True leaders, it seems to me, are born in betrayal.
My first teacher was a very old woman, a Clan Elder. When I became the Serpent, she told me that she believed we are born at the foot of the log bridge that leads to the Land of the Dead, and that the instant we slip from our mother’s canoe, if we truly listen, we will hear the animals we have known in our lives calling to us.
The boy is smiling to himself.
I watch him.
Does he know?
At his tender age, can he possibly understand that a person has to be shoved off the bridge by the one he trusts most before he can look up, see no one standing above to help him, and grasp that being alone is not the curse, it is the task?