Professor Adam Johnson
4/14/13
Narrative and Narrative Theory
Fire Side Song
I sat cross-legged in front of the fire on a cold winter
night, holding my small hands up to the flames. They were a child’s hands.
Hands that I had grown into the calloused hands of a man. Across from me, on
the other side of the fire, sat my grandmother. Her face had long wrinkle lines
on her cheeks and forehead, but in the fire I could see her eyes glowing. They
were almost black except for the glimmer of the fire. She wore a bearskin cloak
around her frail body to protect her from the cold. The fur was brown and soft,
making her blend in with the trees. I pulled my own cloak close to me, a
similar garment made up of several rabbit furs strung together with sinew.
Grandmother had made it for my father when he was my age.
“Do you want to hear a story, little one?” asked my
grandmother. When I nodded, she motioned for me to come and sit next to her. I
crawled over to her and sat cradled in her lap, leaning my head back and
letting the soft fur of the cloak brush against my head.
“I’ll tell you about how our village came to be hear, in the
time of the great beasts.”
When the world was young, long before man walked on it, the
great creatures of the world were given the land we live on by Creator. For
longer than we can imagine, the animals had feuded with one another, unable to
agree on how to live. Eventually, they destroyed their homeland with war.
Thousands were lost, sunken into the earth where they would be woven back into
the fabric of time. When Creator returned from deep among the stars, he saw the
destruction that the great animals had caused. Saddened by the deaths of so
many innocents, Creator wanted to end the suffering of the remaining few
animals.
In his wisdom, Creator sought to bring the animals back
together, rather than kill them. Instead, Creator gave the animals a new world
with which to live in, exiling them from their beautiful home world. After
ending the war with his appearance, Creator took the bodies of the fallen
animals and cast them into the earth of this new world. After several moons had
come and passed, man emerged from the earth into the light of day. Creator
charged the great animals with protecting man and teaching him how to survive.
Although the animals could never agree on how best to rule their new subjects,
they were able to coexist without fighting or war because they had the best
interests of man at heart. Since he ended the war, no one has seen Creator
since, but many claim that he lives on in us and that we are an image of his
own flesh.
“So, he looks like us?” I asked, looking up at her face.
Grandmother smiled at me.
“You might be right, child, but no one alive knows.”
“Did the people who came before us know?” I pressed, waiting
intently for an answer. Grandmother was one of the oldest people in our village
and she remembered as far back as four generations.
“They might have,” she answered in a soothing voice. “I
suppose someone must have known him.”
“Do you think I will meet him one day?” The shadows seemed
to cast themselves toward us, gathering darkness around grandmother’s face. She
looked frightening and I turned my eyes back towards the fire. I felt the heat
on my face as her words trickled down.
“One thing is certain, child,” she replied in a stern tone, “We
will all meet Creator one day.”
“Grey Eagle,” interrupted a man from the village. The light
of the fire did not extend out to his face, but it sounded like Running Wolf,
our leader.
“Yes?” she asked informally.
“We found men scouting near the village, two white men.”
“Spaniards?”
“They bore no flag, eldest one, only the guns of the white
man.” I felt grandmother’s hands wrap around my waist and lift me out of her
lap. She sat me down on the ground and stood up.
“Go find your parents, little one,” she told me.
“What’s happening? Who’s here?” Grandmother’s tone was not
as soft as it had been during the story. I could see the pain in her eyes as
she looked away from me.
“I don’t know.”
That cliffhanger.
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