Wabi

DAYS AND NIGHTS HAD PASSED since I realized that I was in love. How many? I don’t know. All I knew was that I was happy when I could see her and miserable when I couldn’t. I had worn all the bark off the tree limb by impatiently rocking back and forth.

I sat in the tree and cooed softly to myself as Dojihla passed. Naturally she didn’t see me. Dojihla. Isn’t it a beautiful name? It is almost a song. Dojihla, Dojihla. And it is perfect for her. It means “She goes by.” Which is what she did whenever I saw her. She just went by, not noticing me hidden in the cedar tree.

And what if she had looked up? All she would have seen was an owl. Admittedly, a very large, extremely capable young male owl. She would surely have taken note of the fact that he was an owl well above average. No way could she miss that special gleam of intelligence in the eyes, the sensitivity of the beak, the way each feather had been so elegantly preened. All right, I know. I was dreaming.

These days, to be honest, most of the dreaming I did was daydreaming. I was not sleeping the way I should. I was spending so much of my time awake during the day that I was actually dozing off at night. If it hadn’t been for the hunting that Malsumsis did and his insistence that I always take the first bite of whatever he caught, I probably would have been losing weight. But just having the chance to watch Dojihla made my sleepless days worth while.

It wasn’t a sudden thing. My feelings for her had grown over the years the way a sapling grows with the passage of seasons until one day you realize that a tall tree is standing where once there was just an open place in the forest. It had begun with watching the children play, back when she was one of them, and wishing that I could join in. I had grown used to the way she talked, the way she laughed, the way she was always the first to ask questions . . . the way she bullied the other boys and girls.

Season after season, Dojihla had always been the leader in whatever mischief they all got into. She had been the first to try to walk on the thin ice on the ponds, the first to climb to the top of the tallest tree. (She even decided once to climb the very tree I was in. I had to scuttle to the far side, hunch down, sit very still, and pretend to be the broken stub of a branch.)

Dojihla! She was the one who led the other children on hunting expeditions with their small bows and arrows. She even dared, with the bravest of the other young ones, to venture into a certain swamp where it was rumored that a child-eating monster lurked. (Of course, you know that was not true—at least not after I got through with Toad Woman.)

One of Dojihla’s favorite games was going out with a group of boys and girls to search for someone they called the Village Guardian.

“The Village Guardian,” she would say to whatever group of children she had managed to gather to listen to her opinions, “is a tall, strong, handsome man. He roams the woods by himself, protecting the people from any danger that might threaten our village, such as monsters.”

That amused me. I knew that there was certainly no such human as the Village Guardian. If there were, I would have seen him while I patrolled around the village each night.

But Dojihla was determined. In fact, when she was younger, she used to lead the other children on expeditions to find him. They would convince this noble but shy person to come and live in the village with everyone else.

“This time,” Dojihla would say, as she outlined a plan to climb a steep cliff, “we will surely find the Guardian’s hiding place.”

It was hard not to chuckle at her insistence that this imaginary being really existed. Especially when she and her hapless band would fail to find any evidence of her mythical hero and she would look at the dirty scratched faces of her troop, and say—to their dismay—“I have a better idea. Now we’ll search the blackberry thicket!”

Even the bigger boys never tried to contradict her. If they did, they found themselves on the ground with Dojihla sitting on their chest and making them eat grass.

Of course now that Dojihla was a young woman, she no longer wrestled with the boys. That was not through any choice of her own. She didn’t seem to be afraid of anyone or anything. When a certain gleam came into her eye, it meant “Move out of my way or I will move you out of my way.” Isn’t that wonderful? But now, more often than not, the boys she had played with either acted bashful around her or stared when they thought she wasn’t looking. (They were extremely careful to not be caught staring. The last young man Dojihla had noticed gaping at her was hit in the face by a fistful of river mud.)

Several seasons had now passed since Dojihla had led a group of other young ones on one of her quests. Her parents were relieved about that. I knew this for a fact, having listened to their conversations about their daughter. They used to worry that she would be hurt during one of those foolhardy expeditions, but they never told her not to go. Now, though, they had the opposite worry. They were afraid that she would never go.

“My wife,” Dojihla’s father said, shaking his head, “it is now two winters since our son, Melikigo, married and went off to the village of his new wife’s family. We need a young man to take his place. Our daughter needs to finally take a husband.”

“My husband, Wowadam,” Dojihla’s mother said, “you are right. But I fear our daughter will never have a family of her own. She is so stubborn, and so critical.”

I saw their point. Love might have made me sick to my stomach, but it hadn’t made me blind. Graceful as Dojihla was, beautiful as she was, perfect as she was in form and movement, that human girl was just as finicky. I knew because I had been watching her so closely—as had every human youth in every nearby village. They all knew Dojihla. She was the lovely maiden with the sparkling eyes and the sarcastic voice—the one whose words were sharper than flint-tipped arrows.

It had gotten to the point where suitors had almost stopped coming around. Most of them had become afraid of what she would say to any man foolhardy enough to seek her hand. With a few well-aimed words or a single gesture she could destroy the tallest, strongest, most capable suitor. However, there always seemed to be at least one who thought he could succeed where others failed.

I flew off to take a look at the new suitor and found him walking along the river on his way to the village. His name, I soon learned—for he had the nervous habit of talking to himself—was Bitahlo.

“I, Bitahlo,” he said, as he walked along, “will be the one to win her heart. I am sure of it. My song will show her how I feel. She will not be able to resist its power.”

Then he began to sing it. It spoke of Dojihla’s beauty and grace. He was right about that. But when he came to the part about her sweetness, comparing her to flowers, swaying reeds, and a doe with her fawn, I shook my head with pleasure. I thought I knew how Dojihla would react to that.

I flew back on silent wings and managed to conceal myself in the tree before Bitahlo arrived and stood in front of his prospective bride and her parents.

Dojihla’s parents looked over anxiously at their daughter when Bitahlo finished. I was anxious too as I watched from my perch in the cedar. The song had actually not been that bad. Also, to be honest, Bitahlo’s voice was good. What if that song actually did work?

Dojihla looked up. Her eyes seemed far away, as if entranced by the song. Bitahlo leaned forward, eager to hear her acceptance of his declaration of love.

Dojihla’s mother looked up into my tree. “My husband, what is wrong with that owl?” she said. “It sounds as if it is choking.”

“Forget the bird, my wife,” said Dojihla’s father. There was a look in his eyes that told me what had happened was like that last stick pulled from the beaver dam, the one that makes the pent-up water come rushing forth. “We must talk.”

Of course I could. If you can hear the deliciously terrified heartbeat of a mouse hiding in the grass far below your treetop perch, it is not at all difficult to make out a human conversation within a nearby wigwam. That conversation! It both worried me and gave me hope.

“Our daughter now has nineteen winters,” Dojihla’s father whispered. “It is well past the season for her to choose a husband.”

“But how can we find any man who is stupid—I mean suitable enough?” said Dojihla’s mother. “Our daughter is so choosy.”

“My wife,” Dojihla’s father replied, “we shall no longer allow her to choose. We will have a contest in the old way. The man who brings in the most game in a day will be the winner. Our daughter will have to marry that man. It is an ancient tradition. Even Dojihla cannot refuse to follow it.”

I took flight from the tree while they were still talking. I should have been depressed at the thought that Dojihla was going to be forced to take a husband. But I was not. An idea had come to me. It was a crazy idea. It was so strange that I was not sure where it had come from. Still, it made me feel a glimmer of hope. Was it possible? There was only one who could tell me. I had to find my great-grandmother.