Anila and the Clan Heart

The sound of the dogs was reaching a level which would have scared off any wildlife for miles. It was past time to leave, but she couldn’t seem to tear herself away just yet. He looked so beautiful now, so peaceful. The power of true presence… it had given him a light that she didn’t always see in those last days. He had been rather deeply internal in those final moments, as if he knew the shift was about to occur. That wordless way in which we Know, the knowing which comes from the trance-like delta brain that happens when you are walking for so long. The mind no longer chatters, the heart rhythm and breath rhythm are all that is known and felt, and then flashes of insight or memory, and occasional flashes of Knowing come to you in those quiet moments, one foot in front of the other, almost numb now to the effort and pain it takes to keep moving. She wondered if he had one of those flashes of gnosis in those final weeks, because something in his demeanor had changed. He was not less resolved to move forward, but it was almost with a new found ease, perhaps a knowing this too would soon be over. And he was more quiet in his silence, almost too quiet. Maybe she, too, had known, and that’s why the silence hurt her so much.

But it was far from silent now, and she knew she had to go before the dogs really worked up a fervor and ruined their chances of finding any herds to hunt for the foreseeable future. God knows it was an act of divine providence to find anything else alive out here anyway, but they had been lucky before, finding that herd of elk that had somehow managed to work their way down through the snow to some remaining soil and grass. How they do it she would never know, for all of the clan’s digging had yielded nothing more than feet upon feet of packed snow. So much for global warming. The shift of the earth’s magnetic field had completely turned all of it on its head.

Looking over at her dogs, Anila was incredibly thankful to her own strange form of Knowing which had prompted her to gather a small pack of Husky Malamute mix dogs in her final years of the fifth sun. While everyone struggled with the increasing heat of the summers, she hid out at the waters with her dogs, and every winter she set herself to the task of learning and teaching her dogs to pull a sled. She pretended she did it for fun, of course, but she also knew, just in case. Just in case those visions were right. Just in case she wasn’t crazy.

Anila took one last longing look at her beloved Amaru, drank in his skin, his cheekbones, his curling hair which now lay so perfectly around him, almost like a halo of silver, as if the moon goddess herself had kissed him last night in that full moon glow, and now he would be carried on her light back to his home. She would let down her own silver hair and entwine it with his and pull his canoe along that great ocean Home, carried on the currents of tears and grief felt by his loved ones… by Anila…

Anila stopped herself. Now wasn’t the time to cry. She had cried enough. He’d aged, so much in the 20-some years they had been together. But he was still so young. It wasn’t right. But she had to keep going, and now everyone was ready and waiting.

Their clan wasn’t very big, but it was hers. It hadn’t always felt like her family. They had been a blended family, struggling along with the anger and venom of their boys who were broken in the divorces. And yet held together and healed by the balm of her lovely Lalita, that precious girl who won everyone’s heart. Now she was a woman herself, strong, loyal, and also grieving her precious father. The four boys waited with her, and their dear friends as well, those three men and sole woman whom happened to be closest to them when the snow began to fall. And my, did it fall. Had it not been so cold, unusually cold for March, it would have been a torrential monsoon flood, perhaps a flood like Noah’s flood, swallowing the earth in water. But instead, it snowed.

Anila wondered if there was ice on the ocean. If after that great snow, was there even water left on the ocean? Was there an ice bridge somewhere they would have to cross like last time? And why did she feel like she remembered being here before, in the last ice age? Perhaps past and future was just all collapsing into itself, and she really remembered the future. But how did it all end?

This was, to the best of her knowing, the sixth sun. The Hopi prophets and the Maya and others had spoken of it. The most advanced of them remembered not just the flood but four cataclysms, each sun ending in a different way. Of course, Father Sun had never really gone away, but something significant had happened between worlds. For what she believed was three days, everything seemed to stand still. There was darkness, complete darkness. Everything except the old analog clocks stopped working. The whole world fell to silence, and seemingly every living being fell into a collective reverie, a dream state within the darkness. She couldn’t imagine what others may have experienced, she only knew that for her, this was a more natural state she had long prepared for with her intensive meditation work. Within that dream scape, awarenesses came to her that surely were not just her own mind dreaming. She had known things, she had seen things, terrible and beautiful things, the knowing of all that was happening on the planet in those moments. Some minds became lost, lost to the void. Some survived, only to be eaten soon after by the bite of the cold, the raw unpreparedness of a culture caught off guard. Some began to fight bitter battles over remaining resources. Others worked together and did their best to survive. But she, and her clan, were prepared.

She knew, from her studies but also from her visions, that the earth’s poles had shifted. She knew that the movement of the ocean’s churning had slowed in some places. She knew that there was snow covering much of the earth. And she knew, she just knew, that there was still somewhere on this great earth that had living soil, life giving waters, and plant and animal life to sustain them. She knew there were small oases somewhere because that must be what was sustaining the herds. And she also knew that they must head south, or north perhaps it was now.

There was no more time to spend in mourning. She had mourned her whole life for what was to come. Now it was time to trust, to trust that knowing even when her mind at times called her crazy, as did her clan. It was time to put one foot in front of the other. And so she did.

Anila crouched down one last time to her beloved, and as she did, she noticed something she hadn’t thought of in a long time. Around his neck was a hammered copper wire which he had fashioned once in his artisan days. Hung upon the thick gauge wire was a copper pendant, a gift from Lalita for Father’s Day one year. “Take it” said a voice within her. Gently, she removed the necklace from him, carefully unwinding silver hair from it’s coils as she unwound it from his neck. His hair had once been copper… and small silver streaks just beginning to form when she met him. Oh to drink one of those moments in again…

With a shudder of grief, she gathered the necklace and carefully put it around her neck. It was so heavy! She took one last big breath with the sight of him, and she turned and walked away. Back to her people, back to her dogs, back to the one foot before the other.

They set camp that day like they always did. Digging a hole in the snow, which thankfully was not too deeply frozen this time of year, and building a quinzhee to huddle in a heap like dogs themselves. They were getting low on rations, and Anila knew they couldn’t last much longer on the meager amount of meat and pemmican they had left.

She fell into a deep sleep as the morning sun began to bite, and that day she had a powerful dream. In it, the locket was talking to her, and it told her to give it to her youngest son, Apu. She saw the copper wire of the necklace in his hands, and he was fashioning something out of it. Then she saw her dogs in their pile outside, and just beyond them and to the left, she saw a wisp of what looked like a tree…

She awoke with a start, and immediately rehashed what she had dreamed so she remembered. The sun was setting, and she woke everyone else as they groaned and stretched, not ready to walk again but knowing they must. She stepped out of the quinzhee and saw her dogs, just like in her dream. Beyond them and to the left, in the faint twilight, she saw a glimmer of light. Silently and without saying a word to the others, she grabbed her bow, and walked quietly and carefully on the snow. A few hundred meters beyond their camp, she paused. She looked again, and the light was brighter. She could almost make out the shape of a tree, branches stretching wide. Was it a mirage? She unfocused her eyes and again looked… branches of light stretching high… wait, those aren’t branches, they’re…antlers! With one swift movement she nocked an arrow, aimed, said a prayer, and released it into the void towards the spirit mirage of deer or elk. And then she ran. She ran as fast as she could in the direction of the arrow. She ran quite the distance, and when she arrived she saw the most beautiful sight. Her arrowhead perfectly pierced the heart of a gorgeous giant elk. As she approached though, she looked down and realized this elk did not look like an elk at all. It took her a moment to realize what she was actually seeing. It was a reindeer! I caribou! All the way down here? They must be at least halfway down the continental United States already.

She gathered the clan and they all process the meat and set up camp again to allow the meat to dry in the sun the next day. It was then that she went to her youngest, Apu, and gave him his fathers necklace.

In no time at all the boy began to fiddle with the necklace, and as she secretly watched from the side, she witnessed him begin to unwind the wire, and refashion it in a strange way. He began to play with the weight of the copper, and he string the pendant on the end of it almost as if a fisherman holding a fishing rod, fishing perhaps for love with this heart shaped bait. It was a strange sight to behold indeed, but even stranger still was when he began to follow the heart as it danced and waved around in the air, and off he wandered into the distance. It was then that she realized what she was witnessing. He had fashioned, from his father’s artistry, from the love of their daughter, from the heart of his clan, a strange and intricate dowsing rod. And it was guiding him somewhere.