Ulunsuti

A long time ago, the deep places of the river, where it is green and dark and cold, were inhabited by uktenas -- great, spotted or sometimes ringed snakes, as big around as the oldest trees in the forest. These uktenas had horns on their heads, their scales glittered like stars and a bright crest like a diamond blazed from the middle of their foreheads.

These crystals -- for that is what in nature they resemble -- measure about two inches in length and are perfectly clear except for a blood-red streak running through their center from top to bottom. In addition to perhaps a half dozen crystals which fell into the hands of men and were passed down, generation to generation, conjuror to conjuror, the rutile quartz which can be found today in the mountains of western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee constitute the only intact remains of uktenas, whose bones, being liquid heat, dried to a glittering dust within moments of the monsters' deaths and blew here and there. It is this bone dust which causes granite to sparkle in the sunlight and the leaves of certain plants to grow varigated and the eggs of certain birds to be speckled in the nest.

That their remains have not remained distinct but have instead peppered the earth with light is the reason white scientists discount uktenas as myth while acknowledging the existence on the earth of such fantastic creatures as dinosaurs. That, and because it was the Cherokee who first told the story of the uktena -- Indians who knew nothing. White men only believe natives when they tell of gold . . . over there, beyond the mountains. If one is to believe what the red man tells the white, that is where gold has ever lain.

Over there.

Beyond.

The Cherokee call this beautiful crystal from the head of an uktena an ulunsuti, which means transparent and the person who possesses one of these rare stones is blessed indeed, for he or she is sure of success in hunting, love, rainmaking and anything else he or she might wish to undertake, but especially in prophecy, for an ulunsuti works much like a crystal ball -- when properly consulted by someone knowledgable in the art of reading the future in signs, it will reflect quite accurately that which will pass. Blessed . . . or marked, for knowledge of the future can be an intolerable burden, as can success in all things, and he who can make rain is only welcome some of the time.

(An excerpt from Broken Road)

 

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2008/Melissa Hardy