A TAIL OF NINE

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Uktena

Many-Stories and I don't make it back to the fire. Kanati finds us first.

After I get my answers, I'll be able to help Kon once I have the magic I'm supposed to, and together we'll take on what's coming next.

Kanati pauses like he's trying to figure out where we are, even though he knows every part of the woods. When he starts moving again, he adds, "I have had several dreams since you came to me."

I crouch down like I'm looking at a rock. "Did you have dreams or nightmares?"

"There is a difference?" Mystified, he eases down to become a murky mirror image of me.

"Well, yeah," I say. "Of course, there is."

He drums a finger across his chin. "What is it?"

"Ummm, yeah." Does he really not get that? "One's scary and one isn't. You know like ... foxes are animals but not all animals are foxes ... a cat is a cat. A dog is a dog. Both are animals, both have four legs, but they're not all the same."

You'd think I asked him some weird math problem or some kind of ancient riddle that has no answer.

"There are differences between each cat and each dog. What does it matter then whether a creature is a cat or a dog? They are their own entity, with their own differences." He drums a finger to the side of his head now, sending up more smoke rings. "A person, a spirit, a god, a dog, a cat, a bird ... another bird ..."

"Kanati, I was just saying--"

He holds up his hand to stop me and mumbles more about birds, rattling off names. He isn't saying stuff like blue jay, cardinal, crow. Instead, he calls them by specific names, you know, like my name's Jack or his is Kanati.

Suddenly, he asks, "When you greet another, do you introduce yourself as a person?"

"I don't need to," I say. "You can look at me and tell."

"Or that you are a man?"

"Well, they can kinda tell that."

"So you show them your penis?"

"My what? Whoah, Kanati--" I want to curl up and die. Right now.

"You have one, yes?"

"Well, yeah, but I don't need to wave it in people's faces!" My face turns beet red. "I thought we were talking about dreams --"

"I know what we were speaking of." Kanati stretches up so that he's about ten feet tall and his chest puffs out. "I have no trouble remembering things!"

"Sorry." I start to go into a long apology, but the simple I'm sorry seems good enough for him. He claps me on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock me over. After steadying myself, I add, "What were your dreams about?"

The word penis better not be anywhere in his answer.

"They were too disturbing to describe," Kanati says in a hushed whisper.

"Was it about me fighting some great evil?" When he shakes his head, I pop up with, "Your dream about me ... was there a fox in it? Did I have magic?"

"No. It was a dream, a premonition of significant meaning, about more than you and your fox." With his voice an ominous growl, he adds, "We end up where we are meant to, making the choices that we do."

"Do you mean Fate?"

Kanati frowns. "We go where we must. A fox chases and the rabbit runs."

After stubbing my toe on a stump hidden by vines, I weave through the rest of the brambles a bit more carefully. I wish I could pass through here the way I do the houses or that I was made of smoke like Kanati.