A secret kept ... grace hidden

As it turned out Dumpling's skirt was as good a magic carpet as Sheherazade could have conjured. Once each of the traveler's held firm a small smooth pipipi, Pale unfastened her safety pin. Confident and steady, she held the small limpet and pressed gently along its protective doorway. She remembered the protocol of respect. Introduced herself, "I am Pale." Made her intent known, "Your life will open a door I seek. There is a destiny to satisfy. I ask for your help." The Border Witch waited for an answer. The pin found an entrance, but not before a small trickle of blood fell from her thumb. "Pass the pin."  Pale thanked the tiny pipipi, and did as she was told. The Hen and Cock had watched, and it was not their blood required. The journey was swift though the portal tiny. It was a squeeze. POP! POP! POP! One by one the visitors from Salish entered through a pipipi.

 Dumpling's expertise with stitches coursed a path between the stars and planets. Her skirt became a mirror of the sky and as every woman who sews by hand knows the stitch will make its way dependent upon the resistance of the fiber. A Dream Sky was mutable, but, it was also fused with intent. It led. Three small black limpets slid like skates across the light filled sky. Like the tracks of a railroad through the heavens the three birds road the spirals. They landed on a beach where Birds as tall as giants congregated. Once again, the story was already in progress. They listened.

“You cannot know what it is like to keep secrets.How could you know how differently we grew when on the outside the covey saw nearly identical Grey? What grew so differently for me hides here.” Kaimalama Noa turned his back to his twin, raised his great wings and parted the feathers on his right side to reveal a ridge of calcified bone … a barnacle. “Grown since our warming, the barnacle replaces the right side of my filtration system.Where you breathe, ingest and release food, drink and grace I live with the additional need to hold tight … to grasp to survive.” Freeilll Noa wrestled with understanding and found it difficult.Kaimalama retained his bearing, though his breath was shallow and quick. “I live with conflict every moment of my life Freeill. A part of me must do what is completely wrong for the All. When we were younger the need was easy to ignore. It was easy to lie to myself, convincing my urges to be still. The urges have out-grown the promises I have made to them. They wait no longer. To survive I must collect and store things I value.”

“I have traveled with Palaoa, listened with my whole body the song that is as old as water. With barnacles as big as abalone for stirrups I straddled the old mother and found the answer to your question, “What do I value?” Freeilll knew his brother as a comedian and easy joker, often unable to speak without making light of a request. Today, a kind of mask felt from Kaimalama as he conned clearly and without apology, “I value the right of reserve.” My father cocked his head as if a different angle might aid in his understanding of the comment. “Reserve, you value the right to reserve what?” “I value the right to keep somethings private … not secretive exactly. I simply know that my life of clinging and believing that I must horde … keep more than my share, came from not being able to be different from you. Replication is not what Creators’ purpose was. It was diversity, variation.Somehow our covey and our kin focused on the large and visible ‘GRACE’ that doubles our worth.The small and less visible, the nearly invisible graces are left to scramble in darkness with no access to light. This … lifting his right wing to reveal the barnacle … is a part of me left to long in darkness. It has value, I give it worth. Small grace can make big differences, or at the very least it will do no harm. Denied though, the tiny grace can become,” Kaimalama rewound Palaoa’s song and remembered the word. “Denied, the tiny grace can become parasitic. That is what I have lived with these one hundred cycles.”

Freeilll Noa … twin whose birthright and grace is to free the ill-gotten from a space where nothing but the same can occur came to understand the riddle.

A very small creature … the barnacle attached to his twin

A promise broken … grace be nurtured and embraced

A secret kept … grace hidden becomes twisted and ill-gotten … parasitic?

Pale felt tears well from her. Pretending to want what others believe you should want. Her name changes followed that line of belief for too many years ... she lost count. She nearly lost her soul in the counting. How did Kaimalama resolve his conflict she wondered?

Kaimalama answered his brother, and the three visitors listened. "For as long as my destiny within this body persists, I will spend one half of my life as barnacle. I will tend to the Grace of clinging and view life as a filter dependent upon something bigger than I to survive, and yet I will do no harm during this. My kin as Wood Crafter will not recognize me as barnacle, and my kin as barnacle will not know me as Wood Crafter. The coil of Honu that remains true for both of us will serve as our common link regardless of my cycle.” My father was not sure he understood. His brother reassured him, “Yes that is exactly what I mean.”