Sacrifice

Fire reaches for the sky. Hissing and crackling, angry because its yellow reddish orange arms will never touch the stars. The moon is smiling tonight, watching over its children.

We sit in a circle, the flames dancing across our concentrated faces as papa tells us another old Cherokee story. "This man had a dog" he begins, "Everyday the man took his dog to the edge of the lake to get water and the dog would bark furiously at the lake, like he was mad at it." At this part everybody leaned in, curious. "Finally the man got very annoyed with his dog for barking and scolded it. 'Bad dog! It's only water!'

To his surprise the dog looked straight at him and started to talk. The dog said, 'One day soon storms will come, the water will rise, and everyone will drown. You can be saved, but you need a sacrifice. You must throw me into the water.' The man thought he was lying, after he got over the fact his dog could talk of course. When he protested the dog said, 'If you don't believe me, look at the scruff of my neck. I am already dead."

Papa paused. "The man grabbed the dog by the scruff of its neck and saw that its skin and fur were already coming apart. Underneath was nothing but bones. The dog was a skeleton dog. So with tears in his eyes the man tossed his skeleton dog into the lake. When the floods came his family were the only ones left alive. The man heard sounds from the other side of the hill, like a thousand people laughing and dancing but when he raced to the top alas, down below he saw nothing but thousands of skeletons of all the people who died. He realized the dead had been dancing and that was the sound he had heard."

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Ever since I had heard that story one summer night many years ago something about it had always fascinated me. I took a deep breath, understanding what had to be done.

"You're already dead, you're already dead" I whispered, completely calm as the drums called my name.......

Note: The story about the dog is not mine but the rest of it is. Just a little something I came up with to complement it.