 Standing Bear Mythic Press  
The Stone Heart Turtle People By Scarlet L. Kinney |
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Overview Indigo Shaughnessey has always had visions. Animals, birds and trees, not to mention ancestral spirits, communicate with her. A fifth-generation Irish American Catholic growing up on the Downeast Maine coast, she is discouraged from speaking of her magical world, which she shares during her youth with her cousin, Little Deer. As an adolescent, separated from Little Deer by distance and their changing worlds, she begins writing down her experiences of coastal life, which are rich with conflict, adventure, and mythical undertones. Fighting to maintain her sense of feminine power in a world that seems to want to crush her, she becomes feisty and rebellious. The crux of her dilemma is that she feels like she belongs to a long lost race and has somehow stumbled forward in time to the life she is living on the Maine coast. When she rereads her journals many years later, she learns the secret meaning of her life, and discovers at last who she really is. EXCERPTS My name is Indigo Shaughnessey...my own troubles, some of which I am about to share with you in the stories that follow, started very early on, on the playground, where I first encountered bullies. After being called Messy Blue, Inky Jeans, and several other such ridiculous names, and after being knocked down a few times by boys twice my size, I realized something that has stood me well throughout my life: the very first time a bully even looks cross-eyed at you, hit him. Don't try to reason. Don't try to explain. Don't try to appease or manipulate. Above all, don't try to charm your way out of the confrontation. And for God's sake, don't run! Just hit him, with all the magnificent fury of a female insulted beyond endurance. If he's really too big for you to take on physically, then hit him with words that cut like knives, the age-old weapon of females everywhere. Otherwise, before you know it, you'll find yourself face-down in a giant mud puddle, your knees skinned, your pretty pink hair ribbons floating blearily before your eyes, your glossy black pipe curls transformed into wet, muddy strings, thinking about the trouble you're going to be in when Nana Deer sees the rips and tears and streaks of mud on your very girly, beautifully starched and ironed dress.From the Prologue: I Say It's All True From Chapter One: The Cave in the Burren I had been in the forest for some time before it happened, walking in silent reverie on the thick cushion of pine needles beneath my feet, inhaling deeply of the fresh combination of scents peculiar to Maine's coastal forest. Made up of many fragrances - sweet fern, cedar, pine, spruce, balsam fir, and countless small mosses and creeping plants - the scent of the woods near my home was intoxicating. I breathed deeply of the soft night air, imagining that as I inhaled all those fragrances, every cell in my body was being infused with the essence of the forest's mysterious power. As I quietly moved into its depths, I listened to the sounds of the forest settling itself for the dark night that was coming. Night would slowly rise up, I knew, from deep within the earth, from far beneath the tangled, intertwined web of roots that supported and fed the forest's lush vitality. A mourning dove sang its melodic evening song, and my sense of peaceful relaxation deepened. Squirrels chattered quietly here and there. Ravens flew into the woods from all directions, calling to one another as they fluttered through the forest canopy like shadows, gathering in restless groups to seek their evening roosts. Small rustling sounds gently punctuated the general atmosphere of settling energy as the creatures of the day crept into their hiding places, seeking safety before the creatures of the night claimed the forest. Listening to it all, I breathed deeply again. Feeling completely at one with my surroundings, I ventured deeper into the forest, the world outside its borders forgotten. The first indication that something was amiss was a sudden tug of fear deep within my belly... From The Birth of Aina Macha After the Moon had taken her place with the Milky Way in the Midnight Sky, the Potential for Becoming who had dreamed the Moon into Being began to awake from her long dream. She floated just above the seas in the dark, moonlit, starlit night. She looked like a tiny spark that flashed briefly, then disappeared into the Midnight World that was her home, glowly brightly again a few moments later. Slowly, she grew brighter and brighter. She grew larger and larger, until at last she became a great, numinous sphere of transparent light. Then the great transparent sphere of numinous light that she had become began to throb and pulse. At first the pulse was infrequent and erratic. Then that infrequent and erratic pulse slowly became a strong, steady beat. If you had been there, you would have heard the first heartbeat the earth had ever known. From Chapter Eight: The Autumn of my Revenge ...Before long, complete pandemonium reigned. Every single girl in the school, with the exception of primly proper Amber and me, had gone completely berserk. They poured down off the bleachers and out onto the floor in droves, screaming and crying, heading straight for the band. Freddy, with a look of absolute horror on his face, dropped his guitar and ran, followed by the four other members of the band. But the girls were fast on their heels, tearing off their clothes, begging for autographs on thighs, arms, and breasts. I watched in fascination as Dolores actually pulled her skirt up and her panties down, and presented her backside to Freddy, demanding that he autograph it. I don't know what possessed them. Perhaps they had gotten caught up in the whirlwind of feminine hysteria that was following them, no matter where they ran, but Freddy and the other band members actually began signing autographs on the girl's bodies. I was in heaven. No other revenge could have been sweeter. Just let them try and talk about me now, after what they're doing, I thought. Then it occurred to me to check up on what the boys were doing. There they were, stuck like slugs to the back bleachers, looking stunned and befuddled, as though it was impossible for them to grasp what was happening. Dark anger was shadowing the faces of a few of the older boys, though. It was at this point that Mr. Brooks, who had initially been as shocked into stunned silence as all the boys had been when the girls went wild, got himself together, took Amber and me by the arms, and ran with us straight into his office. "Call the police!" he yelled at Mrs. Partridge, who had barricaded herself behind her desk, and was quivering with fear, her face bright red. "NOW!" He practically threw us into his private office, slamming and locking the door on us, trying to keep us safe, I imagine. Actually, truth be told, we were scared stiff. It's one thing to imagine such a thing happening, but it's quite another to actually be in the middle of it. The band members were running wildly up and down the halls, crowds of screaming, half-naked girls after them. Every few moments, they were briefly cornered by groups of girls who bared thighs, breasts and bottoms for autographs. I'm sure the band members were just trying to stay alive by signing the proffered body parts whenever the girls managed to corner them, as they took off running again as soon as they could get away, looks of stark terror on their faces. "YOU GIRLS, I ORDER YOU TO STOP IT!" boomed Mr. Brooks' enraged voice over the loudspeaker. "STOP IT RIGHT NOW, I SAY! COVER YOURSELVES AND GO TO YOUR HOME ROOMS! THE POLICE ARE ON THE WAY! CEASE, I SAY!" He might as well have been whistling in the wind for all the impact his words had on the chaos outside the office. By now, realizing we were safe from the melee, Amber and I were rolling around on the floor, laughting hysterically. From Chapter Nine: Dancing in the Shadows It wasn't until the little dwarf, sobbing hysterically, hobbled up the aisle of the chapel after viewing the urn containing Daddy's ashes at the memorial service that I began to understand the full otherness and richness of the world in which Daddy had finally found his place. There had been a sweet, raven-haired little person in his life who had perhaps loved him as much during her childhood as I had loved him during mine? How had I never known about her? What other secrets about his life in that world so distant from mine were now hidden from me forever? But it was during the reception afterwards - when I realized that that world, the world that had welcomed him with open arms, had perceived him kindly, had loved him in ways that the world of his youth had not - that the whole event began to take on a surreal flavor...The reception was hosted by a very nice and kindly, but strange group of women, members of the town's hospitality club...They were strange to me, first, because they were all dressed identically in beautifully starched and ironed pink baby-doll blouses with white ruffles down the fronts, navy blue skirts, and the whitest sneakers and rolled-down socks I had ever seen. Add to that that they all wore matching pink and blue and white floral aprons of a type I had not seen since the days of my youth in Ma Maddie's kitchen at the inn. If the hall made one feel that a journey back into the previous century had somehow miraculously taken place, these women looked like they had just stepped out of the early fifties. Their hair was shiny, wavy and perfectly groomed, which lent them the look of aging beauty queens trapped in their memories of what once had been but was no more - except perhaps during special occasions like this one, when they stepped forward as one to be of service to their community. ...The finishing touch to this tableaux from another time was the group of red-faced, plump, perspiring, obviously deliriously nervous men dressed in their Sunday best, who were sitting in an anxious cluster on the stage opposite the buffet. They had brought along their fiddles and trumpets and clarinets and now were attempting to accompany a tall, lanky chap who was earnestly doing his best to coax a big band sound out of a disastrously out-of-tune piano. Another fellow was singing. The whole scene reduced me to tears. Who were all of these kindly people, trapped in a consciousness belonging to past decades, to whom my father had obviously been so important that they would go to such lengths, make such an effort, to honor his passing from their lives? |
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