A Hero's Tale Read online

  "Hush," said Maara.

  I opened my eyes.

  Maara brushed the tears from my cheeks. "You were dreaming."

  The memory of my dream was still vivid, and as I told it to her, Maara grew thoughtful.

  "Did the dream frighten you?" she asked.

  "No," I told her. "It was beautiful."

  She smiled at me. "I think you must be one of us at heart."

  Before I could ask her what she meant, she looked up at the fading light and said, "We need to collect firewood before night falls."

  When I got up, I saw a large bundle, tied with a rope of twisted vines, set just inside the fissure in the tree trunk. The knot looked so complicated that I would have cut it, but Maara pulled at one loose strand and it came undone. She unfolded the entire hide of an elk, with the elk's thick winter coat still on it. It was lined with soft deerskin, and another deerskin fell out of the bundle.

  "The forest people have given us a proper bed," said Maara.

  She handed me our cloaks, laid the deerskin down in place of them, and spread the elk hide over it. Then I noticed a covered basket in the shadows by the doorway. When I took the cover off, I saw that it was filled with something that resembled coarsely ground grain. I handed it to Maara, and she tasted it.

  "Acorn meal," she said.

  She held the basket out to me. I took a pinch of the meal and tried it. It was bland, with a faint nutty aftertaste.

  "It makes a good mush," said Maara. "Bread too. My mother used to make a dough of it, roll it into balls, and bake them in the ashes of the fire."

  "The forest people brought us gifts?"

  Maara nodded. "When we make our visit, we'll take them something."

  We had so little, I couldn't think of anything we had that we could spare, but Maara seemed confident that we would find something worthy of the wealth they'd given us.

  By the time we had gathered enough firewood for the night, it was almost dark. For supper we made a stew of venison and wild onions. Maara tried her hand at making acorn bread. She kneaded the dough and shaped the loaves as if she had done it all her life, and the bread turned out very well. We dipped it into the broth of the stew to soften the crust. It was delicious.

  After supper Maara set me the task of braiding creepers into a stout cord for making snares, while she wove a fish trap out of hazel wands. As we worked, I thought about the forest people and wondered what they thought of us inhabiting their sacred tree. I hoped they didn't see us as intruders.

  "Do you think we're really welcome here?" I asked Maara.

  "Yes," she replied. "I didn't expect we would ever see the forest people. That they have befriended us is more than I could have hoped for."

  I remembered my anxiety for Maara and my fear that we would be discovered, and I surprised myself by questioning the forest people's good intentions. Although I didn't like to doubt them, I had to ask, "They won't betray us, will they?"

  "Betray us?"

  "To Elen's house."

  Maara shook her head. "The people of Elen's house see the forest people so seldom that many doubt their existence, and Elen's house has nothing they want. The forest people want only to be left alone, and the less Elen's people are aware of them, the better."

  I was reassured, but her reply piqued my curiosity. "If they wouldn't show themselves to Elen's people, why did they show themselves to us?"

  Maara gazed at me as if I should have understood.

  "They showed themselves to you," I said, "because you're like them."

  With a slight nod of her head, she agreed with me. She continued to gaze at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. As I looked at her, her face changed, just a little, but enough to make me feel that I was looking at a stranger. For the first time she was not just Maara, not the unique person I knew, the person who was like no one else. She was of another tribe, another people, whose ways I didn't know, who spoke a tongue I didn't understand. I was the stranger here.

  "What if they don't accept me?"

  "They will."

  Suddenly I felt very much alone, and my imagination began to run away with me. Was there a Vintel among the forest people?

  Maara took my hand. "They will accept you now because you belong to me," she said, "and soon enough they'll accept you for yourself."

  Because we had slept so long that day, we sat up late. When we tired of our chores, we huddled close to the fire and talked a little. For Maara the smell of acorn bread must have opened a door into memory, because she began to tell me little things about her childhood home -- about round houses with the fire in the center, bitter berries that left an aftertaste of honey, a man who used to play with her by hiding so that she could find him.

  As I listened, I found it impossible to shake off the lonely feeling that came over me when I realized Maara had people here, while I had none. When there were just the two of us, I hadn't felt lonely at all. Now, for no reason I understood, the presence of other people had put a distance between me and Maara. Maara felt it too.

  "What's wrong?" she asked me.

  I shook my head. I couldn't put my feelings into words.

  "Are you afraid?"

  "A little," I admitted.

  "Of the forest people?"

  In a way I was, but not in the way she was thinking of. "I'm afraid you'll belong more to them than to me."

  Maara smiled. "Don't be silly."

  Her teasing only made me feel worse. A tear trickled down my cheek.

  "You're homesick," she said.

  She offered me no easy promises that I would see my home again or that I would someday feel at home in this strange place. She put her arms around me and let me weep against her shoulder for a while. Then, with a mother's tenderness, she undressed me and put me into bed, where we lay awake for hours, sharing our memories of childhood.

  64. The Forest People

  The next day we returned the visit of the forest people. We had stayed up so late the night before that we overslept a bit. While I made breakfast, Maara washed our dirty shirts, then hung them near the fire to dry. I knew without her saying so that they would be our gift to Aamah.

  We followed the brook to the bathing rock and continued up the steep hillside. The forest canopy was thinner here, and a dense growth of holly and brambles grew beneath it. The only way through the tangle was a deer path that wound around the hilltop.

  Maara, who was always so quiet, now began to make a great deal of noise. She scuffed her way through piles of brittle leaves and spoke to me out loud, careless of being overheard. Suddenly she stopped and spoke a word of greeting in the language of the forest people. I couldn't imagine who she was speaking to. The woman's clothing blended so perfectly into the colors of the forest that I didn't see her until she moved. When she approached us, I recognized her as one of the women who had been our guest the day before.

  The woman smiled and spoke a few words of welcome, then led us up the path a short distance before ducking through a curtain of vines into what appeared to be an impenetrable thicket. We would never have found our way through it without a guide. The faintest of paths led us over obstacles of deadfall and through briars that tugged at our clothing, until we arrived at a bramble wall so tangled that we could go no farther. Our guide grasped one of the stout canes and pulled, and the bramble wall began to move. The gate had been so cleverly concealed that I thought for a moment I was a witness to magic. We stepped through the gate into the winter encampment of the forest people.

  The camp lay inside a large enclosure. On three sides we were surrounded by the bramble wall. On the fourth, the rocky hillside loomed over us, too steep to climb. All around us was evidence of much activity. A deer carcass hung from a scaffold, ready for butchering. Inside a long shed, built against the bramble wall and open on three sides, people were busy at their chores. In the center of the enclosure, several people were gathered around a fire pit. No one seemed surprised to see us.

  Our guide led us to the fire and in
vited us to sit down. Someone offered Maara a tightly woven basket, black with soot. Maara dipped her fingers into it and drew out a sticky glob of porridge, which she ate with appropriate noises of appreciation. When they offered the basket to me, I did likewise.

  We began to draw a crowd. Soon a score of women and men had joined us around the fire. Half a dozen children peered out at us from behind their elders, who were just as curious but less inclined to show it, although their quick glances took us in from head to toe. Maara greeted the forest people in their own language and repeated our names several times. Hers gave them no trouble, but their tongues tripped over mine until they settled on something that sounded like Tamara.

  After a while, Maara asked for Aamah, and the forest people escorted us to the shed. Its roof was made of skins stretched over a pole framework and was so low that I could barely stand upright under it. Maara had to stoop to enter. The children laughed at her, and she laughed with them.

  In a cozy corner, behind a wattle screen, a small fire was burning. Aamah sat beside it. Next to her sat the man who had been with her the day before. Aamah made us welcome at her fire, and the rest of the forest people settled themselves nearby. Again words of greeting were exchanged and food was offered. Aamah handed each of us a spit with strips of roasted meat skewered on it.

  We were both full of porridge, but we ate enough to be polite. Then Maara offered our gift to Aamah, who accepted our woolen shirts with unconcealed delight, unfolding and admiring them before passing them along for the others to admire. The children touched them cautiously, as if they found the shirts mysterious and a little frightening. Their elders must have seen woven cloth before, although they seemed to have no means of making it themselves.

  Maara spoke with Aamah for a little while, repeating enough of their conversation to me so that I could follow it. They spoke at length about the coming of winter. Over the last few days the weather had warmed a bit, but Aamah seemed to think that more snow was on the way. She also gave Maara some advice on where to set out our snares and fish traps.

  When others joined in the conversation, Maara grew quiet, content to listen. I lost interest in listening to talk I couldn't understand, and my eyes began to wander. There was a lot to look at. This was where the work of the community was done, where meat was smoked and hides were cured, where acorns were husked and soaked and ground into meal. Here reeds were woven into baskets and stone was worked for tools and weapons, but it was clear that no one slept here, nor would they find the open shed comfortable in bad weather. I saw no other shelter within the enclosure. Perhaps their sleeping quarters were as hidden as the village itself.

  The man sitting beside Aamah began to speak. From the way he first settled himself and from his tone of voice, I knew he was about to tell a story. The children, who had been playing nearby, sat down to listen. Maara smiled in anticipation. Then, to my surprise, she moved behind me and pulled me back against her. The storyteller paused often to make noises and gestures to illustrate his tale, and Maara took each opportunity to whisper the story in my ear.

  Honey Paw is very thin. Sleepy and bad-tempered, he blinks at the sun. The bees are hard at work among the flowers. Honey Paw follows them home. He satisfies his hunger, and the bees begin again.

  Four Legs walks a great distance. Berries grow where only he can find them. Long Claw digs out the rotten hearts of trees and eats the grubs he finds there. Yellow Tooth gnaws on bones of elk and deer.

  Fur Man is fat. His winter coat is thick. His great head grows heavy. He shelters in his cave and sleeps.

  While I was trying to understand the meaning of the story, the children all began to shout at once, "Urti. Urti."

  "Bear," Maara whispered in my ear.

  "Oh," I said. "It's a riddle."

  But the storyteller hadn't finished.

  She-bear has lost her cub.

  "He left the den too soon," she says. "He wandered too far."

  Beside her hearth fire, she waits through the night for his return.

  In the morning, she-bear goes out to find him. She looks in the forests, in the meadows, in the streams. She looks everywhere. She searches drifts of fallen leaves. She searches every cave and hollow tree. She searches everywhere.

  She asks the squirrel, the beaver, the hunting cat, "Have you seen him?"

  She asks the fish, the bird, the grasshopper, "Have you seen him?"

  She asks everyone she meets. No one has seen him.

  Night falls. In the branches of a tree, old mother Owl unfolds her wings.

  "Old mother owl," says she-bear, "where is my son?"

  Old mother Owl takes wing. Silently she ascends into the sky, high over she-bear's head. She-bear follows her with her eyes.

  There in the sky, she-bear sees her son, on his back, lying in a field of stars. Then she knows that her son has met his death, and in her sorrow, she seeks her den and falls into the long sleep of grief.

  Old mother Owl is sorry for she-bear's sorrow. Old mother Owl flies to the body of she-bear's son and plucks his spirit from his mouth. Old mother Owl flies to she-bear's den and sends his spirit into his mother's heart.

  In the spring, she-bear wakes with her cub beside her.

  The story filled me with sadness. A tear trickled down my cheek and drew Aamah's eye. Aamah spoke to Maara, and Maara said, "She wants to know what made you cry."

  I had no ready answer. I shook my head. Maara answered for me.

  "What did you say?" I asked her.

  "I told her that your mother too has lost her cub," she said.

  Aamah smiled at me and spoke to me directly.

  "She will send old mother Owl to your mother's heart," said Maara.

  We left the village of the forest people so late in the afternoon that we didn't arrive home until after dark. Neither of us was hungry. The forest people had fed us until we couldn't take another bite. We huddled under our cloaks while we waited for our fire to warm the hollow tree.

  Although my body was tired, my mind was wide awake, full of all the things I had seen and heard that day. I had spent the homeward journey thinking about the story of she-bear and her cub. I understood its meaning. It was a tale for teaching children about the bear stars.

  As everyone knows, the bear travels in a circle in the northern sky, completing one circle in the course of the year. At summer's end, the bear lies on his back, a sign that winter is coming. The story also taught something of the ways of bears.

  When I was small, my mother told me animal stories to teach me about the world. Each story was the answer to a question. How did the bobcat lose her tail? How did the hare get his white winter coat?

  I was a little disappointed.

  "Is the story of she-bear only a tale for teaching children?" I asked Maara.

  "If it were," she said, "would it have made you cry?"

  Then I remembered her reply to Aamah. The story of she-bear was also a story about motherhood.

  "Are our mothers searching for us, do you think?"

  "I hope not," said Maara. "I hope they're both safe at home, but I think their hearts must be searching for some news of us."

  As I drifted into sleep that night, I dreamed of old mother Owl. She flew into the heavens and touched the stars. She flew all night on silent wings. She heard the prayers of she-bear and answered them. She heard Aamah's prayers and answered them. She heard the love in every mother's heart and brought their children home to them.

  The next day was cold and dark, and we had work to do before bad weather kept us at home. In the morning we followed the brook downstream, looking for a place to put our fish trap. On the way back, we set our snares. We spent all afternoon collecting firewood. It was fortunate we did, because that night, as Aamah had predicted, snow fell.

  For the next few days we stayed snug and safe in our hollow tree. To pass the time, Maara repeated the story of she-bear, a few words at a time, first in the language of the forest people, then in my own tongue. I learned the strange
words more easily than I thought I would. At least I learned to recognize the sound of them. Making many of those sounds myself was more than I could do. Maara tried not to laugh at me.

  After our visit to their village, I had no more anxiety about the forest people. My experience there convinced me that they had kind hearts. None of them seemed to doubt our good intentions. I felt that they accepted us, not just as neighbors, but as friends. Even the children lost their fear of us. One little girl laid her head in my lap and fell asleep and neither knew nor cared that a few hours before I had been a stranger. Now I was ashamed that I'd had doubts about them, because most often it is the trusting who are trustworthy.

  After the snowfall, the forest people came to visit us again. Nearly a dozen of them crowded into our hollow tree. I was disappointed to see that Aamah wasn't with them. This time the man who usually stayed by Aamah's side, the storyteller, whose name was Sett, appeared to be their leader. They had brought us a shoulder of venison, which we cooked and shared with them. While we waited for the meat, we offered our guests some tea and acorn bread.

  Once we had eaten everyone relaxed and a general conversation began. I didn't understand a word of it, but I found it soothing. It reminded me of when I was a child, listening to the grown-ups talk. Although I couldn't always follow what they were saying, the threads of their conversation wove themselves together into a tight fabric around me, and if the sharp words of some tore it a little here and there, the mending threads of others drew us all together again. So the forest people's talk surrounded me, until at last I drifted off to sleep leaning against Maara's shoulder.

  For several weeks, weather permitting, we exchanged visits with the forest people, and when we could, Maara and I returned their generosity. Even the gift of a few fish pleased them, although they could easily have caught all the fish they needed for themselves. While fish seemed to me a more practical gift, they greatly prized our woolen shirts, not for their usefulness, but for their novelty. Aamah had shared them out by tearing them to pieces, so that everyone could have a few strips of cloth. Some wore the strips tied around their wrists or ankles or as headbands, while others braided them into their hair.