He woke to the dripping of rain on his forehead. The drops came slowly, two at a time, splashing his wide sun-wrinkled forehead. He opened his eyes and realized that he lay in the snow. Many fires illuminated this sorrowful night. He did not stop to consider the doings of the men around him. He looked instead toward the light blue OverSky hanging over the darkened EarthSky.

Above this nighted land smiled Old Mother Moon, showing her gums in her joy at the coming of many to her empty house. She smiled down to a figure that stood over him. He risked a side-ways glance and saw the pitiless son of Old Mother Moon, Sun Warrior, Guide of Souls—but he was no guide; just a harvester. In this world he had named this being himself. He was DeathSong the Punishment of Beginning; a scourge let loose by man upon man. He could not dwell for long upon this puny war-consumed soul, for, in the light blue OverSky above, between the war-darkened EarthSky and the black Void of Beginning sparkling with its imperishable stars, he saw him.

His ghost’s heart pounded one great greeting in his cavernous old chest as he reclined, eyes on the crying face of a handsome youth, a youth of the AllPeople that had the eyes of the wolf-man he had tamed ages ago. How could he not see the shining spirit of that birth-maimed infant; the infant that even then held the power to banish despair; whose own mother followed the babe like a disciple until her untimely end. How could he not feel joy at the sight of his beautiful boy, living now in such a well-shaped form?

His son sat upon a stream of deep-river blue looking down upon one of his small forest friends; the squirrels that he loved so. The dying squirrel was dressed like a Whiteman but painted for war like a Civilized Person. He saw then, that though his son’s tears splashed upon his ancient face, his youthful hands reached for the squirrel in despair, even as his mother had once reached out in despair at his twisted little form at birth.

It seemed ages since he last walked, even among the ghosts. He could not, however, resist the call of his son’s sorrow. He sat up, sounding like the creaking branch of an elder oak in an autumn gale. He looked down at aged hands gnarled like the roots of a river-bank maple. As he stood to tower above the short killer at his side he felt his hair fall upon and beyond his shoulders.

My, it has grown so long, and whiter even than snow. You are far beyond old age Wondering Wanderer.

He would require his canoe—and there it was, hovering just above the blood-soaked snows. He sat within his white canoe. It occurred to him that he had no faceless men to guide him, and would need to paddle himself. With that thought the paddle was there, of pure white petrified birch, between his great ghost-talons.

He then picked up the squirrel and placed him within the canoe. The blue-sky-river poured down out of heaven and he began rowing through the darkness to its falls. Then came the white waters—no not waters, but souls—churning up against his pure canoe. He did what must be done and drew them one at a time into his canoe. Though the canoe was no larger than he there was room for all as he hauled them in their many hands of hands within its comforting shell. They had perished in fear, anger, dread, terror, hope, bitterness and grace.

Some beseeched the Un-ravished White Mother of He-Who-Makes-Rivers. Others cursed The Beginner. Some called for their grandfathers, some for their mothers. Many simply pleaded with him to guide them along the River of Ghosts, to bring them to the RiverSky Falls at the foot of the Starlit Path. Once there, he had no doubt, they would seek his hand for the climb above, for it was a climb that many souls feared, and his old hands were as many as required to assist the Returned on the path back to Beginning.

He looked up above into the dream-sky-eyes of his son and felt as whole as a ghost with unfinished observances and numberless regrets could feel.

Here I come my sweet boy. This paddle dips for you…