White Sky, Black Bird
Bodéwadmi Territory (Modern-Day Michigan)
Those precious few weeks between the arrival of Dr. Härkönen to the village and the beginning of winter were some of the happiest in the boys’ lives. Every day brought something new, and every day after was something to look forward to. The doctor kept his word, teaching the elders of the village and others who were interested about all sorts of things—medicine, science, but also of the world, of politics. He described great empires, Chinese and Ottoman and Mughal, of ancient civilizations, Greek and Roman and Egyptian. Eventually, most of the others in the village tired of his lessons, caring little for things that had no bearing on their own lives. The boys, however, were different. They hung on his every word, devoured every ounce of information he gave to them. So it was that after a week or two, the good doctor spent most of his time in the company of those two boys, lecturing them on any number of topics.
Sometimes, the lectures were more direct, especially when learning languages. Both of the boys were improving their English at a rapid rate, and were practically fluent in French by now. What had really helped was a foray into another language called Latin, allegedly spoken by the ancient peoples of Rome. It was similar to both French and English in more ways than one, and learning some of the Latin words helped the boys’ fundamental understanding of both languages. Between the two, though, Black Bird was the prodigy when it came to languages.
Each of them had their strengths—Black Bird was a natural at history, politics, theology, philosophy, rhetoric, and language. White Sky, on the other hand, excelled at physics, geometry, alchemy, algebra, botany, and morphology. It was their differences that made them such a formidable pair—the two always worked in tandem, cooperating to help each other understand topics that came more difficult to them.
Sometimes, however, and especially on the topics that required more than rote memorization to learn, the doctor would instruct them in a different way. It would take the shape of an open dialogue between them, in a series of questions and answers. The doctor said it was a method developed by an ancient Greek teacher named Socrates. The doctor himself was an incredible teacher, always using the boys’ own points of reference and connecting them to the concepts at hand.
“Tell me how your people think the world came to be,” he began his lecture today.
“I’ll explain it,” White Sky said, raising his hand. He always wanted to get the first word in when it came to explaining their people’s customs and cultures, his chest swelling with pride every time he did so.
“The world was created by Gitche Manitou,” he began. “Manitou is like… well, it’s something powerful inside you, an energy created by each living thing. Gitche then is the greatest of all of them, the Creator of everything. Gitche Manitou created the sun and the moon to be the Grandfather and Grandmother to the Mother Earth. Gitche Manitou filled Mother Earth with plants and animals, and finally, humans. We were the last to arrive on earth—Gitche Manitou put us all in a miigis shell, and lowered us to earth. We are Anishinaabe—it means ‘the men from whence lowered’, meaning we were the original people, the first Gitche Manitou created.”
“What’s a miigis shell?” Härkönen replied. “I’ve never heard of the term.”
“It’s like a small shell, that… hm… well, it’s hard to describe.”
White Sky turned to Black Bird.
“How would you describe a miigis shell to someone who’s never seen it?”
Black Bird scratched his head.
“Hm… I don’t know. That’s tough. It’d be easier to draw it, I think.”
The doctor handed him a piece of paper and a small stick of charcoal. Black Bird was a talented artist, and drew a small, oblong shell in the shape of an egg, the middle of which was bisected by a long, narrow opening running from top to bottom. Each side of the opening was marked by small, tooth-like indents.
“This is what it looks like, basically,” he said. “The mouth is only on one side, and it’s got these small little teeth, like that. They’re usually brown and white, and pretty unique, as far as shells go.”
“Do you have one here?” The doctor said. “I’d very much like to see one.”
White Sky shook his head.
“They’re very rare,” he said. “They say you’ll have good luck for the rest of your life if you find one and hold on to it. Most of the ones we do have are owned by the Faith-Keepers.”
“Hm…” the doctor said, scratching his head. Clearly he was bothered by something, but he brushed it off. “Nevermind me. Apologies, White Sky. Continue your story.”
“So the people finally arrived on the earth,” White Sky said. “And things were fine for a while. But eventually humans began to fight, destroying things around them and killing each other. They needed guidance, so the Creator made Manaboash to teach them, but they didn’t listen.”
“You say that like it’s humanity’s fault,” Black Bird cut in. “Completely omitting the fact that Manaboash carried the reputation of being a trickster.”
“Not in the beginning,” White Sky shot back. “How can someone carry a reputation when they haven’t arrived on the earth yet? Be serious.”
“Slow down, boys,” Härkönen interrupted. “Who is Manaboash? Man? Woman? What?”
“Neither,” Black Bird said, like it was obvious. “Manaboash is a shapeshifter—they can take a variety of different forms. The Creator first sent them in the form of a large rabbit. Sometimes they’re a man, sometimes a woman, oftentimes an animal.”
The doctor nodded, apparently satisfied with that answer.
“Anyway,” White Sky said. “Manaboash tried to teach the Anishinaabeg, naming the animals and plants for them, but they didn’t want to listen to him, and continued fighting. Gitche Manitou became despondent at the state of the world, and so he decided to wash it all away in a massive flood. Manaboash was the only man to survive, and he floated atop a piece of driftwood. Sometimes, he would find an animal survivor, and he would let them take turns sitting on the driftwood, treading water while they rested on it. He made several animal friends this way, so that eventually, there were too many to rest on the driftwood. So Manaboash came up with a plan. ‘I’ll dive to the bottom of the waters,’ he said, ‘and bring back some dirt so we can make a new island to live on’. He dove down, but the waters were far too deep for him, and he surfaced with nothing. A few of the other animals volunteered to go after, because they were skilled divers—the crane, the grebe, even the turtle—but they couldn’t reach the bottom, either. And then, the muskrat spoke up. ‘I’ll try,’ he said.”
Black bird rolled his eyes. “This is his favorite part of the story.”
“Shut up,” White Sky shot back. “Anyway, all the other animals made fun of the muskrat for even thinking he could do it, because he was small, and not nearly as good at diving as the others. But the muskrat was determined, and he swam all the way down to the deepest depths of the sea, grabbing a fistful of land in his paw. The waters were terribly deep, though, so deep that he did not have the strength to make the journey back. With the last of his energy, he gripped the earth as tight as he could. By the time he had reached the surface, he was dead. But his sacrifice was not in vein, for he still had the earth clutched in his paw. Manaboash took it, and placed it on the turtle’s back, and it soon flourished into these lands, the ones we live on today.”
“Hm,” Dr. Härkönen said, scratching his chin. “Very well. Today, gentlemen, we are going to delve into the story of your creation, and break it down to its bare essentials. Let’s start with the story itself. Why do you think the story exists? Why do you think your parents and grandparents have passed it down for generations?”
Now the lecture had really begun. Härkönen would ask, the boys would answer, and both parts of this dialogue would both continue, and be analyzed themselves. Every question and every answer would be analyzed, picked apart, and critiqued, until the very meaning of the words they spoke came into question. It was, needless to say, the boys’ favorite part of all.
“To tell us about our history,” White Sky answered. “Everyone should know their history.”
“Mhm, mhm. Black Bird? What about you?”
Black Bird thought for a moment. He had found that the best way to get to the root of these conversations was to ignore the first answer he thought of, the one that sprung up subconsciously. What he tried to do instead was to search deeper, to take his first answer and flip it on its head, discovering the true meaning of it underneath.
“I don’t think it’s history,” Black Bird said. “Not exactly. But I also don’t think it’s completely fable. I think the stories are ways for elders to teach children in a way that interests them. Like, I don’t literally believe that a muskrat swam to the bottom of the sea and scooped up enough dirt to make an island, but when me and White Sky were children, his story resonated with us. White Sky used to be a lot smaller, and he was picked on by some of the other kids in the village, like the muskrat was, and we both wanted to be able to defy those odds anyway, like he did. On the other hand, I remember one winter when I was little, a traveling Faith-Keeper came to stay with my father. He recanted the prophecies to us over dinner, and I actually fell asleep because of how boring it was. My mother chewed me out something awful, but I think that’s the point. I cared about the stories of Manaboash because they were funny, and because they all had a lesson at the end.”
“The prophecies,” Härkönen mused. “Tell me about them.”
Black Bird and White Sky looked at each other. The Seven Fires of Prophecy, like all of the oldest and most revered of the Faith-Keeper teachings, were something sacred, and not something to be shared with outsiders.
“I can’t remember much,” Black Bird lied. “But we’re taught that we were visited by a series of prophets in ancient times, over a thousand years ago or more, who set us on the path that we have taken, and told us of what to come.”
“Have the prophecies come true?” Härkönen asked.
“All the ones so far,” White Sky butted in. “They’re chronological, so some haven’t had the chance to happen yet. They were what caused us to migrate from the east, leaving the Dawnland Folk, who we were once a part of. They were what told us to seek out the miigis shells, and led us to Turtle Island. They predicted you, by the way. White men. Some would come with the face of brotherhood, and some would come with the face of death. Sound familiar?”
“Fascinating,” the doctor said, reclining in his chair. “But let us not stray too far from the topic. The reason I asked about the prophecies is to see how they differed from the story of your creation. I assume, for example, that there are some differences between the stories around creation and the actual oral records of your people’s history?”
The boys thought for a second.
“Actually,” White Sky said. “I guess there are. I mean, in the story, Turtle Island is the only piece of land that survives the flood, which was placed upon the turtle’s back, but the prophecy is the one that told us to seek out Turtle Island in our journey away from the Dawn Lands.”
“And no one had ever seen miigis shells before we left,” Black Bird said. “We found the first, according to the elders, during our journey here. But how could that be true, if Gitche Manitou placed all of us in one big miigis shell when he lowered us to the earth?”
“Good. You are separating lore from fable. Lore is real, tangible history, passed down through oral record-keeping, or in your people’s case, I have heard your elders actually write it down, which keeps your lore better-preserved than the other tribes in the area. Fable, on the other hand, while often based on lore, and sometimes containing similar information, is condensed and shaped for narrative purposes, often to simplify information or convey moral lessons. While I would venture to say that a muskrat did not, in fact, dive to the bottom of the sea to bring back all this land, ultimately that is secondary in importance to what the muskrat represents. This will be our first topic of discussion.”
The doctor lit his pipe, and puffed on it thoughtfully.
“So let us start with the muskrat,” he said. “What do we think he represents? What is his role in the story?”
“An underdog,” White Sky said.
“A martyr,” Black Bird said.
“Two different answers, and yet both are correct. We shall examine each one, for both roles are intentional. The first role is the one we are first presented with: the underdog. For the muskrat is the last of all the animals to make the attempt, yes? Thus we see the attempts of the prior animals, the ones who would be more likely to succeed. Their failures frame our expectations. We know that the muskrat is a swimming animal, but that does not make him a diving animal. One would never expect the muskrat to dive deeper than a grebe or a turtle. So therefore, by showcasing all the other attempts first, we are more likely to assume, as the other animals did, that the muskrat’s attempt would be completely futile. In fact the narrative goes so far as to have the other animals. Now why do we think that part is important?”
“It teaches us to not make judgments about other people,” White Sky said. “That when someone says they aim to do something, we should not laugh at them or put them down like the other animals did.”
“Black Bird?”
“I agree. I think it’s included for the lesson.”
“Ah, but there is another reason as well. It also conditions us to root for the muskrat, to hope he wins. If we were simply told that a muskrat swam down and got some dirt, that’s not all that remarkable. But because Manaboash and all the other animals failed first, his feat becomes miraculous.”
“Can I ask you a question, doctor?” Black Bird asked.
“Of course.”
“Do you think the story is just a child’s fable, and nothing more? Is that how you see the rest of our religion?”
“No. Religious mythoi are filled with allegories like these, and I for one, believe they are not meant to be taken literally. This does not mean, of course, that they are not useful. For example, when I was a boy, I was taught that there were two humans in the beginning: Adam and Eve. They lived in a perfect place called the Garden of Eden, where there was no pain, or hunger, or suffering. There was just one rule—in the center of that garden, there was a tree, with enormous ripe fruit growing on its branches. God, the creator of everything, told Adam and Eve to never eat the fruit on that tree. One day, Eve was admiring the tree, when she saw a snake in its branches. The snake spoke to Eve, and told her to try the fruit. Eve said that it was forbidden, but the snake whispered in her ear, seducing her, telling her that she would gain great knowledge if she consumed it. Eve was persuaded, and cut the fruit and shared it with Adam. But they broke the cardinal rule, and thus were expelled from the Garden of Eden, leaving them and their descendants to forever suffer in the world. Now, many biblical scholars believe that this snake was more than a snake, and was an incarnation of Lucifer. You could consider him God’s evil counterpart. But what do I think? Do I believe that a real snake talked to one woman, and that each and every one of the millions of people on this earth suffer through life because of her decision? No. Nor do I think the snake was Lucifer, really. I think, instead, the snake is a representation of temptation, the kind that leads to sin. Greed. Hubris. Taboo. This is what the essence of that story is about, not snakes and fruit.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The doctor puffed on his pipe, and the boys eagerly awaited his next point.
“Now, where were we? Ah, yes, the muskrat. You pointed out another quality, Black Bird: his martyrdom. Why do you suppose that people venerate martyrs to such a degree?”
“Because they’ve made the ultimate sacrifice,” Black Bird said. “In our culture, we have Seven Teachings from the Grandfathers, seven values that make up our ethical core, I guess. One of them is Dabaadendiziwin. It means… well, I guess it’s hard to translate into French. But essentially it is to know yourself in relation to others, to have compassion for others in relation to yourself. Martyrdom is like Dabaadendiziwin to an extreme degree, which I suppose makes it an extreme virtue.”
“Good,” the doctor said. “Martyrdom is the ultimate selflessness, sacrificing one’s life for the good of others. But not only that, we also venerate martyrs because we don’t want their deaths to lack purpose. Dying is a frightening ordeal, especially at the hands of some
“Do the Christians venerate martyrs like we do?” asked White Sky. In response, the doctor began laughing so hard he fell out of his seat.
“Oh, forgive me,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “I don’t mean to make fun of your question, honestly—it’s just quite refreshing to have someone so unfamiliar with the faith. It just so happens, my dear pupil, that martyrdom forms the absolute core of Christian thought. Christ, whom the religion is named after, was a martyr, sent by his father, the Lord God, creator of all things, for the explicit purpose of martyring himself to absolve all of humanity for their sin. All throughout the history of Christianity, martyrs have been venerated—the ones persecuted by the Roman Emperor Nero, for example. Now that Christianity is large and powerful, organized into a central church, martyrs are given official status by one of the Christian groups as being holy and divine themselves, being given the title of saint.”
The doctor managed to regain his composure, standing back up and sitting back again.
“For example,” he continued, straightening his glasses. “I’m sure you have seen the Jesuit priests about these parts, yes? The Christians with dark robes that come trying to convert you? There was one in these parts many years back now by the name of Isaac Jogues. He went to live among the Hurons, you know, the ones who used to live on the peninsula right next to us, where we passed through on our way here. Well, as you might suspect from such a time and place, the village where he had set up a mission was beset upon by Iroquois, the Eastern Door tribe, if I remember correctly. They took Isaac captive, and tortured him mercilessly. Now, as you likely know, the Eastern Door folk tend to either torture their captives to death, or assimilate them into their villages. They did neither with Isaac, keeping him alive just to torture. They starved him, mutilated every part of his body, flogged and beat him. This lasted for a full year. Thankfully for Isaac, the Dutch who traded with the tribe learned of his capture, and bargained for his release. Upon escaping that hell, he returned to Europe, and traveled to the Vatican, which is the headquarters of the Catholic church. He spoke to the Pope, the highest figure in Catholic culture and the most powerful man in Europe. The Pope beheld Isaac in his current state, and the man’s deformities were so incredibly severe that he was declared a living martyr. Think about that—to be so disfigured, so unrecognizable as a living human, that you are declared to have sacrificed your life, despite the fact you’re still breathing. This is off topic for our discussion, but what do you suppose he did after that?”
The two boys thought long and hard, but neither of them could come up with an answer.
“He went back,” the doctor said. “After all that pain and suffering, he returned to the Iroquois. Of course, the question on everyone’s minds is: why? Why on earth would he return to no doubt face more of the tortures he had suffered so long already? The answer: martyrdom. Poor Isaac had been granted martyrdom without actually being martyred, at least in his eyes, and felt that after suffering all that only to survive defeated the purpose given to him by God. There’s a lesson there, I think, about the danger of adhering to ideals too fervently. For Christians, being a martyr is so sought after that its most zealous champions will willingly seek out death. And what happened to Mr. Jogues? Not two weeks after he arrived back in Mohawk territory, they buried a tomahawk in the back of his skull and dumped his body in the river. So what was the more deterministic event in determining his sacrifice? I think we can all agree that it was his original, and not his subsequent and rather unceremonious murder, that was more important in the grand scheme of things. Food for thought.”
“I have a question,” White Sky said. “And I know it’s off-topic, but I’m wondering now. You’ve been all around the world, right? Is there any place you’ve been where they despise martyrs rather than praise them? Or do all people you’ve met feel the same way about self-sacrifice?”
The doctor’s face lit up like a lamp.
“My dear boy, you are not off-topic,” he exclaimed. “For, in fact, this is the exact place I was heading with this whole lecture. You are asking about ethical universals, which is a fascinating topic of study. Let me give you an example: in the Christian Bible, there is a story in the book of Genesis. It says that there was a time of great debauchery and sin, when mankind had abandoned civility and ethics for hedonism and selfishness. God watched them kill each other, and became grief-stricken at how corrupt the world had become. He searched the world, and found one righteous man, named Noah. God told Noah that he was planning to flood the world, to erase man and his wickedness from the earth. With God’s warning, Noah built an enormous canoe to weather the flood, and took with him all manner of animals so that they would survive once the waters receded.”
He looked at White Sky with a wry smile. “Sound familiar?”
“You’re trying to proselytize to us,” White Sky accused. “This is exactly what those Jesuits did to the Island-Dwellers—they came in, drawing parallels between the Island faith and their own to help convert them. We’re not converting to Christianity, if that’s what this whole lecture is about.”
“Oh, please—I don’t expect you to abandon your faith for mine, or even particularly want you to. Make no mistake—though I am Christian, I don’t particularly care what you believe. In my mind, I know the truth—that truth is the divinity of the Lord God, and of Jesus Christ. Whether or not you are able to see and accept that is your problem, not mine. But no, the reason I bring this up is because of universals. Your flood story is almost the exact same as the one in Genesis, despite there having been no contact between Christians and your people before about a century or so, give or take. But both stories are thousands of years old, so neither of us could have borrowed it from each other. What’s more, this story is found elsewhere—in the Hindu texts of a distant land called India, for example, there are two stories. One is a story of a man named Manu, who was warned by a fish of an impending flood, and built a canoe to survive it. Another recounts a story of the god Vishnu commanding these heavenly beings called asura to take a mountain into the middle of the ocean. The asura were foolish and self-serving, and abandoned the mountain, letting it sink to the ocean floor. Vishnu took the form of a turtle, and swam to the bottom, collecting the mountain and placing it on his back. Isn’t that so similar to the story of Turtle Island? So too exist similar myths in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written work in the world. Why do we think this is?”
“Because there really was a flood,” White Sky exclaimed. “I mean, all these people from all over the world, all having the same story in their histories? It must mean it was a real occurrence, then. Doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps. What do you think, Black Bird?”
Black Bird sat there, eyes clouded over in thought. The two let him ponder it as long as he needed. It took many minutes, and the wigwam was silent for the first time in hours.
“Maybe it’s the opposite,” Black Bird said. “Like you said, doctor, maybe it’s not what the story says itself, but what it represents. Water is a powerful thing, in many different ways. It can heal and nurture, but also destroy, and wash away things, wipe them clean. If you have too little water, you starve, and die. But if you have too much, you drown, and die. Both extremes lead to ruin, and maybe because of that, the flood is metaphorical, caused by an abundance of people living in excess. There is something in all people around the world then, that at some point experienced that excess, a great corruption of their people, and witnessed a collapse caused by that lack of ethics. To fix the depravity, they might have needed to change things so drastically that it was like a flood came through and washed everything away, uprooting every tree and plant and leaving only seeds that would grow again, with new guidance.”
“Good,” Härkönen mused. “Good. Excellent answers from the both of you. And predictably, as it seems to be the case with all our seminars, you have found yourselves at opposite ends of the spectrum. What we have arrived at is a long-discussed conundrum with the concept of universals. There are shared qualities that many different things possess—if that is the case, then, what is the meaning of those shared qualities? Do those qualities exist outside the objects they attribute? Is that existence something meaningful? Let us explore.”
He took a piece of paper, drawing a crude rendering of what looked like a turtle on the back.
“All turtles that we know of possess shells to cover their backs, for example. Now, there are a great many other animals that have shells, but only turtles have turtle shells. And we can say with a certain degree of confidence that every turtle is born with a shell, which means that a turtle shell is an inseparable aspect of what makes a turtle a turtle, and not anything else. Plato believed that this, among other things, contributed to what he would call the Form of the turtle. He believed that everything had an idealized Form—plants, animals, objects, people. This Form was the absolute essence that determined the identity of any given thing. A turtle, then, is not actually a turtle, but a manifestation of the Form of turtleness, a quality unique to turtles that each of them embodies to varying degrees.”
“You’re starting to lose me,” White Sky said.
“That’s alright—we’ll go one step at a time. Picture, if you will, the inside of a cave. In the cave there are people sitting. They are chained to the floor, and cannot move—they have lived all their life like this. The only thing they can see is the wall of the cave in front of them. Behind them is a large fire, and in front of the fire are more people, who are invisible to the chained prisoners. The people behind them carry objects, which cast shadows on the wall from the light of the fire. The invisible ones say the name of each object as it casts its shadow. What then, do you think the response from the prisoners would be?”
“They would see the shadows as the objects themselves,” Black Bird replied. “Since it’s the only thing they’ve ever seen.”
“Correct. They understand a vase to not be a vase, but the shadow the vase casts on the wall. Yet, as we know, shadows are not representative of the objects that cast them—they can be too tall, or too thin, or any number of different distortions. Plato believed that everything we see and behold in this world is a mere shadow, a reflection of a true Form that exists beyond the confines of physical space. The shadows are not perfect, as shadows are, which is why we get different variations of the same thing.”
“Is he right?” White Sky asked. “I mean, are we just supposed to believe that nothing we hear or see around us is actually real?”
“It’s all a matter of perspective,” the doctor replied. “After all, how are supposed to prove with a degree of certainty whether or not everything we see, hear, or touch is represented correctly or not? What are they supposed to look like, if not what we perceive them as? It was this issue that caused Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, to contradict his master’s theory of Forms. He too believed that universals pointed to a Form, but that what we perceive that Form to be is a proper reflection of it, rather than a shadow of something more ideal, as Plato suggested. For example, one could study turtles in great detail, all the while becoming more acquainted with what ‘turtleness’ is, because the more similarities you notice between all the different turtles, the more you can identify its true Form. Those similarities, those universals, are what define the truth of what a turtle is, and thus, what is most universal is also the most true.”
The boys took a moment to take everything in, and rationalize it. This was the point in which their discussions became the most challenging, but that also meant it was the point in which they were at their most fascinating. After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, the doctor continued.
“Now, the problem of universals has traditionally been applied to generic, more mundane aspects of things, like color, shape, and size. But since we are on the topic, why not extend this line of thinking to cultures, systems of law and ethics, to mythologies and religions? Think back to the issue of the incredibly ubiquitous flood. There are, off the top of my head, two main ways in which you could explain this. The first is White Sky’s takeaway—that these stories are all based on a universal flood that all peoples on this earth experienced. You could also apply the theory of Forms, either Plato’s or Aristotle’s, in which you could say that there is an innate ‘floodness’ to the human psyche that causes us to perceive floods as bringers of both destruction and renewal, and thus write floods into legend to warn the younger generations against debauchery and excess, as Black Bird suggested. There are two further ways to interpret that as well, depending on whether or not ‘floodness’ is a fundamental true aspect of human nature, or whether it is simply a distorted fragment of something deeper beyond our perception.”
“But which one is the correct answer?” White Sky asked. He always struggled with the discussions that were more open-ended and vague—he wanted a solution to every problem, a finite and definitive answer to every question. “Which one do you believe, doctor?”
“That is an excellent question, and one I have been trying to solve for quite some time. It is, in fact, the ultimate question. What is humanity? Is there a universal Form or truth of us, that all peoples share, regardless of distance or cultural contact? Are all our faiths, our values, our codes of law, a mere imitation of some deeper existence that we have not attained? I doubt any of us will ever get a concrete answer, and my opinion on the subject seems to change all the time. For example, it changed today, as a result of this discussion.”
“What do you mean?”
A smile spread across the doctor’s face like a giddy child’s, and he grabbed the charcoal making another. It was a symbol, one that neither of them had seen before: 貝.
“This is the root character of the Chinese word for ‘money’,” he explained. Does it look familiar to either of you?”
The boys shook their heads. The doctor took the charcoal, and added two small tails onto the bottom of Black Bird’s rendering of a miigis shell.
“It looks the same,” Black Bird said, his eyes widening with the realization.
“Exactly. Chinese characters are originally based on drawings of things they represent. In this case, the character for ‘money’ is represented by a cowrie, what you two call miigis shells. Many Oriental cultures valued the cowrie highly, and used it as a form of currency before they began minting coins and other things. What’s fascinating to me is that, as far as I’m aware, cowries are not endemic to this area. They are found on the coasts of India and Africa, all the way across the Atlantic. How then, do you suppose your people found cowries during your westward migration?”
The boys sat in silence, trying to think of an answer. At the same time, both of them looked at each other, their eyes glistening with the light of epiphany, for they had reached the same conclusion.
“A flood,” Black Bird said. “If the world was flooded with water, sea creatures from all areas would coalesce into one great pool. And if the waters receded afterwards, it would leave behind things like shells in places they wouldn’t have been otherwise.”
“Precisely. Before today, I was leaning towards your conclusion, Black Bird. But if I am correct, if your miigis shells are indeed cowries, then I think that might lend a credence of great import to White Sky’s belief. Much to think about, boys. Much to think about.”
After their lesson, the boys would go into the nearby woods, looking for remnants of small game before the winter truly set in. Today, however, their plans changed, for by the time they had exited their wigwam, the ground was covered with the first snow of winter. It was just as well—this particular discussion had exhausted the boy’s minds, and they were already worried that they wouldn’t be alert enough to catch anything. So they abandoned their duties for the rest of the day, running out to play in the snow with the other boys in the village.
Once the sun set, they settled into the wigwam they shared together. White Sky’s parents stayed in one adjacent, and the doctor slept in the elder’s longhouse, per his agreement with them, which meant the space was for the two of them, and them alone. They couldn’t have asked for better luck than to have this wigwam be empty for them, for if they slept in the one next to them, White Sky’s mother would have gone into a fit of rage to keep them quiet. They always talked, far into the night, even on this one, with their minds and bodies exhausted from the day.
“I want to go to China one day, I think,” White Sky said as the two stared at the ceiling together. “If the doctor’s right, I want to see their miigis shells for myself.”
“How will you manage that?” Black Bird laughed. “Will you sail around the whole world just to look at some little white shells?”
“Why not? Once we become rich enough from trading, we’ll be able to go anywhere we want. Where would you want to go, if you were to leave these lands?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never really thought about it. You know, growing up, I thought Turtle Island was all there was. Even though I knew the white men were here, I never really thought about where they came from, or what that meant. I still find it hard to picture just how big the world is. Do you think anyone’s seen it all?”
“We’ll have to ask the doctor—if anyone has, he’ll know it. And if anyone hasn’t, we’ll be the first to do it.”
“Will we now? I suppose you’re dragging me along for this grand expedition.”
“Of course. You wouldn’t have me go alone, would you?”
“Ha. We would have no time to marry, or to have kids, not with all that traveling.”
“That’s fine by me. I don’t want to settle down with a woman and child—too boring. Not when there’s so much out there to see.”
“Yeah. I want to see the Vatican the doctor was talking about. And all the other churches and cathedrals, like the one in Italy, with the paintings of the heavens on its ceiling.”
“Do you really think he doesn’t care about our faith?” White Sky asked. “He said he didn’t, but I’ve never met a Christian who wasn’t ultimately trying to sway you to their side.”
“I’m not sure,” Black Sky said. “Everyone has different perspectives, I guess. The doctor said he knows his religion to be the one true one, and so he isn’t bothered by non-believers, because it’s their choice to not see the truth. But the Island-Dwellers believed the opposite. They thought that whatever you believed became real for you, because it was your truth, and that was what mattered. If you believe in the Christian heaven, that’s where you went, and if you believe in another afterlife, that’s where you go instead. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
A silence fell in the wigwam.
“You know a lot about the Island-Dwellers, brother.”
White Sky looked over at Black Bird, trying to glean anything from him. But his friend just kept his eyes on the ceiling, on the distant night sky through the smoke-hole.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess I do.”