There is only one thing I have done in my life that I am truly proud of.
I have tried to be a teacher.
I think some of my students actually heard me, though the gods know, listening is not easy. The greatest danger for the Student is thinking he has heard everything perfectly. It takes a long time to understand that the wisest words are not rolls of thunder. They don’t strike at the heart like lightning. They are whispers, softly spoken into the ear, easily ignored by the spiritually intoxicated.
Oh, I am old, but I remember that intoxication, that heady rush of certainty. Even now, just thinking about it, I’m a little tipsy.
That’s why wisdom sneaks by. We’re tipsy. We can feel revelation surging in our veins. Who has time for whispers when the whole world is a divine shout?
Unfortunately, shouts are just air. Genuine spiritual awareness is hard work. It’s like quarrying stone beneath a blazing sun, day after day. A man gets tired.
So very tired.
It is just easier to sit down, smile, and think great thoughts in the shade.
The truth, you see, is that revelation isn’t fun. Revelation is pain.
I close my eyes.
My vision is growing dim.
I hear voices calling to me from far away. I think I recognize my mother’s voice.
I force myself to listen.
I listen for a long, long time.
And finally … I swear to you, I do hear the whispers.
Forty-four
In the Serpent’s central fire pit, flames flickered and cast their warm light. Smoke rose, pooling around the rafters and the sacked herbs hanging from the roof.
In the wavering yellow glow, Bobcat sat on his haunches, forearms propped on his knees. A worried look filled his moon-shaped face with its odd, beaklike nose. His mild brown eyes communicated his concern as he looked at the Serpent.
Salamander tried to breathe in shallow gasps. The stench of feces, clotted blood, and closing death permeated the air. Even now, after having been smothered with it for days, it clung in his nostrils.
Death was everywhere. It filled his dreams, creeping out of the corners of his souls. It showed him Eats Wood’s face as it rotted in some secret location. In his dreams, he watched the flesh turn brown, soften, and slip from the skull. In off moments, he felt the cracking of bone through the handle as he drove his ax through the top of Eats Wood’s head. His souls flinched as the corpse twitched in his memory.
He hadn’t expected killing to be like that. Not after the way the warriors spoke. He had found no glory in the murder of Eats Wood. Instead, he was plagued by an aching hollowness, the lingering nightmares, loss, and the bruise of regret.
Now Death lurked here, Dancing with the firelight, slipping among the shadows. It hovered with the smoke in the rafters, clinging to the sooty cane poles as it peered down at the dying Serpent with liquid black eyes.
My friend is dying. Who am I going to talk to now? Salamander’s souls ached in anticipation of the coming loneliness.
The Serpent lay on his back, faceup, mouth gaping. Rasping air passed back and forth between his dry lips. His body was little more than bones with a thin leathery skin sagging off them. Only his belly, just left of the navel, was swollen. Scabs showed where Bobcat had punctured the skin, using a stone sucking tube to try and draw out the evil. When Salamander touched the lump, he discovered it was hard, like a rock.
“He said that it entered him sometime ago,” Salamander replied wearily. “How could it beat him? He is the strongest of us.”
“Sometimes evil is the strongest of all.” Bobcat laced his fingers together.
They waited.
The Serpent muttered, half of the words garbled, but now and then a name would come out: that of someone long dead. Or a snatch of conversation, one-sided, as the Serpent babbled to someone only his frantically jerking eyes could see. At other times his limbs moved. He might have been walking in some distant time or place.
“He’s talking to the Dead,” Bobcat said. “It won’t be long now, Salamander.”
“Then they are all around us.” He looked up at the cloudy smoke, hearing the rain pattering in puddles as it trickled off the roof. Ghosts? All around? Who were they? Was his uncle there? Did White Bird circle in the hazy smoke, looking down at Salamander?
Hello, Brother! Hello, Uncle. Are you there? His souls ached to speak with them again.
Bobcat reached into a bowl of filthy water and squeezed out a red-brown-stained cloth. The stench strengthened in the air. Raising the Serpent’s stick of a leg, he wiped at the man’s fouled anus and cleaned the slight dribble of urine from his thigh. Finished, Bobcat dropped the cloth back in the water.
“Wolf Dream,” the old man gasped suddenly, his eyes flickering. He began to mumble: