quick understanding was unusual, and Uhtatse warmed to the boy. “Yes. I have been chosen to learn to be the One Who Smells the Wind. I have been learning my craft for a year, now.”
“I thought as much. I, too, am in training and will be Shaman, when the time comes. But I do not know about One Who Smells the Wind. What will your task be, when the time comes?”
Uhtatse looked down into the fire below the stone, thinking how best to put words to his complex and unceasing task for one who did not understand what it might be. Carefully, he said, “We live here always, high above the lands below. All that threatens the People, besides wind and weather and predators, comes from the low country.
“Always, there is one who is tuned to the world about us so closely that he can feel at once any change—in any THING. A strange presence crushing the grass or brushing through the oak trees of the Middle Way, a restlessness among the deer or the fowl of the air, a strange scent on the wind or a sound that does not belong in the world we know will serve as a warning to the one trained to know. He, in turn, warns the People.
“Our One Who Smells the Wind was one of those who met you, as you came up the mesa. He is a great protector of the People. He knows even when the Kiyate move on the plains, down there, for he can feel the troubling of the air where they go. He can smell the grease on their bodies over a great distance, and if they turn toward our place, we know and can prepare to defend ourselves.”
The Anensi boy frowned. Then he smiled. “That is a skilled and valuable work, in a way not unlike that for which I am in training. I am Ra-onto. What do they call you?”
“Uhtatse.”
Ra-onto made the sign for peace and friendship. Uhtatse did the same. Then, formalities done with, they lay together on the rock and looked down at the firelit scene below them.
“And are you a great hunter, as so many of your people are?” asked the Anensi.
Uhtatse grunted. “When I was a boy, my uncle taught me to use the atlatl and the spear, and I was not bad, if not good either. But now I cannot kill.”
Ra-onto turned onto his side and stared at him, his dark eyes shining in the firelight. “You cannot kill? Not anything? Not even a rattlesnake or a tarantula in your blanket?”
“Nothing. I cannot pick a leaf from a tree or even crush a blade of grass, if I can avoid touching it. To do that is to divide myself from the world. If I did so, the mesa and the creatures on it would not speak to me, and I could not hear, even if they did. I cannot help my mother to pull the weeds from her gardens. I cannot pick a flower in the spring. Yet, in return, I can see and hear and feel things that it is not given to many to understand. It is a fair trade, I think.”
Ra-onto nodded. “It seems to be. What can you feel now? Or is there too much noise and bustle here?”
Uhtatse had not tried sensing, in such circumstances. It was an interesting thought, and he felt that he could try. He stared away from the fire, down into the darkness behind the great stone where he lay. He opened his ears, his nose, his heart to the words of the light breeze blowing chill across the mesa top.
He felt a great owl swoop to pounce upon an unwary mouse in the grain field. A deer stirred, reaching for another nibble of oak leaves down in the Middle Way. The feel of the small herd around that individual came clearly to Uhtatse. A buck and two does and this single yearling.
Magpies quarreled softly in their roost. The water rippled in the wind across the catchments. Everything fitted together with seamless ease, nothing troubling the air or earth, the water or the creatures living in any of them.
“All is well,” he said. “I had not tried doing that before. I am glad it can be done, even in the middle of such confusion—it was as if my mind could close its door-hide, shutting out the light and the bustle.”
The other boy looked impressed. “I can see that you do, indeed, have a rare gift. One that I would like to share, if that were possible. Yet, moving as we do, it would not work for us. Things must be familiar always, for such magic to work its best.”
As he thought about the words, Uhtatse found that he agreed. Amid ever-changing surroundings, one could never hope to find that attunement necessary for his work. This made him realize how very different must be the life that Ra-onto lived. He wondered, in turn, if the boy might not find the mesa interesting. “Would you like to come tomorrow, with me? I will show you the mesa, as very few ever know it.”
Ra-onto’s eyes brightened. “I would, indeed, like to see your world through your eyes. I will go.”
Uhtatse rolled again onto his belly and looked down at the men, still talking quietly of things he would never see or smell or feel. But he no longer had a desire to follow the Anensi on their journeying. Something about the conversation with the boy at his side had given him a new appreciation for his own place and people. It was as if he had seen them all, for an instant, through the eyes of Ra-onto.
Now the chants that accompanied the distant dancers sounded fresh to his ears. The pots simmering beside the fires glowed with a new beauty. The very texture of his turkey-feather blanket almost felt unfamiliar to his fingers, as he rolled the stuff between them, feeling the twisted yucca fiber that caught bits of feather in every winding, forming the fluffy warmth. He had never thought of the way it was made, even while watching his people form the strands and weave them into cloth.
“I will show you the mesa,” he murmured to Ra-onto, “as you have shown it to me.”
Chapter Five
The visit of the Anensi came with the first of summer. It enlivened the talk about the evening fires for many weeks, and the things for which the Ahye-tum-datsehe had traded were enjoyed for far longer than that. Among those matters were the parakeets that Ra-onto had traded to Uhtatse for his feather blanket.
That had been a hard choice to make. Uhtatse had been given the blanket by his mother, and he hated to lose it. Yet he traded at last and presented the birds to Ahyallah.
She was very pleased with his gift. The creatures’ bright plumage and their shrill chatter filled her with joy, as she twisted yucca fibers with fur or feathers for the men to weave into blankets. She kept their cage near, whether in her room in the pueblo where she worked in winter or outside beneath a big piñon where she formed her fibers when the weather was fine.
She swore that the new blanket for her son would be a small price to pay for the pleasure she took in her new pets. And, indeed, it seemed that her fingers flew more swiftly to the accompaniment of the twitters of the parakeets.
It seemed to Uhtatse that he alone had been changed by the visit of the traders. Not only had he seen his own world with new eyes, but he had also been made aware that something was missing inside him, something necessary to his task of keeping his people safe. He felt, he smelled, he saw acutely, and he could interpret those sensations accurately. Yet he now knew that he lacked something vital, which had only now been revealed to him as he went about the mesa with Ra-onto.
The land itself did not speak directly to his heart, as it seemed to do for the old One Who Smelled the Wind. He had seen the man pause to bend over a plant, as if listening to some inaudible word it spoke. He had thought it strange and had not understood. Now he knew with sudden certainty, that it was the plant and the soil in which it grew that spoke to the Elder.
The Old One heard what was spoken with no lips and said with no tongue. Uhtatse knew with equal certainty
