Ankti In Flight

Smoke rose from the camp sight like a giant grey bird, wings blocking out the setting sun, feathers swirling in wayward directions, floating on the wind amid the fiery reds and pinks of sunset. Soon night would descend, blackness like a blanket stitched with white like beads of birch bark, the moon, like the eye of an owl butterfly's wing. Woodsmoke and burned meat permeated the air, heat rushed in a waves from the bonfires just beginning to burn. Children rushed to tents, ready for dinner, dropping dolls and stick toys on the ground, hoops with strings from the guts of the hunt on their grill. They wiped their dirty hands on their bare chests, smearing paint paint across their fingers.

Ankti dropped her maize on the woven reed carpet of her hut and ducked beneath the flap and out into the evening. A breeze blew feathers into her hair, and made the beads they were strung with roll across her cheeks like pebbles.

She tugged on the bone handle of the stone knife around her throat, snapping the cord from it's knot behind her neck and raised it to the game hanging outside, the hide of a wildcat caught the day before, smoked and pinkish red. She'd skinned it and smoked it and now was ready to bring it inside. She severed the rope it swung on and brought the game inside the tent, laying it on a stiff reed table.

The flap of the tent quivered with the breeze, stoking the fire in their tent, smoke spiralling toward the hole in their tent, sparks dancing across logs and jumping outward like droplets from a disrupted puddle.

Ankti listened to the crackle of the fire, the hiss of water evaporating in wood, and the calls outside the tent. The chieftain was returning tonight. There would be celebrations. She was to sit at his side, a place of honour. He would bring her a gift, she would dance to show her gratitude. Makah had patiently shown her the steps, practicing with her in the shade of a willow behind shorn sheafs of grain and naked stock of maize. They had giggled with Ankti's ungraceful movements, her flailing limbs, and Makah's lack of balance. Much of their practice had given way to walks away from camp, through the underground caverns, and naps near sun ripened berry bushes and water that rushed liked coils of snakes under the mountains.

Mother had gone out, to collect the young ones and wash them in the last of the water lugged up from the river that day. It would make no difference, Ankti knew. Left alone the children became filthy and dust covered in a manner of minutes.

To pass the time she went over her paint marks, lines of blue and red on her shoulders, neck, collar bones and cheeks. Bolded, they stood out on her tanned skin and made her almond shaped eyes darker. She washed her palms clean and pulled her fingers through her matted hair, catching them on ornaments her mother had made for her in the last cycle of the moon, when she hadn't been busy tanning hides and threading furs with her bone needle.

Outside the sun dipped lower until it was a blur of liquid gold over the crag the spanned the entire of the western landscape. The woods became a black mass of twisting gnarled branches, patchwork foliage and blurred birds in flight against the vivid blue twilight. The camp sight was awash in the reds of the fire and drum beats began to fill the clearing, shaking the ground and writhing in Ankti's bones like tongues of flame. It called to her with the words of an old friend, but the intrigue of a new rhythm. The pounding became her heartbeat and she felt each turn of the earth, each finger gliding across a milk white skin stretched taught and reverberating with sound.

Surely it wouldn't hurt, she reasoned, to step out into the night for one moment. To leave the confines of the tent, now stiflingly hot and dark, and dance in the light of the fire, call out to the rising moon.

Before she had reasoned further, her feet had guided her out of the tent and toward the bonfire that grew like a beast in the night in the centre of the camp sight. Men and women were seated, in the dust and one logs or rush mats, waiting for new of the chieftain at the rivers edge. Elsewhere, miles away, on the backs of elks, men waiting amid the trees, akin to the movement of each leaf and twig, each night animal, as they waited for the water to ripple just right and alert them that the warriors, and their leader, had come back.

Those around the fire now banged drums and danced with open eyes, black with night, red with fire, and limbs as free as those of the willow trees. Ankti felt a bridge grow from her chest, as warm and insubstantial as light, reaching for the hearts of others whose bones were filled with the fire of the drums, whose feet were alive with the quaking of the dirt and the mountains. The wind blew her hair from her face and she rushed forward to meet it, leaping into the ring of dancers and letting the drums guide her.

The drums called to her, called left and right, up and down, and she jumped and spun to meet them. Her eyes were open but she saw nothing, nothing but sparks and black of night, nothing but clusters of stars that whirled above her, pinwheeling stories of Great Bear and other woodland creatures. She lifted her arms to them, willing her spirit to fly from her body, be one with the sky. She sang in praise of the moon, loudly with wild words, singing of the swiftness of the wind, the power of the fire, the tides of the ocean and the giving of the earth. She closed her eyes and spun, spinning closer and further form the heat of the fire, hands brushing furs and leather, beads clattering like the Great Rattle Snake -

"Ankti!"

The voice was shrill and cut through the pounding in her head and chest like an arrow through the red fox. The drumming ceased and her limbs became dead weight. The voice brought her back from that endless, spinning, golden moment and dropped her on the soil, before the blazing fire where the drummers had stopped, hands poised above their instruments, and the dancers had moved to the edges of the circle.

Ankti's mother stepped carefully through the drummers and circled Ankti's wrist with her fingers. She was shorter than Ankti, for her daughter had her father's height, but with her sharp, beautiful features and commanding voice, she was looked upon as the Great Owl, like a wise creature. She was well respected and few, including Ankti, spoke against her.

Ankti moved out of the circle with her mother, aware of the drumming beginning again, and the pitch black the sky had reached, the moon coming to its zenith as though it had followed its great silver arc in the passing of a second while Ankti had danced.

Ankti's mother, Kiwidinok to the people, Koko to Ankti and her siblings took in Ankti's appearance, her wild hair in wisps and clumped braids, her furs and skirt covered with dust, her legs streaked with brown.

"Chief will be back soon, you cannot disgrace him with such behaviour. You must await his presence at the greater bonfire, when he has travelled here from the river. You know that."

Ankti looked backed at the bonfire, feet aching to dance once more, and lifted her head to the moon, silently seeking help.

"I am sorry, Mother. I meant our leader no disrespect."

Koko released her daughter's wrist. "There is dinner in the tent?" Ankti nodded. "There will be more food later. We must dress you now, or-"

A horn drowned out her words. A horn of bone, Koko knew, hollowed out from a rare follow deer once found wandering the forest, alone, unaware of the arrow pointed to its heart. Unaware of the beauty of it's own hide, which now hung on the shoulders of the approaching chief.

His face was a map of time, wrinkling around his mouth telling the story of each smile, creases beside his eyes the story of each hardship and suspicion, lines on his forehead his every worry. His cheeks were smeared with red so dead and brown it was like the sands in the west. His broad shoulders had small raised scars on them, pale lines on his brown skin. His features were hard, square, but the tilt of his mouth in a smile sent reassurance and happiness throughout his people. He was tall, commanding, fiercely frightening with his feather staff and case of stone arrowheads, but capable of kindness. His eyes were dark, black pupils in black irises, orbs of inky night, now focused on Ankti.

"Daughter. Am I welcomed home?"

Text by Lucie MacAulay