People of the Mist(78)
She turned, jabbing the ground angrily with her sassafras stick. No good would come of this. No good at all!
Fifteen
Sun Conch sat on a stump, shivering. The night had fallen clear and cold. Her breath clouded each time she exhaled. They had made camp in the. narrow band of trees that lined the inlet just south of the canoe landing. Just behind them, the winter-fallow fields, spiked with burned stumps, stretched toward the wooded ridge. Their camp lay but a short distance from the palisade—close enough that they could hear each voice that called out from Flat Pearl Village. People must be cooking supper. She heard laughter, and children shrieking to the barking of dogs. Wooden plates clunked, and a golden aura of firelight haloed the palisades. It made Sun Conch long for home and family. And High Fox … her precious High Fox.
Panther hummed to himself as he diligently arranged kindling in the fire pit they’d hacked into the frozen soil. He looked frail and old. The tattered brown blanket he wore around his shoulders highlighted his gray hair and bushy eyebrows.
Sun Conch cupped her hands around one knee and listened to the sounds beyond the village. Owls hooted as they glided over the treetops, their eyes flashing. Owls: the familiars of night travelers.
“Elder?” she said. “May I ask you a question?”
“Questions are good things. Of course you may.” He placed his last twig on the kindling pile and lifted a small ceramic pot of hot coals, given to him by Nine Killer, from his pack. He sprinkled the coals over the carefully arranged kindling and crouched down to blow on them.
Sun Conch said, “Do you recall when you talked about cocoons hatching? I didn’t really understand. I was hoping you could give me some answers about that.”
Smoke curled up from the kindling. Panther kept blowing and the coals flared. Bright yellow flames licked up around the under. He sat back to catch his breath. Sun Conch shivered at the sudden warmth. Light leaped through the bare branches above their camp.
“People,” Panther said, “are always searching for answers, Sun Conch. Answers. They all want answers. And that’s what cocoons are.”
“Answers?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and nodded somberly. “The worst kind. They’re absolute truths. Lifeless and worthless, but absolute. The clan is mother. The village is family. The world was created by the great tree that grew out of the mud in the first days before giving fruit to First Man and First Woman. Boys are carefree warriors. Girls are responsible managers. The moment we come into the world, the first threads are woven into our souls, and meant to be the foundation of who we become. And so they are. From those cocoons we can hatch many grand things, but humans usually kill them before they have a chance. A few Comings of the Leaves and those precious cocoons have been turned into nothing more than hollow husks.”
Sun Conch clutched her feathered cape close at her throat and studied the way the firelight flowed into his deep wrinkles. “What does that mean?”
He smiled, and the few teeth in his mouth shone orange in the gleam. “You have to stop wanting answers. Let them go. You can’t grow wings with a belly full of answers. Wings are born only when you start living your questions.”
“Living … questions?”
Panther added a larger branch to the fire. Sparks crackled and spun upward in a blinking twirl. “Oh, yes. Whenever you truly take the time to look at a trembling leaf, or watch a stone being tumbled” along the bottom of a river, you are living a question.”
Sun Conch’s brows pulled together. “You’re confusing me, Elder.” “Hmm?” He looked up.
“What question are you living when you look at a trembling leaf?”
Panther tucked his blanket around his moccasins, and heaved a sigh. “You want me to give you an answer?”
Sun Conch sensed she’d said something wrong. She wet her lips. “Yes.”
He made an airy gesture with his hand. “Answers are not shiny rocks that you can dig from the ground, Sun Conch. They are the cool air in your lungs, and the warm blood pulsing in your veins. If you live your questions, sincerely, with all your heart, the answers will smile at you from every grain of sand and drifting cloud. Answers, my girl, are not found. They are lived.”
She fumbled with the war club tied to the side of her belt, pulling it around to the front, and checking the knot to make sure it would come loose with one quick tug. “So… you’re not going to answer me?”
His bushy silver brows arched. “I could. But it would be my answer. Not yours. The answer has to be yours, or it isn’t an answer at all.”