Hidden Treasures: Short Stories: Beautiful Dreamer Short Stories, #1

By Cathy Smith

Hidden Treasures is a volume of 7 short literary poetic-prose stories with socially progressive arguments. The stories range from themes of serendipity, cloning and property tax to a musing fantasy about making all right with the world. These stories are appropriate for older children, teens as well as adults.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cathy Smith
• Release date: Dec 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386381389

Cathy Smith

Cathy Smith is a Mohawk writer who lives on a Status Reservation on the Canadian Side of the Border on Turtle Island (North America). She is proud of her people’s heritage and also has an interest in the myths and legends of other peoples and cultures, and modern fantasy and science fiction, which is often derived from past myths and often acts as myths for modern times.

Book preview

Hidden Treasures

Copyright © 1993, Cathy Smith

1. YUNWI TSUNSDI: THE Fox

Redbird had seen all of her children and grandchildren born in this house—even Charles, her youngest half-brother. Most of them had been raised here, in the Land of a Thousand Smokes. In fact, she had attended the birth of quite a few of the local children, being both a county and tribal midwife. Most of the people in the county at that time were Ani Yun'wiya, Cherokee. Cherokee usually from North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee.

She sat in the dark. The night was filled with odd noises, loose hinges creaking against the rain-filled wind and crashing rents of thunder. Tikwale'lu—thunder. Occasionally, violent flashes of light streaked across the room illuminating her unmoving, almost inert, figure which was set against an enormous dimly lit plaster wall. Elderly and small, she sat dwarfed by the shadows of chairs, tables, and iron candle holders. Her usually straight back was ordinarily slumped over to the side in slumber at this hour, but tonight she did not sleep in her chair, she was wide awake, thinking. Her eyes flickered now, glowing like the still hot wood ash dying in the sodden ashes of the metal bucket she used to clean the bottom of the wood stove.

Her fingers moved quickly and not with age, although some thought her to be close to 100 winters or even older. She had no birth certificate; there was no proof of her birth or the birth of some of her family members other than the verbal corroboration of family, friends, and the like. Well, I guess they, themselves, knew who they were and how long they had been here.

She was not slow or labored by illnesses or exhaustion. The room was pulled deeper into the moistened darkness of the hour and the unrequited need for light, honored only by a temporary drifting brightness of the moon, shifting away momentarily from Alma Redbird's face. Tojuwah, that's how you say Redbird in Cherokee.

The drone of unceasing torrents of water coated the underside of her mind which moved from one object to the other in an arrhythmic way like a waterfall interrupted by boulders, then released to flow freely again. Ama'tikwalelunyi, waterfall.

Alma Tojuwah Ridden also had some Scots Irish ancestry. She had grown up and had lived all her life in Beulah, North Carolina on the Tennessee/North Carolina border near Gatlinburg. It was 1950, and the times were not that easy for the Cherokee people. Segregation had forced them, along with peoples of African descent, to use Colored Only facilities and obey the unfair laws of Jim Crow. This segregation created a category of brown-skinned multi-ethnic minorities that sometimes had weird advantages in being segregated. As the famous Langston Hughes joke says, The Titanic was devoid of any passengers of color, simply because they weren't allowed to work on the ship or even to buy a ticket! No one is crying over not being allowed aboard the Titanic now, are they?

But in terms of jobs or housing and even the education that her people had disliked so much – there weren't many opportunities. Redbird had seen a lot. Some of her people said she had even known Tecumseh, The Prophet as a child. She could speak of him in trance, everybody knew that. If she had been a small child at that time, that would definitely make her over 100 years old. All of that would have made her closer to 150 years old and so that was probably not true. Possibly. Tecumseh had died in 1813. So, go figure.

The rain would not make her thoughts cease. The thunder also rolled like the ama'tikwalelunyi (waterfall) – over and over in one place, like a tumbler, an unceasing drum. Her thoughts rolled that way too. They would not go away. They followed the motion of the rain. She smelled the wet wood of the warn and broken sill by the door. She liked that smell. The seepage had dampened her cotton throw rugs. A branch smacked into the window glass in front of her, startling the glow of the weak yellow porch light shining underneath the water-logged, draining door.

Drat... she said anxiously, mumbling to herself.

A loud rattling underneath the house disturbed her as a silver-red fox jumped against the window in its confusion caused by the ferocity of the rainstorm. Alma gave a sigh, glancing at the light coming in through the crack in her front door.

Oh, good heavens! Again?! she exclaimed. I hope you didn't fall too hard – clever though you are.

She heard the hoot of an owl, calling at poor, wet Brother Fox. Seeming to comment on the darkness and the clumsiness of his friend. Rising, Alma shuffled to the window and saw the fox, obscured in the shadow of the house, running crazily after his attempt to crawl in her closed window. Its tail shone light silver against the inky shadows of the woods edge.

The roof leaked in puddles around her bare wooden floor in the living room, rain drizzled down the chimney in rivulets., splattering onto the top of her hot wood stove which used the chimney to put its pipe above her roof. Ama'tikwalelunyi, like a small waterfall. The fox disappeared under the dense foliage. Lightening split Alma's vision of the dank forest. Turning around, the red animal stared directly at her, its eyes dilated, the rest of its body hidden by the cover of the trees.

YUNWI TSUNSDI – a Forest Spirit, she thought to herself. This fox cannot stay outside in any heavy weather. He has never been able to do that, even as a kitten. That was how Alma and the fox had met, during another rainstorm when he was a little one.

Alma had been in this house for many, many years. She had seen some of her grandchildren born right in this front room. Now, the house was in disrepair, but clean. The floors were wooden and bare except for an occasional rag rug. Her electricity, for the most part, had been shut off too long ago to be remembered, so she used mostly candles, and heated her living room with wood. There was a bed (really a divan) in the corner of the room near the stove. The animal's eyes had resembled lit, glowing embers.

She knew that particular animal well. The Yunwi Tsunsdi spoke to her in his own voice. He brought news and gave companionship to her journey. He was kindred and a very good friend. One of the reasons that her mother had chosen the English name Alma was because it meant spirit in Latin.

Like a familiar, the fox spoke to her in a clear deep voice and used his own Ani Yun'wiya name for her in speaking to her. He would call her the White-haired One. She did the same for him, calling him the Smart Red Dog. Crawling into the house since he was a kitten, this wasn't the first time he had tried to climb into her home through the window. Scratching at her jutting casement, the young fox was sometimes frightened by the rain and the silent flashes of lightning delayed in their jarring, thunderous explosions by the distance between the creation of the noise and the vulnerable dead timber, plentiful and scattered near his lair.

Alma hoped fervently that the forest wouldn't catch fire. It had happened before and barely missed burning the back of her house. A fiery streak from the heavens had lit some dry tinder near a shed and her younger neighbors had dug trenches, bulldozing part of the dry brush by the pond.

The rain splattered at her feet in rude slapping dashes, wetting her socks. She pulled her tattered blanket closer around her thin shoulders and put her feet up on the ottoman.

The animal had run through the woods the day before, frightening some of the folks picking wild berries. One of them and dropped a pail and exclaimed, There goes Alma's fox!

The fox had scampered faster than the breaking storm this evening, skittering sideways underneath the prickles of the berry bushes and running through the subterfuge of the denser parts of the woods in his accustomed passage to the old woman's house, barreling through the hole he had made near her back door after crashing into the window casement by mistake.

His mouth hung open as Alma let out a quiet exclamation of dismay, patting his fur over the naked skin missing one patch of his silken tri-colored sable which he had torn out on some jutting section of casement in his fear of an anguished chase. The berry pickers had not really had any interest in him other than to make a comment about his appearance and retrieve the lost or scattered labor reflected in the contents of their buckets.

Someone saw one of the Tsawa'si – or one of the Little People – smile as he picked up a dropped berry and scurry into the bushes again, singing a tiny melody in Cherokee. The Little People loved berries, too. One berry was like a melon to them!

The fox still panted from the exertion of his panicked escape from Brother Thunder and lay down at Alma Redbird’s feet, resting his snout on her shoe.

Oh, my! You, poor little thing! exclaimed the old woman sympathetically, making clucking noises with her mouth. The fox spoke to her and told her of his run and his messages from the forest. He told her about the coming of some people that she knew. They would be here to see her soon. It was a good thing. They sat together, then, in peace and silence.

Later that evening, the sky darkened again with the storm. There was more incessant leaking from her roof and casements, which brought Alma to light the charcoal embers and bits of unburnt branches remaining in the wood stove. She rekindled her fire in the stove from a teat of that lit charcoal and added larger pieces of split wood until the fire was roaring again and drying out her room.

THE CHEROKEE, AFRICAN American and poor white berry pickers had spoken of the fox (and Alma's affectionate, gentle caring of him) in their cabins – set far away in the forest. They slept on cots and in lofts with mattresses filled with oat hay and timothy (which was pleasant smelling and, of course, their mattress stuffing could include the ubiquitous corn shucks). There were now kettles boiling over their hearths filled with rabbit stew, venison, and wild vegetables. The berries sat in a corner.

One of them sat down with a musical instrument and began to compose a riddle about the fox and the enigma of just why he would want to follow an elderly woman around that way. The fox whistled at Alma when he wanted to see her. He would hold his head up and whistle through his throat with his mouth open, as if he were going to howl like a wolf. There were many choices as to why the fox would do this. So, the singer sang some more and the people around the fire made up parts of the song and riddle just to help and have some fun. The fox and Alma were a conundrum.

One jolly man, a berry picker, said he thought that this meant that Alma Ridden was concealing something and the fox was there to reveal it. A lady began to play the spoons on the knee of her long calico dress. Another person shouted through the darkness of the cabin that he was, Goin' home 'cause a storm's a-brewin' out yonder! He ran off abruptly, banging the door to the cabin open.

The berry picker clanging the spoons stopped as he left. A few sparrows seeking refuge from the coming gale flew in and began to chirp up by the shadows of the loft on the rafters. The woman spoke. She said that there were two reasons that a male fox might behave the way he did.

The reasons took the form of a riddle with two different answers, both of which led to the same conclusion. The riddle went like this: "There were two doors. Each door had a gatekeeper. One gatekeeper told only the truth and the other only lies. How could you tell which door to enter and which gatekeeper to trust with your inquiry within the time you were given to ask? Each door went to just about the same place (although you would not know this). The place inside was very, very nice. And there was some hint of great power, prosperity, and freedom.

The two choices represented the fact that the fox might have something good in mind, or something conniving and not quite honest. After all, he was a wild animal.

But why, asked one of the berry picker's companions, would anyone want to try and enter a door without knowing exactly what might lay beyond it?

No one would, agreed the storyteller. What you would ask the gatekeeper and perhaps the quality of the passage also reflects the condition of the passenger, and the questions cannot be answered the same way for everyone. But remember, there were hints that whatever was beyond the two doors was wonderful. I think you could say though, that, 'Yes, you can ask the doorkeeper anything you want to.' It is generally agreed either door is not dangerous. You can easily find the doorway on the way out. There is no prohibition against leaving. Or, coming back in. But it is your choice as to whether you will talk to the gatekeeper that lies or the one that tells the truth. That is the real choice.

The thunderstorm had now begun to pour torrents down on the metal roof of the cabin. A member of the party noted that whomsoever was left inside, was probably stranded until the morning and most everyone there had to wait until the rain ceased or be drenched by the downpour – at risk of losing their way in the forest because of the wet, impenetrable darkness. The music from the back of the cabin grew louder and the hearth fire burned merrily.

The real question is what difference it might make if the gatekeeper at either door told the truth or if he told lies, noted the woman who had been playing the spoons.

One person answered, "Well, if you can get in, but you might not be able to find your way out – say for a really long time, what