Captive Spirit (4 page)

“A small one for your sister,” Gaho instructed her, still wrapping her hand around my elbow.

Chenoa nodded and emptied no more than a few raindrops worth of wine into a cup, barely enough to quench a rabbit. She gave it to Gaho, and Gaho lifted it to my lips. The sweet warm liquid dribbled down my throat, and I closed my eyes. It did taste good. I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since before ball court. Suddenly a few drops of wine was not nearly enough.

“Better?” Gaho whispered.

I nodded, dragging my tongue across my lips.

Gaho handed my cup back to Chenoa. “Good,” she said as her eyes darted past my shoulders. “Because it looks like Yuma and Miakoda wish to begin.”

***

Yuma was the tribal leader for the White Ant Clan.

He was everything that Miakoda of the Red Ant Clan was not: tall and slender like a saguaro, handsome, articulate, and regal. When he gazed into your eyes, you thought you were staring into a bottomless night sky. They always danced and sparkled as he listened intently to the children’s embellished tales about snared rabbits or to the boys’ bravado about ball court. When he listened, it was as if for that moment you were the most important person in the village. And when he spoke, you held your breath for fear you’d miss a single word. He was also the only Tribal Leader of the White Ant Clan I’d ever known. Next to Ituha, Yuma was like a second father to me.

For the Rain Ceremony, Yuma donned his white albino deerskins and matching sandals. Three necklaces strung with polished stones and grey shells hung around his neck and rested just below his bare chest where he painted yellow lines along each rib. Yuma strode into the middle of the growing crowd near the main fire pit. He lifted his hands above his head and the villagers fell silent. Miakoda immediately did the same from the other side of the fire except he held the carved walking stick in his right hand that he always carried and sometimes used on misbehaving children.

Without being told, the villagers began to shuffle to their mats around the fire, sitting with their families, Red Ant Clan members next to White. Gaho and Ituha took their coveted places beside Miakoda and his family as his invited guests. I squeezed next to Gaho. Chenoa and Onawa sat on the other side of Ituha. Eyota took his place at the center behind us, sitting straight as a hunter’s arrow. Fortunately, the sun finally lowered in the sky behind our shoulders but our foreheads and faces still beaded with sweat. The flames from the fire only thickened the air.

I looked for Honovi and finally spotted him above the flames. He sat cross-legged alongside his parents across from us, surrounded by other clan families. His hair was still damp from his swim and hung loose over his bare chest and shoulders. The bruises on his chest had become darker since his swim. I waited for his eyes to meet mine but they did not. Instead, he chatted with a pretty girl of fifteen harvests from the Red Ant Clan seated next to his family. Her name was Dyani. I’d seen her lots of times collecting mesquite seeds in the saguaro forest where Chenoa and I often walked. She had the most delicate hands and feet I’d ever seen.

Tonight, oddly, I envied her even more.

This was the first ceremony where Honovi and I didn’t sit together and my chest tightened from the change. I should be seated with Honovi, laughing, talking, and celebrating. He shouldn’t be seated beside Dyani. He barely knew her. What did she know of Honovi’s secrets?

Besides, it didn’t feel right sitting with Miakoda and his family of strangers. Looking at their unreadable faces, I feared that it would never feel right again.

Yuma lifted his hands above his head one final time, a signal for everyone to sit. As his hands lifted into the air, the shuffling stopped. Then Yuma nodded to an ancient woman named Chitsa sitting beside Miakoda. She was one of the elders. Her hair was as white and coarse as Yuma’s deerskin. When she walked, her shoulders curved over her neck and almost touched her ears. She didn’t talk as much as mumble because most of her front teeth were missing. Yuma said that she had The Power and for that she commanded as much respect from the clans as he did. It was believed throughout the village that Chitsa had visions and could see the future. She was the one who foresaw the lack of rain in the last two Seasons of Longer Days; her vision told us that the corn fields would turn brown and brittle.

And Chitsa had been right.

“Yuma is starting the ceremony with the Dance of Womanhood,” Gaho whispered to me as Chitsa shuffled around the fire. Gaho nodded at the ceremonial sticks that Chitsa clutched in both of her hands. The skin over Chitsa’s hands was so thin that I could see most of her bones. The sticks, like her hands, were smooth from age. Each stick had a deerskin pouch round with river pebbles. When they all shook, it sounded like rain.

My tongue dragged anxiously across my lips. I still tasted the sweetness from the wine. Normally I enjoyed watching the building excitement of our ceremonies—the beating drums, the chanting, even the fine white clouds of swirling sage and mesquite that circled above the fire. But not this time. This time I wasn’t merely an observer; I was a participant.

Since we sat beside Miakoda’s family, people studied my family, even though we pretended not to notice. I could feel their eyes sweeping over us, silently noting the pull of our shoulders, the lift of our chins. I was suddenly grateful that I wore my mother’s best deerskin and my family’s finest jewelry. Gaho was right—let everyone see that Ituha provided well for his family. None of us went without.

Still, my head began to spin as I waited for Chitsa to stand before me and offer a ceremonial stick. In order to join the rest of my sisters for the Dance of Womanhood, I would need to reach up and accept it. But instead of jubilation, I sank deeper into the ground, somehow hoping that Chitsa would pass me by.

Mercifully, she started on the opposite side of the circle and handed sticks to five girls who were as many harvests old as me. Their faces brightened as they accepted their sticks and stood proudly before their families. Their first step to womanhood had begun. I wished that my face would reflect such a glow, such gladness, instead of the tightness that stretched across my cheeks.

Then Chitsa slowly shuffled to the other side of the fire where I sat. After presenting a ceremonial stick to four more anxious girls, her cloudy eyes finally rested on me. The flames from the fire glowed around her like the sun. The tips of her hair turned orange. She became like a flower rising out of the desert. I couldn’t escape her.

She stood above me, staring with eyes that were dotted with bits of white and grey. She once had deep green eyes like mine, another oddity in our village, especially when everyone else had black or brown. In a way, Chitsa and I had that strange, unspoken connection because of it. Sometimes I thought she could read my thoughts, and that frightened me most of all.

Chitsa’s other features were buried in the folds of her dark, freckled skin. When her cloudy eyes held mine, she nodded once before tilting her head. She smiled, just a small one. Tentatively, I reached for the ceremonial stick she held over my head. But then her smile faded so abruptly that my hand froze in the air. My fist clenched.

Gaho nudged me once with her elbow.

I swallowed.

And then I opened my hand.

Before I could claim the stick, Chitsa pulled it close to her chest. Her eyes began to roll backwards and her eyelids started to flutter.

Everyone around us gasped, including Gaho and Ituha.

Yuma stood immediately, leapt across the circle in three easy sides and reached for her elbow before I even had a chance to breathe. Chitsa crumpled backwards into his arms and her head began to bob.

Then she started to moan.

“The Old One is having a vision,” someone whispered next to us. The hushed voices spread all the way around the fire.

“She’s having a vision!”

“Does she speak with Hunab Ku?”

“Will we finally have rain?”

“What does she see?”

The villagers stood alongside their children to watch Chitsa convulse in Yuma’s arms. Others placed their hands over their mouths in fear and excitement. All eyes rested on Chitsa, waiting.

Finally, her eyes stopped rolling and her head snapped upright but Yuma’s hands remained on her shoulders. He cradled her head against his arm. Then she dragged her tongue across her dry lips and shook her head, signaling to Yuma that she was all right. She could walk. With Yuma’s hand supporting the small of her back, Chitsa stepped closer to me. She nodded, once. And then she extended the last remaining ceremonial stick still clenched in her hands.

I reached for the stick again, instinctively, but this time my hand shook, too. I didn’t bother with trying to smile. I almost dropped the stick. That’s because there was something troubling about her eyes; they had turned darker. The white was replaced with flecks of green and brown. It was as if her green color had returned.

As I searched her eyes for answers, Chitsa mumbled something that I could barely understand. Then she spoke again. Barely above a whisper, she said, “Aiyana, you must run when you think you should walk.”

My neck pulled back. My eyes widened.

Run?
I thought.
Run where? Why?
Her words didn’t make any sense. What kind of a vision was that?

I wanted to grab Chitsa by the shoulders and beg her to tell me more but my lips froze. I was too stunned. Why had she singled me out from all of the others? Why not tell this to one of the other girls? Why me?

Leading Chitsa by the shoulders, Yuma walked her back to a thick mat of rabbit skins beside his family. She sank down into the furs, exhausted; my opportunity to question, lost. I sat numbly, holding the stick.

A drumbeat thundered behind me, just once, and I flinched.

Every girl had a ceremonial stick. The Dance of Womanhood had officially begun.

Trancelike, three more drummers began to bang their drums with long, white bones in perfect unison. The animal bones became sinewy extensions of their arms. Each heavy drumbeat pierced the air like thunder, silencing all other sounds. Everyone around the fire began to clap, slow and steady like the drumbeats.

Thump, thump, thump.

Thump, thump, thump.

The claps became louder with each steady drumbeat, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

One by one, each girl who held one of Chitsa’s ceremony sticks stood before her families and slowly began to pivot in small circles around the fire, shaking her stick to the steady beat of the drums. The hiss from each stick added to the music of the drumbeat. Each girl became a new layer to the dance.

The first to stand was Dyani and a breath lodged deep in my throat. I watched as Honovi’s eyes followed her as she began her dance around the fire.
Why is he ignoring me? What have I done? Why won’t he look at me?

But then, as if knowing that I watched him as much as Dyani, Honovi finally turned and locked his eyes onto mine from across the fire. Oddly, I felt relief. I smiled at him, just a tiny one, not enough for anyone but us to notice. Honovi nodded and my chest felt lighter. If only my feet felt the same way.

When it came my turn to join the dance, my knees wobbled and my head spun, but I took a deep breath and pulled my shoulders back. I would not disappoint Gaho and Ituha. I tried to beam at their expectant faces while failing miserably to ignore the clapping and the drumbeats that kept perfect time with the pounding inside my head. I worried that my feet were as tangled as my thoughts. I tried to focus on not tripping into the fire.

And so, I began my Dance of Womanhood by pivoting in slow, tiny circles like the other girls, shaking my stick to each drumbeat. To concentrate, I narrowed my eyes till they were tiny slits. It was less frightening that way. The pebbles hissed like a snake inside my deerskin pouch, a warning to evil spirits to keep their distance as I began the Dance of Womanhood. The tips of my sandals dug into the dirt with each pivot. To keep from hyperventilating, I pretended that I was somewhere else, even someone else, a girl with wings who could fly over the mountains surrounding our village. My arms finally began to feel lighter, even as the drumbeats grew heavier.

Thump, thump, thump.

Thump, thump, thump.

Soon, the drumbeats became so loud that they even silenced the clapping.

The closer we pivoted around the fire, the hotter my cheeks became. Around and around the fire we danced, once circle after another. Our feet had to pivot faster to keep up with the drumbeats. My head felt dizzy from all of the spinning and pivoting, but there were always helpful hands pushing me back into the circle, always back into the center.

Faster and faster, the drumbeats thundered around my ears. I pivoted and twirled so fast that I only saw flashes of faces and light through my eyelashes—Gaho’s smile, Ituha’s eyes, Eyota’s gleaming teeth, even Honovi’s serious expression. All of the colors around me—black, yellow, orange, red—blended into a single color, like the colors right before the sun disappears before night. And then the crescendo of the drumbeats finally melted with the clapping and the hissing from our ceremonial sticks until there wasn’t a sky full of sounds but a single one. We were one people, one color, one sound.

And then, as if Hunab Ku himself lowered his gentle hand over the entire village, silence fell upon the circle. My eyes were dry when I finally opened them. And when they opened, a circle of men stood around us wearing masks made of dark-red clay and dried leaves. My chin pulled close to my neck, confused, as my head still spun from all the dancing.

What is this?
I asked myself, blinking hard, trying to focus. I searched the villagers’ faces seated around us until my eyes found Gaho.
What is happening?
I asked her with my eyes.

But Gaho’s face was expressionless. She did not recognize the anxiety behind my eyes. And even if she did what could she do?

I searched the circle for Honovi but Honovi was missing.