Free Panther in the Sky by James Alexander Thom

Pocono.”
    “Good. Now I know you are going to ask me why Our Grandmother made the rattlesnake with poison, so I will answer before you ask. This she did so that we will be careful not to step on him. He has a privilege not to be stepped upon. But she also put a warning noise on him so that a careless person will not be bitten by mistake.”
    Tecumseh thought for a moment. “Then why,” he asked, “did not Our Grandmother put a warning noise on the poison ivy?”
    Chiksika shook his head, then laughed. “You!” he exclaimed, and popped him on the head with his fingertips.
    “Or on the copperhead snake?” Tecumseh kept on.
    “So you will have to stay alert and watch for things! And so there will be more for you to learn. Now.” He reached out and touched the jewelweed plant again, and he said in the voice he used when he was reaching the main point in a lesson, “You will see that wherever the poison leaves grow, nearby grow these that cure the poison. Everything in the world Our Grandmother created just so. For every evil spirit there is a good spirit. But one must learn everything, or these creations will do you no good. Do you see?”
    Tecumseh nodded. He rubbed a jewelweed leaf between his finger and thumb and felt its healing juice, and he thought how wise the Creator had been. He smiled at Chiksika, white teeth flashing in his coppery face. “Now what else?” he said.
    Chiksika laughed aloud. “More! More! My little brother wants to know everything before he is seven summers old!”
    “Yes! What about the mockingbird? When his funny noisesmade me laugh this morning, you said you would tell me about why he makes such funny talk.”
    “Ah. For this reason,” Chiksika said. “It is to guard the place where he lives. He learns the songs of many other birds. Then he sits near his home and makes himself sound like a forest full of birds. And so, when other birds come near his territory, they will think it is already crowded with too many birds and will go away.”
    “Ah! How smart he is!”
    “Oh, yes. Kokomthena made all the birds and animals smart in their ways, so they can get along. The birds are a people, just as we are, and the wolves are a people, and deer and bears. And all are smart in their ways. A great hunter is one who knows how the different races of animals are smart. If he knows this, then he can think like them and know where they will be at a time of the day. The Great Good Spirit made Kokomthena very wise, so that she could create smart and happy creatures on the world.”
    “Tell me about her little dog and the Skemotah.”
    Chiksika put his hand on Tecumseh’s shoulder and smiled. “It is like this. Kokomthena is always busy making something. She does not make people and animals anymore, because she finished them. But what she makes now is the Skemotah. She weaves on it every day, in her home near the moon. You tell me what the Skemotah is.”
    “It is a big basket, or like a seine.”
    “And is for what?”
    “When the world ends, she will fish for all the People. The good ones she will lift to heaven in the seine, and the bad ones will fall through and be lost.”
    Chiksika said, “I think you know this story very well already, little brother.”
    “Yes. But what about her little dog?”
    “Here it is about her little dog. All day every day she weaves the Skemotah. When she is finished with it, there will be nothing else for her to do, and so the world will end, and that is when she will fish for the good ones to take to heaven. But every night, when Our Grandmother Kokomthena is tired from her weaving and goes to sleep, her little dog wakes up …”
    Tecumseh laughed and clapped his hands. “Because he has been sleeping all day at her feet!”
    “Yes. And when she goes to sleep, the little dog is ready to play. So he takes the Skemotah in his teeth and unravels all shehas woven that day. And so because of her little dog, the world has not ended yet.”
    Tecumseh smiled,