****
Ed woke to the smell of soup and a soft kiss on his lips. Opening his eyes he was surprised and greatly relieved to find Mary instead of Running Bear at his side, and Jack sitting near her holding a cup of steaming soup. Morning sunlight shone through the fabric of the tent and Running Bear was nowhere in sight. Somehow they had survived the night!
"The good news is: you did it!" said Jack.
"I knew that you could!" said Mary. "I'm so proud of you!"
"The bad news is, the Ice Giants are real, and are waking up and hungry," said Ed. "But Turtle Man must be overjoyed that I can at last hear both turtle and Stone-Coat thoughts!" Ed said, grinning. "I suppose that Mouse told him already but I want to tell him about it in person myself."
The faces of Ed's visitors suddenly turned glum. "There is some really bad news, Ed. Turtle Man is dead."
"What?" Ed felt as though the breath had been physically knocked out of him.
"He died late last night very shortly after Mouse told him about your success," Mary explained. "Talking Owl thinks that he was hanging on to life in order to hear that piece of good news. She says that he died contented."
"Contented? Crap!" said Ed. "I should have waited until morning to tell anyone!"
"He was a hundred and fifteen years old, Ed," said Jack. "You helped him die happy. You can't do much better than dying happy at a hundred-fifteen."
"I suppose not," conceded Ed. "Who would want to live forever anyway?"
"The Tribe is of course in shock, especially Talking Owl."
"Mouse wants you and Running Bear to report back to the Lodge in person for the funeral and for Tribe leadership meetings that will follow," said Jack, as he handed Ed his cup of soup. "We don't know what the political fallout will be, but it might be messy."
"Messy political fallout?" Ed responded. "The damn Stone-Coats are real and they are hungry and they are waking up! Isn't that messy enough?"
"Rumor has it that Singing Moon wants to become the new Religious Chief," said Jack. "Drink your soup."
"Singing Moon?" said Ed. "That's absurd! She doesn't believe in Stone-Coats and she isn't even psychic! Worst of all she's a nasty piece of work personality-wise. Her daughter was Turtle Man's apprentice and should become Chief!"
"But Talking Owl hasn't talked to turtles," said Jack. "Singing Moon argues that since she hasn't, her daughter is no more qualified for the job than she is. Actually in theory you are now the only highly qualified Tribe member available."
Ed almost choked on his soup. "What?"
"Technically you are a member of the Turtle Clan and you are the only person alive to have talked with turtles and Stone-Coats," said Jack. "You should be a shoe-in for the title of Turtle Man and the job of Religious Chief."
"That's totally crazy!" Ed objected.
Jack shrugged. "It is what it is! But first things first: you and Running Bear need to report to the Great Lodge. Mary and I will keep an eye out here at the campsite while you are gone."
"Mary staying here?" objected Ed. "No way! What if the big stone beaver fully wakes up? I won't have it!"
"You aren't chief yet, Mr. Raccoon," said Mary. "I'm staying right here with Jack until you get back. I'll be fine; after all, I can run faster than Jack."
Ed and Jack both gave her a blank look in response.
"You both surely know that old joke about only having to run faster than the other guy when a bear attacks," she explained. "I'm quick as a squirrel but Jack is an old fart and slow as a turtle. Finish your soup, Ed, and get going."
"Swell," said Jack.
They carefully studied Hairless Bear and Running Bear took more photos before they set off for the Lodge. They satisfied themselves that Hairless hadn't moved since yesterday, but to Ed he looked slightly taller.
"Yes, his entire neck and shoulders are exposed today," said Running Bear. "Perhaps he is not getting taller but instead the woodpile is getting shorter. Or maybe both."
"Of course! He absorbs the wood!" said Ed. "Nevertheless we better get to the Turtle Man Lodge and then come back here pronto."
Ed and John half walked, half jogged to the Great Lodge of Turtle Man. Despite temperatures well below freezing, they found the amphitheater packed full of mournful Tribe members that stepped aside to allow the two newcomers to pass. Most were chanting or wailing as they shuffled their feet to help stay warm and/or commemorate Turtle Man. Many of the mourners were telepathic, but Ed could not distinguish many words or clear thoughts; it was as if the pain of the mourners was beyond the reach of mere language.
The Tribe Elders were all crowded into the Elder's Great Dome, close to a hundred of them, all facing towards the back of the Dome where the body of Turtle Man lay. Ed and John weaved their way through the other mourners, arriving at last at the bed of Turtle Man. The remaining Tribe leaders formed an inner circle around the bed, including the tearful Talking Owl. Even the always scowling Singing Moon participated.
The body itself evidently lay out of sight on the bed below a growing covering of parting gifts from the Tribe, including colorful robes, necklaces, and scarves. Ed was actually greatly relieved not to see a body; he hated funerals and in particular dead bodies at funerals. John Running Bear reached inside his coat and pulled out a huge hunting knife, which he reverently placed atop the pile of gifts.
Ed was aware of eyes turning towards him as he suddenly realized that he was expected to also provide a gift! What? He had nothing of value! Finally he fumbled with his wallet and produced a highly valued photo of himself and Mary, which he placed next to John Running Bear's knife. In case that wasn't enough he added his social security card, which was all worn out and he hadn't used in decades anyway.
Mouse mumbled something unintelligible amid the seething din of voices and thoughts that filled the Dome, and as one the two dozen people surrounding the bed reached down and lifted the entire bed shoulder high: frame, body, and gifts. Then as they wordlessly chanted, they slowly carried it away, around the glowing eternal flame and out the front door. The amphitheater crowd greatly increased the volume of their chanting and wailing. Ed had one hand on the bedframe, and struggled mightily to contribute to the carrying of it, and to avoid tripping his fellow bed-bearers. At one particularly icy spot he slipped and would have fallen, but was immediately supported by the immense strength of John Running Bear, who steadily walked beside him, along with hundreds of others.
Ed had no idea where the precession was going, but merely followed along with the others. At last at the far side of the amphitheater they sat the bed down upon a large woodpile and stepped back. Others added more and more wood around the bed, until it was surrounded and covered by a ten-foot high wood pile. A dozen flaming torches were abruptly thrown onto the woodpile by the chanting crowd, and it burst into bright flame.
In the woods around them a mournful chorus of howling grey wolves and coyotes erupted, and Ed thought that he heard bears growling deeply and raptors shrieking high above. He extended his thoughts and confirmed that dozens of the creatures were nearby, and echoing the distress broadcast by their human brethren; friends of the Tribe that shared their sorrows as well as they shared the forests and mountains.
Ed and the Elders stood silently and watched the flame grow to a great height as it engulfed the bed and Turtle Man. The burning wood was mostly small, dry branches and it burned away very fast and hot; in twenty minutes most of it crumbled away and was gone, along with the bed, the parting gifts, and Turtle Man. Coals glowed red then slowly faded to darkness. For too short a time the funeral fire warmed Turtle Man's people, then like the great man's life it was gone forever, consumed into smoke and ash.
"He joins our ancestors, as we will someday join him," pronounced Talking Bear, officially ending the gathering.
When all flame was gone most of the crowd quietly dispersed and Mouse led Ed, John, and a dozen Tribe Leaders and Elders back to the Dome of Elders. There Doc joined them. The Leaders and Elders sat on the rug
-covered floor in a circle near the Eternal Flame, and John, Ed, and Doc sat together behind them.
Mouse spoke first. "It is in such times as these that the Tribe needs to rally its true strength. We must pause in our mourning to address urgent matters. Before we discuss Tribe leadership I want us to hear and see what Raccoon and Running Bear have found. I gave everyone only brief verbal reports last night. Also we will get a report on the study of the artifact from Doc and White Cloud."
"I object," said Singing Moon. "Nothing is more important than Tribe leadership; that should be settled first."
The pronouncement stunned the others gathered in the Dome like a thunderclap. Here in the Great Dome where Turtle Man died only hours earlier, Singing Moon was back to her divisive politics already.
"Nothing is more important now than information about the awakening of the Stone-Coats," countered Mouse.
"We have heard that old story all of our lives," said Singing Moon, "but none of us has ever seen a living Stone-Coat, nor have our parents, or their parents before them. If they ever existed at all it has been hundreds of years since they lived."
"We have indeed for a long time been fortunate that they sleep," said Mouse.
"We have been ignorant for a long time," retorted Singing Moon. "Many of our children have been to the outside world, and seen wonders and wealth that our Tribe members deny for themselves. It is time to reject the myth of the Stone-Coats and fully open our Tribe to new ways and new things."
"We have in recent years brought many new things and ways to the Tribe, Daughter," replied Mouse patiently. "But we must also not forget our commitment to guard against the Stone-Coats. We must all be prepared to stop them when they wake!"
"They will never wake, Mother," replied Singing Moon. "Besides, if they were to wake we are no longer the ones to stop them, the white man with their weapons of war would be the ones to stop them. Why should our men be the ones to save a world that is no longer ours? The Stone-Coats are dead, and the old Tribe ways need to die also. Talking with animals using our minds is a thing of the past and no longer needed. With the passing of Turtle Man, now is the time to break from the past and start a new life." Several of the other elders shook their heads in agreement.
"Many young warriors of our Bear and Wolf clans doubtlessly agree with much of what you say, Singing Moon," said Chief Talking Bear. "Many of them have seen the wonders and comforts that the outside world has to offer. But the outside world also offers many evils and would take away our identity and purpose as stewards to this world. Many still believe in our ancient commitment to hide and guard against the Stone-Coats. But you raise the central issue. If there are no Stone-Coats, it may indeed be time that we take a different path."
Following their gasps of surprise, many Singing Moon supporters nodded in agreement, and several muttered their affirmation aloud. Ed could sense that Mouse was becoming very concerned. If Chief Mike Talking Bear sided with his wife Singing Moon, perhaps she would get everything she wanted. Until last night, the Tribe abandoning their Stone-Coat myth commitment was what Ed also wanted. But that was yesterday. Now he was convinced that Stone-Coat Ice Giants were real and were waking up.
Mouse shook her head sadly. "I did not realize that so many in the Tribe wish to abandon their heritage and abandon our commitment to contain the Stone-Coats." She shot an icy glance towards Chief Mike, who quickly looked away.
Ed felt sorry for Chief Mike. The poor bastard was probably regularly beat-up by both his wife and Mouse.
"There are no Stone-Coats, Mother!" said Singing Moon adamantly.
"You don't know that!" Taking Owl objected.
"Most of us do know it," Singing Moon claimed. Again there were nods and murmurs of agreement from several elders. "While you were listening to the ravings of an old man, others of us have been concerned with the real world. The Tribe's new generations reject the old myths."
"Ravings of an old man?" sputtered Mouse. The old woman was so angry that Ed thought she might club her daughter with her walking stick. "Ravings?"
John Running Bear cleared his throat, causing the Mohawk to turn their attentions to him. "Pardon this intrusion by a stranger, but I have a solution that everyone might agree to."
"You do, Mohican?" Singing Moon said icily. "You?"
"Singing Moon makes a lot of sense," continued Running Bear. "Agree to do what she wishes in the spring, if the Stone-Coats do not wake before then. That would be sensible."
"And if they do awaken?" asked Mouse, her voice steel-edged and strong. "What then?"
"Then the Tribe will continue its unselfish commitment to contain them and to bring new outside things to the Tribe only selectively," said the Mohican. "But as you yourself said, Singing Moon, even if the Stone-Coats once existed they haven't awoken in hundreds of years, or they have actually been dead for a very long time. What is the chance that they will wake during this particular winter?"
"None at all!" declared Singing Moon, grinning.
"Very well, I officially propose what the Mohican has said," said Mouse. "Further, if the Stone-Coats do not wake before spring I propose that Singing Moon herself be declared Religious Chief, as even without the ability to read thoughts she has been wise enough to see truth. In the meantime Talking Owl, the apprentice of Turtle Man, will temporarily perform Religious Chief duties under my advisement. She will become Religious Chief permanently if the Stone-Coats wake. How many here agree to all of this?"
All of the astonished Elders and Leaders raised their hands.
"The motion is carried!" declared Talking Bear, who looked very relieved, though a bit perplexed.
The grinning Singing Moon and three of her supporting elders stood and stepped away towards the Dome exit.
"Wait sisters!" said Mouse. "There are the reports on Bear Claw and Hairless Bear to hear now!"
"A waste of time," said Singing Moon, as she and her supporters continued to walk away. "We have no need for more delusions and lies. You in the Great Lodge can for a time continue to waste your days dreaming about Stone-Coats. Our people are no longer children, to be cowed by stories of monsters and led by dreamers and animal talkers. We of the Village will tend to the real Tribe needs such as food and firewood, for the winter will be long and cold. But then afterwards the spring will be all the warmer!"
"Very well Daughter," said Mouse. "We will somehow manage to continue on without you."
Chief mike exited the Dome with his wife and announced to the remaining crowd what had been decided. There were a few resulting cheers, but mostly there were incredulous looks. Singing Moon as Religious Chief? That seemed like an absurd contradiction!
"First let us hear from Raccoon and our very clever visiting Mohican," Mouse announced, when Chief Mike soon returned.
"Yes, Running Bear," said Chief Mike. "Let's see those photos of Hairless Bear."
"I have them here on a decent sized screen," said White Cloud, as he produced a twenty-two inch monitor connected to a small laptop. Those who remained repositioned themselves in a tight half-circle facing the screen.
White Cloud flipped through the pictures as Running Bear narrated. The very first photo, a zoom in on the Hairless Bear head from ground level, drew loud exclamations from the observers.
"For all of my long life including only a week ago I have seen only granite in the vague shape of a bear's head," said Mouse. "Now the granite has disappeared and nothing but the bare Stone-Coat head remains!"
The photos of the clawed hand also received much attention. "The fingers and hand were mere bulges in granite only two weeks ago when my braves renewed the woodpile!" said White Cloud. "How is this possible? And there should be more wood! We even covered most of the head with wood! Also there should be two feet of snow atop the woodpile and hairless bear!"
John passed around the piece of half-eaten wood and his partly eaten away glove, and explained that the wood pile has been gradually disappearing. "Wood that touches Hairless Bear is absorbed by him
. Perhaps the granite and snow has also been eaten away by him!"
The loudest exclamations occurred when the photo of the bear head with its red eye was shown. "The eye is alive!" one exclaimed. "It can't be a coincidence that Turtle Man died on the same night that this happened," said another in alarm.
"Weren't you scared?" Talking Owl asked the Mohican.
"Damn right I was scared when the eye lit up," admitted Running Bear.
"But he bravely took the pictures anyway," said Ed. "Meanwhile I was comfortably warm and ignorant inside the tent. Then later I heard turtle thoughts and what I believe were Stone-Coat thoughts, and it was my turn to be scared." He described his experience. "The bottom line is that the turtles say that the Stone-Coats are waking up and are hungry, and the Stone-Coats also themselves say that they are hungry. I can hear thousands of them chattering away."
"This is already far worse than last year!" exclaimed Chief Mike, "and we are only a few days into winter weather!"
"And it is still only October," complained Mouse. "Doc, is an ice age coming?"
"Technically the world has been in an ice age for the last two and a half million years," Doc replied. "It's called the Quaternary Ice Age. There has been a gradual decrease in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cooling for over thirty million years that probably helped lead to it. Within an ice age, the world climate fluctuates between glacial and interglacial periods which can last tens of thousands of years. The resulting hardships may have shaped the emergence of our own species.
"We are in a warm interglacial period now that started more than ten thousand years ago. That warm period is likely to continue and intensify at least another ten thousand years, due to our carbon fuel loving ways. Huge glaciers were receding from this area roughly ten thousand years ago. I don't think that it's a coincidence that your tribe first settled here then, when the last glaciers were receding from this area."
"And encountered and learned how to deal with Stone-Coats?" asked Ed.
Doc shrugged. "It's a hypothesis."
"Do you think that Stone-Coats came into being during our ice age?" Mouse asked.
"Probably not during the Quaternary," replied Doc. "That wouldn't have provided a long enough time span. But the occurrence of ice ages goes back billions of years, and some of them lasted for tens or even hundreds of millions of years. These creatures probably originated and evolved during a much longer ice age than the current one. The two greatest ice ages were more than two billion years ago and over six-hundred million years ago when most or all the entire surface of Earth may have been covered in ice, by ice sheets more than a mile thick. Some scientists call those ice ages the Snowball Earth events. There have been several additional long ice ages since then. I suspect that our sort of life evolved and flourished in the times between the ice age glacial periods, and the Stone-Coat sort of life thrived during the glacial periods. That resulted in two fundamentally different life forms for two very different environments."
"But how can rock live and evolve?" Ed asked. "Ever hear the expression 'dumb as a rock'?"
"The short answer to that question is that we don't know yet." admitted Doc. "But through analysis of the Bear Claw we are learning more. White Cloud?"
There were more gasps when White Cloud displayed view after view of the Bear Claw artifact under various lighting conditions. The Claw clearly matched the Hairless Bear claws of John's photos, but these amazing Bear Claw photos had been taken under better lighting conditions using higher resolution cameras.
"This is what's left of one of our cobalt steel drill bits that we used last night on a Bear Claw scale," White Cloud said. The photo was a close-up of a drill bit with a flattened tip. "That drill bit did nothing at all to the scale. We finally resorted to use of an expensive tungsten carbide drill bit that had embedded polycrystalline diamonds in its tip." A second broken drill bit was shown. The tip of this one was shattered and broken off. "This drill bit created a small scratch on the Hairless Bear scale that disappeared in a few minutes. The scale actually healed itself!"
"What are your bottom-line conclusions?" Talking Bear asked.
"The scales and the claw tip itself exhibit a hardness of level of ten on the standard Mohs scale of hardness and are clearly diamonds," said Doc. "Further, they quickly heal themselves when damaged, suggesting that they are alive in some sense."
"How could a scratched diamond heal itself?" Chief Mike asked.
"We don't know," Doc admitted. "But the healing suggests that the Claw is alive. The overall Claw structure is made up of crystals of various elements and combinations of elements. We don't yet know their functions but we see similar crystals throughout the Claw structure, indicating that the same sort of pattern is being followed throughout. To us that seems to be another suggestion of life."
"Such a pattern implies information," said White Cloud. "Information that must reside within all Stone-Coats and throughout each Stone-Coat."
"For our sort of life the information on how our bodies are structured is essentially encoded chemically in complex carbon-based molecules called genes," said Doc.
"How is it done for Stone-Coats?" Ed asked.
"We don't know yet," Doc admitted. "For our carbon-based life forms we have centuries of scientific research to aid our understanding; for these creatures we have only centuries of legends and one day of clumsy science."
"There appear to be dark-colored strands throughout the Claw that are suggestive of nerves or veins," said Doc. "Those could be another form of carbon called graphite, or they could even be organic material, but their composition and function is totally speculation at this point. Our research has only begun."
"You have discovered much in a very short time," noted Mouse.
"Only the tiny tip of a giant iceberg," said Doc. "As to how these stone creatures move and think and reproduce, we simply don't know."
"Yes, we clearly need to know much more," said Chief Mike. "How can we kill or otherwise stop them if we don't better understand how they are alive?"
"We could use a lot more science brainpower on this, that's for sure," said Doc.
Ed happened to know a scientist with enormous brainpower. Could he be contacted?
****