I followed Meryl for miles and miles and miles. I thought we were lost more times that I could count. But the sun usually stayed in front of us or behind us, and we kept heading west. We eventually strayed away from the highway, veering ever so slightly north, and the cars and trucks feel behind us step by step.
The sun was an avenging angel far above, radiating outwards in a language of heat and blinding light. The pan of the earth started to look baked into iron, the few weeds and bushes here and there struggling to survive under such bright scrutiny. Somehow Meryl found shelter here and there, in hollows and ditches that we came across, barking at me with little yips. We would travel at dusk and dawn, and avoid the worst of it. As soon as we lost the sun, we usually had to stop no matter what.
We survived, somehow. A stupid, stupid, kid on the run from everything, and a little dog willing to show him the way to nowhere.
In the morning, more than a few days out from Ses staring blankly up at a sky she could not see, a slight fog started to clear, and for the first time, I could see the mesas starting to rise from the pan that crunched meekly under my feet. Our water was getting thin, so any change was a welcome one. I felt something rise in me, a push in my feet, a swell in my heart, and the desire to reach that thing standing like a monolith in front of us.
I found myself speeding up. Slowly at first, then a jog, then more of a run. I wish I can say I could sprint like the wind for as long as I wanted, but the landscape surrounding me had its own plans. We picked our way through the gullies and culverts cut by rain fall long since forgotten, and the began to wind our way to the base of the mesa that had peeked through its shadowed misty veil to reveal itself to us. Ever leading, Meryl found the easist way for me, up this hill, down this corner, up this ridge.
As the sun started to pull its way downwards as a shade in the sky, revealing the twilight of the long west, we finally reached the top of the mesa. There were a few trees around a small spring, the water seemed fresh and clean, and I quickly doused my head. The heat of the climb was radiating off of me. Meryl just jumped in.
I laughed. She huffed and shook off… and I was soaked by my own personal canine water sprinkler. I stopped laughing.
“Hey, I was laughing with you, not at you, you silly dog.”
She smiled with a pant and headed towards the edge of the mesa, to a dark shape huddled among the unbroken edges of the future tumble weeds, and I thought I saw a small crackle of fire reflect of their edges.
That was not right, because when I climbed up here, there was hardly any bushes, and definitely no fires. No ominous lumps of shadow either. I was starting to spook myself out. With the sun going down, the light must have been playing tricks on my eyes.
“Come over to my fire, grandson.” The ominous shade turned his head and looked right at me with wide white eyes. The went from edge to edge, an unbroken field of milky white, with no pupils that I could see. A small fire was crackling in front him merrily, while the little wolf pranced over to the man, accepted a friendly pat on the head, and curled up next to the fire. “I mean you no harm, young one. Come sit. Sit.”
“Sorry. You scared me. I didn’t see anyone up here.” I said timidly.
“No need to apologize. Come sit.” He motioned over to the fire. He smiled widely. “If I say it a third time, you wont have a choice.”
I believed him.
“Not that I would get up from my little fire to make you sit down, but the universe has its rules, and when someone like me says something three times, there are… repercussions.” He chuckled.
I sat down across from him at the fire, and looked up as the sky started to deepen from its oranges and pinks to a darker, colder purple. The north star started to shine brilliantly as a wisp of cloud pulled away in regret. I think Venus was up early. It was a jewel set up in the desert sky.
“She is beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Who?”
“Our lovely evening star, Anani. She is a part of the cycle… birth, life, death, rebirth. Her and her brother, Masi, on opposite sides of us, one for morning, one for night. Tonight she looks down on us.” He smiled up at the sky, his leathery withered neck stretching out. He was wrapped in a simple blanket at the shoulders, his hair in a single gray braid that fell down his back, and his bare feet poking out from underneath. They were gnarled and weathered feet, bare skin that had seen hundreds of hard miles. My traitor of a wolf laid near his foot, smiling in her sleep.
“She is beautiful. Although I call her Venus.” I smiled.
“You would, grandson.” He smiled again. “It is a clumsy name. Anani is better, don’t you think?”
“I suppose. Yes. Anani is better.” I frowned slightly as he met my eye. “I am sorry sir, but I am not your grandson. I just walked up here.”
“Yes you did! Following young Waha’e here. She had to lead you a long way, did she not? She cared for you. Let her sleep now. She has earned a good rest. Look at your legs, then look at her legs. Long way for short legs.”
“Waha’e?” I cocked my eyebrow. “Funny, I was calling her Meryl.”
He grunted and shook his head with a smile. “You and your poor names. Waha’e is better.”
“I suppose it is.” I came back to my point. “Are you expecting someone?”
“Not any more.” He reached out and patted my foot. Then he reached into the bundle of stacked tumbleweeds and tossed a few branches onto his small smokeless fire. “With those long legs, I would think you would walk faster.”
“Wawa the puppy over there has stumpy legs, remember? I was following her.” I joked.
“Ha. Yes, I suppose that is true. I should fix that.” He reached over and petted Waha’e three slow times, and the third pass of his gnarled hand, where the little wolf puppy slept, a large graceful wolf slept in her place. I would have jumped up if I had not seen it in person. It wasn’t jarring, or unexpected in the way you would think. It was gradual and instant at the same moment, and she didn’t even wake up. “There. When she wakes up, she will feel more like her old self.”
“Her old self?”
“Would you have walked up to a full grown wolf? Especially one of the Old Ones like Waha’e?” He winked.
“I suppose not. Probably would have soiled myself.”
“Waha’e has answered my calls for many generations. She is a Blessed One.” He smiled. “She does a good job when she is called.”
“She’s a spirit guide.” I said.
“Ah, my grandson can think for himself. Perhaps one day, you will think of good names indeed. Very good. Waha’e is. Blessed.”
“She definitely helped. She knew where she was going, whether I wanted to go or not.”
“Indeed.” He looked up at the stars as they started to come alive in the deepening dark. I followed his gaze, feeling the warmth of the fire on my knees, and the crackling of the dry tinder fitfully spitting its way up between us. The curtain of night was expansive, the brilliance of a billions stars opened above us. The majesty of it all spun above the mesa like a top, as flashes of light traced its fingers across the atmosphere far above. “You are my grandson. Perhaps not the child of my daughter or son, but a child of mine. Your spirit is strong, Jonny. And any child that has such a spirit is mine to claim as my own. You are my grandson.”
“And why am I here? Ses, Jack, Benny, even Hanks… I shouldn’t’ve ran. Why did you tell Benny to make me come?” I said. I felt the desire to just, understand… Something.
“I did not tell you to come. Water is a messenger, but it is not a spirit. Someone else sent the message to you. There are many powers at work in our world. I did know that your time was coming, and I let it be known that you are mine. I would think that many would want that to happen…” He said.
“So you knew I was coming, but you didn’t know when?” I furrowed my forehead.
“Skepticism?” He winked again. “It will make sense in time.”
“What will make sense?”
“Everything!” He laughed.
I was starting to get pissed, I knew it showed on my face. I glowered at the fire. Why did my anger always flare up at the wrong times? My emotions always seemed to be just below the surface of my skin, waiting for a moment to rip itself free. I was a shitty teenage disguise of skin and meat for an emotional rage beast inside. My “grandfather” sat there watching the fire, the small flickers reflecting off his expansive white eyes.
“And what is your name?” I challenged.
“You can call me Grandfather.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“What do I…” I started, but he waved my question away with a curt gesture immediately.
“You are sitting on a rock in the middle of the desert. A great vulture lands in front of you and says, ‘You must die, I need to eat.’ You look at the vulture and say ‘I am resting, then I am going on my way. I have no plan to die’. You get up and walk away, the vulture flies on, to find some other meal. The small mouse that was under the rock saw both your shadows and heard your voices does not understand. He saw what must have been gods. He doesn’t think about it and goes on with his life.”
“So I am the mouse?” The parable made no sense.
“That is not the point, my son. Sometimes we don’t understand things around us. Sometimes the mundane, like a man resting on a rock, can be misunderstood. Sometimes, the powerful forces of life, like the vulture needing to survive, are not understood. Sometimes, big things are happening right next to us and we just don’t have the ability to perceive it correctly. That is ok. I am here for that reason… to help you understand. Not everything right this moment! You cannot have all answers all at once. Like a starving man, if you eat your fill all at once, you will just vomit it all up again. It won’t help.”
“Why did Ses have to die?” The rage had turned to grief. The push and pull was going to rip me apart.
“Ses did not have to die and she did not choose to die, true. However, no one chose for her. Ses was not murdered, Jonny. It was an accident. A horrible one that you must grieve, but it was just an accident. An opportunity that arose that others were able to perceive and it all came together into a set of circumstances that brought you to me.”
“That doesn’t help.” I said while I wiped at my nose and eyes, ashamed.
“It shouldn’t.” I could see the empathy in his face. “But next time you see something bad happen, you can help. That is why you are here.”
“Next time?”
“Think of a spider. He sits on his web, at the center of his threads. He can feel the wind, the rain, the arrival of his next meal. He can tell when something is trying to eat him. He can feel everything through his web.”
“Ok?”
“Think of a battle. Men on either side, fighting for what they think is right. Defending their home, protecting their loved ones, fighting to ensure their future, or whatever cause is given to them. Think of each fighter moving across a battlefield, fighting their way until the enemy submits or they are broken themselves.”
“What…” Again, he cut me off with a gesture.
“Now. Think of the battle, and the soldiers are spiders. The battlefield is a great web. The spiders can add to, they can take from, and they can manipulate the great web.”
I sat in silence and thought about that. Spiders fighting each other, feeling each other, working their way across a web. Adding threads to get to enemies, taking threads to cut off enemies, while the enemies do the same.
“I think I get it. But how does that apply to me? Or Ses? Or anything?”
“You are one of those spiders. The web is the world.”
“And I can? How does that change anything next time?”
“You can affect the world around you in a different way. With a little learning, patience, and luck.”
“How?” I said meekly. I could sense some truth in this. Something profoundly powerful.
“I can show you. You just need to take my hand.” He offered a weathered and gnarled hand to me from under his blanket. His palm was facing up and I could see the fire catch on the lines and cracks of his skin.
I grabbed his hand without hesitation. And in that moment, he unfolded from himself and became a curtain of night, the brilliance of galaxies spinning opened up from within his blanket. As it was cast aside, he stood up to be the night, the sky full of stars, and the billions of shining flickering dots of light hanging in the unlimited distance far above me. The universe unspooled in front me, and made me witness the enormity of it all, compared to the insignificance of my own life. I heard my grandfather’s voice in my ear, as I reeled from being made an observer of the universe around me.
“You are a weaver of fate.”