Drinker laughed as he raced up the mound to take his mother some yucca leaves. She was making sandals this morning, and he was running errands for her. He knew that she would want him to gather feathers from the turkeys in the Clan. She would carefully sew the feathers together with the string she made from the yucca plant and make socks. He didn’t mind running errands. He and his best friend, Fleetfoot, were having fun racing up and down the mound and around and around the Clan. Drinker had already circled the Great Kiva six times as he ran here and there to collect supplies. They were using the Kiva as a marker for how many times they had circled the Clan. 

“Ten!” Fleetfoot called out to him suddenly as Drinker passed him, heading back down the mound to gather the turkey feathers. Fleetfoot was fast, as fast as the nimble deer that ran through the woods on the mountains of their Clan.

“Oh sure! Your tongue is fleet, and not your feet,” Drinker yelled. “How could you do it so fast?”

“Drink the air for energy and not for daydreams,” shouted Fleetfoot in reply. “Then you’ll be faster.”

Drinker snorted, but Fleetfoot had a point. He loved to breathe in the dreams and talents from the air, and he could not remember ever having won one race in all the years he and his friend had been racing around the Clan together. They were only two months apart in age. Both had been named for signs at their birth and both signs had proven true.

Fleetfoot was born in the spring. While the wise-woman was delivering him on a soft blanket made for the mother for the birthing occasion, a deer had come into the camp with a little fawn. When the startled animals spied the group of people gathered to greet the new member of the Clan, they had fled from the scene as swiftly as the wind. Fleetfoot was given his name in honor of the fearless little fawn who had raced so swiftly after its mother. In the years since then, no one had ever beaten him in a foot race.

Drinker was born a few months earlier, just as winter was coming to an end. The village elders liked to tell the story of how he had immediately started gulping down the people around him. They said that the old wise-woman had pulled him from his mother and lifted him up to show him to the waiting community. They laughed when they told him that his little brown eyes had flown wide open as soon as he gasped in the air.

They marveled over the fact that even as a newborn, he had loved the air filled with the thoughts and talents of the people of their group. His father had laughed and named him Drinker after seeing him gasping in the talents of the people around him.

Drinker’s clan were spirit-catchers, a type of people who could “catch” other people’s talents by breathing in their thoughts and feelings. All the Clans said that they had never seen a spirit-catcher as talented as the little boy who grew up with a joyous smile and snapping dark eyes.

His mother taught him the polite rules the Clan lived by. It was bad manners to drink in the thoughts of others without asking because that was considered eavesdropping. Never drink people’s talents without asking because drinking from them causes them to lose strength. Don’t drink from anyone too deeply. Don’t draw in without reservation what that person loves to do, she said, because they might begin to think only of that.

His mother warned him that people could fall under your spell and be unable to do anything but daydream all day long. The essence that you drink from them is that which is dearest to their heart, whatever gifts and abilities they have from birth.

Drinker’s father told the story of one time when he had offered to hold the little newborn so his tired mother could get some rest. The father said that he had dozed off with little Drinker in his lap, and he didn’t wake up until three days later. No one could wake him from the spell he had fallen under when the thirsty baby drank deeply of his powers. The whole time the new dad was asleep, he had been dreaming a wonderful dream. He thought he was harvesting corn and beans and squash to make a delicious stew.

Drinker felt embarrassed when his father told this tale. But, Drinker admitted, he did know how to sow seeds and dig up the ground to make loose soil for them to grow in. He knew how to tend plants carefully until they were ripe. He knew exactly how to harvest them, cook them, and make meals for all the people in the Clan.

Drinker also knew how to make medicine as his mother did. As time passed, Drinker learned to love all the activities of the clan. The wise-woman took care of people with herbs and medicine and kind hands. She took care of the sick and delivered babies and gave friendly advice to everyone, Even as a tiny child, Drinker had trailed along behind her and his mother, pretending he was helping with the ceremonies performed by the wise-women of their clan. He was a great help. No one ever had to tell him what to do because he had the knowledge that he drank in from their spirits.

He loved to care for people, to run everywhere he went, and to help tend the animals. He knew how to do everything that everyone in the village loved to do. At first, he had been too young to be taught not to drink in every person that he touched, so he learned everyone’s secrets and everyone’s talents, and he was happy doing everything that his entire clan loved to do.

He especially loved animals. One spring morning he had come across a wounded deer lying in a gully. She was panting and looked at him with sad, frightened eyes. He soothed her with his soft voice and helped her give birth to a beautiful little fawn. He pretended that the baby deer was the fawn who had run through their camp when Drinker was a few months old.

He named the little newborn Fleetwind in honor of his friend. The mama deer liked to run too, he knew. He could feel how she liked to browse quietly in the shade of the forest. He could sense her talents and her love for her new family, but the talents did not pass into him even when he concentrated and tried to breathe in deeply from her spirit.

Drinker spread mud on the deer’s wound. He knew it would harden and protect the leg. Sure enough, a little later she stood up shakily and led Fleetwind into the trees. As he watched, smiling, he wondered about the talents people had passed to him from their spirit, up through their mind, and out to him. He called their abilities, their “gifts” because it seemed to him that everyone received their aptitudes as they received life, as a free gift from the One who created everything.

It didn’t work the same way with animals as it did with people. Somehow, they were different. Animals could love and they definitely had talents. There was a difference in the ability to think things through and make the same deliberate choices as people did. He thought maybe that is why it did not have the same effect on him.

For the first six years of Drinker’s life, he had been filled with delight every day and helped people and chased after Fleetfoot. He brought joy to the clan. Just after he turned six years old, the winter got colder and darker. The snows were deep and cold. No one went out to hunt for food for months. The clan ate dried food that they had  prepared in the summer and fall, but finally even that ran out. The people in Drinker’s clan grew lean and hard, and many people were sick.

 Drinker got sick too. He had a fever, and he tossed and turned for days and nights until the sickness finally calmed down and left his body.

Drinker had lain on his mat in the corner of the family’s room and shivered under his blanket. After many days, he woke up and looked around him. He felt tired, sore, and bewildered. He recognized where he was, but everything felt different.

His mother came over to feel his face. She smiled down at her son.

“How do you feel, little one?”

Drinker squinted up at her.

“I feel strange,” he said. “What happened?”

He felt so tired. He felt like there was something he needed to remember, but he couldn’t think of what it was.

“Why am I…?” Drinker’s words trailed off, and he fell back to sleep.

When Drinker woke up again, he discovered that he had forgotten all the talents that he had absorbed from the people in the Clan. The blanket covering him felt warm, and he rubbed his cheek on it. But he couldn’t remember how it was made. He couldn’t remember how to spin threads, or weave them on the big loom in the Clan. He didn’t know how to color them or lace them together into a vibrant pattern, as he once loved to do.

When his mother leaned over him to spoon broth into him to bring back his strength, he didn’t remember which herbs were added to the water or how to harvest and dry the ground corn that was added for nutrients. He didn’t remember how to do the things he loved to do in the past.

He felt sad, but safe when he looked up into his mother’s face. He sighed and opened his mouth and swallowed the thin soup. When he finished the bowl, he lay still and listened to someone singing in another room. They were singing softly, almost crooning, and Drinker thought it sounded beautiful. He was to hear this voice often in the days ahead, as a gentle young woman went from cot to cot comforting the people who were sick.

After another week of laying on the little cot, Drinker got up and went outside. He climbed up onto the roof to feel the warm rays of the sun. He was sitting and looking out over the fields and into the forest when Fleetfoot emerged from the top of the ladder and ran over to him. Curiously, they stared at one another. Drinker thought that Fleetfoot looked very thin but he didn’t know that he was even thinner. He put out his hand towards his friend and Fleetfoot touched it.

“Mama told me you were empty,” Fleetfoot said.

Drinker nodded. “Empty” was the term the spirit-catchers used when they did not have stored any of the talents of others. The elders explained that some kinds of sickness can destroy the ability to catch or keep the abilities from the spirits of others, at least until you were fully recovered.

“Would you like a drink of me?” Fleetfoot asked.

Drinker smiled. He took Fleetfoot’s hand and held it while he breathed the air deeply. The air was cool and the deep breath felt good in his lungs but he couldn’t sense anything from his friend. He just felt tired.

“I don’t think it’s going to work right now, Fleet. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Sure. I’ll come by and see you again.”

The two sat looking over the surrounding fields. Drinker leaned back and turned his face up to the sky. The sun felt good on his face.

“I wish I could drink the sun,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t ever get cold.”

Fleetfoot laughed. “You probably will someday.”

Drinker spent the next weeks catching up on the talents he had lost. The wise-woman was willing to share with him again because she liked his help. His father offered his talents as well, and Fleetfoot came over and sat down by him so he could drink from him. Drinker gulped in deeply, but not too deeply, so his friend would be safe. He acquired Fleetfoot’s love of running. Even though he loved to run, he was not as fast as his young friend. Now Drinker had the talent and the love of running but his body was not the same.

Drinker started to love to heal, to cook, and to help with the animals. He was happy again. Every once in a while, he snuck a little sip of other people without asking. He always did it quietly, and he felt guilty. He wanted everyone’s talents and joy.

After that sickness, Drinker always dressed warm when he went out in the cold. He carefully ate the healthy herbs that his mother prepared for the people of the Clan. He gobbled down his father’s vegetables mixed in thick, rich stews, and the rabbits and antelope and deer that the hunters in the Clan brought back to share with everyone.  He didn’t want to get sick.

Drinker helped the wise-woman when babies were born. He treasured the feeling of tasting their talent when they came out of their mothers into the fresh air. He didn’t have to breathe deeply or concentrate when a baby was so young. He just touched them and felt their being.

Sometimes parents would ask him how their newborn child tasted. Drinker always explained what he felt and saw when he held them.

He might say, “This child will love to make jewelry out of the turquoise and copper we mine because he has a love of beauty and using his hands.”

Or, “This child will love animals and being out in nature because she has a love of running free.”

The whole Clan was excited when he said about his little sister, “This child will grow up to be a wise-woman because she will want to help care for people. When this girl was inside the womb, she heard people’s voices, and even then it made her love them and want to help them.”

The spirit-catcher Clan lived together happily, and Drinker was friends with each one of them. And then, one day when he was older, he got taken away.