Butterfly Moon: Short Stories

On This Earth

1 On This Earth The house was a forest remembering itself. The pine trees that held up the walls dreamed of stars dwelling in their needles. Jointed, branched, rooted, the trees still listened to the wind. The oak floors gleamed from the generations of human oils. Nails pierced the wooden beams, the iron remembering hands melting ores, hammering, straightening. When Iron sang, the humans slept uneasily, dreaming of spears, knives, the sharp edge of death. Under the house, the ancient continent measured the journey of animals: giant beaver, tiny horses, elk, vast bears that clawed the horizon. Their bones lay in stone or were stone. And there was the memory of Ice Animals, walking into the sun, away from the mountains of ice and cold abysses. Minerals and rocks shared memories. The tribe of Obsidian, those sharpheaded old ones, danced around the fire, singing about hunts before Iron. Flint swapped stories with Mica. Long before this house was built, there was a marsh and beavers dammed the creek, gnawing down trees the size of night. The marsh became a meadow and sturdy wild horses ran into the thunder of their songs. They pulled grass with their strong teeth and fertilized the young pines with dung. Their foals stood weak-kneed under slivers of moon. The horses rode the back of life and died out, their species not to be seen again on this continent for hundreds of years. Trees grew over the meadow. Once, the sky was full of burning spears. A tree caught on fire and burned an area around it before the rains drowned the flames, leaving a partially hollow log. Bears lived there, snuffling in their sleep. Years passed and the bears left. Moss weighed down the log. It collapsed and settled into the earth. 2 Later, a medicine man walked into the forest clearing. He heard the spirit bears growling and the horses calling. He smelled the clover odor of stars and knew this was the place for his sweat lodge. He cleared the brush, pulling up plants with his old hands. He found rocks that had been carried by rivers of frozen water. They were born speckled, pitted, brindled, and solid. They were part of Grandmother Earth’s medicine bag. The round ones he carried to the fire pit. He cut down saplings. He wove branches and made walls. He built a hut dark as the womb. He made a fire over the rocks. They blackened, hissed, and rolled. He tossed water over them and steam rose up. This was his last sweat. His arms were muscled but the skin draped over the bones. While he sweated, he heard horses snorting. He heard the slap of beaver tails. He saw a woman wearing furs. She wore a necklace of a single mammoth tooth. She smiled at him and then disappeared. He saw a monstrous bird, wings wide as the wind. When he finally crawled out of the lodge, the night was clear. He sensed some kind of structure around him. It was a house, he figured out. He walked among busy people who didn’t see him. People were born and cradled in wood. They slept with wood touching the tops of their heads where their souls come out. They ate on tables of wood and stirred their pots with wooden spoons. Then the people changed. The women’s hair was curled. The men wore pieces of cloth to hold up their pants. And they cooked and cleaned and argued and loved until they opened the thick-planked door of death. They were carried away in wooden boxes. Again, the women changed, wearing pants. The men wore cloth around their necks. They didn’t use wood or clay vessels. They ate on something shiny and unbreakable. They didn’t sleep on feathers or grass. They squirted poison on weeds and threw old furniture into the creek. They got sick a lot. They were forgetting their connection to the earth. What astonished him was that they were all his children. Their skins were pink, golden, brown, black. Their eyes were the colors of rocks: obsidian, slate, amber. Or the color of trees: green, yellow , brown. Some had sky eyes: blue or thunderclouds. Their hair was the color of iron, bear, fire. These were his descendants. How it happened he didn’t understand. The vision faded. He looked around him with a start. He recalled why he was here. His people were dying. He needed a cure...