People of the Mesa: A Novel of Native America. Ardath Mayhar
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was blurred, and only flashes of alien colors and scents came to him as he strained to recall that long ago visit.
Filled with excitement, he yet managed to keep his face still, his motions dignified, so as to make a match for the Elders. He took his place with them at the Meeting of the Ways, where others from the tribes living on other parts of the joined mesas were already assembling.
There was an air of festival about them. Tonight there would be dancing on the roofs of the kivas, feasts of venison and turkey and hare, and long, long tale-telling. He had heard accounts of other visits of the Anensi, and even the regular festivals for the weather gods did not have the intense excitement these rare occasions did.
Now he heard voices. Their tones were different, their words ringing strangely upon his ear, the cadences alien to him. His nose twitched, too, nostrils flaring. The scent that had come to him on the breeze was stronger now, as the first of the newcomers rounded the last steep rise of the buttress rock. A dark face, much like the faces of his own people and yet shaped with a subtle difference, gazed upon those waiting there. A dark hand rose in greeting.
The Healer had joined them quietly as they waited. Now he and the Teacher, the Old Woman Who Sang the Future, and the One Who Smelled the Wind went forward together, the trailing paws and tails of their fur robes whipping in the brisk breeze. Four gray-haired people, filled with cautious courtesy, moved to greet these guests.
Uhtatse closed his eyes, thinking of a day when he would make one of those elders, representing his part of the People of the high green mesa.
As the Anensi drew nearer, he saw that many were laden with hide-wrapped packs or with stick and fiber cages in which parakeets fluttered and small animals showed as furry lumps. Bags bulged heavily against the muscular shoulders bearing them. What exotic things might fill them?
He would have liked to join the rest of the children, who were now running forward, chattering questions at the patient traders. They felt the contours of packs and bags and poked their inquisitive fingers between the sticks of the cages, only to be nipped by irritable parrots or bitten by impatient beasts. One small one was already crying silently, great tears rolling down her round cheeks.
That was not the way for one who was to become the protector of his people to behave. Such childish things were now behind him, and he waited quietly, keeping his expression sober. Control of the self was the first of the matters he had learned from Ki-shi-o-te.
As the long string of walkers passed him, he watched everything. This was an entire tribe. There were old people and children, warriors and women and lads of his own age. Among those latter, he found one in particular who captured his attention.
This was a boy who walked proudly, his shoulders straight under the huge pack he carried. His eyes, too, were watchful, quick to note everything that came into their field. Those alert eyes met his, as he stared. For an instant, something flashed between them, along their bonded gazes. Recognition? Impossible. But, perhaps, a certain kinship of spirit.
Uhtatse turned to follow the last of the Anensi toward the great Talking Place that his people had begun building on the edge of a commanding precipice. It was a long way, and he had the time to think, as he trudged along behind his excited people, of all the strange things he had encountered in the space of one short morning.
Chapter Four
It was, indeed, a busy evening. Fires bloomed about the Talking Place, as all the groups living on the mesa converged there to be near the traders. The Anensi camped together, the women putting together shelters of hide and pole, with practiced ease, while the men squatted beside their opened bundles, bragging about their wares.
The smell of roasting meat filled the air, together with that of baking tubers and stewing vegetables from the gardens. Beans and squash simmered together in big jars to which red-hot stones were added from time to time to keep them at boiling heat.
The children, wild with the unfamiliar excitement, forgot their rigid training and ran about, getting into the ways of their mothers and being cuffed by their impatient fathers if they interrupted the haggling over the trade goods. It seemed strange to Uhtatse that those who possessed such a wealth of shell beads and woven goods and birds and salt and items for which he had not even a name might want or need anything the Ahye-tum-datsehe had to barter.
The pottery and the baskets, the dried foodstuffs, the carven wood pieces that were made in the winter seemed terribly familiar and valueless. He could not imagine their having any worth for others. But the Anensi had come a very long way for this trading. There must be things they wanted and needed, or they would not have troubled themselves with the harsh journey over harsher lands to get here.
That gave Uhtatse a different idea of his world. It held much that was not confined to the mesa top, it was evident. At times, as he lay upon one of the cut stones that still waited to be added to the Talking Place, he found himself dreaming of going away from the mesa, down to the lowlands with these people. He knew the Anensi were seldom troubled, even by the Kiyate or the Tsununni, for they traded with everyone. Even those distant and warlike people needed the things they brought from the east, the west, and the south. If he should go with them, he could see the world they were telling about, down there about the fires.
Listening with half his attention to the men talking just below his perch, he dreamed of the wide water they spoke about. That was a strange notion, he felt—water as far as one could see! In this arid world, that seemed almost impossible, and yet he did not doubt the words of the speaker.
And those cities of stone far to the south—he would love to see how men went about building their own mesas and living inside them, instead of making low stone houses on the tops of the ground. Yet, as he listened, he found that he had no wish to see some of the ceremonies those people practiced. The words of the man below his stone perch made his skin crinkle, as they told of sacrifices of living men and women to the harsh gods of those distant ones.
A soft sound caught his attention. He turned his head to see the tall boy he had noticed earlier standing beside the stone, his dark gaze fixed upon him.
“You may come up here, if you like,” said the young One Who Smelled the Wind.
With a nod, the other sprang up to land softly beside him on the boulder, whose surface was still warm from the sun. “You do not dance with the others,” said the stranger. “You do not run with the young ones. You are, I think, one who is in training to be an Old One.”
Such quick understanding was unusual, and Uhtatse warmed to the boy. “Yes. I have been chosen to learn to be the One Who Smells the Wind. I have been learning my craft for a year, now.”
“I thought as much. I, too, am in training and will be Shaman, when the time comes. But I do not know about One Who Smells the Wind. What will your task be, when the time comes?”
Uhtatse looked down into the fire below the stone, thinking how best to put words to his complex and unceasing task for one who did not understand what it might be. Carefully, he said, “We live here always, high above the lands below. All that threatens the People, besides wind and weather and predators, comes from the low country.
“Always, there is one who is tuned to the world about us so closely that he can feel at once any change—in any THING. A strange presence crushing the grass or brushing through the oak trees of the Middle Way, a restlessness among the deer or the fowl of the air, a strange scent on the wind or a sound that does not belong in the world we know will serve as a warning to the one trained to know. He, in turn, warns the People.
“Our One Who Smells the Wind was one of those who met you, as you came up the mesa. He is a great protector of the People. He knows even when the Kiyate move on the plains, down there, for he can feel the troubling of the air where they go. He can smell the grease on their bodies over a great distance, and if they turn toward our place, we know and can prepare to defend ourselves.”
The Anensi boy frowned. Then he smiled. “That is a skilled and valuable work, in a way not unlike that for which I am in training. I am Ra-onto. What do they call you?”
“Uhtatse.”