Trouble’s Turn
A Mystical Animal Allies Tale (Short Story)
By Ronda Del Boccio
Copyright © 2010 by Ronda Del Boccio
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Cover design by Ronda Del Boccio using a royalty free photo by Laura Musikanski found on Morguefile.com
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Trouble’s Turn
By Ronda Del Boccio
© 2010 by Ronda Del Boccio WriteOnPurpose.com
From our Den far above the earth, I sit in the Place of Watching and gaze through the hazy veil to observe our Two-legged charges, who call themselves the People. There is a special window that allows us to see them. All the Allies have their way of watching. We Wolves have our Den, the Hummingbird Nation has a huge Flower that I would love to see, and the Buffalo Nation watches through a pool of water in the plains where they live. I only know this from hearing the older ones talk about their travels, and I can hardly wait to have those adventures myself.
Supposedly, I am too young to start watching The People, but I don’t know how I’m going to learn how to help them if I know nothing about them. That’s one of those things the adults never explain to my satisfaction. I’m not a pup anymore, after all. I’m almost adult, too mature to want to play with the whelps and not old enough or experienced enough or not whatever else enough to take on the responsibilities of being one of the Allies of the People. I get bored, and that always leads to me living up to the name they call me.
Life down on earth seems to be going along as usual, and it’s not all that interesting either just to watch. I see females tanning hides, drying meat, or mending clothes. Pups…boys…are chasing each other and playing warrior practice games. Bent males smoke a pipe or teach the young pups.
A warning whoop catches my attention as well of those in the village below. Warriors rush back to their pack with news, and now women leave tasks half done and call out for their young to come to their sides. Men take up weapons and the elders call the People to gather. They rush around, making sure all their clan is safe. A woman calls out, “Where is Runs From Snakes?” It must be his Mother, because I have heard that yelp of terror before. I can almost smell their fear from here.
“There you are, Trouble,” Mother says. I feel her eyes study me from eartips to tailtip. “You are taking an interest in those we guide and protect.” She stands beside me and nuzzles me between the ears. “Especially I see you gaze at one of the young pups, the one who is so swift of foot. I do not see him now.”
“Not only him.” I was watching when his grandfather named him. “The clan treats Runs From Snakes as a coward but he’s not.” He was just a whelp when he ran away from what turned out to be a harmless grass snake, but he didn’t know. He ran carrying his sister from what he thought was danger. I say he was brave. He still is, and still they treat him as a coward. “
“You curled your lip at his mother. That is no way for an Ally to behave.” She uses that disapproving tone that tells me I’m in trouble.
“She can’t see me.” Mother watches me intensely and I try not to twitch a whisker but I can’t sit still. I jump to my feet to face her. “Now he is nearly grown and he is always trying to prove himself worthy.” My hackles are up and I try to force them down. Now I am in BIG trouble. I wish I could keep lips and hackles down and mouth closed sometimes.
Mother, predictably, snaps at the air. “It is not for you to decide how others should act, especially since you so often live up to your name.”
“I’m young and I know nothing.” I have been trying to live down the name Trouble for as long as it takes a Two-legged pup to grow from whelp to grey-hair. “I do not understand many things about the Two-leggeds, but when you’re young, nobody respects you there or here.” I flop down with nose on paws to watch the People.
Mother lies down beside me. “You are as restless as I was at your age.” She sighs. “Mother always said she hoped I would bear a she-wolf just like me.”
“You used to be restless?” Something must have changed, because she has to be one of the most boring Wolves the Great Mystery ever created.
She moves her body alongside mine, snuggling. “I can tell this is hard for you to believe.” Now she yips laughter.
“Help me understand the People.”
“I am glad you show some interest, since it is our place in the Great Wheel of Life to guide them.”
When I take a mate, I will NEVER treat the pups I bear the way she treats me. Never! I wait before saying anything else so I don’t get in even more trouble today. Lips are down, hackles are down. Good. I am keeping my anger more to myself…at the moment, at least. “They start as pups, just as we do and they grow as we do, then they become bent and frail and their spirit goes…somewhere…wherever spirits of Two-leggeds go.”
“You see that our brethren the Elk and Hawks have different ways than we Wolves.”
“Yes.”
“It is the same for those we guide. But since they are creatures of the Earth, their place in the world differs as well.”
“Is that why they are so…” I never can figure out how to say the way they seem to me. “So thick?”
“They do seem thick. We are pure spirit, they have bodies of earth.”
“Is that why when Father goes to speak to their Spirit-Chief, I can see the trees through him?”
“Exactly. “
Down on Earth, the People are together in the big lodge. Pack leader warns his people about pale faced men who would take their land. “They come to take our home away from us. We must be like smoke. We must disappear into the mountains until they pass.”
“That is the coward’s way,” someone shouts.”
Chief stamps his foot. “Is it cowardly to defend our children and our freedom?”
“We fight!” one of the warriors jumps to his feet, hot-blooded, and all the young men join him, whooping, making strong gestures. “We fight to defend our land!”
The Spirit-Chief stands beside the Clan Chief. He has that look like Father gets when he’s mad and it has the same affect. “We must pray in earnest and ask our Allies to come to our aid. We must ask to know whether we should defend our land or scatter to come together after the storm.”
Prayers come to us Allies like whispers. When they smoke the pipe or sweat in the turtle den…the “sweat lodge”…the prayers are louder. The young Wolves carry the prayers in their mouths to Great Mystery. I have done this for a long time. Some Allies speak to the Two-leggeds’ when their eyes are closed. Some appear in waking.
“Can one of us have a solid body like them?”
Mother pulls back into herself. She is panting now and I don’t know why. “Yes, it can be done but only by one who knows the ways of the earthworld.”
I watch Father when he goes to aid his One. But he isn’t thick like the People. He never touches the Two-leggeds, never stays long, and never looks solid like a wolf of the earth would look.
“Mother, have you ever gone down to help the People?”
I feel her muscles stiffen. “I do not go to their world, but I do guide them.”
She never talks about how she guides her One from the Den between the worlds. I am supposedly not old enough to learn, and nobody tells me anything. The passage is well guarded because they all try to hide from us young ones, but I know where it is. I have even snuck into the Den a few times. I don’t think my parents know about that.
I don’t know how we each get our One or how to make the connection once we do. That’s another one of those things I’m too young and inexperienced to learn. I am not sure what happens or how, because to me it only looks like a bunch of Wolves sitting, ears straight, tails out, eyes soft, with all attention down on Earth. “How do you guide your Person?”
“Mostly through their dreams.”
“What are dreams?”
“Dreams are teaching messages that come to The People when they sleep, although mostly they do not remember.”
“Why not?” I remember teachings even though I do not always obey them.
“Living in the earth world can make it seem as if the People are separate from the Great Mystery.”
What happens to them during sleep is strange to me. We lay down to rest as the creatures of earth do, but we are still aware. No part of us leaves to go somewhere else. That is what happens for the People. “I wonder what it’s like to sleep.”
“It’s…I am not certain.”
Mother HAS been there and she knows exactly what it’s like, but