People of the Sea(27)
Five
Sunchaser had been gone by that time. But it was small comfort that he hadn’t been around to gloat.
Catchstraw had never lived down that day. People still joked about it, and anyone who openly scorned him and his Dreaming mentioned the event to justify their disbelief. He was still convinced that Sunchaser had done something, cut the stitching or slipped a blade into the hide, but he’d been unable to find the proof.
Catchstraw blinked when an idea suddenly occurred to him. For moons, he’d been trying to figure a way of getting back at Sunchaser. “So everything is connected to everything? Maybe you’re right, great Sunchaser.”
Catchstraw leaned forward and brushed dirt from the maze inscribed hide, then flattened it out on the floor to scrutinize it. Shadows cast by the fire dappled the design. He pulled a stick from his woodpile and thrust the point into the flames to char. When it had a good coating of black, Catchstraw withdrew the stick and lowered the tip to the hide. He chanted the Mammoth Spirit Dance Song as he worked. With the patience of Lion stalking Tapir, he drew new lines, blocking old pathways, creating new twists. An elated chortle escaped his lips.
“Oh, this is amusing.”
His actions took on an unreal quality, as if the simple movements of his hand threw him back and forth in time and carried him days, even cycles, from this place and then returned him in an instant.
“I’ve never felt so much like I’m Dreaming. Really Dreaming.” His voice sounded far away and unfamiliar. Not his at all. It sent a frightened thrill through him.
He took lines and turned them into spirals, or drew them straight out away from the center of the maze, where they dangled in emptiness.
At times during the long night, he heard the coughs and garbled words of the people sleeping in the lodges nearest him, and the sounds jarred him from his task. He would halt long enough to massage his cramping hand before he bent forward to his work again.
Euphoria possessed him. His body seemed to float on a warm cloud. The lodge grew crystal-clear, the colors brightening until they dazzled, the designs on the baskets and parfleches jumping out at him. When he thought he heard voices in the crackling and hissing of the fire, fear flushed his veins, and he forced himself to stop. He fell back against his hides, panting.
“Blessed Mother Ocean,” he whispered hoarsely, “what happened to me? I felt as if—for the first time—I touched the Dream world.”
He peered nervously around his lodge. “Oh, Spirits, let it happen again. Please!”
The black womb jostled violently around him, and the Unnamed Boy went silent in fear.
Stars shot back and forth across the sky, leaving glowing silver trails in their wakes. He could hear their voices, soft and muted, discussing him and the blue-green world below.
The Boy shivered.
“It’s all right,” a Man said.
The Boy searched the blackness, trying to see who had spoken to him. But he saw only the flying stars. “No,” he answered, “it’s not all right. My mother is in very bad trouble. If I could just find a body to live in again, I could help her…. And Sunchaser. He needs me, too. Neither of them would have to hurt so much if they had me there to help them!”
The Man’s voice swirled around him as though coming from all directions at once, like an echo in a deep canyon. “Suffering… yes, pain is always the problem… it waxes and wanes like the face of Above-Old-Man beneath the touch of Sister Earth. But the changes are not part of Above-Old-Man. They are only shadows that momentarily dim his brightness. Above-Old-Man’s heart doesn’t change
at all. You must look deeper, Boy. much deeper, before you will be ready to be born again. This is the very reason you have been denied life so many times.”
Stars gathered around the Boy. their light hurt fully brilliant, but their warmth built a cocoon around him. Soft voices whispered in his ears, so mixed-up that he couldn’t make out anything, they were trying to tell him.
The Boy bit his Up and thought about the heart of Above Old-Man… the heart beneath the shadows…
“But Sunchaser. What of Sunchaser, Man? Will the shadows catch him?”
In a forlorn voice, the Man replied, “It’s difficult to know, Boy. Sometimes humans beg for battles to be taken away from them, not realizing that only in struggling with shadows is the Light made manifest.”
Sunchaser walked through Brushnut Village with weary determination, heading for Standing Moon’s lodge, nestled between the trunks of two giant firs. Fifteen lodges were spread amongst the trees, arranged around a central plaza where a huge communal bonfire burned. Exhaustion smoldered within his tall body like embers hidden in the ash of an abandoned hearth. His deep-set eyes had sunk so much in the past two weeks that they resembled black holes cut into the tan oval of his face. The buckskin of his long beaded shirt had grown stiff with dirt and sweat. Around him, sobs and fevered moans echoed through the village. The illness had been raging for half a moon, with no sign of letting up. He hesitated before Standing Moon’s door. The last snow