When
Kiri awoke early the next morning, his first thoughts were about
exploring his new home -- with Kala as his guide, of course. He got
up very quickly and seeing that Kala was not in her room, he hurried
down to the fire, hoping that she would be there. Kala was indeed
seated by the fire talking with his Aunt Vara and a Danai man and
woman. The Danai couple got up as he approached, glanced at his aunt
and started toward the door, smiling at Kiri as they left.
“Hello
Kiri”, his aunt said, “did you sleep well?”
“Yes,
Aunt Vara”. He smiled at Kala. “Hello.”
She
smiled back at him, but before she had a chance to say anything else
his aunt spoke again.
“Kala
wants to show you around this morning, but such things can wait until
later. It is important that we get started right away.”
“Get
started?”
“Yes,
on your instruction. Each morning I will be instructing you, and
answering any questions you might have from the previous day. I want
to make sure that all of your first thoughts, each day, are about the
matters at hand. It will do you no good to have your head full of
other ideas before you start your studies.”
Kiri
thought to himself that his head was already full of other ideas, but
he said nothing. Vara continued.
“Yes
Kiri, you can meet up with Kala after we have finished. Really! Your
thoughts are as clear to me as a sky full of stars sometimes.”
Kiri
just smiled sheepishly, and said nothing. Kala got up and beamed at
Kiri.
“I’ll
see you later Kiri. Just ask for me after you have finished. Goodbye
Vara”
Kiri
and his aunt said goodbye to Kala and she left the house.
“Before
we get started, you should have something to eat Kiri. Try some of
this, it is really good”
She
passed him a bowl of a creamy looking mush, and he tasted it,
cautiously. He liked it.
“It
is a Danai favorite,” she said, “it’s made from bread and nuts
cooked in sheep’s milk and flavored with honey and a part of a
flower that grows here”.
Kiri
finished the bowl eagerly. He had not realized just how hungry he
was.
“Aunt
Vara, I do have some questions. There were some things I was
wondering about after you and Urho told your stories when we were
back home. I never had a chance to ask you about them at that time.”
“Then
that will be an good place for us to start,” she replied, “but we
are not going to talk about these things here, we have a special
place where will go for your lessons. Come on.”
She
got up and led Kiri out of the house and down a long log road to the
edge of the village. He saw that there was a circle there, but it was
not made of stone like the circle at home. It was made of tree
trunks, stripped of their branches. Just before they got to the
circle, there was a small round hut with an animal skin covering the
low doorway. She crawled inside and Kiri followed. The inside of the
hut was a single room with a fire burning at the centre. Sheepskin
cushions surround the fire, but there was nothing else in the hut
save for a pile of logs for the fire, and the fire was the only
light. They sat down and Kiri started to speak.
“When
you and Urho told your stories about the Great Serpent, he said that
the reindeer found the Great Serpent in a cave in the forest, and you
said that the hunter found the Great Serpent in a cave beneath the
sea. Later, the Great Serpent came to the wise woman in a dream.
There are some things that I don’t understand: if the Great Serpent
is in the forest, how can he also be beneath the sea? Also, if the
Great Serpent visited the wise woman in a dream, why did the reindeer
and the hunter have to go somewhere to find him? Couldn’t they have
seen him in their dream? Did the reindeer and the hunter really go to
the Great Serpent? After all, they both woke up somewhere else
afterward. Were they dreaming too, just like the wise woman?”
Vara
smiled, and thought for a few moments.
“If
you have never met the Great Serpent before, you have to go on a
journey first. After that first time, the Great Serpent will come to
you.”
“But
Aunt Vara, the Great Serpent came to me in a dream, just like the
wise woman. I never went on a journey to find the Great Serpent.”
“But
you did Kiri, you went on the long Night Journey, from your home to
here, in the Danai boat.”
“But,
Aunt Vara, surely the Great Serpent does not visit everyone the goes
on a journey, what about everyone else on the boat. Did the Great
Serpent also visit you on that night?”
Vara
thought for while.
“Your
journey was very special. Before you left your home you were a boy.
Now you are starting to be a man.”
Kiri
thought of Kala.
“But
you came here to be with Urho, That is special, isn’t it?”
“Yes
it is Kiri, but it is special in a different way. I am still the same
person as before I left. True, I am now with Urho, and I am now your
tutor, but all of these things are part of what I was before. I could
see the signs appearing that told me that you were ready for your
special journey. What you were before was starting to wear on you,
you were dissatisfied with life at home. You were starting to realize
your destiny. All the Danai sailors had made those night journeys
many times. It was not special for them in the way it was for you.
“It
is important for you to understand that when anyone goes on a journey
to visit the Great Serpent, it is the place of departure that is
important. The Great Serpent can be found anywhere, everywhere. Where
that place is depends on where the seeker starts from. You cannot
really see the place where the Great Serpent resides, because the
Great Serpent lives in the place beyond all places, at the very edge
of the Oneness. It is the point where the Oneness meets the world.”
Kiri
suddenly felt very big. It was not big like being grown up; it was
big in size. He felt himself filling the small hut, and then he saw
the whole village as if he was a bird flying above it.
“Aunt
Vara! This is what you meant back home when you said the centre of
our circle was the same as the centre of the Danai circle out here,
isn’t it? The centre of the circle is the edge of the Oneness. It
is that quiet place. It is where you can meet the Great Serpent when
you need to!”
He
could feel tears filling his eyes. He remembered the tears that
appeared in the Danai sailor’s eyes when he was hearing the magic
of Samo’s flute back in their own village.
Vara
stood up.
“You
have finished your lessons for today Kiri. You need time to
experience what you have discovered here. It would be wrong to try to
do more today. I am very proud of you Kiri. I never thought that you
would learn so fast.”
“Can’t
we go on Aunt Vara, I want to learn more.”
“Tomorrow,
Kiri, tomorrow. Now run along and find Kala. Enjoy the rest of your
day. Meet some more people. I have to enter the circle for a while.”
Kiri
said goodbye to his aunt and left the hut. He started walking back
down the log road to the house, but his mind was still full of what
had just happened. He found himself at the other edge of the village,
at the big log road that followed the village wall, and he realized
that he must have walked right by the house without noticing. He
decided that he would find Kala later, and follow the road right
round the village. He was thinking too much to have to talk to
anyone, not even Kala.
This
was all very well, but as he walked around, a number of Danai
villagers would call to him by name and introduce themselves. He
thought that he was doing just what his aunt had told him to do. He
was meeting people. It was obvious that he was not going to get much
time alone, and he didn’t feel confident enough to leave the
village and wander into the forest, so he decided that he should go
back to the house and find Kala. His feeling of bigness was starting
to fade more and more as he was brought back to earth by all of the
pleasantries he was exchanging with the villagers. He smiled to
himself. Perhaps Kala was one of the few villagers that he had not
spoken to in the last little while. He felt pleased, though, that
everyone was making him feel so welcome. He remembered his long walks
about his home village. He always felt invisible to everyone back
there. If anyone called out to him, it was to ask him to do
something, or to stop doing something else. Here, in this strange
village, he felt important. Perhaps, one day, he would be invisible
here too, but he was going to enjoy the feeling of belonging while it
lasted.
He
did not hurry back to the house, but walked slowly, sometimes turning
a corner on to a new road for a while, and then coming back to the
road that he knew. This village was much bigger than his own village.
He thought that it must have been a lot of work to cut it all out of
the forest, and perhaps there were not as many villages in this area
as there were back in his homeland. Perhaps this village was like an
island in the sea of forest around it. He asked about that from the
next person that greeted him, a man called Sokol.
“The
next village is a long way away” Sokol told him. “You can get
there through the forest on the old trail, but most people go there
by boat. It takes half the day.”
At
length, Kiri arrived back at the house, and Kala was waiting for him
by the fire.
“There
you are!” she said, “I thought you had got lost. I saw Vara quite
a while ago, and she said that she had sent you off to find me. I told
lots of people where I was going. Did no one tell you?”
“I’m
sorry Kala, I had to think about things so I went for a walk around
the village first.”
“I
was going to show you the village, Kiri.”
She
seemed a little disappointed.
“Oh
I didn’t see much of the village Kala. It’s just that my lessons
were on my mind, and there were things that I wanted to get clear
before I came to see you. I didn’t want to seem rude because I
couldn’t stop thinking about what Aunt Vara had taught me. He gave
her a hug.
“Can
we go and see the forest? I have never walked in a forest before. Is
it safe?”
She
laughed.
“Of
course it is safe! Yes, we can do that. I like the forest and I know
it very well. I have never met anyone that has never been in a forest
before, don’t you have a forest back where you lived before?”
“Yes,
but it was dangerous, and many people never came back out of it.”
“Why?”
“I
don’t know”
“When
someone vanished, didn’t anyone have any ideas about what had
happened to them?”
“I
never heard of anyone going into the forest, so I don’t know. The
hunters would go to the edge of it, but not inside.”
Kala
laughed.
“I
think they were all being silly,” she said.
Kiri
felt himself getting a little annoyed, but he wondered if perhaps she
was right. She was not afraid of the forest. He would be the same.
“Let’s
go and look at it Kala.”
John's Coydog Community page
Just finished the chapter. I see Kiri has started his special training where he will learn about the Oneness and the Great Serpant. What will he learn?
ReplyDeleteWell, as John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans". Experience teaches, too.
DeleteI just discovered that when you save a blog draft, Blogger sets the date. I uploaded it really early this morning and then noticed it had yesterday's date because that is when I last saved it. I've now changed the date to today's. I also see that I can set the publication date for any previously written posts, click on "publish" and they will appear on that day. That's handy. I can prepare a few posts and then do something else or go on a vacation for a while.