The Legend of Tyoga Weathersby by H L Grandin Page A

there was no turnin’ him around.” Tears filling her eyes, she gazed off into the blackness of the forest as a smiled creased her lips. “He stayed up all night with that snake. Moving it closer to the fire when he though it was getting cold, and pulling it back when the coals got too hot. He was determined that that snake was going to survive.” She choked when the tears began to flow more readily. “I knew better. I should have thrown that snake into the fire and killed it myself. But I didn’t. Now I have to live the rest of my life knowing that I could have done something to save …” She stopped speaking and dried her eyes with her apron.
    Tyoga picked the harness up off of the ground. Silently, he began working the awl through one of the leather side stays.
    Emma picked up her basket, and turned to go into the house.
    Before she could take a step, he reached out and gently grabbed her wrist. “Mama, it wasn’t your fault, you know.”
    “Tyoga, water moccasins are dangerous snakes,” she replied with a hint of annoyance in her tone. “He was just a child. It’s a parent’s job to protect and defend their children. I knew better. He didn’t. If I had only … My baby boy—your brother—would be alive and with us today.”
    Tyoga placed the harness at his feet again, and stood up. He stepped in front of his mother so that she was looking into his eyes.
    “Ma, there isn’t anything that you could have done to change the course of events. I saw you get out grandma’s doctorin’ tools and watched you cut the X’s over the fang marks, and try to suck out the poison even though you knew that it was too late. I even watched you open his arm with the razor when his skin began to split because of the swelling. There wasn’t anything more you could have done. Ma, the real point is that water moccasins aren’t dangerous. Snakes don’t take into account good will or bad intent. They react not by design, but in the only way that they can.”
    “Ty, Davey never hurt the snake, he took care of it and protected it.”
    “But, Mama, he did hurt the snake. He harmed it in the worst possible way. He put it in that hog’s head, and placed it on the shelf.”
    When she didn’t understand, he continued, “You can’t lock nature in a crate or a box, Mama. You can’t place it in a barn or behind a fence. You see all of this?” He waved his arm to indicate the acreage that he and his father had plowed and manicured. “This isn’t real. This isn’t what matters. It doesn’t belong to us any more than the trees and the dirt and the rain. In time, it will all be gone—consumed by what really matters.”
    While she was a bright, educated, inquisitive woman, Emma was a Weathersby by marriage. She couldn’t hope to be awakened. She would never know the promise.
    Tyoga turned away from his mother and faced the west. It was mid-afternoon, but already the warmth of the sun had been blocked by the peak of Polish’d Mountain. He closed his eyes and opened his heart to the whisper of the promise.
    Standing behind her son, Emma noticed, perhaps for the first time, his broad shoulders and well-defined waist. Mature beyond his years, and wise in ways that hadn’t been apparent before his encounter with the Runion wolves, he was growing into a fine young man.
    She watched as her son’s breathing slowed and deepened. She stepped away when she noticed the swelling in his upper arms, and the back-panel of his leather vest tighten across his shoulders. When he turned to face her once again, she raised her right hand to her lips, stepped back and gasped nearly inaudibly.
    The gentle hazel swirl of his eyes that she was so used to seeing was gone. The emerald hue that pacified his gaze had been stripped away. In spite of that, she recognized her son beyond the amber hues that had taken the place of his eyes.
    “Ma, the truths that you cannot see are hidden from you for a reason. They are concealed from most men, because to