SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 6: A Man of the Pwi (part 2 of 3)

Then Fava understood: the name described the person Tull would become, a man with a crushed heart.

The Pwi came forward and hugged Tull, welcomed him into the family, all of them talking at once.

Fava hugged him, tried to console him. "I have seen you watch Isteria," she said, pronouncing Wisteria as best she could, "that human girl. Now that you are Pwi, you should look at girls among your own people," and Tull blushed. By Pwi standards he was obscenely old to be single, as was Fava.

Twice, Fava knew, Pwi girls had set their belongings on Tull's doorstep, asking him to marry him in the manner of the Pwi, and he had left the belongings on the doorstep until the girls took them away. Fava had been one of those girls.

An old man hugged him and reminded, "I have two daughters, and they both need a husband; perhaps one wife would not be enough for you?"

And when the marriageable girls in the village hugged him, Fava could not help but notice how some hugged him with passion, so that their breasts pressed firmly against his chest. He would be able to feel their soft curves, and Fava knew that it was not done by accident.

Some Pwi left early, for they still sorely mourned the deaths of Denni and Tchar. But others sang and danced, guzzling beer from a barrel until the air smelled sour and warm, ripe, and sticky; then they spun madly and jumped into the air until they could no longer stand.

When Tull looked toward his home, as if to go sleep, Zhopila pleaded that he come to sleep in the home of his new Pwi family.

Fava's heart leapt when he agreed to do so.

They went to the house, dug there into the side of the hill, and Fava put fresh wood on the small fire in the hearth.

For a while, Tull sat up with Ayuvah's little daughter Sava, warmed by the light of the hearth, and carved her a tiny sailboat from a walnut shell.

Ayuvah told his mother about seeing Little Chaa touch the mayor's Dryad, and Zhopila became angry. Zhopila told Little Chaa, "You stay away from that monster, or someday she will carry you away from home to be her lover, and make you her slave."

So she told the boy the story of "Tchulpa and the Dryad of the Pines":

Long ago, the Starfarers created many trees and animals—both the mammoth and the redwood and the beasts in Hotland, but their work was not done. So, to finish their work, they gave birth to seven Creators—beasts terrible to look upon: Xicame to rule the fishes of the sea. Mema and Va to form and to rule the birds, lizards, snakes, the three breeds of dragons, and the serpents. Dwafordotch was made master of the insects. Zheforso to rule the hairy beasts, the Hukm, Mastodon Men, and the Pwi. Theva to rule the deserts and plains. And last of all, Forethorun to rule the jungles and trees.

Each Creator gave birth to new plants and animals, filling the world with life and death.

But when he was yet young, Forethorun made his home in a cave, and one day the mountain fell upon him. So, in his place, the six Creators made Dryads to tend the trees.

In those days, Tchulpa, a man of the Pwi with a beautiful wife and six beloved children, went into the forest with his basket to hunt for pine nuts in the month of White, and as he foraged, he heard a woman singing, and he crept toward her and found her beside a river.

Her skin was green, like the leaves of a young pine tree, and softer than the petals of a flower. Her beauty was above that of any woman, and when she walked, she moved as gracefully as a prancing deer, and her breasts bobbed like peonies in the wind.

Her voice was more beautiful than earthly speech—as if the meadowlark had lent her her song, and she sang of love, so Tchulpa thought that surely this must be the goddess Zhofwa, who blows her kisses upon young people so they fall in love.