Yatz steered straight towards the craft. He saw creatures move on it. Monster cormorants? He swallowed panic as he watched the peculiar beings scramble up and down the high, folded wings.
The canoe moved in closer. “They’re not cormorants,” Yatz whispered in awe. “They have faces like human beings.” They had beckoning hands and voices, luring them onto the vessel. To fly them off to supernatural regions?
The youth’s mind raced through a thousand stories. Long ago many young Haida princes had been spirited off to incredible adventures. Yet he had never dreamed of it happening now, to someone like himself.
The ship let down a rope ladder.
Yatz blinked his eyes and swallowed.
But his uncle, worthy of the great Haida name he wore, instantly caught the ladder. Less boldly, Yatz moved to follow his uncle. And even less boldly, their attendants backwatered from the awesome ship to wait at a respectful distance.
As Yatz climbed the ladder, his thoughts rushed back to his childhood village. His family would grieve for him, he knew, even as they boasted of his marvelous disappearance. And the Sdast’a•aas Eagles, all of them would watch for his reappearance. Perhaps he would come back with a supernatural wife and children as others had done in the legends! Perhaps he would bring a new crest for the Sdast’a•aas totem poles, a new story for feast-house telling. Yet, gaining the ship’s deck, he shrank back from the hand extended to him.
Then he stood with his uncle, dignified, silent, waiting. The canoe would spread its wings and fly off with them. Such things had happened to others in ancient days. Now they two had been chosen for supernatural adventures. His heart pounded within his rib cage.
A breath of wind ruffled the monster wings above his head.
Yatz’s darting glances caught small flutters among the feathers. Or were they feathers? Or were they a massed tribe of ghosts in ghost blankets?
Everywhere he saw iron . . . iron . . . iron.
These, then, were Iron Men, come from the source of that mysterious substance. He felt the eyes of the chief of the Iron Men watching his interest in the iron. Then his gaze, like his uncle’s, was captured by a shining stick. The stick, only partly wooden, was held by one of the Iron Men.
The observant captain noticed. He spoke to the man. And the man pointed the stick at a seagull.
The Haida watched breathless to see what would happen. Thunder leapt from the stick. Lightning flashed.
“The bird!” gasped Yatz, startled. The seagull had dropped to the sea as though an arrow pierced it. His knees went weak and he sank to the deck. The stick was a supernatural charm; the Thunderbird’s power moved through it. He strove to control his unseemly trembling, to remember he was a Haida prince.
Untroubled by a need for dignity, the slave paddlers fled in terror.
A shout from Chief 7idansuu stopped their flight. It also yanked Yatz to his feet again, and straightened his shoulders. A Haida did not show fear, especially a Sdast’a•aas Saang gaahl Eagle prince.
He saw that the paddlers had begun to circle the ship at a safe distance from it. He hoped they would escape, if only to tell the astounding tale at the coming potlatch.
The chief of the Iron Men beckoned Yatz and his uncle to follow him through a door. This astonishing canoe had a house on its back; and inside the house, Iron Men sat around a high plank eating a gruesome meal.
“Maggots!” Yatz shrank in distaste from their steaming rice. “And the grease of dead men!” He concealed his disgust as a seaman poured molasses on his rice. He was thankful they offered him none of the revolting mixture; and he was even more thankful to escape back to the open deck.
All the while his eyes were busy. Truly these were Iron Men. A strange eagerness began to tinge his fear of the coming flight to their supernatural regions. What might he not see!
Still the ghost wings did not spread themselves.
Yatz sensed that his uncle was quite as perplexed. But 7idansuu was a mighty chief in the world of real men. He did not betray his anxieties. Nor did he fail in courtesy. Having noted the pleased surprise with which the chief of the Iron Men had looked at the sea otter cloak, he now lifted it from his nephew’s shoulders and presented it to the captain.
The captain accepted it with matching grace. In obvious delight he stroked long black silky hairs that were enriched by a sprinkling of silver filaments. Then he glanced thoughtfully about the ship, and his eyes lighted on the musket. This he presented to Chief 7idansuu, who took it in trembling fingers.
Controlling a natural fear, the chief pointed it at a seagull. But nothing happened.
The Iron chief smiled and took it. He pointed it at a bird and squeezed the trigger. Thunder and lightning leapt out, and the bird fell. Then he handed it back to Chief 7idansuu with foreign words of explanation. And he looked next at the Haida youth, as if wondering what to give him. He spoke to a seaman; the seaman brought something to him; and he presented this gift to Yatz.
What was it? What could it be?
The gift was smooth and shining as a salmon, though shaped more like a yew wedge for splitting cedar. It was hard as a rock. As iron! Yatz held it anxiously by the rounded hole in its thicker end. What was this shining thing?
“Axehead,” the captain told him; and he motioned with his hands, like chopping.
A woodworker’s charm! Iron shining with supernatural power! He dared to touch its cutting edge. It was sharper than a broken shell. Harder than a pointed elk horn. But—perhaps it would not work for him, as the thunderstick had not worked for his uncle.
The ghost blankets began to stir in the huge white wings above his head.
Yatz gasped. He held his breath. Now they would fly off to the land of the Iron Men.
The Iron chief shouted orders. He indicated his guests’ departure.
They both blinked with surprise.
They were not to be carried off?
Without betraying his vast relief, Chief 7idansuu called his paddlers, who apprehensively moved in to get him. Yatz controlled himself, not to depart in unbefitting panic. But he sank down most thankfully into the real Haida canoe paddled by real human beings.
With the rest of the marveling men, he watched the amazing canoe move off. It moved without paddles as the Iron Men sang a strange song. But it did not spread its wings and take to the air, though they watched it to the far horizon. Perhaps, they decided, it waited until no human eye could see it.
And then, spurred by a wild wish to tell someone about this wonder, the crew almost lifted the canoe from the sea with mighty strokes of their paddles. They shouted and sang to give vent to their excitement. They became almost incoherent, blurting out the tale to the waiting family. They couldn’t wait to get back home to astound all the villagers.
Impatiently they sat out the storm, then dashed madly across the ocean. But to their disappointment, the villagers were still away at their fishing stations.
Yatz woke every morning before the raven’s cry roused Hiellen. If only Haiias would hurry home!
While he waited, he helped his uncle plan a new glory for the coming potlatch. Now they would present a new tale, “The Tale of the Flying Canoe.” They planned the production in a ferment of excitement. Yet no matter how they tried, they could not make the thunderstick thunder. Chief 7idansuu pointed it at a thousand seagulls. He squeezed and resqueezed the trigger. But the thunderstick just kept silent. “I have not the power to use it,” he confessed sorrowfully to Yatz.
The axehead was a different matter! Yatz gazed at it again and again in wonder. He marveled, for he had the power to use the axehead. He chipped with