ROAD OF THE PIASA

There were two or three women in the line with bare brown breasts that swung as they walked. Their hair was bound into pony tails that hung a long way down their backs. Behind them was the last man bringing up the rear. This person had very long, very wet hair and his skimpy garments were also wet! Could he have been the owner of the canoe who perhaps swam across the river to get back? They watched in stymied silence from their thicket as the little funerary procession vanished into the woods. They sat this way in disbelief for another forever, listening.

Laran, whispered now to Natia ever so quietly it was almost like lipsinking the words. "Stay here while I scout out the path to the beach and come back for you. Make sure we get out of here safe without running into any stragglers."

"Please hurry!" Natia answered also almost without sound. When he left skirting the path from inside the wood, she hung her head upside down and closed her eyes. She meditated this way trying hard to relax and existentialize that she was somewhere else. She rocked her body trying desperately to calm herself.

Suddenly from behind her thicket she heard a large thwack, followed by a shaking rustle. She gasped, with her hand on her heart, fully expecting to be discovered in that split second of terror! Into the air above her a mother deer and her fawn apparently also hiding, just behind her, sprang out together passing her hiding place in one leap. The extreme quiet must have made them sense they were safe. She held her heart, relieved now of the terror that passed and felt her heart pounding. She only hoped she had a good heart!

Laran appeared now from the main path motioning that he would go up a little in the opposite direction to make sure that they were truly safe.

"Be ready," he cuffed his words with one hand.

"Oh, please God, Natia prayed, I promise if we get back to the site I will never again be an adventurer! And I wished to go back in time? I want only to see the site again and dig into this time!"

Laran appeared motioning her out to the path.

A golden sliver of sunlight trickled through the inside corner of thatch work roof from the light outside of the realm of darkness. Except for this, pitch blackness surrounded her. Looking up toward the source of the narrow stream of light, one could see little, since the trickle of light did nothing but blind her eyes to the area around the opening and around her. She lay there not wanting to move, as though hiding in the safety of darkness under the opening.

For a few minutes, she felt in a state of almost semi-consciousness, unable to see anything but that solitary trickle of light outside the softness and warmth around her. Lulled from sleep she lay in the womb of darkness, focusing on the light above as a world outside, to which she knew she would finally have to emerge. Knowing that, she leaned back into the softness under the dark again. The crack was just the right size for her appetite for the world outside today. Safer to stay this way for awhile. She was afraid to become a part of the darkness by sitting up. So she lay below the world of the blackness looking up at the light as if to wonder what would happen next.

Not too far from her, she could hear rhythmic heavy breathing. She closed her eyes again, lulled and assured by the sound, and leaned back into the softness beneath her. Sleep overwhelmed her. She was wrapped in a blanket. She walked out of the light at the top of the opening and walked to the river where she opened the blanket that she was wrapped in and bathed in the water. Beams of light, like the crack of light in the roof above her, embraced her hand everywhere she touched her body to wash. Her body gleamed in the rays of light that reflected off of the water.

When she finished washing, she wrapped herself again in the blanket and lie down under the willows that hung over the river. The willows whooshed and bent over her bathed, wrapped body in a hush. Huuuusssshhh! Huuuussshhh! Huuuussshhh! They bowed and bent and dipped, sometimes touching her and sometimes fanning her with their fronds.

"Never leave the river. Never leave the river," They swished and bent reaching down at her, caressing her and soothing her. There was a clucking sound now on one side of her; like something cooing, soft and clucking steady strokes of reassurment.

"Nati, Nati," they whispered reaching down toward her. "Nati, Nati," Trees shaking her. "Nati," Someone shaking her. "Nati," Laran shaking her. Eyes fluttering in semi-darkness now as the room became lighter, she struggled to awaken.