Lone Wolf of the Two Feathers

by A. Howard Reed

It was May 21, 1990, several days before my fiftieth birthday. A friend, a recognized Medicine Woman in this area, took me to Bell Rock in the Verde Valley east of Sedona where she said she had a present for me. She didn’t give me any indication of what she was up to.

We hiked some distance from the westerly base of Bell Rock and reached the top of a small hillock. Bell Rock was to the east, Courthouse to the northeast and Cathedral to the south behind us. She found a place where the center spire of Cathedral could be seen and spread out a blanket. She called my attention to the middle spire and asked me to sit down.

As I did, I turned around and saw, there in the gap between Courthouse and the canyon cliff wall, two huge standing pinnacle-like slabs of rock. They were a majestic pair of rabbit ears, thrusting nearly two hundred feet into the air. I was immediately overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu and became very excited.

She said something and I said something and she smiled. She took out her pipe and cedar and smudged us off. She sang some songs and I hummed along. I didn’t know the words or the language. It was her song about Tonka Sheila and Vera Mi, the one she found many years before when she was searching for her connection to the ways and mother earth.

She sang so sweetly I became lost within it. After she was finished and we had smoked the pipe, establishing her intent to lead me to a time in my history of my choice, I was asked to lie back and get comfortable.

When I was comfortable she asked me what I was thinking. I said that the two rocks, the rabbit ears, and this place were very connected to me. She said, “Go there and tell me what you see.” I do not know exactly what I said because everything was moving so fast, but this is what I remember, recombined from a children’s story I wrote the next day.

There was a village here. They lived in the hollow between Bell Rock and this place.

The villagers were little people and seemed to have lived there for a long time. One day a group of taller, bigger people came by. They came through the area every year and weren’t very friendly. They seemed afraid and didn’t stay long. After they left, a woman discovered a baby in the weeds. The baby was a boy and was severely deformed. He had a club foot and his spine had a strange twist to it.

There was a debate about leaving the child and letting it die. The woman, who was childless, said that she would care for it. Her husband was recently dead, perhaps killed in an accident or mauled by an animal, but not at war. The grandmothers and grandfathers decided that the boy would be an orphan like any other orphan of their village and she would be his closest relation. And so the villagers accepted the boy as one of their own and they raised him.

As he grew, his deformity became more obvious. His back was terribly bent, like a “Z”, and a hump thrust out between his shoulder blades. His foot was turned so badly he nearly walked on his ankle as he hobbled about on a stick-like crutch. In spite of his crookedness, he was a pleasant child, but he couldn’t play with the other children and do the things they did.

Also, they didn’t want to play with him because he was always getting hurt or couldn’t keep up with them. He spent a lot of time alone and the women and the old people who didn’t mind his presence. He was very good at helping the women with their cooking and camp site chores.

But he looked forward to the night, when he could sit by the fire and hear the stories of the people and look at the stars. It was his secret dream to touch the stars.

And then it came time for him to go out into the wilderness and get his name and receive a vision for his life’s work. It was autumn. The adults had gathered and discussed their concerns for the boy. They said he could not really belong to their village if he could not do this simple thing. He would bring nothing to share at the firesides. He would have no wisdom to impart. Mostly they did not think that he could survive the ordeal because it was their custom that the seeker would stay away until they had a vision. This meant fasting until hunger overwhelmed the seekers and forced them to find their own food and water to replenish themselves and then start all over again. Many seekers never returned. The elders knew that he would not survive if he hurt himself or failed to have a vision within a week. He was a terrible hunter and a barely adequate trapper.

The place he chose was a hill nearby with a flat place on top with several levels of edges and natural passageways with rain washed steps leading to the top. The boy could see the place from the village and to him it was far away. He had never been there. Unlike the other children who spent a year or more looking for likely places to have their visions, he had never been anywhere but the furthest hut of the village and the well where they got their water.

The elders asked if he had found his special place. He said that he had and assured them that he was determined to do this thing. “You will see me again soon, or not at all,” he said. He said that if he could not fulfill this quest then he would join his ancestors because he did not want to be a burden on the village or an exception to their customs. “I want to be a real person with a name and a purpose,” he said. “I do not want to be a child any longer. It is time for me join the young men, if they will have me.” And so the boy was reminded of what to do in the event of an emergency like a snake bite or a scorpion sting and what was expected of him.

The next morning the villagers gathered to send him off. He left the village heading away from his selected site and when he could no longer see the huts and was certain that no one had followed him he turned back toward the hill. By the end of the day he had reached the hill. Nightfall came quickly and he had to wait for the full moon to rise before continuing the climb. It was midnight before he reached the top.

He breached the brim and collapsed on the ground. He was exhausted. His foot was bleeding and his entire body ached like it had never ached before. If he didn’t know before he knew then that he could never be a warrior or a man like the other boys would be. And he wept at the futility of it all. What he had spent a day and most of the night to accomplish, a child half his age could do twenty or thirty times. He also knew that if he was not successful in his quest he would be treated like a stranger and in time, ignored to death. He saw his life flash before him like a brief beam of light that breaks through the clouds and then is gone.

Still weeping with self pity, he crawled to the middle of the mesa and collapsed. He could go no further. He rolled over on his back and pulled his satchel under his neck to keep pressure off his spine and watched the stars through tear filled eyes. He reached up to them wanting to touch them and join them. He cried himself to sleep and dreamt of leaving his crooked body and joining the stars.

The morning came. The village beneath his overlook became awake and he could smell the fires and the odors from the cooking pots and hear the noises of morning chores. He looked about and saw that some coyotes and other animals had been with him and he became afraid. Some of the animals had come very close.

That day he searched for a place that would fit his back and when he found a suitable depression he prepared it with sticks and brush to pad the rough edges and thought about building a shelter over it. He decided not to because he wanted to see the stars. Nearby was a cedar bush that he could sit under until the night came.

Three days and nights passed without a vision. No inner prompting came to him. His stomach grumbled and he felt faint. He pulled out one of two pieces of dried deer meat that he had stashed in his sack, but could not eat it. He was determined not give in so early in his vigil.

That night as he lay on his bed watching the stars and moon journey across the sky and his nose being assailed with by the smell of the evening meal from the smoldering camp fires of the village in the dale below, he felt the presence of many animals pressing in on him and he became more afraid. They were bolder than the night before. They seemed to walk over him.

He would have called in the spirit animals that he heard the other children had evoked to watch over them when they were threatened. But he didn’t know who his animals were. Mouse, squirrel? Lizard, snake? Eagle, owl? The only humped-back animals he knew was the buffalo and the buzzard. One lived on the high plateau where he had never been and the other floated on the wind waiting for creatures to die. He wished he knew his animals like the other children did. Not knowing what else to do he asked buffalo and buzzard to stand by him. He would live or die.

Soon there came by several coyotes. One came close enough to steal the piece of meat that he had left out and ate it just inches from his face. It looked up and saw a larger animal looking at him. The coyote yipped in fright and ran away. The boy sat up and there, not more than ten paces away was a wolf! A big wolf. He bit a scream and slowly lay back on his bed

and shivered in fright, waiting for the wolf to devour him. He waited until dawn frozen in fright and nothing happened. He did not notice that no other animal bothered him for the rest of the night.

As dawn broke, he slowly propped himself on his elbows and cautiously looked for the wolf. He heard a noise and turned to see the wolf come over the rise, seemingly out of the dawn’s sun. Behind it were the spires of two long slim rocks towering high above the valley floor looking like two feathers pointed skyward. They appeared to poke out of the wolf’s head, like a headdress. “Two Feathers” came to the boys mind. But that was not right. The animal was now close enough for him to see its eyes. They were yellow and huge and it had teeth that gleamed wetly. The wolf circled and sniffed him. The boy fell back on his bed of twigs and watched the huge head hover over him. The wolf licked his bloodied foot and nudged his hip.

Its slobber dripped on his face. The boy, weak from hunger and thirst, and unable to move quickly because of his crippled-ness knew that he would be the wolf’s next meal. It was not a matter of “if” but “when.”

Lying there as he was, feeling the wolf nudge him, the boy closed his eyes and accepted his death. He would not touch the stars, but that was okay. He was at peace with his fear and accepted his eventual death. He felt like two people; one that was alive, laying on the ground being measured by a wolf and the other like a spirit hovering several feet in the air watching himself and the wolf.

He must have fallen asleep or passed out because something startled him back to his bed and the hillock over-looking the village. It was mid day and the sun was directly overhead.

He was thirsty and perspiring as if stricken with a fever. He had to find shade. “If I don’t see my enemies they cannot harm me,” he thought deliriously. He opened his eyes and looked around.

The wolf was gone and in the sky the buzzards were circling. He began to crawl to the cedar bush and saw the wolf rise up from beneath the shelter and snarl. The boy stopped and then remembered the last piece of meat in his knapsack. He fished it out and tossed it to the wolf saying, “Wolf, if you are hungry you may have my meat. If you are still hungry you can eat me. I will not return to the village until I touch the stars and learn my name. That is why I am here.”

Frightened and trembling with nothing left to sustain him, even though the friendly fires and food of his home was a sling’s shot distant away, he backed off and waited his fate.

The wolf then did a surprising thing. It rose slowly to its magnificent stature and sniffed the meat and then went to the boy. The wolf seemed to smile, its breath was hot against the boys face and it licked him and then walked away. The boy was faint with fright and laid down and the day passed without him moving. That evening the boy awoke with fresh saliva dripping on his face and two yellow eyes staring at him just inches away.

He gathered all of his strength and crawled back to his bed. The wolf watched as the boy settled into his bed and the boy felt a calm overcome him. He was no longer afraid of dying.

He looked at the sky and became lost in the color of the sunset seeming to cover him like a blanket. Soon the moon started to raise, and its light made the two feather rocks in the east shimmer in its light. “She-naw-eeka” burst into his mind. But it wasn’t a word of the people of the village. They would not know it and he could not say it until he knew the meaning.

“I have a name!” he cried out loud. But I cannot utter it he thought. “I have a name,” he yelled again. The wolf was nearby and was startled by his outburst and backed away with a gruff woof and a snort. The boy did not care. He was flush with the excitement of awareness and all that night as he thought and pondered the meaning of word which had to be his name and never thought about the wolf again.

The name was given and it was private but without a meaning, and he could not honor the custom that he share it with the people at the next full moon celebration. As he lay on his back and watched the stars and the moon move in slow motion across the sky, his attention turned to the moon. The rabbit in the moon stared back at him, its ears upright, directed toward him as if listening to his thoughts. He laughed. He had a glimpse of the meaning of the word and was determined to wait for another sign to affirm his decision.

And the days and the nights blurred together as he waited for the confirmation of his insight. He was now totally dehydrated and could only move if he forced himself. The ground was no longer hard, but soft as a fur pallet, his foot was no longer a part of his body but a stone lashed to his ankle. He felt no pain and was oblivious to the sun that was cracking his lips and blistering the inside of his nose. Only on occasion during the day did he open his eyes to watch the buzzards fly lazy circles above him. For three days and nights he lay on the ground waiting for the confirmation.

On the morning of the seventh day the wolf, who had been with him for the entire time, was returning from an early morning hunt followed by its mate and two pups. The animal came to the boy and dropped a rabbit beside him. The rabbit’s ears were tall and erect, dusty white and red, the same color of the twin spires that raised up out of the valley behind him. The wolf licked his face, its slobber revived him. “What do you want with me?” croaked the boy. He struggled to his elbows and saw the rabbit. “A rabbit. Is this mine?” The wolf turned to look at his mate and the two pups behind him. “Yes,” the boy chuckled when he saw what the wolf was looking at; “You have brought your family. I am sorry I am such a puny boy. They deserve a buffalo.” He fell back on the ground and began to dream deliriously.

The boy tossed and turned, fretted and moaned. The dream made no sense. The images tumbled and turned. Of those he could grasp, he saw himself running with, and then riding a wolf. Then he flew to the moon and played with the rabbit. A crooked stick wrap-woven with deer-hide strips dyed with four colors, blue, yellow, red and green, spun like a disoriented hummingbird about him. The twin spires vibrated whenever someone looked at them and small rocks fell off and glowed burning all about their bases. The people of the village walked about with blank eyes while the sun buzzed like an angry hornet and hurt his ears. And then night and calmness. Yellow-white dots dashed about the ground, looking for something they could not find. And then stillness and blackness underlaid by a barely audible harmonic that held steady as if to wait for the leader of the song to introduce the next chord.

He awoke with a start. The rabbit. The ears. The moon. The wolf. The spinning stick.

The two tall rocks in the east.

“I have a sign. I have many signs. I have many meanings and although I do not know what they mean, I am certain that my quest is complete.” He struggled to his numb feet while asking himself, “Maybe I should stay longer to make sense of these signs?”

“No,” he answered himself firmly, like the only child that he was, accustomed to hearing his own voice speaking boldly, “I have a lifetime to make sense of them. I know I cannot stay here.”

He picked up his walking stick and the rabbit, leaving his satchel behind, and hobbled to the trail head. The wolf rose up from under the bush and trotted to his side and pressed against him when he began to wobble. The boy stopped and pushed at the wolf. The wolf backed off and sat on its haunches looking at him. “Thank you, wolf,” the boy said, “We shall see each other again.” The wolf blinked and returned to his family under the bush as if to say, “Now you are on your own.”

For the next several hours he slipped and slid down the hillside. Along the way he lost his walking stick, but picked up another near the bottom. It was as crooked as his back but would suffice until he found another one. It was sundown when he limped into the village, weak from the sun’s exposure and lack of food and water. Someone noticed him and shouted a greeting. His aunt rushed out to welcome him. Several boys came to him and helped him to the hut of the elders, asking questions and chattering so much they made him dizzy. But he refused to answer them.

He entered the hut and found several old men and a woman inside. They had been maintaining a vigil for him. He told them his story and they did not believe him. He showed them the rabbit. They examined it carefully and decided that indeed a large animal had mauled it. But they needed more proof. They sent some warriors to the place and found many signs of the wolf and the boys little bed in the rock. They returned with his walking stick and bundle and related what they saw.

That evening the rabbit was prepared and all of the people were given a portion. The boy was given the two ears and the boy was asked to tell his story. He said he would wait until the next full moon so that he could show the people what had happened.

The day came and the boy’s foot was nearly healed and he felt much rejuvenated. The elders made a great fuss over the fire preparation and after the evening meal and it was time for his telling, they called everyone to the fireside. All of the people took their places and waited for him to be called forward. “Come. Boy. Here, sit with us and tell us your story and what you learned and how we shall call you.” The boy hobbled into view on his stick and sat with a bump on the ground beside the most elder. “Tell us boy, what you did on the table rock and what you saw.”

And so the boy related his story. The coyote that stole his food. The wolf that refused it.

The death that never came. The word that popped into his head and the rabbit in the moon. He related everything he could remember and after he was through, the fire was low and the elders asked him if he knew who the wolf was. The boy said no.

“The wolf was yourself. He was standing by to devour you with your desire to touch the stars and be someone you are not. The small deceit of meat exposed that you wanted security and food for tomorrow, yet the wolf fed you and all of the people when you decided that he could chose between you or the small scrap of meat.

“The wolf brought you ears to hear. Like the twin feathers yonder who always tell us when a stranger approaches. You were shown that your heart will always make the right decision as long as the wolf is in front of you, a vanguard searching for the right and safe path for you to follow. We know your name and one day it will be known throughout the land. But for now you must work with your new knowledge and in time it will be called wisdom, and you will be counselor and be a fair judge for all of the people. And the wolf shall be your protector, not your destroyer.”

And the people murmured with pride because amongst them lived She-naw-eeka, to be known as Lone Wolf of the Two Feathers, lawgiver and fair judge for all.

Guise of a Thunderbird, illustration by Elikozoe