There is an old coyote who buries poems in the desert. He etches them upon scraps of bark and stones worn smooth by ancient rivers, and nobody understands why. 

They gossip among themselves; how strange, the ways of this old timer! He lives out among the rocks and the grasses, and none remember his family or band, and nobody goes to visit him. The farmers move from mound to mound, chattering as they move beneath the early morning sun along the river, telling tales of the old coyote. He is mad, some say, like those who were taken away, the ones who caused the sky to darken and the ground to buckle. No, says another, he is one of the old stones that woke and now walks on four paws. Not so, another chimes in! He is the northern wind that took a shape, and will lead cubs into the canyonlands and whisper secrets in their ears.

The season is dry, and the land has been changing. There are more cacti now, and thorny brush. The river is sluggish, and the soil becomes sandy. There is talk of leaving, but none dare to be the first. The youngsters range further from the riverbank, looking for seeds and fruits. They tell stories of their own, and quarrel and laugh and peck at each other in the ways of all children away from their parents and elders. One of them is quieter, an armadillo pup who has been listening with eager ears to all the tales of the rest of his band. He has made a practice of listening and looking, and is the first to find new sprouts and blooming desert pears. He is the first to notice that there are more than ever, as the weather becomes dry. 

He finds a strange sight in the scrubland, a place where small walls have been built in neat rows, the boxes lined with pebbles. The other cubs mask their unease with bravado, boasting that the old coyote is a flesh-eater, and that here lies the bones of his prey. He should be driven deeper into the desert they declare. But they scatter like dry leaves on the wind when the pup unearths a bone carved with words they cannot read, crying of spells and evil magic. Soon he is the only one there, left to find more words carved into square-edged stones that are woven into the narrow walls. He puzzles at them, alone with the wind and his thoughts.

And then again, he is not. The old coyote is there, yellow eyes peering down from atop a rock, loping closer to regard the pup. “You do not run, with the others,” he says. His voice is rough as bark, burred, but not unkind.

The armadillo feels scared, but his curiosity drives him on. “My legs will not outpace yours, Elder. What are these words? Did you write them?”

The old coyote smiles, and draws close to rest one paw atop the short walls. “I did, cubling. They are seeds, buried here to rest quietly until their time. Come, if you would, and see what they become.” With a swish of his tail he turned away, and the armadillo followed.

The unlikely pair make their way through scrub and brush that screens the entrance to a small arroyo, the rocky cleft leading up to the top of a soaring mesa. Metal veins of the earth lay bare here, strange and hard like roots carved from crystal, and the armadillo stares at them, frowns, and continues on. The coyote pauses at the top as the pup gasps, seeing more of the rows of narrow walls. From them sprout plants of every size and shape, vines climbing up around taller stalks. The floodplain by the river might grow such abundance after the rains came, but here atop a high flat rock such a garden is beyond wondrous.

“You did this with words?”

The coyote merely chuckles. “You must know the language that the Isles speak, in order for them to hear. It is a language that others before me set deep into the soil and rock here, in ways we cannot know now. But if you tell them poems, they will speak back to you in the language of seed and stem. Come now, cubling. We must get you home, before you are worried after. Come again, if you would learn more.”

And as he leads the armadillo away, the pup resolves to come back to the mesa, and to understand more of the strange words known to the old coyote.

And so the armadillo pup tells his own stories, that he is going out to forage, or to search for new water sources in the high desert. Eyebrows raise, but there is no denying that the river is failing, and the magic of the old times has faded with those who were sent north, so he leaves without comment. His feet scrabble against rocks and dry sticks in his haste to return to the mesa once again. The coyote meets him there, and together they range out across the land. The coyote shares the language of the poems, and the nature of their planting, in hollows and on steep hillsides, at the foot of rocky cliffs. “We must give beauty to the land,” he tells the pup, “and in turn it will give beauty back to us.” He has gathered a sheaf of seeds, clustering tightly about their stalks. They gleam red in the late afternoon light as he holds them out.

The armadillo reaches for it, marveling that such a thing has grown here in the sandy ground. “It looks like the crops we plant by the river, Elder. But the river now is only a stream, and these would never grow in the rocks and dust.” He searches about his pack, pulling forth seeds that he had collected from the tribe’s planting, and shows them to the coyote. Grinning, his companion plucks them up. The pup is astonished when he then bends down to scoop aside the pebbles and the sand, placing the river seeds in the hollow.

“Perhaps if we ask well, then the Isles may see to their nurturing,” says the coyote, “and thus gift you a new poem, that will sprout in new places.” He produces a stick of charcoal and a strip of bark. “Here, cubling. I will show you how.”

And so the days and nights pass, with the pup and the elder spending many of both in each other’s company. And the armadillo pup watches, and learns, and listens. He sees the poems buried by the coyote, the seeds and sproutlings that are called forth to be gathered. He watches the dances and rituals as they are taught in turn, the coyote showing him terraced hills and structures kept secret by the sands, and how they can be used to bring forth life. And more and more he sees the sadness of the coyote. It is in the way the elder’s eyes gleam by firelight, or the arc of seeds as he tosses them to the wind. And there is a day when the armadillo comes upon the coyote on the high mesa, and hearing words on the wind he hides among the garden, his ears twisting and bobbing like the plants all around him. The coyote was speaking to someone, although the pup has never known any other to seek out his company. His curiosity grows and grows, until it bursts forth like a seedling to send him tumbling out of the garden to rush up to the coyote. “Elder! I heard you speaking to someone! Who is it that has come?”

The coyote startles, but on seeing the youngster he gives a smile that is lop-sided with emotion. “Cubling, I speak with the one who taught me the poems, and the language in which to write them. She spoke to the Isles as though she herself had roots, and leaves that rustled in the evening breeze.”

Peering about, the armadillo pup is confused. “But nobody is here, Elder.”

“Are they not? Listen.” The old coyote is quiet, thoughtful. “She is always with me, in the breeze and the plants, in the stones and the sand. My mate put herself into the land, and now it gives her back to me, in a thousand ways.”

The pup understands, and knows then the source of the coyote’s sadness. “And you write to her, Elder. With the poems.”

“I tell her own stories back to her,” says the coyote. “She was the one who knew the words. I merely repeat them, for try as I have to write, I do not know the language of the Isles, and they do not speak back to me, if I try to use my own words. But I am content to continue to tell her stories to the land, and to let it tell me of her.”

The armadillo pup is thoughtful, and the lessons that day are quieter. Sitting above a dried stream bed, the pup bends and scoops aside some earth, the sand running gently through his claws. Remembering all that he has learned, he scratches words of his own into the rocky soil, and lays a handful of seeds down while the coyote looks on with a proud grin. They continue on, into the darkening day, and the moment passes without further thought until the sun sets and rises, sets and rises again. Until the armadillo is startled to be set upon by the old coyote, his fur nearly flying off of him in his excitement. “Come and see, cubling!” And he leads the pup back to the stream bed, to where now grows a sudden bloom of grasses and wildflowers spreading open to greet the harsh sun. “What words,” cried the coyote, “which of her poems did you tell the land, cubling?!” And it is slowly and quietly the armadillo replies, that the words he chose were his own, and not ones taught to him by the elder.

At first the coyote is so still that the pup fears he has done something wrong, and an apology rises to his tongue unbidden. But with a bark of laughter he is swept up into the old coyote’s paws, the elder swirling him around in an embrace as tears stream down his muzzle. “Oh cubling. Cubling! It is a miracle, a wonder! To have someone learn so much, to take my mate’s words and make their own anew! It is like the rain that comes after long drought. I had no hope left in these bones of mine.” And again he barks a laugh that soaks into the stones all around, and in years to come that place blossoms with the flower we call Coyote’s Laughter, as yellow as the old coyote’s eyes.

The coyote and the armadillo range out across the sands and among the canyons, and where they go springs new life and new blooms. And those that forage into the desert wonder at these unknown plants, and talk of the Isles blessing arise around the night-time fires. That perhaps the old magic will start again, and the land become greener. And the armadillo pup listens, and he smiles as he scratches new words in bark and soft stones.

The season is still dry, when the armadillo comes to the high mesa. He finds the old coyote resting among the planting beds there, the breath whispering from him like the dry winds across the growing dunes. The land has become harsh, and the river no longer snakes along the valley below. The stalks are withering, and their taproots reach fruitlessly for the last sips of moisture in the dusty ground. A fine coat of sand had settled over the elder, but those yellow eyes open once more as the armadillo approaches. “Cubling,” he says, and his voice is softer than the armadillo had ever heard. His ears flicker as he moves closer, straining to listen. “Cubling, I have been waiting for you. I am glad to be able to see you.”

“Elder,” says the armadillo, “I am no longer scared, as I was when we first met. I have learned so much from you. Is there aught you would ask of me?”

The old coyote coughed and grinned at his student, no longer a pup. “Tell my story, cubling. Write poems of me to the Isles, of me and my mate both, so that the land can sing us back to you. Remember us.”

And the armadillo does so, writing the story of the old coyote atop the mesa. And as he does the clouds gathered to listen, and wept to hear it, wept so long and hard that the dust runs muddy with their tears. All about him the desert bursts to life, and he laughs then at the song of the Isles, of long buried knowledge and the wisdom of those passed. And he returns to his tribe to tell the song of the old coyote and his mate, and to teach new writers the words of seed and stem.

There is an armadillo who buries poems in the desert. He scratches them in strips of bark and smooth river stones, and the sands bloom in his passing. Few know why, and fewer still understand. But he is not alone.

Such is the way of it.

This one's for Sepdet - for teaching me the power of stories.