Pondwader did not sleep for a time. He thought about the things she’d said. And about the Lightning Bird’s Song that filled him with such magnificent and unearthly longings.
“You’ve been calling me, eyeless boy. I’m here. What do you want?”
My eyes jerk open and I pant in terror, scanning the pale blue dawn. The twisting branches have thrown off the cloak of night, and absorbed the first faint rays of Sun Mother’s glory. Leaves shine and flutter in the whisper of pine-scented wind. It is cool, and feels good after yesterday’s heat.
I turn my head, and see her.
Turtle Bone Doll sits in the middle of a palmetto frond over my head, her shabby tunic and white body framed perfectly in the dark green fan.
“What took you so long?” I whisper. “I’ve been calling you for days!”
“And you expect me to come, just because you call? I have many other things to worry about than you, stupid boy.”
“Why do you call me stupid?” I ask angrily. “I learned to thunder, didn’t I?”
Wind rustles through the forest, and the frond where Turtle Bone Doll sits bobs up and down, making her frayed skirt billow. “Just because I forced you to learn one simple skill, you think it means you’re no longer related to those catfish with combed-out brains?”
I stretch my back muscles. “I’ve learned other things, too. .The Lightning Bird has been Singing to me. Did you know that? He’s been telling me the most dazzling things—what it feels like to leap from the soft belly of clouds and plunge through the sky—”
“I don’t suppose it occurred to you that perhaps the Bird was trying to get you to SOAR … did it, brainless boy? Maybe the Bird has also been showing you sights of such wondrous light that your human eyes cannot conceive the beauty?”
Astonished, I whisper, “How did you know?”
Turtle Bone Doll vents an exasperated sigh. “Could it be that the Bird is tantalizing you, making you long so for the Light, that eventually, when you have the time, providing you live long enough, you will want to learn to FLASH?”
I frown. Turtle Bone Doll has leaned forward on the palm frond, so that she is perched over my face. One of her eyes is gone, apparently rubbed off. A sly grin comes to my face.
“I guess you can’t call me an ‘eyeless’ boy anymore, since you only have one left.”
“You missed your own point. And mine too, it seems.”
My thoughts flounder, trying to decipher that comment. “Oh,” I say, “you mean you’re not eyeless because you still have one left, and—”
“And you are as blind as a mud mole. Listen to me, will you, Pondwader? The Lightning Bird is working as hard as he can to make you want to become part of his Dance, before it’s too late, and you find out the hard way.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Turtle Bone Doll slides down to the very tip of the frond’s serrated leaf, little more than a hand’s breadth away, and whispers, “Have you really been screaming my name in your dreams, just to ask me these sorts of questions?”
I stare into her faded face. Her mouth has been smeared into a gray smudge. “Uh … no. I’ve been calling you because I want to know how you came to life. Musselwhite said she didn’t breathe life into you, and if she didn’t—”
“Finally! An important question … Did Musselwhite ever tell you about the time four of her sons died in a single day when a waterspout spun out of the sky and ripped their canoe in half?”
My mouth drops open. “No,” I say softly.
“She swam out at dawn to dive in the warm water, searching for their bodies. The storm had churned up the ocean so badly she couldn’t see anything. She had to pat her hands over the bottom, feeling for them. All day, she swam and searched. At dusk, on the brink of exhaustion, her right hand touched something cold and smooth. Her fingertips recognized the mouth and nose. It took all her strength to pull the boy from beneath the sand, and when she did, she dragged him to the surface, put her mouth over his and tried to breathe life back into him … but she couldn’t, Pondwader. Do you know why?”
I reach up, grab the tip of the frond and pull her down closer. Turtle Bone Doll tilts forward to oblige me, staring expressionlessly into my face. “What does that have to do with how you came to life?”
“How does anything come to life, Pondwader?”
“It gets a soul, or souls.” I release the frond and Turtle Bone Doll floats with its bobbing motion.
“How did you get one when your souls had been washed away in the Pond?”