"Daddy?"
The boy was on his knees outside the front flap of the teepee. His father, who had ears like a spring deer, had heard his footsteps and woken up, but kept his eyes closed.
"Daddy," the boy whispered again, now inching towards him on his tippy-toes. He was so light on his feet he would have scarcely cracked a dry leaf.
“The fire went out in my teepee."
The cicadas buzzed and the frogs croaked, but his father said nothing. So he walked around to his father’s head and put his lips next to his ear.
“I’m shaking from the cold. Listen." He held his wrist right up to the man’s pierced ear. The dried corn-kernel beads on his bracelet made soft clacking noises, like sweet rain.
His father resisted smiling, but couldn't resist opening an eye to sneak a look at Petalesharo. With the light of the moon passing through the skin of the teepee, he could just make out his silhouette.
"And my teeth are chattering," said Petalesharo, continuing.
"Oh, are they now?" his father softly replied.
"Listen," said the boy. He placed his cheek next to his father’s and, in a typical performance, clicked his teeth together as fast as he could.
“It sounds like it’s pretty cold.”
"It’s freezing!” said Petalesharo.
"Okay," said his father, "you can come in. And be sure to bring the rubbing sticks, just in case."
Petalesharo, with the rubbing sticks already in his hand, sat down in his father's teepee. Echo Hawk rolled out of bed, and grabbed his pipe.
Echo Hawk put aside the rubbing sticks and sat down next to Petalesharo to look at the fire. Their twin faces flickered with copper and orange. Petalesharo was sitting with his arms crossed around his knees. Echo Hawk had lit his pipe with an ember.
"Better?" he asked Petalesharo, putting his hand on his shoulder.
"A little better," said the boy.
"When I was little," said Echo Hawk, "I used to come into my father's teepee too. The fire was always a little warmer in there. I would ask to come in, very early in the morning, just before they would head out to machete the grain. I was just like you. And after some time of doing that, after spending many nights next to the fire with my father, he taught something important to me."
Echo Hawk reached out and grabbed a small twig from near the doorflap. "Suppose I took this twig and put it in the fire, Petalesharo. Tell me what will happen."
"It'll burn," said Petalesharo.
"But why?"
"If you put anything in a fire, it burns."
"Exactly. Fire is hungry and will eat anything. It's never satisfied with what it has. That's why your fire didn't last in your teepee. The nature of fire is to consume itself."
"For that reason, Petalesharo," said Echo Hawk, "fire is not wise."
Petalesharo was listening, gazing into the fire.
His father scooted a little closer to him. "Have you ever listened to it? Like really listened to it? Put your hands like this, behind your ears." Echo Hawk demonstrated the move, cupping his hands like satellite dishes next to his head.
"Like a deer," said Petalesharo.
"Yes, exactly," said his father. "Just like a deer. Now, with your hands like that, listen to the fire."
Petalesharo scooted a little closer to the fire and put his hands behind his ears, just like a deer.
"I hear it," he said.
"Pay close attention to it," said Echo Hawk, "what do you hear?"
The boy heard a high-pitched squeal as air escaped from one of the logs.
"Crying."
"Yes, Petalesharo. Do you know why it's crying?"
"No."
Wouldn't you cry too? thought Echo Hawk.
Petalesharo, with his hands still behind his ears, took a moment to think. He heard all sorts of popping sounds. He heard the whoop of air as the fire inhaled it. He even thought he heard a snake hissing and a crocodile snapping.
"I hear it so clearly," said the boy.
"What do you hear?"
"I think it's the embers," said the boy, "the ones who are crying."
"That's right, Petalesharo. The embers cry because they are ignorant. It's true that they whizz around and burn out, and vanish. But I don't think they disappear," said Echo Hawk, indicating up. He pointed to the night sky, at all the mysterious lights up there.
Echo Hawk puffed his pipe, staring deeply into the fire. "According to the legend, that's where they go," said Echo Hawk. "All the embers start in the same place. Some fall into the fire. Others rush away. Look at the ones that are rushing away. Where're they going? What are they thinking about? Why are they in such a hurry?" he said.
"I don’t know," said the boy.
"Imagine how it must be to be an ember. To blaze through the air. You probably feel like you're burning for a long, long time. You don't realize how little time you really have. You look around you. Behind you you see light. It's hot. It's bright. Ahead of you, you see more embers, just like you. Some of them burn out, but that's okay. That doesn't mean anything to you. That only proves to you that you burn while the others go out..."
He puffed the pipe again.
"But they all burn out sooner or later, Petalesharo."
Petalesharo, with his cupped hands, wasn't there anymore. There was no dust where he was sitting. The corn kernels of his bracelet were still on Echo Hawk's wrist.
But momentarily the warmth from the fire made Echo Hawk feel like he was there. It reminded him of how warm that boy used to be. How he used to come in late at night to wake him up to say that the fire had gone out. And how he always already had the rubbing sticks with him.
Echo Hawk puffed his pipe one more time, alone, in front of the blazing, churning fire.
He's lying on his back in the grass now, palming the pipe his father used to smoke. In his pocket is the popcorn bracelet he made when his they used to play Pawnees in the back yard. When he was Petalesharo they would spend the evening staring at the fire. But he's not Petalesharo anymore. He is Peter.
The stars are glowing extra brightly tonight. He remembers something he read in a book once, about the speed of light. It was a book his dad gave him when he was a little bit older. The book said that the nearest star is 4.5 light years away and is called Alpha Centauri.
The farthest known stars are billions of light years away. The book says that humans are lucky to be able to see them because we just happen to be clever enough to build telescopes. Some of those stars don’t exist anymore, but their light is still speeding through the universe, and to anyone looking, they still look very much alive.
The book says that humans also figured out the age of the sun. It is 4.5 billion years old, with a couple billion more to go. But even after the sun burns out, its light will still be speeding through the universe. Petalesharo is thinking about this right now.
“Someone, somewhere, will look at that the light from our sun and think: that star was once very important,” he thinks to himself.
Peter is looking up at the stars through Petalesharo's eyes. He doesn't know if Echo Hawk's ember is still burning out there, somewhere.
But he imagines it, feeling its warmth.
Happy birthday, dad. You would have been 67 today.