Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mana appeared to Nathan to be elderly. Her thin arms and legs were likewise hirsute. Her sagging thin breasts and stomach were the only parts of her body not covered in hair. Her face too featured a wiry beard along with thin silver hair above her upper lip. She had a wide deep generous smile surrounded by ageless wrinkles. She communicated to Nathan in a reassuring manner. Her voice was inaudible, yet Nathan clearly comprehended her,
“You have had quite a journey little one.” Mana studied Nathan’s countenance. She detected his worry like an explorer reading a map. Nathan stared at Mana hopelessly. She conveyed gentleness calming the child’s torment. “We will find your kind. Yes, we certainly will. You must first come with me to rest. You will need your strength. I will carry you to where I dwell.” Nathan was too physically and emotionally exhausted to protest. In such despair he surrendered to Mana.
Mana wrapped a long arm behind Nathan’s back as she lifted him with her other arm resting against his thighs. Mana seemed uncommonly strong. She gazed once again into Nathan’s eyes with her encouraging expression before she began loping. Her long strides continued along the path that Nathan had followed. They turned at a bend at the top of the slope that Nathan had moments before struggled to scale. Tall yellow grass swayed in the breeze in a field to their left. Mana left the path as her long strides sank deep into the waist-high grass. The golden grass willingly parted as Mana strode carrying Nathan in her arms. A narrower less-traveled path appeared as Mana cleared the field. Mana moved effortlessly over a ravine steadily descending away from the main path.
Drowsily Nathan murmured, “The lizardman said stay on the path.” Mana’s expression remained unchanged. She did not acknowledge the boy’s words. Soon he fell into a peaceful sleep as Mana continued on.
The full bright sun of a glorious day was exposed as Mana strolled. The roar of distant waves was heard as the landscape began to change. A bouquet of tall ancient trees emerged in the distance, palmettos and date palms along with sturdy Sequoias, blooming crape myrtles and sand pines. Mana left the path before it was engulfed by the long-grassed sand dunes. She traveled parallel to the sea before she arrived at the base of a colossal Sequoia. The tree had a gaping arc at the foot of its exposed roots. Mana ducked with her guest beneath the arc as she disappeared into the tree. Mana’s home was inside of the sequoia. There was a long bench supported by four sturdy trunks at the far end of the entrance. Crude wooden bowls littered a driftwood table. The bowls were filled with aromatic herbs. Bunches of dried wild flowers tied with vines hung from a branch burrowed into the Sequoia’s soft inner belly of bark. The sheltered area that Mana brought Nathan into was nearly twenty feet in circumference. The room’s ceiling rose conically until it was engulfed by darkness. Over countless years the mighty tree grew in such a fashion leaving a cave-like structure beneath its trunk. Mana had discovered the anomaly on one of her countless jaunts. There was no way of describing how old the tree was in this land where time was unaccounted for. Mana gently placed the sleeping child in a large nest woven with thin sinewy limbs in the shape of an egg. Nathan laid on a comfortable mattress produced from tall grass and moss. The nest had been prepared for Nathan with lavender, bergamot, orange blossoms and patchouli. The spices induced Nathan into a pleasant and peaceful dream. The distant sound of the waves beckoned him to an earlier time in his life.
The surf, above all else, dominated the boy’s awareness. His father prodded him to join him in the knee-high tide. Nathan lingered just out of reach of the ensuing waves. He cautiously approached his father as the wave retreated from the darkened moist sand. The next anticipated wave broke. The boy returned to the safety of the beach beyond the reach of the water. He pranced on the balls of his feet, leaving round imprints in the sunken sand. He repeated this cautious dance with the approaching waves over and over again. Each time the waves would fill the imprints in the sand, erasing their presence as if toying with the boy’s existence. The sun warmed the child just as the breeze cooled him. Back and forth he ran outdistancing the playful waves. Without indication one wave rose higher than the others and broke with such force that it covered the child’s ankles before he could outrace it. He immediately felt the cold ocean numbing his ankles. As quickly the wave retreated. The little boy’s heart raced with caution and excitement. “Come on little buddy. Join me out here,” his father urged. Nathan, growing bolder, moved towards his father. The next wave rushed upon him covering his calves. Again, the child retreated.
Children on either side of him reenacted the same ritual of hesitation and calculation. One older girl galloped aside Nathan veering off diagonally attacking the oncoming wave before she joyfully collapsed to the wave’s overwhelming force. Her unrestrained expression confirmed to Nathan the coldness of the water, yet she broke into a squeal of excitement as the wave retreated. On she moved until the tide reached her waist. Encouraged by her progress Nathan too eventually reached his father. He jumped into his father’s arms. His dad held him close to his chest distracting him with conversation as he slowly moved deeper into the surf. A seagull fighting against the breeze caught Nathan’s attention. The bird’s wings forcefully flapped against the steady breeze. The gull shifted her direction in the sky using the wind at her back as the gull spectacularly raced out to sea propelled by the force of the wind to her nest on a barrier island. The father and son had advanced to a depth where the water reached the father’s waist. Nathan lifted his legs squeezing his knees so that they embraced his father’s upper torso beyond the reach of the cold ocean water. The father looked lovingly at his son, holding him close to his chest before he collapsed to his knees bringing the ocean up to union of father and child. Nathan’s fingers dug into his father’s shoulders as his eyes grew big with the cool water’s swell. He studied his father’s gentle reassurance. The boy was safe as the sun smiled down on them.
When they returned from the water Nathan collapsed next to his mother. She smelled of coconut lotion as her hands reapplied the white sunblock to her child’s cool shoulders. She brushed the pasted sand from the back of his legs. His body was dimpled with goosebumps from the cold ocean and sea breeze. He cozied up to his mother’s warm body resting his head on her shoulder. She stroked his blonde curls with her fingers. The boy drowsily stared at the abyss of the cloudless sky shading the sun’s glare with his hand resting on his forehead. A solitary kite danced in the breeze. The white rectangular midsection of the kite separated its red crown from the split green and yellow tail. The conversation of other families was muffled by the orchestra of the surf and wind. Nathan stared at the brilliant blue heaven completely engrossed in nature’s tranquility. The kite climbed higher and higher as if attempting to break from the tension of the string that kept it anchored to its guiding hand far below. Nathan sighed deeply, satisfyingly. This was a day at the beach, the best day he ever remembered. He fell into sleep as his mother sang a familiar lullaby:
If I had a penny for every time you made me smile
I could place those pennies end-to-end for miles
I could stack those pennies into sky-high piles
If I had a penny for every time you made me smile.
When he awoke from his sleep Mana’s large ebony eyes and imprinted smile regarded the boy. He looked back at her curiously, knowingly. She seemed to be humming the tune of the lullaby.
“We can’t lay around. We have to find my cousins,” Nathan urged, his voice heightening with distress.
“Yes, we have a long journey today. You will learn that your rest was needed,” Nathan understood as Mana silently tilted her head.
“How long have I been asleep?” the boy demanded ignoring Mana’s advice.
Mana tightened her lips as her eyes looked upward in contemplation, “I do not understand your understanding of time.” She perceived that her response did not appease the boy’s distress. “You have seen when the stars appear in the dark sky,” Nathan nodded. “As the sky darkens more and more stars appear.”
“So?”
“Have you ever counted the stars?”
“There are way too many to count. What would be the point?”
“After you finished counting all the stars you would have a better sense of time. I have been here longer than some of those stars. Most of those stars have existed much longer than me,” Nathan regarded Mana in disbelief.
“I don’t know how long you rested.” Mana hesitated in order that Nathan could absorb her meaning, “As you expressed, ‘What would be the point?’”
Mana’s riddling explanation did not temper Nathan’s anxiety. “Mana,” the boy protested.
Mana, anticipating his concern replied, “Come now, we are wasting your sense of time.”
“No offense, but you just don’t get it,” Mana patiently looked at the protesting child. “I have come into this strange place with all these strange,” he hesitated to gather his thoughts, “with all these strange creatures like yourself and I have lost my cousins.”
“I understand.”
“No you don’t!” Nathan could not conceal his agitation, “We were sleeping one moment and then, Kyle, well he, he,” the child searched for the words to explain Kyle’s disappearance, “he was taken by a band of bats. One of those bats was huge and it had on this necklace.” Nathan reached into the pocket of his pajama shirt to show Mana Zeborg’s pendant. Mana studied the pendant and the chain that it was attached to. She seemed to recognize the embossed orb in the center of the pendant, but her expression remained unmoved. “Then there was Lizardman and those mean cats, no lions, well maybe bobcats, yea that’s it, do you know what a bobcat is?” Mana remained standing in the entrance-way of her dwelling inside of the sequoia, her thoughts, if she had any, were not shared with the boy. “Of course, you know what a bobcat is, this is your world and as you told me, well you didn’t actually tell me, but you let me know you’re really old. It’s okay, you seem to be trying to help me. Those bobcats were riding on some sort of,” he again searched for the word, “land dragon?” “Not the kind that flies, but these were like really big horses. Have you seen those too?” Nathan was exhausted from his explanation. “Well, what do you think about all that?”
Mana smiled pausing deliberately before her thoughts were translated to Nathan, “Little ones need to listen more and speak less.”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“Yes, we each do not understand. You explained to me that you were in a hurry to find your kind and then you delay that search by expressing your confusion. I don’t waste time in that way.”
“I’m just a kid in this strange place. You’re right I don’t understand. Those bobcats didn’t like me one bit and Lizardman fought them, he saved me you know, before he went over the cliff with the last bobcat clutching to him,” Mana could not conceal her concern at this announcement from the child. “I’m sorry did you know Lizardman?”
“There is much you need to learn and the best way for you to survive here and to find your kind is to remember that you are in a land where every other creature finds you strange,” Mana explained as she headed out of the security of the Sequoia, “Come, we have a long journey ahead of us.” Nathan hesitated. He attempted to protest Mana’s announcement, but he understood the futility of his defiance. He quickly ran to catch up with her. Once he gained pace with Mana he asked, “How long is a long journey?”
Mana’s reply was as fleeing as her stride, “That all depends on your sense of time.”