Fire Is Your Water
FIRE IS YOUR WATER
A Novel
Jim Minick
Swallow Press
Athens, Ohio
Swallow Press
An imprint of Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2017 by Jim Minick
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Swallow Press / Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).
Printed in the United States of America
Swallow Press / Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Minick, Jim, date author.
Title: Fire is your water : a novel / Jim Minick.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Swallow Press, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016051608| ISBN 9780804011846 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780804040792 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Spiritual healing—Fiction. | Young women—Fiction. | Healers—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / General.
Classification: LCC PS3613.I6253 F57 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051608
For Ida Franklin Minick (1879–1968),
great-grandmother,
first memory,
powwow doctor who chanted over me
before I was even born;
for Glenn and Susan Minick,
joined by a wink and a scoop of ice cream
on the Pennsylvania Turnpike;
for Blue and Kittatinny Mountains,
shelter and vision;
and for Sarah,
my heart’s fire.
If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.
—From “The Question” by Rumi
Cicero
According to the Cherokee tale—which I like—I got my black feathers by trying to fetch fire. Way back, before you and your words even existed, we animals lived in a world without fire. We shivered a lot, went to bed early, huddled to keep warm. Then one day, lightning struck a hollow sycamore far out on an island. We could see the smoke. A little bit of sun waited there.
None of the fourleggeds could swim that far, not the mountain lion or wolf or even the bear, so I volunteered. I winged across that wide water, and I could tell as I got closer that fire burned hot, the smoke shooting up in great billows. How in this cold world was I going to grab an ember and haul it back? I circled. The sycamore had no branches—it’d been dead a long time. All I could do was land on the lip of that long hollow flue. I touched the wood and felt blisters on my claws. Sparks drifted up and I pecked, but they burned my beak. For a moment, the smoke cleared and I stared down into the fire. My god, that scared me. Then a huge flame blasted up and scorched me black. I barely made it back across the water.
Owls tried. All three failed. Two snakes swam across and came back black and shiny like me. Then the little spider spoke up, and by god of all eightleggeds if she didn’t snatch a little spark in her baskety web and swim back. That’s how fire came into the world—a good thing, I guess, though I’m not always sure.
So remember this next time you kill a spider or light your stove to cook. But hell, you won’t. You never do. Just like you never call me the right name—I’m a raven, not a crow. Drill that into your convoluted brain.
Now git on with you. I got feathers to preen.
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