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SHINGAS' TALE |
Shingas could hear the songs of the mourners lift and fall across the waters of the Lenapewihittuk as if they rode upon the backs of the lightning bugs that blinked first here, then there, in front of the canoes. The mourning songs were not as impassioned as they had been on the first night following his youngest son’s burial. And that was as it should be. The first night, following the long silence as the boy’s body was dressed and his mother prepared the necessities he might need on his journey to the Sky World – deerskin for fresh moccasins, his wooden bowl and spoon, the small bow and arrows he had only just learned to shoot – the songs had frightened the animals and made the clouds weep, they had been so full of power. But now, on this, the twilight of the twelfth day, the songs were gentle as befitting the last time Shingas would have to bring the steaming pot of meat to his dead child. Tonight, as the sun left the sky, he, his wife, and the village would offer his son one final feast before the child’s blood soul, the one that remained with the body, left to rejoin with the heart soul that fled at the moment of death – and wait – with the Sky People. Tonight, Shingas would bid farewell to a son who had not lived long enough to be given a name, and to tell him, gently, how it was that he came to die. A foolish accident. A smaller brother trying to prove himself in the eyes of an admired older brother. Nothing more. Shingas had done the same when he’d been the younger brother, as did Tamagua born two seasons after him. As had countless other generations of Lenni Lenape brothers. But this time there had been an accident. Foolish. And the pain of it, like a cold fist, still held Shingas’ heart within its grasp. A lightning bug landed, weightless, on the back of Shingas’ hand as he plunged the paddle into the black water of the river. His unnamed son had loved the glowing beetle swarms, chasing them far into the soft nights and arguing – when his mother finally called him to his sleeping skins – that they were not bugs with fire in their bellies, but tiny stars sent by the Sky People for him to catch. Shingas smiled at the memory. Perhaps the Name-Givers would have remembered that when the time came for the boy’s naming ceremony. But that time would never come now and it was better this way. Now none of them in the village would have tp think of some other name to call the glimmering bugs so they wouldn’t accidently call the dead child back from the land of the spirits. It was better that he’d died unnamed. As if hearing this last, unspoken thought, and grateful that it did not have to lose the power of its own name, the lightning bug on Shingas’ hand blinked three times and rose into the night sky. It was a good sign. Turning to look back over his shoulder, Shingas smiled broadly enough for his wife, Cholena, to see it against the black soot and bear grease face he would wear in memory of his son until the time of the lightning bugs came again. She nodded but did not smile, or if she did, the black paint on her own cheeks hid it from him. “We’re almost there,” he said even though the way had become familiar to all in the mourning party. “Is the food still warm?” Cholena nodded, the straight white part in her raven black hair bobbing up and down, and touched one hand to the birch-wrapped pot as if she’d forgotten she was carrying it. “Yes,” she said. “But not too hot. He doesn’t like his food hot. It burned him once, do you remember?” Shingas grunted and turned around as the bottom of the canoe touched the pebble-strewn bank. He remembered. The boy had howled in pain and wouldn’t touch another bowl of meat or corn until it was almost cold to the touch. Perhaps the Name Givers would have remembered that also, Shingas thought as he stepped from the dugout, pulling it higher onto the rocks and empty mussel shells, and named his youngest child Burnt Tongue or Doesn’t Like Heat. “Foolish,” he whispered out loud, not realizing he’d spoken until his son, his living and now only son, Little Frog, spoke. “What?” “Did you speak, Father? I didn’t hear.” Shingas shook his head and took a deep breath, listening to the gentle crunch of doeskin on stone as the village followed his wife to the burial ground and then to the mourning songs – softer now, no more than a whisper, a cradle song to sing his unnamed son to the stars – before he could find it within himself to answer. But even then, his voice sounded as if it came from deep within his belly. “I was just talking to the wind,” he said and made as if to cuff the boy on the side of the head, pulling back at the last moment so his hand touched only air. Unlike the rest of the mourners, Little Frog wore no face paint or any of the ornaments of grief. As the bridge between the earth and sky, he would be the last thing his brother’s spirit would see, the last body in which his brother’s spirit would momentarily dwell; and that last brief echo of life needed to show only joy, not sorrow. So much like his brother. The thought came unbidden, unexpected; and like a freak chill on a hot summer night, tightened the icy grip on his heart. Shingas took a step toward the burial ground and stumbled, quickly blaming it on an imaginary root when the shocked muttering began. “I am becoming night blind in my old age,” he said, rolling his shoulders and nodding as the concern he’d heard instantly turned to laughter at his joke about being old. He was still a young man and the village knew it, barely through the middle of his nineteenth summer, Cholena a year younger. They would have many more children, many more sons to fill the place in their hearts left empty by the loss of the unnamed one. But that would come later. Now they had only the loss. “You are not old, Father,” Little Frog said, always one step behind everyone else. So much like his brother. “Old enough to know how to avoid roots better,” Shingas said and finally reached out to touch his son. He’d been unable to do so before, the ice fist threatening to still his heart should their hands so much as graze one another while dipping bowls into the cooking pot. But now, on this last night of mourning, Shingas reached out and placed a hand on Little Frog’s shoulder. “And old enough to know better about many things.” The cold fist within him began to melt. “Are you ready, my son?” Little Frog looked up and smiled. The same smile, so much like his brother. “Yes, Father.” Shingas smiled back and pulled the warm night deep into his lungs, smelled the heat that still clung to the woodland’s moist underbelly. “Then I am proud,” he said, hugging the boy close. “Come, your brother is waiting.” Though the songs were still soft and filled with the words of mourning, a lightness came over Shingas as he led his living son to the grave post of his dead son. After eleven days and nights of silence, it would be good to speak to his child again. For the last time. Cholena was already seated next to the grave, setting out the meal that she’d brought and telling their son’s spirit not to worry, that the fish stew wouldn’t burn him. One of the Elder Name-Givers heard and chuckled softly. Shingas nodded and smiled at the peaceful scene. The moonlight had stripped his son’s grave post of its bright colors and rendered the few painted designs, that spoke so silently of the unaccomplished life buried beneath the yellow earth, all but invisible. Shingas looked up and watched a cloud of lightning bugs dance beneath the pathway of stars. Perhaps the little boy had been right. Part of him hoped it was so, he would like to think that the Sky People had sent the glowing insects down to the earth for his son to play with. The ice fell away from his heart, never to return, as he lowered his gaze to watch Little Frog walk – straight back, head high – to the blanket spread across his brother’s grave mound and accept the drinking gourd from Cholena’s hands. “You are a good son,” she said as she helped their son to sit, one hand remaining on the gourd to steady it. “And a good brother. He would have learned much from you.” Shingas leaned forward and saw a small tremor tug at the boy’s mouth, a childish quiver of fright that was gone a moment later as he straightened his shoulders, preparing his body to bridge the two worlds. “Drink,” Netawatwees, the sakima, civil chief, said, gesturing with his own hand as if he, too, held a gourd, “and allow us all one last visit with the one who still lingers.” There was another stiffening to the narrow shoulders – Shingas wondered if any, other than himself, had noticed – as Little Frog lifted the gourd to his lips. Three swallows, four. A grimace at the taste. The twittering of laughter laced between the songs of mourning and the stir of wind through the leaf heavy trees. Shingas’ among them. As a boy, not much older than Little Frog, he had been the bridge for his grandfather after the old man had been killed during a hunt. Another foolish accident. The cornered stag had proven too great a foe for the nearly blind warrior . . . and he said as much, through Shingas, once the power of speech had been given back to him. That, and to apologize to his wife for having had the bad luck to leave here without meat for the coming winter. Sightless, speechless, and without form, Shingas nevertheless heard his grandfather’s farewell and wept without eyes or tears. Although an honor, Shingas could tell by the pinched look on his son’s face that the sleeping drink hadn’t gotten any better tasting in the years since he’d helped his grandfather say good-bye to the land of the living. Shingas bit the inside of his cheek to keep silent as the gourd slipped from Little Frog’s hand and the boy fell back onto the blanket covering his brother’s grave. Slowly, so slowly that it would have been hard for Shingas to remember the exact moment, the songs of the mourners gave was to the sound of the wind and water. And the steady, deep breathing of his son . . . his sons . . . as one became the other. Little Frog’s body suddenly constricted – bowing upward, toward the path of stars, anchored to the earth only by the souls of his feet and the top of his head, arms hanging loose like empty sacks of skin – and a sound, a watery sob, tore from his throat. It was such a foolish accident. The child should have known better that to try and help with the fishing nets . . . he was too young . . . too small, so terribly small. No one had seen him become entangled in the nets. No one had seen him go under the fish-churned waters. No one had heard his cries for help, if there’d been any. No one. Not Little Frog, not Cholena, not . . . No one. He’d only noticed the child was gone when he looked back toward the shore to wave and boast about the catch. And only knew his youngest son was dead when he heard Cholena’s anguished screams. “FATHER! HELP ME!” The voice that gurgled from Little Frog’s mouth had a slight lips. Shingas had almost forgotten that about his youngest son. How could he have forgotten. “MOTHER!” “Sah-sah-sah,” Cholena hushed, her hands gently patting the rigid body back against the blanket. Tears glistened on her cheeks, reflecting the moonlight. “It’s all right. Sah, quiet. Rest, my little one, rest.” Little Frog opened his eyes and blinked, a look of surprise on his face. “Mother?” He turned, eyes going round as they fell upon Cholena. “Mother!” He sprang at her, clung to her, fingers grasping the soft doeskin of her gown, burying his face against her neck. “Mum mum mum.” Childish sounds of pleasure. Shingas had almost forgotten that as well. “I was,” the little voice sighed, “I was . . . I thought . . . I didn’t know where I was, Mother. It was so dark and still and . . . and the water was so cold I . . . I . . . Oh Mother, Mother.” “I am here, little one. It’s all right, sha. I’m here.” As he clung to her, so did Cholena cling to him. Desperate, with a strength born in hopelessness . . . as if she was starving and he, the spirit within the borrowed body, was food. The only food she would ever need. Shingas felt his heart pound slowly against the bones in his chest – a gentle reminder from the Manetuwak that he still walked the earth. That he still lived upon this world. Nodding, he walked to the grave and kneeled, held out his arms and gasped as Little Frog’s body filled the empty space between them. Little Frog’s body . . . but the shape, like the voice and actions, even the faint scent of the breath different, changed. Belonging to another. Like moss on a tree, or lichen on stone . . . one son’s body, the other’s spirit . . . together for only a moment longer. Shingas closed his arms around his joined sons and held them tight, rocking back and forth to the measured beat of his heart . . . the same way he had every night since the child’s birth. “Father, I-I couldn’t see you,” the voice of his dead son whimpered, “and it was so dark and cold, I . . .” The tears came in a flood. Shingas curled himself tighter around the trembling little body. “I know,” he whispered, “and it pains me that I didn’t see you . . . that I didn’t know you were in the water until it was too late.” Shingas felt his throat close, shutting off the passage from breath to lungs as if he was the one drowning. When he was able to speak again, the words sounded weak in his ears. “I should have known you would try to help. That was your way and I’m sorry I forgot that.” Releasing the tightness in his arms, Shingas gently tipped Little Frog’s head back until their eyes met. A younger gaze looked out through the dark eyes. “You became tangled in the fish nets when we began pulling it into shore,” Shingas said softly. “You drowned. I’m sorry, my child, that I couldn’t save you.” Shingas let the spirit-child within the body of his living son sob out the loss of its barely begun life while he continued to rock slowly back and forth, back and forth; his eyes locked now with those of his wife, the only things he could see that were not masked by the black mourning paint. She was singing her own song of loss – softer than the others that hovered in the air above the grave – a prayer to Kishelemukong, the creator of all things, to think well of their unnamed child so that he might be created again in the world of the spirits. Shingas closed his eyes and joined his voice to hers, doubling the prayer and imagining his words and hers, and those of the Real People gathered around them turning into lightning bugs to light the pathway through the stars for his child. The image helped to strengthen his own spirit when he opened his eyes again. “Quiet now, little one,” he whispered, “you need no longer cry. All that has passed. The journey you start tonight will be filled with light and warmth. There is no sorrow where you go now, no pain. Now you will walk among the stars and chase lightning bugs throughout the endless night skies. It is a place of happiness for all times.” The tremors in Little Frog’s body slowed as the spirit within listened, the fitful sobs slowing. “W-will you be there, Father?” the tiny voice asked. “Will Mother and Little Frog?” Shingas brushed the loose hair back from the tear-stained face and lowered his head until his lips brushed against the small ear. “Yes. Soon, perhaps, or maybe a little longer.” “But!” “Sah. Time has stopped for you, little one. It means nothing more than light following darkness and back again in its turn. You’ll see us again, you’ll see all the Real People, I promise. If you’re not too busy tormenting the lightning bugs of the Sky People.” The spirit within the body giggled, then wiped its nose on the back of Little Frog’s arm and sat up, studying Shingas’ face as if trying to memorize every line and shadow of it. A smile touched the corners of Little Frog’s wide mouth as the spirit child touched one finger to the black paint on Shingas’ cheek. “Black,” the inner spirit giggled as it held up the stained finger for inspection. “See.” Shingas closed his hand over the smaller one, folding the raised finger down against his palm. “I see. We have painted our faced black to mourn your death, my son, because we all loved you. And because part of your spirit remained here with us. But now that time is over and you must go.” The spirit within Little Frog looked up into Shingas’ eyes. “Where, Father?” Shingas pulled his sons closer to his chest and looked up into the twinkling blanket of stars. “To the sky, little one. Follow the lightning bugs and they will take you to the land beyond this one.” He lowered his voice, softer than a whisper, as Little Frog shivered, once. “I will never forget you. Go now, and find peace.” Little Frog’s body tightened, the muscles in his back and legs growing taut against the skin at the same moment a sigh, long and trembling, passed from his parted lips. A moment later his body relaxed and pressed tighter against Shingas’ chest. Little Frog slept deep, and Shingas hoped, dreamless. It was over. Lifting his head, Shingas closed his eyes and listened to the silence between the stars for the sound of his dead child’s moccasins as he chased the lightning bugs into the land of the Sky People. |
