“What if I make mistakes?”
“Everybody makes mistakes, Chief Red-Beard,” the old shaman told him. “That’s one of the ways we learn things—not the best way, perhaps, but it’s there if you need it.”
Chief White-Braid’s lodge was a bit rickety, but it had been there for a long time. Like all the lodges in the village of Lattash, it had been built with limber willow branches interlaced with limbs taken from evergreen trees. It had originally been constructed in the shape of a dome, but it was sagging quite noticeably now, and the limber willow branches were now brittle. Red-Beard saw some correspondences there. His uncle White-Braid sagged now and then, and he also seemed quite brittle. Red-Beard sighed. The thought of getting old was very depressing.
It was quite late, and Red-Beard was tired, but he forced himself to remain awake as he sat cross-legged beside his uncle’s pallet. Chief White-Braid appeared to be sleeping soundly, so Red-Beard’s vigil didn’t really seem to make much sense, but the presence of the elders of the tribe in White-Braid’s lodge obliged him to stay awake.
His mind seemed to wander, though, and he had to keep jerking it back to the business at hand. His eyes seemed sandy, and he really wanted to get some sleep.
The vigil in his uncle’s lodge was quite peculiar. It wasn’t as if White-Braid were dying, but the elders, one by one, had come unsummoned and had quietly seated themselves in the lodge without so much as saying a word.
Red-Beard was catching a strong odor of collusion here.
Then Chief White-Braid’s eyes opened.
“Did you sleep well, uncle?” Red-Beard asked him.
“Not really, my son. No matter how much I sleep, I seem to be tired all the time now. Things here in Lattash are not as they should be, and my sleep is much troubled. I am burdened with cares now, and it seems that I am no longer able to bear those cares.” He sat up, smiling faintly. “It had been my thought that sleep might allow me to set those cares aside and return to Lattash when it was a good and pleasant place in which to live, but it has not been so. The fire mountains hover always at the edge of my mind, even when I sleep.” He sighed and shook his head.
Then he straightened, and his voice became stronger and his eyes more alert. “I think it is time for a change, my son. What is old is going away, and what is new approaches fast, and I do not like what is new. Lattash is old, and I am old. It is my thought that you should be the new, and you should find some new place for the tribe to call its home.”
Red-Beard winced. He’d been hoping that this wouldn’t happen. “Longbow and I looked at a new place yesterday, uncle,” he ventured. “It’s not as pretty as Lattash, but I think it might be safer. There’s a stream there, but it moves sluggishly, since it comes down to the bay through rounded hills rather than tumbling down out of mountains. Longbow and I saw no signs of spring floods, which isn’t a bad thing. Some years the river that comes down out of the mountains here at Lattash is just a little too frisky. It’s a nice enough river I guess, but spring excites it too much. The hunting and fishing in the place Longbow and I found should be very good, and there’s much open land for planting.”
“It would seem that you have chosen wisely, my son. In time, the memories of Lattash will fade, I think, and the new village will make the tribe content.”
“There’s much promise there, uncle,” Red-Beard replied, glossing over the stiff winds that were likely to cause a few problems. “The best thing about it is probably those rounded hills. Mountains are pretty to look at, but they seem to get excited every so often, and they start belching fire.”
“I’ve noticed that myself, my son. Mountains are young, and they sometimes feel the need to show off. Rounded hills are older, and they have more sense.” Chief White-Braid rose to his feet. “It would seem that old is not as good as it was once,” he said to the tribal elders. “It is my thought that it might be best for the tribe if we were to look to young for leadership.”
The elders all nodded gravely.
“It is good that we all agree,” Chief White-Braid declared. “I will make one last suggestion, and then I will speak no more of this matter. Red-Beard is the son of my younger brother, who died many years ago. You all may have noticed that Red-Beard laughs often and finds life most enjoyable. It is my thought that he will laugh less often if we lay the burden of leadership on him.” There was not the slightest hint of a smile on the old chief’s face.
The tribal elders, however, were all grinning broadly.
Red-Beard wasn’t amused, though. No matter which way he’d turned, Longbow had been ahead of him.
Red-Beard moved about the village of Lattash the next morning, advising the men of the tribe that he and Longbow had found a suitable location for a new village. His status in the tribe had changed, of course, but he didn’t want to strut around waving it in everybody’s face. Most of the men of the tribe seemed to be very interested when he described the place, but there were those who voiced certain objections when he admitted that the new place would not be identical to the place where the tribe now dwelt. The notion of change seems very disturbing to some men. Red-Beard patiently kept reminding them about the distinct possibility that the fire mountains would spew forth more molten rock and engulf the village and everybody in it. The ones who objected responded with maybes: “Maybe the fire mountains will go back to sleep,” or “Maybe Zelana will come back and put out the fires,” or—the most absurd of all—“Maybe a good rainstorm will blow in and put out the fire.” The dimwits seemed to feel that if they talked about something long enough, the problem would go away.
Sometimes the objectors made Red-Beard want to scream.
“I think you might be going at it the wrong way, friend Red-Beard,” Longbow suggested along about noon. “Don’t ask; tell.”
“You lost me there, Longbow.”
“You never want to ask a fool for his opinion about a decision that’s already been made, because he’ll give you his opinion, and that usually takes the rest of the day.”
“I’m just a little new at this, friend Longbow,” Red-Beard reminded him. “I’m sort of feeling my way along right now. It doesn’t seem that it’d be polite to just bull my way around, giving everybody orders.”
“It doesn’t work that way, friend Red-Beard. You don’t have time to be polite. The growing season’s already started, so the women of your tribe should be planting. If the women don’t plant, nobody will eat when winter comes.”