Legends of Belariath
The Quest of Festivals Common
Storm Dancer - Cycles of Celebration Among the Sheyka
It is said among my people that the spirits of the people are tied to the spirits of the land and the seasons that turn like a wheel from spring to winter and back again. I know that in my childhood, nothing seemed more natural than to follow the herds, letting their wisdom and our own make us strong. But that was far from here, and seems long ago to me now.
To find the territory that the tribe of the Spirit Wind roamed, you would need to walk quickly, and for more than a moon's full cycle plus waxing one week or more. East and north from here was our home - the place we called Caskangaya Basin. Our elders say beyond the memory of our eldest stories, there was water there - a vast ocean that perhaps our kind lived beside. There is little water there now, unless you count the rivers that grow in season and dwindle in the heat of summer. Mountains border one side to the north, and then steppes down onto the plain where we lived. Easter still rolling hills rise from the grass and blanketed with trees - or so they used to be. Others come there now, and cut the trees, and farm the land. My people avoided them when I was small, but it was they, I think, who destroyed my village...
Let me go on. We were talking of marking the seasons, and like all of our people, my tribe did so with celebrations of the things that made our life possible. Greatest in my memory were the Wakanjelo gatherings of spring and fall. The first full moon of the Birch month - March you would call it - and the first full moon of the Blood month - October.
These times did all our people gather in the basin, at a spot pre-selected, and a vast city of teejas and campfires rose like mushrooms after rain. For a week, give or take a day, we gathered in all our people - from plains and forests and mountains alike, and as one people we met and celebrated. Young men who had become warriors since the last winter gather, and women who had become of marriageable age were encouraged to meet and look for prospective mates. Marriage negotiations could sometimes take more than one festival, but a woman was counted fortunate if she were married at the spring Wakanjelo gather, for she could spend the months of plenty with her new husband and get off to a good start. The elders tell stories and the history of the people, and the craftsmen find willing students to pass on their knowledge to. Judgments and discussions were held, as well as dances and feasting. And for that week, all Sheyka were one people, and one tribe and one clan in spirit. When it was over, each went their own way, but the stories and the dances and the gossip and the marriages kept people entertained for a while.
Other celebrations were not always so big. We had what you would call a Berrygrass festival in the Honey month - May. That was when we gathered much of the sedge and the sweet prairie grasses, and the berries and fruits of the prairie plants for drying and preserving. Many girl children celebrated their first moon time then, and even in the day, women sang as they worked in groups braiding the grasses and sedges, and threading berries for drying. A special treat, if enough could be found, was the honey liquor that could be fermented from the wildflower honey found in ground bee nests. Travelers, you see, are not usually in one place long enough to ferment beverages, but this one time of year, it is just right to do it quickly. If we could find what we needed, by the next celebration - the River festival - we would have it to drink.
The River festival took place in the Blue-Sky month - July. Spring's swollen rivers dwindled to a normal size, and the life in them was celebrated by dances and feasting. Otter skins were worn by our young warriors dancing their thanks to the bounty of the river, and asking to be blessed with a great harvest to feed all the people. Interestingly no fish were taken from the river during this time - it was thought to be bad luck to do so. As with all fertility festivals, certain activities were encouraged within the teejas. This particular festival was more male oriented than some of them, and slaves not already attached to anyone in particular were often - borrowed - for the night. Sometimes a maiden was taken as well - those who wished to be married against their elders' wishes sometimes did so, and forced the elders to accept the match. Like the burgeoning life of plain and river, passions ran high at this season.
The next major point in the cycle was less a celebration than a very busy cooperative time. I do not think all Sheyka do such things, but we were fortunate that one end of our range was near enough the sea that during the hot months - August and September, one day we would wake up
and find the river full of fish. We would set aside many other things to capture and clean and dry these fish - for ourselves and to trade at the fall Wakanjelo festival. Children set to work with nets and baskets, and the older folk sat in groups filleting the cleaned fish and working the meat onto drying racks for placement over slow fires. Bears would sometimes come down to the river to fish, and many a young warrior looking to make his name came back with claws or skins or teeth from such an encounter. For maybe five days, the fish would be there in plenty, and then as suddenly as they came, they would be gone again.
As the moon waxed in the blood month, and the herds began to grow restless in their colder ranges, a messenger would come to tell us where the October Wakanjelo festival would be held. As soon as that was known, my tribe would begin to make ready. All the things we had worked on over the summer months - beadwork or leather, feathers and sewing of all kinds - each of us got ready the things we had to trade. The elders as well determined how much of our preserved berries and meats could be traded, and determined for what they would trade. Many of our people had horses that we used to drag the travois which carried our village, but not all of us by any means. We moved toward Chaskangaya's meeting place at a walking pace which took several days.
The fall festival differed from the spring one in feel, if not in substance. It was a making ready for winter festival, where unfinished business was taken care of. We traded hides of the herd beasts, and our berries and grasses for wood and shell ornaments, jewelry of metals from the mountain tribes, and herbs and foods to add variety as we sat out the winter in our southernmost camps. The young men grouped together, re-fighting the raids and hunts of the summer months, and the women sat around their fires, gossiping and talking of women things. Women married in
the spring Wakanjelo were checked to see if they were bearing children yet - considered a sign of blessing among the people to conceive over the plentiful summer. Vision quests were sometimes undertaken at this festival as well - and the customary dances and feasting that went with them. The last night, the eldest of each tribe and clan took part in a ceremony of sacrifice for the safety of the people over the coming months. When the celebration was over, each group returned to their wintering place, and a time of settling in to deal with the tribe's own survival for the winter months.
The shortest day of the year was known as Death Day. No cooking was done on that day - and each of us spent time remembering those who had been lost during the last year. All fires were put out at noon and re-lit at sundown in memory of the dead. Spirit dances - only done this one night a year - echoed eerily through the cold night air, and many of the young huddled in their teejas together, not just from the cold. The elders told stories of the cannibals of the north and the strange elves from beneath the ground who carried off our warriors and spilled our blood in the early history of our people. When the sun rose the next morning, the whole world felt clean and reborn, and thus our yearly cycle started again.
There was one more celebration that I enjoyed, and it was called the Feast of the Hare. It fell in the middle of the Ice month - January - and was a day when every boy child not yet a warrior, went hunting for a snow-coated hare. They were cunning and hard to catch, but one had to be found, they said, or bad luck would follow. When a hare was taken, it was given a royal funeral, and the meat was stewed and fed to only the girl children of the village, by the boys who did the hunting. Now it seems to me this was a way of cementing the protector role of the males to their mates, but at the time it was grand fun to be served the warm savory stew by the boys that, the day before, had been pulling your braids and being a nuisance.
So now you know how I - when I was Sunflower, daughter of the Spirit Wind tribe - marked the seasons. My grandfather chose me to follow his path at the River festival in my 15th year. In my last year before I became the spirit keeper of my people, I met Shadow Claw at the spring
Wakanjelo festival. And so even though I live apart from my people and among those who do not follow the cycles as I was taught, still the year turns for me as it ever has. One day, perhaps, I will return to Chaskangaya and visit my people again.