Free The Order of the Poison Oak by Brent Hartinger Page B

the cold. I can give you the gift of fire, and that will keep you and the other animals warm.’
    “So,” I continued with my story, “the Creator picked up a stick and put it into the sun, setting it on fire. Then he gave it to Rainbow Crow, saying, ‘Unfortunately, I can only give you this gift one time, so hurry back to Earth before the flame goes out.’”
    As I was talking, I looked around at the kids again. They weren’t just listening: now they were hanging on my every word—even Ian, who had stopped kicking the stones. I knew that it wasn’t because I was such a great storyteller. No, it was because they were scared and they wanted something from me and my story, even if I still wasn’t quite sure what that was.
    “So Rainbow Crow took the Creator’s flaming stick in his beak,” I said, “and started flying the three-day journey home. But as he flew, ashes from the fire blew back into his feathers, turning them black with soot. And as the fire burned, the smoke blew into his mouth, and his voice became cracked and hoarse.
    “Eventually, Rainbow Crow made it back to Earth, and he shared the fire with the other animals. With it, they melted the snow and became warm and happy. But Rainbow Crow was sad, because by now his fantastic rainbow-colored feathers had turned black and his beautiful singing voice was gone. He wasn’t Rainbow Crow anymore. Now he was just Crow. So he flew to the top of a tree where he could be alone and cry.
    “Now, up in the heavens, the Creator heard Crow crying and felt his great despair, and so he came down to the bird. ‘Why are you so sad?’ the Creator asked.
    “‘I’m sad,’ Crow said, ‘because I was once beautiful, but I’m not anymore. I once had a great singing voice, but now I don’t. I am no longer Rainbow Crow, but just Crow.’
    “‘What you did for your people took great courage,’ the Creator said. ‘And as a reward, I have given you those blackened feathers, and a different kind of singing voice. They are my gift to you—the gift of freedom.’
    “‘Freedom?’ Crow said. ‘How are these things the gift of freedom?’
    “‘You have saved your people from the cold,’ the Creator said. ‘But soon there will be a new threat facing the animals. Soon humans will come to Earth, and they will take your fire and try to be master of everything. But they will never master you. Humans won’t hunt you for food or feathers, because now your meat tastes of smoke and your feathers are black. And they won’t capture and cage you, because now your voice is coarse. You will always be Rainbow Crow, and you will still be beautiful, but it will be a secret beauty, one that others will not see unless they look very carefully.’ And sure enough, when Crow looked down at his black feathers, he saw that, in a certain light, they still shone with all the colors of the rainbow.
    “And so Crow returned to the other animals. And to this day, only a very few humans can see the secret beauty of the freest of all the animals, Rainbow Crow.”
    When I finished, I looked around at the kids again. Those distant helicopters still sputtered and the lake still gurgled, but the kids themselves were absolutely quiet.
    It was funny. When I’d started the story, I’d just been thinking it was a nice, distracting little story about fire. But now that I’d finished, I saw that it was the perfect story for these burn survivor kids, about how they were all Rainbow Crows too, with hidden beauty. For a second, I thought of saying something about this. But I didn’t know how to express it without sounding stupid. So instead, I said, very quietly, “Let’s get moving, okay?”
    Still without a word, we started down the trail again. And then—and this couldn’t have gone better if I’d planned it!—the crow began to caw. Every kid stared up at that bird, no longer hypnotized by the distant forest fire but by the crow, and by my story.
    Finally, Otto said to me, “Is that a real