By this time, everyone had gathered. The headman stood upon a stump and shouted for all to hear. "One by one, you each approach. Come up to the serpent's heads and tell what you know about the monster. A word, a phrase, whatever, but speak, and then we will know. The warrior who conquered this terrible beast will be shown."
Each person approached. Each uttered a word, a comment – but no one knew more than anyone else.
"This can't be," growled the headman. "Is this everyone? Who hasn't come? I commanded everyone to come forth!"
"There's a herding boy still out in the field," someone said.
"That wretched little beggar?" another asked. "That runt can't be the hero."
"Bring him," ordered the headman.
Out in the field, the talking stick quivered in Ptchiza's hand. "Now they're coming for you," it said. "Don't go yet. I need time to tell you what to do."
Messengers arrived, summoning Ptchiza.
He shook his head. "I will not go, not right now."
The men grumbled but left.
"Soon after you reach the headman's house," the talking stick said, "he will order you to talk about the serpent's heads. Say at first that you don't know anything about it, but when he keeps asking, say something about the tongues."
Ptchiza patted the maiden's doeskin pouch, lumpy with five grisly trophies. He slid the talking stick into his own pouch just as the messengers returned.
"The headman says you must come whether you want to or not," they snapped. "If you won't come along meek and mild, we'll drag you!"
"You don't need to bother," Ptchiza said. "You lead the way. I'll follow along, no trouble."
People sniffed in disdain as the ragged herdboy was led to the headman's dwelling. The headman looked him up and down, huffed in disgust, and said, "Everybody else has told what little they know. Now your turn. Tell whatever you know about these heads."
Ptchiza hunched as if nervous. "I don't know much at all."
"Go ahead and tell it anyway."
"It's really nothing—"
"I order you to speak!"
"Well, then, I suppose—" Ptchiza shifted, and turned his glance to the heads. "Every head that I've ever seen has a tongue."
"Yes, so?"
"Even serpents, right?"
"Certainly serpents."
"Even monster serpents?"
The headman squinted at Ptchiza. "What are you playing at?"
The boy just stared at the closest skull.
The headman grumbled, then grabbed it and yanked the jaw open. The head, of course, had no tongue.
Ptchiza took out the doeskin pouch and dumped its contents onto the table.
The maiden gasped and scurried forward from the corner. "That is my pouch! And my ring!" – for he had tossed it down as well. She took his arms and kissed him.
"How can this be?" growled the headman. "A filthy, ragged runt like you!"
"Give me a room to myself," Ptchiza said.
After a long moment glaring, the headman nodded to one of his men, who took the boy aside. In privacy, Ptchiza took out the talking stick and held it in both hands. Once again he felt the change come over him, the stretching, the swelling, the towering height. His buckskin shirt and leggings enlarged with him, no longer patched and dirty but fine as his Grandmother's best handiwork.
Ptchiza strode back into the headman's company. Everyone stepped back and stared.
"So it was you after all," the headman said. He beckoned his daughter. "She will be your wife, if it pleases her."
All eyes turned to the maiden. She smiled. "It pleases me."
And so they wed. And they danced. And they feasted.
The five men who had lied? They were thrown in the strong house. Maybe they are in there still.
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So ends the tale of the seven-headed serpent that ravaged lands around a lake in western Oregon. The Kalapuya folktale about young hero Ptchiza had its origins in a Petit-Jean tale from Provençal, France, which traveled with French traders across North America, assimilated and adapted into storytelling traditions among the tribes.
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prompt: time
