Spiritwalkers: Initiate, Part Two

[aithne]

They ate and then mounted up and rode, still going towards Little Water. Zotum was her teacher today, beginning to work on her bow skills. She was not bad with a bow to begin with, and the learning was immediately easier than it had been with the hatchet.

Otaktay occasionally rode close to take a swipe at her, but he wasn't very serious today and she got away with no new bruises--from him, at least. She had never shot from horseback before, not being a hunter, and forgetting to compensate for Una's motion gave her some very nasty bruises on the inside of her arm, the skin torn.

She could hear most of the spiritwalkers today, and the conversations made much more sense now. It felt crowded in her head, making her a little off-balance, but the sensation was also pleasant, a feeling of connectedness with these men. Even with the bad blood between Cheveyo and Adoeete, everything felt harmonious and balanced. "She's not a bad shot," she heard Dichali comment to Cheveyo.

"Good thing, I want her to be a distance shooter," Cheveyo replied. "I don't think she should be put close in often. She doesn't have the strength to fight off a close attacker, and I don't know if she ever will."

Nascha resisted the urge to glance down at herself, knowing it was true. Best to be as good as I can at a distance, she told herself. She raised the bow, drawing it in the same motion, took a second to sight her target, and let the arrow fly. She knew by the time it left her hands that it was going to fly true, and it hit a stump with a gratifying thump.

Best to concentrate on what she was good at, after all.

That evening, they were a closer to Little Water but still days away. Pezi came to her, as in the distance coyotes sang to each other, belling voices carrying clearly through the rapidly cooling evening air. He said nothing, just sat down before her and held out his hands, cocking his head.

Nascha reached out and took them, and all around her like smoke, Pezi's story swirled.

There was an immediate difference here. The others had all been born Apache. Pezi's mother had been Sioux, captured in a raid. His father had died shortly after her capture, and Pezi didn't know if his father had been Apache or Sioux. His mother had kept herself apart from the tribe, choosing to live on her own instead of staying with her husband's mother, never learning more than a smattering of Apache. From an early age, Pezi had done most of the talking for the two of them.

He had grown up alone, outcast from the rest of the tribe. His mother had not wanted him to speak to his grandparents, but he snuck off to see them sometimes, to sit silently by their fire, small shadow in the flame's light. He had learned to track on his own, since nobody ever taught him much of anything.

Image after image came, Pezi alone and alien in the midst of the tribe, the pain of never being anything more than a tolerated guest to the people he had grown up alongside, never making any friends his own age. Being chosen as a spiritwalker had come as one of the greatest surprises of his life.

Feelings came then, the surprise again and the honor and excitement of belonging somewhere for the first time, and the pain and worry of having to leave his mother. She speaks so little Apache, Pezi murmured in her mind. If she fell ill, if she hurt herself, she could not ask for help.

There was another way in which Pezi was alone--there had never been any women for him, and he doubted that there ever would be. He might be spiritwalker, but that didn't mean he was good at talking to girls. Or anyone, really. Images came of the other spiritwalkers, a family for the first time in his life, the first time he had ever had anything like the easy camaraderie of friends. He belonged here more than he ever had anywhere, but even with all the voices in his head, he sometimes felt alone.

"So it is possible to still feel alone when you have even other people in your head. How often do you get to see your mother, now?" Nascha asked.

"Very rarely. maybe once or twice a season." He shook his head. "It is very possible to feel alone. You can still shut them all off."

"So if you need to think about things without sharing it with everyone, you can. That's good to know," she replied.

Pezi gave her half a smile. The look in his quiet eyes was one she couldn't quite understand, but she recognized the melancholy that ached in him. "It can be done. But it can be dangerous, you may miss something. Each of us is different in what we can do. It was unknown until I came along that anyone could be carried into the spiritworld."

"How did you find out?" Nascha asked.

"The person before you was injured badly. I knew no other way to get him back any quicker. I scooped him up and took him with me into spiritworld. Until then, it hadn't been done."

The person before me. The coyotes struck up a new chorus, a little closer than they had been before. "I've been wondering--is it allowed, for me to ask about the person before me?"

"It is, but you will be told the story on eighth night," he told her. "You will get the full story that way."

She took his meaning, and inclined her head. "I'll wait, then. How long ago did you find out you could do this?"

His smile turned wry. "Eight days. You were my second attempt. And it was a good thing that you couldn't hear me that day when Cheveyo told me we were going to try it again."

Nascha caught her breath. "He made it sound like you'd done it many times before."

"Once, many. Very little difference in Cheveyo's mind." He shrugged. "You will come to learn this."

"So do something once, and he'll assume it can be repeated. I'm just glad it worked, the second time."

"Without us both being lost somewhere that I couldn't get back from," he said.

The coyotes were getting closer, and Nascha heard Cheveyo and Sahale go to calm the horses, who were becoming restive. "Well, you know for sure now, and there wasn't any harm done." She breathed out, something inside of her gone still with astonishment. I might have gotten lost in spiritworld and died. It was an uneasy thought.

"No, there wasn't." Pezi let go of her hands, and his quiet voice remained clear in her mind. "You are getting close, now, to becoming a spiritwalker. How are you feeling about it?"

Nascha thought about it for a moment, thought about these men, the open sky with the stars without number, seeing and talking to her mother in spiritworld. Thought about blood soaking into dirt. "Still daunted, but now that I can step in and out of spiritworld on my own, I'm starting to think it's actually possible that I'll become one of you." She smiled briefly. "I wasn't convinced, before."

"Better or worse, you will become one of us shortly. You were chosen, we all felt it."

"It just seems strange, is all. I probably would have died trying to get back to my village. I never expected any of this to happen." She shook her head, marveling that she was here and not picked clean to the bones in the slight shade of a boulder, bones scattered in the red dirt.

"Neither did any of we expect to have the gift," he said.

Nascha smiled. "True. But right until I was taken in by all of you, I thought that spiritwalkers had to be male."

He chuckled, and she realized that that was the first time she had ever heard Pezi laugh. "So did we. Adoeete was very surprised. Cheveyo silenced him quickly before he said something he would regret."

She remembered talking to Adoeete about that very topic. "Dichali mentioned a crack Adoeete made."

"I thought he was going to say something more, but Cheveyo cut him off." Nascha thought back, remembered what she had not known was important at the time, a very brief firming of Cheveyo's lips. There were things one did not say, so one would not have to talk about it later.

She could very well imagine what Adoeete had been about to say. "He said to me that he thought that women as spiritwalkers was a bad idea, but that he'd accept it." She wrinkled her nose. "Adoeete spends a lot of time trying to accept things he can't change, it seems."

Pezi nodded. "My mother's people had the expression that reeds bend in the wind. Adoeete will break sometime in a wind stronger than he is."

Nascha thought about the Adoeete she knew, wanting desperately to lead and fearing it at the same time, his back set straight and stiff. "Well, for his sake, I hope the experience is a teaching one and not fatal."

"Maybe, I think he will leave us soon enough anyway and take his place with the elders."

"His father's health isn't good?" she asked.

"His father is old," Pezi said.

She thought, and remembered that Adoeete was twenty seasons older than Cheveyo, and remembered the images of Adoeete's father. He was a man with eyes deep-set in a face that was worn like a hill with the movement of the seasons. "Well, I hope becoming an elder isn't the experience he fears it's going to be. I think that was all the questions I had. Thank you for your story, Pezi."

"Thank you for becoming one of us," he said, and gave her a brief smile before getting up.

Nascha watched him go, listened to the restive horses and the calls of the coyotes. She thought about Pezi, weighing his story, heavy within her. It was a spot of subtle disharmony within the group, though overall she thought he was more of a balancing element than unbalancing. She tried to imagine the painting her grandfather would have made for Pezi, the blessing he would have given him.

She shook her head and sought her blankets, stretching sore legs and checking the bruises and torn skin on the inside of her arm. She had always been a rider, but she wasn't often on a horse all day long. It was taking her some time to get used to it.

And to everything else, she thought with some humor. She fell asleep, listening to the coyotes, tired and a little bit lonely. Her last thought before she fell completely asleep was that she wished Tse were here, she thought he and Pezi would have gotten along.

The next day was more of the same, riding and shooting and occasionally ducking Otaktay's surprise attacks. At the end of the day, Sahale came to her, sitting down and putting his hands out for her to take.

Sahale's story started soft, images fluttering against her like the wings of butterflies or tufts of wool. She saw his parents, married young and still sometimes silly as children with each other, and all the childhood mishaps and pranks that Sahale had gotten into. He had never been able to sit still, she saw, his body filled with a restless energy that made movement a joy and trying to sit still torture.

His family had gone with a breakaway group from the main Apache tribe when he was young, and she saw hardship when things had gotten lean in the beginning. Life had gotten easier eventually, and Sahale had been happy.

All that came to an end the day the Spanish had come. They had killed all who resisted, and took Sahale and his parents to one of their prisons. They threw them in a locked room, and there they were left, with no recourse and no understanding of why this had been done to them. Sahale was forty-eight seasons old.

The boy who had lived to run was kept in one room for twenty-four seasons. His father died two seasons after they had been taken, beaten to death by the Spanish. His mother had never smiled again, after that day. She died a year after that from some disease, leaving Sahale alone.

But not alone. There were always more prisoners, many dying, others looking for whatever status they could get in there with their fists and teeth. Some of them were Apache, but there were more Sioux, Ute, and Navajo. Nascha saw and felt beatings, felt him living hard, each new day both welcomed and cursed. So much time spent wondering if he was going to lose his mind like some did, start screaming and never stop. But something in him would not give into that. He learned the language of the Spanish, learned how to defend himself, and waited.

His chance came--an inattentive guard coming too close to the prison door, lulled into thinking Sahale was "tame" because he spoke their language. She felt the satisfying crack of the guard's neck breaking, heard the shouts of those behind him as they realized what had just happened.

In the chaos, Sahale had escaped, managing not to get caught or shot. There was a wild joy as he stretched out his body fully for the first time in so long, the desert under his feet welcoming his footsteps. He ran, at first, then walked. Then rested, then walked. Cheveyo had found him like he had found Nascha, dying of thirst in the desert. Sahale had answered the question correctly, and had been taken in into the spiritwalkers.

His story ended with both the joy of being free and hatred of those who had kept him captive for so long. He hated all things Spanish, and white men in general. Being able to speak to them had given him a look at how they thought of the native tribes, and it was not flattering. The words they use have power among them. And they call us something other than human.

Nascha considered this. "How long were you walking before Cheveyo found you?" she asked.

"Three days, without water or food. I didn't have any to take with me."

Her eyes widened. "I'm impressed. Without water or food, I probably wouldn't have lasted a day."

Sahale shook his head. "Sheer will to get away. Twenty-four seasons will allow you to do just about anything you didn't think you could before."

"It sounds like it. Were you going somewhere, or just heading away?"

"I knew my people were north. That's all I knew, so that's the way I headed." He shrugged, and she got the feeling that he had never had the first doubt that he would find them.

Nascha tightened her hands on his. She could feel Sahale's restlessness, communicated through flesh and bone, and she felt like she needed to hold on to him tightly lest he jump up and run away. "So what do you do with the hatred? Do you let it eat at you, or do you just somehow live with it?"

"I have learned to live with it. I hate still and probably always will, but we have to think for the tribe and whether killing this Spanish will help or hurt the tribe. On very few occasions so far has that answer been hurt, so I get my revenge slowly."

"Well, at least you were probably happy when we found out that we needed to go after those Spanish," she said.

Sahale nodded. "I was looking forward to it, I admit."

"Would you be willing to teach me a little of their language, some time?" she asked.

"I can, it's not as hard as it sounds," he said.

She gave him a smile, and was not surprised when he didn't smile back. "Oh, good. It sounded awful. But I think at least knowing a little might be useful."

"It very well could be. Any more questions, Nascha? Tomorrow is the night."

Nerves twisted her stomach briefly, feeling like an echo of the peyote. "Do I get to know what's going to happen, or do I find out when I get there?"

Sahale shrugged. "It's pretty much the same as you have been doing night after night, but now we are all there."

"And I'm telling my story. And then I get to hear the story of the one whose place I'm taking." She shook a long breath.

"Yes, it's a bit different. Then blood ritual and you take your place as the newest spiritwalker."

She eyed Sahale suspiciously. "Blood ritual?"

"Ah, you get seven cuts and we get one and share each other's blood. Binding us to one another." He let go of her hands and turned the inside of his right arm to the fire. She could see, faintly, seven thin scars on the skin there, illuminated by the orange light of the flame.

Nascha considered this. "That doesn't sound so bad, then."

"It's not. They just make it sound like it." Sahale smiled briefly, a rare sight.

She smiled back, and nodded. "Strangely, telling my own story makes me more nervous than the thought of that ritual. I'm not sure why. It's not like I don't know you all by now."

"It shouldn't, you have seen seven examples now. Just be truthful about what you feel. That's the hardest part."

"I think it will be. I've been trying not to think about what I'm feeling so much, because it keeps on getting me tangled up. But I know you're right," she said, and let out a breath, forcing her shoulders to relax.

"You have to have grief and rage. Let it go and tell us the truth. Step back and look at yourself," Sahale told her.

"I'll do my best. I have an idea what I'm going to say, but we'll see what I actually do."

"I am sure you will," he said. "Anything more, Nascha?"

She turned her hands palms-up towards the sky. "I don't think so, Sahale. Thank you for your story."

"Good night, Nascha." He got up, leaving her alone to think about what she was going to say the next night. She spent a long time in her blankets, listening to night sounds, the faraway shree of an owl, her namesake. The wind was stirring this night, touching her skin like hands.

She fell asleep without coming to any decisions, and the next morning began like most had, woken when false dawn colored the east sky and breaking camp, mounting up and moving on. She trained as she rode, Sahale taught her the words morning and horse in Spanish. Una was developing a dislike of Otaktay's horse, since every time she came near her rider tried to hit Nascha.

They stopped about noon to let the worst of the heat pass and let the horses rest, then rode on. Sundown found them in the shelter of a rock formation, surrounded by a ring of boulders. They ate and then, too soon, it was time.

Nascha had been having attacks of nerves on and off all day, but now that the moment was here she felt calm. She would do well, or she would do poorly, but this was her path and this was the time. She sat where Cheveyo indicated, and he sat down next to her, taking her right hand. Dichali took her left, and the others ringed her. "We need to touch bare skin," Adoeete said, and there were hands on her legs, her arms, her neck, her face. It was a strange feeling, being surrounded like this, with these men so close to her. My brothers.

She took a deep breath, and began.

I am the daughter of a weaver...

There was Shadi, smiling, frowning, always the center of Nascha's life. Her father, aunts and uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers, her cousin Sakhyo, who she had been raised with more as a sister than a cousin. There had been two younger brothers, but they had both died before they were eight seasons old from one of the illnesses that children got.

Sakhyo had been the pretty one, the capable one, the one that adults loved to pick up and pet. Nascha had gotten her share of attention, though she mostly trailed along into Sakhyo's wake like a small shadow. There were memories of fights, with Sakhyo over childish disagreements, more serious ones with Shadi, who had always wanted Nascha to learn her art. Nascha had little interest and no patience with weaving, and as Nascha got older, she came into conflict with her mother more often.

Images came from her now, feelings, Sakhyo and Ahiga marrying, the birth of Nastas, Ahiga's smile when he held his son for the first time. Then there was Tse, who she had known all of her life but who she'd never given a second thought to until the day he gave her a polished stone with a hole in the center, because he knew she liked looking through them. She'd been astonished, not realizing that anyone had paid enough attention to her to know that.

There were secretive meetings, long walks together, working side by side during the harvest. There were other faces, girls who wanted Tse, who were destined for disappointment. That winter, Shadi had gone to talk with Tse's parents, and it had been decided over the space of several weeks that the two would marry in the summer. The two were kept mostly apart during the winter, though they did manage to see each other long enough to share secret kisses every day.

Then spring had come, and it was time for the tribe to split. Nascha's heart had been light as they set off into the desert, towards a place that had been scouted for in the fall. She was embarking on a new life, with someone who loved her beside her, with her family around her. She had even made an effort not to fight so much with Shadi, with varying degrees of success depending on the day. Then there was her marriage, settling down into married life with Tse. She remembered him as he had been the day she had married him--nervous and proud, his head held high. She had begged him to try to stay, when Shadi had tried to send him off with Grandfather a little while after they had married.

Then the attack, and the day that everything had changed.

Nascha tried to keep the grief and rage from overwhelming her as she went through the attack, her parents and Tse dying, her first glimpse of Chogan. She recounted the journey to the Arapaho camp, and what she had seen and heard there. Chogan. Halian. Tokala. Chuslum. Chunta. Eyanosa. Ituha. Ohanzee. Skah. Tavibo. She showed them the tent, the skins everywhere, the mounting feeling of panic as Chogan simply kept her tied and didn't try to take what he likely considered his right. Then the night when his eyes had been glassy with peyote and she had escaped, running through the night. Then making it back to the camp to discover that she had missed Grandfather and Ahiga.

She ended with her experiences since she had been found by the spiritwalkers, what she had seen in each of the men who were now her brothers. She was a little afraid of this new life sometimes, of being a spiritwalker, unsure if she had what it took to be one of them. As time went on, she was beginning to lose most of the fear. She felt a hard and heavy guilt about Tse, feeling that if she had not begged him to stay, he would have been away and safe when the attack had come.

There were still large parts of her that were stunned by what she had lost. And though she knew it was necessary, it was very hard for her to wait until it was the right time to rescue Sakhyo and Nastas.

There was silence for a few minutes after she ran out of images and simply say, feeling as though she had just poured her whole life into these men. Their hands on her skin were unmoving. Then there was a voice. Dichali's, she thought, though for some reason it was hard to tell. "Did you love him? Tse?"

Nascha bowed her head. Silently, she said, "I did. Very much. He was all I wanted, once I got to know him."

"Have you grieved yet?" It wasn't Dichali's voice alone now. It sounded like all of them, speaking together, or perhaps none of them. She couldn't tell.

"A little," she said, slowly. "There's something dark under the stunned feeling, though. I'm almost afraid to come out of shock, because I think it's going to hurt a lot when I do."

"It will, but we all live through it. You have us, now. Family for as long as we live."

Nascha took a shaky breath and lifted her head. "Yes. It's strange, but I feel like I belong here, with all of you. Like this is where I was supposed to be."

They considered this, lightning passing around her in little sparks. "Are you ready to begin again?"

"I am. I'm afraid, but I'm not letting that stop me from trying."

The feeling that came along with their words was warm, understanding. "There is nothing to fear from any of us. From the past we take lessons, and this lesson is to be from the one that you replace. His name was Chahta, and he was a brother."

Then, images.

He had been short but quick, and with a smile that was even quicker. Chahta. Fast with a bow and a knife. His life, what the spiritwalkers knew of him, began to go by. His boyhood, his wife and parents and children, all still alive. There had been so many battles, so many victories. He had been Cheveyo's second, a tracker who could not be matched.

There were images coming now, of his last battle. He had ranged too far out and was ambushed by Chogan and his people. He had killed two of them before they had fallen, and Chogan in rage had torn the flesh from his scalp and back, taking the skin and leaving Chahta to die. Pezi had found him and in desperation had discovered that he could bring him into spiritworld, bringing him back to try to save him. It had been futile, and Cheveyo had taken him into the bond, absorbed all that he was and all of his knowledge so he could pass him along. He had then taken Chahta's life, releasing struggling spirit from flesh too wounded to live.

He was one of us, just as you are now. Forever part of the past, but never forgotten. We give to you all that he was and all that he knew.

More images came now, blinding speed going by her, and her eyes watered as she tried to absorb it, comprehend it, but there was nothing she could grasp and hold. The images sped up and then, abruptly, came to a stop.

Nascha felt faint, but she didn't fall over, even though her head felt as if the top were missing and she had all the sky between her eyes. Slowly, one by one, they cut their arms and then Nascha's, touching the cuts together. Nascha knew that the cuts hurt, but she could barely feel it. After each of them had mingled their blood with hers, they got up and left silently, until it was just Cheveyo left.

He used a knife to cut his arm and then hers, pressing the cuts together. She glanced down at her arm afterwards, saw the blood welling from shallow cuts. "It is done, Nascha," Cheveyo said. "Spiritwalker."

For a long moment, she was utterly lost for words. "It is an honor, Cheveyo," she said.

Cheveyo smiled, and took her hand, clasping her fingers in his briefly. "The honor is ours too, Nascha."

"I think I need to sit here for a while. I feel--strange."

"You will for awhile," he told her. He reached over and picked up a waterskin, handing it to her. "Talk if you want or be silent, but I will be here tonight. I can hear you now, clearly."

With a start, Nascha realized that she had not said a word aloud since she had sat down to tell her story. She closed her eyes as something began to burn inside of her. She had made it. She had become a spiritwalker.

And now, her immediate goal accomplished, the shock of the changes in her life was beginning to wear off. What was underneath was pain, and she felt tears begin to well in her eyes and close her throat.

"Do you want to be alone or is it easier with company?" Cheveyo asked gently.

Nascha wrapped her arms around herself. "Stay. Please. I don't want to be alone with this."

"I can hold you if that is better, but for history, I do not comfort all my spiritwalkers in that manner." He smiled at her.

That almost got a smile in return from her. "Just sit with me, if you would."

And he did. She did end up leaning on him, shaking with sobs, the strange feeling of the sky living within her breaking open what she had closed up tight so she could do what needed to be done. Then the tears ran dry and she allowed herself to simply sit and miss Tse, her family, Sakhyo.

She did not know if the grief had an end. It must. Her brothers had all lost people, friends, wives, parents. They knew this emptiness and had survived it, and if they had, so must she.

At the moment, sitting next to Cheveyo with the sky over head and somehow within her as well, she didn't know if she had the faith to live through it. For the night, she could sit with the pain and try to understand it, to feel the silent support of her brothers.

Never alone again, as long as I live.