He smiled confidently and cleanly to himself.
Bathing was a ritual in Attaugee, Coosauda, Towassau, in all the Alabama towns and in all the Muskogee towns. Mothers brought their babies to the river where they floated as gently as if they rested on their breasts. The bathing now was no less familiar, but only more intelligently understood, as he knew by their instruction. Swimming on his back in and out of the stronger flow at midstream, he offered himself up to the sky world, to the sun itself, as a mouse would in a stubbled corn field to the predator claws of a hawk or eagle slowly flying overhead. He laughed, moving effortlessly in the water.
As I carry the blessing made more receptive in the ritual, so do I remain unafraid.
Darkness had fallen over the village as Otci piled the last pieces of firewood by the cabin door. In the council square, the larger fire burned magnificently in a pit encircled by huge, white-painted stones. It lit the ground and threw ghostly, dancing shadows upon the empty seats of the warriors’ lodge. Shadows and light danced against the rotunda, where the spiral fire is burned. The fire had a spirit of its own; it was alive. The night breathed and whispered. Otci sensed some other presence in the solitude as he piled up wood. The full moon lit the village square in pale luminescence, reflecting the pine sapling framework of cabins as something fantastic, something of standing skeletons, mysterious and treacherous, laying a cool pallor on the bark covering the cabins. The fire threw irregular shadows on walls. He thought he heard a dry laugh within the shadows, like that of the dead. He felt the light move him into its suggestion, pull him into its play of contorted forms. Warm yellow moved against chilled pale lavender. It was a ghost moving over a corpse.
Otci looked up to the dark skies. Far off a billowing thunderhead rose, its folds heavy and menacing. Two moons from this very night he would be called to the square for another purpose. Like the full light of the moon thrown against the village cabins and lodges, he, too, would have to throw up the whole of himself and present it to the stern eyes of his approvers. To be offered up as if created again, to be vulnerable again before those who say yes, he must be acceptable.
He would be presented to the miko, the elders, and the warriors, to have conferred upon him his new name and honor. In that quest he would have passed through the search for his own vision. It would lead him to one truth that is himself and his place before the god he sought to sustain his courage. Then he would become a whole man and a warrior of the nation. He would grow to become a man larger in intellect and moral rightness. His what-is-inside-of-me would become incorruptible as his heart deepened and widened. On that day in the square, the Poskita, he would announce himself and his purpose. There would be nothing to surprise him.
He folded his arms on his chest in the warming promise of his ascendancy among them. Then he lay down and closed his eyes as the calm rode over him. He dreamed. In his dream he stood up and stepped away. The crickets sang as he walked across the illuminated yard to the familiar path. A breeze dashed through the wood, then died, then raced through again, clacking the magnolia leaves against one another in their clusters. The well-formed cloud blew nearer. He walked without hesitation or noise through dark trees in the beauty of the night. His inner eye was open. Perhaps he was being summoned by the mass hysteria of the whirring insects and creatures alive in the undergrowth.
To Otci it looked like the magnificent cloud might burst in its fullness. There was no heaven-wide flash of the silent Snake-in-the-Sky, no boom and fire of Thunderman; only the cloud advancing into the clear night like the stealthy, potent glide of the river-riding tie snake coming up out of the dark water to enter the unprotected cabins.
No. The night spirit moved on its own. It drew him. The night delivered the moon and the cloud and the frog song and the wind, and it all swam in his head, stirring him, coming alive in his eyes and ears.
It drew him deeper into the trees. Otci pushed branches and undergrowth out of his path and arrived at the edge of the bluff. He was winded. He wanted to stand alone. He looked down upon the moving water whose current he felt strong within him and it soothed him.
Then the place suddenly throbbed with a magical quality. He arose lightly and walked down to the river, where he would wash. He would splash the water in his eyes and let the refreshing coolness run down his back and chest. He was carrying a musket at the ready in his left hand. Someone, something was watching him. Intense eyes were upon him.
Suddenly a large red fox darted out from the trees and skirted down the bluff to the water’s edge. Its thick, moon-brilliant tail stood straight out behind. The fox flashed its gaze up to him, then ran on. He gave the death cry as he bounded down the bluff, eager to kill it, to bring it to the village square, to give its skin to the miko. This would surely be the triumph of his cunning.
He sprang after the fox. He ran swiftly to trap it and corner it against an unclimbable bank he knew to be somewhere in the trees. The fox raced ahead of him, and he shouted loudly as he ran hard after it.
He jumped over fallen trees, swept away branches that hung down in front of him, and splashed through collected pools of water as he ran over the ground. The fox was in full flight; it laughed as it led him on. It ran down to the river, where it leapt into the water with a neat, unbroken step, then swam swiftly in the running flow.
Otci ran to the water’s edge. Cold uncertainty seized him as he hesitated on the bank. He forgot himself in his boldness, and ran into the water holding his musket high in the air. He swam strongly in the river. As he did so, he felt the current sucking at his arms and legs, pulling him downstream. Still, he gained on the animal, for he was swimming with all his strength. The fear of middle river diminished with each strong stroke of his free arm and his legs.
As his foot struck the muddy ground, the fox was climbing up the bank. He struggled after it and regained the chase. The fox ran swiftly through the woods, red flashing through the dark green. Then it disappeared over the edge of a tree-shrouded gully. As he dashed through the defile after the fox, he was running faster than he ever had before. The fox turned briskly around the edge of the deep gully. As he swept the ferns from his path, he found himself approaching a high, hard clay wall that stood at the end of the corridor, which the brilliant fox now tried desperately to climb, his tail waving. Otci laid his finger on the trigger as the exhilaration heated his temples. He had trapped his game.
“Utassi Tchati!” (Red Fox!) he called out. The fox turned in resignation and shook the water from itself as it panted. It looked straight into Otci’s eyes. Otci hesitated.
“Don’t do it, Otci!” the fox said in a clear voice. “I am not to die just now. There is too much to be gained.”
In the shaded part of his memory, Otci remembered his vow to remain open to the voices of the thicket. Four-legged creatures carry the word.
“I chased you out of the thicket and across the river. You are trapped here, and you can’t beguile me. You can’t escape me!” he said strongly.
The fox cocked its head. “I cannot escape you, neither do I wish to beguile you, but you will not kill me, Otci!” the fox repeated.
“I have only one chance,” he replied. “The one shot that it takes to blow the fire through you gives me an entrance into the warriors’ council. I’ll wrap your skin over the miko’s shoulders and hang your tail from my lodge door!”
“You do not have the power in a new land to kill me, Otci,” the fox said. A smile of satisfaction lit its face. “You have crossed over into a new place, you see. The river is wide. I see you still sitting in the cabin of your mother.”
The hunter’s pride rose in him. He would hesitate no longer. He raised his musket and aimed it at the fox’s heart. The animal stood, unmoved, panting its small tongue like a small flag. His hand was shaking as he jerked the trigger. But there was only the cold click of the flint against the steel. The flash in the pan and the explosion did not come. He pulled the hammer back again. The fox still stood there. Again there was no fire and jolt.
“You are new in the strange land, Otci. Your ground is across