by Scott O'Dell
Karana was sitting at the mouth of the cave, leaning against one of the stone pillars. She held out her hand to me. It was small and cold.
Since the first time, the time I had seen her through the iron bars of my cell, she had worn a necklace. It was a pretty necklace of black stones. They were all round and shining and there was a spot of fire deep inside each one.
She took off the necklace and put it around my neck. She sat back against the stone and watched the morning unfold. Pelicans were flying low over the surf and farther out young whales were sending up their airy plumes of spray.
We sat there, saying nothing, until the tide came in and the first bell rang in the belfry. Then I got up and kissed her good-bye.
"I will come back at noon," I said. "Not with a melon, though. They are gone. But with something you will like."
Usually Karana looked up at me and smiled. Then I saw that her head had turned to one side. She was looking far off across the sea. After a while I saw that she was no longer breathing.
Some thought that Karana died because she caught cold sleeping out in the weather. But she was used to caves and beaches and all kinds of weather. Others said she died of some sickness she had caught from the white traders. But these things were not true.
I think she died for a different reason. She liked the people at the Mission, although she was shut away from them because she did not speak the language they did. She liked to watch the birds feeding along the beach and the gulls crying and the spouting of the whales and the dolphins playing in the channel. She liked to watch the wild horses galloping through the surf. And the red melons with their black seeds and the dancing of the fiestas.
She liked these things but still she missed the island where she was born and had lived for most of her life. She missed it deep within herself, in a place she had no words to reach. She missed it like I missed my home in the mountains.
The next evening after mass we buried her in a place near the Mission. All the birds were flying home and the candles shivered in the cold sea wind. That night I took my blanket and slept nearby with her gray dog beside me.
At first there were many of her animals for me to take care of. But one by one they got well enough to fend for themselves. All but the snake with the emerald eyes. The last time I was in the cave he was still there in the wall by the skeleton of the great winged bird.
29
IT WAS still dark when I left the Mission. I took a bag with me filled with bread I had saved, a clay pot to cook in, and a blanket I had made for such a time, if it ever came. I could not handle Rontu-Aru by words so I put a riata around his neck.
We left quietly and by the front gate, where anyone could see us if they were awake. I was closing the big gate behind us when I heard a voice. It was Father Malatesta's. He was coming from the chapel and he held a book in his hand.
"You are up early," he said.
"Yes, I have a long way to go. The sun will be hot at midday."
"Where is this place you go, young lady?"
"Far away, Father, in the mountains. Ten days to the south and three days to the east."
"The place you came from?"
"Yes, long ago."
"Who gave you this permission?"
"No one, Father, I came a long while ago and now I return."
"You do not like us?"
"I like you but this is not my home."
"You do not like our food and our shelter? You do not want us to teach you skills and the grandeur of our language? You do not find God to your liking? You would rather pray to snakes and coyotes and the sun than to our Virgin Mary?"
"I am thankful for all that you have given me," I said.
"But it is not enough—all these things?"
"It is enough, Father Malatesta, and I thank you and Father Merced and Father Vicente. But God is in the mountains too. Now I go back to my home."
I closed the gate. Then a curious thing happened. Father Malatesta came to the gate, slowly, with the steps of an old man, and handed me the book he carried.
He said, Way a con Dios. And I returned his farewell, wishing him to go with God, also.
I went down to the beach. The tide was out and the sand was wet. There was a glow behind the mountains, far to the east, but the sea was dark.
I walked until the sun came up and then I sat down and ate a piece of tortilla. I tied the riata around my waist for the gray dog still did not want to go with me.
I could see the black stumps where the fire had started in Box Canyon. Between them and the lagoon, for a distance of a league, the fire had burned everything. It looked like a blanket of black snow. But along the marges of the San Felipe lagoon grass was already beginning to grow.
It was not until I had walked for the length of seven suns that I let Rontu-Aru off his leash. It came about this way.
It was just before dusk and I was still walking along the beach, since it was the easiest path to the south. A man came out of a brush hut and started down the beach toward me. He said nothing, but walked along in back of me for a while.
I stopped and loosened the data. The gray dog turned and walked toward the man, baring his teeth.
"Rontu-Aru," I called, remembering Karana's command.
The man turned away. The dog backed off, growling, and came to my side. After that I never put the riata on him again. I had no fear after that for him or for myself.
The way home to Pala in the high mountains to the south I knew. It was faster to go by land, because the shore went in and out. It is twice as far along the sea.
I did not hurry. I played stick with Rontu-Aru. I would find a piece of driftwood and throw it out in the waves and he would plunge in the water and bring it back. I pried mussels from the rocks, made a fire, and boiled them in my clay pot. I also dug clams. Some of them were bigger than my hand. I gave Rontu-Aru the tough parts, because his teeth were a lot stronger than mine and I made a stew of them with some acorn flour an old woman gave me.
It was a long way home, over a hundred leagues, but it was a happy journey. I had time to think of many things, during those first days of summer, and the last days of my girlhood.
There was a wide stream that came out of the mountains and flowed slowly back and forth between oak trees and sycamores and the red manzanita. It had a sandy bottom with patches of blue stones. The stream was near to my home. When I came to it I began to run. My dog ran at my side.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Front
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