I was weaker than I had thought. I had to lie back down and close my good eye. I heard the two women come into the lodge and kneel beside me.
“Move aside, you,” a young woman’s voice said. I heard the soft pad of my wolf friend’s feet as he allowed himself to be shoved back.
A hand touched my cheek and I opened my eye to look up into the concerned face of Dojihla.
“Ah,” I said.
I could think of nothing more to say. It was not just because the expression on Dojihla’s face was filled with hope. It was also because I could see behind her an old woman with hair as white as snow and a strange smile on her face. I had never seen that old woman before . . . or had I? And then I knew.
CHAPTER 38
Seven Stars
I REACHED MY HAND OUT toward the old woman whose smile grew broader as I did so.
“Is it you?” I said.
“Wabi,” my great-grandmother answered, “here I am.” She squeezed my hand in hers. Dojihla moved back slightly to allow my great-grandmother to come closer.
“Are you content to be a human?” Great-grandmother asked.
“It was good to be an owl.”
“Yes, but are you content now?” she repeated.
“I think so.”
I looked over at Dojihla, who seemed to be listening very intently to this conversation between us—listening as if she completely understood what we were talking about. I wondered how much my great-grandmother had told her. From what I had learned of Dojihla’s stubborn nature, probably a great deal.
I nodded my head. “Yes, yes. I am content.”
Dojihla let out a breath and turned her head away for a moment.
I looked toward the door of the lodge. The light of the sun was dimming. Soon it would be dark.
“Are you content, Great-grandmother?”
She smiled at that. “Wabi, don’t you know how lonely I would have been without you?” She sighed. “Have you been to the place where my roosting tree stood?”
“Yes,” I said, and nodded my head. It was sad to think of how the old tree had been broken.
My great-grandmother sighed again. “I have been back there too. One way or another, all trees must eventually fall. It was still standing when I changed. I saw the bear coming. I had to warn the people of the village before it reached them. There was no way they would have listened to me as an owl.”
She paused then and looked out the door. “Did you see that the seven stones are also gone?”
“I did.”
“They were not destroyed by that poor suffering bear. Remember the story I told you, Wabi? How they were once seven wise old ones who turned themselves into trees and then into stones? They have changed again. They have gone and taken with them the power for us to change. For better or worse, you and I are humans, and humans we will stay.”
It was now dark outside the lodge. Night had come, a night that my great-grandmother and I would never again fly through on silent wings.
I reached my good arm out to my great-grandmother. “Help me to stand,” I said.
But before my great-grandmother could pull me up, Dojihla was there, lifting me to my feet. I was so surprised at her strength that I spoke without thinking.
“Am I not too heavy for you?”
“Who does this foolish one think carried him all the way from the cliff back to the village?” Dojihla said, looking back toward my great-grandmother. She wrapped my good arm around her neck and grasped me firmly about my waist. Malsumsis rose from the place he had been curled up next to the door to stand at my great-grandmother’s side.
The four of us went through the door of the lodge to stand under the night sky. I turned my head to look into Dojihla’s eyes. Our faces were very close to each other.
“I was afraid I had killed you when I rolled that last rock down the cliff.” Her voice was soft and I saw that there were now tears in her eyes.
“No,” I said, “you saved me.”
“And how many times have you saved me, my Village Guardian?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer, but perhaps there was nothing that I needed to say just then. It was enough to stand there with our arms around each other and the two other beings I loved most in the world close beside us.
I looked up into the sky at a pattern that I had never noticed before. There were seven stars directly overhead. Their shape was that of a circle without end.
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