RAVA
CHAPTER 1
I wondered what I could do to prove
that I was brave. I couldn’t tell them
about the fox on the sand at Humalivuu that led me to this canyon in the forbidden land, speaking to me in a strange voice, giving me courage when I was filled with fear. They would all laugh; ‘Cowardly Fox has found her magical spirit, and it told her to run away from home!’ I felt my tears coming but I swallowed them.
I had to find a way to show my courage. Perhaps I could perform, holding two poisonous serpents while chanting to Alahtin; but when would it appear next? Sitting in front
of the frightening canyon, with my eyes closed, showing my bravery, I was thinking of other ways to prove my courage when suddenly I heard mysterious sounds. Eyes open, I stood up and walked toward the ocean, hunting the source of the voice.
“To the underworld with you!” shouted someone. The voice was faint, mixing with the breeze and the thump of the crashing ocean waters. I walked over the piles of sand driven up by the heavy waves. I could hardly believe my eyes. I ran to the dark brown sand, the edge of the ocean, wondering if the fox was playing with my eyes. In the middle wave of a group of three advancing waves I glimpsed the brown planks and then the whole wooden canoe commanded by a man sitting a bit more than halfway back, dipping his blade into the rushing water as if he were guiding the craft’s precise position, now and then paddling with powerful strokes to further adjust the direction of the nose of his craft.
“Damn the Great Mother!” he shouted, looking at the wave as he paddled to maintain direction, using knowledge I could not ever have imagined possible. The tomol was hurtling toward me, the canoe’s back end leaving a streaky line of frothy bubbles behind it as it slid sideways in the hollow of the wave, the man grunting furiously with each guiding stroke of the paddle. “To the underworld with you!” shouted the man foolishly, totally ignoring me and everything except his progress in keeping the craft speeding sideways on the wave curling toward shore. It was a miracle! Just the color of the clear turquoise wave and the reddish brown tomol were like medicine to my eyes. I was feeling the opposite of what I felt running away from the sign of the cougar crushing the dolphin in its jaws in the canyon behind me. And from Humalivuu and all the jealous nasty people in my village.
“To the underworld with the Great Mother, and to everybody!” the man in the tomol shouted as he paddled furiously to guide his speeding craft, filling me with excitement. I watched the tomol pass to the left of me, gliding as fast as a pelican, much faster than any tomol could go paddled by the strongest fishermen. For a moment my old confidence returned with a new desire: I wanted to ride the waves in my own tomol.
My chest pounded with frustration when I remembered it was impossible because the new chief of Condor’s Nest gave the canoe that I built to my half brother Coyin, a real skunk!
“To the Underworld with the Great Mother!!” I screamed, recalling my own cursing of Mongala, the new chief, and all the others who had falsely accused me, and how good it felt earlier in the morning. I wished I hadn’t, for the man turned to look at who screamed. Just then the tomol stopped, and was covered by the crashing wave. The craft, about the length of three men’s outstretched arms, floated upside down near the place of the upset, but the man had disappeared. I ran into the shallows and then dove deeper, looking underwater for him. He might have hit his head on the edge of the tomol and been put to sleep. Or perhaps he was dazed and in his confusion swam downward, thinking down was up. I had heard similar stories from my father.
I came up for air, gasping and blowing out water, shivering from the cold. I dove in again. My vision was fuzzy; I could see the brown seaweed reaching up, its tentacles swaying with the force of the waves, and following it down, about two body lengths, a blurry mix of brown rocks and white sand.
I dolphined along the crowded line of the seaweed growth, came up for air and dove under, searching left and right for the man. He couldn’t have disappeared! I saw something shiny, round and golden resting on the bottom, but I ignored it for the moment, thinking maybe it was the inside of an abalone shell. I looked all around for the man.
There he was, his limbs flailing, struggling with a tangled web of seaweed stalks. I gulped as much air as I could and dove down, seeing the man’s leg wrapped by several strands of the tough grabby stalk. Using the obsidian knife grandmother had given me, I cut the stalks, clutched my knife in my teeth, and dove to the bottom, frogging along the flat wavy sand until I was directly underneath the man. I grabbed both feet and pushed up against the bottom, then pushed off again to get to the air above.
After I caught my breath, still holding the knife handle in my teeth, I pulled the man by his hair, which was long like all men’s hair, until we were both in shallow water. By now the man was spitting up the salty water and gradually putting his feet under him on the bottom, giving me a chance to resheath my knife.
The first surprise was that it was not a man but a large boy! I was stunned, and in my confusion made a joke. “Hey, blueface, next time don’t swim down!”
The boy grinned. Just then a wave crashed upon us, pushing both of us down under. We waited for the wave to pass over us, holding our breath. We pushed off of the bottom and stood in the calm water up to our waists, catching our wind, spitting out the salty water and clearing our noses. I was about to say something when the boy put his arm around my neck, and then hit my face with his other hand balled in a fist. He let me go, grinning from ear to ear, like he knew my nose had already seen battle. The blood dripped into the water and onto my shoulders. Normally I would hit anybody who hit me, whatever their reason. But how do you hit somebody you just saved? The boy was looking south, as if he had forgotten something and suddenly remembered it.
I was confused, but just then I noticed the tomol drifting close to the dangerous rocks in the lapping shore waves, and I chose to save it from damage instead of fighting its owner. I swam and walked through the shallows, grabbed it with both hands, pushed it through the maze of nasty rocks and dragged it to a safe place up on the hard sand. I heard the same sound of a bird squawking-‘tee-err-a, tee-er-a, and was sure somebody had been watching me, having seen something moving out of the corner of my eye. Keeping my inner eye on my first task, I turned and looked to see if the boy was coming in. No.
I saw that the boy’s head was under the water. I went back to help him, still surprised by my own blood and even more surprised that I was going back to help him again. I guess I still felt responsible for his accident. But if I had known what lurked close by, I would never have entered the water.
As I returned to the boy, a herd of sea lions came barging in, several nosing pups onto shore, knocking us down into the green covered rocks that usually held many little blue and black shells attached to the rocks, some sticking out on the sides sharp as knives. Shell covered rocks hiding in waist deep water could surprise you and make you bleed.
I was lucky to be pushed onto a single rock which grazed my back, instead of cutting my leg or pushing my shoulder out of place, which I guessed is what happened to the boy. After being injured both of us took care to watch where we stepped in the shallows, which held many rocks covered not only with the sharp shells that had already tasted blood but also purple needles and stinging worms. We were fountains of blood, the boy more than me. We found the sand warm and safe.
“Oh, no!” I said out loud, adding as I glanced at the larger boy who was laying on his side, “I can’t believe I left it.” I stopped speaking. My companion was not paying attention, laying with his eyes closed, rocking back and forth in pain. If I hadn’t been thinking about where in the canyon I left it, and how I no doubt ran over it as I escaped from my imagined enemy, I might have made sense of yet another wave of barking sea lions that splashed past us and waddled to the south and settled with the others on some of the flatter smaller rocks in the middle of the bay.
The boy had stopped moving, his shoulder awkwardly drooping to one side where it seemed out of place. Blood was still dripping from a large gash on his leg. I looked all over the beach and spied a tan cape tossed onto a rock, which I retrieved and laid down for the boy to use. I had my hands full as I also picked up his water basket, which was the same kind as ours, a small-mouthed tall basket coated on the inside with tar to keep the water from leaking out. I stopped to shake it. It was half full, and seemed well made, which matched the rank of his cape. He was still in pain, looking out at the Great Mother, shivering and rocking and ignoring me. I took a drink, too thirsty to observe the courtesy of ownership. My lips no longer stuck together, the water thankfully washing away the salty stickiness. I remade my grip on the thick cape, which had loosened while I stole a drink.
It was the skin of a cougar that I was bringing him, a cape that was likely the possession of a chief, or a chief’s son. I wondered if he was from the tribe in the canyon behind us, with the soaproot fishing pond and the nasty emblem of cougar killing the Protector scratched into the cliff wall. Was he a member of Cougars Den, or was he from a village further south, one that I knew nothing about? I was shivering standing there, lost in the center of many paths of thought when a sound came out of him.
“Hey!” Grunted the boy on the cougar skin cape, twisting slightly to look in my direction while doing his best to point with his good arm. I looked up. I saw a baby sea lion, confused, swimming about in the green water. A small sea lion, probably a mother, was wheeling about in a frenzy down on the hard brown sand near the water, barking and moving strangely. I wondered what she was so upset about until I searched the bay with my eyes and saw a very large black fin slowly moving closer to us, toward the shore. It was the evil one, and the little sea lion pup was swimming right towards it! The situation pained me but strangely caused the other boy to smile.
“Hey,” he said, “The protector has come.”
“No, the Protector. . .” I started to correct him but I stopped, seeing the boy was not interested. Then I understood the signs I had ignored as I ran along the beach further and further from my home, passing sea lions barking, up on shore, and then here in the water as they almost killed us getting in to safety.
The front fin now was joined in movement by a massive large tail, the tip of which broke the water about two body lengths from the triangular front fin. It was moving slowly, deliberately, closing in on the little pup while its mother was in anguish, sounding almost as if she were crying as she barked and prepared to face the monster herself.
Then something happened that took the grin off the face of the boy. To the right on the north side of the bay a single dolphin jumped out of the water in a long flat leap that must have covered three tomol lengths. The evil one was unchanged in its slow merciless advance. Another and another and another dolphin leaped and made a direct path towards the monster.
As I watched I noticed the sun finally breaking through the morning mists, giving bright colors to the dolphins’ impossible task. One after another they advanced, each only a small part of the giant fish’s prodigious body. So it’s true, I thought. The dolphin was the Protector; circling the Great Mother bringing good luck; an idea that was taught and talked about by fisherman but seldom seen.
I glanced at my quiet companion to see if he was smiling again. But his steady gaze drew my eyes back to the water. There was such big splashing that we could hear the fight, as one after another the much smaller but quicker dolphins hit the giant shark with their powerful snouts until the Protector forced the huge finned beast to flee, giving up its prey and turning out to sea, its giant fin finally fading in my grateful eyes. The mother sea lion and her pup came out of the water onto the shore amongst the herd. All was well. I was so happy.
I was brave, saving the man who was a boy, and then was fortunate to see the Protector save a baby sea lion!!!.
“I can’t believe I saw this, it’s an omen!” I exclaimed, directing my voice in the boy’s direction. After I told this story my tribe would have to pick me as the bravest, even if I was a girl. I smiled to myself. Hadn’t I sworn off the trip to the Solstice ceremony? Hadn’t Keleg been pledged the Solstice trip, and everything else now that his father was chief? I wondered if my tribe’s doubts of my bravery was why I had saved the man riding the wave, or if it was his courage to do something no one had ever seen that made his life seem so valuable? But I let that question go, as if it were a stray bird: nobody wanted to listen to a story of my doubts.
I would soon be back home and telling my amazing journey to the chief and all the others around the fire. I’d be picked as the bravest, and Keleg and Coyin would not be happy. And I would be going to the Solstice ceremony! My days as the shame doll were over! I couldn’t wait to say goodbye and begin my journey north back to Humalivuu.
SYNOPSIS: RAVA,, the girl call Brave Fox
Rava runs away from her village into the Forbidden Land to escape the taunting and teasing and unfair treatment by her brothers and their friends and ends up learning the truth about the two tribes that have been enemies for as long as anyone can recall, and saves both from destroying each other using a new silent way of giving messages.
Disturbed that she is going into dangerous lands, and angry that she has been mistreated, Rava tries to come to terms with what led up to her problems as she follows the strange fox who appeared at the beginning, and barely notices how far she has run along the beach. She stops running when the ghostlike spectre of a fox leads her into a canyon, out of which she runs in fear, hating her cowardice that has appeared in the moment when she desperately wants to be brave.
Back at the mouth of the canyon she discovers a man riding waves in a tomol, a kind of large canoe, whom she saves when his craft goes under. Together they witness a baby seal saved from the jaws of a giant shark by a gang of dolphins. Rava is surprised to learn that Ishi, the son of the chief of the vicious age-old enemy Cougars Den, is also running away from his tribe. He is injured so they return to her village, Condor’s Nest, at Humalivuu, where she hopes Shotay, the shaman, can heal him. But she learns of a plot to kill her and so they leave as soon as Ishi is recovered, beginning a long land journey southward during which they meet another boy, Akiwo, who accompanies them back to Ishi’s village. They discover a lot of secrets and face many dangers during their trip but nothing prepares them for the brutal treatment at the hands of Ishi’s father when they finally reach his village.
Akiwo and Rava are taken captive, tied to the tops of sweat houses, and there she unravels the mystery of the first cave they discovered running away from Condor’s Nest, solving the message contained in the drawings in a hidden room in the cave where many ancestors are interred in baskets. She recognizes the place shown in the drawings of the cave, including a triangle, a cougar and a dolphin. With begrudging help from Ishi they untie themselves and escape from Ishi’s village, and, climbing up Cougar Mountain, they search the top for signs, but she is wounded by the search party and Akiwo is recaptured. All seems lost until Rava notices something odd in the massive pine tree and, working by herself, digs up a hollow wooden dolphin she hopes is full of treasure, but turns out to contain nothing but a mountain lion skin, a powerful bow, and pieces of thin white bark, one thin animal skin, and some sharpened feathers and black water.
overcoming from wound in her side made by a strange, short but powerful arrow shot at her as they escaped their captors, she slowly realizes a way using the contents of the wooden dolphin to stop the inevitable slaughter sure to come when her father returns to Condor’s Nest and finds his daughter missing and forms a war party to search for her southward, ending in yet another battle at Cougar’s Den. She suspects that Mongala, the chief who took over when her father and mother were traveling, is behind everything, possibly even the deadly short arrows.
From her vantage point on Cougar Mountain she sees both groups of warriors getting closer, and draws a picture message on the animal skin and wraps it around one of the arrows and pulls back the stiff bowstring and sends the missle whistling through the air to land in the middle of the two groups, shocking them, stopping the fighting before it starts. Unwrapped from the arrow, the skin contains marks which show that both tribes are the same, have the same origin. But both tribe’s warriors are defeated by a volley of short arrows from above, where Rava bravely climbs to confront Mongala, who it turns out is really from Cougar’s Den. An earthquake flings him off of his perch after he has told Rava enough confirm her suspicions that a strong new force is at work, which is revealed the next morning when Cougar’s den is attacked by giant round balls flying through the air. By questioning Mongala, now severely wounded from his fall, she learns that powerful strangers in a giant tomol desire the yellow rocks, which explains where the devices shooting the powerful short arrows came from.
She gathers the yellow rocks together, mostly from Mongala’s caves above the trail where he ambushed both tribes. She arranges for her father and the chief of Cougar’s Den, Leaping Cat, to carry the heavy yellow rocks to the shore where the giant Spanish vessel is anchored, hidden behind rocky cliffs. She climbs up the side of the massive Tomol and through an interpreter bargains the gold for their promise to leave the tribes alone and to take the offending traitors with them.
Delivered back to the shore by rowboat, Rava is finally safe, and her courage and cleverness is recognized by the the two chiefs. Joined by Akiwo, no longer a prisoner, they walk back to Humalivuu, friends who helped each other when it counted most. Rava wonders out loud if the powerful strangers will change the world or disappear forever.
Blurb—to go before first chapter. ---being a girl with a name like Brave Fox can make life difficult, and in the case of Rava, almost too much to bear, sending her into the Forbidden Land where she might run into vicious warriors, which at the time she ran away seemed less painful than the new chief’s sons and their friend’s relentless teasing and taunting. In enemy territory, seeing a man drowning, she must decide: help him and risk death, or run away back home where they will brand you a coward.
