The Spanish town yet burned on the morning of the second day, and DeathSong had not returned. RavenSong, Bruco, Healer and Three-Rivers—he being now a war prophet—held a meeting of chiefs. Healer wanted to quit the place, it now being ‘unhealthy’ and not good for body-healing. The warriors all also wished to return to their homes with their treasures, wives, new sons and daughters, and the horses. DeathSong and RavenSong had made certain that the horse houses called stables had not been burned. The Spanish had had so many fine horses that there was one for every warrior, and many additional ones for the hauling of treasure.

However, RavenSong would not permit a departure until the return of his war-brother. It was early morning when the people assembled before the Spanish House of Beginning called church. The men here each chose their wife and adopted a child according to who had slain the most Spaniards. This done, there remained nearly a hundred older women, smaller children, and even some old Spanish men who had been spared. These were adopted by Jay-Bear, and taken into the tribe known as The Sons of Fierce Woman. They would haul the food from the Spanish chief’s house.

This left only the Spanish priest, his altar boy, two Brown Robes called Dominicans and a Black Robe called Jesuit. According to the wishes of Three-Rivers they were permitted to keep their Catholic treasures and some barrels of food and wine. The only material treasures left were the goods to be found in the single canoe-house that still floated, and those things within the house of the slain Spanish chief.

The sail cloths were portioned out for use as shelters and many weapons were taken. The most amazing treasures were 12 boxes called chests filled with sun-tears called gold and moon-tears called silver, in the form of bars called ingots and ancestor tokens called coins. Bruco and Healer indicated that these were things much coveted by Whites, and constituted the very reason why Whites had come to Mother Earth and rubbed out the Big Town Peoples of Deep Summer called Aztec, Maya and Inca. The assembled people wanted nothing to do with this treasure. Although the tears of sun and moon were beautiful and imperishable and could be easily worked, these things attracted White People like a carcass draws flies. They turned to Three-Rivers and stood awaiting his counsel.

You must advise the best path for all of the peoples. Think; glide within to the Place of Repose among the Oneness…

He was a ghost floating among a vast chamber heaped with sun-tear images, fashioned exquisitely to honor the many and varied Aspects of Beginning and the ancestors of the weeping chief. The chief was not only a chief of chiefs but a holy man as well; no a prophet; no an eighth Aspect of Beginning! This chief kept looking at a mark on the wall on the inside of his stone house. Finally, servants laboring under the long knives of the Spanish piled sun-tear relics as high as the mark. This done, the chief sat proudly as his body was used like tinder to light a fire that melted the sun-tears. His ghost was driven from the inferno so he stood without, among mountain peaks far higher than the Smokey Grandfathers, so high their sides were scorched by the sun so that they were devoid of trees, their nakedness covered partially in snow…

When he opened his eyes they burned, and he looked up to see Healer was attending to him, taking the body signs used by Sunset healers to gauge the health of a person. Apparently Three-Rivers was not alive according to these crude indications of life, for Healer was very surprised and quite relieved when Three-Rivers returned from Oneness. He lay on the cold ground, from which Healer helped him rise with words of inquiry, “Three-Rivers, whatever has occurred physiologically and psychologically with your union with the capacitator, it has not cured your epilepsy or your autism—the autism admittedly being mild in your case. You are still having epileptic seizures; these apparently being amplified by your unique state-of-being. What troubles me more is that you have alternatively become catatonic and comatose at times that before would have merely been marked by stemming and disassociation. I have gone over the texts with you. You understand these things. I don’t think this is anything to mess with, and would like you to come back with me…”

This man is a veritable spring of banal concerns.

“Healer, my body is of no concern. Only enlightenment and the repose and ascension of souls are my concerns—I respect you immensely. I am One, I am fine.”

He then touched his palm to Healer’s palm and wished that Healer could hear his lungs expand and count the beating of his heart and note the pressure in his veins through this contact. Healer looked him in the eyes and slowly adopted the expression of the amazed.

Is that better my friend?

Healer spoke more to Angh than to Three-Rivers, though their eyes danced together. “His vitals are perfect and there appears to have been a marked increase in his lung capacity since this coma that he has just emerged from. The hyperactivity of course, appears to be unaffected.”

Healer stepped away and joined the circle of chiefs. Three-Rivers now took on the persona of Hated Hare-Lip, reached skyward as if pulling the clouds to him, and spoke firmly in the languages of the Southern Mountain Cousins, the Wild Goose Men and the Falling Waters, WideWaters and TideWaters, “The Beginner has shown me, that these dried and caked sun-tears and moon-tears were once the sacred images of Mother Earth People, taken by the Whites and melted into these sorry lumps with the very fat of the Sun-fire Chief to feed the fire. These lumps are profane, but their essence is sacred. I would ask the brave Southern Mountain Cousins, who live cradled within the bosom of Mother Earth to take these divine tears back to their homes and craft them in the Seven Aspects of Beginning, and also as totems, and keep them safe from the Whites for the AllPeople. RavenSong will you do this?”

The lean scarred chief nodded with conviction.

Three-Rivers was just hitting his stride as he spun to Jay-Bear. “Will the Sons of Fierce Woman continue to fight the Whiteman?”

Jay-Bear raised his twice-broken fist.

Three-Rivers then looked to all of them one at a time, “Friends, I will return again—I will know when my Mother weeps, and I will come to you my brothers and sisters…”

He then saw DeathSong carrying a broken Spanish warrior and trailed by a weary wife-of-many, and, according to the good luck of blessed medicine-men—and prophets—he latched onto this happening as a sign from The Beginner—we were all expecting him about this time. Quiet your science you doubting Sunset boy. Weave it, spin it, turn it into hope[‘ITALIC]—and flourished his pimp-cane as Gerald Hicks took the hint and did screeching back-flips on his shoulder, and then pointed it like the very Medicine Branch of Beginning at the ruthless warrior, “Behold, the Spear of the Sun; the Fury of the AllSpirit—yes, include all denominations, expand your fan-base as they say—I will call him to your side when next Mother Earth groans under the weight of the Whiteman’s greed!”

The warriors, even the wounded and maimed, cheered, and smiled, and began to hug one another, clasp hands and gather their many new people and things.

What was that?

That was Thunder-Boy!

No, those were the manipulative words of a thieving Sunset boy!

They liked it.

What is not to like when you tell people what they secretly wish to hear?

It was a necessary speech.

Necessary or not it was not very reverent.

Politics make demands on a prophet, even a reverent one…

He warmed when he saw Bluebird standing before him, dispossessed of his fury once again, and having acquired yet another woman to confuse his already addled mind.