Butler, Octavia - Survivor

“Do the Tehkohn still rule other tribes?”

“No, no longer. We had too many ties—people spread over too much territory. One by one, the ties were broken. The people made themselves separate tribes again. But through all that, this dwelling has protected us, fighter and nonfighter.”

I turned to look at him. His head reached just above my elbow, and his slenderness made him look more like a young boy than a man. He and his wife looked like adolescents together, yet Jeh had told me that these two had an adolescent son—a boy in the midst of his first liaison.

Artisans and farmers were naturally small people, members of a race different from those of the stocky hunters and the tall lean judges.

“Did artisans build this dwelling?” I asked Choh.

He glanced up at me and his body whitened. “Yes. The Hao came to them—to my ancestors—and said, ‘Build us a home that will help us fight by concealing itself as we do.’ And for the time it took to build this dwelling, artisans ruled. Others obeyed them—hunters, judges, even the Hao listened when artisans spoke. And when the building was finished, the Hao looked at it and saw that there was greater value in nonfighting people than they had thought.”

He had a low quiet way of speaking that I liked, and he was at ease with me now that his curiosity about my differences had been satisfied. I began to think that my stay with him and Gehnahteh would not be as bad as I had feared.

After the general tour, Choh took me to the heavily draped doorways of three apartments. These were visible doorways with only the hides of animals serving as doors. Hidden doors of stone and metal were used only for special purposes. Choh stopped at each of these doorways and called out a name. He introduced me first to a hunter, then to a pair of judges, then to a pair of farmers who were just leaving their apartment. These were the trade families of Gehnahteh and Choh. They performed special services for each other and considered themselves to be related as though by blood. Now I was part of their group. From now on, the hunter—he was a widower—would supply Choh’s artisan friend with leather for my shoes.

Choh made me guide him once to each of these three apartments. When he saw that I knew the way, he took me down to a lower level of the dwelling where wood had been cut and stored in great piles. There were wooden handcarts there much like the Missionaries’ carts. I was surprised because the Garkohn did not use such things in their dwelling or even on their trails through the meklah-tangled valley.

“Load a cart,” Choh told me. “Take one load of wood to each of the three apartments, and to our apartment. When you have finished, leave the cart here, and come home.”

He turned and left me. And I did my work, and went home.

Thus began my life as a Tehkohn—a life of working and learning through my work. I ran errands for Gehnahteh and Choh. I learned to cook Tehkohn foods over the fire in the fireplace of their apartment. I learned to clean the apartment with a soap made from the roots of one of the mountain plants. I learned to make the soap and the brushes I used. I was loaned to the trade-family farmers to help with the planting. The farmers put me to work with the adolescent children who were breaking up clods of earth while the adults plowed with a tool that looked like a long narrow version of an Earth-made shovel. The tool had a strong wooden handle and a flat narrow metal head that tapered to a point. On one side of each handle, down near the metal, there was a footrest that the farmers used to push the metal deep into the ground. My farmers watched me for a half day, then gave me a shovel.

Their main crop was a kind of tuber that they ate in some form with almost every meal—their nonaddictive version of the meklah. They also raised a small sweet melon, sweet berries, other fruit, and at least three kinds of bean or pea that grew in pods underground. They had no domestic animals. The native animals would not breed in captivity. Usually, they sickened and died soon after they were caught. The Tehkohn simply did what they could to insure a plentiful supply of wild game. They killed off all the non-Tehkohn predators they could, and they diverted rivers and streams to irrigate the territory around them more evenly and make it lush for the plant eaters. Then the hunters killed as much game as they could when they could, and preserved large amounts of it. Both they and the farmers were skillful. The people did not go hungry.

All the Tehkohn were skillful. They were absorbing me. They kept me working harder than I had ever worked with the Missionaries, and when I was not working, I was either learning or sleeping. There seemed to be no time for anything else. Gehnahteh and Choh made sure there was no time.

I felt myself slipping away not only from the Missionaries, but from the wilds. The wild human within me who watched and cautioned and alerted me, who kept me ready to do and be whatever I had to do and be to survive, was becoming Tehkohn. Too Tehkohn. If the Tehkohn had not been so different physically, that might not have been a bad thing. I had found more acceptance among them in my short time with them than I had in more than three years with the Missionaries. But I could not spend my life among people so alien, no matter how accepting they were. Now and then, in spite of the work, I found myself still longing to see another Missionary. Furless skin, black or white or brown. I spoke aloud to myself in English and it sounded strange to me. I began to resent the Tehkohn, their work, their customs. I grew careless. There was one night in particular…

I was not yet used to the cooking and I had an accident. I had cooked over an open fire for most of my life, but it had been a haphazard kind of cooking. I had never had a heavy kettle to contend with. I burned myself, and in sharp reaction, dumped most of the stew into the fire.

Gehnahteh said several Tehkohn words that I had never heard before and seized a stick of firewood. Her body flared angry yellow as she hit me once, twice. I scrambled away from her more startled than hurt.

She followed me, beating me across the back and ribs, hitting the arm I held up to protect my head. The blows were jarring and painful, but strangely, I did not want to hit back if I could avoid it. I wasn’t afraid, or even angry. I was annoyed—and much aware of Gehnahteh’s smallness. Surely, I could handle this one furious little artisan—whom I happened to like—without hurting her.

Finally, I seized her arm, wrenched the stick away from her, and threw it into the half-smothered fire. Then I caught her by the throat, shook her once warningly, and let her go. She stumbled back from me and we stood glaring at each other. Choh, watching us, had stood up, but he had not had time to interfere. Now he stood looking at me uncertainly. In that moment, I knew I could kill them both if I wanted to. I couldn’t get away with it, but I could do it. They were small and strong and I was large and stronger. Also, untrained as I was in the ways of their hunters and judges, I was still what they would call a fighter.

The knowledge gave me a security I had not had since my capture. I relaxed. Without a word, I took a basket from beside the door and went down to one of the storage rooms for more tubers, vegetables, and dried meat. I cleaned the kettle and cleaned the mess out of the fireplace, and I made more stew.

Nothing was said about the incident, but neither Gehnahteh nor Choh ever tried to beat me again. I began to refuse work when I didn’t want it. Not often, but when I was tired. The first time I did it, Gehnahteh swore at me. I sat listening until she finished and went away. After that, she and Choh began to ask me to do things instead of telling me. They had handled young fighters before—had been second-parents to several. They understood what was happening better than I did.