[Early French traders carried folktales along with their wares across the American wilderness, to be adopted into the storytelling styles of the tribes they encountered. This version of a Petit-Jean tale comes from Oregon on the West Coast, where young Ptchiza heeds the advice of his spirit guide residing in a carved wooden stick.]
They could have lazed around for days, feasting on that one deer. But Ptchiza went hunting every morning after his swim. He brought home buck after buck, and Grandmother labored all day long skinning and butchering his kills and setting meat strips to dry in the bright sunshine.
Ptchiza soon had to take a break from hunting to build another plank hut to store the dried venison. He did not slow, but hunted and hammered until five fine houses stood around their clearing, each one filled with dried meat.
"Are you planning a feast?" Grandmother joked. "Inviting all your aunts and uncles and cousins?"
"Where were they when you went hungry, trying to keep me sheltered and fed all these years? No, this food is for you."
"Ah," she said. "I see. When are you leaving?"
"My spirit guide says it is time for me to make a long journey." Ptchiza took his Grandmother's hands. "I leave you plenty of food. I will set out in the morning."
.
Ptchiza followed the talking stick's directions and walked until he came to the dwelling of the headman. Short, travel-worn and dirty, Ptchiza looked just a poor urchin. People curled the lip at him, but he gained a place tending the headman's horses.
The boy wondered why people wore black feathers and hung black cloth in their doors. "We all mourn with the headman," another young herder explained. "Each year he must give a daughter to the seven-headed serpent or it will devour everyone in the land. They go in the morning."
"Must give her – to be eaten?"
The herder nodded.
Ptchiza shook his head. "That is not right," he murmured.
His talking stick quivered agreement.
(to be continued)
.
prompt: "food"
