Page 201 of The Lonely Road

It still does it for me.

She flicks her shawl toward me.

The long fringe moves—all fifteen inches of it—mimicking the grasses bears move through when they emerge, because the whole ceremony is about that: emergence, return, the things winter takes and spring gives back.

I step forward.

The Catman strikes his stick against the growler and opens the floor. The signal and the permission.

She draws the shawl around us both.

The cobalt blue settles across my shoulders and hers, both of us inside it, the fringe at the edges, the stepped diamond pattern that has been in her family forever.

Her hand finds my arm.

Her other hand takes mine.

The turquoise ring is warm from the morning.

She looks up at me with the Bear Dance in her face—all the looseness of it, all the rootedness.

Just Taya.

Entirely.

The drum finds us.

Forward and back.

Forward and back.

Grounded, close to the earth, our bodies aligned, our weights shifting together with the rhythm of two people who have learned each other’s timing.

She looks up at me.

I look down at her.

“You’re smiling.” Her eyes twinkle with amusement.

She’s right. These days, I smile a whole lot. I can’t help myself. “Yes.”

“Like you forgot to decide not to.”

“I remember when you said that.”

“I remember everything. It’s a lawyer thing.”

I shake my head. I know her better now. “And a Wíitsin thing.”

She tilts her head and grins. “And a Wíitsin thing,” she agrees.

The drum goes on.

The moraches go on.

The Bear Dance goes on the way it always has—not building to anything, not requiring resolution. Just continuing, because that’s what it does. Because that’s what it is.

This is the ceremony of return. And the return doesn’t end.