The Strong Current. Robert Day

me to my ground, and here, where it is thicker with trees than on your side, a ground you have not seen before, you are powerless with the old methods,” the fox said in a controlled voice.

      The animal’s words rose strongly before Otci and struck at him with slaps of doubt. The impotent steel in his right hand grew heavy as he felt the gravity of his quest seize him. He spoke from the pit of his stomach.

      “The water was cold and deep, and the current carried me away from you,” he said, “but I still found you. Long Person did not stop me!”

      “What were you seeking?” the fox asked, with a wrinkled eyebrow. “You entered that water from which many have never reemerged, and you swam it without slowing to doubt yourself. You have never been here before. It must be the calling of the spirit, Otci.” The sharp-eyed animal spoke in a quietly authoritative voice that was now beginning to sound sharply familiar. The fox’s tone and rhythm of speech was one he recognized. Without looking deep for his own reply, he recited what he knew instinctively. The words arose dark from within him.

      “I cross over the Long Person and it allows me the passage. I swim in it without the fear. I know the river and I am known by it. It confirms me with the power.” He spoke to a distant thing. He was unable to identify what it was, but it was the possibility of him along the path he had weeks ago begun to travel. “The rains that fall in the high country are sent from the far heights where the Master sits, and the rains fall every day in the corn-growing time. I am like a tall pine by the river’s edge, and the wind carries my seed to other lands that show me.”

      The fox looked at him with his dark and gleaming eye and said, “If you cross over the dark stream again back to your own ground, what will the talk be? You aimed at me and tried to fire your gun, but it was useless. You tried to kill me and couldn’t do it. So now you see what the new ground is. Can you find your way back when darkness hides the path? It will be so dark you will not see the rattlesnake. The new land is known only to those who dwell there. This ground defies such a bold entrance.”

      He pondered the challenge, not taking his eye from the animal that spoke in such a fierceness of color and knowledge. He looked up and saw the sky darken through the trees. It suddenly turned gray blue.

      Then he said to the fox in anger, “They will say of me that I confronted the one who hungers for swimmers. They will say that I floated in the river like a fish, for I know it moves, and they will say that neither strange places nor new impediments cause Otci to hesitate. That is what they will say!”

      The fox looked at him derisively. “What of me, Otci?”

      The fox had spoken firmly. Otci knew that it had led him off in its chosen direction. A knot tightened in his throat. He knew now that he was unprepared when he had taken the leap, that the distance of the leap showed his rawness. The fox had led him off so easily, and he easily could become lost in going back.

      “You overpower me,” he heard himself say. “This land is yours, and I do not take back with me that which is not naturally laid out before me. That is what they have said. The courage to cross over the void is not enough. I entered it hungrily, but I’ll go back now.”

      The fox grinned in a way that he had seen on another’s painted face, the bold red streaks of wild fur that flashed back beside a sharp mouth. The fox held him in his stare, drawing him further into the weight of its talk. Then without another word, it turned nimbly toward the wall. In three light steps it sprang up the slippery clay edifice to disappear over the edge.

      Now with the strange sky blinking darker over him in the dimming forms of the gully, he sensed his intrusion into the animated woods. He was lost in a place he didn’t know and could accomplish nothing there. He turned to retrace his steps.

      He arrived at the water’s edge relieved to see the familiar stream stretching out before him. Stepping into it, he felt the welcome of its freshness about his feet and ankles. The exultant death cry now was lost. He couldn’t give in, not now. He had not brought back the prize. He had only intruded and found something he couldn’t touch that was mightier than he. Otci dipped his face into the eddy by the bank and drank. The cool, clean water refreshed him. As the water washed down his dry throat, he felt he was finding a calm place for his thoughts to collect. He would regain himself after this ineffective chase; it would be successful the next time. The fox’s face flashed again before his inner eye, laughing. It is a lost . . .

      A drop of rain on his thigh awoke him from the dream. He opened his eyes to find himself where he had lain down. He sat up and imagined the dark shore across the river. He suddenly felt a serenity of being where he ought to be. The possibilities were unfolding.

      This spot can shelter me from illusion. There is no such creature. Yet it undid me. I did as Nokusi told us, and I leapt for it as I might not have in other dreams. I could only have done that. I don’t think anything is wrong. Only a brief fear, only an uncertainty. No, only that.

      The purple predawn light crept through the fire hole in the pitched roof of his mother’s bark-covered cabin as Otci slept on a moss-stuffed cot. Outside, an impish breeze whispered against the broad leaves of a sycamore by the side of the cabin. Now that the days had turned quite warm with the fattening moon of the blackberry ripening month Otci slept inside, where he also kept the fire. Only with the end of the Poskita at the new corn ripening time was the fire to be extinguished and a new, unpolluted fire kindled. Squirrels pattering across the bark-covered roof awoke him. He saw the faint morning light through the fire hole and realized it was time to join the others at the river for the morning bath. Already they must all be down there, and the rest of the village would soon follow. He heard again the caution of Bear’s voice, felt the rigor of his own responsibility, and the necessity of making it right.

      He threw off the blanket and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Footsteps outside the stretched deerhide door startled him. He knew it must be Hobithli coming to rouse him. A few taps rattled against the side of the cabin and he recognized the impatient sounds of his dauntless friend.

      “Otci, Otci, get up!” The voice whispered harshly outside. “The others are already down at the river. Come on!”

      “Good, good,” he muttered. “Just let me set the fire.”

      Squatting naked at the stone-encircled fire pit in the center of the cabin, he threw several handfuls of dried grass onto the embers glowing beneath the gray ashes and blew the heat to a flame. Picking up a few small sticks, he placed them across the flames gently and walked hurriedly over to the wall peg for his breechcloth. Wrapping it around him and tying it off at the front, he heard the sticks pop as they caught fire. He reached for several thicker short sticks and placed them around the perimeter of the small flames so that they met and connected above the fire. He skillfully tied them with a thin piece of grapevine and propped several other smaller sticks between them to form an easily lit conical wick for the fire. Stepping back to watch it flame, he heard Hobithli again rattle the stiff deerhide door.

      “We’re late, hurry,” said his friend in a grating voice.

      Otci sensed his carelessness in arising late. He brought his fist once against the wall to stay Hobithli’s impatience. “It’s just about to catch!”

      Facing the fire, he saw the flames flicker up between the piled sticks and reach up to singe the twisted grapevine. He hurriedly placed more grass around the base of the fire, piling smaller then larger sticks on top of it to catch the fire when the bottom of the pile became heated. He quickly lifted the leather loop at the edge of the deerskin doorflap off the short wooden peg on the wall and stepped outside. Turning to Hobithli he narrowed his eyebrows and turned his mouth down in a frown, imitating the wild, contorted facial gestures of the dance leader. Raising his hand as if to bring it flat onto the belly of his friend, he slapped it instead on his heavy shoulder. “Come on, you’re holding me up,” he said with a mock sneer.

      Otci ran off in the direction of the river, past the dark council square rimmed with open-front warriors’ and elders’ cabins, past the cabins circling the square and around the smaller ones located irregularly beyond the perimeter. Despite his size, Hobithli was as fast as he, and he caught his friend as they