From her perch in the knotted cypress, just beside the larger bayou, she called to her only remaining friend, the alligator.
“Brother,” she said, “it’s time.”
From the murky waters of the bayou, he floated to the surface and blinked his yellow eyes, eyes that looked like the sun. He turned his gaze to her with a solemn stare. “Sister,” he said, “you must be certain.”
“Of course I’m certain,” she retorted. She had talked many times of her plan to lure Night Song back to her. She had dreamed dreams of the two of them climbing into the branches of trees, exploring the underwater caves, dining on crawdads and catfish, basking in the sunlight that warmed the soggy forest floor in patches. She had dreamed this dream so many times, she could taste it. As if to prove the point, she flicked her long tongue along her bottom jaw.
“The consequences are dire,” the Alligator King reminded her.
“Sssssstttt!” she hissed. “I know what the consequences are.” Of course she did. She knew that if Night Song returned to her serpent shape, she would never be able to don her human skin again. It was a rule that suited Grandmother Moccasin just fine.
“Does Night Song know this?” asked the alligator.
Grandmother did not answer the question. The only thing that mattered was having her daughter beside her again. That was all.
The Alligator King looked at her, but she turned away. He spoke once more. “You must tell her before she makes the choice.”
“Enough,” said Grandmother. “I’ll tell her when the time is right.” And with that, she slithered down the cypress tree and began to make her way toward the other side of the forest.
But as she slid away, she heard the alligator call to her.
“Promise you’ll tell her before she makes the choice.” Then he closed his eyes and sank to the muddy bottom.
“I promise,” she whispered. But no one, not even the trees, believed her.
57
HOW CAN A cat keep a promise when he is hungry? The good news is that cats are built for the hunt. Their strong back legs are made for springing. Their sharp claws are designed for hooking. And their pointed teeth are perfect for the bite. And now that he was done with the hiccups, he could do a considerable amount of sneaking up. With all this gear and talent on paw, it seemed as though Puck would have no trouble tracking down some breakfast.
He had, after all, watched Sabine prey upon the lizards and mice that his mother had brought home for them.
Hadn’t he?
He set out.
For the rest of the morning, he sniffed for mice, skinks, anything that moved. But after several hours, the only thing he had managed to drum up was a pair of crickets that jumped right in front of him, surprising the living daylights out of him, but also turning into a crunchy albeit not very satisfying snack.
The truth of the matter was this: In those practice sessions under the tilting house, he had to admit, Sabine had done much of the serious work of trapping, leaving the remains for Puck. Of the two, Puck could see that his sister was the better hunter. How could he know that in the world of cats, it’s often the female who leads the hunt? Sabine was only being true to her forebears, those lionesses, those tigresses, those female ocelots.
Sabine. Thinking about his sister brought a different kind of ache. Before all of this, he had never been more than a few feet away from his twin. The pang grew more taut, as though a string were being pulled from the top of his head to the tip of his tail. They say that the knot between twins is tighter than any other. That twins are so closely bound they can see each other’s thoughts, their hearts beat at exactly the same time, not even a second’s difference. And once apart, twins come unraveled. Besides being hungry and itchy, Puck felt unraveled.
Missing rolled over him like a thick cloud. Missing Sabine. Missing his mother. Missing Ranger. The pang grew and grew.
He stepped into a patch of sunlight and lay down. In the warm afternoon sun that soaked into his itchy skin, he thought hard about those times his mother had brought home the small gifts that now seemed so large. He traced in his mind how to lay low, he thought of Sabine crouching behind the old fish traps, waiting for an unsuspecting target to run by, then leaping out at just the right moment. He replayed these actions over and over.
He lay in the light, remembering, when suddenly he noticed that the sun had slipped away. He felt a cool shadow drift over him. A chill ran through him. Then he noticed how quiet it had suddenly become, as if the forest around him was holding its breath.
He looked on the ground to see if he could tell where the sun had moved. He walked toward another patch of goldy light, but as soon as he got there, it also went away. Was the sun playing a trick on him? Was it angry about the hissing? He looked for another patch and when he saw the light, he bunched up his back legs and . . . jumped!
Jumped just in time to avoid being grabbed by an enormous bird! Yikes! Puck ran, ran fast, ran as hard as he could to the safety of his den. You’ll be safe in the Underneath. The bird swooped after him; Puck could feel the air behind him being stirred up by its enormous wings. He slipped into his lair, but he turned around just in time to see the giant bird peering in at him, its eyes gleaming.
Puck took a deep breath and . . . let out his most piercing scream. YEEEOOWWWW!!! To his surprise, it worked. The bird flew away.
There are many birds of prey in the piney woods—the owls, the peregrines, the red-tailed hawks, and even the tall-legged waterbirds, the great blue herons and sandhill cranes. Puck could not identify this one.
All he knew was that it was large. He tucked himself against the farthest side of his den, back, back, back, as far from the opening as he could get. There he hunkered for a long, long time, wound into a tight ball, and panted. How did he know that the bird wasn’t waiting for him, just as Sabine had waited for the lizard behind the fish traps? It could still be out there. Waiting. The thought of it made Puck tremble. His sides heaved in and out.
But after a while, his body grew tired of being so tightly wound. His legs began to ache from the tension. His ribs felt sore and his mouth was dry from his quick pants. And once again, his stomach, still empty despite the earlier crickets, rumbled. He could not cower in the dark forever. He stood up and tried to shake off the nerves. He had to go out sooner or later or he would expire in this small, dark space. Slowly he stretched his achy limbs and crept toward the opening. Once there, he poked his head out and cautiously looked all around, to both sides and overhead. Day was coming to a close, and the woods were filled with shadows. Still there was no sign of the bird. He stepped out, his whiskers on high alert. He sniffed the air.
He did not smell bird.
He did smell mouse.
There, right in front of him, just outside his door, was a freshly killed mouse. Evidently when Puck let loose his high-pitched scream, the bird had startled and dropped the mouse.
Even though Puck knew the mouse was already dead, he decided to kill it again, just to make sure. He thought about what Sabine might do. So he fluffed up his fur as much as he could what with all that cakey mud, arched his back to its full kitten height, and pounced on the lifeless body with all four paws. He batted it from side to side and tossed it into the air. He hooked it with his deadly claws and chomped down on it with his sharp teeth. At last, satisfied that he had killed it completely and thoroughly, he took the tail between his jaws and dragged it into his lair and ate and ate and ate. No mouse had ever been more tasty. He ate every little morsel, including the fur and bones, until all that was left was the very tip of the tail. He belched and then he ate that, too. While he ate, he thought about his sister, the hunter. What was she eating this night? Would she take the place of their mother and leave the safety of the Underneath to hunt for herself and Ranger? Puck licked his chops. It was a very fine mouse. He hoped that Sabine was eating a meal as filling as this too. Sabine. He wished he could have shared this mouse with his one and only sister. He would have gladly given h
er the larger portion. Gladly. Finally, his belly full, he curled into a ball and fell fast asleep.
• • •
From a branch in a nearby winged elm tree, a solitary bird watched, its dark eyes aglow in the encroaching dusk. Then it spread its coppery wings and flew away.
58
GO BACK A thousand years, go back. In the village along the creek, time passed quickly for Hawk Man and Night Song. Hawk Man, with his ability to listen, had become one of the elders, a man who grew in wisdom, a man who knew the ways of the forest and the seasons, a man who could tell when a storm was approaching or when the buffalo were migrating. The people of the village turned to him for advice and friendship.
He was not one of them, but they loved him nonetheless. Night Song became known for her beautiful pottery as well as her mysterious, wordless songs. The children especially loved to hear her sing as they drifted off to sleep.
Together, Hawk Man and Night Song watched their little daughter grow. In the years since her birth, she had shot up straight like her father, and handsome like her mother. In almost every respect, she was exactly like the other children in the village. Except for one thing.
If the sun shone at just the right angle when it fell upon her skin, she appeared to glimmer.
As the girl’s tenth birthday approached, Night Song decided to make her a special jar, a jar of her own. “Our daughter is becoming a young woman,” she told her husband, “and a young woman needs a jar of her own.” It would be fine large jar. A jar for gathering berries and nuts and crawdads, a jar for storing corn and water. It would be a worthy jar for a worthy daughter.
The next day Night Song walked to the edge of the creek and gathered the thick red clay into a basket. Then she rolled the clay into long coils with the palms of her hands and wrapped the coils around and around onto themselves until they formed a shape. Next, she dipped her fingers into water and rubbed the coils together until the surface was smooth, both inside and out. When she was satisfied with its smoothness, she pressed her thumbnail into the surface near the rim. She smiled. The print was a perfect crescent moon. A new moon. She thought of her daughter and smiled. A new moon. A new year. She rubbed her finger over the tiny moon. Then, with her thumbnail, she pressed more and more small crescent moons in a swirling pattern all around the upper part of the jar until there were exactly one hundred. A hundred crescent moons. When she was done, she set the jar on a flat rock and let it dry in the sun.
As the sun began to set, “Time to fire it,” she told Hawk Man, and together they gathered the wood for the pit, struck the flint that started the flame, then waited for the fire to grow hot-hothot. They lowered the raw jar into the pit and waited. Waited for the fire to do its work, to seal the clay so that it would be impenetrable from either side, in or out.
The fire burned and burned and the pot slowly hardened. Hours passed until at last the flames ebbed, glimmered, and died away. When it was cool enough, Night Song lifted the jar out of the pit, turned it around and around in her hands. It was large and heavy. She felt its weight as she lifted it onto her shoulder and leaned her ear against the smooth surface. Then she set it on the ground in front of her, and with a mussel shell, she began to etch a design around the large bottom, beneath the crescent moons.
She closed her eyes and let her hands lead the work, turning the jar as the shell dug into the side. Hours passed. Her hands worked.
To Night Song, who had spent most of her life without fingers or hands, they were still a mystery to her, as if they had a knowledge all their own. Her eyes still closed, she smiled. Those hands worked and worked. More time passed, until at last her arms ached from balancing such a large vessel. Her fingers cramped from pressing the shell into the hard surface.
When at last she opened her eyes, she was stunned. The carved lines curled around the pot, ducking in and out of one another, and wrapped themselves into a body.
“Mother!” Night Song cried. She fell backward at the sight, landing hard on the ground behind her. The etching on the jar was unmistakable, the long curving body of a snake, the perfect diamonds of the scales moving with the contours of the jar. The etched snake swam beneath the hundred crescent moons.
“It’s beautiful,” proclaimed Hawk Man, and it was.
Night Song, still surprised by the drawing, stammered, “Yes.” She caught her breath. “Yes,” she repeated. She looked again at the graceful figure of her mother. “She is.” A glint of longing flickered behind her eyes. The appearance on the jar sparked a small yearning to see her ancient mother, the one who had cared for her when she was smaller than her own daughter. She shook her head. Where was Grandmother, she wondered? She smiled at the thought of her. Then, still smiling, she returned to the jar.
To finish the gift, Night Song made a lid, a tight-fitting lid, one that sat snug in the rim. Good for keeping things out. Good for keeping things in. Hawk Man held the jar while Night Song added the finishing touches.
How could they know that even at that moment, while they admired the jar, a jar made by a mother for her daughter on her tenth birthday, just at that very moment, a thousand years ago, Grandmother was on the move?
59
OF ALL THE denizens of the piney woods, a kitten falls into the realm of “smaller animal species.” In the days that followed Puck’s encounter with the bird, he also came nose-to-nose with a large raccoon, as well as a very smelly and noisy peccary. In both cases, he was able to surprise these creatures with his loud and threatening screeches.
YEEEOOOWWWW!!! The sound of it split the air. Both the raccoon and the peccary turned around and hightailed it. If they had looked over their shoulders, they would have seen Puck running too, in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, the little cat realized that besides his claws and teeth and springy legs, high-pitched screaming could be a useful weapon.
It didn’t take long before Puck learned to use all his tools. In the area near his den, he soon discovered the best places for trapping mice and lizards. Once he even found a mole, sticking its head above the earth just as Puck happened by. And eventually he garnered the courage to walk down the bank beside the creek and lap up the clear water. It was salty, but he drank it. And after he finished, he sat beside the water and watched it rumble by. He was done with being hungry and thirsty.
Now what he had to do was get across that creek. Ranger and Sabine were on the other side. He was sure of it. From above it, at the top of the bank, it didn’t look so wide, as if maybe if he took a running leap he might be able to jump over it. But here at the edge, where his toes touched the cool water, where the temperature was lower and the ground was softer, when he looked across it, the other side might as well have been another continent and the creek itself the ocean.
He stared at the other bank. And as he did, he saw a flash of light, like a small rainbow, hovering at the edge. The hummingbird!
He blinked and she was gone.
60
ALL OF US have favorites. The sky has favorite comets. The wind has favorite canyons. The rain has favorite roofs. And the trees? Because they live such long lives, their favorites change from time to time. But if you could ask a longleaf pine or a mulberry or a weeping willow, they will tell you that a thousand years ago, it was Night Song they adored. Yes, Night Song and her beautiful lullaby. They loved her from the moment she arrived.
As she stood next to the fire pit, Night Song looked hard at the jar she had made. She had thought of Grandmother many times, and whenever she did, she also thought of the long hours they spent floating on the backs of the alligators, hunting the crawdads in their underwater caves, twisting their long bodies around the tallest branches of the trees. Night Song looked up. She cupped her hand over her eyes to shield them from the bright sun that slipped between their leaves. For a brief moment, she thought the branches were waving to her. Now longing, sharp and keen, pierced through her human skin like a knife, and she caught her breath.
All these years, she had missed Grandmother.
But she had turned her back on the missing, had refused to consider it. The missing was too big to carry around. But now, here on the surface of the beautiful jar, the perfect likeness of Grandmother shone, a reminder that there was someone else besides her husband and daughter who loved her.
• • •
A thousand years later, a small cat sits beside this same creek and misses his drownt mother. He misses his silvery twin. He misses his winsome hound. Yes, missing is all around.
61
BENEATH THE TILTED house, Ranger stirred. It was dark out, and all he could hear was the chirping of crickets and the quiet rise and fall of Sabine’s small purrs as she slept. He licked the top of her head with his big, slurpy tongue. He watched her as she stretched and rolled over. Then she kept right on sleeping.
Ranger got up and crept out into the filthy yard, littered with years of broken bottles, and also the old bones of the beasts that Gar Face had shot with his rifle and skinned on the porch. Ranger had cleaned his share of these bones himself. He licked his jaws. It had been a long time since Ranger had gone on the hunt, had feasted on fresh meat, had shared a fresh possum or a raccoon or a swamp hare with Gar Face. He had been the best dog in the forest, and Gar Face knew it, a dog descended from generations of prized hounds, hounds raised right on the silver Sabine, the wide and silver river to the east of this forest. Ranger had served his master well, had scouted out the beavers and the deer and the raccoons. Once he had even cornered a rare black bear, possibly the only one left in this dark forest. Gar Face had rewarded the dog with steak carved from that very bear.