“So much boring chatter for one so deep. Of course, the iron atom will say only his name. Water too and even granite or glass. Because iron has only one note; water two, maybe three. But you, my friend, make the violin seem simple. You are a song of the gods in the mouth of a fool. You can’t help it. So much promise in one so weak attracts disease.”
Juan Thrombone sat again and smiled. We looked at each other, and even though my head had begun to ache from the words, which seemed to go directly into my mind, I asked, “Are you saying that blue light is a sickness? That one who sees the light is sick?”
“Sick?” Thrombone said, chuckling softly. “No. But weak as kittens in a cave full of stones. They feel mighty, but there is no strength in them. Only ambition and youth. They cannot hunt or mul-ti-ply. Only can they play like the big cat who has left the den carrying their milk in her udders.”
“What do you mean? Alacrity was born from Ordé and Addy.”
“First Light,” Thrombone’s eyes filled with fondness. “Her child is rare but no different from the rest. The next generation is coming, but not yet. Maybe never. Maybe not at all.”
By then I wanted to know everything that the little madman knew.
“So this isn’t what Ordé said?” I asked. “This isn’t the beginning of the change of the world?”
“It might be some kind of start,” he answered. “But this is story-time and not school.”
“But—” I started to say.
“I have answered your question, and now you need to ask another. Not about blue light, though. With that I am through.”
“Why didn’t you want us to come here?” Alacrity asked. “Why’d you send those butterflies to hurt us?”
“Because, little one, I was afraid. I was afraid that Death would sniff at you even here and come to kill the puppy trees as he did their big mama redwood. I was afraid and so I sent my butterflies to sting you with their love.” Juan Thrombone almost lost his benign smile for a moment. “But when you fought so hard and killed so many I” — He held his palm to his lips and sucked suddenly, pulling his hand away from his mouth. This caused the same thumping in the air that had rendered the butterflies, and me, unconscious. This sound, however, wasn’t as violent as the first — “so you wouldn’t kill all of my beautiful friends.”
“What did those butterflies do to the children?” Addy asked.
Thrombone smiled again, holding up the baby finger of his left hand to the point at his left eye.
“You mean to ask,” our odd host lectured, “what are those butterflies that they could do what they did? But the answer is no story. I made water every day in a clearing of rotten wood. In a year there were wild flowers everywhere. In another year there were butterflies. From butterfly to worm, and then from the worm rose the creatures that suckled on blue.”
Thrombone smiled to himself.
“Maybe it is a story,” he said.
Wanita asked, “Then why did you let us come if you was scared? Ain’t you scared no more?”
Thrombone was looking into Addy’s eyes at that moment. She stared back while running her finger down the healing wound on her face.
“I can hear people’s dreams also, Dreamer. I can hear all living things when they dream. Dogs and trees and fish and bears. I can speak to dreamers. I spoke to all of you. I knew in our talks that you were not bad — at least, not yet. And I was lonely, but that’s not why I let you pass.”
“Why then?” Wanita asked again.
“To sleep with you, Dreamer.”
“Say what?” That was me. “Hey, man, I know you livin’ up here with the bears and shit, but down the hill, in civilization, no matter if you got blue light or Thunderbird wine, men sleeping with little girls is just not happenin’.” I was angry and used street talk like a hapless frog puffing up his throat to bluff his way.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Juan said. If he was in any way intimidated, he hid it well. “You are right, of course. I’ve been up here so long that I forget how to talk. I don’t mean sex. I like sex. I want sex. But for Wanita, it is only her dreams I wish to share. I can hear dreams, but she — she can travel in them, she can see with them. Her dreams are the most beautiful I have ever seen.”
I was not convinced. I made up my mind right then to tuck Wanita in every night — and to sleep close by.
Bomp bomp bomp resounded in the air. Bomp de bomp. Bomp de bomp.
“It’s Reggie!” Alacrity cried.
The sound came closer and closer. Finally Reggie emerged from the woods with a big hollow log in his arms. He beat the drum with a thick branch.
Thrombone leaped up and so did Addy and the girls. They all danced and laughed happily. No one else seemed to feel that the world was falling apart. No one else seemed afraid of what might happen in the days to come.
I fed the fire while my friends and Juan Thrombone danced. Reggie beat his drum with an amazing ear for someone untrained. They were all wild and abandoned, but Alacrity was by far the most primal. Her movements were like nothing except maybe the flames I fed. She leaped and gesticulated, bounced and sang out. Her whiteness was fearful to see. Her intensity, I feared, was the future of the world.
The dancing went on for quite a while longer. Finally Addy tired, and Juan followed her back to the fire. Smiling and happy, they sat there next to me. I felt more lonely than ever.
“The trees are not only a wall of wood and root,” Juan was saying later on, after much honey wine, “but they sing a dull song I taught them. That song hides the puppy trees and you and me. They also call for people like you, First Light” — he was referring to Addy, he was holding her hand — “humans half dipped blue. I wanted them to come help me tend the trees and the forest.”
“Why would the trees need tending?” I asked. “It is a forest, isn’t it? The trees can get along on their own.”
“But these are special trees,” the little woodsman replied.
“What kind of special trees?”
Juan Thrombone turned his full attention upon me then. In his eyes I saw a vastness across which, I imagined, a strong wind blew. His smile didn’t seem relevant to the power in those eyes, but he smiled anyway and said, “There are two kinds of trees that are special. One because they can sing and the other because they roar.”
“What do you mean?”
“You heard a call, did you not?” he asked.
The storm in his gaze seemed to grow in power.
“That call,” he continued, “was from a thousand trees whose parents were white firs. I grafted them so they could sing so sweet and high. They sing like the wind, only higher. They sing like the sun before dawn.”
“The wind and the sun,” Addy said. “Are those the two kinds?”
“No, First Light,” Juan said gently. “The white firs sing of the sun and wind. And then there are the puppy trees.”