the old hunting and battle tales of their fathers and grandfathers. They were his fearless young men in training.

“The river rose by his command,” Bear said in a low tone, “and he couldn’t control it. It swept him away, proud man. We cut him loose. He floated on down the stream a ways, then his body sank. We went back. No one sang for him. He alone had done it, claimed he had done it. But the Long Person doesn’t hear vain voices. It cowers to no man. The rains come every season and more so in the Wind-Blowing Moon. The Long Person knows no spirit but that of Esaugetu Emissee.”

Otci understood that Bear had finished. As leader of the initiates, his duty was to lead them away at the end of the lesson giving. He placed his hands down on the ground to push himself up and so signal the others. He knew their teacher looked to him to demonstrate authority. He had expected that command to be his since his father told him of the legends of his ancestors and the prowess of his clan totem. The Poskita, the green corn festival, hangs so brightly two moons hence for their entrance into the warriors’ council. It is the prize after the long test of their courage, strength of mind, and vision from their dreams. When the time comes, boys would end their playing games and go to Pitiless Bear to receive their instruction. So it had been in their earliest memory of the Poskita. He had always been there.

He rose to his feet, nodded at the eleven beside him, and they stood to follow him out of the clearing in the thicket, to leave the silence of it and the fire to the old warrior.

Later that afternoon, he led the initiates back into the trees to the fire pit. They positioned themselves in a semicircle around the teacher. Bear as a younger man was known through the country for his hunting and battle exploits, and that renown had magnified him as a teacher. He waited patiently for them to settle. He well knew that young blood was still intemperate by the lack of sacrifice and discipline. Their eyes had not yet become bold. He remained still until they all found their position around him. Then he spoke slowly.

“We hear the legends. They tell us who we are, where we came from. They tell us about the order of things, and where we are with the Creator, Esaugetu Emissee. They are the truth, as told to us by the elders, who heard them from the elders before them. These stories have been told for as many years as there are stars. You commit to them because they are the first steps along the path in knowing yourself. They tell you how men are wise or foolish, how they are obedient or disobedient. They tell you about cunning, and love and power.

“Now listen, this is how it all began. It was all darkness once. There was no light. The far heights were unlit by the sun and they were left wide and empty by the absence of the stars and the moon. The earth was there, but it was covered entirely by water. There was no land, only a flat, boundless expanse of water, as wide as the sky vault. Beneath the waves lived the fish, the tie snake, and other water creatures. They swam wildly in the deep, cold current, content in their world beneath the waves. Esaugetu Emissee, who was the voice before he created, lived above in the far heights with the old time beings. They were Panther, Bear, Eagle, Owl, Spider, Buzzard, Rabbit, Crawfish, Raccoon, and all the other creature spirits, the spirits from which many of us, you and I included, take our names. Each of the old time beings followed in his own way, going about their habits as each does on earth now; only they existed in the spirit form. In this order, which was the way the world had been forever, there was harmony and peace, for all the creatures of the sky world were the beloved of Esaugetu Emissee. He ruled in the quiet.

“The sky world and the sea world were undisturbed. There was no preying of spirit upon spirit. There was no shriek or loud call. There was only the great quiet. But there was doubt. Though water everywhere covered the face of the earth, the sky spirits knew what lay beneath it. They knew that beneath the dark waves there was land. Only they did not know how to get it. The flying beings first grew anxious. They began to despair that there was no one capable of bringing up the land. Soon the roaming beings, too, grew distraught. The swimming beings beneath the waves knew it was there, but did not believe that the land could be gotten because it was too far down. Esaugetu Emissee, in his seat behind the dark sun, had resolved to leave them to their own cunning in finding it, for those were the devices he gave them in the beginning. He knew they would find a way, for once they used these faculties and the earth became opened up to all the creatures, there was more for him to do.

“At last, the flying beings determined to find the land. They called a council of all the old time beings to decide which order was best: to have land amid water, which would be a new way, or to have all water, which was the way they had always known. Eagle presided because he could fly nearest the dark sun and was one of the most cunning and fierce. Eagle sat before them. When the talk started among them some of the flying and roaming beings said, ‘Let us have land, so that we may have an abundance of food,’ because they thought that with no land to offer them continued sustenance they might eventually starve to death. They had visions of what bounty the earth might offer. But some of the swimming creatures disagreed, because they were content with the world as it was.

“They shook their heads and argued. They spoke angrily in high voices and grew disconsolate. Eagle could not quiet them. Master of Breath heard the growing clamor and saw that there was dissension. He looked down on them, yet he remained unmoved. Time was moving as it should, and time was his. Then Bear arose. He told them their bickering had no cunning, and he asked the creatures to calm their talk. So they told Eagle to decide one way or the other, whether the world should be land and water, or all water. Eagle left the council for a period to find quietness and solitude in which to ponder it, for he knew that his decision must agree with Master of Breath. To choose carelessly and without good sense was to risk corrupting Master of Breath’s future work. He remained by himself for a good while.

“Then Eagle decided. He returned to the council and announced that he had chosen for land and water, and they all agreed. So they looked around for someone they could send out to find land. Dove thought he could do it, and so he spoke up to offer himself as the first one for the task. So they sent him. He was given only four days, as we know it, in which to perform his task.

“When he returned, they saw he had nothing to show for his search. He told them he could not find land; water lay everywhere. So Eagle said they would yet find a way. They agreed to try another plan.

“Now, Crawfish was the one who claimed he could find land. Eagle gave him an equal period of time, and sent him off. Crawfish disappeared beneath the water. They called aloud for Crawfish to succeed, and drew close over the waters where he descended. They waited. After a while the water became muddy, and they were lifted with hope. At last, Crawfish began to emerge from the depths of the dark sea, and as he neared the surface they saw he swam very slowly. When he broke the water, they picked him up and saw that he was nearly dead. But in his claws they found a small chunk of earth. They picked it out of Crawfish’s claws and carefully made a ball of it. They gave it to Eagle, who flew away with it. Not a word was said. None doubted his power.

“When he returned, he told them that this was land, that they should follow him east where it lay. They all went with him. There they found an island; it was small and still soft from being taken from the water. Then one of them said, ‘Who will now spread out the land and make it so that it is dry and hard?’ Some said Hawk should, because his wings were among the strongest of all. But Buzzard agreed to it. He flew above them, spreading out his long, ragged wings in continuous looping glides over the featureless landscape. He sailed over the earth; he spread it out.

“Now, after a long while, Buzzard became tired of flying that way. He began to beat his wings in an effort to stay aloft. He beat them so hard the force of wind from his wings formed hills and valleys in the soft dirt. Soon the water receded from the land, leaving the earth much larger than before. Lakes remained and rivers were left running through the land as remnants of the broad water. Seeing that they were now able to live on dry land and draw water, the old time beings descended to it. They rejoiced in the hospitable earth. Along the banks of rivers they found broad fields, and beyond them great hills and mountains. Master of Breath saw that the land was good. His children had discovered his creation, and seeing that his plan was being made manifest by his good children, he smiled on their satisfaction and delight. This was far better than the sky world, they said. Master of Breath rejoiced in the clarity of their talk and their cleverness.

“So, by their own devices the old time beings had formed earth. Master of Breath was pleased with it, and He instructed them that they should stay there. They did, and each creature found his roost, his burrow, his den on land.

“Yet everywhere there was still darkness. Though the earth was dry there was no light to illuminate it. Yet they knew time had to be distinguished in different cycles, so that they would have a period to hunt and to work and a period to rest and procreate. It was in the plan of Master of Breath.

“So they called a council to deliberate who should furnish light for the newly made earth. Again, Eagle sat at the head of the council. Panther, who was strong, inexhaustible, and very swift, volunteered. They agreed to appoint him to give light since he with his long tail leaves a brilliant streamer in his wake as he runs back and forth across the heavens. They instructed him to go east and come back across the west to see if his light was good enough to illuminate the earth. He ran off to the east, turned, crossed the heavens and came down to the west. When he had done this and returned to the council, he asked them if his light was good. They said it was not enough to illuminate the earth. Panther crept low and sulked. They appointed Spider to go east and come back. He did as he was told. He climbed up to the sky, hung there and made a small speck of light on the horizon. But it was too dim. He went west and hung there, too, but it was equally dim in that region. He came back to the gathering and asked if it was all right. They told him no, that his light was not great enough.

“So they appointed another. They chose Moon, because he was large and had great power. They told Moon to go east, come back across the heavens and go down in the west. Moon started out as they directed. When he came back from the east to the west he made better light than Panther or Spider, but sill it was not good enough.

“Then they chose another. They appointed Sun, because like Moon, he had hidden strength and it was known: he is the retainer of Master of Breath. They gave him the same instructions, and Sun left them to rise in the far heights. When Sun came back westward, he gave good light and when he went down to the horizon, it was all right, and they saw the beauty of the earth by it. Sun returned and asked their judgment. They said it was good, so the Sun was chosen to give light, and he gave everlasting light.

“Thus the earth was made and inhabited by the old time beings and was lit by Sun. Master of Breath smiled upon his creation, for he saw that it was good and bountiful and clean.

“Now, when the old time beings came down to earth and inhabited it as totem animals there again rose doubt. When Groundhog saw that Sun would give light to the earth, he told them, ‘If it is daylight all the time, we will not increase.’ He said, ‘If we have a period of darkness, then we will be able to rest from our work and procreate among our own kind.’

“So it was Groundhog who decided that there must be night to separate the day. They agreed with him, and so instructed Sun to come up between periods of darkness, which they called nightfall. But when night and day were set in order, they found that while Sun rested it was so dark that no one could see to travel. This would not do because creatures would not be able to find each other to multiply. So they sent Spider to scatter himself across the heavens and Moon to hang high above them, and Panther was to appear as the streaking night fire to announce danger, and it was all right. Thus Groundhog had made night through his own cunning, and they had all agreed with him and allowed it to remain so.

“So the earth was made, lighted by the sun, the moon, and the stars, and night came in, too. Master of Breath smiled again upon the earth. High in the far heights he still keeps his sacred fire in the sun. He holds dominion over us now as he did over the old time beings then, and directs Hayuya and Yahola, the spirits who reside in the air to act when we entreat them for their supplications of strength, long life, clearness of vision and thought. The first people came up from within the red earth at his calling. But when they came up they found a great fog. It covered the earth and they could not see well. At last the Wind came and blew the fog away. Then the people found their cunning. They acquired their creativity and their skills by learning them from the old time beings. The people established family clans and the clans have been the foundation of society since the beginning. Each clan has an ancestor in one of the old time beings. But the Wind clan has been the chief clan since its ancestor made it possible for the people to see the earth.

Bear began to catch another wind, and as he continued the initiates sat still and listened. The old warrior paused to look at them. Then he spoke.

“The legends tell about how people are the way they are. The legends were known first by the Ulibahali, the first people who spoke the old language. They had a word for the order of things. That word defines why the primal beings, the rocks, trees, the rivers and hills, are worshipped because they also have a spirit and are close to Master of Breath. They witnessed the peoples’ creation. That word is alive in our legends. I can speak that word only at sacred places honored by Master of Breath. It was the first word spoken. So when I speak it, I tremble. I wait for the silence. It comes and I can commune with Him in the skies. You will know that word one day. To know our ancestors you must know it.”

But Bear didn’t tell them the word. It was not the time or the place. The legends reeled off his tongue. He told his listeners how Grandmother Spider once stole the sun, the life and death of the Sweet Medicine, how the Mudheads did not know how to copulate until Groundhog told them. He told them how the miko of Kialgi lost his medicine, and of how Pasikola fought the lump of pitch.

The initiates soon became thirsty in the afternoon heat. Bear didn’t stop until the stories of pride and passion, lust and envy, vanity and greed, and nobility and loving-kindness of the people were told. By the time the sun had dropped below the clouds late in the day he still had them spellbound. And that was it.

“My talk is ended,” said the old warrior to his twelve initiates, “and I am done with you for today.” Otci, still alert to the old warrior’s legend-giving, turned from Nokusi’s eye and peered down the line of his brothers. They sat quietly in the brightness of the tales, unwilling to break from the grasp Nokusi held over them. Otci now felt a tinge of uneasiness, as he would feel if he showed up late for the departure to a hunt.

Bear spoke again. “The sun is heavy and yellowing now in the west, and my tongue is spent. Go down to the river and cleanse yourselves before returning to your mother’s fire. I will call you again in the morning.” The aged eyes flashed with the intensity of his younger, greener days. “I said it is ended,” he spoke sternly. “Go down to the river. You sit around staring stupidly like children. You are nearly men! Now go!”

Otci rose quickly as the others, too, jumped to their feet. They sprang out of the small clearing like a pack of wild horses, choking the narrow path leading down to the bluff above the river. He stepped aside to let them pass. Running and stumbling over each other, they bounded through the opening in the woods. The river would take them in. To it they would give the spirit so keenly held by their teacher back in the thicket.

Otci let them all run past. He was soaring in the expectancy of the Poskita. Nokusi’s words hung in his ear for that adventure, for his ambitions were formed by the flashing eyes and the broad sweeps of the hand that emphasized the low rumblings and musical quality of his voice in his lesson giving. In the quiet of his walk, he spoke to it from within:

I am strengthened for the fast and for the show of courage. The mockingbirds and the jays and the crows are calling out the woodland song that will lead me to the great silence. Their presence, too, increases my knowledge as does the council talk as I break into this shining, new world.

He walked on a ways.

They are all washing in the river now, he thought. The path lies open. The clamor of creation and the profusion of spirit is all so vigorous. Down the bluff is the source, the Long Person. There, like the strength of Esaugetu Emissee, is the moving water which restores. It takes away the spirit’s pollution that distances us from the divine. It is a living thing and its distance is long.

He reached the water’s edge to find them bathing. They washed in the single devotion which called to each of them: Hobithli (Fog), his companion in all adventures; Katutci (Little Panther), another companion; two ballplayer athletes, Illitci (Killer) and Kunip (Skunk); Tumchuli, the quiet one and, as some suspected, perhaps unready for this trial; the hunters, Fuswa (Bird) and Pinili (Turkey Foot); Lojutci (Little Fist), who scraped out burned-out cedar logs to fashion long canoes; Halpada (Alligator), the tall and guileful one; Eli Francis, the son of Owl clan mother and a white trader; and Hobayi (Faraway), the one different from them all by his silent, distant mien. Otci stripped off his breechcloth and dove into the cool, green water, closing his eyes to feel the water envelop him in a clean freshness.

He swam in the broad flow. Gliding downward in the cool water, he arched his body upward to face the wavelets. Splinters of dancing light flashed on the rippling face of the river. Bursting up to the air, he pressed the water away from his eyes and shook his topknot of hair.

He breathed deeply as he faced the sinking sun, warm on his skin. He recited the prayer of his teachings as the voice in the thicket came alive in his own.

“Receive me, Master of Breath, and cleanse me of the unclean spirit tainted by my absence from you. Make me invincible. Fill me with courage, strength and cunning, as I wash away the impurity from my body and spirit.”

His prayers were strong in the water. He and his brothers had heard them all their lives when they came down to the river to bathe with their fathers and with the elders, the beloved men. The divine words, too, were formed in his memory. Only Nokusi put them in the proper place in the devotions. The far heights where the Master sits behind the sun took the prayers as the river took their spirit’s corruption and bore it away, down to the faraway white water that lies wide at the end of the long journey, at the mouth of the stream that is in the Choctaw country. As Otci stood waist deep in the water, he turned to the east and offered his supplication to the Hiyayalgee, the Light People, holders of the medicine and directors of the wind.

As I tend the fire and keep the good medicine, light the way to the wisdom of my emerging manhood so that my people might praise and honor me. Open my eyes to that which sustains the spirit.

He then completed his bathing. The cool running stream enveloped every part of his lean body. His strong hands gripped muscles along slender arms and legs, and rubbed them to a renewal of power and lightness. Stroking deeply with his palms and fingers, he rubbed away the smell brought on by the long day at the fireside; he stretched away the strain in his back gathered up at the old warrior’s talk. The work he would perform in his mother’s cabin during the green corn rites must be as precise in spirit-calling as this is in cleansing. The dream of measuring up to the feats of his brother, Ispokeega, of surpassing them even, must demand as sure a devotion. The river took the useless away, allowed for the courage to rise up within the new cleanness. So his bathing habits he kept exact.

Otci pressed firmly the muscles of his shoulder so that he might invigorate the strength of his club-swinging and bow-drawing power. Arching to stretch out again the tension and stiffness, he heard the popping of his spine as the gathered concentration of his learning released in the beneficent stream.

He ducked beneath the water to clean his face and hair. His fingers scratched his skull all about its clean-shaven sides and close-cropped hair atop. He rubbed deeply the flesh that spread across his broad cheekbones from a strong, straight nose, as prominent and noble as an eagle’s beak. He rubbed his chin, then the muscles of his neck. Lifting himself up again, he spread his hands out on the surface, then slapped the water once.

Now it is done. Master of Breath will be thankful that his children perform so faithfully, and that we, too, are taking the best that is in us and directing it as he would have us do. He will know that Otci speaks from the center.

He smiled confidently and cleanly to himself.

Bathing was a ritual in Attaugee, Coosauda, Towassau, in all the Alabama towns and in all the Muskogee towns. Mothers brought their babies to the river where they floated as gently as if they rested on their breasts. The bathing now was no less familiar, but only more intelligently understood, as he knew by their instruction. Swimming on his back in and out of the stronger flow at midstream, he offered himself up to the sky world, to the sun itself, as a mouse would in a stubbled corn field to the predator claws of a hawk or eagle slowly flying overhead. He laughed, moving effortlessly in the water.

As I carry the blessing made more receptive in the ritual, so do I remain unafraid.

Darkness had fallen over the village as Otci piled the last pieces of firewood by the cabin door. In the council square, the larger fire burned magnificently in a pit encircled by huge, white-painted stones. It lit the ground and threw ghostly, dancing shadows upon the empty seats of the warriors’ lodge. Shadows and light danced against the rotunda, where the spiral fire is burned. The fire had a spirit of its own; it was alive. The night breathed and whispered. Otci sensed some other presence in the solitude as he piled up wood. The full moon lit the village square in pale luminescence, reflecting the pine sapling framework of cabins as something fantastic, something of standing skeletons, mysterious and treacherous, laying a cool pallor on the bark covering the cabins. The fire threw irregular shadows on walls. He thought he heard a dry laugh within the shadows, like that of the dead. He felt the light move him into its suggestion, pull him into its play of contorted forms. Warm yellow moved against chilled pale lavender. It was a ghost moving over a corpse.

Otci looked up to the dark skies. Far off a billowing thunderhead rose, its folds heavy and menacing. Two moons from this very night he would be called to the square for another purpose. Like the full light of the moon thrown against the village cabins and lodges, he, too, would have to throw up the whole of himself and present it to the stern eyes of his approvers. To be offered up as if created again, to be vulnerable again before those who say yes, he must be acceptable.

He would be presented to the miko, the elders, and the warriors, to have conferred upon him his new name and honor. In that quest he would have passed through the search for his own vision. It would lead him to one truth that is himself and his place before the god he sought to sustain his courage. Then he would become a whole man and a warrior of the nation. He would grow to become a man larger in intellect and moral rightness. His what-is-inside-of-me would become incorruptible as his heart deepened and widened. On that day in the square, the Poskita, he would announce himself and his purpose. There would be nothing to surprise him.

He folded his arms on his chest in the warming promise of his ascendancy among them. Then he lay down and closed his eyes as the calm rode over him. He dreamed. In his dream he stood up and stepped away. The crickets sang as he walked across the illuminated yard to the familiar path. A breeze dashed through the wood, then died, then raced through again, clacking the magnolia leaves against one another in their clusters. The well-formed cloud blew nearer. He walked without hesitation or noise through dark trees in the beauty of the night. His inner eye was open. Perhaps he was being summoned by the mass hysteria of the whirring insects and creatures alive in the undergrowth.

To Otci it looked like the magnificent cloud might burst in its fullness. There was no heaven-wide flash of the silent Snake-in-the-Sky, no boom and fire of Thunderman; only the cloud advancing into the clear night like the stealthy, potent glide of the river-riding tie snake coming up out of the dark water to enter the unprotected cabins.

No. The night spirit moved on its own. It drew him. The night delivered the moon and the cloud and the frog song and the wind, and it all swam in his head, stirring him, coming alive in his eyes and ears.

It drew him deeper into the trees. Otci pushed branches and undergrowth out of his path and arrived at the edge of the bluff. He was winded. He wanted to stand alone. He looked down upon the moving water whose current he felt strong within him and it soothed him.

Then the place suddenly throbbed with a magical quality. He arose lightly and walked down to the river, where he would wash. He would splash the water in his eyes and let the refreshing coolness run down his back and chest. He was carrying a musket at the ready in his left hand. Someone, something was watching him. Intense eyes were upon him.

Suddenly a large red fox darted out from the trees and skirted down the bluff to the water’s edge. Its thick, moon-brilliant tail stood straight out behind. The fox flashed its gaze up to him, then ran on. He gave the death cry as he bounded down the bluff, eager to kill it, to bring it to the village square, to give its skin to the miko. This would surely be the triumph of his cunning.

He sprang after the fox. He ran swiftly to trap it and corner it against an unclimbable bank he knew to be somewhere in the trees. The fox raced ahead of him, and he shouted loudly as he ran hard after it.

He jumped over fallen trees, swept away branches that hung down in front of him, and splashed through collected pools of water as he ran over the ground. The fox was in full flight; it laughed as it led him on. It ran down to the river, where it leapt into the water with a neat, unbroken step, then swam swiftly in the running flow.

Otci ran to the water’s edge. Cold uncertainty seized him as he hesitated on the bank. He forgot himself in his boldness, and ran into the water holding his musket high in the air. He swam strongly in the river. As he did so, he felt the current sucking at his arms and legs, pulling him downstream. Still, he gained on the animal, for he was swimming with all his strength. The fear of middle river diminished with each strong stroke of his free arm and his legs.

As his foot struck the muddy ground, the fox was climbing up the bank. He struggled after it and regained the chase. The fox ran swiftly through the woods, red flashing through the dark green. Then it disappeared over the edge of a tree-shrouded gully. As he dashed through the defile after the fox, he was running faster than he ever had before. The fox turned briskly around the edge of the deep gully. As he swept the ferns from his path, he found himself approaching a high, hard clay wall that stood at the end of the corridor, which the brilliant fox now tried desperately to climb, his tail waving. Otci laid his finger on the trigger as the exhilaration heated his temples. He had trapped his game.

“Utassi Tchati!” (Red Fox!) he called out. The fox turned in resignation and shook the water from itself as it panted. It looked straight into Otci’s eyes. Otci hesitated.

“Don’t do it, Otci!” the fox said in a clear voice. “I am not to die just now. There is too much to be gained.”

In the shaded part of his memory, Otci remembered his vow to remain open to the voices of the thicket. Four-legged creatures carry the word.

“I chased you out of the thicket and across the river. You are trapped here, and you can’t beguile me. You can’t escape me!” he said strongly.

The fox cocked its head. “I cannot escape you, neither do I wish to beguile you, but you will not kill me, Otci!” the fox repeated.

“I have only one chance,” he replied. “The one shot that it takes to blow the fire through you gives me an entrance into the warriors’ council. I’ll wrap your skin over the miko’s shoulders and hang your tail from my lodge door!”

“You do not have the power in a new land to kill me, Otci,” the fox said. A smile of satisfaction lit its face. “You have crossed over into a new place, you see. The river is wide. I see you still sitting in the cabin of your mother.”

The hunter’s pride rose in him. He would hesitate no longer. He raised his musket and aimed it at the fox’s heart. The animal stood, unmoved, panting its small tongue like a small flag. His hand was shaking as he jerked the trigger. But there was only the cold click of the flint against the steel. The flash in the pan and the explosion did not come. He pulled the hammer back again. The fox still stood there. Again there was no fire and jolt.

“You are new in the strange land, Otci. Your ground is across the river where the current keeps you safe and well-guarded until the men call you. You swam across it after me to my ground, and here, where it is thicker with trees than on your side, a ground you have not seen before, you are powerless with the old methods,” the fox said in a controlled voice.

The animal’s words rose strongly before Otci and struck at him with slaps of doubt. The impotent steel in his right hand grew heavy as he felt the gravity of his quest seize him. He spoke from the pit of his stomach.

“The water was cold and deep, and the current carried me away from you,” he said, “but I still found you. Long Person did not stop me!”

“What were you seeking?” the fox asked, with a wrinkled eyebrow. “You entered that water from which many have never reemerged, and you swam it without slowing to doubt yourself. You have never been here before. It must be the calling of the spirit, Otci.” The sharp-eyed animal spoke in a quietly authoritative voice that was now beginning to sound sharply familiar. The fox’s tone and rhythm of speech was one he recognized. Without looking deep for his own reply, he recited what he knew instinctively. The words arose dark from within him.

“I cross over the Long Person and it allows me the passage. I swim in it without the fear. I know the river and I am known by it. It confirms me with the power.” He spoke to a distant thing. He was unable to identify what it was, but it was the possibility of him along the path he had weeks ago begun to travel. “The rains that fall in the high country are sent from the far heights where the Master sits, and the rains fall every day in the corn-growing time. I am like a tall pine by the river’s edge, and the wind carries my seed to other lands that show me.”

The fox looked at him with his dark and gleaming eye and said, “If you cross over the dark stream again back to your own ground, what will the talk be? You aimed at me and tried to fire your gun, but it was useless. You tried to kill me and couldn’t do it. So now you see what the new ground is. Can you find your way back when darkness hides the path? It will be so dark you will not see the rattlesnake. The new land is known only to those who dwell there. This ground defies such a bold entrance.”

He pondered the challenge, not taking his eye from the animal that spoke in such a fierceness of color and knowledge. He looked up and saw the sky darken through the trees. It suddenly turned gray blue.

Then he said to the fox in anger, “They will say of me that I confronted the one who hungers for swimmers. They will say that I floated in the river like a fish, for I know it moves, and they will say that neither strange places nor new impediments cause Otci to hesitate. That is what they will say!”

The fox looked at him derisively. “What of me, Otci?”

The fox had spoken firmly. Otci knew that it had led him off in its chosen direction. A knot tightened in his throat. He knew now that he was unprepared when he had taken the leap, that the distance of the leap showed his rawness. The fox had led him off so easily, and he easily could become lost in going back.

“You overpower me,” he heard himself say. “This land is yours, and I do not take back with me that which is not naturally laid out before me. That is what they have said. The courage to cross over the void is not enough. I entered it hungrily, but I’ll go back now.”

The fox grinned in a way that he had seen on another’s painted face, the bold red streaks of wild fur that flashed back beside a sharp mouth. The fox held him in his stare, drawing him further into the weight of its talk. Then without another word, it turned nimbly toward the wall. In three light steps it sprang up the slippery clay edifice to disappear over the edge.

Now with the strange sky blinking darker over him in the dimming forms of the gully, he sensed his intrusion into the animated woods. He was lost in a place he didn’t know and could accomplish nothing there. He turned to retrace his steps.

He arrived at the water’s edge relieved to see the familiar stream stretching out before him. Stepping into it, he felt the welcome of its freshness about his feet and ankles. The exultant death cry now was lost. He couldn’t give in, not now. He had not brought back the prize. He had only intruded and found something he couldn’t touch that was mightier than he. Otci dipped his face into the eddy by the bank and drank. The cool, clean water refreshed him. As the water washed down his dry throat, he felt he was finding a calm place for his thoughts to collect. He would regain himself after this ineffective chase; it would be successful the next time. The fox’s face flashed again before his inner eye, laughing. It is a lost . . .

A drop of rain on his thigh awoke him from the dream. He opened his eyes to find himself where he had lain down. He sat up and imagined the dark shore across the river. He suddenly felt a serenity of being where he ought to be. The possibilities were unfolding.

This spot can shelter me from illusion. There is no such creature. Yet it undid me. I did as Nokusi told us, and I leapt for it as I might not have in other dreams. I could only have done that. I don’t think anything is wrong. Only a brief fear, only an uncertainty. No, only that.

The purple predawn light crept through the fire hole in the pitched roof of his mother’s bark-covered cabin as Otci slept on a moss-stuffed cot. Outside, an impish breeze whispered against the broad leaves of a sycamore by the side of the cabin. Now that the days had turned quite warm with the fattening moon of the blackberry ripening month Otci slept inside, where he also kept the fire. Only with the end of the Poskita at the new corn ripening time was the fire to be extinguished and a new, unpolluted fire kindled. Squirrels pattering across the bark-covered roof awoke him. He saw the faint morning light through the fire hole and realized it was time to join the others at the river for the morning bath. Already they must all be down there, and the rest of the village would soon follow. He heard again the caution of Bear’s voice, felt the rigor of his own responsibility, and the necessity of making it right.

He threw off the blanket and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Footsteps outside the stretched deerhide door startled him. He knew it must be Hobithli coming to rouse him. A few taps rattled against the side of the cabin and he recognized the impatient sounds of his dauntless friend.

“Otci, Otci, get up!” The voice whispered harshly outside. “The others are already down at the river. Come on!”

“Good, good,” he muttered. “Just let me set the fire.”

Squatting naked at the stone-encircled fire pit in the center of the cabin, he threw several handfuls of dried grass onto the embers glowing beneath the gray ashes and blew the heat to a flame. Picking up a few small sticks, he placed them across the flames gently and walked hurriedly over to the wall peg for his breechcloth. Wrapping it around him and tying it off at the front, he heard the sticks pop as they caught fire. He reached for several thicker short sticks and placed them around the perimeter of the small flames so that they met and connected above the fire. He skillfully tied them with a thin piece of grapevine and propped several other smaller sticks between them to form an easily lit conical wick for the fire. Stepping back to watch it flame, he heard Hobithli again rattle the stiff deerhide door.

“We’re late, hurry,” said his friend in a grating voice.

Otci sensed his carelessness in arising late. He brought his fist once against the wall to stay Hobithli’s impatience. “It’s just about to catch!”

Facing the fire, he saw the flames flicker up between the piled sticks and reach up to singe the twisted grapevine. He hurriedly placed more grass around the base of the fire, piling smaller then larger sticks on top of it to catch the fire when the bottom of the pile became heated. He quickly lifted the leather loop at the edge of the deerskin doorflap off the short wooden peg on the wall and stepped outside. Turning to Hobithli he narrowed his eyebrows and turned his mouth down in a frown, imitating the wild, contorted facial gestures of the dance leader. Raising his hand as if to bring it flat onto the belly of his friend, he slapped it instead on his heavy shoulder. “Come on, you’re holding me up,” he said with a mock sneer.

Otci ran off in the direction of the river, past the dark council square rimmed with open-front warriors’ and elders’ cabins, past the cabins circling the square and around the smaller ones located irregularly beyond the perimeter. Despite his size, Hobithli was as fast as he, and he caught his friend as they reached the end of the melon patch outside the village. Together they raced down the worn path, brushing and knocking branches before them. Reaching the bluff they looked down to see the others washing quietly in the river, sending out ripples over the dark water. The two initiates skirted down the clay bluff and across the sand bar and ran, diving with great splashes into the midst of the others. Disregarding their spirited joking at the start of their race, the two initiates set their minds to washing themselves, rubbing briskly in their first, early obeisance to the Master of Breath.

Finally, Otci washed his face and hair, and stood up out of the water to see if the others were through. Their reddish brown bodies gleamed in the morning light, giving accent to every well-formed muscle on strong frames. Even in a hurry, the initiates washed as if in the presence of an unseen authority.

They stepped out of the water and gathered on the bank. Otci stood among them. “Fuswa,” he said. The Bird Clan hunter would know an unwatched path to the old man’s fire. “Tell us where to go.”

“There is a trail that runs to the north around the edge of the swamp by the bend,” he responded promptly. “It is thick enough with bushes and trees to hide us. It will be unguarded, I’m sure.”

“Maybe unguarded,” replied Illitci, “but it is too well-known by the hunters. He would be watching for that one. We need to find a path that is far out of the way, one that would come up behind him.”

Tumchuli raised his head and said eagerly, “We can canoe downstream and approach him from the west. The trees are so thick that he would never see us until we are right upon him.”

“Too thick for us to even walk through, Tumchuli,” said Pinili, shaking his head. “Too many briars.”

“We must find a way that is never taken, approach the fire from a direction he would never suspect,” said Francis. He looked at Otci for a comment.

“Pinili,” he said, “you’ve been out in the thicket enough. Isn’t there some hidden path you take to kill your turkey?”

The reticent hunter pondered silently, then he looked up. “His fire is on the north side of the juniper grove, and I know the grove well,” he said.

“Yes, and there is a creek that runs by the trees, too,” said Tumchuli excitedly.

“That creek comes out into the river right down there,” said Pinili pointing downstream in the direction of the bend in the stream. “We may take the creek up to the juniper trees, and then only a short distance from that is where he burns his fire,” he said.

“What is the wood like by the creek, and how dense is it from the trees to the fire?” asked Katutci.

“It is clear by the creek. I see squirrels feeding along it every time I’m in there. But the growth from the junipers to the fire is dense. If we can sight the mulberry tree that stands right behind Nokusi then we can crawl around to it. It’s big enough for us to see,” he said.

“Only there won’t be any commands, Otci,” said Hobithli.

“Yes, I know,” said Otci. “Then you stay in front of me and point out the way, Pinili. Katutci is behind me and the rest know their place.”

Otci set the order of their progression through the woods every day. At his direction, each took an advanced position in line as they traced their way from the river to the fire for the master’s talks. Thus, as Bear ordered, they all had the opportunity to lead. But Otci, if he didn’t lead himself, was always behind the one in front, and was always responsible for the direction and the skill by which the group moved.

He walked ahead a few steps up to the rise of the bluff, the rest falling in line behind him. He looked back to see if Hobayi had a branch with which to cover their footprints, and waited until his raw-boned, sharp-jawed brother had broken off a limb from a small tree, shook it to see if it had the weight he liked, and joined in at the rear of the line.

Otci felt a communal spirit. It would sustain them all in their tasks before their teacher, for each was a protector of the other. And each one was each one’s brother. Though each was of a different clan, they were all bound up in the same quest. The initial words of instruction still hung in his ear. Nokusi had ordained it beyond the miko’s objection. This was their time together, like no other time in their lives. It was the sacred time in which boyhood’s inhibitions were shattered to bring on them the risks of the wider way of men.

It was like that with everything the old warrior had told them before his fire since they began meeting deep in the thicket. They had listened devoutly as he told them the unbreakable laws of the path, and to Otci the word held firm. The warriors at the head of the line and the rear of the line have the important roles, Bear told them. One directs; the other conceals. That is the entire movement: a joined, coordinated stealth through the great, dense thicket.

Nokusi would begin their warriors’ story with his own. If they could follow his path, then they would become warriors in spirit. Otci knew the council believed it. Nokusi told them how as a young man he led his warriors against the English along the Oconee River to the east. Once he led the French captain from Toulouse all the way around the English camp, only to find them gone and a slight wisp of smoke rising from an extinguished fire pit. Yet it was a feat for which he was given a new musket and powder canister. He had trailed the branches as his party advanced into the pine woodland country of the Choctaw west of the Tombigbee, and when he returned, his bow dangled with the hair locks of two victims. He taught making bows from the osage orange tree, arrows from the elm, and how to coat the flint heads with cloth and pitch to flame a stockade wall. He showed them how to cut the hair from the fallen enemy. He used the initiates’ leader and a stick to demonstrate how to cut it quickly and cleanly, and made each one practice on him until they knew it rhythmically.

He taught them other devices of the path: how to crawl though the cane to kill alligator, how to give the deer, turkey, eagle, and wounded bear call to lure them, how to carve out a deer head and wear it, and how to place the deer hide over their backs to crawl up to the banks where Idjo feeds on grass and shoot him. When hunting in the country of the Upper Muskogee or the Lower Muskogee and Seminole, they learned what to look for in trade to bring back to the miko as they bartered goods from their own river area: salt, dried fish, pigeons, and flint. These teachings of the gray-browed warrior stirred Otci. It was as if Bear was giving them the tools of life. The others, too, anticipated every instruction. He taught them that only this would bring them honor. To violate the laws of warriorhood, Otci knew, was to betray the man, and all that the nation kept sacrosanct, and to invite the rebuke of their fathers, along with the shame of their ancestors.

The sun now approached the treetops as he led them over the bluff to a narrow, nearly concealed trail that Pinili pointed out. It led off the main path to the village. It was getting late. They must advance in haste, for the old warrior does not smile upon late arrivals. He signaled them through the brush behind Pinili as the file crept in the hushed, deathly advance. The rhythmic rise and fall of their shoulders make their going one continuous, fluid movement, lunging in unison through the new green. He cautioned the hunter with a tap on the shoulder. He stepped off the trail toward the faint musical flow of a clear pebble-bottomed creek. They crossed the creek to the right side to avoid the spirits of unburied warriors killed in battle that pass along the left side, moving to broader, deeper rivers. It was a matter of reverence. He stepped carefully, skillfully, straining with his back and legs to obscure from any watchful eye their discovery by sight or sound. He crouched in stealth through the wet, yellow-green woodland maze.

Pinili pointed out the juniper grove that stood darkly in the thick cluster of trees before them. As they reached the first juniper tree, his right arm extended and caught the fragrant dripping branch. Looking down, Otci felt a soft moss bed beneath his foot and his tension eased. It would be a quiet path. He passed the branch back with his left hand to Katutci, who took it and gently swung it to Tumchuli, who ducked beneath it, and passing beneath it the line advanced without pause, snaking through the growth. In the teaching of the master, they moved as an animal, a fluid weave among branches and trunks that towered above them, each knowing that one deviant movement or noise could betray all of them. Otci felt secure about this way. Behind them crept Hobayi, trailing the cypress branch that pulled leaves over their footprints, obscuring forever from any woodland mind their brief, invisible journey through the thicket.

Otci peered through the dense growth at a sudden movement. Two raccoons washed in the creek. Without looking back he tapped Katutci on the shoulder and pointed out the black-cowled animals splashing in the water. As the initiates approached, the raccoons remained unbothered, unaware that the human procession was nearing them. Not wishing to startle them or set the birds off from their branches, Otci pointed to Pinili to take them over to the left. Katutci passed, and the rest followed. Only Lojutci paid attention to the animals. He looked over his shoulder at their round, gray-striped bodies with alert little ears shaking with each quick dip of their paws in the water. As he moved past them, he noted well their habits. The living embodiment of his ancestors, his Raccoon clan blood spirited him with the same cunning as these animals.

The line passed so noiselessly that only the softly scratching branch dragged by Hobayi caught their ear. The larger raccoon looked up and met the strange one’s cold eye directly. It stood in its hind legs. The other turned suddenly and saw the line passing through the green. They dashed across the creek, alerting Francis to the noise. Hobayi pushed him on with stiff arm. His hungry, flashing grin beamed at Francis, the light skinned one. There would not be many opportunities like that which would escape his killing arrow. They passed over the edge of the moss bed. Tumchuli whimpered as he stepped on a stick embedded in the soft cushion.

Creeping at a slower pace through the woods, Otci sought to find the large mulberry tree that was his sign. Before it Bear must be sitting, carefully laying the small sticks on the leaping flames of his fire pit. He reached forward and grabbed Pinili’s arm. He turned back around and stood up to where he could see the end of the line. The mulberry was only twenty steps beyond him. He turned to face Hobayi. Both hands at ear level gave them the sign to halt. He swept his arm leftward to swing them out along a line which would converge on the perimeter.

Then from behind came a loud rattle. A menacing low voice growled unseen from the trees, stiffening Otci’s neck in a cold flash. The animal anger then mounted instantly to a shrill, stuttering yelp, then almost musically to a protracted fierce and high-pitched howl. Otci turned in fright, ready to dodge blindly the attacker behind them. Illitci, the killer, solid as an oak in all tense moments, closed his jaw, set his eyes, lowering himself to one knee. Hobithli and Lojutci stood up and looked for a movement in the thick undergrowth. The panic of individual movements broke the order of the procession. Otci searched the trees in trepidation, unable to give a command. The air hung still, broken only by the call of the long-tailed mockingbird high in the branches. The expectancy of a clash coiled up in his legs like the bent spring of a trap, held in tension and set to fall on the prey which would trip it. Among the trees Otci turned quickly, narrowing his eyes to look through the mulberry growth into the clearing. There was no one there. Coldness ran through his temples. He clenched his fist in indecision.

“Look behind the asi bush, Otci,” a heavy voice spoke out of the stillness. “But it’s too late. I would have split your skull when you left the creek.”

They looked at the asi bush with the bright red berries. It rustled, and from it Bear slowly rose, his dark eyes heated to dark gleaming embers. Placing his huge hands on his hips, he glared at the line, moving his assailing eyes from Otci, paled, to the towering Halpada, who stared at his feet, to the pursed-lipped Illitci and Kunip, to Francis and Hobayi, who met his eye stoically.

Bear remained standing at his full height, far taller and more imposing than he had ever been among them. Otci felt his impatience and displeasure heated by their failure to put his teaching to the proper use he expected. The old warrior spoke to them with crisp authority.