the water away from his eyes and shook his topknot of hair.
He breathed deeply as he faced the sinking sun, warm on his skin. He recited the prayer of his teachings as the voice in the thicket came alive in his own.
“Receive me, Master of Breath, and cleanse me of the unclean spirit tainted by my absence from you. Make me invincible. Fill me with courage, strength and cunning, as I wash away the impurity from my body and spirit.”
His prayers were strong in the water. He and his brothers had heard them all their lives when they came down to the river to bathe with their fathers and with the elders, the beloved men. The divine words, too, were formed in his memory. Only Nokusi put them in the proper place in the devotions. The far heights where the Master sits behind the sun took the prayers as the river took their spirit’s corruption and bore it away, down to the faraway white water that lies wide at the end of the long journey, at the mouth of the stream that is in the Choctaw country. As Otci stood waist deep in the water, he turned to the east and offered his supplication to the Hiyayalgee, the Light People, holders of the medicine and directors of the wind.
As I tend the fire and keep the good medicine, light the way to the wisdom of my emerging manhood so that my people might praise and honor me. Open my eyes to that which sustains the spirit.
He then completed his bathing. The cool running stream enveloped every part of his lean body. His strong hands gripped muscles along slender arms and legs, and rubbed them to a renewal of power and lightness. Stroking deeply with his palms and fingers, he rubbed away the smell brought on by the long day at the fireside; he stretched away the strain in his back gathered up at the old warrior’s talk. The work he would perform in his mother’s cabin during the green corn rites must be as precise in spirit-calling as this is in cleansing. The dream of measuring up to the feats of his brother, Ispokeega, of surpassing them even, must demand as sure a devotion. The river took the useless away, allowed for the courage to rise up within the new cleanness. So his bathing habits he kept exact.
Otci pressed firmly the muscles of his shoulder so that he might invigorate the strength of his club-swinging and bow-drawing power. Arching to stretch out again the tension and stiffness, he heard the popping of his spine as the gathered concentration of his learning released in the beneficent stream.
He ducked beneath the water to clean his face and hair. His fingers scratched his skull all about its clean-shaven sides and close-cropped hair atop. He rubbed deeply the flesh that spread across his broad cheekbones from a strong, straight nose, as prominent and noble as an eagle’s beak. He rubbed his chin, then the muscles of his neck. Lifting himself up again, he spread his hands out on the surface, then slapped the water once.
Now it is done. Master of Breath will be thankful that his children perform so faithfully, and that we, too, are taking the best that is in us and directing it as he would have us do. He will know that Otci speaks from the center.
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
