by Caleb Fox
“So down the animals and plants came, and when they got here, they found out everything was different. They were missing something—they were like shadows, ghosts, not living beings, not running, jumping, laughing, loving, blood-pumping beings like we are now.
“Eagle, the highest flying of all birds, is the messenger between the world above and the world below, so he soared upward, beyond the sun, and asked what was wrong. ‘You need fire,’ he was told. ‘Fire is energy, fire is vitality, fire is life.’
“Eagle lifted his voice to Thunder, ‘Give us fire. We will die without fire.’
“Thunder gathered his strength and shot a bolt from the heavens. It split the sky and blasted into a hollow sycamore tree. Everyone watched, worried. When smoke wafted out of the top of the tree, they all rejoiced. Thunder had made the Earth the gift of fire.
“Even today Eagle is known as the bringer of thunder and lightning.
“Fire is a good example of how we don’t see deep into things, beyond appearances to reality. Let’s talk a little about the essence of fire. Our first idea about fire is that it keeps us warm, and it cooks our food. These are trivia. Fire is the spark that burns in all living beings. It is energy. It is life itself. Sometimes it seems to destroy. But watch fire burn a stick of wood. It doesn’t destroy the stick—it transforms it into energy. You can feel the heat with your hand. You can see the light from the flame. You can even see the waves of heat rising up. And when fire burns a field of grass, or a patch of forest, it renews the earth to grow younger and greener grasses and trees. Fire is not just one flame. It is a life-giving energy, a gift of the spirits to the Earth.
“There, now you see part of what I mean by seeing beyond the appearances of things to their spiritual reality.
“So, back on Earth they still needed fire. This burning sycamore was on an island, and the animals wondered how to get the fire. As they thought, they suddenly noticed that they were feeling better. Animals’ bodies began to take on substance, muscles thickened, bones formed in their shadows. Soon everyone began to move around and talk and smile. Plants picked themselves up off the ground, rose into the air, and faced the sun. As everyone breathed in and out, they felt more vigorous. Dusky Owl, who is wise, guessed the truth. ‘Smoke is fire’s breath, and as we draw smoke in, we come alive.’
“They were concerned, though, that the sycamore would soon burn up and the fire would go out. They needed to get hold of that fire and make it grow. So all the plants and animals, including human beings, held a council. Every one that could swim or fly wanted to be the hero to get the fire.
“Because he’s big and strong, Raven went first. While he was standing on top of the tree, the heat scorched all his feathers black, and he flapped back fast, without any fire. Screech Owl went next, but when he looked down into the tree, a blast of hot air burned his eyes. He zigzagged his way back, but for a long time he was nearly blind, and even today his eyes are red. Hoot Owl and Horned Owl tried next, but the smoke blinded them, and the ashes made white rings around their eyes. As anyone can see, they have never managed to get rid of those white rings.
“When the birds had failed, Blacksnake said he was sure he could do it. He swam across the water, wound his way up the tree, and peered down. The smoke immediately choked him. He fell into the tree, got burned, climbed back up the inside, and got back to shore as blackened as he still is.
“Now all the animals were afraid to go. Everyone tried to talk someone else into going. Eventually, one of the smallest animals of all volunteered, Water Spider, the one with black hair and red stripes. ‘You can swim over there,’ everyone else said, ‘but how will you bring the fire back?’
“ ‘Just watch me,’ said Water Spider.
“Out of her body she spun a thread in the shape of a small bowl. She swam across the water with the bowl on her back, plunked a coal into it, and swam back. Ever since, we’ve had fire.
“All living creatures came together then for a giant council. Remember, this was when all the animals were still friendly and still talked to each other, before death came into this world, and creatures started eating one another. They put Water Spider’s fire at the center of the lodge and built it high, so they would have plenty of fire. And then two peoples made great gifts to the human beings.
“Tobacco spoke first. He said, ‘If you will pluck my leaves, cut them up, burn them, and breathe in the smoke, I will give you health of body, clarity of mind, and spiritual insight.’
“First Man, Kanati, asked, ‘What do you want in return?’
“ ‘We want you to plant us everywhere we can grow, so that our tribe will grow larger and larger.’
“First Man and First Woman agreed, though their descendants later forgot.
“Then the Stone People made First Man and First Woman a generous offer. They said, ‘Build a low, tight hut that holds steam. Make a fire, heat us very hot, and put us in the hut. Then pour water on us and breathe in the steam that springs up. Draw in the breath of fire this way, and soak your bodies in it. We will be a furnace of life for you, body, mind, and spirit.’
“First Man and First Woman were so grateful and humbled by this generosity that they could not speak. You know that we still perform the ceremony of the sweat lodge today. Unfortunately, the people have forgotten that the ceremony is to renew the mind and spirit, and not for the body only.
“First Man and First Woman realized now that fire was a supreme gift and that it must never be allowed to go out. They kept it going in the council lodge, and they put it at the center of their home for warmth at night and in the winter. One of them always stayed home to keep the council fire going. And when First Man traveled, he learned to carry fire along in a pouch of thick buffalo hide, so if he camped in a cave, he would always have fire. Later the people learned to create fire by rubbing the fleabane stalk against the hard fungus that grows on the underside of locust branches. You know that every year at the Planting Moon Ceremony we still put out the blaze in every house and take to each house new fire from the sacred fire in the council lodge.
“But that original fire, the one Water Spider brought back, it is the grandfather of the fire that burns in the council lodge in our own village now. The priest tends it so that it never goes out.
“So, Grandson, that is how this world got fire, and how human beings use its gifts. Fire is life itself in this world. The sun is fire. A star is distant fire. A lightning bug is fire. The life of every living creature is fire. Your spirit is fire. In the Galayi language we have a single word that means your spirit, your soul, and your heart—your yuwi. That is your fire.
“Listen to this lesson carefully, keep it close within your heart, because it is an elusive one. Fire—spirit, soul, and heart—is not physical. It is the essence of life, and it cannot perish. Here on Earth, as long as there is fire, there is life, and as long as there is life, there is fire.
“That’s why, every winter solstice, when the sun is weakest, I come to this room and paint the sun the color of fire.”
They sat together for long moments, Aku’s mind sifting through what he had heard. Finally, he said, “When I change myself into an owl, I make no change at all. My fire is the same—I am the same.”
She came around the fire and squeezed his hand. “That is a great secret. When you know it as experience, not just thought, you will be more powerful.”
Aku went on, as though watching something at a great distance. “Your son and grandson are the same. They are the fire born into them, whether in human shape or panther shape.”
“Yes.”
“This is part of what you mean when you ask me to see beyond appearances to reality.”
“It’s one part, beginning to see the bones in the shadows.”
Aku swiveled his shoulders and stretched his back like he was uncomfortable.
“Who else are you thinking of?” asked Tsola.
“Salya.”
“And what do you see?”
Aku clasped
his hands on top of his hair and shook his head fast. “Maloch has stolen my sister’s spirit.” For a moment he lost his tongue. “That is beyond horror, and I must set it right. Now.”
“Drink this,” said Tsola. “It will help you get ready for the next step.”
Tsola and Bola watched each other for long, silent moments. When they knew their young kinsman was asleep, Bola said, “Maloch the Uktena won’t just kill him. He’ll eat his spirit. And you’re sending him there.”
“Not I. It’s what he’s born to.”
Bola heard a scraping in his mother’s voice. A rare thought zinged through him. She’s getting too old.
“Every one of them has something to teach the seeker,” Tsola said. She held her torch as high as his own so Aku could really study the painted images.
He checked out Rabbit, with its split nose. “What does Rabbit have to say to me?”
“He’s the trickster. But every seeker has to learn the teaching from every animal. It’s like giving birth, or having sex. No point in knowing about it—you have to experience it.”
“I don’t understand.” Well, he did, about sex.
She didn’t respond.
Aku held his light close to Little Deer, who was only knee-high and entirely white.
“Do you know the story of the King of the Deer?”
“No.”
Tsola grimaced. Meli, had she lived, would have made sure her children knew the old stories. Shonan thought they were the ghosts of the past. “The seekers of wisdom who come to me, each one gets to know some of these figures and the spirits they represent. Seekers make different discoveries in different paintings—sometimes, in fact, within the same painting. Each seeker takes home his own wisdom, and usually they come back several times to learn more.”
Aku considered Rabbit for another long moment and passed on to Wolf. “That seems strange to me,” he said.
“What?”
“His fangs are showing, but his eyes, his eyes, they’re …” Aku rummaged through his mind. “Compassionate.”
“Very observant,” she said. “Wolf was the companion of First Man, the lucky hunter.” This was mere information—she could talk about that.
“That’s why no Galayi will kill a wolf,” said Aku, “except for the one man in each village who is given that power.”
At least her grandson knew some of the old lore.
Aku stopped in front of the drawing of Panther. Behind them Bola thumped his tail. “Look at the eyes,” Aku said. “They see in darkness but …” He considered the strange luminescence in the orbs. “Bola,” he said, “do you also see into the darkness of the spirit?”
“If you want the knowledge,” Bola said, “you have to take the journey.”
Aku turned and looked Bola straight in the face. “Can you see into the Darkening Land?”
Bola snapped out a roar.
Aku’s knees shook as he turned away. He pretended to study the next figure, Bear, for a long time, but fear lashed every thought out of his mind. Finally, he said, “Grandmother, why is Bear white?”
“If you walk with him, you will know.”
Aku cocked his head at Bear. “I think he looks like an uncle.” Among the Galayi, a boy’s maternal uncles were his particular guides and teachers.
He walked onward to look at Great Dusky Owl.
“Don’t gaze at him now,” said Tsola. “That’s for later.”
“Will these paintings last forever? Down here away from the weather?”
“I don’t think so, not on this limestone. I’ve already repainted some of them. Besides, I’d hate to think that in a hundred generations, when no Wounded Healer might be here, people would come and use the power of the paintings without guidance.”
Aku sidestepped to look up at War Eagle, the highest of all the paintings, curving with the wall so that its head and its amber eye glared down from the ceiling.
This was not the white-headed, white-tailed eagle, but the dark red-brown bird with the red-gold throat. He was sacred to the Galayi for two reasons. He carried messages between the people and the Powers who lived in the Land Beyond the Sky Arch, and they thought him the perfect warrior, the essence of courage. When a Galayi warrior acted bravely, the Red Chief gave him the feather of a war eagle to tie into his hair.
Tsola watched Aku keenly. He tilted his head far back and stared into the great eye. Quietly, she reached for a cup of special tea she had brewed.
“I could fly into his eye,” said Aku, drone-like.
She handed him the tea. “Drink this.”
Beyond thought, he drained it.
Tsola reached for her drum and began a gentle tap, tum-tum, tum-tum, like a heartbeat.
Aku felt a wobble inside, and in the next moment he was flying.
20
The wind was cool and bracing, its damp edge intoxicating. He swiveled his head in every direction. A jolt of fear thrilled him. His first measure of height was the distance the tops of the mountains rose above the plains. His second, equally helpful, was a thin gauze of clouds that shadowed the mountains. Aku glided to that height again, three mountain measures above the earth. His wings were spread, and he was floating, effortless.
What’s it like, wing-flapper?
Tsola’s words, without a voice.
Where are you?
His own words, without a voice.
In your mind.
Inside my mind?
I can see out your eyes.
The drumbeat insisted a little, and for the first time Aku noticed it.
This is our connection, the beat. It binds you to the world of Earth and lifts me to your world.
Some tricks you play.
What if this is reality? What if your ordinary world is the trick?
Jabber-talk.
She laughed. What do you want to do?
Fly!
Pay attention!
In fact, he could feel it now, he was not only flying, he was rising without any effort on his part. Somehow the invisible hand of the air itself was lifting him.
So, wing-beater, how does it feel to be a soarer? A high-flier? A cloud-dweller? Scary?
It feels supreme. He didn’t add that a portal in his mind had been kicked in and a new world of infinite vistas spread before him. Aku was a man was an owl was an eagle was a life-fire.
Good, said Tsola.
He felt a pang. Grand, he thought out loud, but lonely.
Power is always lonely. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little company.
Wing tip to wing tip he flew alongside another war eagle. They met eye slit to eye slit and knew each other. Mates, life partners, male and female.
Aku’s spouse arced her beak downward, folded her wings, and dived. Aku zoomed beak to tail behind her. Down, fast as any living creature could go, plummeting like drops off a high waterfall.
After shrieking down forever, his mate suddenly stuck out her wings and glided.
You’re a little confused, warned Tsola. There was a tease in her voice.
Aku followed his mate into the glide, and they coasted toward the top of a mountain with sharp, jagged promontories, peaks pointed like the tips of awls, or the splinters of broken bones.
Where do you think you are? said Tsola. Earth?
Aku was busy noticing something else. He was the bigger eagle, length greater, wing span wider, body heftier.
His mate floated to a landing on the rim of a nest, presumably their home.
Tsola’s drum tum-tummed, tum-tummed, holding him in this strange world yet connecting him to Earth.
He knew something but he didn’t know. He glided to a half-awkward landing on the nest, a bed made of thick limbs and soft, yellow grasses, waist-high to a man and further across than a man was tall.
Suddenly Aku’s mate was on his back. Aku had a wild thought that he was under attack. He turned his head directly backward, but his mate’s head was too far away to peck. And she didn’t look mad. In fact, her eyes had a loo
k that seemed familiar—and he felt it! He was about to get … !
He writhed free, clawing.
What the hell are you doing? He hurled the words at Tsola.
Tsola cackled. Don’t give me that, just don’t. You knew it. You’re bigger—you’re the girl.
Damn it!
Actually, you know, it feels good.
Aku and her mate—Aku was the “her” now—bounced around the edges of their nest, trying to figure each other out.
Did Bola see that?
He can’t see you. Only I can.
Good. Don’t tell me sex is a learning experience.
Suit yourself.
Aku’s mate sailed away. Aku didn’t think he was mad.
Why don’t you take a nap? said Tsola.
Aku, She Eagle, nestled comfortably on two black eggs. She was content. Grandmother Sun was hot for a spring day, and the rock walls squared around the nest radiated warmth. She wanted to nod off.
Oh, Grandson, said Tsola, you think this is being a mother?
Aku didn’t answer.
He Eagle let out a little yawp, caught Aku’s eye, and pointed down with his beak. A red fox slinked along the hillside, hunting. Its handsome coat was silky, its belly white, the tips of its ears black. Aku liked the nimble way it moved.
Her heart beat a little faster. A fox was a lot of meat, and this time of year, when trees were budding but not leafed out, one fox probably meant two.
She admired the elegance of the fox’s strut for a moment, a fellow hunter.
She looked around the nest and saw no threats to her eggs. The two eagles stayed close to the nest while the eaglets were growing inside their shells, but for a prize like this … Once they hatched, mother or father would sit on the nest all the time.
Caution or daring? said Tsola.
Aku looked down. The fox was poised, paw in the air, searching for something. Aku made eye contact with her mate. He swooped off to the side, away from the nest. Yes, the fox was worth a little risk.