“You don’t think it’s possible that Red Knot grabbed the necklace in a fight for her life? That she tore it from his throat trying to protect herself?”
Sun Conch’s spine went rigid. She stared at Panther. “No. I don’t.”
“I see.” But he acted just the opposite. His mouth had set into hard lines. “Then who do you think murdered Red Knot?”
“I don’t know, Elder! It could be one of ten people!” She made a sweeping gesture with her arm. “Nearly everyone in Flat Pearl Village has a motive!” Panther frowned at the mist. As the morning warmed, it seemed to fall apart, fragmenting into patches, then wisps. Soon it would rise and transform itself into low clouds. “Well, that’s true. We need to uncover more of what happened here before we can begin to judge.”
The eastern sky had started to glow. Gulls flapped across the luminous blue, their hoarse calls echoing. Sun Conch smoothed her fingers down the polished wood of High Fox’s war club, the club he had forced her to take, despite the fact that it was his life that was in danger. “Elder,” she asked, “why do you hate High Fox so much? He’s never done anything to you.”
“No,” Panther said. “But he will if I let him. He’ll hurt anyone who gives him a chance.”
“He’s never hurt me.”
“Never?”
She started to give him a hasty answer, but he’d know she was lying. “Well, even if he has, I still want to marry him, Elder. Do you think that’s wrong? To want to love someone forever?”
“Not wrong,” he answered wistfully. “But there is nothing more difficult than loving another person, Sun Conch. Lovers so often want to consume each other, to draw the other inside their hearts where they can keep them caged like a beloved pet—”
“I don’t want High Fox as my pet!”
Panther looked up at her from beneath bushy silver brows. “Perhaps not, but I’m sure he wants you as his. He already treats you like his second-favorite dog. Now, let me finish what I was saying.”
She clamped her jaw.
Panther leaned toward her to peer into her eyes. “Do you want to know how to avoid becoming a pet?”
“Not really. I don’t think it will ever happen to me. I’m too strong-willed.”
“I’m going to tell you just the same, because someday you’ll be glad I did.” He brushed at a speck of dirt on his blanket, gently, as if it were alive and he feared to hurt it, “Never strive to be one with another person, Sun Conch. You will want to. The heart can be very demanding. But don’t do it. Love only succeeds when two people realize they can’t be one, and learn to nurture the distance between them. Distance is what makes it possible to see another person for who they really are, whole, and naked against a clean blue sky. That is the beginning of real love.”
“Distance! But I…” Sun Conch stopped, and checked to see if Panther wore his evil squint. He didn’t. In fact, he looked a little sad. “Elder, I promise you that I will remember your words, though I will surely never learn to appreciate such a distance. More than anything, I want to be close to High Fox.” The closer the better.
Panther looked away, and his eyes glinted with a silver-silk flash of dawn. “You will learn. Or you will spend your life alone.” He abruptly rose to his feet, said, “As I have,” and hobbled off as if each step hurt.
Sun Conch flopped back against the house wall. He had a way of conversing that felt a lot like being pelted with rocks.. She shook her head. The pungent scents of the newborn day rose powerfully, wet thatch and burning oak) the mist-soaked feathers of her cape. Several people were up and about. Two girls walked toward the opening in the palisade, water jugs cupped in their brown arms, their voices loud in the morning stillness. A dog trotted happily at the heels of a boy with an armload of wood.
An odd pain spread across her chest as she wondered at Panther’s last statement. Did it mean that he had never learned to nurture the distance? Was that why he wasn’t married? Why he lived on his island in the middle of nowhere?
As Panther neared the opening in the palisade, Sun Conch suddenly realized he intended to go outside. She grabbed her war club, sprang to her feet, and dashed across the plaza, calling, “Panther? Wait! Don’t go out there alone! I’m coming!”
The Solitary
Blessed gods, my gods, I am so alone.
I stare at the fire lit roof above me, and try just to breathe.
How curious that the sudden awareness of my coming death has awakened me to the fact that I have no one, that I spent my life discarding loved ones like broken pots along the way.