People of the Sky (33 page)

She could only huddle and cry in the well of want, shame and deep degradation into which the shaman had cast her and where she would stay forever…

“Kesbe-Rohoni.”

Her ears heard Chamois voice, but to her mind it meant nothing. She felt a touch, but it was a
million miles distant.

“They have gone. Why do you huddle so strangely and cry like a child?”

She felt the words. Now they hurt. She drew herself in as tight as she could about the grotesqueness of her nightmare pregnancy, trying to seal in the horror and the shame. No one must ever know.

But Chamol wouldn’t give up, nor go away. “Tell me what they have done—what she has done.”

Kesbe squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to open her mouth, but her teeth chattered too violently to let her talk. From the depths of the well, she tried to reach up, to touch, to speak. One word emerged, distorted, broken.

“Imiya,” she whispered.

“He is safe in your
Gooney Berg
. The evil is gone from him,” Chamol answered, misunderstanding.

“No. The evil…in me…Sahacat put the evil in me…” She groped outward along the curve of her belly. Couldn’t Chamol see the hideous thing she had become…had even half-wanted to become? The thought brought a flood of renewed tears and a wish, mercifully granted, to retreat into darkness. The last thing she felt was the Pai woman taking her hands and holding them firmly.

She woke to the soft sound of rattles and a soft breathing of air across her face. Something gritty lay under her. Sand. A feather-scale fan passed slowly across her face, caressing her. The low sound of chanting echoed within the room. A woman’s voice. Chamol.

She still felt pregnant. The weight of her abdomen flattened her buttocks against the floor. From the corner of one eye, she saw patterns on the floor, patterns that reminded her of the sand-painting of Imiya and Haewi that she had seen in Chamois house. She craned her neck up a little. It was true. She lay in the midst of a sand-painting.

Her memory of the depiction of Imiya she had previously seen woke concern for the boy. How long had he been left inside the hot metal shell of the aircraft?

“Kesbe-Rohoni, it is good you wake. You must free my brother from your Grandmother Aronan. Nabamida will take Imiya to his house, where Sahacat will not find him “

Kesbe blinked at Chamol, remembering how she had wrenched the Indian woman away from Imiya and out of the C-47’s cargo door. Could Chamol possibly have forgiven her for that? She tried to explain, apologize, but the words wouldn’t form.

“That does not matter now.” Chamol touched her gently. “Give us the means to enter Grandmother Aronan and get Imiya.”

She groped, found
Gooney Berg’s
keys, slipped the cord over her head. When she tried to sit up, she shook violently. “Give…these to…Nabamida,” she managed to say, then tried to explain how the right key fitted into the aircraft’s door.

Chamol soothed her, saying that the bowmaker would be able to figure out what she meant, since he was an artisan who formed and shaped wood. She left the room briefly to deliver the keys to Nabamida along with brief instructions. Kesbe heard the tread of the man’s feet, the jingle of keys, the rustle of the door flap. Chamol came back.

Sitting cross-legged, the Pai woman began once again to sweep Kesbe ritually with a plume of feather-scales.

“I know what has been done to you,” she said softly. “In your mind, you are
lomuqualt
. It cannot be undone. It can only be seen through. I will help, for I know what it is to give birth.”

She smoothed Kesbe’s hair back from her sweating face. “Tell me what moves through your mind, your body.”

At first, Kesbe’s tongue was locked into silence by the overwhelming feelings of revulsion and shame, but gradually the fanning and the gentle chanting relaxed her. She began to speak, slowly and hesitantly at first, then the words began to spill from her lips as her trust in Chamol grew. She told her the hallucinations, the images, the feelings.

“You fear that you no longer own your body,” the Pai woman said, smoothing Kesbe’s hair. “But you never have possessed it entirely. All of us belong to something greater. We share ourselves with that which creates and that which is good.”

Kesbe felt that Chamois words were pressing against the barrier in her mind, but still could not break through. There was still something that she herself was holding back. It was the forbidden want that had colluded in her downfall and even now made her wish to retreat again into catatonia. It was something that wouldn’t come out in words.

“Sahacat is not the only woman with power among the Pai,” said Chamol. “I too have skill, though it is small. Sit up.” She took Kesbe’s hands and pulled her to a cross-legged position. She began to clap softly in rhythm while singing in a low voice. A smell blossomed from her and when Kesbe inhaled it, she felt as though she were out in the desert in full sun, sitting amid the rocks and fragrant plants.

“I will guide you where your mind fears to go,” said Chamol. “Where are you now?”

Kesbe told her.

“It is good. Stay there. Be with yourself, with your body. Do not judge it.”

She was there on the desert, with the sun bathing her face, her breasts and the roundness of her lower body. She felt strangely neutral, balanced on an edge where she might fall one way or the other. The key was her desire. Would she suppress it as grotesque or untimely, as her culture and her upbringing bade her to do, or could she somehow admit that this was something she could want.

She felt herself sitting cross-legged. She leaned forward, pressing her hands into the soil, letting her big belly rest on the earth. Like the world, she was engorged and plump with life. She rested in a serene animal contentment, feeling her fullness with rejoicing and pride.

“You are ready to bring forth,” said Chamois voice, now carried on the desert wind. “Straddle the earth and face the sun.”

She stood, leaning back with her legs spread. With her hands, she cradled the weight of her belly. Something stirred within her, growing to a warm turbulence that heated her womb. It kicked like a child about to be born, then pushed down with a molten intensity that almost became pain. The muscles in her belly tightened, wrapping and squeezing in a series of strong pulsations like orgasm. They became stronger, nearing the edge of pain. Sweat ran on her forehead and her breasts. She felt the nearness of fear, for this was the ultimate surrender of control.

“Your body was made to do all things,” said the wise voice on the wind. “This is neither the greatest nor the least. Let it happen.”

Kesbe loosed the tendons of her hands that had drawn her fingers into claws against her belly. She clasped them beneath the swell, giving herself to the pulsations that swept through her.

The gift of her womb surged down, and through and out, pouring itself from her in a hot cascade of power and life. She flung back her head in the joy, wonder and pain, letting loose a shout to the sky.

And as her belly gave what she had nurtured, she looked down to see a rainbow arching from
between her legs in a fountain of colors that spread to the heavens.

“You are the woman-who-births-a-rainbow,” Chamol said and in that instant, Kesbe was back on the sand-painting with the aronan feather-scale fan sweeping the air above her. With a sting of relief, yet regret, she knew her body was restored, her belly flat, as it had always been.

She looked up, once again fully within herself. The fan paused.

“You are healed,” Chamol said. “Not only of the hurt Sahacat worked in you, but the deeper hurt given by your own people. Is it true that to the people of your tribe bearing and birthing is unwanted? Even shameful?”

“It can interrupt a woman’s life,” Kesbe tried to explain. “It can interfere with other things she may want to do.”

“But it must be a choice,” said Chamol softly. “Not something a woman…you…are driven from because of fear.”

Kesbe reached for the Pai woman’s hand and held it. “I am no longer afraid. What you did…was it magic? I know that part of me now and it no longer frightens the rest.”

“If it was magic, it was the magic of one woman reaching to another through the knowing sense. And the magic of a wounded spirit guided to heal itself.”

Kesbe sat up, trying to be careful of the sand-painting. “I think that when the time comes to make such a choice, I will be able to do it without fear.”

“That time will come,” said Chamol. She paused, studying Kesbe. “You have grown stronger through enduring and learning. I think it is right for you to learn one thing more.”

“And that is?” asked Kesbe as Chamol helped her to her feet.

“The truth about the Pai people,” the woman answered. “Come and you will see it with new eyes.”

Silently, Kesbe followed her from the room.

Kesbe wanted to see Imiya first, but when Chamol reassured her that Nabamida was caring for the boy, she followed where the Pai woman led. Chamol took her to a small hut that stood apart from the pueblo. Dusk was falling, casting long dark shadows on the floor of the cave that held Tuwayhoima. Kesbe could see wavering lights through window openings in the stone and adobe wall. From inside came singing.

“We bless he who bears new life.

We bless she who bears new life.

The gods honor the coming of this one.

May it enter this world softly, in beauty.

May the one who is coming be held proudly to the sun.

That the god may know this child.”

She suddenly suspected what Chamol was taking her to see. She pulled back on the woman’s hand, stopping her briefly. “Is this a
lomuqualt
birth ceremony?”

“Yes. Why?”

Kesbe swallowed, remembering what had happened to Imiya in
Gooney Berg
not so many hours ago. “I’m not sure I can stand to see more of that…kind of thing.”

“But you have not seen it,” Chamol said, her eyes wide and her face earnest. “You have seen Sahacat’s perversion of it and your fear of it, but you have not seen the truth.”

The singing rose up again, washing over and through Kesbe like a warm heavy wave. It bore a strange sort of comfort. Among the voices, she heard one she knew. Nyentiwakay’s.

She looked up in surprise.

“Come,” Chamol said, leading the way and pushing aside the door hanging for Kesbe. Even before she stepped into the dimly lit chamber, she caught the odor of excitement and expectation. Eyes turned to her, lips opened in surprise, but before anyone could challenge her right to be there, Chamol pushed ahead, whispering quick explanations.

People crowded the small room, some sitting cross-legged on rugs, others standing or leaning against the walls. At the center was a knot of people surrounding Nyentiwakay, making a living birth-chair on which the
lomuqualt
half-lay, half-squatted. What surprised Kesbe was that at least half of those present were Pai men and child-warriors. They were not just spectators, but active participants, helping to support and soothe the
lomuqualt
as the first pangs of birth began.

It conflicted entirely with Kesbe’s knowledge that among ancient Pueblo peoples, such an event was the province of women. She said so in a low voice to Chamol.

“But why should only women be present? The one who bears is a man,” Chamol answered.

“What?” Kesbe managed to splutter, turning more gazes in her direction. “I thought Nyentiwakay was a woman.”

“Nyentiwakay is a man. He is carrying an aronan-child. That is what it means to be
lomuqualt
. Women can also be
lomuqualt
, but only a woman can conceive and carry a human child.”

Kesbe slumped back against a wall to which she had retreated. “I’m not sure I can believe all this.”

Then she saw something else that astonished her. In the midst of the gathering of human forms and faces, she saw one that wasn’t. Standing near Nyentiwakay was an aronan that Kesbe had never seen before. What she could see of its wings looked odd. They were too small for the
creature and had a fresh new sheen that didn’t match the age-dulled cuticle. It dipped its head to caress Nyentiwakay with its antennae, telling all there that it loved him.

“Warrior-woman!” The voice was not Chamois. Nyentiwakay turned a flushed and sweating face toward Kesbe. “You have come to see me in my joy. Chamol, don’t let her cower in the corner. Bring her here so she may see and feel and smell…and know what it is to be a woman or a man among the Pai Yinaye.’

Kesbe’s legs turned rubbery and her stomach did flip-flops. The memory of that
thing
slithering out of a human body. She wasn’t sure she could witness that again. If that was the truth of the Pai Yinaye, she wished herself a thousand miles away from it.

She remembered something that Sahacat had said.
It is evil to you because you look at it through eyes touched with evil.
Through Chamol she had learned that what clouded her vision was not evil but fear. Now she had lived through that fear, faced it down even though it threatened to take possession of her body. Had she indeed purged herself of it? This would be the test.

And suddenly her legs were moving her through the crowded room and her eyes were meeting Nyentiwakay’s. She took the hand that was given to her, held it in her palm and studied it. It was broad, blunt-fingered and powerful. A man’s hand. Or perhaps the hand of one who was both woman and man at once, combining the gifts of both sexes.

As Kesbe stooped beside the
lomuqualt
, she was drawn into the interweaving of human bodies that held and supported Nyentiwakay. She found herself kneeling alongside the sinewy form and looking over the rise of belly. Someone lifted and parted Nyentiwakay’s robe in preparation. Kesbe saw that the
lomuqualt’s
abdomen was no mere bag of swollen flesh, but well-strapped with muscle. And beyond, she glimpsed the indisputable evidence that Nyentiwakay was indeed male.

The muscles in the
lomuqualt’s
strong abdomen tensed. He flung his head back. “It is coming,” he said and began to pant fiercely.

A last surge of panic made Kesbe glance hastily about her. She was hemmed in on all sides by the Pai and Nyentiwakay’s flier crowding in, around and almost on top of her. She could only stay and see it through.

Chanting began again and broke into singing, both aronan and human. Nyentiwakay joined the song, which somehow fitted the rhythm of his effort. Though Kesbe could not sing the words in Pai, she could follow the melody. She began to feel that she was becoming part of a group being and that it was this entity, not just Nyentiwakay alone who labored to bring new life into the world.

And then, at the peak of the song, the people surrounding the
lomuqualt
pushed him up into a squatting position. Nyentiwakay curled about his body, pushing against his belly with powerful forearms and shoulder muscles that bulged with the effort. Kesbe was caught in the grip of two contradictory emotions—horrified fascination and joyful excitement. She found herself straining to see the strange birth. Her neck ached and her memories jabbed at her, but neither could force her to look away.

And then suddenly Nyentiwakay’s panting became a triumphal shout and Kesbe smelled the spiciness of aronan-scent mixed in with human blood and sweat. He collapsed backwards into supporting arms while an old woman drew from his body a red-smeared white capsule that looked like a cocoon. Attached to the capsule was a cord like an umbilicus that entered Nyentiwakay’s body through the vaginal-like opening behind his genitals. Carefully the crone severed the cord, cleaned the capsule, then held it up to show all assembled. In the firelight,
Kesbe could see the form of an aronan nymph through the opalescent covering.

The old woman brought out an obsidian blade and carefully slit the capsule. Nyentiwakay sat up, holding out his arms. Again Kesbe’s attention was fixed on the capsule and the stirring of the new creature inside. The old Pai woman used her blade with care, for the covering was thin.

A feathery antenna plume curled through the opening. Another followed, then a large-eyed head with a short muzzle and stumpy horns. Carefully the old midwife drew the nymph from its silken cradle and patted the dampness from the fuzz on its body. It lifted its head and unrolled a tiny watch-spring of a tongue as she placed it in the arms of the human being who had borne it.

Nyentiwakay smiled. The soft light in his eyes seemed to brighten the whole room. People leaned closer for a look at the little creature and made the same oohing and aahing noises they made over a newborn baby. Beside the
lomuqualt
stood his aronan, arching its neck proudly and dipping its head to stroke the nymph with its antennae.

Kesbe felt shaky and she didn’t know exactly why. It was not that she had no reason, there were too many possibilities. Perhaps the most likely one was her dawning realization that she might have been wrong about the Pai and their intimate partnership with aronans.

She was also puzzled about Nyentiwakay. Did all the Pai males develop this strange hermaphrodism? These people were of human stock. What had happened to alter them so radically. She tried to ask Nyentiwakay, but he was wrapped up in admiring his new infant. Instead she motioned Chamol over and asked her.

“It is the effect of the
kekelt
drink,” Chamol answered after listening to her carefully. “In women, it enhances and prepares the natural womb to carry an aronan-child. Men who are given the drink grow new organs, resembling a womb and a birthway. They contain and nourish the embryo as it develops into a nymph.”

“I know where the drink comes from,’ Kesbe said, remembering the strange tears that swelled beneath Baqui Iba’s eyes when the shaman rubbed its face. “But why do they make it?”

“It enables them to survive by having us bear their children.”

“But if that is so, how did aronans exist before the Pai came into this world?”

“They used another creature of this world, one that was rapidly dwindling in number. Had we not come and made a new partnership, the aronans would have also died,” Chamol said.

“What was the old partnership like? Why did the creatures start dying out?”

“We do not know, but we are grateful to them for preserving the aronans until we came. Those creatures made an even greater sacrifice than we.” Chamol paused and stared solemnly at Kesbe. “Legend says that each one who bore an aronan-child died while bringing it to life.”

Kesbe felt hot, then cold. If Chamol had told her this before she had come to witness the birth of Nyentiwakay’s aronan-child, would she have had the strength to face it?

Yes. With what I know and feel now, I would have.

In a whisper, she said, “That’s why the previous hosts all died out. The aronans themselves killed them. But why don’t they kill us, then?”

“They have learned. And we have learned,” said Chamol softly. “Both have adapted. We have given and accepted gifts that make it possible for each to exist without harming the other.”

Kesbe wasn’t sure that she could look upon such a thing as a gift, especially after what Chamol had just told her. But even if aronans had been parasitic on a previous host species, that was in the past. How the change had happened, she did not know, but the result was present in this room: Nyentiwakay with his aronan-child in his arms.

As her uneasiness faded, certain aspects of the Pai-aronan partnership intrigued her. If both men and women could share the experience of bringing a new life into the world, the resulting
empathy between the sexes might bring about an entirely new relationship, one less filled with jealousy, dependence and dominance.

Chamol began helping an old Pai man to fill a large shallow earthenware pot with warm sudsy water. The first to be bathed was Nyentiwakay. He held the little nymph against his chest while the midwife ceremonially washed his hair and then sponged the blood and fluids from his thighs.

The birthway will close,” he said to Kesbe as she watched. “My
lomuclualt-womb
will gradually disappear and my body will be as before. But I am changed. I am now a man “

Then the little aronan-child was carefully placed in the shallow water on a low footstool near Nyentiwakay. Each of the visitors who filed by took up a tiny cob of corn that had been soaked to make it pliable. With the softened cob, they each cleaned a small part of the nymph’s body.

Kesbe wasn’t sure whether she would be included in this, but when Nyentiwakay beckoned her closer and placed a wet corncob in her hand, she didn’t hesitate. She chose a place on the newborn’s neck, stroking gingerly for fear she might damage the new cuticle. It turned its head to her, its insect eyes looking velvety in its little foal-muzzle of a face. It unfolded its legs in the bathwater and swept them around, obviously enjoying this new sensation.

The old midwife lifted the aronan-child out, dripping, patted it dry and dusted it with cornmeal. As she worked, Kesbe heard her voice rising and falling in a prayer-chant that wished the babe long life, strong flight and a fruitful partnership when the time came. She also offered the aronan-child a name, whereupon all the guests, to Kesbe’s amazement, did the same. She found that she too, was expected to suggest one.

Her mind stumbled. She didn’t even know whether the aronan-child was male or female. Neither, really, although they all must lay eggs, she thought. Then a name did come into her head and she said it, hearing the hush. “Haewi Namij. Wind Laughing.”

She fell silent, wondering if she had just committed the worst of offenses. Perhaps it was too soon and the memory still too painful.

“It will be one name among many,” said Nyentiwakay. “And it is a good name.”

The old woman made a path of cornmeal through the door while other people robed Nyentiwakay and helped him to his feet.

He rose to stand beside his aronan and said, “This is the one who was my flier and my partner when I was a child-warrior. This is the one who planted its egg within me. When its second set of wings is grown, it will fly free on the wind until the end of its life.” Together the man and the aronan followed the line of cornmeal to the edge of the mesa.

Human arms and segmented forelimbs together lifted the aronan-child to the rising sun.

Chamol crept up softly behind Kesbe, disturbing the trance-like state into which she had fallen. “Now Nyentiwakay will marry and father children. His firstborn son or daughter will partner with his aronan-child, his second will take the nymph borne by the woman he will choose as his wife. It is the Pai way to know that there is another spirit destined to walk with you on your life-road. It is a good thing, not one to fear.”

“I know that now,” she whispered. “Chamol, I have to go back to
Gooney Berg
. I…I need to think things over.”

Kesbe wanted to head straight for her aircraft, but she had given the keys to Nabamida.