It’s not far across the lake at that point. He got a good view. He watched the whole time. He must like our looks. We liked his looks, too. We liked his big hat. His shirt is red. Except for our collections of feathers and flowers, we don’t have any red.
Tom is the best at everything. Of course, since he’s the oldest. He dances now. Just look at Tom’s fast footwork and how he can leap. The man stares. He even looks at us through things Tom says are binoculars. And he has another thing. Tom says that’s a camera and he’s taking our picture. We’ve seen pictures in our books. He’ll have us on paper to take home to his house.
Where the river comes down to the lake, you have to cross on the stepping-stones to get to our side. It looks as if that man is coming over. There’s a couple of wobbly stones we set up on purpose. We didn’t want Mother crossing without us knowing it.
Those flat stones look as if they’re there to be stepped on, but they’re really there to trip you up. So down he goes right in the middle of the stream, backpack and all. I’m not happy about him getting his paper wet. How much paper is there in the world? I’ll ask Tom. Or maybe I’ll ask this man.
We save our laughing for later. We only caw a little bit.
He sloshes out.
He knows that was on purpose—that those two middle rocks were set there so as to teeter.
He takes off his big black hat and empties out the water, puts it back on. Then he sits on the bank and examines his ankle.
We crowd around and look, too. His ankle is already starting to swell and turn black. Others of us skip back and forth across the stream. We don’t avoid the center stones, we just go really fast over them.
He has tape just for this. He wraps up his ankle, twisting the tape here and there. He’s better at it than Tom ever was with our sprained ankles. Here’s another lesson for all of us.
What if we bring this man to our little homemade huts or our cave? We could hide him from Mother and have him to ourselves. Or what if we bring him home to Mother?
When he gets up, we get up, too. He limps. He follows our path from the stepping stones. If we don’t watch out he’ll be right at Mother’s in ten minutes. Well, at this rate, twenty.
Tom says, “Lean on me,” but he won’t. Tom says he’s angry. Tom says, “If we had fathers, that’s who he’d be limping off to see. He wants us punished.”
We do wonder about fathers. Why don’t we have them? Even Tom doesn’t know, and Mother won’t talk about it.
We can let him limp along the path to home, or sidetrack him to our cave. Tom says, “Let him go on home. We’ll get to see what Mother does.”
Pretty soon our regular houses come into view. They’re good houses, not only thatched roofs, but thatched sides, too. Maybe we shouldn’t call it thatch. It’s made of tule rushes. Mother’s house is made of stone and is much bigger. Tom says she made it by herself. He remembers thinking he was helping, though now he doesn’t think he could have helped much. He was only three or four.
At our clearing, the man stops and looks.
Chickens in the yard have already cackled a warning that a stranger is coming—or a fox. We know Mother’s hiding behind the door of her house looking out the little peephole. I’ll bet she has the bar down.
The man keeps standing at the edge of our clearing, just looking.
Usually we hear the clanking of her loom, but lately she’s been making moccasins. The simple life seems awfully complicated to Tom. The rest of us don’t know any other way, though we try to guess. Tom says you don’t even have to build a fire or light the lamps. He says clothes and shoes are just there, and he’s told us all about electricity.
“Mother!” That’s Tom. He goes to the door. “Don’t worry. He’s hurt.”
“Tell him to go away.”
“We want him.”
“He’s not the right sort.”
“Come and see for yourself.”
“I can tell from here.”
“Please come. He can hardly walk. He has paper and pencil.”
“We don’t need it.”
How can she say that? It’s what I want the most.
“And he has a camera.”
We hear the bar fall away and the door opens. Out she comes.
She’s pretty much covered up, big baggy shirt. She’s the only one we know with breasts, though I seem to be getting something like that now. I hide it from the others. I wish she’d give me a shirt like the one she’s wearing. If I get any lumpier, I’ll need that. It’s a wonder I even know about them, but we do have books with pictures. Mother gave me a talk. It sounded silly. I don’t know whether to believe her or not.
Usually Mother dresses so you can tell more about her body. Now she’s different. And her hair is pulled back tight like it never is. She looks angry and worried. We just can’t keep track of all the things we’re not supposed to do. As we think up new things, new ones keep turning out to be bad. It even surprises us older ones. But now we do know. We never should have let the man come this far. Mother knows to blame Tom and me.
Tom and I are getting sick of not knowing more things about more places. It’s a good thing Tom once was someplace else or we wouldn’t even know there was another place. He came up here with Mother before any of us were born. He says Mother was looking for the simple life. He says that’s what we’re doing now.
He remembers lots of things from before. He had a father who left and Mother went around punching things when she wasn’t lying on the couch. Finally she came up here with Tom. She said she didn’t like the world the way it is and she was going to live a different way. But Tom doesn’t know where the rest of us come from. He doesn’t remember me coming. Suddenly I was here.
The man must like Mother. He looks relieved. As if everything is all right now.
When Mother steps out, Wren, right away, grabs Mother’s skirt and Loon hides behind her. Mother couldn’t save us from anything. Only Tom could do that. You’d think they’d know by now.
Mother looks horrified. “You can’t stay here. Tom, take the camera.”
“I’ve sprained my ankle—maybe broken it,” says the man. “I need to impose on you. I don’t think I’ll be able to climb down for a while.”
“You can’t stay!”
Tom says, “We’ll keep him with us. You’ll hardly know he’s here.”
“He can’t stay. You know that as well as I do. Think, for heaven’s sake!”
The rest of us say, “Why?” but Tom says, “All right, all right. We’ll send him on his way.”
We didn’t know Tom would be so cruel, nor Mother either.
The man looks upset. He hands Tom the camera. He says, “It got wet.”
Tom gives it to Mother. Mother opens it and pulls out the insides.
The man says, “I can’t climb down now.”
Mother says, “You have to.”
“Can I at least stay the night?”
“That’s impossible.”
We all say (except Tom), “Why not?”
But right away the man turns and starts hobbling down the trail.
Tom goes to help him and this time the man lets him. Tom is exactly as tall as the man.
A little ways down we turn off the path. Tom tells the man, “Only a little farther now.” Then, to the younger ones, “If anybody says anything to Mother, I’ll take your gold.”
I know what’s happening. It’s off to our cave, sitting around the campfire, and crawdads for supper. Maybe even frog’s legs. Nothing better. Nothing more fun.
Our cave has thick beds of ferns. Much better than our beds at home. And we have really soft rabbitskin blankets we made ourselves. Tom and I sewed them up. We chipped out little pockets in the walls so we could have feathers and flowers all over. But it’s shallow. When it rains the rain blows all the way in, but when it’s clear, if you lie with your head toward the entrance, you can see the stars as you go to sleep. Sometimes the moon’s so bright it wakes you up when it pops up over the mountain.
There’s a sort of porch in front where we made a fireplace and put logs around it to sit on. That porch has a good view over the whole valley.
I say, “Isn’t this nice?” The man is impressed.
We build a little fire and send everybody out to catch things or dig things up. They’re so excited to be doing it for the man. On the way back they pick big stalks—taller than they are—of fireweed in bloom just for looks.
He can’t stop saying, Thank you, and keeps asking what can he do for us. We say, Don’t worry, we’ll think of things. He asks our names. His is Hazlet, but people call him Haze. He asks our ages but we’re not sure. Asks where our fathers are. We say we don’t have any.
“One mother for all these little ones?”
We don’t know. Sometimes little ones just appear—in the chicken coop. Mother takes them in.
We talk about paper. He’ll set his out to dry tomorrow. We’ll help. He’s going to draw us all as presents to each of us. And he’ll give us all the leftover paper when he leaves.
Tom and I stay out all night with the man but we make the little ones go home.
Haze asks a lot of questions. Some are the same ones we ask ourselves, like, “Where’s our father? How long have we lived up here? Why are we here in the middle of nowhere?”
(We think it’s as much a place as anyplace else.)
We tell him Mother doesn’t want us to get to be like other people.
He thinks that can’t be the only reason, though he sees her point. He says we’re turning out a lot better than some.
We like him. We say, “Stay. We need another grown-up. The only one we know is Mother.”
He says both I and Tom are not far off from being grown.
Of course he has to stay until his ankle gets better, but we want him after.
Next day first thing he spreads the paper out to dry with a rock on each one. We help. It hurts him to walk, so he mostly crawls. Then he picks good pieces of charcoal out of the fireplace. He’ll show us how to use them for drawing.
The little ones come rushing down. Some wanted to come so badly they didn’t even have their breakfast.
As soon as the paper dries, Haze draws. He draws me and Tom first, and then Henny and Drake. Then the little ones sitting in a row on the logs on the stone porch. Sometimes he draws with the charcoal he picked out of the fireplace. “They’ll smear,” he says. “Be careful.”
We hang the drawings at the back of the cave, high so the little ones won’t mess them up. Me he draws again in pencil and rolls it up and puts it in his pack.
We want to show them to Mother, we wonder if she’s seen anything like it, but we don’t dare. It might be one of those things we’re not supposed to do. Besides, the man is supposed to be gone by now.
Haze shows us how to use the binoculars. We look around at everything. To the side we see those three men…or, rather, their little tents—up along the silver river. We’re good at taking turns. When we’re not looking, we draw. He gives us lessons. I’m good at it already. I thought I would be.
We have lots of days of drawing and looking while Haze gets better. He even shows us how to make paper out of weeds. Lumpy, but better than nothing.
Tom makes a good strong staff for Haze. Haze says that’ll be good even when his ankle is better. The rest of the time we gather cattail roots and lily roots and Solomon’s seal along with the frog’s legs and crawdads.
Then one time when Haze is much better he says, “I always wanted to go up to your glacier. Have you ever gone that high?”
We haven’t, but we’ve thought about it. “We see lights up there sometimes.”
“Good, we’ll go. You and Tom. The little ones can spend the day with your mother.”
“They won’t unless we threaten to take away their gold.”
“Gold?”
But we’re not thinking gold, we’re thinking how we’ll be getting out of here, farther than we ever have. We’re so happy we put out our traps and catch rabbits. Mother doesn’t need to know about it. We stretch the skin for ourselves and dry the meat for our trip.
Tom and I skip morning lessons all the time now and stay down with Haze. We’re learning more from him in just a few weeks than we ever did from Mother. He shows us all about maps on his maps. We pick out what looks like the best route up to the glacier. He shows us all about his compass. He thinks it odd that we never saw a flashlight till now. He’s got two, one you fit on your head and another you hold.
We start out while it’s still dark. Haze wears the flashlight on his head and goes first. He gives the other to me and I go last. Tom and I each carry a little rabbitskin blanket. Haze has a bag for sleeping. He has the cane Tom made him and his maps. His backpack is full. He even brought paper in case he wants to draw. He has this waterproof stuff that he wrapped his food in before. Now he wraps the paper in it. He feels about paper as we do. We’d rather have paper than gold. He says he would, too.
We top our pass and dip into the next valley at sunrise, or what would have been sunrise if it hadn’t been for the mountain in the way. This mountain is much higher than the ones near us. That’s why you can see the glacier from our house.
Tom and I had hoped to find people in this valley, but there’s nobody. Still the path goes on. From here you get a really good view of the glacier. It’s been melting away. Haze gives us a lesson on glaciers. There’s a lot of debris at the sides. That’s called lateral moraine, at the end it’s called terminal. I already knew that, though I never saw it until now.
The glacier’s a lot bigger than we thought. Back home we can only see the top. We had no idea it had all this junk around it and came down so far into this other valley.
We spend the night right where we are, partway down the second pass, and by afternoon next day, we’re at the glacier and its river trickling out.
This valley has a lot fewer trees in it and those are all stunted. Haze points out odd stuff. To us everything is odd. He says, “Look at the peculiar shapes of those rocks. They look like a whole row of skyscrapers.”
They sure seem like they’re scraping the sky, but we know the sky is way, way, way up, all the way to the stars.
We climb the sideways debris to get a good look around. Then Haze sees what he thinks might be the mouth of a cave.
He tells us to stay back, but we don’t want to. “Why come all this way and not see everything?”
“All right, but stay behind me.”
It’s not a cave but a doorway of some sort into a big, long, long bluish white house, hugging up close to the glacier. Until you get close, it just looks like more glacier.
At the door, Haze doesn’t even knock. He just opens it in a careful sneaky way.
Mother never likes that. She wants us to know how to be courteous. Tom and I look at each other. Haze doesn’t know how to be polite.
Haze opens the door all the way and we go in. Tom and I don’t want to be sneaky, but we don’t know what else to do except go with him.
It’s warm in there. We were getting cold. We had wrapped our rabbitskin blankets around us. Haze is wearing his jacket filled with little feathers. He showed us. “Down is the warmest there is,” he said, “but you know that already.” Only we didn’t. He wanted me to trade my rabbit skins with his jacket so I’d be warm as we crossed the high places but I said maybe later, and we should all have a turn with it.
Through that door, we aren’t anywhere at all, but there’s another door. We open that one and it’s even warmer. It’s large and dim. At first we don’t know what the room is all about, then we see it’s a whole room full of eggs. Really big ones. There must be ten or fifteen. They’re nested in white stuff. Warm air blows over us and them. Tiny feathers are flying around. Not a lot, just here and there.
Haze keeps saying, “My God. My God.”
We’re not as surprised as he is—after all, we gather chicken’s eggs every day, just not such big ones. And there’s feathers in our henhouse, too, but these are all the ones
Haze calls “down.” They’re like what’s on my head, but mine are black. Tom told me that when I first came, mine started out yellow.
Then we’re even more surprised. Haze takes off his jacket, grabs the closest egg, wraps it in the jacket, and we hurry out. It’s so big it’ll be a meal for more than just us three. But we have plenty of food with us. Besides, no pan to cook it in.
It’s not like our usual eggs. It has a leathery shell.
Haze holds the egg close to his chest to keep it warm. We go back to the edge of the valley.
Tom says, “Are you going to hatch it?”
“Well, I’m not going to eat it. Did you think I would?”
We like Haze. We didn’t think he would but we weren’t sure.
It’s getting dark. It’s too late to start home now. We build a little fire and eat our dried rabbit. Haze keeps the egg in his lap and takes out paper and sketches the big room full of eggs from memory. He also marks on the map where the cave is. Tom and I curl up by the fire. I fall asleep right away but then I hear Haze ask, “Does your mother know about all this?”
That’s what I was wondering. I think she does. But I won’t say. Tom says, “Maybe.”
And I know…I think I know what’s in this egg. My little brother or little sister, I suppose.
Haze says, “It’s a smart way to get a lot of them…of you…in a hurry.” Then: “Maybe only takes one mother for the lot.”
Just when I’m falling back to sleep he says, “Not clones either. Easy to see that.”
The egg hatches next day when we’re on the way home. The cutest little thing I ever saw. All golden. It’s cute even before it dries off. It’s one of the scaly ones with a feathered cap like I have, though I don’t have many scales. Just in a few spots. It’s a little on the duck-like side. Much more than me. We don’t know yet if it’s a boy or girl. Mother can tell right away.
Since I’m a girl I think I ought to get to carry it, but Haze thinks it’s safer if he does.
Firebirds Rising Page 25