The Storyteller

I’d been training as a storyteller

Since I was four years old—

Listening to the masters tell their tales.

The old ones said I had the knack,

And so they let me hang around

And listen to the gory details,

Even though I was a girl.

And as I grew, I smiled as they affirmed

The gift of memory, the gift of rhythm,

The heart of understanding within me.

And so they took some time

To train the gifts I had

To twine up the pillars of our people’s history,

And then at night we’d separate,

Each to a wigwam in the corners,

Scattered, so that if tragedy struck,

Not all of us storytellers would vanish at once,

Taking with us forever, the tradition,

And the many holy words.

Then one day we went to war

With a neighboring tribe over territory.

At least one storyteller always went to watch,

So that later, someone could relate

Just how the action of the battle went down—

Who won, who lost, the number of the casualties.

I had always stayed away

From the heat of battle.

The others kept me from it.

Of course, I was still young, just 13,

And of course, I was still a girl.

And so it was with disbelieving shock

That I listened, as the Great Chief,

And Greatest Storyteller of us all,

Informed me that the good news was

Our tribe had won the skirmish,

But the bad news was, our warriors had killed

Their only storyteller.

Now our tribe was honor bound

To supply them with one of ours,

So that their history, and their tribal knowledge

Would not be lost and die.

“Ayita,” the Great Chief leaned in to tell me,

With big tears clouding in his eyes,

“We have decided to send you.”

My heart beat at double rhythm.

I stood silently before him.

I didn’t understand any of the repercussions

Of the words the Great Chief spoke.

But I could feel the apprehension

Tightening across his great, large chest,

And I could see the “missing-me”

Already in his eyes.

And so my own eyes filled with tears, as well.

Chapter 2

I stood in the wigwam of my childhood.

It always seemed bigger until today.

My mother was heating meat on a skewer,

Roasting only four ears of corn.

My two brothers wrestled, kicked the dust up,

And squabbled just outside.

Mama spoke sharply to them,

As she continued to turn the spit.

I looked around for anything that was mine.

I realized that I had nothing.

No one said goodbye to me,

And I never saw my Father again.

I walked with the Chief and his four sons.

We headed into the evening.

I followed them, single file,

Down the trail ‘til the north star appeared.

It could be seen four fingers high

Over horizon’s ledge.

“We stop here,” the Great Chief said.

“This is more than half the way.”

I watched his sons gather wood,

And so I gathered, too.

And when they sat, I sat down.

We ate dried meat, and pumpkin seeds,

Smelling the smoke from the fire we’d made,

Watching it disappear back up into the stars.

We ate in silence,

All of us just looking at the food

Going from our hands up to our mouths.

I glanced quite often at the Great Chief,

And from him, to his youngest son, who had just turned 16.

I tried to guess when he was about to look

Up at me, from his food,

And so I would quickly drop my eyes, past my seeds,

To a place folded deep in my lap.

I didn’t know why I needed to look at him

Over and over again.

I had memorized his face several years ago.

I guess it was because I had never

Seen this particular way

That his forehead pulled,

And his eyes drew deeply down.

Chapter 3

I had never outwardly dared

To dream of being in love,

Especially with the Son of our Great Chief.

His name was Nusdev Iyadnedi,

Which, in your tongue, might mean, “Custom,”

And my hopes of him hid behind visions of my own everyday chores.

I could see me gathering wood and putting it by “our” wigwam, someday.

I could picture me grinding the acorns on a stone, close to where he stood.

Now I looked only deeply into the fire,

Seeing I had no stories,

No vision for what this new turn of life would mean.

That night I woke up suddenly.

Nusdev’s face was close to mine,

His hand was on my shoulder.

He blinked hard and then he said,

“Ayita, there are many things…”

Then a rustling interrupted.

The Great Chief was uneasy on his mat,

And turning restlessly.

Nusdev touched his lips

Quickly to my forehead.

Then hurried back to his appointed

Sleeping place by the fire.

Next morning, we continued the path,

But something had changed inside me.

His touch had done it.

Now, I outwardly wanted him.

I felt like a grown woman!

Knowing he wanted me,

Made me walk like a grown woman.

My heart impatiently bloomed a fragile milk-flower,

As I followed him on that morning.

Chapter 4

Just as the Platte gave way to valley,

We stopped to survey the village below.

They were the same people.

They spoke the same language.

They held the same stories as sacred,

Same tribe, same history.

I wondered now, that we could kill them—

How they could kill us?

How we could kill their storyteller?

We pushed on, down into their region,

Where six warriors,

In full battle dress, and painted faces,

Met us at the village wall.

Their chief came up and stood behind them.

We stood, the Great Chief standing in front,

His four sons right behind him,

And after them, I peered,

Moving my head slightly from one side to the other,

Trying to see around the wide shoulders of the men,

To look beyond this ritual handshake

To the “What-Would-Happen-Next?”

The neighboring chief stepped through his men.

His head also moved from side to side.

The two chiefs exchanged solemn looks and signs,

Then both looked back toward me.

I stepped up between Great Chief’s two middle sons.

The neighbor chief knitted his graying brow

And demanded in disbelief,

“What is this! You brought me a woman-child?”

Our Great Chief stepped quickly up to him

And called him by his given name,

“Gigage Atitsasdi,” was all I heard him say.

Then they traded muffled phrases,

Gestures of denial and anger gradually

Eroded into ones of disgruntled acceptance.

Then our Great Chief stepped back.

He put one arm around my shoulder,

And brought me forward to face Gigage.

“This is Ayita,” he said.

She knows the history, the songs of lore.

We present her to you and to your people

As your Storyteller.”

The grieving people stared at me.

Their eyes were hard and empty.

Their sadness billowed large and dark,

And I watched them turn, with no expression,

From the rustling introductions

To re-enter their humbled day,

Their defeated village, and the tasks they had at hand.

Then Gigage also returned.

I watched his back as he disappeared.

The Great Chief whispered urgently, “Go!

Go on, and follow him.”

I hustled through the six large warriors,

And stepped through the narrow village gate.

I looked around but couldn’t see

Which way Gigage had decided to go.

I looked back, outside, to see the Great Chief,

And all of his chieftain sons were leaving,

Trudging their way back up the ridge,

Where we’d been just hours before.

Then one of the six mighty warrior men

Came and stood directly before me.

He stared at me blankly,

And finally, he motioned me toward the back,

“That is the wigwam where Digatiya used to stay.

You can live there… if you want to,”

And then he turned and walked away, too.

“Thank you,” I said to the back of his head,

And to the wind his quick exit had stirred.

Chapter 5

I pulled the worn out skin up

At the opening of the wigwam.

I tied it up at the corner,

So some light could shine within.

The tent was dim.

I stepped in, and stood by the center fire pit.

There in the dark, it dawned on me,

That I was on my own.

There was some fire wood stacked on the side

Of the door of the dusty wigwam,

And some seeds and jerky meat

In a storage box to the right of the pit.

And so I didn’t worry about

What I would eat on that first day,

But that might be the only thing

That wasn’t on my mind.

I could see large heaviness

Looming black before me,

Threatening to take me captive with the day.

I needed time to think, to discern if I was prey or predator,

And I sought the Great Power,

To change my course if I was the hunted one—

To show me how to grab the mighty beast of happenstance

By the tail, and make him work for me.

I understood one thing:

Survival was the issue.

I had crossed some invisible rite of passage today, and more.

There had been no official ceremony for me,

Only the nod from the Great Chief’s head,

Acknowledging me as Storyteller.

He had offered me to them,

And that was a reality.

But now I took the day.

I had to,

For if I didn’t,

I knew that night would take me.

For at sun set,

The people would require from me a story,

And everyone knew,

This first one must be very, very good.

And though I was young, I knew what day it was—

The equinox approaching—

The equal-day-and-night of autumn, drawing near.

For this day, the lectionary specified

A simple parable story,

The last push of hard work,

To be prepared for winter’s dark and cold—

The story of the Honey Badger,

How his duty proved him

Against lighthearted Rabbit,

And the morals that their visions simply told.

But I was angry at the stories.

I didn’t want to tell them.

I certainly didn’t feel that story speak to me.

No fable, nor history, not even the lamenting ones of exile,

Shed tears for the abandonment, and the imprisonment that I felt.

I walked upright through the encampment,

Thinking, ever thinking,

Holding back my tears at first,

But as I wove my trail through theirs,

My heart turned toward them in pity and in sameness.

Their sadness was worse than mine was—

Their losses weighty and crucial,

Son after son missing forever,

Descendents, generations, altered forever,

In ways that shouted back at the stories,

“Lacking! Incomplete!”

And so my eyes cried just like theirs.

No! No matter how you spun the tale,

No honey badger story

Would offer grace or healing

To these people, or to me.

Chapter 6

I wanted to lie down in the dark of the tent,

Shut my eyes and sleep.

But it smelled like stale dust in there,

And I didn’t feel like building a fire.

I also wondered if the spirit of Digatiya,

The former storyteller,

Still hovered around the wigwam,

And the thought of that drove me out into the light.

I walked unnoticed out the village gate.

I stepped the paces of the four walled corners

That outlined the campsite there.

I looked out as far as my eye could see—

To the north, the south, the east, the west,

And walked back to where I had begun.

It made me see the bigness of the Great Spirit of Life.

It strengthened me to know that I could do my small part.

I walked a trail through the woods for a long time,

Then turned, and went back to the old wigwam inside the walls.

I had just picked up a few pieces of wood

And some brittle kindling,

When one of the large warriors approached and stood before me.

He was the one who had pointed me here to the back.

“I am Anidohi,” he said.

His face was not quite as blank as it had been.

I couldn’t help but smile to hear his name,

For it means “Messenger,” or, “Angel.”

He looked at me, a little shocked, I guess to see me smiling.

It was so rare for a man to speak to someone like me,

But I liked it, quite a bit.

“I have come to tell you

That dusk is soon approaching,”

He was serious now, blank again, and hard to read.

“The people want their story, now,”

He nodded, nudging me to understand.

I had decided, earlier, on my walk,

That I would tell no tales today,

But this presented something of a challenge.

The large warrior, his stern look,

And yet, the honor he had shown me,

For he had shared his name with me.

Something about that kindness

Caused me to follow him, immediately.

I dropped the wood I held in my arms,

And headed to the tribal meeting house.

But as we made our way there,

I realized,

I had not brought any stories

To the forethought of my knowledge,

Much less the ones that were compelled

For this certain day of the year.

I knew that I could tell them,

If I could ever get one started.

But, something prevented me from recalling the beginning.

And so he led me to the seat,

Just there, by Gigage, the Chief,

And I sat, and I looked into the deep eyes

Of the human beings who sat waiting

For their story.

Chapter 7

I opened my mouth.

A silent wind lisped out.

Then it hummed a rhythm, chanting

To a different, distant drum.

I alone could hear it at first,

But slowly, ears were straining,

And they began to hear the story, too.

It was an old, old story.

And yet, it was bathed in newness.

It was a legend that no one ever told.

I don’t know how I knew it.

I marveled at it, also.

It spoke to me,

As I professed its deep set truths.

But it addressed that moment.

It spoke hard to all the people.

I cried there as I told it,

And the people cried with me.

There were a few who didn’t weep,

And I knew they didn’t like it.

It wasn’t the story customarily spoken on that certain day.

But it was the story

Of that particular now.

It prepared awareness,

And layered a healing balm

Upon us, the hurting ones.

It bound up our wounds,

And poured fresh wine and oil,

So that we could see light,

Even there, in the great, dark valley.

And when the story had done its work,

I stood, and I left the people.

I went back to Digatiya’s wigwam,

And built a fire in there.

The next morning I awoke.

A thud resounded in my eardrums.

I startled up and peered outside the skin.

A dead rabbit, and a crumpled, dying, honey badger

Lay outside my wigwam exit.

A fine welcome, I must say.

I knew it was a criticism,

And an edit to my story,

More exactly, an anonymous remark about

The story I didn’t tell.

But I took a log

And put the badger

Over into mercy,

For this was humble pie

That, at least, was edible.

And so I began to skin the animals.

I wasn’t about to let any part of their lives waste on my account.

As I labored, a shadow came and hovered just above me.

I thought it might be the spirit of the passing Digatiya,

But then I heard a chuckle.

I looked behind to see my messenger, Anidohi, shaking his head.

He knelt beside me, without any hesitation, and took the pelt for me.

We stripped the meat together, and laid it out, to dry it.

He had a little leather pouch with some salt and a few more seeds.

“Thank you,” I told him, this time face to face.

Chapter 8

Tonight the humans crowded close

To hear the rest of the story,

For though I had stopped my speaking,

We knew, there was more to hear.

This, the night before the day, when everything is equal.

The darkness and the lightness stand in equanimity.

Again, the lectionary called for meaningless dia-tribals.

But the Spirit spoke a fresh call to the people and to me.

And so I sang, and chanted what I heard the whirlwind singing.

The prayers and hopes and dreams of many voices

Echoed from the tops of the mulberry trees.

And in the spaces missing,

The people hummed and chanted,

For they caught the mighty flowing rhythm,

And they sang that song with me.

And there were still a few hard faces,

Who couldn’t stand the fractal beauty.

They clenched their teeth wanting only to eat

Structured bureaucracy.

But many, smiled, and swayed to the rhythms of the chorus.

They could see new patterns in the fabric,

Weaving anthems peacefully.

And where we could have ended,

We began, with a soothing lullaby,

Singing to the clouds for rain,

To the Sun for burgeoned light.

And children drifted easily

To sleep on happy parents,

Satisfied with all of death and life.

Chapter 9

Next morning, after breakfast,

Anidohi came up walking,

Gigage, the Chief, behind him, looking grand.

For he was in full-feathered headdress,

And a long-robed, beaded topcoat,

Made of the whitest leather-skin

That I had ever seen.

Anidohi said, “Good Morning.”

I smiled again to see him.

Then the Chief stepped forward, too,

And held out an open hand.

“I come to speak my mind with you,

Ayita,” he said slowly.

And so I motioned to a stump

By my fire pit there outside.

And so he sat upon it,

And I sat on the ground before him,

Cross-legged, feeling very small

Across from his great stature.

The Chief began a story

About his mother and his father,

And I listened to him as he reminisced.

It was a touching story, and his love for them

Was poignant, but I knew it was the Once-Upon-a-Time,

And always after that, the plot would turn.

I thought about Gigage, my new Chief, as I sat there,

How his name was most appropriate,

For symbolically it meant “Wine.”

Being this close to him

Warmed me somehow, from the inside.

I felt myself relax within the distance of his arm.

I didn’t think anymore about the structure of his story.

My mind gave up the race to beat him to the moral’s end.

I listened, open to the way the words streamed gently forward,

And I felt like I was one of his oldest friends.

“Ayita,” Gigage paused and looked into my eyes with query,

“The histories are important,

But the futures are, as well.

And I have sons, and so do they,

And so I understand you,

And I like the stories that you tell,

And I even like the way

That you are weaving them anew.

I see the people listening.

I see their hope springs welling up,

And I see life in you.

But I am torn, between the old,

The ways of our ancestors,

And the ways that life has spread

Its essence out so new.”

I didn’t know if I should answer the question

That his eyes were really asking,

Even though his mouth hadn’t formed it just quite then,

But before I could decide, a man came walking toward us briskly,

“Grandfather,” he said urgently, “I need a word with you.”

Anidohi stood up too, from the one knee he had taken.

Gigage stood and walked a few steps out of earshot’s reach.

Then Anidohi leaned and whispered to inform me,

“That is Chief’s grandson, namesake, and future Chieftain,

Gigage Atitsasdi-Itsa, or in other words, New Wine.”

Chapter 10

The Chief called to Anidohi

To come and join their meeting,

But quickly he returned to me again.

“Ayita,” he said, “Another skirmish!

We must defend ourselves against

The People of the North!”

Then the Chief came by, on his way to get the warriors,

“Ayita,” he said, “You must come.

Anidohi, stay with her, and guard her life with yours.”

So I went with Anidohi.

We hurried out the village gate,

Out to a cliff that perched above

The great extended plain.

We saw the Other People coming,

Out the forest on the north,

As our warriors lurched from the forest on the south.

Great muskets, and great anger

Poured out on our warriors from the Other People.

I watched the killings happen.

I will never erase from my memory

The way the life snuffed out so simply,

No drama, no dignity.

And though our bows were no match

For the booming power the Others wielded,

Our warriors stealthily moved around to get them from behind.

And even though their weapons dropped us more quickly and from a distance,

The arrows that only wounded them would do their work in time,

For they were designed to break off inside them and fester,

And they had been soaking in rancid, rotting meat-fat,

And the sickness it would cause would infect them ‘til they died.

They would not be back anytime soon.

But the casualties were great, again.

Chapter 11

Anidohi had stood beside me

For the entire length of the battle.

We had watched in silence as the skirmish

Had unwound.

There never seemed to be a clear beginning

To the action,

And I wasn’t sure when the ending came.

I finally got a sense

Of complete exhaustion in the valley.

And I, too, just from witnessing,

Felt weary and out of breath.

But, finally, it was Anidohi, who turned

And took my shoulder,

And said to me, “Come, Ayita,

We have seen enough.”

And he urged me back into the forest,

And we took the trail that led south

To our walled encampment.

Chapter 12

When we got back, Anidohi walked me

All the way to the door of my wigwam.

We had walked with neither of us uttering one single sound.

Anidohi shook his head,

And then he finally told me,

“I have watched many battles, large and small.

I have partaken in more than my share.

But this was the worst day of my life.”

I stood, looking up into his eyes,

Trying to understand his story.

I didn’t know why this one was the worst.

He was choked up in his spirit.

He shook his head again,

And simply turned and left me there.

I didn’t kindle a fire,

Nor eat a morsel of food,

But just sat on the stump outside my wigwam

And stared into the cloudy sunset.

I heard the crowd gathering at the meeting house,

And got up, without thinking, and trudged down there, too.

Gigage, our Chief, and the surviving warriors

Were already in the center of the 7-sided structure.

The families gathered round them

To sing the song of return.

I stood in the back,

For I had no family present,

And thought of disappearing out the door,

When the Chief called out, and the singing hushed,

“Where is Ayita?”

The people turned. Eyes were on me,

And they opened a way for me to go

And be in the center, with the Chief, and the warriors.

They asked me to add this day, into the days of many battles.

I had heard many times,

In my own ancestral tribe,

The battle stories, the old ones,

And the fresh ones.

But I could not strike away

The rough chert from the story.

I couldn’t make a spear point

Out of the crumbling I had seen.

And so I just reported

The nothingness of the dying,

And the way life had just gone on in spite of it all—

How birds were singing on our way home,

As if nothing had happened.

Smallness moved on both sides of the battle,

And yet, there was something noble about it, too—

How some of the heroes seemed born for that day,

And, while, on one hand, I had watched with tenderness and pity,

As a mother would dread for her sons to go and fight,

There seemed to be a greater plane behind the battle’s fury,

And there seemed to be a blessing on it

From the hand of the Great Spirit,

And this was just one day’s work of a tanning which would take many more.

And as I spoke,

Anidohi came

And stood behind me,

And in witness to my story,

He stood, and great tears flowed down his face

As he made the large signs with his hand and arms

Of the peace dance.

Chapter 13

This morning I left again, eating nothing.

As I got to the village gate, the warrior on guard

Opened it for me, hesitating.

I knew it was not the safest thing to go out

The day after a battle,

But I needed to walk.

I went around the four corners of the encampment again,

And listened to the families, getting up, having breakfast.

I heard loving kindnesses, and petty squabbling words,

Then I headed south, into the trail of the living forest.

I got out into a deep clearing, and sat.

It reminded me of the time, when I was nine,

That my parents and grandparents had taken me,

And left me in the woods to await my personal vision

From the Great Spirit, or from my spirit guide.

This was our custom, and as I lingered,

I did feel a great something come over me.

It didn’t have the visage of a particular animal.

It didn’t have a way for me to go.

I can remember trying to make it something that it wasn’t,

For I didn’t like the feeling I had.

It seemed to me that everything was changing all around me,

And the things that had always been,

Or, the good times, the prosperity,

Were giving way to something else,

That I was born in evening,

And I would see only night in my lifetime.

Other children told stories of their vision quest,

Of seeing a wolf, or an eagle, or bear.

But I always thought they must be lying,

For I surely didn’t see anything like that.

But when my family came with smiling faces,

High hopes of what I had seen,

I lied, too.

I told them I had seen a mountain goat.

But today I sat in the clearing,

And the cloudy feeling came again.

This time I recognized it.

Everything was crumbling,

And shaking, and changing.

The floodplain would never be the same

After the rush that deluged the trees and bushes

And anything else in its path.

And yet, the cloudy presence had a warmth,

And the warmth assured me of a bigger picture.

Chapter 14

Without thinking, I got up and wandered around the clearing.

I gathered long branches.

I pulled them clean of smaller twigs and leaves.

I stuck them, four corners, and gathered more.

I began to weave them in and out to make a booth.

I got maybe half way done, when my stomach growled ferocious,

And I remembered, I had not eaten in two days.

I dropped the latest branch and headed back to the walled encampment.

As I walked, I thought about the hut that I was building.

If I was going to be detached from all I’d ever known,

Why not just go all the way, and live out in the woods alone?

I liked the idea.

And so every day, I would go and walk,

And my journey’s end would lead me to that place in the little clearing

Where I worked on the hut, and when it was done,

I made myself a storage bin, up off the ground, out of clay.

And slowly, without anyone even noticing,

I began to move supplies out there.

Chapter 15

Some days I would spend in the village by my wigwam.

Some days I would work more on my hut out in the forest.

Gradually a few girls my age befriended me,

And on the days when I was with them,

We stitched deerskin shirts and blankets.

Most of them were married already.

Two of them were big with babies.

One had already had a man child.

We made a papoose for him.

They told me their stories.

They didn’t know what to make of me,

For though I was just like they were,

I was nothing like any of them.

It was strange for a girl to live

All alone without family.

I would think sometimes after they left me

Of how my story would go,

For their families had arranged for them

The marriage of their destiny.

But I had no father in this camp,

But mostly I had no grandmother,

No family to choose for me.

Maybe it wasn’t right for a storyteller to marry,

But I still thought about Nusdev,

And longed to have with him

The beginnings of our own nation—

Love and life with him.

Chapter 16

Today when I came to my little hut,

I brought meat strips and a ku nu che ball,

Made of nut meat and shell of hickory.

I heard a crack of a twig snap, then silence—

A mistake only a novice hunter would make.

I froze, sensing the great forest with all of my Self,

Afraid for just one second,

But then a feeling came over me, that, it didn’t really matter.

And so I went on, putting the meat in the storage bin,

And placing the ku ne che in there.

Then I sat.

There seemed to me many possibilities.

I wondered if I could build myself a booth

Closer to my own tribe?

I could just as easily disappear into the forests over there as here?

But every dusk, I returned

To the humans who gathered for the story.

I would tell them what I had seen that day,

For every day, walking, and working on my hut,

Pictures would come to my heart from somewhere.

I would watch the visions unfold.

And then that night,

I would tell the people what had happened as I saw it,

And then, I would wait, ‘til the last one left,

And then I, too, would leave the meeting house,

And go out into the clearing and sleep

In the little hut that I had made with my own hands.

Chapter 17

Today a visitor appeared to me at my little hut in the clearing,

And at first, I thought him just a vision,

But I heard his voice in the outer part of my ear.

I looked at his face, and barely knew him,

But it was the only one of my daydreams,

Nusdev, the son of the Great Chief of my original tribe.

He came shaking his head,

Great disbelief in his eyes.

“What are you doing, Ayita?”

“What is all of this?”

I couldn’t answer him,

For in truth, I didn’t know.

He filled my silence with more questions,

Until I felt that they were statements

Of his severe disapproval.

I tried to listen to the deeper sound under what his voice made,

To see if it was concern that pushed

The interrogation so pointedly,

Or if it was just pure criticism.

Finally he stopped and was quiet.

We stood, both of us silent.

We heard a branch crack to the left.

He grabbed my hand, squeezed it,

And then he ran.

He disappeared into the woods

And left me there alone.

And so I sat down on the deerskin,

Crossed my legs,

And stared into the sun.

And with a great peace settling around me,

I waited for a better vision.

Chapter 18

Today I turned 14.

No one knew it.

I was called to witness another battle,

So Anidohi and I stood, and recorded,

As even yet again, more warriors on both sides perished.

And as the sun got low in the west,

And the battle raged, with no signs of slowing,

Anidohi walked with me back toward the village.

“I am walking you all the way to your hut, tonight, Ayita,” he said.

“My hut?” I echoed with surprise.

“Yes,” he said, very plainly. “I know about your hut in the clearing.”

And so he walked with me, all the way.

“I have been watching you, guarding you,” he said.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“I don’t need it.

I will lay my head and sleep, whether you guard me or you don’t.”

“Yes,” he said, “I realize that,

But listen, Ayita,” he added.

“This latest skirmish signals something significant.”

“What is that?” I asked him.

“The Other People have been making deals and making treaties.

But just as quickly breaking them and making something else.

We are losing this battle, and you know as well as I do,

That it can’t go on this way for too much more.

I have heard that the Other People have set a place aside for us—

A place where we are going to have to move,

A different destiny, but, perhaps, a place where there will be no more battles.

I don’t know just how all of this is supposed to come to be,

But, I know it is coming soon.”

I wondered why I hadn’t heard of this.

And so we sat together on the deerskin outside my shelter,

And it felt good to be so close to him.

Men didn’t usually sit on deerskin, but on cougar, or other big cat,

But, we watched the moon descending,

Which, all of this seemed so out of kilter.

But then we watched the stars as they rose.

Then the night got hazy.

All night, we sat, both, in silence, and in talking,

Just us, together.

Together we witnessed the sun break forth through a smoky dawn.

And that morning, the day after my fourteenth birthday,

He kissed me sweetly, like a man would kiss his only maiden,

And we stretched out together in the sandy clearing.

He put one arm under my shoulders like a pillow,

And he told me he wanted me to be his wife.

Chapter 19

I drifted to sleep at dawn without giving him an answer.

I fell asleep thinking, this wasn’t the normal way.

He hadn’t brought a deer to me.

I hadn’t been given the opportunity

To cook it, or to not cook it,

To show the family my decision.

I had no grandmother here, to help me to decide.

But my dreams were filled with less domestic things.

My visions turned for hours of scenes I couldn’t understand.

The premonitions that rushed my consciousness confused me to my being.

The image was something I had never seen:

A river of humans flowing south,

Crying through the winter.

It poured like brine through a snowy wilderness.

Tears poured all the more, like rain,

Until the river flowed with salt,

And only those who bore it strong,

By finding a new way to breathe and live,

Would make the next new day.

Then lines crossed the continent,

Made of iron and booming noise,

Animal-less skins and wrappers dot

The hills and plains and ponds.

I woke with a sweat.

Anidohi had built a small fire,

But there seemed to me, to be too much smoke!

He was warming some of the meat strips

And cutting a dried pumpkin gourd.

We ate together, peacefully enough—

Talking embarrassedly, awkwardly,

And finally, we left, near dusk, for the village,

For it was story time.

“I really like your stories, Ayita,” he said.

“They make me feel better when I hear them.

Even though some are sad, they have a way I like.”

“Thank you,” I looked into his eyes,

“Very, very much.”

Chapter 20

As we turned our hearts toward the village,

We seemed to walk a quicker pace.

Then more frantic as we realized

The smoke was getting thick.

It was cold that evening, and still,

And we breathed it without any let up,

And finally, we ran to the edge of the forest

Where only the trees were clearing.

We stepped out into the place

Where the village had been,

Only to see ourselves surrounded

By charred remains of pottery and rubble.

The grasses of the prairie still burned to the west.

The 7 logs of the meeting house roof smoldered in pieces on the ground.

The mud houses were down. The thatched roofs gone.

Supplies were gone, taken or burned—

Blankets, food, everything,

And all the people, too.

There was nothing salvageable.

Even the place itself, seemed haunted.

I rushed to the place where my friend with the man child

Had lived to find nothing at all.

Warriors, babies, everyone,

Gigage, and his grandson, Itsa,

Had vanished with the burning flames

And only the smoke was left.

Anidohi and I didn’t linger,

But quickly made our return to the forest.

He only stopped as we saw one storage bin

That the fire had somehow missed.

There was one Ku-nu-che hickory ball in there,

Several paltry meat-strips, and a pouch of miscellaneous seeds.

We grabbed it all and went back to my shelter,

In the clearing of the forest.

We drank some cool water from a stream along the way.

But when we reached the deerskin,

We collapsed ourselves upon it.

I don’t remember crying like that

Since I was, maybe 8 winters old,

When someone had told me that one of the stories wasn’t true.

Anidohi held me, as I sobbed,

And cried my heart out,

And when I calmed, I realized

That he was crying too.

Chapter 21

It was getting very dark

Anidohi got up and searched his pack,

And pulled a skin out of the folds

And brought it over to me.

He sat beside me, and covered me with it,

And we huddled there together.

I took my hand and pulled the corner of the skin up over him, too,

And we felt the living warmth return.

A little moonlight flickered in,

Through the smoky, clouded night.

And I saw, it was a cougar pelt.

He had one, after all.

Then he said, “This is what happens

When the Other People come.

I want to go in the morning light,

And find where our tribe has gone.”

And I couldn’t help but think,

“Our tribe?” “Other people?”

For this didn’t feel like my tribe yet,

And what were the Others to me?

But I drifted off to sleep, and woke in early morning.

Ahidohi was gone from me,

And I was cold, and scared.

I went ahead and built a fire

For I figured a little more smoke couldn’t hurt,

And I wanted to warm some meat strips

And roast a few pumpkin seeds.

I heard someone approaching,

And turned to see Anidohi

Coming through the trail toward me,

With a deer upon his back.

He laid it at my feet and said,

“First things, first.”

Still on his knees beside the deer,

He looked up into my eyes, through his,

So kind, and wise, filled with sweet, tender, pity and love for me.

And I had to laugh a little bit,

And shake my head to clear my thought,

But without any hesitation after that, I told him,

“I will cook it for you.”

And so we skinned the deer together,

And stripped the meat and smoked it dry,

And worked that day as he told me what he had found

That morning as he hunted.

Chapter 22

Anidohi told me had scouted about, and just before he’d seen the deer,

He smelled more smoke from further south, and followed it a bit to see

Another smoking village.

But there was one, like him, in the woods,

And they had spoken together.

The brave told him,

“The Others came. They rounded us up.

We couldn’t even pack a dragger.

I slipped away into the woods

And watched how they made all fire.

They made our hearts burn, too, in the watching.

Everything has gone up in the smoke.

The village days have ended here,

And something new now comes.”

Then the brave told him how he followed them

To another type of village—

A different kind of walls the Other People had.

These walls didn’t keep out harm,

But kept the human beings in,

A “concentration camp” they called it,

And that’s where our people were.

He told Anidohi how to get there,

And that many tribes were gathered.

Anidohi and I talked too, about what

We should do.

And then he turned, he took my shoulders

And said, “I know it may sound crazy,

That I would still think of having my own tribe

With you as my princess someday,

But life still flows, and we need each other,

And today is one of the deepest wells of joy, and of sorrow

That I have ever known.”

Chapter 23

We worked on the deer together,

Cutting it into the thinnest strips,

Smoking it over the fire.

I kept thinking about the vision,

Of the river of tears that flowed,

The Human Beings pouring together

West and through the south.

Part of my heart was hard on survival.

I wanted to stay and live in my hut.

I thought about Anidohi, and his proposal,

And how we were cooking the deer.

And a part of my heart wanted to un-cook it, somehow.

My head ached with trauma, as if I’d been hit.

I didn’t want to be a wife, or a mother.

I didn’t want to be anything,

And I felt I wasn’t.

I felt untouched and untouchable,

Apart from my family, my tribe, the Humans,

And I wanted to be apart from Anidohi too.

I didn’t want any more pain of separation,

And so, to be separate by my active choice

Called a life of peace to me.

Finally I told Anidohi,

“They will make our people go

To the place where you have told me—

The place they have reserved.”

Anidohi shook his head,

“They are in that place right now.”

“No,” I said, “They’re not.

They will have to go there on foot,

And the place is far away.”

Anidohi didn’t argue,

But pondered the thing that I had said.

Then he got up, left the deer, and told me he’d return.

While he was gone,

I cried some more,

And thought about running away.

I had never done that kind of thing,

But it seemed to me, if I had,

I could have run away as a child,

And never been given to Gigage’s Tribe,

And never been strange to the girls my age,

And never been hurt in the heart.

Yes, maybe some wolf would have found me, or bear,

But I would have been much better off,

Only hurting, or dead on the outside,

Not this aching wound on the “in”

That might never heal.

Chapter 25

I woke up early

While the sky was still dark,

Anidohi wrapped around me.

I peered up into the black sky vault

And saw the Seven Sisters turning.

They smiled at me.

They accepted me into their star generation,

And I smiled, too.

I felt accepted

In heaven

And earth below.

And in the morning,

As we shared our food together.

We discussed

The Human Beings and what we had to do.

“You were right, Ayita,” said Anidohi softly,

“They plan to march them to a territory

A long, far way from here.

I think that we should march beside them

On the far side of the river.

Maybe some way we can help them—

Find a way to set them free.”

I didn’t want to leave this flash of happiness I’d found,

But I would have followed the man

Into the Other’s walled camp.

Something about him made me feel

Connected, and accepted again,

And even more, like a chosen arrow

Wanted, and traded for.

And so I began to pack the few things that I had,

And we made our way, together, to a place beside the river,

And waited for the Other People to make their move again.

Chapter 26

We camped in some trees
On a river bluff.
We could lie flat in the bushes,
And look over the walls of the Other's fort,
And see some of what went on.

Our people were huddled,
Penned like their sheep,
Their faces drawn and beaten.

We saw Gigage, and his grandson, Itsa, standing alone at the end.
Anidohi left me hidden
In the scraggy underbrush,
And furtively made his way down one night

To see if he could speak to the chief,

To see how he was doing.

I took turns of watching hard,
And hiding my eyes in terror.
I couldn't bear the alternative thoughts
Of them catching Anidohi, too.

When he returned,
He had great tears,
And shook his head in disbelief.
"The sight of our Human Beings
Wrapped in the Other Peoples blankets,
And the deep-eyed poverty,
Has hollowed my strength, Ayita.
Many of them have fled their bodies, already,
Given up the spirit within."
And Gigage had told him
To run,
And to wipe his memory of the tribe,

And to find a way to live in the little freedom that remained in the land.

But Anidohi had told him
That he and I were together,
And that we planned to follow them
To the place held back for us.

And Gigage told him
The trail began tomorrow.

Chapter 27

“The trail,” I said, “has no beginning.”

“Yes,” Anidohi saw it with me,

“And it will never end,” he said.

“It is only the path of life,

Stretching out before us,

And so we shouldn’t grieve.”

Something about the words seemed right,

Even in the face of this death,

And so, even though we talked

Of fasting ourselves, and offering prayers,

We decided better to eat and be strong,

For whatever the journey brought us.

We didn’t dare to build a fire,

But ate heartily, the dried meat from the deer

That was our wedding dowry.

And though the weather was turning now,

We stayed warm without a fire,

Wrapped up at night together.

And even in this place of great changing,

And not knowing,

I was certain that I had never felt more alive.

Sometimes a lonely screech of an owl

Would tear into my spirit,

And a bad breath would try to come upon me,

To tell me I should be a prisoner too.

But I would shake that feeling hard

And say, “NO!”

And it would leave me.

But, it was three long days before the gates of the Other People

Finally opened, and the river of original people flooded out.

Chapter 28

Anidohi and I were sleeping

When we heard the roar that morning.

We rustled up quickly, and looked below

To see the people pool,

Billowing out beside the gate,

Then streaming down the riverside

With the warriors and their firesticks

Pushing them on downstream.

Many looked back within the walls,

For they were leaving behind

A mother, a grandfather, or a child, too sick to go.

And everyone, even the Other People’s guards,

Looked gaunt, and empty spirited.

No one wanted to do this,

But this, is what they did.

Anidohi and I gathered our packs up quickly,

And began to trail them on the bluff,

Walking side by side with them,

Only without the push.

But we were being pulled along,

Just as forcefully as they,

For our hearts were overthrown with love

For our People, and their lives.

And as we walked, we prayed and cried,

To the Great White Spirit of Mercy

To come upon us,

And heal us in Nu na da ul tsun yi—

“The Place Where They Cried”.

Chapter 30

We walked for days and days on end.
Anidohi kept track,
Reminding me of the New Moons,
Equal days, and solstices,
While I tried hard to lose them all.

After several months it hit me,
that I hadn’t had the time—
The kind of time that women have,
and I wondered at it.
But only a few days later,
I doubled in pain as we walked the trail.
I passed a tuft of blood and flesh,
Clotted knots and hair.

Anidohi came to me,
squeezed his eyes together hard.
He dug a small hole in the cold, winter earth
And buried our first baby.
We couldn’t tell if its destiny
was that of a hunter or a weaver,
But the next day
We were walking again,
Trying to keep up with our tribe.

Chapter 31

One morning Anidohi had gone
To see if he could find a bird,
Or maybe a rabbit for us to eat,
And since the ground had not frozen solid,
I went looking for Hopniss to dig.
And while I stooped and clawed the ground,
I heard the footfalls of a stranger.
I turned to see a booted soldier.
He charged me and knocked me down.

He spoke hard whispers on my neck,
As he pinned me to the earth.
He pushed his body into mine
And tried to pull my tunic up.
Just as I realized what he was doing,
He suddenly gave way.
His breath went out,
And all his weight went flat
And heavy as a stone.
I felt a pierce of my own breast,
As he turned and looked behind him.

Anidohi had shot him with an arrow.

The soldier aimed his fear at us,

And with his only, dying wish,
He pulled an iron.
I heard a blast,
Then watched Anidohi fall.

I pushed the soldier off of me
And knelt at my loving messenger’s side.
"There is no death," he breathed out bravely.
"Be wise, and never grieve for me.
I was never born here.
I can never be destroyed."

Chapter 32

I left them both

In the sand on the bluff,

And wandered off,

Vaguely following the marching tribe.

I heard them sing sometimes, the songs

Of lament and bitter tears,

And I cried, too,

Even though no iron pointed me along.

But I grieved, on top of all else,

Because I wasn’t wise,

For I did long for Anidohi.

I grieved the hidden destiny

That now would play out

Without us together.

But somewhere, far away,

In some other happy land,

A heart of tender tears would roam

And love some maiden lucky enough

To be already there.

For three long days I stumbled blindly.

My tears veiled the harsh reality.

They blurred and fogged my awareness,

And dulled my trembling heart.

These were also the darkest days—

The days when the sun must come back from death,

The three days after the solstice,

And the stories haunted me.

One told of how a brave had lain

In a cave, mauled by a bear and left for dead.

And the third day,

Waters of life seeped in

And made him whole again.

And then the Sun returned.

Chapter 33

Even as slow as the march proceeded,
I struggled to keep up with them,
Especially when it seemed that they
Followed the buffalo wandering.
The soldiers seemed to take them north,
Only to wind up in the south,
And sometimes I would swear that we
Were heading back toward home.
My life felt like a useless gnat,
Hovering helplessly in random flight,
Around some spoiling piece of fruit,
Just because it was there.

I could feel myself growing weaker,
And yet stronger, somehow for surviving.
Living on cattail root and briars,
I stumbled along beside.

But the visions kept me going.
Bright lightnings of pain flashed just beneath
The surface tension of my eyelids.
The colors were stark and real.
The orbits of the stars manifest
Themselves to me in quick precision.
I seemed to hold within my spirit
The knowledge of the Sun.

Time slowed, then stopped for me,

At will, so I could understand,
And replicate in my mind’s eye,

The destinies of every water's drop.
Some piece of infinity began to uncoil,
And I could see it,
Never ending.
Every scale contained many chapters,
But the answers all were there.