The Original Savvy
Page 3 of 3With this new understanding tucked under her belt and into the corners of her smile, Eva Mae gathered up her children and fled from the infectious, grasping-grabbing itch of avarice. She disappeared into the wilds with her family in tow, determined that she would make herself secret and let the gold sleep where it lay-even if it sang to her, or called to her by name-so that its nature, and that of her own, might not be used for the wrong sorts of gain.
And as her children grew, she saw in each of them a great potential. Each of her boys and each of her girls had something in them, something big or something small, a dose of magic from the Big Muddy, or from a wellspring of their very own. Whether it was John, her eldest, who, from the first stroke of midnight on his thirteenth birthday could catch falling stars like lightning bugs to light the house through the darkest, coldest winter nights, or Sadie-Jade, her youngest, who knew from an even younger age how to collect the bees' honey without ever getting stung and could coax the nectar from the tongues of butterflies, every one of her children was exceptional and special. Whether it was a power that struck them with the force of a flash flood, or an ability they fostered as they grew, Eva Mae knew that they each had their very own savvy.
While she missed her husbands sorely, in time Eva Mae realized that her fate was just the same mix of bitter and sweet, of tang and spice given to all the world. Her life had sent her both tragedy and joy, sorrow and immense, unbridled wealth. And though the gold dust forever insisted on rising from the ground at her feet, swirling around her and tickling her nose in the early mornings when she went out into the crisp, fresh air, the wealth she felt did not come from that dazzling, sparkling stuff. Eva Mae's riches were there beside her in the mountains and the springs and the forests and the grasses, and in the hands and hearts and minds of her children, as are the riches of us all.
And so, Eva Mae El Dorado Two-Birds Ransom sneezed the gold dust from her nose and let her story fade away, and the Golden Girl was lost to both history and the storytellers. Her children grew up and moved on, spreading out across the continent with their own extraordinary talents, talents that grew in speed and strength throughout the tributaries of childhood to form one vast and mighty river as they grew up. Over the Rocky Mountains and down into the Texas Panhandle, from the chilly gray shores of the Pacific Northwest to the tropics of the Florida Keys, Eva Mae's descendents scattered like the airborne seeds of dandelion fluff, taking with them that something special that made them each unique, passing on their bloodline, and imbuing the world with savvy.
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