The Mountain Cage Read Online Free PDF

and son, but he knew I had returned to Yeke Geren as a man. He might have guessed I had left a woman here.
     
     
    The man who had come for me led me past clusters of houses. Although it was nearly midnight, with only a sliver of moon to light our way, people were still awake; I heard them murmuring beyond the open doors. A band of children trailed us. Whenever I slowed, they crowded around me to touch my long coat or to pull at my silk tunic.
    We halted in front of a long house large enough for three families. The sign of the Wolf Clan was painted on the door. The man motioned to me to go inside, then led the children away.
    At first, I thought the house was empty, then heard a whisper near the back. Three banked fires glowed in the central space between the house’s bark partitions. I called out a greeting; as I passed the last partition, I turned to my right and saw who was waiting for me.
    My son wore his headdress, a woven cap from which a single large eagle feather jutted from a cluster of smaller feathers. Braided bands with beads adorned his bare arms; rattles hung from his belt. My wife wore a deerskin cloak over a dress decorated with beads. Even in the shadows beyond the fire, I saw the strands of silver in her dark hair.
    “Dasiyu,” I whispered, then turned to my son. “Teyendanaga.”
    He shook his head slightly. “You forget—I am the sachem Sohaewahah now.” He gestured at one of the blankets that covered the floor; I sat down.
    “I hoped you would come back,” Dasiyu said. “I wished for it, yet prayed that you would not.”
    “Mother,” our son murmured. She pushed a bowl of hommony toward me, then sat back on her heels.
    “I wanted to come to you right away,” I said. “I did not know if you were here. When the men of my own clan greeted me, I feared what they might say if I asked about you, so kept silent. I searched the crowd for you when I was speaking.”
    “I was there,” Dasiyu said, “sitting behind the sachems among the women. Your eyes are failing you.”
    I suspected that she had concealed herself behind others. “I thought you might have another husband by now.”
    “I have never divorced you.” Her face was much the same, only lightly marked with lines. I thought of how I must look to her, leather-faced and broader in the belly, softened by the years in Yeke Geren. “I have never placed the few belongings you left with me outside my door. You are still my husband, Senadondo, but it is Sohaewahah who asked you to come to this house, not I.”
    My son held up his hand. “I knew you would return to us, my father. I saw it in my vision. It is of that vision that I wish to speak now.”
    That a vision might have come to him, I did not doubt. Many spirits lived in these lands, and the Ganeagaono, as do all wise men, trust their dreams. But evil spirits can deceive men, and even the wise can fail to understand what the spirits tell them.
    “I would hear of your vision,” I said.
    “Two summers past, not long after I became Sohaewahah, I fell ill with a fever. My body fought it, but even after it passed, I could not rise from my bed. It was then, after the fever was gone, that I had my vision and knew it to be truth.” He gazed directly at me, his eyes steady. “Beyond my doorway, I saw a great light, and then three men entered my dwelling. One carried a branch, another a red tomahawk, and the third bore the shorter bow and the firestick that are your people’s weapons. The man holding the branch spoke, and I knew that Hawenneyu was speaking to me through him. He told me of a storm gathering in the east, over the Ojikhadagega, the great ocean your people crossed, and said that it threatened all the nations of the Long House. He told me that some of those who might offer us peace would bring only the peace of death. Yet his words did not frighten me, for he went on to say that my father would return to me, and bring a brother to my side.”
    He glanced at his mother, then