Wa'lik And The Last Deer An Original Tale by Ron Fullwood [excerpt from] Chapter One Mikito awoke at dawn. Warm dust drifted through the cracks in the shelter's roof. His bed of fur slid off as he snaked out from underneath. He turned to drape his arm over his juniper longbow and pulled the cool wood close to his side. His fingers ran up and down the length of the strapping, thewed fast against the back of the straight splint of wood, and he found no imperfection in the smoothed ridges. He measured his grip around the hide in the center, and his fingers touched without much effort. Pulling himself up straight with the wood between his feet, he struggled a little to bend the top end of the splint to the loop of string. Mikito was not accustomed to ordering his own day and he was suddenly anxious to be in his mother's good graces. He set his longbow aside, brushed the branches back that were thatched overhead, and pushed outside into the glow of the late winter's morning sun. In the center of the village, Mikito's mother, Mi'rah, sat beside the cooking pit tending the fire. Before her on a large flat stone, crushed sugar pine cone seeds from last season's harvest topped off the hollows and spilled into a waiting basket below. She felt her son's arms wrap gently around her neck and she smiled. Mikito spoke quietly into her ear. "Ay'ukii, Hello, mother." "Ay'ukii, Mikito." she answered. He stepped back a little and waited, but his mother gave no instruction. She pulled her thin hair out of her face and turned back into the smoke. Mikito was an eager liege to the bidding of his elders, alert for any charge that would signal his ascension into the cadre of adults and men. He did not need to be enjoined to the day's labor. Across the glen the village was coming alive. There were only four children in their small valley. Mikito watched as his sister, the oldest child in the tribe, emerged from his family's lodge. Born Shu'nay'aron, branch of Sumac, she was known by the tribe as Me'asa'coiit, named for the adornments of bone and precious stone that she skillfully crafted and gave away. Seventeen seasons of life in the valley made her a constant companion to the other children, with the exception of Mikito who would measure himself against every challenge from his maturing sister. Shu'anay's job was to watch over seven-year old Caahi, daughter of Maruk and Otahei, the toolmaker. She also cared for the only boy in the valley other than Mikito, four-year old Yana'qui, son of Ta'niay and Kayakunva, the fur trapper. She was two heads taller than Mikito and about that much stronger. She was fast, too, but was bound and fettered by her young charges, and Mikito was seldom harassed beyond his ability to take flight. A woman's life in the forest was measured against her ability to work and persevere. As Shu'anay approached adulthood, the prospect of her liberty from the tribe was leavened by the harshness of life in the forest. She would not expect to survive without the support of men, but she did not intend to grow up dependent and helpless. In her eyes, Mikito's independence was destined by virtue of his maleness. He would soon outgrow her, but she would dominate him for as long as she was able. Shu'anay had initiated Mikito to the manner of an uncompromising, virulent woman. The crop of her dark brown hair bounced over the crest of the hill. She was followed closely by her lesser gang of three. "Suva'nik." Mikito whispered to his mother. He would see her later. Mi'rah dropped a small amount of pine nuts and juniper fruit into his hand and gently urged him on his way. He would have to breach the roving obstacle, and he set a course to defy the gauntlet, but they had ambushed him. With a resounding, "Ook naa! Come here!" Shu'anay turned Mikito around and closed the gap between them. She stepped in his path and stared down at him with a silly grin. He stepped back and lost his footing on the edge of the embankment behind him. In the next instant, he was upended, rolling halfway to the bottom of the hill, a victim of the retribution of his nemesis scamp. The distance impelled was enough for Mikito to effect a retreat. He scrambled through the ivy and righted himself, cheating Shu'anay out of her moment of dominance over all of the lesser villagers. He skirted the path, satisfied that he had avoided her, for now. As he looked through the woods, Mikito could see the men of the village gathered at their usual meeting place beside the creek. Wa'lik, his father, stood over the men, motioning upstream with an excited wave of his mighty bow. Mikito gobbled his meal and started down the hill. He quickly recovered and ducked into the scrub thicket to creep within hearing distance. Only grown men were welcome to share in their boasting and plotting. "Wapiti!" cried Wa'lik, as he drew a precious arrow from his mangled leather sheath and let it fly upstream. He then crouched down and in a solemn voice counseled those seated that the Deer Spirit had again filled his dreams. Singing songs of the great Wapiti deer herd, the Spirit had called Wa'lik by name and had conjured visions of the giant elk he had hunted in the past. Mikito slid closer to see the faces of those who had gathered, without giving himself away. Ota'hei sat directly underneath Wa'lik, looking up into his face with a frown. Ota'hei always had a grim look about him. His dark eyes were deeply set behind his massive, wooly brows, and he watched through the chopped, shingled front of his long black hair. Bruja set himself so that, as he watched Wa'lik speak, he could include the rushing stream and an occasional trout in his broad view. He dangled the end of the grass rope he had fiddled together, down to the brooking stream below so that it skipped along the surface of the current. Kayakunva was perched on a stump with a clutch of new arrows resting atop his longbow, nodding, with an approving gleam in his quick eyes. And he marked in his mind the spot where Wa'lik's shaft had fallen. Mikito never tired of his father's tales of a time when the giant deer filled the forest and the valley woods. Wapiti, he told him, stood as tall as a man at its shoulders, was as heavy as ten men, and had bones like branches atop its head. But Mikito had never seen a giant deer. These days there were only the white-tails and the muley long ears. As he had grown, these deer seemed smaller to him, and every season they had become harder to find in the valley "Ha'ii, matee! Wait! Stop talking!" Bent and weathered, the tribe's eldest man stopped Wa'lik with a wave of his hand before he could finish the telling of his latest dream. "Why," Marmot asked, "does the Deer Spirit disturb only one hunter's sleep? Many nights I have called and sung but no Spirit came, no Deer Spirit answered. The Wapiti are gone forever." The tribe called the old man Marmot. A full head of gray hair down his back made him look like the yellowbelly rodent of the same name. Marmot was one of a band of Medicine men and Shamanists who had scattered north. They were driven out of their Pueblo village land by mistrust and disillusionment, brought on by a long period of drought and disease. Many small wars erupted after their departure. The leaderless people, packed together in close, tough competition, found it impossible to share the land's dwindled resources between the many tribes. Many more would be pushed to scatter in all directions to avoid the fighting and unrest. Marmot had left his band far behind and pressed north to search the forest wilderness for healing plants. In the past, many a hunt had begun with a vision from Wa'lik, but, he would dream only of elk. When the elk could no longer be found, it was Marmot who had begun to conjure visions of Rabbit and his den. In an elaborate nighttime ritual, the manner of which was the invention of Marmot, the fur of the rabbit was cast into a crackling chaparral fire. He would be aided in this ritual by Wa'lik's aunt, Hamiahaj, "the woman who would be Marmot's wife." He would appear overcome, utter strange words, and sing songs known only to him. Then, he would withdraw to his lodge to receive visions of Rabbit and the location of his den. In the morning he would emerge and announce the vision, which would cause great celebration in the village and a rush of preparations for the hunt. Mikito watched as the old man pulled himself up, and the whole clan, one after the other, left his father standing alone with his bow. He hunched back out of sight, and Wa'lik ducked away upstream. It would be nightfall before he would see his father return home from checking his traps and snares. He wondered whether his father was angry. Mikito lay there awhile, staring up into his drooping tent of spruce branches. His thoughts were interrupted by a sharp trill from panicky ground squirrels, coming undone, as their black and white-striped offspring scurried straight for Mikito where he lay. The two new forest residents stopped a short distance away and stood up on ends, chirping and twitching their long ears back and forth. Mikito quickly fashioned a harmless makeshift bow from a sapling branch. Sighting his prey, the young hunter let his stick arrow fly, and the chastened newcomers scrambled back to the safety of their parents' nest. He rolled over to the water's edge, taking a long look upstream to where his father had gone. The stream was running full from the melting mountain snow, cold and wide and deeper than its calm face would betray. Mikito lay on his stomach, the way he had seen his father do when he drank from a stream, and touched his forehead to the blue water. He stared down at his reflection, and his face was his father's face. He reached in and muddied the water. Atop the hill the village had come fully awake. This warm winter morning promised to awaken every desire hibernating inside. The forest floor had begun to glow a mossy green with a new season's rush of growth to forage. The forest around them was a perpetual resource for their survival. Mikito would rely on his sharp eyes and strong back to keep up with the women today as they searched the wilderness for food. A hard day's work often meant larger portions at mealtime. He ran most of the way back to the village, gathering litter as he climbed. Mi'rah caught Mikito before he could reach the hut. An armful of kindling smoothed the furrows in his mother's brow. "Where is your father?" she asked, not waiting for an answer. She smiled down at her son. "I need you to help, Kito." she said firmly. "Come back to me here, after you have finished at the spring." Mi'rah headed back to the lodge with the bundle and Mikito started down a well worn path to the bathing place. A short distance through the woods, there was a hillside where the water table cut across the land and spilled through boulders and stones into a granite basin. Marmot had created a waterfall above a stone basin by digging a flume from the brook to the mantle and backfilling it with rocks. There was clean water in the plunge pool for bathing and washing, away from the dangerous currents that flowed beneath the stream. Halfway down, Mikito met the returning line of women bathers and stood aside to allow them to pass. Each woman and child carried a full water basket. "Che'emyaach! Hurry up!" cried Ta'mah'iit from the head of the line to the others as she brushed by. Mikito cut away from the path and made his way down to the spring. Once there, he splashed into the frigid black water, indifferent to the cold. Then, he pulled himself out again and flounced onto the mossy edge of the pond and looked around. Before him the wide strata of rocks emptied the water into a progression of shallow pools, forming an alluvial garden covered with Nymphaea and bog Arum. The sun glistened on the golden yellow spathes of skunk cabbage, crisply folded, revealing new pearlescent sprouts and auguring an early spring. Mikito looked beyond the forest through the budding trees. To the east, a little uphill and a little downhill, the land rose steadily to meet a purple-gray wall of mountains, dotted with ancient fir and juniper. On the other side, the land fell around a clear, blue lake with birch woods and pine teeming with rabbits and streams clogged with spawning trout every summer. There lay the lands of the Daowahga, the home of Mikito's closest kin tribes. All of the relatives would gather in the summer at the lake to bless the land and the animals, and give thanks to all that had sustained them throughout the season. They would build a summer shelter and avail themselves of all the lake forest had to offer. Mikito marked in his mind the different ways of the people there, from the stories that they told, and the songs of Spirit and the past that echoed off the water, up to the broad sky. He was at once impatient for any amount of work that would draw the day of their departure closer. It was providence that cleared the path home, for there would be no yielding from Mikito as he reached the village at the top of his bent. He found his mother kneeling behind the lodge, busy with two large baskets. "Mikito," she spoke without looking up, "I'm going somewhere." She tucked the two baskets under her arm and began to walk slowly out to the timber and the tussocks beyond. "Wait!" Mikito cried out. He caught up to her and eagerly took one of the baskets in hand. "Let's go." he offered with a smile. He followed behind, carefully matching her steps to keep from making a sound. Soon, the tops of the village huts were all he could see as he glanced back through the brown-black seed heads floating above the tufts of bunch grass. Mi'rah stopped some distance ahead. There in front of her lay branches scattered across a wide hole in the base of a fallen oak, with mud and grass mashed throughout. As he approached, Mikito could see several connecting ditches, also covered with branches and a muddy thatch. The air smelled musty and the ground was damp and oily. He spotted rotting piles of, what looked like, entrails of some sort, gutted and discarded from an earlier hunt, strewn around the ground attracting flies in the sun's heat. An odd stand of brush separated itself from the thicket along the site and leaned toward them. Mikito dropped his pack and backed up quickly. The clump of branches was alive! Grass and weeds fell aside and there stood an ashen man, bare except for the strip of hide covering his waist. He was darker than anyone Mikito had ever seen, even underneath the gray dust that covered his large frame. He lowered his reddened eyes and glowered, first at Mi'rah, and then at Mikito. The hulky beast crouched and began to circle the pair. He stopped directly in front of Mi'rah and began to shiver, sending a chill through Mikito that spread from his feet and numbed the top of his head. He was frozen in place, unable to move or yell out. The ashen man's arms rose slowly toward Mi'rah as if he would grab her with his outstretched swollen hands. Mi'rah would not look his way or move from where she stood. She held her bundle closer and fixed her eyes on the ramshackle bunker behind the creeping menace. At once, there came a shrill cry from underneath the pile and a young girl emerged. She was clothed in torn fur and had a pale mat of hair surrounding her sallow, dirty face. She yelled something as she ran at the ashen man, swinging her arms wildly. The man turned and snarled and they could see that he was afraid. He reached back and shoved the girl to the ground. She pulled her self partway up and watched as he lurched back to confront them again. He stopped short and straightened, looming over the hapless pair. "What do you want here?" he growled. Mi'rah slid her feet slowly backward, saying nothing. Mikito caught a glimpse of her hand behind, carefully fishing around in her pack. As he watched, one side of her arm appeared to be turning black. The sun glittered on her transforming limb, black and silver and undulating. She raised her arm to the ashen man, and he began to shiver again. From where Mikito stood, the glint of light on her arm had brightened into a searing diamond. Transfixed, he reached out as if to grab the glittery prize, but he quickly recovered, recoiling as he realized the jewel was the scale of an ominous serpent; its swaying head giving authority to Mi'rah's steady countenance. Lowering her arm, she let the snake fall before her. The attacker then fell away and grabbed the young girl to put her in harm's way. The girl struggled free and scampered over to the snake, peering down to gauge the source of her guardian's fear. Reaching behind its head, she took the serpent into her arms and offered it up to Mi'rah with a defiant smile. The giant spook scrambled back, terrified and trembling. "You have no right here!" he wailed in retreat. Growling to himself, he disappeared into the ground. Mikito could hear him muttering deep within his underground lair. In this land, only the evil and the wicked held any fear of serpents. Each snake skin shed revealed a new life, a soul reborn, a defiance to the destruction and decay that played host to predators and tyrants. Mi'rah stooped and took the snake from the child. Around its head, the serpent's shell was slough and brittle, its ripe scales glossy and sleek, and its eyes wet and pale, set to harden to the world anew. Mi'rah put it among some branches, and the old skin was quickly turned inside out and cast off. Regenerated, their anguine sentinel retreated into the brambles. At last, the trio seemed well-met, but that wasn't enough to hold the child there. She dug her feet into the soft ground and turned to run. Mi'rah called softly to the child, "Little one, you are sunlight born from the cold earth. The little girl turned and fixed her deep gaze on Mikito and then bristled as he cast a sympathetic smile her way. Mi'rah nudged him and motioned for the pack he had dropped. She beckoned the child to sit. In her pack there were simple smocks of fur and a blanket. The young girl grabbed a smock from the pile and quickly slipped it over her own torn frock. From Mikito's pack Mi'rah produced a handful of juniper berries, whereupon, the child fell about Mi'rah's arms and gobbled gratefully from her cupped hands. Mi'rah smoothed the hair from her tiny face and gently examined her soiled and scratched frame. Suddenly, the girl sat up and glared at the bunker. All around was silence, but the child behaved as if she were being called. At once, she leapt up and grabbed the two packs and raced for an opening in the ground. Then, she was gone. Mi'rah did not follow. She turned and quickly made her way back toward the village. Mikito followed, doing his best to keep up. He turned back once, thinking he heard shouting, but he couldn't be sure. He thought he saw something yellow flash through the trees, but he wasn't certain. Mikito remembered a song which reminded him of the young girl. He recited it aloud as he loped back to the village: "Yellow bird, yellow bird. In the sky, in the sky. See the fox, see the fox. On the ground, on the ground. Little mouse, little mouse. See the bird, see the bird. See the fox, see the mouse. On the ground, on the ground. Yellow bird, yellow bird. See the mouse, see the mouse. On the ground, on the ground. In the sky, in the sky."