This morning at breakfast the village shaman looked distraught, so I brought him the tobacco pouch early and sat with him by the fire. As always, he answered the question before I could ask it.

“The Sun is angry,” he said, packing his pipe and lighting it with a half-burned stick. “The giver of Life and Light expects from us a shimmer of reverence. And yet for years no one would even look at Him.”

I watched him draw a long breath from the pipe and hold it, the smoke seeping from his half-open mouth. “What will happen to us?” I asked. Finally he exhaled into the fire.

“I do not know,” he said. “But today the Sun is throwing mad shade.”