He loved his mother and he treated her with kindness.

He was far from perfect, though. He had two flaws. He was judgmental of the others who didn’t know what or who they were. And he was afraid of his own strength and power, so he seemed to lower himself and always gave in to others, never taking an initiative even when he saw an answer, even when they all saw his leadership abilities and powers. Yet when called on in school, he sometimes could not speak.

He was well acquainted with the ways of the other boys his age and even the young children were drinking beer and using drugs, whatever they could find, even hair spray. He saw them sitting in the doorways and behind the ramps. Or under the pier. They tried to hide their ways, staggering home, sometimes with paint on their faces. And they had knives. Sometimes they threw them in the ground to see how close they could come to someone’s foot. The person with the foot on the ground was not allowed to move.

And he who lived with his mother on the old Trophy was to go another way. The stakes were high, though. He would not have an education. He would have another destiny in the world. He could not change anyone. Neither could his mother. But she tried. And that was what counted.

He remembered the night he got up in the darkness and walked to the chair beside her bed and moved the lamp. “I don’t want to go away to live with the old people, but I know I am the one. I see it.”

“I know,” she said, taking his hand, already masculine, callused from helping her with their work.

The day he left, he remembered his grandmother telling about Lot’s wife looking back, and though he knew his mother watched them leave so silently in the water, he waved once and then he didn’t look back. He’d be looking back for years so it was a time to look forward. To what, he didn’t know, but looking he saw the great ocean and it was hard work for the men who took him away—well, not really away—but to. And so he took over and helped paddle to a world he was from and was returning to and he was silent.

On the day he went to live with the elders in the white houses on the other side of the large bay, the people were so happy to have him there. They talked to him in A’atsika until he began to understand and speak back. He observed. He had freedom to walk, to swim, to watch the mornings. He could see some of the land from there and think, My mother is setting out for the fish now. She is making coffee. He watched for her boat, named after him.

He also thought, Somewhere there is theory, the big bang, the telescopes, space explorers, the attempted understanding of intelligence. Somewhere else there are people who study the Forbidden City. And here there is knowledge of the water, the land, plants, astronomy, another language. It is time now to learn new words, songs, and plants.