Wabi (10 page)

Then I stepped forward to show myself to all those waiting. Nervous eyes were straining in the direction of my voice. To my relief, the gray-haired sagamon who had greeted all the others extended that same welcome to me in a voice that sounded relieved.

“Hello, my friend,” he said, extending an open hand toward me. “Welcome. Enter as a friend and join our circle around the fire.”

“MY NAME,” I SAID, “IS Wabi. My great-grandfather was from this place. His name was Nadialid.”

People nodded at that.

“Nadialid?” said an old man. “There was a fine young man of that name when I was a small boy. Tall and strong he was, much as you are. But that Nadialid just went off hunting one day and never returned.”

Perfect!

“Yes,” I quickly said, “that is the same Nadialid who was my great-grandfather.”

“Why did he never return to our village?” someone else asked.

I recognized that sweet but skeptical voice. Dojihla.

“Ah, he was taken by an urge to...uh, to wander,” I said, both telling the truth and making things up as I went along. “To see things he had never seen before.” (Such as how the world looks when you view it from the sky.) “After he met my great-grandmother, they chose each other as mates for life. His love for her was so great that he decided to stay with her and follow the ways of her people.”

I smiled and looked around me. It seemed to be working. People were nodding their heads in approval. Even Dojihla seemed interested in this tale of how my great-grandfather had given up everything—more than she could imagine, in fact—to be with my great-grandmother.

“After his passing, my great-grandmother and their fledglings—uh, children—remained with . . . her own people. But his story was passed on down to me. It fascinated me. So I made the long journey to reach this place.”

“Your only reason for coming to our village was to see the home of your ancestors?” asked Dojihla's father.

“Of course,” I said. “What better reason could there be to come to this beautiful place?”

Several people smiled at this and one or two of the young men in the circle looked relieved. Dojihla, though, looked either disappointed or disbelieving.

“You do not know of the contest?” She spat out that last word as if it was a piece of rotten meat.

“There is a contest?” I asked in an innocent voice.

Dojihla opened her mouth to say something further, but her mother leaned in front of her.

“Young man,” she said to me, “do you have a wife? Is there some young woman to whom you are promised in your home village?”

“A wife? No.” I paused. How much should I say? I settled on words that I hoped would both tell the truth and hide it. “I lived alone with my great-grandmother after losing my parents.”

Dojihla's mother was smiling very broadly now.

“Ah,” Dojihla's father said, showing his large teeth in a grin so big that his face seemed ready to split in half. “Ah, ah, ah! But would you like to find a wife?”

I managed to control myself. I did not shout “YES!” or bob my head up and down madly. I just lifted one hand up to my chin (as I had seen Dojihla's father do while he was listening to me talk about where I came from) to indicate I was carefully considering his words.

“Yes,” I said slowly, looking at the fire as I did so. “But I am not sure how to go about finding a wife. Among my own people, it is always the female who decides who her mate will be.”

I didn't turn my head in Dojihla's direction as I spoke those words, but I did take advantage of the fact that my new eyes could move so freely. As I looked out of the corner of one eye, I thought that I saw her expression change for just a moment. I quickly shifted my eyes back down toward the fire.

“Young man,” Dojihla's father said, placing one hand on my shoulder, “how good a hunter are you?”

 

I sat up and looked around. For the first time in my life, I was inside a wigwam, one of the little upside-down nests in which humans live. It was surprisingly comfortable. True, fresh breeze did not blow over me as it would have done in a proper perch high in a tree, but my human body needed more warmth from such things as clothing and fires than I had ever found necessary as an owl.

Around me I heard the sounds of sleep. All of the young men who were to hunt tomorrow had been given this one wigwam to sleep in. The sounds—and occasional smells—that they gave off were...interesting. All of them were sleeping soundly, but I was too excited, too unused to sleeping during the best part of the night, to keep my eyes closed. Plus, I now realized that there were some other questions I needed to have answered.

It was easy to move silently from the lodge and slip out of the village without anyone noticing me. I was pleased to realize that, although my eyes were weaker at night than they had once been, I could still see well enough to move quickly through the trees. Soon I was not walking, but running. My new legs were well made for such exercise. I felt as if I could run all night.

Suddenly, a dark, growling shape leaped at me from the forest, knocking me off balance. A long-toothed mouth gaped wide at me. Hot breath blew in my face. There was only one thing I could do.

“Get off,” I said.

Malsumsis woofed and then hopped off to one side.

“Idiot!” I scratched my wolf friend's ears with the fingers of my hands and he whined happily. “Yes,” I said, “I am glad to see you too.”

The two of us began to run together through the forest. I had never been able to run with my friend before, only swooped on silent wings over his head. I liked the feeling of our running together, the soft thump of the earth beneath us, the way the ground seemed to rise up to catch me each time I lifted a foot and let it fall. The night wind in our faces was sweet. I'd been eager to reach the tree where I knew my great-grandmother would be roosting, but it was almost too soon when we arrived there. This running was so much fun.

As soon as I called her name, she came swooping down.

“Whoooo-whoooo,” she said. “Wabi, there is more that you need.”

It was not a question. As always, it was as if she knew my thoughts.

“Yes, Great-grandmother,” I said. “I forgot that humans are not like owls when they hunt.”

I looked down at my feet—so good for running, so pathetically useless for such things as striking and killing prey. “I need something to hunt with.”

Great-grandmother chuckled. “I know,” she said. “I would have told you before, but you were toooo eager to go.” She nodded her beak toward an old, old maple tree. “Look inside the hollow of that tree.”

I went to the maple. Its hollow was a narrow slit, but I was able to reach my arm far inside. Even without seeing, my sensitive human fingers were able to find what was hidden there. I pulled it out. It was a long object wrapped in old worn deerskin, just as my clothing had been. I undid the laces that tied it to disclose a fine bow with its double-twisted string wrapped about it, a quiver of arrows. I placed them carefully on the deerskin and stood back to look at them. I knew that they had been in that tree for many, many seasons, yet they glistened like new in the light from the full face of the moon. Nadialid's own weapons.

WHEN THE SUN LIFTED AGAIN into the sky, it found me asleep, really asleep, inside the wigwam in Valley Village along with the dozen other young men. In fact, I was the last of them to wake. The clouds at the edge of the sky had already begun to show the first streaks of red when I had finally slipped back in among the snoring suitors. I had spent much of the night learning to use my new weapons.

But the voices of the young men woke me.

“What is wrong with Gwanakwozid over there?” I heard one of them say.

“Hah, he is probably one of those who just looks like a good hunter but is really a lazy fool,” another voice said. “Let him remain there like a dead log.”

“Too late. Look, he's moving.”

“Slowly, though. You would think from the way he acts that it's time to sleep and not the dawn.”

Ah, they were talking about me. Little did they know how true those last words actually were.

I sat up, rubbing my eyes against the light. The other suitors were chuckling as they went out the door of the wigwam. I stood, rearranged my feathers—er, clothes—and followed them outside.

The others in the village were eating. It was food that had been damaged by hot water and burned by their fires. Some of it was not even meat. Yet it smelled good to my human nose. My impulse was to hop over to the pots and help myself, but I was cautious.

I noticed that the other young men from the guest lodge looked as hungry as I felt. But none of them went over to take food. Dojihla's father, who was also the village leader, came to stand before us. Wowadam, He Who Knows. That was his name.

“The job of the hunter,” Wowadam said, “is to feed the people. So none of you will eat this day until you have finished your hunt. Are you all ready to begin?”

He looked at each of the young men who stood there, their bows and arrows held out before them for his inspection. He stopped in front of me.

“Wabi, great-grandson of Nadialid,” he said, “where are your weapons?”

“To show that I came here as a friend,” I said, “I did not bring them with me. I left them hidden just outside the village.”

“Ah-hah,” Dojihla's father said. He looked relieved. “Run and get them,” he said.

 

Run, he said. I ran swiftly from the village to the cedar tree just within the forest. I reached up into its branches to grasp the bundle that held the unstrung bow, the quiver, and the arrows. Then I returned to the place where the others still stood.

For some reason, the young men were all gaping at me. Some of the others gathered around were making gasping sounds. Others were saying such things as “Wah-hey,” and “Nanabi! So fast!”

Dojihla, though, was just looking at me in a way that made me feel uneasy. Had I just run a little too swiftly?

“Wabi,” Wowadam said, “are the others of your family as fast a runner as you?”

“No,” I said, answering quite truthfully. There was no way any owl could hop as fast as I had just run.

“Ah,” he said. Then he shook his head and turned his attention to the bundle I held. “May I see your weapon?”

I unwrapped the bow and held it out in front of me. As I did so I realized for the first time that it was larger and thicker than any of the bows held by the other young men.

“That is no bow,” said the young man next to me. “That is a tree.”

“A war club, more like,” said the next young man. “Perhaps he hunts by hitting animals over the head with it.”

All of the other suitors laughed, as did many of the people gathered around.

I was beginning to get used to this kind of teasing. I had listened often enough from the forest to such talk between humans, especially young human males, to know that it was meant both playfully and, sometimes, as a challenge.

It came to me then how I could respond. I turned toward the other young men and held out my unstrung bow.

“Here,” I said. “Would anyone like to try to string this?”

A large young man, a head shorter than me but a bit broader and with a face as round as that of the moon, was pushed forward by his friends.

“Go ahead, Wikadegwa,” one of them said.

“Bend it until it breaks, Fat Face,” said another.

Fat Face held out his hands and then smiled at me. It was a smile that showed no teeth. Somehow I knew that this smile was meant to say,
I am only doing this because they are making me do it.

I smiled back and handed him the bow. He hefted it in his hands, then looped the string around one end, placed the other end of the bow against the ground, and leaned his back into it. The bow did not bend. Fat Face strained harder. Water began to pop out of his forehead in little bubbles. Was Fat Face's head getting ready to explode?

“WHHHAAAAGGGH!” Fat Face blew the air out of his mouth and let go of the bow. He staggered back a step before regaining his balance.

“It cannot be done,” he said, handing me the bow. “No one can bend this. You are playing a joke on us all.”

Everyone was looking at me. I shook my head. “It is not a joke,” I said. “My great-grandfather could bend this bow.” I paused and looked around. I wrapped one leg around the bow, grasped the upper end with my hand, pressed down on it, and slipped the string in place. Then I held it up and plucked it with my finger, a deep throbbing note twanging out.

“And,” I said, plucking the string again, “so can I.”

A chorus of “Oh-hos” and “Ahs” came from those gathered around me. Fat Face was patting my shoulder in a friendly way. The sharp-faced young man who had made the remark about my sleeping like a dead log stepped forward. I remembered his name. It was Bitahlo.

“So, you can string that thing. But can you shoot it?” he asked.

“What shall I shoot at?” I said.

“Can you hit the middle knot on that pine tree over there by the—WAGH!” He stared at my arrow quivering in the middle of the target he had just named.

“Like that?” I said.

“Ah, yes,” Bitahlo said in a slow voice as he moved back into the group of young men who again appeared to be trying to catch flies with their mouths.