I am older than I once was.  I look around me and I see the strengths of the world, the threads of narrative that present themselves, the songs that come all the way from Deepwaters to now.  I sit under an Owl Moon, under Her watchful eye, in the land once known as the Land of the Lady of White Waters, now dry and hot since the Lost Ones swarmed here like a group of intoxicated ants.  I sit here and I tell stories.

This may not be your story.  We come from 10,000 Ways.  But it is a story.  It is one that has been hidden in what I've been taught, in what I've seen, in where I've been and I share it with you now.

This world has seen nine suns, from the time of the Fire Gods to the Deep Ones to the Emerald Children and the Forest Lords, Insect Nations to Half-Bloods, from Lizard Kings to Serpent Lords and then to the Now of the Warm-Blooded.

In the time of the Warm-Blooded came Man.  This is their story.

Our relations arose just as the Serpent Lords faded from the world.  Those at the time were known as the Squirrel People and, like the squirrels, they were settled to life in the trees.  They took such joy in the light of the new sun that they spread across the world -- finding lost paths that none now remember -- simply because they were curious about where such paths would take them.

To our great-grandfathers, the first of the five gifts was given, the Gift of EyesWide, to lift your eyes up and reach for that which is beyond you.  The people became known as the People of Eyes Wide and roamed the world for thousands of generations before the killing ice cut them off from their brothers and sisters, driving many of them back to the Womb of our World, in the lands far to the west of my home and across the World Ocean.

As the ice took the North and South, safe within the warm forest of the Earth's womb grew the Great Jaws.  These knucklewalkers thrived among the giant trees even as the cats of old hunted them. The Great Jaws had received the Gift of the Hand.  They understood that as the fingers follow the lead of the fist, so does the strongest guide all others.  The strong protects the young and the females.  The strong leads the People to new food. The strong maintains the tradition of the ancestors.

Many thousands of generations, they lived this way until, among the Great Jaws, a young one named Bright Eyes was born.  Above all foods, she loved the insects, hunting them down whenever she could.  She was an explorer, the kind that took the Gift of Eyes Wide  deep inside herself and never quit in her search for tasty wrigglings.

On the day trouble found her, she had discovered where some beetles hid and was beside herself with joy.  Crawling into the small cliffside crack, she wriggled deep down until she slipped and fell into a cave.  There, frightened, she knew she'd fallen right into the presence of trouble.  A soft cry answered her own and for a moment, she didn't want to investigate.  After all, what if it promised to be more trouble than she could handle?  But, in the end, curiousity overtook her and she shuffled over to it.

The little spirit she found had been lost for quite some time.  Used to the cliffsides and the sacred hills, it had become trapped deep in the cave and needed someone to carry it out.  After a certain amount of apprehension and negotiation, Bright Eyes agreed and swallowed the spirit to keep it safe. Feeling moved by spirit, Bright Eyes found the faint breath of wind which showed the way out and when she emerged, she tried to spit up her friend.  But taking in a spirit like that comes with a price; the spirit would not come out again.  By offering her friendship, Bright Eyes received, through the spirit, the Gift of Echo.

Bright Eyes' children, their children and their children's children took to copying the ways of the forest and all its inhabitants.  They gave voice to the quiet ones, form to the still ones and after seeing an animal carry food in its arms, they copied that as well, becoming the first race of Man -- the two-legged Echoes.

In Echoes' time, over thousands of generations, a new change create over the womb of the world.  The land of the two-legged went from the domain of trees to grasslands.  Here, the great cats could hunt unchallenged as no trees would lend aid to the two-legged or their cousins.  They had to call on all of their experience and gifts -- that of Eyes Wide to see above the grasses, of the Hand so that the strongest could order them away from trouble, and the Echo to see that fish swam faster than the great cats could manage -- and those that copied the fish could move faster as well!

Over hundreds of generations, by the banks of lakes and rivers, the people of Echo discovered fire and tools appropriate to the needed task but they were still missing something from their lives, something no one had thought of... that is, until the time of Ananse.

Some say Ananse was always an 'old soul', some venture to say he was dropped on his head when he was a child.  All agree that Kweku Ananse spent his time trying to figure out how things work, how things connected.  By the time he was an old man, old even by his people's reckoning, he had plenty of threads but no conclusions.

Frustrated with the never-ending quest, Ananse realized that no one can know how all the threads fit together except those that have the right perspective.  Seizing a hold of his interesting conjectures, he used it to build a ladder far up into the sky.  There, he met with Nyambe and the other spirits set above the world, who laughed at his feeble attempts to request what they jealously possessed -- the power to make stories.

They challenged Ananse to three impossible tests: to subdue, without killing, the great enemy of Man -- the cats; to subdue and bring to them the only thing which frightened the great cats, the wasps with stings like fire; and finally to fetch without fail and with respect, the spirit of the earth that no man can see and live.

Ananse accomplished those tasks by first playing on the vanity and love of games that possessed the great leopard.  Then, Ananse tricked the wasps into flying into a gourd by uncovering the one thing they feared -- the spirits of earth and sky -- through fooling them with a little rain.  The last task, Anansi caught with a tar baby, trapping the spirit using the one thing no spirit will leave unchallenged -- disrespect.

Laden with these three gifts, Ananse gave them to Nyambe and the laughing ceased as they realized Ananse had become a new thing.  They gave him the Gift of AllStories and his children and their children and their children's children became the storykeepers.  They spread out across the world and as they did, the world changed them as much as they changed the world.

Hundreds of generations passed before the final gift came into the hands of the People.

His name was Greyfur and he was alone.  At an age when he should have been surrounded by family, he had been driven away and, though angry, still sought out what had been lost.  This was because Greyfur was not one of the races of man -- he was a four-legged, a wolf.  His kin had learned a secret few other predators bothered to learn, that of the Way of the Herd.  That which the wolves hunted protected its own, young and old alike, each acting as if with one body, one mind, one spirit.  Greyfur's people learned to adapt those rituals to their own, much to their great benefit.

Greyfur found the hunting trails of the humans and stumbled across a human who did not chase him away, who shared the kill, who -- in the end -- considered Greyfur good luck.  That's when the two began to speak, to adopt one another as family.  Greyfur and the human -- and those that followed -- brought something vital to each other.  To the wolves, I can't say what gift they took from us but it was valuable enough that they staid alongside us even in darker days and also taught the children of Echo a new story, a way of life that was the Gift of the Pack.

The Pack works to honor all as one; from the eldest to the youngest, each part of a pack has strengths to celebrate and weaknesses to protect.  Strength of limb and tooth is only one  part of the whole.  Among the humans, this became tribe, became Elders, became stories for 7 generations.  The humans kept all of the wisdom of the Pack but added one piece: in times of crisis, they would return back to the Gift of the Hand.  They would reach back and allow one to lead over all so that, in times of great danger, decisions would be swift and assured.

Two ways of living, woven together, manifesting in 10,000 Ways among the Five-Gifted two-leggeds known as humans.

These are the gifts that lay within us, that we can see in the faces of our children, in the fires of our passion, in the flow that is our lives.  The Gift of EyesWide, the Hand, Echo, AllStories and the Pack.

Who knows to what shores they will take us?

Continued in pt 3