Masterson Adao's Dance

a search for meaning and peace
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-68222-370-3
Verlag: JIG House
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Told with profound reflection and lyrical beauty, Adao's Dance captivates and inspires. This story, powerful in its narrative and insight, is about a prairie boy, Adao, who receives a dream with a holy man, hears a voice in the wind, and leaves his home to summit a mountain and receive renown. Adao passes into an unknown, dangerous, and supernatural world discovering both friends and enemies, acclaim and despair, while gaining wisdom about the heart and the desires within it. Adao's Dance probes the complexities of human achievement, acceptance, and love, while exploring the question, Where might one find true inner peace?

Autoren/Hrsg.

Masterson, Russ

Leseproben

10 In the morning we walked in the dew under a red sky, my heart burning as the source of the red rose higher. I thought about my exhalation the previous night and breathed in deeply of the cool air around us. It was the beginning of a new breath and a new way of life. Jadon rarely asked of these things, but I couldn’t help but think he knew I was walking through more than the hills. A meadow appeared before us, and our path ran parallel to a surging creek, which split the meadow in half and was lined with white-blooming mountain laurel. We walked for another two hours in the heat of the day, drinking most of our water, sweating most of it out, and entered into a canyon near the end of the hills. The canyon was twenty feet narrow and a hundred feet deep, with an aspen grove growing on the land above. It was dark, the air cooler, the ground moist. There was no foliage, no whimsy grass, no bursting blooms as there was in the light. No birds seen or heard but a strange eeriness in the confined loneliness of the canyon. “We need water, good friend,” Jadon said, holding our clear glass bottles upside down, not a drop falling to the earth. “There’s so much moisture down here, a source of water must be close.” We walked thirty minutes into the canyon, into the coolness and the narrow, into the shadows. Darkness formed behind rocks and at the base of the canyon walls. “Adao, there’s water. You can hear it. Come over here,” Jadon said, standing near a low opening in the canyon wall. “Lean in,” he said, pushing me farther into the cave. The opening in the canyon wall was low and wide, a pancake squeeze, perhaps ten feet long. We lay on our bellies, looking into the cave, toward the sound of rushing water. The dim light from behind and above us filtered into the small opening, revealing that the cave opened up into a cavern. “The water must be close, in there somewhere,” Jadon said. Flowing water. Fresh water. Water we needed. “There’s no assurance a better water source is ahead of us,” Jadon said, feeling my hesitancy. “I understand, but there’s no assurance we won’t be drinking in a den of snakes,” I said. “Or a trap, where the snakes imprison us in the cave by blocking the exit. But we need the water. We will die without it,” Jadon said. “We have no map of water sources, if there’s anything ahead. It’s another risk, another narrow field to run across, wondering if beasts will attack us. Let’s just get on with it. I didn’t vote to run across that field, not when we could’ve walked around, but this is a risk we have to take.” “Okay,” I said, pausing. “We do need the water.” My throat was dry and a headache was forming from dehydration. “Why don’t you go in for the water and I’ll guard the opening?” I said, hoping he would agree. “What if the snakes are at the bottom? What good will you be here?” Jadon asked. “But what if the snakes are up here?” I said. “I can fight them.” “Wouldn’t you rather fight them together, whether down there or up here?” “I guess we should take a weapon,” I said, untying the totem from my back, looking around for something that could do harm. “Rocks,” Jadon said. We stuffed our pockets full of small rocks and carried a glass bottle in our left hands and a large rock in our right. We lay flat on the ground, shimmying into the opening. The ground was cold, as was the rock ceiling a few inches above our heads. A hundred feet of rock suspended above me, I thought. I wiggled like a worm, using my knees and elbows as much as I could, inching along, eyes adjusting to the diminishing light. The rocks in my pockets pressed into my thighs, my back occasionally scraping against the ceiling above me. The ceiling disappeared and the cave opened into a voluminous room the size of the schoolhouse, with stalagmites rising and stalactites falling throughout it. We followed the sound of water, weaving in and out of the stalagmites and a few boulders, to the opposite side of the room, some forty feet. The noise of the creek became louder, and our eyes strained to see, but we both saw it – a void in the cave floor, into darkness. “This isn’t worth it, Jadon,” I said. “There’s too much risk, the snakes, the darkness.” “It’s worth it if we get water.” “We can’t descend it,” I said, eager to turn back. I looked into the darkness, waiting to see something move, anything move. “For water we can,” Jadon said. “You’re making it a big deal. It’s not. We’ve only been in here three or four minutes.” “We don’t even know how deep it is,” I said. Jadon reached into his pocket, pulled out a rock and dropped it into the darkness. We heard the tapping of rock on rock quickly. “See, it’s fine, maybe ten feet. It will be fine. I’ll just go down and get us water,” he said. “Are you going to jump?” I said. “I’ll go back for the rope,” he said. “You can stay here. It’ll only take me a few minutes to squirm back through the opening.” Jadon walked back toward the light. I stood, shifting my eyes between the dark spaces and the light, unable to see anything. I turned from the opening and looked into the darkness. There were shadows within the darkness, and the shadows moved and slithered. They surrounded me, and squeezed the breath from me. I opened my mouth but no sound came out. The snakes were upon me, predatorily, quiet as night, long as the aspens that rose above this wretched cave. The boulders blurred into one thick robust snake, winding through the rising rock formations, toward me, always toward me, hunting me, squeezing me, crushing me. “Good news,” Jadon said. His voice startled me. “There were no snakes out there,” he said. “You okay?” “Yeah, fine. Just thought I saw something,” I replied, pushing the words out. “You’re just imagining things,” he said. He tied the rope around a boulder and leaned his weight back on the rope. “Good,” he said. “That should hold.” Jadon took rocks out of his pockets and replaced them with our bottles. He grasped the rope with both hands and put his feet on the edge of the void, letting his weight out into the open space, lowering his midsection and walking his feet down the rock with precision, his legs parallel to the floor below. I sat on my knees at the edge of the drop and watched him disappear into darkness. “What’s down there?” I said, over the sound of the rushing water. “Don’t know. I can’t see anything. I can see you. Can you see me?” “No.” “Ah, I’m down. You can’t see me?” “No, Jadon. Hurry up, it’s creepy in here.” “Well, I see you fine, but I can’t see much down here. You really can’t see me? It’s loud, must be a big creek. If I yell you know there are snakes, and you come down here with some rocks.” He was quiet for a few seconds, and I could feel the snakes lying in wait. Get the water and get out of here. Jadon filled the bottles with fresh water and climbed his way back up. We untied and coiled the rope, making our way back to the opening. We unloaded all of our pockets of rocks and carefully held our prized water in our hands as we shimmied back through the pancake squeeze. “See, no snakes,” Jadon said, gloating. “It really wasn’t a big deal. I walked into a cave and found water.” “We walked into a cave and found water,” I added, as we stood and brushed the dirt from our shirts and pants. “Yes, sorry, we.” We each held our bottle of water out before us, admiring the clarity, raising it as one would an offering. I lifted the bottle to my lips, pressing the glass rim to my lower lip, the cool water flowing into my mouth and down my aching throat, exquisite refreshment to the dry places. We hoisted the totem on my back, and Jadon shouldered our bag. We walked out of the wide part of the canyon and back into the narrows. We walked for an hour, curving in and around, doubting our path but unwilling to turn back. I waited to hear from the voice in the wind and the wind gusted through the canyon several times, but I heard nothing, only the sound of shifting pebbles. I kept hearing something behind us. The wind, I told myself. And again, I heard it, a slight brushing noise. “Do you hear that?” I asked Jadon. “Yes. I was hoping I was imagining things,” he said. The noise became louder, so our speed increased until we were walking rapidly, then jogging. We kept looking back but could see nothing. The noise continued, always behind us, always keeping pace. Finally, we could stand it no more, and took off at a sprint, hoping to lose it. “It’s still coming!” Jadon gasped. “It’s just waiting for us to lose pace,” I said, and eventually we did. Spent and winded, my back raw from the totem, we slowed, and turned. Finally the beast came into view. He was low and stout like a lizard with two sets of short legs, but long like a snake, the length of three horses, slithery with scaly skin. He had a compact neck and head like a block, thick with a strong jaw. His tongue whisked in and out of his mouth. His red eyes never blinked and never turned from us. Jadon and I stood still, breathing heavily. We had no rocks in our pockets and none near us to throw. The...