Ticky-Ticky's QUEST

 Part 2 of a Trilogy: 

Travel to *Turtle Island

Copyright by Michael Auld 2024 

Book Cover: The hero Ticky-Ticky wearing his own shell georget necklace, and surrounded by other ancient spider clamshell gorgets which symbolize the power of the arachnid.

 

* a.k.a. The Native American name for North America because the continent looks like a giant turtle from above.

Author’s Note.

This free continuous story blog begins with a synopsis of each chapter of  Part 2 of the Ticky-Ticky story. Starting in National Native American Heritage Month, each week I will add the next chapter's synopsis until we arrive at the end of tis story. (To see Part 1, click here.)

INTRODUCTION

Spider Woman of the Hopi at the Creation. She is one of the people who Ticky-Ticky meets.

The history of spider women and men is ancient. For example, in the Americas the Hopi of New Mexico tell of Spider Woman who was present at the Creation. Her Web of Life connects all animate and inanimate things. Spider beings are in stories from Africa to Europe, and in the Americas. In Ghana and Jamaica it is Anansi. Europe has Aracnia, North America has even more. Here we have Grandmother Spider of the Cherokee, Spider Woman of the Hopi, Iktomi of the Lakota (Sioux), Spider Woman & her husband of the Dine or Navajo, Aunt Nancy of Georgia's Sea Islands, and Great Spider Mother of Teotihuakan, Mexico. Then,South America has a gigantic spider character in te Nasca desert. This story begins as Part 2 of a series in the trilogy of Kweku Anansi the Spider-Man's son, Ticky-Ticky.a quarter spider-boy searching the Americas for his missing wayward father. Ticky-Ticky's mom is a full-blood Yamaye Taino woman.

But,  first, here is the beginning of his journey whch starts in a Jamaican boy's school.
In Part 1, the young teen was forced to leave his Coromanti boys high school by the headmaster for inattention in class. "Don't come. back without your father," the British headmaster warned, instead of giving Ticky-Ticky a caning on the bent-over butt.
So, the spider-boy his was forced to go on a quest in search of Anansi, who had been missing for a year, while on an adventure of his own. This is a continuation of Ticky-Ticky's QUEST which take him to North Arica to meet ancient folkloric Native American spider people. So, come along for the ride!

Ticky-Ticky's search took him to Coabey, the Taino Island of the Dead. There he borrowed Opiel, the Searchdog of the Absent, and a flying, time traveling Bat-canoe. Next stop was HaitiHaiti You can see a synopsis of that story at http://anansistories.com/Ticky_Ticky.html.

PART 2 

CHAPTER 1

Ticky-Ticky's flying Bat-Canoe landed in the Florida Everglades, surprising John Littletree a Seminole who had recently encountered Anansi the Spider-Man's search for his "rich American relatives". Where did Ticky-Ticky's dad go?

  A happy feeling surged through Ticky-Ticky's heart in this first Native American encounter. We will see that he will receive a priceless lesson and a valuable lead about his father from a Seminole Indian, John Littletree. This is the time that Ticky-Ticky began to wear a spider gorget suspended around his neck. This amulet replaced the carved navel designed one from a manatee bone that had been given to him by Cuffy the Obeah-man, back in Jamaica. That navel amulet was supposed to serve Ticky-Ticky as a safety passport while he was in the ghost filled Caribbean’s Coabey, the Island of the Dead. That manatee bone amulet was ripped off his body when Guabancex, the Angry Woman of the Hurricane had snatched Ticky-Ticky from the flying Bat-canoe over Matinino, the Island of Women. The ancient spider gorget, carved from the purple and white quahog clamshell was a good luck charm, intended to smell out Spiders like Anansi and his Turtle Island relatives. 

Ticky-Ticky also learned from John that, "Amerindians of the Americas, outside of the U.S.A., were hot called Native Americans.” This term only applied to indigenous people of continental North America. In Canada, they are called First Nations. In Mexico, Indigina (In-dee-he-nah) and Indio (In-de-oh) were the words used. 

Ticky-Ticky had learned at Coromanti, his Jamaican High School, that Amerindian was a combined term that distinguished the indigenous people of the Americas from Asiatic Indians of India. The next lesson was from John Littletree. 

"Turtle Island was the indigenous name for the northern continent of the Americas." John had said. 

This was because, from the air, the North American continent appeared to be in the shape of a gigantic turtle. From ancient times, traditional maps were drawn by two-dimensional thinking sailors. Some Amerindians saw the world in 6-D. These six-“dimensions” we’re comprised of the Four Sacred Directions of the white, snowy North, the yellow of the warm South, the red of the East’s rising sun, and the black of the night and the West’s setting sun. The 5^th-Dimension was Father Sky above, populated by the winged ones. The 6^th Dimension was Mother Earth below, populated by the two and four legged, the crawlers and the swimmers. Sometimes there was the 7^th Dimension with which Ticky-Ticky was familiar; Opiyel’s Spirit World.

As one Maya shaman said, “The world is made up of dualities. As day need night, good cannot exist without evil…they balance each other.”

Author's Note_2: "I had met the late  John Littletree, a military veteran who was a dance circle's Arena Director at powwows in Virginia. I had to honor him in tis story."

To be continued..