towering house... It was long time ago at a time when the world was new and old at the same time. It was at the turn of the last century before children were sent to boarding schools. It was 1900. A young boy, an Indian boy played in some old ruins not far from his home. Eshkee, Where are you, Eshkee, come and eat with us. He heard his mother call out to him from a distance, a place in the trees downhill far below. His 10-year-old body stood up and looked out the adobe portal, a small opening in wall of the ruins where he could see the whole valley below. It looked east to the distant mesas. I wonder if they had kids like me, and if they played here, he thought to himself. His mother called to him again and he dropped himself to the earth floor below keeping the pottery shard he held in his hand and ran down the narrow trail to the edge of the woods where a small spring led to a pond next to where their camp was. It was summer and everything was green. They were living at their sheep camp, up high on the mountain, there were pinon pines, Douglas firs and Blue Spruce and further up Aspen trees with their white bark. The trees were tall and strong. The leaves rustled in the wind. He often played there in the ruins and watched the clouds float by. He thought about the people who live in those old ruins. He sat up there on the hill, they were made of earth and old cedar logs. Mom, tell me about the Towering House? he said. Dont play up there, you can get hurt, there is nothing there. We dont bother those places; there are bad spirits that roam around those places. We never bother them. Those they call devil spirits live there. His headband was crooked and his long hair was sticking out, she fixed it for him and told him to go to the pond to wash himself. He ran to the pond, there are small scrub oak trees, and some ferns by the waters edge, the plants were thick through there so it was hard to see. The one thing he knew it was green and he liked to stay around there. He ran to the waters edge and looked at himself in the still water. He could see he looked like his father, who was down off the mountain helping with a ceremony. Eshkee was left in charge of the sheep and he taken them out earlier in the morning, real early and brought them back in, he would take them again in a little bit to go down to Where Lightning Struck a Giant Tree, that ridge it was called that and took all afternoon to go there and then come back. As he looked at himself, he heard a noise, some twigs and branches braking. Someone was running to the pond from the other side. He stood up and looked through the thick brush wondering who it could be. Just then a little Indian girl his age, came running out. She was dressed in the old time Indian style of dress, with high leggings, and a woven dress. He hair was long and she looked to be his age. She stopped running seeing him standing there. She looked at him. She looked like she was a Keesahnee, one of the Anasazi, the ancient ones. She was his age. He was going to say who are you but then she was gone just like that running back the way she had come. Eshkee went to eat and found his mother had made blue cornmeal bread cooked in the ashes of the fire and she had beaten some dried deer meat to make it soft for them to eat. He sat down and watched as she gave him his food. Is there someone living around us over that way, he pointed toward the mountain, beyond the ruins to the next ridgeline. It was nothing but forest up there. His mother said, No one is staying up that way, because there isnt any water for them up there. She looked at him curiously and said, Why, did you see something up there? He sat there and thought about it and thought I have to find out what is going one before I say anything about that girl. She is not one of us; she is one of the Towering House People he thought. He knew they lived far from this place. He had never been to their country but he had heard his mother and father talk about them from time to time. As time went on from time to time he would hear noises in the brush, and as he got older he learned to listen for the sound of broken branches, and slowly he tracked the sound. He found that there were stray billy goats wondering around, small ones and when these were near, he would move very quietly and found he could catch a glimpse of the little girl. She tended the goats. The hillside was steep and thick with scrub oak, and he would follow her for little bit and then she would walk into the forest and be gone. He could never track her beyond there. She seemed to disappear when he came to the place called Dark Canyon. He didnt mention this to his parents, since he expected they would say something about those Keesahnee living somewhere around there, but they said nothing. One morning, early near sunrise he took the sheep out early and sat on a large rock to watch the sound come up. The sheep like to eat the early morning dew on the plants, and if he were a sheep it would be treat for him to be taken out that early. He heard some singing, a girls voice it was, coming from high above him where there were large rocks and a place where you could see the sunrise through the trees. He knew the place. He listened as it came through the air as the sun broke dawn. The earth, trees and sky were pink and gold. The air was fresh. He followed the sound of it, and as he got near it ended. He thought about the song he had heard, and it was not like any he had ever heard before. He thought about Dawn Boy, and the stories his father had told him about the Sun making its way from the East to the West, and how this was done every day without fail. He had heard his father, grandfather and his whole family at one time or another talk about Hozhoji, the blessing of a new dawn, about finding the Beautyway as the went throughout the day. He had heard his father sing countless times before, and yet this song was different. He listened each morning and he could hear it. TAAAAHH HHOOOOOOOOO! TAAAAHHHH HHEEYYYY TAAAAHH HHOOOOOOOOO! TAAAAHHHH HHEEYYYY! AAAAHHHHYYAAHH! AAWWAAAAYYYYY! AAAAHHHHYYAAHH! AAWWAAAAYYYYY! The sound of it carried on the wind and it echoed in the distant hills and canyons. It seemed to make everything peaceful and good. It lifted him as he heard its echoes and wondered about the one singing it each morning. The song went on and as dawn became day if faded its echo going faint in the canyon walls and forest. Day after day he heard it and went to find the one who sang it. He resolved to find her, and waited in the high place before the early light of day. He sat wedged in the large red sandstone rocks and found that they were warm from the long hot day, falling asleep from its warmth as he waited for dawn to come. He woke when he heard her voice just a stone throw away. He could see her form as she kneeled down facing the East and it seemed offered a prayer. He thought about how she did it. Her hair was long and black, and she dressed in a shawl, the colors different from that of his own people. He thought about why he had said anything to anyone about her, and the song she sang, but felt it was something he was not ready to talk about with the people he knew. He sat wedged in the rocks as she watched the early morning light move silently and a soft grace all its own chasing the darkness away and bringing its fingers of pink and gold light to all that was there He watched her as she sang from her kneeling position, looking into the dawn and thought who is she and where does she come from. TAAAAHH HHOOOOOOOOO! TAAAAHHHH HHEEYYYY TAAAAHH HHOOOOOOOOO! TAAAAHHHH HHEEYYYY! AAAAAYYYYYEEEEEE! TAAAAHH HHOOOOOOOOO! TAAAAHHHH HHEEYYYY HHHHYYAAHH! AAHH YAAHH WWAAAAYYYYY! AAAAHHHHYYAAHH! AAWWAAAAYYYYY! TAAAAHHHH YYAAAHHHHEEEYYYY TAAAAHH HHOOOOOOOOO! TAAAAHHHH HHEEYYYY TAAAAHH HHOOOOOOOOO! TAAAAHHHH HHEEYYYY! When she finished, he was going to surprise her, but found he could not make himself do it. He watched her as she slowly got up and walked to the forests edge making the sound of a blue jay, calling to one in the nearby tree and he called back. He stood there a while and then left to tend the sheep. It so happened his mother sent him down the mountain to help with a Sing for the Edge of the Water People, and so he found himself building a shade house. As he worked, he liked the rhythm of what he was doing and soon found himself singing quietly to himself. The Singer was from far off, a place way to the East, a place called Where the Coyotes Cut Through the Mountain; three days ride away from the Edge of the Water People. He was an old man with silver white hair, a face wrinkled from the sun. He was carrying an assortment of deerskin wrappings. These Eshkee knew contained the things of a medicine man. He knew that this man at a time when he was young had run down a deer and smothered it with his bare hands, so that no wound would be made in the deerskin, that the feathers, sticks and other items were old. Eshkee made himself busy to stay out of the way of this man from so far off. Eshkee was working when he heard the Singer come up to him and say, My son, I hear you singing a song, a tiny one under your breath. I am wondering where did you learn to sing this song? Eshkee didnt know what he was saying. He looked at him and returned to work. The Singer came up to him and said, When I was young, just a young boy, my grandfathers father sang that song from a long time ago. It was lost in the wind to me; I had forgotten the sound of it from so long ago. Now I hear it and it reminded me of when I was small and sat at the fire of the grandfathers father and heard him sing that song. Where did you learn it? Eshkee walked inside the shade house and the old Singer followed him, the walked through the other side a little ways away. Eshkee was shy to talk about it, he said he had heard the song coming from the Towering House up on the mountain, and had seen a girl not from around there make her way to the high rocks and sing it dawn. He had first seen her when he was a child and now he was a young man and did not know her name or where she came from. The old Singer moved his hands through his hair, looking at the young man. He said in our way, we come from four original clans, that is where we come from way back in the days when the Holy Beings were with us. One of those was the Towering House Clan, it is from these people that we come from in our way of being related to one another. The people of the Towering House are no more, they are gone, they went away and no one has seen any of them. Did this girl talk to you? Did she give anything to you? Eshkee said no. The old Singer asked Eshkee for his medicine bundle. No one ever asks another for their medicine bundle it is considered a sacred thing, it is a little of what places, experiences, happiness and troubled times we mark our lives with. What it contains is very personal and not talked about in the way people talk about things with one another. Eshkee presented his to the old Singer. In the bundle there was a pottery shard, and it was the one Eshkee had carried from the time he was little boy, it was from the ruins he played in as a boy. The old man took and took Eshkee into the ceremonial area and unrolled his deerskin bag, the one without any mark used for his medicines. There in the midst of all this was a small pottery bowl used for healing. It was chipped and a piece was gone. The old Singer put the pottery shard to it and it went into it easily. The old Singer studied it for a bit and gave Eshkee something else for it from his bundle. He told him to put it near where the Towering House Ruins are. In the stillness of night, in the quiet at the end of the day, Eshkee would sing the song and at dawn still hear it quietly, the echo still resounds through the canyons and valleys of this land. where those that walked the earth have left a trace of themselves in the wind. It is there in the quiet of early morning just before first light. The girl from the Towering House sings her song....rustywire
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 01:35:14 +0000
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