Spirit Walker
river channel from the mountains.
    When the bag was sewn, Chaa stood before the Pwi in the guttering torchlight and said, “No two men walk the same world. Kwea shapes each man’s perceptions. Kwea shapes his loves and fears, and because of this it is often not easy for the Pwi to understand one another.
    “Here, we have Tull Genet, a man who has been Tcho-Pwi, and he is hard for us to understand, for he sometimes thinks like a human. Yet I say that he is Pwi, and that it is right for us to adopt him into the family.
    “My grandfather taught me that all things are connected: when a man plants wheat in a field he makes bread from it, and it is easy to see that the man would not exist without the bread, and it is also easy to see that the bread would not exist without the labor of the man. If you are awake to the connections, then certainly you will see that the man and the bread, they are not separate, but are one thing. They are two parts of a greater whole.
    “But the bread and the man, they could not exist without the wheat. And the wheat cannot exist without the rain and the oceans and the sun and the soil and the worms within the soil. And both the bread and the man who eats the bread become connected to all of these things, and they are not separate, but part of a greater whole.
    “You are rain and soil and sunlight and wind and oceans. Always there is an ocean throbbing in your veins, and when you exhale, you add force to the winds, and when you work in a field on a hot day, the sweat of your body rains upon the ground, and when you are joyful, you release sunlight in the twinkling of your eyes.”
    Chaa said, “We are not only connected to all things, but to all. other. people….
    “You have known Tull for many years, and each of you feel kwea for him. It is right that he become one of us, that he become Pwi.”
    Then Chaa leapt back and shouted to the crowd, “Who will be the midwife?”
    Old Vi, a woman who had served as a midwife for most of the villagers shambled forward. Tull hadn’t realized how old she had become in the past few years. Her red hair was going white, and the hard edges of her body had become soft.
    Chaa bowed to Old Vi, and presented his ceremonial dagger with its blade carved from a carnosaur’s tooth. She took it hesitantly.
    Tull stepped into the bag of leather, and all the Pwi set great stones in the bag, sewed it closed, dragged it to the river, and threw the bag in.
    The bag floated a bit for a few seconds, and the air was forced to the top. But as air leaked from the bag, the weight of the stones made it sink. Tull began struggling to tear the bag open, searching for the weakest seams, the thinnest leather, even as the air escaped.
    The hot air in the bag smelled of brine, sweat and flesh. The stones quickly sank into a pile near his feet, and the air bubble began shrinking at the top of the bag.
    Tull tried pushing against both sides at once, using hands and feet, head and buttocks, to rip the seams, but the bag was too large. So he returned to pulling at the weakest of the seams, struggling to find thread or leather that would tear. He worked at it for several minutes, and the pocket of air kept escaping from the top of the bag, even as warm water trickled down near his feet. He had to arch his neck to grab a hasty last breath.
    Suddenly, all of the air hissed out in a rush, and Tull suspected that a hole had opened near his head. He scratched with all his might, worrying the seams, ripping fingernails, as he tugged at the leather. He struggled to hold his last breath.
    That’s when he realized that the ceremony had gone awry.
    I’m going to drown, he thought, even as I struggle to be reborn. Won’t I look like a fool?
    His heart pounded in the silence, and he stilled himself, wondering what to try next. His lungs were burning, his fingernails bled, and he grew dizzy. He could hear only the sounds of the river washing past the bag, felt it bump the muddy river bottom as it

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