Chapter One
I was born too late. I should have been cacica.
To many, the idea of a female leader was preposterous. But my father, Caalus, was the great unifier of the people of Escampaba, the people who now bear his name. It was his duty to pass to his offspring the royal insignia. Caalus produced no sons, though, only me. To wear the beaded leggings, to place the pearl amulet around my forehead, to carry the ruler''s staff, those were my birthrights. I was born too late. By that time, he''d given them to Stepana.
Stepana. My cousin. Once my husband. Ever my adversary. Child of my father''s sister and the warrior Aricata, born eight years before me. For all that time, despite Ishkara''s potions and the parade of wives the vassal tribes sent Father, he remained childless. Before the council, Aricata was as sharp of speech as he was of spear. "Cacique, how many women have you lain with? All barren? Ha. Already there is whispering, not only in Caalus but throughout Escampaba that their paramount leader possesses the manhood of a jellyfish. The only way to quiet the tongues is to name a successor."
The great captain had the people''s ear. He had slain the stranger named Ponce, the leader of the Spanish invaders who had dared to land on Escampaba''s shores. Aricata''s arrow delivered Ponce to the land beyond and sent his wind ships fleeing. It didn''t matter that Father knew the strangers would return. Aricata was the people''s hero. His influence was pervasive, his ambition limitless. The longer Caalus held off naming an heir, the louder the whispers became.
It was Ishkara who presented the solution after retreating to the sanctuary of the inner temple to listen to the gods, and my same dear uncle who, as tirupo, the people''s spiritual leader, presided over the ceremony at which Caalus adopted Stepana as his son. Though Father recoiled at the very sight of the youth whose head was as swelled as his belly, he understood Ishkara''s good sense. In so doing, Stepana came out from under Aricata''s control and into Father''s. It would seem.
For all the moons my mother carried me in her womb, I am told all of Escampaba held its breath. When I was born female, though, tongues wagged more than ever. Men claimed all the high positions, from tirupo and great captain down to the councilors and clan heads. But on the rare occasion that only a female child was born, she alone would carry the blood of the cacique. She could rule. It had happened in the provinces. As Father called the people to assembly, they wondered: would Caalus be so daring as to attempt to entitle a female? Would he sever the bond that made Stepana his son and successor? He was, after all, the most powerful leader the people had ever known.
Powerful, but not foolhardy. To rouse the wrath of Aricata was to weaken all of Escampaba. Nor would Father break a sacred promise, even one he lamented. He announced to the people: his daughter would not rule. Instead, when she came of age, she would marry Stepana. To pledge me to Stepana was another decision as abhorrent as it was necessary. I had not even the consolation of an unhurried childhood. It was not Father''s wish that I marry at the age of four suns, yet that was his order. I was born too late and wed too soon. And that is but the beginning of my story.
No. My story begins much earlier. For who am I but a strand of palm fiber braided into the belt of my ancestors? My story is the story of my people. It begins, truly, in the time of quiet, when the people knew themselves not as the Calusa, the followers of Caalus, but only as the people. Even then, they had a name for their watery homeland. There, in the maze of island- dotted, shallow- water bays protected from the open sea, tidal waters washed in and out, mixing with fresh water from the rivers of the mainland''s interior. It was not an ancient world; in fact, the oldest stories spoke of a time when the land and sea met much closer to the setting sun, and the ground was dry, the climate arid. Now, though, the sea had risen, creating a vast underwater flat covered with sea grasses and teeming with life. In the shallows the walking trees took hold, forming a web of interlocking roots, nursery and sanctuary for small fish, shrimp, and crabs, which in turn fed the profusion of birds, fish, and animals that the gods had sent to populate this bountiful place.
The people''s name for their home was Escampaba, the Bay of Plenty.
In the time of quiet, there was enough for everyone. Fish swam thick in the waters, and conchs, clams, and whelk were so plentiful that the people''s cities rose on heaps of discarded shells that formed tall mounds topped with homes and temples. Everything the people needed came from the sea and the thin strips of land upon which they lived. The fishermen made cord from the fiber of the sabal palm and wove it into nets, which they floated with pegs from the cypress tree and weighted with heavy shells, and the fish swam into their nets. Women wove baskets from vines and creepers and roots and stems and filled the baskets with oysters for roasting and steaming. Men fashioned cups and bowls from whelk shells, carved as things of beauty as well as of utility. They harnessed fire to hollow out the pine tree for canoes, sturdy crafts that could glide through the shallows or stand up to the waves of the open sea. With whelk shell chisels and cutting blades made from the teeth of sharks, they shaped and sculpted wood into masks for use in their ceremonies.
The gods were pleased with the people. It was a time of abundance.
In the quiet time, the people, my people, lived in harmony with the cycles of sun and moon. They gave thanks to the gods, to Sipi, who ruled over the heavens, land, and sea, to Nao, who presided over human affairs, and to Aurr as well, who aided in time of battle. For even in the quiet time, the people had conflicts. Long had their canoes explored their watery world, paddling up the coast to the north, where they found the followers of Tocobaga, and to the south, past the vast swamp at the foot of the mainland, along the great long appendage of the Gator Tail Islands, and farther yet to the rising sun lands of Tequesta. The time of quiet was threatened then by the voices of others who spoke words the people did not understand.
No, this story is not mine alone. It is that of Tanpa, whose followers built a majestic, high- mounded city traversed with waterways and a deep canal clear across his wide island to gain safe access to the great river that poured from the interior. These feats, grand in vision and exhaustive of labor, opened the trade route to the tribes on the immense Lake Mayaimi. Tanpa was wary, but as he bartered the people''s dried fish for the others'' roots and whelk hammers for their pots of clay, they learned to live together in a truce constructed of mutual fear and respect.
It is the story, too, of Muspa, he of the city at the edge of the vast snaking labyrinth of channels and walking tree islets to the south. Muspa was a tirupo who moved freely about the world of spirits, summoning health with the sea turtle or disease with the spider, fruitfulness with the dolphin or demise with the white pelican. His people excelled in woodcarving, fashioning smooth masks and graceful figures, polishing them to a fine sheen and preserving them with fat or decorating them with pigment made from charcoal, ground shells, or berries. It was these masks that the people used in their ceremonies, these figures that they prayed before. Muspa''s people earned renown throughout Escampaba as masters in the twin realms of the spirits and artistic beauty.
And of so many more. Of the smaller villages of Yagua, Estantapaca, Queyhcha, Sinapa, Tomo, Metamapo, and of the tiny out- island settlements, whose inhabitants shun both the congestion and protection of the cities, and who come together only during the festivals.
And can it be said that mine is not the story of our enemies, too? Of Tocobaga, whose fishermen follow the migrating schools of fish into Calusa waters and whose warriors sneak in at night to steal nets and canoes. And, of course, of the Spaniards, those strangers from afar who returned, just as Father predicted, on their fearsome and fabulous floating villages.
Here, from the refuge of the sacred inner temple where the gods spoke to Caalus and to Ishkara, let all those whose waves have washed over our shores speak while I listen, listen to the counsel of the very waves themselves, pushed to the shore, then sucked back to sea in their endless rhythmic breathing that sustains all of life. For it is nothing but life that I seek, life for my people. Let me hear all the voices until, at last, they speak as one. Only then will I act.
I am Aesha, the bird that dances between the waves. Tonight, my vision will be completed. Tonight, my story may end.
Chapter Two
Caalus stood before the temple, the shadow of his compact, muscled body projecting oddly long and angular onto the latticed walls. He dared not go inside for fear of disturbing Ishkara. For eight days now, his brother had secluded himself in the sanctuary of the inner temple. Only a journey of great import would have kept him there so long. Caalus turned toward the gold-tinted light of late afternoon, gazing past the central canal and its harbored entrance, past the low walking tree islands dotting the placid bay, past even the far-off lookout station on Tega Island. Osprey Eyes, the people called him, and Caalus felt complimented with the comparison to the startling yellow-brown orbs, fierce and keen, of the fish hawk. He strained to see farther yet, out to sea. That was where the strangers would come from. Soon. Then Tanpa, Muspa, and the others would believe. They''d see the wisdom of his counsel. If by then it wasn''t too late.
He didn''t blame the other leaders for doubting. Like the wispy clouds that precede a storm, only rumors had blown in first of a race of hairy-faced strangers who traveled in colossal canoes that could carry an entire settlement yet required no paddlers, only the winds to fill their cloths. The men who steered them, said the chattergulls, were puny, pale-skinned, and laughably ugly, with hair all over their faces and bodies. Yet these strangers from afar could control the winds. They were clever beyond imagination. They came from a land beyond the sun, sent by the gods themselves. Perhaps, some suggested, they were gods.
The stories spread like fire on the grasses, taking on a sinister edge. The strangers carried astonishing weapons whose darts struck like lightning, exploded like thunder, and killed anything in their path. They wielded glinting knives as long as a man''s leg, slicing off the noses and ears of those who refused to do their bidding. It was impossible even to run from them, for the strangers would unleash a wolf-like demon that could outrun a deer and devour you whole in crocodile-like jaws. Soon accounts were told around every campfire in Escampaba of the strangers'' hideous tortures, until it was quite impossible to separate truth from tale.
The same stories could be heard at the chiefs'' council fire. Caalus, the young headman of the small island in the central region, was a newcomer to the informal assemblies that took place during festival time, having only recently become a chief after the passing of his father to the land beyond. He listened closely to the counsel of Tanpa and Muspa, leaders of the people''s great cities to the north and south. Here were men who''d come from a long line of powerful chiefs of the same name, who enjoyed the admiration of all. Yet when finally it came Caalus''s turn to speak, he did not defer. In a voice that was respectful yet firm, he said, "We must band together under a strong single authority, a central council with leaders from throughout the islands. Only then will we be able to coordinate the defense of all." Above the grumbling, he added, "Please, I implore you. Our fishing grounds are becoming ever more congested. How are disputes to be settled? And we should be expanding the trade networks collectively, not haphazardly." But the others, fiercely independent, balked. One way or another, the people had always coped with their enemies and settled their internal differences. They feared the power of a central leader more than they coveted the benefits.
Then a traveler came to Caalus, an Arawak from the islands to the south and east, far beyond the farthest corner of Escampaba. He claimed to have lived amongst the strangers and that he spoke some of their words. Spaniards, he called them. They were monsters whose cruelty knew no bounds. Descending upon the Arawak in search of wealth, especially the shiny ore called gold, the invaders enslaved the natives by the thousands, demanding payment in gold and toil. The Spaniards'' cacique was a man named Juan Ponce De Leon, whom the strangers called Adelantado, "supreme leader." His fearsome companion, Bezerillo, was not a demon but may as well have been-at a point of its master''s finger, the giant dog would rip you to shreds.
The traveler called himself Guacanoa. Facing the standard punishment for failure to deliver the required tribute of gold-the cutting off of his hand-he''d fled by canoe into the night, not daring to make landfall for days on end until, nearly expired from thirst, he came to Caalus.
Caalus gave Guacanoa water, food, and a good bed. After the man had rested, Caalus learned that the strangers numbered, as far as Guacanoa could say, only in the hundreds. With their superior weapons, they lost but few of their men in battle and so had been able to subdue vastly greater numbers of Arawaks, who, being a peaceful people, had few weapons of their own.
Instead of despairing from Guacanoa''s tale, Caalus took solace. The strangers were not gods but men. The most human of purposes motivated them: greed. They ate, slept, shat, and bled. Their numbers were not overwhelming. Perhaps they were capable of cruelty, but what men weren''t? Caalus brought Guacanoa to Tanpa and Muspa along with a new idea. The waters of Escampaba possessed treasures that far outshone the strangers'' yellow rocks. "We''ll trade with them as we have with the interior tribes. We''ll make them allies." And finally, his ultimate argument: "If we devise no such strategy, perhaps Tocobaga will."
Though the mention of Tocobaga, the people''s hated enemy to the north, raised some eyebrows, still many resisted. Who would sit on this council? Where would it be located? What if they disagreed with a decision? They moved at the pace of the manatee, acted like the lumbering sea animal, too, burying their heads in the sea grasses, then rising to snort out a blast of hot air before descending below the surface again.
So Caalus waited, waited while the dread mounted like dead fish on the shore after a strangling tide. Waited while his brother, the tirupo, searched the spirit world for clues to mastering this new menace. From atop the island''s highest point, Caalus watched the sun dash the sky with its fiery light as it descended toward its nightly meeting with the sea. Soon another night of quiet would fall upon Escampaba. How many more would there be?
The wind ships were coming. Ishkara felt them as he could feel a storm still far out at sea, with his bones and joints. Like a wall that rose to the sky, they blotted the sun, casting a shadow that darkened the bay, the island, the temple. They must be very close, too close to see what pushed them forward. " Heh-emm." With a loud slurping sound, Ishkara swigged casine from the cup of the right-handed lightning whelk. Until his vision cleared, the black drink would be his only nourishment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Song of the Tidesby Thomas A. Joseph Copyright © 2008 by Thomas A. Joseph. Excerpted by permission.
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