Chapter Six
Wa-Le-Lu
Ask questions from your heart and it will answer you from the heart.
–Omaha
There is a story that my folks tell about the coyote and fire. How he taught man to rub two sticks to create fire upon which men could keep warm all for the ability to help a human woman. I found the story a like a dripping sack of poison. But as I wept in my sleep to a man with an arrow in his heart, and a burning blue flame in his hands. I knew- fire at whatever cost we have gotten it–made us pay the price that many others would not.
I awoke with a startle with my little twitter bird singing in panic. Danger. My eyes fluttering open caught in the distance a pair of eyes glaring back at me. A pair of non-human eyes glowing in the color of leaf green.
“Go-s-du. (Ashes)” A voice like the scraping of a knife echoed. It came from the glowing eyes that in the midnight silver belonged to a small squirrel. Lost and alone my twitter bird kept her distance. Fluttering near my ear in fear. “Si-s-qui-li-s-da.(Blackbird.)”
Talking squirrels is now a thing. I heaved a sigh. Darkness greeting me as I twisted to leave the area. If there was one thing I’m learning its that talking animals \are creeping me out more than the Un-Ne-Ga horror movies.
My feet pounded against grass and then pavement. Pavement and bright lights with cars whizzing past me like a gazelle in the wild. The fluttering talking hummingbird disappeared with the shaking stomp of reality. I could taste the steam of car exhaust passing in the air. Society. Life. Roaring like a lion buses drove by leaving black dust behind.
I looked down at my tattered clothes. No one would help me out here. Not when my outfit screamed homeless teenager like a missing poster sign. Taking one step a time with my bare feet scraping on glass now and then told me the people the Un-Ne-Ga are at night. The type that ignore people.
Humming a song through my lips I continued to head for the city. A place I’ve never been. My mother might like the Un-Ne-Ga society. But as there will always be a but. She found their values lacked in substance. Seeing the bright lights in front of me glaring down on the sidewalk. I could see why.
Walking towards me there is a boy with a hoodie and pale skin. Hanging from his ears are strings that lead to rhythms and words. I went to side step him but he reached out grasping my coffee skin tight. “Hey,” Ripping one cord from his ear. “You look lost.”
“I damn well am lost. I came out of the forest-” Puzzlement given his face. Ice eyes glistening from the moon told me who he was. Danger.
“What forest? There is only water beyond the grass.”
“I came out of the forest.” The boy looked at my dirt face trying to figure out if I was delirious or just a homeless girl.
“Sure you did.” He grabbed my hand yanking me with him as we headed for the bright lights of the city. I supposed a tribal member is to escort me back to the tribe at the meeting point. I either came out of the forest early, or ended up being forgotten about. The latter being more likely.
Cars zoomed by me sounding like roaring airplanes above my head. Street Lights flickered like the old torches in the stables that were age old and often causes of barn fires. The sidewalk cold but grounded by glass and ash from both bottles and cigarettes. My left toe welling up with blood already from a cut.
“You’re not serious?” I twirled to see that all that remained behind us was clean cut grass and a lake. Did I venture through that not realizing how far away the forest was? I shook my head. No. The forest had to have been within a few feet.
“I mean what else am I supposed to be? An illusionist?” A smirk crossed his devilish face. Lingering in my nose is the stench of forest on my body. I smelled like mud, animal, and compared to the smooth scent of men’s cologne and carbon dioxide from cars.
“A ghost?” He huffed at that like I was a comedian for a job I didn’t sign up for.
“One that appears physical and can talk but is dead? I could see that.” Strange as it was he never slinked away from me because of my smell. If you smelled like animals, people treated you like a stray cat and deem you a stranger upon eyesight.
“How about we go to my place and clean you up?”
“My mother always told me to be weary of strangers.”
“Do you always listen to your mother cause I mean she sent you into the abyss of a grass patch?”
“I don’t even know your name I am not liable to answer that.”
“Certainty you would like to wash up and cleanse the dirt and blood off your feet?” He arches an eyebrow at me as if I wasn’t born of the barbarians that had their lands taken from us long ago.
“I’d rather eat dirt than take the hospitality of a stranger.” I waved my hand in dismissal not understanding if I had to trek through the city or go over the bridge that had no sidewalk on it. My head moved back and forth rocking the choices back and forth inside my head.
“If you need a name, it’s Ken. Lame I know. You wanted some mysterious name like Caliper or Jameson. Nope. Just plain old Ken.”
“Ken is nice. Better than Silska.” He coughed in laughter at my strange name. Being born from another culture meant carrying a name that most thought to shorten to Silk.
“Silska with Cinnamon eyes and caramel coffee skin. I like the sound of that. So are we still strangers now?”
A smile spread along my traitorous face as my bare hands chilled from the night air. I risked this stranger’s hand of help to know the consequence would be twelve whippings from Grandpa when I get home.
We wandered into the city. A well-dressed boy and a homeless girl if one was to judge by appearances. The city is like an animal zoo. I use to only see it by the buildings that stretched into the sky like human built trees. But as we entered deeper into the catacombs of the city, it was obvious who ran the night. Creatures of the night. Men and women who ruled by not following the social order or the regular means of life.
A man spread out his raw hands at me and I grimaced as I realized that I too had no spare cash on my person. Frowning as I walked away Ken side stepped to being closer to the panhandling side noting the tattered clothing I was wearing in the crisp air. He shed the hoodie off his back and put it on me. I shivered at the raw explosion of sounds around me.
The reserve back home would be silent. So silent you could hear your breath in the air. Ken lead me past the tall commercial buildings to an old slick back place where small apartments rested. In his hand keys jangled. Some not belonging to the door he leads me to as we passed fence after fence and mailbox after jar mailbox. Then we reached his front door. Just like in a horror movie you know you made a mistake when all the lights are off.
“You live here on your own?”
“Isn’t it usual for a twenty-three-year-old man to live on his own?” Gulp. Illegal. That was what I was to him. Illegal in Un-Ne-Ga law. He flipped on the switch letting bright florescent light scream into my eyes that had gotten used to the night. “Sorry. Better to get use to the light now.”
“Why is there so little furniture?”
“When you live on your own finances are like snowflakes. You can’t catch up.” He heaved a laugh. “But go take a warm shower to get all that grime off your tattered clothes.”
I blinked at the stack of college books in the corner of what looked like a half-finished living room. But my attention fluctuated by the pointing of his finger to a door to my left. Without saying a word, I walked into the small bathroom ripping the curtains off away to let me stumble into it. Turning the knob to a steaming, cindering, and scorching temperature.
When I stepped out of the volcano droplets, my skin speckled with water and a pair of clean clothes was tossed into the room. My hair looked like a lion’s mane but it was better than what it was before being an entangled mess.
On the bathroom wall rested a small painting of a bird similar to my guide. A twitter bird with red hollow eyes. Crows flocked behind it their wings spanning beyond the page, and eyes as violet as the dusk sky on a winter night. I pushed the door open careful to wrap myself up with the towel to cover me.
Upon leaving my personal sanctuary regret twisted into the pit of my stomach. If this man knew what’s good for him, he would have left me looking like a savage on the street. But his eyes glistened at the pools of water dripping from my body. With a towel surrounding me I stood like a deer in front of headlights. He waved me to the door across from the bathroom that lead to his bedroom not moving from the couch.
This gentle sign of reprieve told me I could sleep as long as he didn’t get ferocious like a lion. I was done with lions. They took what was there’s and ran free. Such were the Un-Ne-Ga’s self righteous law. Slumber took like a baby in the womb of its mother.
Back at the reserve
Roosters cawed at the break of dawn alerting the reserve of the streaks of morning dew in the sky. The chieften swaggered out of his home already drunk on grape wine. Another day gone. Silska’s absence paled the place. Tribe members already put their flags on half staff assuming the poor girl succumbed to the forest like many before her.
Paco breathed in the air heaving a sigh at the mess that turned out to be the start of a new day. Would life turn out to be a bitter problem for his daughter is without a daughter? He watched tribe members walking their younger children to the local school telling them hopeful words that would later turn them as sour as the wine grape he finished guzzling down.
A flock of ravens cawed by as if mocking the honor of the tribe. His only inheritance now rested in the hands of a daughter who wanted to change to motion of the world, a son who could drink a city dry, and a half grandchild who better be on the run or else if the tribe gets their hands on him he’s as good as dead.
Horses rumbled along the dirt path and he sat on his porch swing and bellowing out cannabis smoke to calm his nerves. “Father,”
“What is it Aiyana? You should sleep at this hour with all the late night work you have been doing.”
“Would help if my father caved just a little to let mine progress instead of fighting it with the hostility of a tiger.” Aiyana swiped at her eyes batting away see through water droplets. “ But now is not the time to talk politics Papa. We need to go through that forest and ensure there are no leftover tracing of a carcass. I need to know she is alive.”
“You know that walking into that sacred forest is a sin among our tribes name. You would curse the rest of our youngsters to be fated to a quick death, and we would have no hope of having anymore full blooded tribes members.”
“Your pride will do you in at some point. In fact, I hope it does. We could do without traditions old man. You know it. I know it. We no longer survive on rain alone anymore, or off the land. Doing away with ancient tradition is best for us.”
“Aiyana, I know you get your stubbornness from me but that does not mean you can charge in full throttle against your mother’s wishes. She wished for us to not leave behind the traditions. Just as her grandmother and so forth. I can not just do away with things. We would be no better than the Unega people. Our color and our pride needs to stand true even if it robs me of these days.”
“Chief, there is no pride in robbing others for our own benefit.”
“Oh, daughter of mine I am not here to prove what is wrong or right, our people have their pride, and we have the means to ensure to keep it high. But to do that we must respect the dead. Our loss out in those woods is that the woods picked the girl, and a bunch of pretty folk made of silk raised the girl. They don’t know a thing about nature out there.”
“No. Father, I raised her. She is my blood. She is your blood. They are her blood. But they should wash away a festival and a coming of age ceremony that is as old as the dirt under our feet. There is no reason we should send out our teenagers to their death in the woods without a weapon. Even a lone Unega hunter can mistake her for an animal like a bear.”
“ If you dislike my ways child, you can resign yourself of this heritage, and learn how the Unega feel about you the hard way. If the forest takes her soul it is to be that way as life and death are beyond our abilities to control.”
“Excuses. It is one more life claimed by you. You are no better than my half-son. Taking lives because you can.” Aiyanna turned tears streaming down her face as the grown woman wept for the past, future, and present moment. There would be war coming, and the war was feasting on those within the walls.
