The sound of the fire was louder than the surf. We went fast, for our lives, following Karana, who must have thought of ways of leaving the canyon when we had come in the morning. She must have been in fires before.
Mando said, "We could have gone along the lagoon to the shore." He was disappointed that now he had lost the chance to tell everyone that he had saved us from the fire. "That way we would have reached the sea. Fire does not burn the sea."
I pointed at the waves that the wind sent crashing against the rocks along the shore. "We would have drowned," I said. "Which would you prefer?"
Mando pulled at his ear. He did not like Karana very much because he could not understand what she said. He thought everyone should speak the language he spoke. Unless they did, he thought there was something wrong with their heads and he looked down on them. There were many at the Mission who thought the same. And when Karana learned a few words of Spanish, he and others would smile because she spoke the words in a way that sounded different to them.
He was now impatient. "Stone Hands and his people," he said, "follow the surf."
"Because he would rather risk his life with the sea than with Señor Corrientes," I replied. "And I do not blame him."
"I can do what Stone Hands does," Mando said.
"But you have no reason to prove it."
"I want him to know that I also can defy the sea. I may save someone, even him."
"You had best save yourself."
"He taunts me because I did not catch the big fish."
"That was not your fault."
"Also that I wrecked the boat."
"No one is to blame for the boat."
"Stone Hands thinks so."
"What he thinks is of no importance."
But before I could stop him, Mando was running off toward the shore where great waves were crashing and Stone Hands and his people were trying to make their way along the shore.
26
WE COULD SEE the flames for a long time. They even shone far out on the sea. But we had crossed the lagoon that ran inland near the Mission. Some lay in the grass and rested and some slept. We did not reach the Mission before daylight.
Before noon that day Don Felipe and Señor Moreno came to the Mission to protest the fire. They came with Capitán Cordova and called for Father Vicente. The four men talked for a long time in the courtyard. Then the three men left.
I was working at my loom so I heard nothing of what was said. There was much shouting and striding up and down, but when I saw Father Vicente later he said that he had convinced them all that we did not start the fire and if they wanted to find the one who did for them to go out and search.
Things were better now that Father Vicente was in charge of the Mission and we had new laws. We did not work all day and what we made on the looms we were given permission to sell to the Yankee ships that came into the harbor to trade. Part of the money we could keep and part went to the Mission. This was a new way. In the old days we were not allowed to keep money we made.
The second crop of melons swelled and grew ripe. Karana liked them so much that whenever she had a chance she would steal away and eat melons. She ate more than I have ever seen two people eat. She even ate the small black seeds. She even taught Rontu-Aru to eat them. He must have been the only dog in the world to eat melons.
When the Yankee trading ships came Father Vicente let us go out to them in our canoes and sell the things we had made and were allowed to keep. The rest of the things we made he sold himself, since the Yankees were sharp traders.
Neither Karana nor I had ever been on a trading ship because Father Merced had forbidden it before.
It was like a store on land, only it was on a ship, with rows of shelves filled with hats and beads and dresses and shoes—with everything you could find in a store on the land. Karana bought a hat that was pretty and had a ribbon around the brim and a collar for Rontu-Aru that had a silver buckle. We always liked these days.
We liked all the days now that Father Vicente was our superior, but then suddenly everything changed. In the time of one day a new world descended upon us out of a clear sky.
Sailing into the harbor came the Buenaventura and on it was a man with white hair and a big round face and a body so thin he must never have eaten at all. His name was Father Malatesta and he had come from Mexico City to take charge of the Mission, to take the place of Father Vicente.
The next day the ship sailed north to Monterey and on it was Father Vicente. We stood on the beach and waved him farewell and some of us cried to see him go.
Everything changed then. The new father was older than Father Merced, or seemed older. He wore glasses and looked at things over them and not through them.
He called us all together in the big chapel and told us where he had come from, and that he had heard about the trouble we had had in the past, and what a fine Mission he would make of it.
But now we worked harder and had no time to ourselves—only an hour before we went to bed. We were not allowed to keep anything of what we made.
"The church is very poor," said the new father. "We must work hard and make it a great Mission again. Greater than it ever has been."
He changed many rules and gave out a list of what we could do and not do. No one liked the ways the Mission was run now. Stone Hands began to grumble again.
But the worst change was for Karana. Father Malatesta ordered her to sleep in the dormitorio and because of fleas Rontu-Aru had to stay in the courtyard. Karana tied him there by his new collar. The first night no one could sleep for his howling, not even the new father.
He told the woman who was in charge of the girls' room that Karana would have to move her dog and she told Karana. I was not there when they met so I do not know how she told her. All I know is that night the dog was not tied up in the courtyard and Karana was not in her bed next to mine.
27
WE ALL thought that she would come when the bells rang for morning mass but she did not appear, nor afterward for breakfast, nor to the room where we wove mats.
At noon I took my time to eat and went in search of her. Mando and I sometimes had gone about a league from the Mission along the sand to San Felipe lagoon and the point that ran out in the sea. When the tide was high the surf beat against the point, but at ebb tide you could walk over the rocks and around it.
On the north side of the point were two tall pinnacles and between them, hidden from view, was a cave. It was the same cave that Mando and I knew. At high tide spray beat against it, but other times the sun shone in and it was like a twilight world.
The cave curved and went far back, perhaps twenty long strides from the mouth. The roof was jagged and in places you had to crawl to get through. Then suddenly this long corridor opened and you were in a large room with long things hanging down from the ceiling, like the lights in the chapel, only they were in the shape of cones and clear as air.
The tide was high, but it was here in this big room that I found Karana. She was sitting on a rock that was as flat as a table. The tide came in and out around her. She patted her dog and spoke to him in her island dialect.
I was in the cave for a while before I saw that there were others in the cave besides the three of us.
When she lived at the Mission, Karana brought home wounded animals and birds with broken wings. I was not surprised, therefore, that she brought them here. There was a pelican with a broken leg, which she had bound up with sticks and tied together with reeds. There was an otter watching us from a pool of water near the rock we sat on. Also a gull with a wounded wing. In the twilight of the cave I saw other eyes watching me, though I could not see who or what they belonged to.
On the rock was a small fire. Karana was roasting mussels and clams, moving them around in the coals. Rontu-Aru sat with his head on his paws beside her. He had not barked when I came into the room. She must have taught him when to bark and when to keep silent. But he sat there very quietly, his yellow eyes watching everything I d
id.
I greeted her with a sound we had made up ourselves and it was much like any sound of greeting.
She stirred the fire and sat back and put her hand firmly on my arm. She kept it there for a long time.
From her touch I knew why she was there and why she would never go back to the Mission while Father Malatesta was there. She would never sleep in the room among many people, without her big gray dog.
She offered me some of the clams that had popped open and smelled good, but I had to leave to get back in time for work.
That evening I returned after mass. I had a hard time reaching the cave in the dark, especially since I carried with me one of the last melons from the garden.
Karana had built a large fire and was eating on the flat rock. We ate the melon. At least she did, and we sat with the firelight flickering over the walls and the cones that hung down from the ceiling and looked like crystals.
I had taught her the word for dolphins and when she used it she meant the island where she had lived before.
She pointed to the wall in front of us. It was flat and in it were the bones of something that looked like a wing, the wing of a giant bird that must have been twenty strides in length. The whole wing was there fastened like stone flat against the wall, a great hovering wing without feathers, of an animal that must have flown a long time ago when Mukat was alive and Coyote roamed the land and Zando was our god.
Karana pointed to the skeleton wing and made a gesture toward the west and said the word "dolphin." I knew that she meant that she had seen such a wing on the island where she had lived and I wondered if she wanted to return there.
Then she made an outline in the air, saying that the skeleton she had seen before had a head and beak that was much wider than she could reach. And pointing to her own eyes, she made a circle that let me know that the bones of the bird she had found on the island had eyes as large as the rock we sat upon.
We watched the giant bird with the firelight casting shadows on it. And the skeleton came alive as I watched and as the shadows changed and became feathers, each feather heavier than a strong man could lift, and I saw an eye larger than the table. It was the color of amber. When you looked at it, the eye moved away, but when you were not looking you knew it was watching you.
I quit looking at the skeleton of the giant bird. I quit thinking that it must have eaten large animals, even people, when it was alive and flew around the islands. We sat in silence for an hour or more, all the things we wanted to say to each other locked within us.
The next noon when I came again Karana was sitting outside in the sun. She looked pale and made a motion that meant she felt sick.
"Where?" I asked her, pointing at all the places where people get sick, which are many. It took me a long time.
She pointed to her stomach and made the motion of eating. Then she pointed to her head.
There was a good witch woman at the Mission and an old man who knew many cures but I could not get Karana to move from her cave.
That night when I came with the last melon from the patch and opened it on the rock, Karana would not touch it. I knew then that she was sick.
I went back to the Mission and talked to the old medicine man. He could barely walk, but in the morning, with great difficulty, I got him to the cave. We found Karana sitting on the flat rock beside a small fire. Rontu-Aru lay at her side.
The medicine man asked her questions. Karana said nothing and I reminded him that she did not understand the dialect we spoke, nor Spanish words either. He shook his head and took a pouch from the folds of his tunic and laid out some things on the flat stone—an eagle feather, a black shell I had never seen before, the long tooth of a bear, the skeleton of a fish—many things. Then he mumbled a Spanish prayer to Mukat and to Coyote and to Zando.
It was a long prayer and I could see that Karana was not listening to him. The sound of the surf and the cries of gulls fishing came from far off. I think this is what she heard.
The medicine man then took forth a flute and began to play a tune that was so shrill it was hard for me to hear. But Rontu-Aru heard it, for he cocked his ears and turned his head from side to side, as dogs do when they hear strange noises. Something else heard it too.
While the old man played he kept looking at a place above my head. So fixed was his gaze that after a while I turned to see what he might be gazing at. Near the bones of the giant bird, at a place where its mouth could have been, was a jagged hole. And in the hole was a snake's head. It had wide jaws and large eyes the color of emeralds and a long forked tongue that slowly flicked back and forth. It must have been the snake I had heard about.
Serpiente, Karana said. It was one of the few Spanish words she had learned.
It was likely one of the wounded that she had found somewhere and brought to the cave. She spoke the word without fear. If anything, she spoke with pity, pity for a creature that was fated to live its life hated and reviled by everyone.
At last the old man stopped playing. "Zando has heard my prayer," he said. "He promises to use his powers. All will be well, he says. He will speak to Mukat and to Coyote when he returns from his journey."
We walked back to the Mission and I went to the chapel and prayed to the Virgin, but while I was praying I kept thinking of the snake with the emerald eyes that came and listened when the old man played on his flute.
The next day Karana was better and she had a big driftwood fire going on the flat rock. Around it were nests of kelp. In the nests were swallows that she had picked up on the beach. Although it was spring, a cold wind had come up and killed all the insects that the swallows fed on. As I walked down the beach I had seen the swallows darting here and there along the cliff searching for food and others lying dead among the rocks.
Karana had no way of feeding the starved birds she had gathered up, but she kept them warm until they died. The cold wind left and a warm wind came and the swallows around the Mission and along the cliffs ate once more and built nests everywhere.
28
ON A FINE spring day Stone Hands gathered up a band of young men and girls who did not like Father Malatesta and his new ways and went off to the north. Mando went with them. He said he would leave Stone Hands soon and go to the town of Monterey on the sea.
"I may find the captain of the Boston Boy in Monterey and he will give me back my work. If not, there are many Yankee ships in Monterey and I will choose something that suits my talents, which people say are many."
"When you come home from your voyages, Mando, you will have many more talents. Good fortune and may God go with you."
"Coyote and Mukat will go too," he said, striding off to conquer the world.
Karana fell ill again that night and the next morning I asked the woman who oversaw our work and each day taught us Spanish words if I could go and talk to Father Malatesta.
"My aunt is ill," I said.
"Where?" asked the señora.
"On the beach."
"Tell her to come to the Mission and she will receive treatment. We are busy here, we do not have time for illness."
I then went to Father Malatesta's office and waited there while the bells tolled three different times, counting the hours. At last a handsome young padre who had come with Malatesta from Mexico appeared and asked me what I wanted of him.
"My aunt, whose name is Karana, is ill."
The young padre apologized to me for his lack of furniture. "It has not yet arrived from Mexico," he said. "Make yourself comfortable on the sill. Why is your aunt not treated for her illness?"
"Because she is not at the Mission."
"Where is she?"
I said that she was on the beach but not where.
"Why is she on the beach?" he asked me.
"Because Father Malatesta ordered her to sleep in the dormitorio."
"That is where people sleep."
I told him that she had come from an island far off the coast where she had lived for a long time.
"She is not used to our ways," I said.
The young priest got up and looked out of the door. "She must get used to them. Otherwise why do we have a Mission? So everyone can do what he wishes? So dogs can run everywhere?"
"She will get used to the Mission but not now. Now she is ill."
"We can do nothing for her if she remains on the beach."
"She will not come here," I said.
He shrugged his shoulders and sat down and began to go through a sheaf of papers.
"She cannot sleep in the dormitorio," I said.
"Where did she sleep before we came?"
"In the courtyard with her dog."
"We cannot have people sleeping wherever they wish. Nor dogs running here and there."
He put the papers in a drawer and leaned back and put his hands behind his head and glanced up at the ceiling.
"Is your aunt feeble in the mind?"
"No," I said quickly. "But she is not used to our ways. It will take many moons for her to get used to them. I have been here for a long time and still I am not used to them."
"You have trouble, too? It must be in the family, this trouble."
"I came here but not against my will," I said. "I was happy living where I did live, in the mountains. Someday I may be happy here doing what I am told to do each hour of the day. When Father Vicente was here I liked him and because of him I liked the Mission. I liked God, too, and the Virgin."
This was the wrong thing for me to have said. It made the young priest angry. His face flushed. He got to his feet and as he stood at the door he said, "I will see what can be done about your aunt, who cannot sleep in a fine clean room and without her dog. I will give it serious thought. I may have a chance to speak to Father Malatesta about it. He is a wise man in these matters, but now he is very busy."
I left and went down to the cave. Karana was lying on the flat rock and the fire was out. I lighted another fire and sat beside her and held her hand.
Early the next morning I went to the cave. The sun was bright on the sea and the tide was out.