ORIGIN OF A DREAM, OF A BEAR, AND A TALE IN THE DARK

(TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO RECEIVE ROLAND'S FREE GIFT :
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You shrink back from the shadows at my appearing. Do not fear. I am Elu, wandering Apache spirit.

You seek the origin of DreamSinger's path of words.

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Come. Let me turn back the seasons to a time not so far removed …

… yet to almost a different world than you two-leggeds now stride in such clustered aloneness.

Where wisdom was better than strength.

Where two-leggeds walked and rode with no hinged slabs of plastic pressed tight to their ears, speaking words not cared about miles away.

Where they did not hunch over those same slabs punching fewer and fewer scribbles to a world that read seldom and cared less.

Where boxes of metal bits did not spew one’s and zero’s to faceless strangers foolishly called “followers.”

Where “friend” truly meant comrade. Where alone often meant death.

See that young boy coughing until his frail body goes limp, his eyes bleed tears? That is he whom you call Roland.

Look at the fear and love mixed in the Lakota woman's face as she holds him in his bed. She is his mother. And she knows he is dying.

You feel the cold, but can you feel the isolation of this basement apartment in the worst ice storm in Detroit's history? The mother has just come to this town. Whites are hardly friendly to strangers of their own race, not at all to those who are different.

The ice has frozen the city. The wires that carry voices are down. No one can travel. There is no help.

Should she wander the empty night in vain search for help? Or should she stay, holding the hand of one who is her whole life?

Her only son is dying. But she will not have him die in fear and terror. No, she refuses. But what can fend off those demons in the night?

Her words seem so hollow to her ears. Yet, words are all she has. Words. Yes, they are the answer. Words.

Words she remembers the Grandmothers of both sides of her blood, Irish and Lakota, speaking to her when she was her son's age.

So hugging the cough-wracked body of her son, she begins to spin tales born of sparkling myths and misty legends of both worlds. Roland sees a fabled world spread out from horizon to horizon in the darkness.

Though the White Man believes different, magic is real. In the frigid darkness, myth sings her haunting song of majesty and wonder to this coughing little boy. He shivers ever worse.

"That is good," the Mother says, forcing the fear from her face to smile with lips wooden with dread.

"For your shivers mean The Turquoise Woman is standing close by you. Her touch is cold, oh, so cold. But she embraces only those she loves."

The mother points to the foot of the bed. "See that hulking shape there? No, it is not the coat rack, Roland. It is Hibbs, the bear with two shadows, the protector of all ill children."

She waits patiently for his next coughing spasm to pass, wipes his mouth, his chin, then tweaks his nose. "And once he was your age, Roland. The Turquoise Woman then called him Hibbs, the cub with no clue."

"Truly, Mother?"

"As truly as love can whisper healing and laughter even though the night is dark and filled with pain."

His coughing grows worse. The mother hides her tears from Roland. She kisses his scortching hot forehead. "Let me tell you tales of magic and wonder of the ever-curious Hibbs."

"I never heard of Hibbs before, Mother."

"That is because he lives in a land that you cannot reach by foot or cart or horse. No. Only the imagination can take you there. And dreams are the fuel your journey will need.

But once there, you will find great quests, fierce monsters, faes whose beauty is both terrible and haunting beyond any singing of it."

"Oh, tell me about them, Mother."

And so the mother told the tales she frantically pieced together from the myths of both her Peoples.

The more Roland shivered, the more loved he felt by the Turquoise Woman.

The more his eyesight faded from his growing fever, his approaching death, the more clearly he saw Hibbs, the protector of all ill children, at the foot of his bed.

The trusting heart of a child is a strange, wondrous thing.

His worsening shivers made Roland feel loved by The Turquoise Woman. He saw Hibbs at the foot of his bed, protecting him from the fever and coughing. He heard the tales of magic and healing.

Sometimes trust, awe, and belief can give birth to miracles.

When curious Sun peeked his head over the silver mist of the dawn, Roland's fever had broken, his coughing eased.

Sometimes the magic works.

So little DreamSinger learned the power and magic of words young. As a kiss to the winds to the spirit of his loving mother, who did not want her son to die in fear and darkness, Roland wrote THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS.

He spins his tales still in the darkness. Now, you know the birth of his desire to fling tales into the night. Should you write him, say that Elu waits with his mother and Hibbs to speak to him when he slumbers.

- Elu.

{ http://www.amazon.com/BEAR-TWO-SHADOWS-ebook/dp/B004MDLWD0 }
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