The boys, and the Braves who were training them for the ordeals, lived to the west of the main encampment. Dorrok, the Brown Feather to whom I had been assigned, was standing before one of the tepees. He beckoned me to approach him, but made me wait before he spoke.
“Here you are not the Chief’s daughter; you are Piyanah who obeys me. You will share this tepee with three others: Kekki, Barakeechi, and Tekeeni.”
Before I could answer he turned away and went down the path towards the river. The tepee was smaller than the one Raki and I had shared, and had no centre-post. My new possessions had been put beside the dry reeds on which I was to sleep: two blankets, one with a neck-slit to wear in cold weather, a pair of moccasins, and a tunic of coarse leather, roughly patched together from the hides of small animals. I picked it up; it was hard and some of the skins had not been properly cured, so it had a disagreeable smell. There was also a food-bowl of yellow clay, made by an unskilled thumb.
I was glad that Tekeeni was going to be with me, and wondered if the others were angry at having to share their tepee with a girl. I went out and looked down the slope towards the Squaws’ Tepees. I could see three women plodding up from the river with water-jars, but there was no sign of Raki. When I heard the others returning I pretended to be setting the feathers in one of my arrows. I looked up as the boys came in and waited for a greeting; but even Tekeeni was careful to avoid looking at me.
Through the open flap I could see two Naked Foreheads carrying a cauldron by a branch threaded through its handle. I realized that I was very hungry; except for the broth Na-ka-chek had given us the night before, we had eaten nothing but bread for four days. I watched the others pick up their food-bowls and go out of the tepee. I followed them, and saw that the boys were crowding round a Naked Forehead who was ladling stew into bowls they held out to him. By the smell I knew the hunters had made a kill, for it was fresh deer meat. I wondered if Raki was having some too, or whether there was not sufficient to spare for squaws.
No one spoke to me; they either stared or pretended I was not there. Then one of them began to wind an imaginary bandage round his chest. His mimicry spread to the others, who began an obscene parody of the Betrothal Dance. I wanted to run away, but knew that would only give them a victory. I ate my stew very slowly, knowing that when it was finished I would have to think of something else to do.
A little spring bubbled out of the rock, and each boy rinsed his food-bowl there when he had finished eating. Through a gap in the trees I could see down into the encampment: three women were scouring cooking-pots…no, two women, for the third was Raki. I wished that I were really a man, and that it was the time of the Choosing, for then he could be my squaw, and we would go into the woods and never come back.
One of the Naked Foreheads picked up the empty cauldron to take it to the place of the cooking-fire. I wondered if he was resigned to being despised, or if sometimes he longed for the privileges he had forfeited. It must be lonely to live so near the squaws and yet be allowed no woman.
The tepee was empty when I went there. I wrapped myself in a blanket and when the others came in pretended to be asleep. I had not yet learned that after the sunset drum the boys were not allowed to talk, so I thought they kept silence because they did not want me to overhear.
I woke before the others and crept out without waking them. In the thick half-light I ran down to the pool where Raki and I used to bathe every morning. I hoped that he might be there, but though I waited as long as I dared, he never came. The day before I had pulled the bandage too tight, and my breasts were sore. The water was very cold, and in the grey stillness the brooding trees looked like sorrowful ghosts.
As I went back, I saw a group of boys, led by Dorrok, moving off towards the high pasture. Tekeeni was there, but I was uncertain whether I ought to join them, until he dropped behind the others and beckoned to me. He stayed beside me long enough to whisper, “I saved your bread. I couldn’t bring it with me, but I’ve hidden it under your blanket. We don’t have another meal until sunset, so you will be hungry.”
I smiled to thank him, and before running ahead he said hurriedly, “Don’t let the others know I’m trying to help you. They will soon accept you for one of themselves. Don’t forget the Chief is your father, and I’ll see they don’t forget it either!”
I felt much braver now that I was not quite alone. Tekeeni had been Raki’s friend, and it was almost like having a shadow of Raki with me. I wished I had been nicer to the squaws, for then there might have been women to help him because of their friendship to me. I wondered why my father had decreed that Raki must spend a moon with the squaws before, still dressed as a woman, beginning his training for the ordeals. Even then I should have very little chance to speak to him, for the boys were divided into two groups, and I was sure he would be kept away from me; and he would eat with the squaws and sleep in their tepees.
I repeated the conversation I had so often held with myself since I left Raki, “You must live as a boy, think as a boy, act as a boy…only then can you and Raki be together again. Raki has to be a squaw, so I will make all these boys realize that a squaw is better than they are. I will smile every time they mock me, but I will remember each boy who starts it until I can turn his mockery against himself. I will make myself beat him at whatever he is most proud of doing. I won’t let them hurt me. I will study the habits of the ones who are enemies, as though they were grizzlies that I was watching to learn the weakness in them through which I can capture their claws.”
In my imagination, Raki and I, both dressed as women, were receiving homage from all the tribal Braves. I had forgotten to be watchful, and Gorgi, the boy who had led the mimicry, tripped me so that I fell and cut my knee. I ran on as though I had only stumbled. It didn’t hurt much, but I could feel blood trickling down my leg. I knew that I was being watched to see if I looked down to find out if it was a deep cut, so I didn’t. They were going to be disappointed…for they had forgotten that Raki had taught me to share everything with him!
After we had been running for some time we came back to the river, which had made a wide loop round a hill. Here Dorrok told us that we could rest before the diving practice began. The boys sprawled on the ground, panting after their long run. I wanted to lie flat, to relax all the aching muscles which were still sore after their journey from our little valley; but I sat cross-legged, looking across the river to the mountains which were already covered with the first snow.
Though many of the squaws were strong swimmers they were not taught to dive. I felt a comfortable satisfaction, as a hungry man feels when his food-bowl is warm between his hands. … “They think I shall be frightened of diving. I hope Dorrok leaves me to the last. I wish the pools in our valley had been deeper, for it is more than a year since I could practise every day. I shall pretend that Raki is here watching me, and then I shall go in very straight, without a splash. Great Hunters, please let me do better than the best dive I have ever done!”
The boys were taking off their breech-clouts and tying back their hair with their forehead-thongs. I wondered whether I ought to take off my breast bandage, and decided to do so because it would be so uncomfortable to wear if it was wet. I saw Gorgi taking off an imaginary necklace and armlets, and pretending to unwind a bandage from his chest: several of the others were grinning with him; they thought it clever to copy whatever he did. I decided that Gorgi should be the first bear’s claw on my spirit neck-thong!
The river swirled past the foot of the cliff, but in a backwater there was a deep pool. Above it the rock formation split into a series of ledges, natural steps from which a diver could choose more than twenty different heights. The youngest boys went off a ledge lapped by the water. Dorrok watched them, usually in silence, but sometimes shouting instructions. After they had finished, four boys collected on the next ledge. Then I realized that each ledge was taken in turn, and that the boys knew which height they were expected to choose. Dorrok had expected me to join the youngest boys, but when I pretended not to see him looking at me, he must have thought that I had never dived before and decided to let me watch the others as it was my first day.
The eldest boys, Gorgi among them, were fourteen. They all moved towards the fourth ledge, but at the last moment he stood back and let the others go up to it without him. They looked surprised until he pointed to another height, on a level with their shoulders. My heart began to thud. …I was determined to go off a ledge as high as any of the others, but even the fourth ledge was more than I had ever done. The ledge Gorgi had chosen was narrow and difficult…and the one above it stood above the water three times the height of a man. It looked fairly easy from where I was standing, but I knew what it would look like from up there.
If I made myself go up there, I should have to dive. If I went in flat and knocked the air out of myself, I should be pulled out of the water like a drowning toad. They would never stop laughing at me, and have much more to laugh at than my being a girl. I would be a vanquished boaster…and even Raki laughed at boasters!
Until then I had pretended to take no notice of the divers. I felt Gorgi staring at me, so I turned and looked at him. He was smiling, and there was a swagger in his walk as he went forward to climb to the ledge. Before he dived he looked down to make sure I was watching him. Suddenly I knew one of his weaknesses; he despised me because I was a squaw, and yet he longed for the squaw’s admiration. He was thinking of the Choosing: he wanted all the squaws to admire him, to envy the girl he took into the woods. It would be pleasant to be wanted by the Chief’s daughter…and he would never be able to forget that her name was Piyanah…for I would make him remember it, to his discomfort!
He dived well, and I saw Dorrok sign approval. … “I have got to go off the ledge which is higher than the others.”
Slowly I climbed the rock. Dorrok looked surprised that I intended to dive, and pointed to the lowest shelf. I took no notice and went on climbing, ledge by ledge. I thought Dorrok was going to call me back when I reached the fifth ledge, Gorgi’s ledge: then I scrambled up to the one above it.
It was a good place from which to dive, for the rock overhung the pool. The water looked very far away, and hard as stone. “Please, Raki, don’t let me go flat. Please, Great Hunters, and totem, and spirits, and everybody, don’t let me go flat…or, if I do, please let me hit a rock and be killed. …”
I dived. It seemed a long time before I felt the water part smoothly under my hands. It was dark and safe under the water. I came to the surface and swam to the bank.
Dorrok was smiling at me. “Piyanah dives better than his brothers,” he said loudly, so that all the others could hear.
I saw Gorgi swimming away from me across the pool. Now the neck-thong was no longer empty: on it was my first bear’s claw.