Excerpt from Brazil by Errol Uys, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Naurú was in his hut, the light from the fire within glowing dimly at the entrance. At several points in their lives, men entered that place to seek help or receive messages from the spirits, and they invariably faced such consultations with dread, never sure of the outcome.

Tonight, long before he showed himself, he had started chanting and shaking his rattles, louder and louder, the sounds mounting above those outside, the voice issuing from the small, twisted body remarkable in its power. A mantle of urubu feathers - only he was permitted the covering of the black vulture, bird of death - was slung over the hump on his back, and the sight of him in it was enough to make those closest jump back when he suddenly burst out of his hut. He halted a pace from the nearest group of men, turned his eye upon them, and moaned hideously, all the time shaking three rattles. From his neck hung a long chain made of hundreds of teeth drawn from the jaws of enemy warriors.

Naurú moved with a sort of hop toward the larger group of boys. He danced up and down before them with such ferocity that several began to whimper. Next he turned to those with feathers, stalking round them rather than dancing, circling several times, muttering and shaking the rattles when he paused opposite a boy, looking him over thoroughly before placing a rattle on the ground in front of him.

Aruanã was last to fall under his scrutiny.

He was enormously relieved when Naurú put a rattle down and backed away, but he grew worried again when the pagé went directly into his hut, the abrupt departure seeming to Aruanã to have something to do with him.

Naurú returned quickly, however, with a supply of tabak and lit the dry herb with an ember from the fire. He sat on the ground between the boys, and sucked at one end of the roll of smoldering leaves, filling his lungs.

The elders had elected Tabajara to speak, and he now stepped forward, his feather adornments more resplendent than on the previous night.

"O Great Pagé, Voice of the Spirits of our people, I ask to be heard."

Naurú puffed at the tabak and insolently blew smoke in the elder's direction before announcing, "They will listen."

"Believe, O Naurú, when our people were told that the sacred rattles had lost their feathers, every warrior wanted to take their bows."

A chorus of agreement greeted this statement, and Tabajara waited until it had died down. Naurú continued to sit, puffing away at the roll of tabak, looking on disinterestedly.

"But Naurú saw another way…It was the wisdom from Voice of the Spirits. It told of others to find feathers for the rattles. First we did not hear."

"You question Voice of the Spirits?"

"Never."

"Then, why were your thoughts weak?"

"They were not weak but small. As small as the thoughts of those Naurú appointed to find Macaw."

"There was a reason."

"We saw the wisdom of it."

"But not at first?"

"Not when boys were called to do the work of men. We feared the anger of the ancestors, O Great Pagé''

"Was it not they who asked, when they saw it was time for these boys to begin the work of men?"

"This was what we came to understand."

It was a ritual, this banter between elder and pagé, similar for every age group that approached initiation. To impress the boys, it sometimes went further, with Naurú seizing the opportunity to make a fool of the elder chosen to speak. But Tabajara was adept at meeting Naurú's provocation. He now lashed out at the boys without feathers: "I do not see one feather of Macaw! What kind of men will you be?"

None dared a response.

"I have seen such men," Tabajara told them. "Even the smallest girl in the malocas laughs…

Copyright Errol Uys. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint this excerpt contact the author at http://www.erroluys.com.