His eyes see the crimson dresses of red all around him now and what hasn’t existed for a long time is there again, the constellations, the human portions of water, the rapid waves soothing the cells, oh, a new world, one of changes, full and potent, and when he looks back everything, everyone but the spirits has disappeared.

And he knows the others will come to them, that they know his decision, that they know what he said about the kind of people they were becoming. Cedar will be brought, feathers, even flowers in the canoes. The crimson dresses come closer until they stand around him in the water, flowing the way blood does.

Out in the water the men are silent.

In water he, Thomas, sees above his head the points of the sea shining, the frothing water. At death, he feels, but doesn’t see, all those moments of the past, beautiful and terrible. His senses are awake. He remembers even the unseen, the sweat of labor and love, the taste of the salmon from the river, hears the songs of the ocean, the loved ones singing, smells the garden in the first of spring, the green sprouts, he feels the cool taste of something he can’t name, the sweetness and the physicality of the bending and working in the rice fields.

STIRRINGS UNDERNEATH

Like the water, the earth, the universe, a story is forever unfolding. It floods and erupts. It births new worlds. It is circular as our planet and fluid as the words of the first people who came out from the ocean or out of the cave or down from the sky. Or those who came from a garden where rivers meet and whose god was a tempter to their fall, planning it into their creation along with all the rest.

The red dresses he saw may have been his own blood growing, blooming about him in the water. But if he was too far from shore to see the women with his human eyes, there are other ways of seeing. And when they hear there was an accident, the women dressed in red dresses with grass belts and woven earrings and hats sit down in the sand, dismayed that things had once again gone so wrong. So do the women in jeans and T-shirts. Ruth falls, sinks down, with her face against the sand, sand in her hair, weeping. “Oh, what will ever help us now?” says Wilma. “We are beyond it. How could this have happened? It’s like evil has been living with us.” Even the way they walk. Even the darkness around them. There is evil in the world. It takes the shape of humans. Who want something small. Who want to distinguish themselves. Who want power to make decisions. Who think they want to change things. Who want their own ends. It took the shape of the invaders. It took the shape of the whalers. The men who killed things here. The women who didn’t turn away from them. The women who fed them and didn’t say, We are your hearts. We are your conscience.