People of the Lightning(68)

As Diver chewed his clams, he gazed down at Musselwhite’s deerbone awl, which lay next to him on the floor mat. Just looking at it comforted him. He’d been dreaming of her constantly, wondering if she had married yet, worrying about the guilt she must be feeling. She would blame herself for her children’s deaths and his capture. It was her way. She would be suffering from the mistaken belief that if she had been there, she could have saved them. And perhaps her presence could have saved her children … by preventing his argument with Blue Echo. Grief cramped his stomach. He lifted his bowl, drained it dry, and set it to the side.

“Are you ready to talk?” Cottonmouth asked. The lines around his eyes looked as deep as canyons.

“I have nothing to say to you. I want to be left alone.”

“There is no such thing as ‘alone,’ Diver,” Cottonmouth responded softly. “To be is to be related. To the white-tailed deer, the dolphins, the clouds floating on the horizon. Separateness is an illusion we create to justify our wrongdoings—that way we don’t feel responsible for breaking the world’s heart. But we do, you know. We break the heart of the world every moment of our lives. Even when we—”

“You’re crazy.”

Cottonmouth drew up one knee and cradled it in the circle of his arms. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter. Pain is pain. Truth is Truth.”

“What would you know of truth?” Diver spat the word. “Or pain? Y-you who cannot even breathe without hurting someone!”

“That, Diver,” he said in a haunting voice, “is precisely what I have been trying to tell you. No one can. It is the lot of humans, and the single most important thing we must understand before we can save ourselves. To live is to inflict pain. To live in pain. We cannot help it. But we can learn to live with that Truth without killing our souls over it.” Waning sunlight shone purplish on his tanned cheeks. “Do you wish to save yourself? If you do, I will teach you.”

Diver laughed derisively. “Is that the sort of trash you tell these people to convince them to follow you? To believe in your ridiculous Dreams?”

Cottonmouth looked away. “When Hurricane Breather stalks the land again, you will long to escape to the shining new world that awaits my followers beyond the stars. The things you must learn are simple. If you will listen, they will take only a little—”

“There is nothing I wish to learn from you.”

Cottonmouth inclined his head agreeably. “As you wish.”

Pelicans hunted the darkening ocean, sailing low over the water, twisting and splashing down. Cottonmouth turned his head to watch them with narrowed eyes.

Diver clutched the deerbone awl and slid across the mats until he could brace his back against the northeastern pole. The guards had begun gambling, tossing sticks, but they still paid attention to his every move. Diver let his head fall back against the pole and exhaled. The evening wind tousled his disheveled hair and cooled his hot face. He had begun living from day to day, expecting nothing, praying for everything. And he’d found that such an outlook allowed him to find pleasure in the smallest of things: a gull squabble on the beach could make him laugh for a full hand of time; a husband touching his wife gently brought forth feelings of stunning tenderness; a child tripping over his dog’s tail filled him with unimaginable joy.

Cottonmouth lightly turned over a fragment of clamshell buried in the sand, and examined the faded purple ridges. “I do believe in that other world promised in my Dreams, Diver. I realize that you think I am lying to gain followers, but that is not the case.”

“Isn’t it?”

Cottonmouth shook his head. “Don’t you see, Diver, a person who sees nothing before him but a straight line to burial lives a futile life, a life of ever-increasing care and bitterness, and I cannot bear—”

“I do not know anyone who believes that! All of my relatives know that the Daybreak Land and the Village of Wounded Souls exist. None of them sees life as a straight line to the grave.”

Cottonmouth lowered a hand to draw spirals into the sand at his side. “Well, I did. For many, many summers. I thought humans just lived hard and died, and there was nothing after that.”

“That’s absurd. All the great Soul Dancers have visited the afterworlds. How could you not believe?”

Cottonmouth shrugged. “The fact is, I didn’t. I didn’t believe in an afterlife, or Sun Mother, or any other Spirit. And because I didn’t, I tried to pack ten lives into my one, to enjoy as much as I could, hate as much as I could, kill and save as many as I could.” He laughed grimly. “The only thing I believed in was the world.”