Chapter 2:
Reaching on the Trail
Denman walked
down the dirt path. He was examining the tall trees around him and the
bright
stars that were beginning to show. It was getting late, “We’ll have to
stop soon,” he thought. Just then Denman noticed a young girl
in front of him. She was swaying as she tried to walk. Denman could not
help but smile at this young girl, trying to be strong for her family.
He picked up his pace and swooped her up into his arms,
“May
I carry you, little warrior?” Denman asked.
The young
girl looked at her mother, who nodded. They must be skeptical of him;
he was new to their lives, no matter who his grandfather was. The child
rested her head on his shoulder and turned her head as Denman continued
to walk forward, feeling stronger.
He forgot
about her until she spoke, “Look how tall the pine trees are,
I wonder how they became so tall…” she grinned at him.
Denman
noticed his grandfather watching, analyzing him. Denman knew his
grandfather wanted to see what sort of tribesman he could make, could
he not even provide a simple bed time story for this little girl?
“Little
warrior, I can tell you where the pine tree came from, and even when
some of the stars were born. Would you like to hear?” he asked, hoping
his grandfather heard.
She nodded
her head, with a hint of eagerness in her eyes, before leaning her head
back down on his shoulder.
Denman
looked up at the sky, “You see that cluster of stars there, the six?”
he was suddenly remembering the whole story.
The little
girl nodded her head.
“Those six
stars and the pine are connected, in a tale about children who loved to
play,” he spoke to her softly.
Denman began,
“A long time ago there were seven boys who loved to
play the gatayû'stï game. Do you know this game?”
The girl
shook her head.
“Well, you
roll a stone wheel along the ground and you chase it! You slide a
curved stick behind it and try to strike the stone wheel. These boys
loved to play this game, and they played it very late into the night,
ignoring their mother’s call for dinner, which is no good of course,”
he did his best to sound serious.
The girl
nodded her head in agreement.
“Well,
these
boys were not as obedient as you, little warrior. So one day, after the
boys had been scolded many times to no effect, their mothers
gathered some gatayû'stï stones together. Then, when they
fixed supper for the boys, they boiled the stones along with the corn.
When the boys returned for dinner, hungry and calling for supper, the
mothers produced the gatayû'stï stones from the corn and
said, ‘If you like playing with gatayû'stï stones so much
instead of working in the cornfield, you can eat them instead of corn!’
Well, this made the boys angry and they ran from the house. They began
a
dance, around in a circle. I do not know which one. And they prayed to
the spirits to help them leave their mothers if they were such
trouble to them. And as the children danced they floated higher and
higher into
the sky! The mothers ran after their children, but the boys had danced
too high and kept going and going. Only one mother was able to pull her
son down with a gatayû'stï pole, but he fell so hard that he
fell under the earth and the ground swallowed him. Those six boys who
danced into the sky are still dancing, and they are the six stars you
see in the sky, which we still call Ani'tsutsä (The Boys). As for
the
seventh boy, he is the reason for the pine tree! Every morning his
mother came to the spot the earth had swallowed him and as she cried
her tears soaked the ground. Finally one day, a
green tree sprouted and grew every day until it was very tall. It was
the pine tree, and that is why the pine tree holds in it the light of
the stars! And that is why it is so tall, reaching for his friends!”
This is an infrared picture of the Pleiades. It was taken from a Space Archive
Website. It is a beatiful image, though it would not appear this way to
the naked eye.
The young girl stared at the passing pines as if
they were alive. Then she rested her head again and closed her eyes,
dreaming of dancing stars and trees. Denman’s grandfather walked up
beside him and placed his hand on his shoulder.
“Surely, we
are all reaching for our friends and family, even in the sky.”
Denman
nodded, “I hope the sky is the same when we stop walking.”
“The sky is
always the same, and the stories will always remind us why. No matter
how long the road may be.”
Author’s Note: The
original story, Origin of
the Pleiades And The Pine, is very similar to this story. I made
the story sound more like a bedtime story, where the speaker (Denman)
is interacting with his audience (the child). This was another attempt
at making the story direct and natural. I added the part about the boys
ignoring
the calls for dinner, in order to shape the frametale more. I
added the
part about the tree reaching for his friends. This was how I
pictured the ending of the story when I read it the first time, and it
fit into the
frame tale well. The original story explains that the boys may have
been
doing the feather dance, but it admits the dance is unknown. I felt
that it
was unnecessary for Denman to explain this. It
also has the boys speaking, they say: “As our mothers treat us this
way, let us go where we shall never trouble them any more.” I didn’t
feel like this was necessary, and it brought a level of complication
into the story that I did not want to explore too deeply. Also, the
Pleiades (or the Ani'tsutsä as the Cherokee call it) can found in
mythology everywhere, including the Greeks. Modern astronomy shows that
it is actually a
collection of some five hundred stars. The human eye only picks up six
of them, and they can be found in the constellation Taurus. They have
also been called “The seven sisters”, because in Greek mythology they
are the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione.
This is where the name "Pleiades" comes from.
Original Text:
Story: Origin of the Pleiades
and the Pine
Author: Mooney, James
Site: Myths of
the Cherokee (1897-98)
Information on the greek mythology of the Pleiades:
Wikipedia,
The Pleiades
Adaleniha
Owasa Iyusdi