Whispering Spirits by Rita Karnopp Read Free Book Online Page A

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take your grandmother to share what her grandmother taught her?
Just give me an idea how long we’ll be away from civilization.”
They approached the first tipi and Summer dropped her bags on the
ground. Her arms burned from the labor.
    “I spent my entire summer with my
grandmother.”
    “You’re saying we could be living here for
three or four months? I don’t think so! I can’t imagine anything
more…ridiculous than that. We can’t go back to the days of our
ancestors, Nah’ah . There’s no purpose to stepping back
hundreds of years. This is so not going to happen.”
    “Well, we really don’t have much choice,”
Running Crane said.
    “Meaning?” She glared at him.
    “Well, I wasn’t really going to say anything
this soon…I mean…we weren’t planning on leaving for several months.
I knew I’d have had to tell you sooner or later…but later would
have suited me just fine.”
    “Ugh! Would you just tell us already?” Summer
rubbed her forehead, surprised this was the first time it hurt
since leaving Browning.
    “While landing…umm…a tree branch perforated
the fuel tank on the chopper. I’d radio for a maintenance crew to
drop in and fix it…but it seems we don’t have service out here. I
never considered us being out of radio range.”
    “You’re saying you broke the chopper? We’re
stuck out here until someone back in civilization realizes we
should have returned…and then they’ll come checking on us? I hate
my life.”
    “It’s not so bad, Niipo . I asked your
father to send a supply drop here around the first of August. So
you see, we won’t be so abandoned after all.” Nah’ah entered
the tipi.
    “That’s two months from now. Two months!
Could this get any worse? I agreed to spend the summer taking care
of you. No one told me we’d be out here without even a flushing
toilet. Don’t you think I had the right to know?”
    “Summer, show your grandmother some respect.
She’s doing what she feels is her duty. Your words are cold and
cutting. If I had a grandmother such as yours, I’d be so
grateful.”
    Summer rolled her eyes and turned, facing
him. “I didn’t ask for your opinion. Just because I don’t want to
live in a tipi all summer doesn’t mean I don’t love and respect my
grandmother. I do. Why don’t you go shoot a deer? I hate the taste
of antelope.”
    Grabbing a bag in each hand, Summer entered
the tipi and stopped just inside. She dropped the bags and sat. The
beauty and simplicity of Nah’ah’s tipi remained impressive.
As always straight in the back from the doorway a medicine bundle
hung in a place of honor. Grandmother would sleep on her bed to the
right of center. At the end of her mattress leaned a backrest made
of willow branches lashed together with cotton cord and edged with
woolen fabric on a tripod. To the right of her bed a large parflech
with a bear cub, Nah’ah’s sacred animal helper, beaded on
the front flap. This was like a thin, square suitcase for her
personal clothing and valuables.
    Glancing to the left, Summer noticed the same
setup for herself. The parflech next to her mattress revealed a
skillfully beaded meadowlark, her sacred helper…if she believed in
such a thing.
    Colorfully beaded and quilled parfleches
lined around the inside of the tipi to hold down the bottom of the
tipi liners. No doubt they were loaded with dried meat and
pemmican. The ground had been covered with soft rabbit fur in all
shades of white, tans, browns, and even black.
    The cooking tripod took dominance in the
center from which a kettle hung from a chain over the fire. Summer
noticed the altar between Nah’ah’s mattress and the cooking
fire, in the center of the tipi. She remembered watching Nah’ah clear off the grass and scrape the earth in a certain
shape to build a white clay altar. She’d burn incense every time
she was going to pray or take out the medicine bundle, in the
morning, or when she brought the bundle back inside, before dark.