scvile
12-24-2010, 12:11 PM
I posted Chapter One of this over in General, but was advised to put it in Short Stories.
This is actually a rather long novel that is basically completed, but has gone wrong in a number of places.
I'm hoping that posting in public forum will help me to iron out the problems--both by getting advice and from having the sense of having an audience. (Keeps a person from going off on tangents that are of no interest to anyone but oneself.)
Here is the first two chapter. Several others are ready to put up, if people have an interest in the story.
I may go ahead and post Chapter Two, just so you can see where I'm going with this.
CHAPTER 1
When Fly Awake opened her eyes, it was still dark--so early in the morning she could see the stars through the smoke-hole of the tipi. She could see that the sky was clear, promising all the beauties of a summer day. She stretched pleasantly on her soft buffalo robe, beneath the warmth of a red trade blanket savoring the scents and sensations of the morning’s freshness.
Seated in the darkness at the back of the lodge was the thin and shadowy apparition of her grandfather. Haton sat smoking near the miniscule central fire, a dark silhouette except for the white hair that framed his smoke-blackened and wizened face, and trailed over his thin, angular shoulders and far down his back.
Since it was summer, even Haton, who was often troubled by the cold, felt no need to wrap himself in his red trade blanket, but he had rekindled the fire to drive away the morning chill—and to light his pipe, from which a thin trail of smoke curled upward, scenting the tipi with the smell of kinnikinick.
Haton had been an ancient man for as long as Fly Awake could remember, his hair as pure white as spiders’ webs. The only change in him that Fly Awake was conscious of was that he had grown more frail. When he lay sleeping at night, his form looked so painfully thin that it might have been a child’s. Sometimes, waking during the night, Fly Awake believed for a moment that it was a child who was asleep in her old grandfather’s bed.
Fly Awake and her grandfather shared the tipi with her old father, who still slept. There were now only the three of them in the lodge: Haton, his son-in-law, Black Corn,
who was Fly Awake’s father, and Fly Awake herself. Fly Awake was now the only woman in the lodge since Willow had married Fly Awake’s brother, Iron Tree, and the two had made a separate lodge for themselves.
It was not yet dawn, as Fly Awake knew from the sight that was most familiar to her of all on waking—the view of the night sky and the winking stars through the smoke hole high above her head, with its twirl of tipi poles. All was perfect. She could feel the brisk chill of the damp morning air against her face, though the fire her grandfather had kindled was already beginning to drive it away. There was delight in all these sights and sensations, and in surveying the tidy familiarity of the lodge, the whiteness of the hide walls, and the rich brown carpet of furs. Colorful trade blankets adorned the beds, and the painted lining of the lodge provided a backdrop of lively color.
Haton’s voice was rusty and, even in the dimness, Fly Awake could see how the deep creases of his mask-like face readied themselves to smile.
“You are rightly called Fly Awake,” he said. “I have seen this every morning since you were old enough to walk—that you have risen so early that the people say that it is you who wakes the birds.”
“You are awake, grandfather,” she pointed out, as she luxuriated in the red glow of the fire in the pre-dawn darkness, its scent driving out and replacing the scent of the dewfall that would be heavy on the grass.
“The old rise early,” he replied, “but you can see that they do not fly, and my voice will never make the birds sing,” Haton laughed softly.
“You look like a bird, but that is because your legs are so thin. When I was gathering wood yesterday, I saw two turkeys far up ahead of me, playing together as they walked and sometimes spreading their wings. I thought you were one of them,” Fly
Awake replied, smiling, and then grew pensive. “The people say that you do fly,” she added.
“Ah!” Haton vouchsafed no other reply, and he, too. grew pensive.
“Will you go with me while I fill the water-bag this morning?” she asked at last.
“Let us wait a little—until I have finished smoking. It is early yet, and I have been thinking about the roundness of things, and thinking how everything is continually made new. I see that you, too, think of this.”
“What?” Fly Awake laughed. “I was thinking of digging timpsula. How good that would be!”
“Ah!” Haton said again. “I think you rise early because you rejoice to see the world made new. So you are wise without knowing it.”
“Grandfather—” Fly Awake began, thinking to chide him—but she stopped. The old man was a little mad.
“Every time the tipi is made again,” Haton continued, “it is made according to the pattern of the great circle of stars in the night sky, the Great Hoop, so that the world of spirits is made new on earth. It is thus that our people stay on the good red road—by making our lodges after the pattern of the sky.”
“Well,” Fly Awake admitted, willing to humor the old man, “I think of this when I pitch the tipi.” Whenever the lodge was raised anew, Haton was sure to remind her that the small world of their tipi was a copy of the Great Hoop of the stars in the night sky.
Haton lived with one foot in the spirit world. He was more than a little mad—more than mad enough to make a young woman impatient with him. But there had never been many sane people in Fly Awake's lodge. Her father, Black Corn, was a morose old man, and her mother had been a sour old woman until the day she died. Willow, when
she had shared the lodge, had been as mercurial and unpredicatable as a spring storm. Iron Tree, her brother, took them all seriously: Haton's weird pronouncements, his mother's complaints, Black Corn's moods, and Willow's flights of fancy.
It sometimes did please Fly Awake to think of the roundness of things, so she humored old Haton.
“In the morning I look up and think how the sky will soon grow light, and I want to go out in time to see the last star fade and watch how the sunrise makes the sky glow with different colors. The earth,” she added, “smells sweet in the morning.”
“The morning has a good smell,” Haton agreed, “but all the other times have good smells too. Will Willow come for you this morning? I have a mind to make my prayers alone today.”
Willow, who had married Fly Awake’s brother, Iron Tree, the summer before, had originally come to their lodge as a captive—though Fly Awake’s brother had not so much “captured” Willow as merely found her wandering alone and starving. So maybe he had rescued her. Willow had quickly made a place for herself in their lodge, assuming the role of foster-mother to Fly Awake—though that time now seemed very long ago.
Haton thought it would be good if Willow came to accompany Fly Awake to fill the water bag. His dreams had troubled him.
He had dreamed of the lonely camp where the small family had dwelt many years before, the year Fly Awake was born. He and Black Corn had taken the young Iron Tree on a hunting expedition, leaving the women—Black Corn’s old wife, Red Shield, and her eldest daughter, Otter Woman—alone to deliver the child. In the real world, they had returned to find mother and child thriving and happy. But in the dream, they returned to find Red Shield slain and the child stolen. Otter Woman had disappeared. In the dream, it
had appeared that she had wandered off before the attack. In their anguish, Haton and Black Corn could not decide whether to search for Otter Woman or for the child.
Haton had awakened in anguish of spirit and was still trying to shake off the dreadful sense of loss evoked by the dream. He had waited impatiently in the pre-dawn darkness of the lodge for Fly Awake to begin to stir, knowing that her vibrant waking presence would dispel the dream.
Most mornings Haton accompanied Fly Awake to the water’s edge, and he would make his prayers while she washed, and filled the water bag. Then they would walk back together, and they would talk, Haton filling her head and heart with stories and visions and dreams.
They made a strange pair walking together, the ancient man whose face was a deeply grooved mask of wrinkles, blackened by the smoke of a million campfires, making his way on legs stiffened with age—and the young girl, supple-limbed and slim, with cheeks that were smooth and flushed with youth, and with long, slim legs that stirred the fringes of her fawn-colored deer skin dress around her ankles.
Haton was wise and had seen many things in his life. Sometimes he spoke to Fly Awake of how the small birds had foretold his wife’s death. A flock of chickadees had come and perched in a bush near her while she was picking berries, and they chattered away at her, saying, “Get ready! Your mother comes to meet you! Get ready!” Haton made his voice high and shrill when he told this story, in imitation of the birds, so that it made Fly Awake laugh to hear how comical it sounded.
Haton said that he himself had seen his wife’s mother come to take her to the next world. He could see such things because he was a great and famous medicine man. He had seen many other remarkable things: He had seen the naiads playing in a clear
waterfall, and they had not fled from him as they did from most humans, but had told him secrets about dreaming. Birds and other animals sometimes spoke to him, too, and helped him find game or warned him of danger from enemies.
The old man’s company was delightful to Fly Awake, and she even felt proud of him, proud to be his granddaughter, and was only a little put off when he played the clown, or could not be bothered with practicalities.
Haton had taken charge of Fly Awake after her older sister, Otter Woman, married into another band—for, even long before Fly Awake’s mother’s death, the sister had almost entire care of the child. Otter Woman, the older sister, had loved Fly Awake dearly, and never felt burdened by her. When she had to part with her at the time of her marriage, she had wept so bitterly that the family was embarrassed by her torrent of tears. Fly Awake had been eight years old when her sister married, and Fly Awake’s mother, Black Corn’s wife, Red Shield, had died soon after.
Fly Awake sometimes thought it was strange that she had almost no recollection at all of Red Shield. But she did remember Otter Woman, the older sister who had cared for her so attentively.
Red Shield had largely ignored her. It was Fly Awake’s older sister, Otter Woman, who had held the young girl on her lap, and laughed and played with her. Fly Awake had shared Otter Woman’s robes at night, cuddling against her sister for warmth on winter nights. It had been Otter Woman who had soothed her hurts and fears, told her stories, and taught her skills.
Before Otter Woman went away, Fly Awake had never lacked for a mother’s love—though bestowed by a sister. After Otter Woman’s marriage into another band, and her mother’s death, it had been Haton who had provided all the warmth of Fly Awake’s
childhood. And Haton had often explained that Red Shield’s coldness was a result of age and failing health—that it was sometimes not good for a woman to bear a child so late in life.
After Otter Woman’s marriage and Red Shield’s death, Haton had, incongruously, assumed the role of her mother. Thenceforward, it had been old Haton who had watched over the girl tenderly and been her playmate and companion.
The people had indulged the old man’s tenderness for the child, even though it seemed eccentric, or even improper. What, Haton thought, was an old man good for, but to play with the children? And the people were indulgent of Haton’s eccentricities.
As a motherless child, Fly Awake had been Haton's consolation for a great shame. But later a sorrowful secret had unfolded in his inner vision, and his greatest consolation had become his greatest sorrow.
Now that she had changed from a pretty child to a girl in the first bloom of her womanhood, he saw that it was more important than ever that she never go anywhere alone: That was the custom of his people. Yet it was the secret that Haton had for so long kept sealed in his heart that made him act the part of chaperone himself.
“I suppose Willow will come,” Haton repeated, “so that you will have a companion when you go out this morning.”
“Maybe I will go alone, grandfather,” Fly Awake teased, her dark eyes sparkling at Haton’s consternation. She was eager to be outdoors; she could hear hushed voices, birdsong, and the rustling of the trees.
“A girl you age must always have someone with her,” Haton insisted, seeming not to notice that she was joking. “Otherwise the young men will be trying to talk to her.” Haton had grown garrulous on this point. With old age came the privilege of repeating
himself endlessly, as if he had forgotten that he had made this point many times before—and Fly Awake sometimes teased him about it.
“The young men are all lazy, I think,” she chided. “They are all still asleep—except for the boys who take care of the ponies—and they are only little boys.”
“You must remember, too, that your cousin Nahnohayhee is no longer a little boy, and not speak to him, either.”
“I stopped speaking to him a year ago, grandfather, when he was thirteen winters old,” she reminded Haton. When the girls and boys reached a certain age, it was expected that they no longer speak to each other—no, not even brother and sister. “Still,” she added, “he only seems like a little boy to me.”
“He is not big for his age,” Haton admitted. “How I like to hear him sing to the ponies!” Nahnohayhee would make his voice low pitched, as if he were already a man, and then let the notes fly up to the clouds and down again. One could see his flashing smile, bright as dawn, as he made a shuffling dance in the early light among the different colored spotted ponies.
“He can sing them into doing whatever he wants,” Fly Awake added. “And I miss being able to talk to him. It is, after all, almost like I am one of his mothers, because Willow and I took care of him so often when he was little. Still, grandfather,” she went on, “you know I would never speak to any of the young men, or even listen to them.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “You are the best of granddaughters, and Willow, that good woman, your sister-in-law, has taught you well. How good it is that she came to us, to be a mother to you when you own mother went away on the Spirit Path!”
Willow had easily and intuitively followed Haton’s lead when it came to showering the motherless child with tender affection—and she also intuitively understood
Haton’s careful protection of Fly Awake’s innocence, and wondered a little that it was so exaggerated. Willow had at first supposed that this was because the lodge was only men, except for herself and the child.
Willow was acutely sensitive to the subtleties of her adopted lodge, and she quickly understood that it was not just Fly Awake’s innocence that was being protected. There were undercurrents at work: There were Black Corn’s morose silences and hints of the now-deceased Red Shield’s cold bitterness. There was Haton’s unwillingness to speak of Otter Woman.
Though she was a stranger in Haton’s lodge, Willow was both imaginative and clever, and soon she wove a narrative to account for these strange silences. After she married Iron Tree, she got a bit more of the story from him. Now, as a grown woman, Willow knew Fly Awake’s secret history as well as Haton himself—though the old man never guessed it.
The orphaned child had engaged Willow’s motherly and protective instincts from the first. She knew that Fly Awake had been hurt by Red Shield’s rejection and Otter Woman’s defection, and Willow could see that she was wounded by Haton’s way of never voluntarily speaking of Otter Woman.
But now Haton was speaking kindly of Willow, so that Fly Awake smiled to hear Haton’s good words and pulled her red trade blanket snugly around her shoulders, content to go on listening to this kind of talk. Haton’s talk, even when he was garrulous or clownish or half in another world, had a magic about it, as if, by speaking of the goodness of people, he made them good. She only wished sometimes that he would speak of Otter Woman.
“I was so little when Willow came to us,” Fly Awake replied, “that I only thought
of my own sadness and never of Willow’s. Back then she was always trying to make me happy, and I never thought of trying to make her happy. I should have thought about how much she had suffered. She was afraid of so many things, back then. I should have tried to comfort her. It was because I missed Otter Woman so much, I think.”
Haton did not reply. It was almost as if he did not hear.
Though Willow had once come to take the place of a mother—or as an older sister standing in the place of a mother—to Fly Awake, now their relationship was affectionately sisterly, especially since Willow’s marriage to Iron Tree. But, for Fly Awake, the tender attention she had received from Willow, the best of women, still did not undo the pain of separation from her sister, Otter Woman, and the unease that came from Haton’s unwillingness to speak of her.
“Willow has a timid nature,” Haton remarked at last, “though not so much now as when she first came to us. Children, you know, can know little of other people’s sorrow. It made her happy that you became like a daughter to her. And I think your brother has made her happy, now that they are married.”
Haton, Fly Awake thought, was strangely ignorant of Willow’s character. The timidity he supposed her to possess was mostly feigned. She wondered that Haton could think Willow was timid, when he knew that she had escaped from a white man, after being captured by the Pawnee and sold, and set off alone and on foot, hoping to find her own people again. Fly Awake had heard enough of the story to be amazed at Willow’s courage and resolve, and to admire her as a strong and clever woman.
She did have a few unusual fears: She was afraid of the dark and would keep a fire burning long after it was needed; minor illnesses often filled her with foreboding; and she would sometimes taste the water at a new campsite and declare it undrinkable. Fly
Awake had known her to walk a long distance to fetch water from a stream whose water suited her better, but Fly Awake suspected that this was only because she liked to walk—and to be alone sometimes. She had once walked alone for a long time, and maybe she was used to it.
Willow's supposed timidity and peculiar fears often seemed to Fly Awake to be a ruse. She liked to keep her own counsel; people knew it was useless to argue with fearfulness, and gave in to her. In reality, Willow's courage was something to be reckoned with and would surprise both Haton and Iron Tree as much as Fly Awake imagined it had surprised the Pawnee, and the white man they had sold her to.
“Except that she has no children,” Fly awake pointed out.
“Some time she will have children.”
“She says that, maybe, if she does not, my brother will take a second wife,” Fly Awake told him, looking troubled.
“There would be no harm in it,” Haton observed. “It is good for a woman to have company in her lodge, and to have someone to share her work. And your brother’s children by this second wife would be Willow’s as well, and that would make her lodge cheerful. Your brother would do it only as a kindness to her, for he has great respect for Willow. But,” Haton added, with a faint smile, “your brother is not rich enough to provide for two wives—especially since he must also make meat for our lodge. Your father grows too old to follow the chase.” Haton smiled again. “So I think Willow need not worry that she will have to share her husband.”
What Haton said was true enough. Fly Awake was the youngest child of old parents, and one who had been born long after her parents had ceased to expect that any more children would come to them. Her father was too old to be a very effective hunter,
and Fly Awake and Haton and her old father depended a great deal on her brother, Iron Tree.
“I think it is because of that white man who bought her from the Pawnee that she can have no children,” Fly Awake opined. Willow thought the same, but was willing to let Fly Awake imagine that the cause was some malevolent magic possessed by white men. The truth was a bit more mundane; Willow feared the persistent and long-term effect of the herbs she had used against conception while she lived with the white man.
“It makes me sad to think that Willow lived among such people,” Haton said.
Willow had inspired a dislike for white men in Fly Awake—mostly inadvertently. She had lived a lonely time among a strange people—and she had a secret of her own.
“We will walk out now, granddaughter, now that I have finished smoking.”
“You said you would not go with me this morning.”
“Maybe I will walk with you after all,” Haton replied. He had come to a decision: It was time to speak to Fly Awake of his vision.
The sky was beginning to pale in the east as they left, the birds called and sang, and the whole world smelled sweet and fresh. Even the scent of wood smoke, as the people began to kindle cooking fires, was perfume on the air. The people had worn a path down to the water, but Haton persuaded Fly Awake to take a longer route, claiming that there was a very fine spot further upstream—both because it was beautiful and because the water danced over the rocks at that part of the stream, and was swift and noisy, and very clear.
“You can see that the water from such a place in the river has more life in it,” Haton explained to her, “and it is the life in the water that gives people life and makes them strong.”
“It tastes sweeter, too,” Fly Awake agreed. She paused from time to time, or wandered a little distance from the path, to gather greens to add to the cook pot when they returned. Haton liked the lamb’s quarters, wild onions and garlic, and mint—and the sour dock was still good, if one was careful to gather the youngest leaves.
They wound through a thicket of young willows as they neared the stream. The yellow-green leaves danced in the slanting morning light, and Fly Awake began to cut a bundle of the young branches.
“I want to make a new backrest for my father,” she explained, as Haton drew his own knife and began to help her. “Willow says she is going to make a backrest for my brother. We can make them together.”
“You are as clever as your grandmother was at making fine things,” Haton told her. “What will you do if you make two old men so comfortable and fill us so full of good food that we fall asleep and can give you no company and tell you no stories?”
“The two of you together will snore so loud you will wake yourselves up!” Fly Awake laughed.
“I don’t snore, granddaughter,” Haton objected.
“You don’t—not so much—but my father, Black Corn, cannot seem to stop himself. And if the two of you fall asleep from too much comfort, I will go and find other company.”
Haton gave her a deep and sidelong look.
While Fly Awake chattered, Haton looked for willow withes that were just the right size for a backrest, cutting them free with his big handsome knife, which he kept sharpened to a keen edge. But he was thinking the whole time, while she talked and laughed, and her face shone as bright as the flower of the bloodroot in springtime.
It was time he told her of the secret that lay so heavy on his heart. But what good would it do to tell her? How could knowing help her?
When they reached the river, Fly Awake slipped behind a thicket of willows to wash herself and fill the water bag. Haton, too, set down the bundle of willow wands and washed himself in the swift stream. The water was so cold it almost seemed to burn him, but it also was restorative. He could feel the quick, light joyousness of the tumbling stream in his blood. He made his prayers, and was lost in his own thoughts until Fly Awake returned.
At last she emerged from the thicket, her honeyed skin flushed from the icy water, and walked to join Haton, her figure slim and graceful as a blade of sweetgrass in the dawn. For now the sun was making the sky pink and casting long shadows between slanting golden rays. Fly Awake stepped across a great fallen branch of cottonwood whose cascading leaves had changed to butter yellow and fluttered and sparkled in the faint morning breeze.
As they walked slowly back, Haton was thoughtful. He paused to pluck a leaf from another cottonwood tree and folded it in half to make a kind of whistle. The sound of the leaf whistle was comical rather than musical, and Fly Awake laughed at the burbling chirp of sound.
Willow and some of the other women who were filling their water bags turned to look when they heard Haton’s whistle.
“I think Willow would like to scold you, grandfather. She thinks that sometimes you act like a child, and she is afraid the people will begin to laugh at you. She thinks so great a medicine man should act more dignified,” Fly Awake laughed. “Now you have made her cross.”
“Willow cannot be cross with anyone. She doesn’t know how to scold.” Haton paused reflectively. “A woman who does not scold is dangerous. I saw this once when I was a boy. There was a woman of one of the other bands of our people, and all the people talked of her gentleness and how she never scolded her husband. But one day she gathered all the embers from the fire and threw them on him while he slept. All the people talked about it for days. And your grandmother! Your grandmother’s tongue had more sting in it than fire,” Haton added wistfully. “I had no worries about burning embers in my bed. So you can see how life with a scolding woman is carefree.”
Fly Awake laughed again, for Haton’s expression as he recalled his late wife’s bullying and scolding was sentimental. Haton, for all that he was a great medicine man, had a touch of the child. Even his appearance, rail-thin and wizened, seemed comical at times.
Haton made his leaf whistle chirp until it wore out and turned to look at Fly Awake. In the way of all children, she had grown up far too quickly and transformed from a wild-eyed, wild-haired child into a graceful creature—perhaps the loveliest girl in their village.
Fly Awake turned to look at Haton, because he had suddenly turned pensive. He seemed actually to age as he stood beside her, where he had come to a halt in the morning light. He now sang a medicine song, deep in his throat, and low. It was not an emphatic or ceremonial kind of medicine song. Instead it was one of those offhand exhalations of the spirit, like a man sighing sadly in song.
“You are going away,” Haton said, when he had finished intoning his song. Fly Awake stared at him, astounded by the sudden change in his manner. “There are men on horses. They are coming to take you away from us.” This was the vision that had been
locked for so long in his heart, and the sense of its menace renewed itself as he spoke. He heard the din of the stampede and felt the deep darkness of a moonless night as if it were a solid thing that enveloped and blinded him.
“What do you mean?” Fly Awake asked, feeling deeply frightened.
“I speak only to prepare you,” Haton said with solemnity, “perhaps to help you in time to come.” Haton had drifted into a dream state that had enveloped him like a dark cloud. In his dream state, there was a magnificence about him, but as the dream fell away from him he was once again only a shrunken old man, dry as the bark of an ancient tree.
“You will belong to a white man,” Haton said, after the transformation back to his usual self was complete, which made the words seem still more hopeless, his sorrow deeper.
Fly Awake felt Haton’s sadness shake her long-limbed body. How she despised these white men! Perhaps even more horrible was the thought of being separated from her own people, the gentle Willow, and her adored grandfather.
Then she felt an angry refusal to believe that such a thing could be possible.
Although Fly Awake tried to disbelieve his words, Haton could see that she trembled like an aspen leaf. He was sad for her—and for himself.
With a quick, decisive movement, she picked up the water bag that she had set down while she listened to Haton’s words. Her action was abrupt, as if she wished to turn away from the dream Haton was trying to make her see. Attention to ordinary tasks was the best way to calm her heart, which beat wildly, and she still felt oppressed, despite the golden slant of the morning sun and the music of the birds in the treetops. Her posture showed that she wanted to walk back to the lodge now, to forget the dream and immerse herself again in the life of the village.
Haton continued to stand still, as if he had more to say. He saw again how beautiful and precious she was, slim as a reed, her black hair straight and shining, falling to the backs of her knees—looking much as her grandmother had in youth. The vision that Fly Awake might go away had made a hole in Haton’s heart.
It is no good to grow old, he thought: Everyone goes away. He felt like the old man he was.
“There is a strange kind of tipi—that way.” He pointed toward the southeast. I have seen it sometimes, in dreams. It is a square tipi, not in a circle. In it there are little red horses, like toys. This place is dark. The man is a shadow.”
He looked at her as if he supposed that she, too, saw these things. He knew that she understood that he had traveled to this place, flying in spirit through the night sky to make his medicine. All the people knew of this power of Haton’s; some claimed to have seen him in flight.
“I do not see everything,” he added. “I have made medicine against this thing, yet I still see it.”
“When will this happen?” Fly Awake, at once tremulous and angry.
“It is neither very near nor very far. This white man is nearer than before. But still not so close by.” Haton again gestured toward the southeast. “I will make medicine again,” he added.
This is actually a rather long novel that is basically completed, but has gone wrong in a number of places.
I'm hoping that posting in public forum will help me to iron out the problems--both by getting advice and from having the sense of having an audience. (Keeps a person from going off on tangents that are of no interest to anyone but oneself.)
Here is the first two chapter. Several others are ready to put up, if people have an interest in the story.
I may go ahead and post Chapter Two, just so you can see where I'm going with this.
CHAPTER 1
When Fly Awake opened her eyes, it was still dark--so early in the morning she could see the stars through the smoke-hole of the tipi. She could see that the sky was clear, promising all the beauties of a summer day. She stretched pleasantly on her soft buffalo robe, beneath the warmth of a red trade blanket savoring the scents and sensations of the morning’s freshness.
Seated in the darkness at the back of the lodge was the thin and shadowy apparition of her grandfather. Haton sat smoking near the miniscule central fire, a dark silhouette except for the white hair that framed his smoke-blackened and wizened face, and trailed over his thin, angular shoulders and far down his back.
Since it was summer, even Haton, who was often troubled by the cold, felt no need to wrap himself in his red trade blanket, but he had rekindled the fire to drive away the morning chill—and to light his pipe, from which a thin trail of smoke curled upward, scenting the tipi with the smell of kinnikinick.
Haton had been an ancient man for as long as Fly Awake could remember, his hair as pure white as spiders’ webs. The only change in him that Fly Awake was conscious of was that he had grown more frail. When he lay sleeping at night, his form looked so painfully thin that it might have been a child’s. Sometimes, waking during the night, Fly Awake believed for a moment that it was a child who was asleep in her old grandfather’s bed.
Fly Awake and her grandfather shared the tipi with her old father, who still slept. There were now only the three of them in the lodge: Haton, his son-in-law, Black Corn,
who was Fly Awake’s father, and Fly Awake herself. Fly Awake was now the only woman in the lodge since Willow had married Fly Awake’s brother, Iron Tree, and the two had made a separate lodge for themselves.
It was not yet dawn, as Fly Awake knew from the sight that was most familiar to her of all on waking—the view of the night sky and the winking stars through the smoke hole high above her head, with its twirl of tipi poles. All was perfect. She could feel the brisk chill of the damp morning air against her face, though the fire her grandfather had kindled was already beginning to drive it away. There was delight in all these sights and sensations, and in surveying the tidy familiarity of the lodge, the whiteness of the hide walls, and the rich brown carpet of furs. Colorful trade blankets adorned the beds, and the painted lining of the lodge provided a backdrop of lively color.
Haton’s voice was rusty and, even in the dimness, Fly Awake could see how the deep creases of his mask-like face readied themselves to smile.
“You are rightly called Fly Awake,” he said. “I have seen this every morning since you were old enough to walk—that you have risen so early that the people say that it is you who wakes the birds.”
“You are awake, grandfather,” she pointed out, as she luxuriated in the red glow of the fire in the pre-dawn darkness, its scent driving out and replacing the scent of the dewfall that would be heavy on the grass.
“The old rise early,” he replied, “but you can see that they do not fly, and my voice will never make the birds sing,” Haton laughed softly.
“You look like a bird, but that is because your legs are so thin. When I was gathering wood yesterday, I saw two turkeys far up ahead of me, playing together as they walked and sometimes spreading their wings. I thought you were one of them,” Fly
Awake replied, smiling, and then grew pensive. “The people say that you do fly,” she added.
“Ah!” Haton vouchsafed no other reply, and he, too. grew pensive.
“Will you go with me while I fill the water-bag this morning?” she asked at last.
“Let us wait a little—until I have finished smoking. It is early yet, and I have been thinking about the roundness of things, and thinking how everything is continually made new. I see that you, too, think of this.”
“What?” Fly Awake laughed. “I was thinking of digging timpsula. How good that would be!”
“Ah!” Haton said again. “I think you rise early because you rejoice to see the world made new. So you are wise without knowing it.”
“Grandfather—” Fly Awake began, thinking to chide him—but she stopped. The old man was a little mad.
“Every time the tipi is made again,” Haton continued, “it is made according to the pattern of the great circle of stars in the night sky, the Great Hoop, so that the world of spirits is made new on earth. It is thus that our people stay on the good red road—by making our lodges after the pattern of the sky.”
“Well,” Fly Awake admitted, willing to humor the old man, “I think of this when I pitch the tipi.” Whenever the lodge was raised anew, Haton was sure to remind her that the small world of their tipi was a copy of the Great Hoop of the stars in the night sky.
Haton lived with one foot in the spirit world. He was more than a little mad—more than mad enough to make a young woman impatient with him. But there had never been many sane people in Fly Awake's lodge. Her father, Black Corn, was a morose old man, and her mother had been a sour old woman until the day she died. Willow, when
she had shared the lodge, had been as mercurial and unpredicatable as a spring storm. Iron Tree, her brother, took them all seriously: Haton's weird pronouncements, his mother's complaints, Black Corn's moods, and Willow's flights of fancy.
It sometimes did please Fly Awake to think of the roundness of things, so she humored old Haton.
“In the morning I look up and think how the sky will soon grow light, and I want to go out in time to see the last star fade and watch how the sunrise makes the sky glow with different colors. The earth,” she added, “smells sweet in the morning.”
“The morning has a good smell,” Haton agreed, “but all the other times have good smells too. Will Willow come for you this morning? I have a mind to make my prayers alone today.”
Willow, who had married Fly Awake’s brother, Iron Tree, the summer before, had originally come to their lodge as a captive—though Fly Awake’s brother had not so much “captured” Willow as merely found her wandering alone and starving. So maybe he had rescued her. Willow had quickly made a place for herself in their lodge, assuming the role of foster-mother to Fly Awake—though that time now seemed very long ago.
Haton thought it would be good if Willow came to accompany Fly Awake to fill the water bag. His dreams had troubled him.
He had dreamed of the lonely camp where the small family had dwelt many years before, the year Fly Awake was born. He and Black Corn had taken the young Iron Tree on a hunting expedition, leaving the women—Black Corn’s old wife, Red Shield, and her eldest daughter, Otter Woman—alone to deliver the child. In the real world, they had returned to find mother and child thriving and happy. But in the dream, they returned to find Red Shield slain and the child stolen. Otter Woman had disappeared. In the dream, it
had appeared that she had wandered off before the attack. In their anguish, Haton and Black Corn could not decide whether to search for Otter Woman or for the child.
Haton had awakened in anguish of spirit and was still trying to shake off the dreadful sense of loss evoked by the dream. He had waited impatiently in the pre-dawn darkness of the lodge for Fly Awake to begin to stir, knowing that her vibrant waking presence would dispel the dream.
Most mornings Haton accompanied Fly Awake to the water’s edge, and he would make his prayers while she washed, and filled the water bag. Then they would walk back together, and they would talk, Haton filling her head and heart with stories and visions and dreams.
They made a strange pair walking together, the ancient man whose face was a deeply grooved mask of wrinkles, blackened by the smoke of a million campfires, making his way on legs stiffened with age—and the young girl, supple-limbed and slim, with cheeks that were smooth and flushed with youth, and with long, slim legs that stirred the fringes of her fawn-colored deer skin dress around her ankles.
Haton was wise and had seen many things in his life. Sometimes he spoke to Fly Awake of how the small birds had foretold his wife’s death. A flock of chickadees had come and perched in a bush near her while she was picking berries, and they chattered away at her, saying, “Get ready! Your mother comes to meet you! Get ready!” Haton made his voice high and shrill when he told this story, in imitation of the birds, so that it made Fly Awake laugh to hear how comical it sounded.
Haton said that he himself had seen his wife’s mother come to take her to the next world. He could see such things because he was a great and famous medicine man. He had seen many other remarkable things: He had seen the naiads playing in a clear
waterfall, and they had not fled from him as they did from most humans, but had told him secrets about dreaming. Birds and other animals sometimes spoke to him, too, and helped him find game or warned him of danger from enemies.
The old man’s company was delightful to Fly Awake, and she even felt proud of him, proud to be his granddaughter, and was only a little put off when he played the clown, or could not be bothered with practicalities.
Haton had taken charge of Fly Awake after her older sister, Otter Woman, married into another band—for, even long before Fly Awake’s mother’s death, the sister had almost entire care of the child. Otter Woman, the older sister, had loved Fly Awake dearly, and never felt burdened by her. When she had to part with her at the time of her marriage, she had wept so bitterly that the family was embarrassed by her torrent of tears. Fly Awake had been eight years old when her sister married, and Fly Awake’s mother, Black Corn’s wife, Red Shield, had died soon after.
Fly Awake sometimes thought it was strange that she had almost no recollection at all of Red Shield. But she did remember Otter Woman, the older sister who had cared for her so attentively.
Red Shield had largely ignored her. It was Fly Awake’s older sister, Otter Woman, who had held the young girl on her lap, and laughed and played with her. Fly Awake had shared Otter Woman’s robes at night, cuddling against her sister for warmth on winter nights. It had been Otter Woman who had soothed her hurts and fears, told her stories, and taught her skills.
Before Otter Woman went away, Fly Awake had never lacked for a mother’s love—though bestowed by a sister. After Otter Woman’s marriage into another band, and her mother’s death, it had been Haton who had provided all the warmth of Fly Awake’s
childhood. And Haton had often explained that Red Shield’s coldness was a result of age and failing health—that it was sometimes not good for a woman to bear a child so late in life.
After Otter Woman’s marriage and Red Shield’s death, Haton had, incongruously, assumed the role of her mother. Thenceforward, it had been old Haton who had watched over the girl tenderly and been her playmate and companion.
The people had indulged the old man’s tenderness for the child, even though it seemed eccentric, or even improper. What, Haton thought, was an old man good for, but to play with the children? And the people were indulgent of Haton’s eccentricities.
As a motherless child, Fly Awake had been Haton's consolation for a great shame. But later a sorrowful secret had unfolded in his inner vision, and his greatest consolation had become his greatest sorrow.
Now that she had changed from a pretty child to a girl in the first bloom of her womanhood, he saw that it was more important than ever that she never go anywhere alone: That was the custom of his people. Yet it was the secret that Haton had for so long kept sealed in his heart that made him act the part of chaperone himself.
“I suppose Willow will come,” Haton repeated, “so that you will have a companion when you go out this morning.”
“Maybe I will go alone, grandfather,” Fly Awake teased, her dark eyes sparkling at Haton’s consternation. She was eager to be outdoors; she could hear hushed voices, birdsong, and the rustling of the trees.
“A girl you age must always have someone with her,” Haton insisted, seeming not to notice that she was joking. “Otherwise the young men will be trying to talk to her.” Haton had grown garrulous on this point. With old age came the privilege of repeating
himself endlessly, as if he had forgotten that he had made this point many times before—and Fly Awake sometimes teased him about it.
“The young men are all lazy, I think,” she chided. “They are all still asleep—except for the boys who take care of the ponies—and they are only little boys.”
“You must remember, too, that your cousin Nahnohayhee is no longer a little boy, and not speak to him, either.”
“I stopped speaking to him a year ago, grandfather, when he was thirteen winters old,” she reminded Haton. When the girls and boys reached a certain age, it was expected that they no longer speak to each other—no, not even brother and sister. “Still,” she added, “he only seems like a little boy to me.”
“He is not big for his age,” Haton admitted. “How I like to hear him sing to the ponies!” Nahnohayhee would make his voice low pitched, as if he were already a man, and then let the notes fly up to the clouds and down again. One could see his flashing smile, bright as dawn, as he made a shuffling dance in the early light among the different colored spotted ponies.
“He can sing them into doing whatever he wants,” Fly Awake added. “And I miss being able to talk to him. It is, after all, almost like I am one of his mothers, because Willow and I took care of him so often when he was little. Still, grandfather,” she went on, “you know I would never speak to any of the young men, or even listen to them.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “You are the best of granddaughters, and Willow, that good woman, your sister-in-law, has taught you well. How good it is that she came to us, to be a mother to you when you own mother went away on the Spirit Path!”
Willow had easily and intuitively followed Haton’s lead when it came to showering the motherless child with tender affection—and she also intuitively understood
Haton’s careful protection of Fly Awake’s innocence, and wondered a little that it was so exaggerated. Willow had at first supposed that this was because the lodge was only men, except for herself and the child.
Willow was acutely sensitive to the subtleties of her adopted lodge, and she quickly understood that it was not just Fly Awake’s innocence that was being protected. There were undercurrents at work: There were Black Corn’s morose silences and hints of the now-deceased Red Shield’s cold bitterness. There was Haton’s unwillingness to speak of Otter Woman.
Though she was a stranger in Haton’s lodge, Willow was both imaginative and clever, and soon she wove a narrative to account for these strange silences. After she married Iron Tree, she got a bit more of the story from him. Now, as a grown woman, Willow knew Fly Awake’s secret history as well as Haton himself—though the old man never guessed it.
The orphaned child had engaged Willow’s motherly and protective instincts from the first. She knew that Fly Awake had been hurt by Red Shield’s rejection and Otter Woman’s defection, and Willow could see that she was wounded by Haton’s way of never voluntarily speaking of Otter Woman.
But now Haton was speaking kindly of Willow, so that Fly Awake smiled to hear Haton’s good words and pulled her red trade blanket snugly around her shoulders, content to go on listening to this kind of talk. Haton’s talk, even when he was garrulous or clownish or half in another world, had a magic about it, as if, by speaking of the goodness of people, he made them good. She only wished sometimes that he would speak of Otter Woman.
“I was so little when Willow came to us,” Fly Awake replied, “that I only thought
of my own sadness and never of Willow’s. Back then she was always trying to make me happy, and I never thought of trying to make her happy. I should have thought about how much she had suffered. She was afraid of so many things, back then. I should have tried to comfort her. It was because I missed Otter Woman so much, I think.”
Haton did not reply. It was almost as if he did not hear.
Though Willow had once come to take the place of a mother—or as an older sister standing in the place of a mother—to Fly Awake, now their relationship was affectionately sisterly, especially since Willow’s marriage to Iron Tree. But, for Fly Awake, the tender attention she had received from Willow, the best of women, still did not undo the pain of separation from her sister, Otter Woman, and the unease that came from Haton’s unwillingness to speak of her.
“Willow has a timid nature,” Haton remarked at last, “though not so much now as when she first came to us. Children, you know, can know little of other people’s sorrow. It made her happy that you became like a daughter to her. And I think your brother has made her happy, now that they are married.”
Haton, Fly Awake thought, was strangely ignorant of Willow’s character. The timidity he supposed her to possess was mostly feigned. She wondered that Haton could think Willow was timid, when he knew that she had escaped from a white man, after being captured by the Pawnee and sold, and set off alone and on foot, hoping to find her own people again. Fly Awake had heard enough of the story to be amazed at Willow’s courage and resolve, and to admire her as a strong and clever woman.
She did have a few unusual fears: She was afraid of the dark and would keep a fire burning long after it was needed; minor illnesses often filled her with foreboding; and she would sometimes taste the water at a new campsite and declare it undrinkable. Fly
Awake had known her to walk a long distance to fetch water from a stream whose water suited her better, but Fly Awake suspected that this was only because she liked to walk—and to be alone sometimes. She had once walked alone for a long time, and maybe she was used to it.
Willow's supposed timidity and peculiar fears often seemed to Fly Awake to be a ruse. She liked to keep her own counsel; people knew it was useless to argue with fearfulness, and gave in to her. In reality, Willow's courage was something to be reckoned with and would surprise both Haton and Iron Tree as much as Fly Awake imagined it had surprised the Pawnee, and the white man they had sold her to.
“Except that she has no children,” Fly awake pointed out.
“Some time she will have children.”
“She says that, maybe, if she does not, my brother will take a second wife,” Fly Awake told him, looking troubled.
“There would be no harm in it,” Haton observed. “It is good for a woman to have company in her lodge, and to have someone to share her work. And your brother’s children by this second wife would be Willow’s as well, and that would make her lodge cheerful. Your brother would do it only as a kindness to her, for he has great respect for Willow. But,” Haton added, with a faint smile, “your brother is not rich enough to provide for two wives—especially since he must also make meat for our lodge. Your father grows too old to follow the chase.” Haton smiled again. “So I think Willow need not worry that she will have to share her husband.”
What Haton said was true enough. Fly Awake was the youngest child of old parents, and one who had been born long after her parents had ceased to expect that any more children would come to them. Her father was too old to be a very effective hunter,
and Fly Awake and Haton and her old father depended a great deal on her brother, Iron Tree.
“I think it is because of that white man who bought her from the Pawnee that she can have no children,” Fly Awake opined. Willow thought the same, but was willing to let Fly Awake imagine that the cause was some malevolent magic possessed by white men. The truth was a bit more mundane; Willow feared the persistent and long-term effect of the herbs she had used against conception while she lived with the white man.
“It makes me sad to think that Willow lived among such people,” Haton said.
Willow had inspired a dislike for white men in Fly Awake—mostly inadvertently. She had lived a lonely time among a strange people—and she had a secret of her own.
“We will walk out now, granddaughter, now that I have finished smoking.”
“You said you would not go with me this morning.”
“Maybe I will walk with you after all,” Haton replied. He had come to a decision: It was time to speak to Fly Awake of his vision.
The sky was beginning to pale in the east as they left, the birds called and sang, and the whole world smelled sweet and fresh. Even the scent of wood smoke, as the people began to kindle cooking fires, was perfume on the air. The people had worn a path down to the water, but Haton persuaded Fly Awake to take a longer route, claiming that there was a very fine spot further upstream—both because it was beautiful and because the water danced over the rocks at that part of the stream, and was swift and noisy, and very clear.
“You can see that the water from such a place in the river has more life in it,” Haton explained to her, “and it is the life in the water that gives people life and makes them strong.”
“It tastes sweeter, too,” Fly Awake agreed. She paused from time to time, or wandered a little distance from the path, to gather greens to add to the cook pot when they returned. Haton liked the lamb’s quarters, wild onions and garlic, and mint—and the sour dock was still good, if one was careful to gather the youngest leaves.
They wound through a thicket of young willows as they neared the stream. The yellow-green leaves danced in the slanting morning light, and Fly Awake began to cut a bundle of the young branches.
“I want to make a new backrest for my father,” she explained, as Haton drew his own knife and began to help her. “Willow says she is going to make a backrest for my brother. We can make them together.”
“You are as clever as your grandmother was at making fine things,” Haton told her. “What will you do if you make two old men so comfortable and fill us so full of good food that we fall asleep and can give you no company and tell you no stories?”
“The two of you together will snore so loud you will wake yourselves up!” Fly Awake laughed.
“I don’t snore, granddaughter,” Haton objected.
“You don’t—not so much—but my father, Black Corn, cannot seem to stop himself. And if the two of you fall asleep from too much comfort, I will go and find other company.”
Haton gave her a deep and sidelong look.
While Fly Awake chattered, Haton looked for willow withes that were just the right size for a backrest, cutting them free with his big handsome knife, which he kept sharpened to a keen edge. But he was thinking the whole time, while she talked and laughed, and her face shone as bright as the flower of the bloodroot in springtime.
It was time he told her of the secret that lay so heavy on his heart. But what good would it do to tell her? How could knowing help her?
When they reached the river, Fly Awake slipped behind a thicket of willows to wash herself and fill the water bag. Haton, too, set down the bundle of willow wands and washed himself in the swift stream. The water was so cold it almost seemed to burn him, but it also was restorative. He could feel the quick, light joyousness of the tumbling stream in his blood. He made his prayers, and was lost in his own thoughts until Fly Awake returned.
At last she emerged from the thicket, her honeyed skin flushed from the icy water, and walked to join Haton, her figure slim and graceful as a blade of sweetgrass in the dawn. For now the sun was making the sky pink and casting long shadows between slanting golden rays. Fly Awake stepped across a great fallen branch of cottonwood whose cascading leaves had changed to butter yellow and fluttered and sparkled in the faint morning breeze.
As they walked slowly back, Haton was thoughtful. He paused to pluck a leaf from another cottonwood tree and folded it in half to make a kind of whistle. The sound of the leaf whistle was comical rather than musical, and Fly Awake laughed at the burbling chirp of sound.
Willow and some of the other women who were filling their water bags turned to look when they heard Haton’s whistle.
“I think Willow would like to scold you, grandfather. She thinks that sometimes you act like a child, and she is afraid the people will begin to laugh at you. She thinks so great a medicine man should act more dignified,” Fly Awake laughed. “Now you have made her cross.”
“Willow cannot be cross with anyone. She doesn’t know how to scold.” Haton paused reflectively. “A woman who does not scold is dangerous. I saw this once when I was a boy. There was a woman of one of the other bands of our people, and all the people talked of her gentleness and how she never scolded her husband. But one day she gathered all the embers from the fire and threw them on him while he slept. All the people talked about it for days. And your grandmother! Your grandmother’s tongue had more sting in it than fire,” Haton added wistfully. “I had no worries about burning embers in my bed. So you can see how life with a scolding woman is carefree.”
Fly Awake laughed again, for Haton’s expression as he recalled his late wife’s bullying and scolding was sentimental. Haton, for all that he was a great medicine man, had a touch of the child. Even his appearance, rail-thin and wizened, seemed comical at times.
Haton made his leaf whistle chirp until it wore out and turned to look at Fly Awake. In the way of all children, she had grown up far too quickly and transformed from a wild-eyed, wild-haired child into a graceful creature—perhaps the loveliest girl in their village.
Fly Awake turned to look at Haton, because he had suddenly turned pensive. He seemed actually to age as he stood beside her, where he had come to a halt in the morning light. He now sang a medicine song, deep in his throat, and low. It was not an emphatic or ceremonial kind of medicine song. Instead it was one of those offhand exhalations of the spirit, like a man sighing sadly in song.
“You are going away,” Haton said, when he had finished intoning his song. Fly Awake stared at him, astounded by the sudden change in his manner. “There are men on horses. They are coming to take you away from us.” This was the vision that had been
locked for so long in his heart, and the sense of its menace renewed itself as he spoke. He heard the din of the stampede and felt the deep darkness of a moonless night as if it were a solid thing that enveloped and blinded him.
“What do you mean?” Fly Awake asked, feeling deeply frightened.
“I speak only to prepare you,” Haton said with solemnity, “perhaps to help you in time to come.” Haton had drifted into a dream state that had enveloped him like a dark cloud. In his dream state, there was a magnificence about him, but as the dream fell away from him he was once again only a shrunken old man, dry as the bark of an ancient tree.
“You will belong to a white man,” Haton said, after the transformation back to his usual self was complete, which made the words seem still more hopeless, his sorrow deeper.
Fly Awake felt Haton’s sadness shake her long-limbed body. How she despised these white men! Perhaps even more horrible was the thought of being separated from her own people, the gentle Willow, and her adored grandfather.
Then she felt an angry refusal to believe that such a thing could be possible.
Although Fly Awake tried to disbelieve his words, Haton could see that she trembled like an aspen leaf. He was sad for her—and for himself.
With a quick, decisive movement, she picked up the water bag that she had set down while she listened to Haton’s words. Her action was abrupt, as if she wished to turn away from the dream Haton was trying to make her see. Attention to ordinary tasks was the best way to calm her heart, which beat wildly, and she still felt oppressed, despite the golden slant of the morning sun and the music of the birds in the treetops. Her posture showed that she wanted to walk back to the lodge now, to forget the dream and immerse herself again in the life of the village.
Haton continued to stand still, as if he had more to say. He saw again how beautiful and precious she was, slim as a reed, her black hair straight and shining, falling to the backs of her knees—looking much as her grandmother had in youth. The vision that Fly Awake might go away had made a hole in Haton’s heart.
It is no good to grow old, he thought: Everyone goes away. He felt like the old man he was.
“There is a strange kind of tipi—that way.” He pointed toward the southeast. I have seen it sometimes, in dreams. It is a square tipi, not in a circle. In it there are little red horses, like toys. This place is dark. The man is a shadow.”
He looked at her as if he supposed that she, too, saw these things. He knew that she understood that he had traveled to this place, flying in spirit through the night sky to make his medicine. All the people knew of this power of Haton’s; some claimed to have seen him in flight.
“I do not see everything,” he added. “I have made medicine against this thing, yet I still see it.”
“When will this happen?” Fly Awake, at once tremulous and angry.
“It is neither very near nor very far. This white man is nearer than before. But still not so close by.” Haton again gestured toward the southeast. “I will make medicine again,” he added.