Read Online The World Above the Sky by Kent Stetson - Free Book Online Page B

to the strait through a narrow gut. Wind, sun and the push and pull of the moon churned fresh water from the hills and salt gulf waters into the bay’s life-sustaining broth. Its marshland fringe thronged with life. Aquatic mammals and waterfowl came and went at the bidding of the four distinct seasons that regulated the lives of The People.
    They began their descent to The People’s summer camp along well-trod paths. Keswalqw regarded the village tucked in the curve of the east bank below as an extension of the rivers and their creatures, all beings sentient as herself, possessed of their own Kiji-kinap , a tangle of life requiring care and tending, a sentient being deserving care and respect. The entire system was enriched, each species serving another in a generative web where land and sea, forest, river and sky functioned as one breathing, flowing entity. The estuary’s waters, within an easy walk of the lodges, offered the richest fishing of the entire bay. Ocean fish fat with roe driven to spawn in fresh waters collected here in early spring en route from the open sea. Mammals designed by nature to harvest the fish followed, feasted and, in their turn, fed The People.
    The river transformed The People’s lives seasonally as it was itself transformed. Keswalqw and her tribe followed game inland to winter camps when the brutal northern winter rode south, its killing winds riling the sea, turning bays and their estuaries to cracked plains of ice. The slick, stone-hard highway of ice the rivers became carried hunters deep inland to take moose, caribou, beaver and bear. The women followed, butchered the carcasses, hauled meat and raw hides to the winter camp, their toboggans’ wooden runners watered slick with ice.
    In spring great depths of packed snow gave way to the warming rays of Grandfather Sun. The old man he’d become over winter was reborn, a virile young shaman/warrior and provider. Power pulsed from his rejuvenated loins. His implacable stare—all melting fire—transformed ice and snow into clear running water. Spring floods cleansed the winter hunting grounds. Snowmelt rushed in torrents through the summer camp, cleansing it of the previous summer’s dross, scrubbing the earth clean for the season of plenty to come.
    Her pleasure in the ordered beauty of the village lay undisguised on Keswalqw’s face. Three sorts of structures were positioned with regard to space and privacy along the inside curve of the cove where tidal and fresh waters met. Cone-shaped wigwams rose from a circular base. Round-roofed domes and more familiar rectangular peaked-roof buildings formed a loose perimeter. Eugainia learned the wigwams, cone-shaped or dome-roofed, were primarily sleeping quarters sheltering three, often four, generations. The long rectangular edifices housed stores and sheltered communal activities.
    Each wigwam was distinguished by particular bird, animal or landscape forms. Narrow bands and sharp points of white pigment made of powdered clamshell and seal fat drew the eye to subtle, often geometric highlights. Red ochre. Yellow sulphur. Blue mussel shell. Grey or black ash. The palette was at once subtle and intense. On the door flap of a particular wigwam in which Keswalqw took pride, a spot of white, intense in this clear day’s morning sun, highlighted the black eye of a boldly painted loon.
    â€œMy totem,” Keswalqw explained. “She lives in three worlds and carries her young upon her back.”
    Keswalqw unlaced the neck of a distended moose bladder. Eugainia recoiled at its contents—putrid fat with a foul fishy odour. The seal oil water-proofed the wigwam’s skin and kept it supple. Keswalqw leaned into the skin wall and inhaled. She indicated Eugainia do the same. The seal oil once applied lost its repulsive pungence. The sun’s rays and sea air transformed the foul odour into a pleasant aroma, not unlike the scent of forest moss or fallen