Sees Behind Trees

“‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘the people need someone to do the impossible. As necessary as hunting is, as necessary as growing and harvesting plants, sometimes we need even more than those tasks can provide. We need someone with the ability to see what can’t be seen. And we won’t have the regular contest until someone passes this new one.’”

The weroance recasts the coming-of-age in a way that allows Walnut to succeed on his own terms, but she also underscores the benefits of diversity to the community. By embracing all kinds of people, the pool of ideas and perspectives becomes wider, allowing for innovation and adaptation. That the weroance makes this new test the first test of the ceremony underscores that it is valuable.

“‘And what of the boy who passed?’ my mother called out from where she stood. ‘What about my Walnut?’

‘When a boy passes the test he is no longer a boy,’ the weroance answered. ‘He no longer wears a boy’s name […] Sees Behind Trees,’ the weroance pronounced, ‘is now a young man.’”

Sees Behind Trees’s mother’s concern is whether the new test carries the same weight as the old test, and the weroance confirms that Walnut is now a man: Sees Behind Trees. The importance of Sees Behind Trees becoming a “young man” highlights the stratification of his community into children and adults. Although Walnut could not shoot moss, he proved himself worthy of adult status. That said, the rest of the novel reveals that he is still very much in the process of learning to be an adult.

“‘All right,’ I agreed, and shut my eyes. I listened very hard, listened with every eye of my ear, but all that came to me was the sound of Diver’s breathing, the air hissing in and out of her mouth.

‘I see a fish,’ I said, imagining the beat of gills.

Diver’s breathing got faster. ‘Has this fish swallowed my needle?’

‘Maybe.’”

Sees Behind Trees’s interaction with Diver highlights both the limits of his abilities and the lack of understanding among his peers. Diver does not understand that Sees Behind Trees is listening and smelling to “see,” so she stands close to him, and the noise of her breathing drowns out everything else. At the same time, Sees Behind Trees “imagines” a fish rather than “seeing” it, showing that he is prone to flights of fancy when using his talent.

“‘Not by myself,’ I said. ‘I can only see what is put in front of me, like anyone else.’

But Diver didn’t hear me. She was already running off, excited to have news to tell. By the next day everyone believed I could live up to my name. The truly bad thing was, I began to believe it, too.”

Sees Behind Trees understands that his ability combines sensory input and reasoning, which is not supernatural. However, Diver’s story makes it seem like Sees Behind Trees is using magic or tricks to solve problems, which would make Sees Behind Trees into a superhuman figure. Sees Behind Trees’s embrace of this reputation introduces the motif of hubris that Gray Fire’s story develops further.

“The smile fell from his lips at my tone, but he didn’t move except to sit next to me. He touched my wrist lightly with his fingers.

‘It will be funny,’ he said. ‘When you think of it the right way.’

‘How can the same thing be both funny and not funny?’

‘You have to see the joke,’ Brings the Deer explained. ‘You have to learn to laugh at yourself.’”

Much like the weroance’s speech at the ceremony, Brings the Deer emphasizes the importance of seeing things from more than one perspective. From his view, the prank was funny, and he knows that Sees Behind Trees would laugh, as well, if he could see this other perspective. At the same time, Brings the Deer senses Sees Behind Trees’s overconfidence, encouraging him to “laugh at [him]self” to shake off self-importance.

“No matter what anyone else thought—no matter how often Diver repeated her story, no matter how much my mother and the rest of my family bragged about me—I knew who I wasn’t: I wasn’t who they thought I was. I was still just me, with a different name. How did other people do it? Had it been easier for them to catch up to their new selves? Or was everyone secretly two people at the same time, one of them largely pretend?”

Sees Behind Trees’s discomfort with his adult identity is a mix of both adolescent uncertainty and recognition that he does not have the supernatural powers Diver attributes to him. The book suggests that his final question comes closest to the truth since the people around him are still the same people they were when they were younger.

“Now Three Chances was making sense to me, because at night, with the sounds of sleeping and whispering, the vibration of bat wings swooping in the air, and the low crackles of dying fires on every side of me, I didn’t feel so much by myself. At night I could see as far as I could throw a rock.”

Sees Behind Trees takes comfort as he realizes that his disability is not inherently alienating. Since he cannot see clearly, he finds connection with his surroundings in a different way: through sounds and smells. His realization that he is comfortable at night in a way that his peers are not contributes to the novel’s overarching message about the distinct perspective that Sees Behind Trees brings to the community.

“I felt foolish to have repeated the words she had used when she gave me my name. In my mouth they sounded like boasting, and I had nothing to boast about.

‘I’ve got to go someplace now,’ I said, and excused myself quickly.

I walked through the village, not even speaking to people I passed because I knew if I did I would say another stupid thing.”

Sees Behind Trees continues to struggle with his position in the community since he wants respect but does not want to misrepresent his abilities. After embarrassing himself in front of the weroance, he flees, hoping he does not need to risk speaking to anyone else, showing his rapid change between overconfidence and insecurity.

“‘It can make you forget your weaknesses,’ Gray Fire said. ‘It can make you believe what other people say about you or need from you more than what you know to be the truth. You start to make promises you can’t keep.’

Now I was the one who looked away. What if Diver’s needle hadn’t stuck to her dress?”

Gray Fire’s story highlights the hubris that he and Sees Behind Trees share. Sees Behind Trees realizes that, in a sense, he got “lucky” with Diver’s needle: He agreed to help her without really knowing if he could fulfill his promises. The same is true of his eventual pledge to help Gray Fire, but there is an important difference: Sees Behind Trees merely says that he will “try” to help, suggesting that he now recognizes his own limitations.

“‘The moon shattered into waves,’ he said. ‘I had come too near. And before it could return, the clouds so crowded the sky that I could not even see stars. The rain returned as well. The night had beaten me before I had taken my first running step. And that was not the worst thing […] My foot had slipped between two curved rocks,’ he said. ‘It had been swallowed by the spirit of the place.’”

Gray Fire’s hubris, like the moon, is shattered by the realization that he misjudged his abilities. The reference to “the spirit of the place” swallowing his foot, a symbol of his running ability, indicates a supernatural punishment for his pride. In his overconfidence, he sees himself as “deserving” punishment for challenging nature, highlighting how hubris leads to a downfall.

“He was impatient to start out. ‘It is too early for real snow,’ he stated. ‘This won’t last. It will melt in no time and by this evening the earth will be brown again.’

Gray Fire was not a tall man—and he was slightly bent with age—so he and I were nearly the same height. He was as old as a grandfather but his mind seemed younger—more curious and less sure.”

The novel addresses the meaning of “adulthood” from multiple angles; this passage emphasizes that age is not a critical element in determining maturity. The imagery indicates maturity—Gray Fire is “bent with age” and “as old as a grandfather”—but he is “more curious and less sure,” which Sees Behind Trees interprets as signs of immaturity. Gray Fire is also impatient, and his decision to push ahead with the journey despite the snow highlights that age does not necessarily imply wisdom. In this context, the fact that Sees Behind Trees and Gray Fire are “nearly the same height” symbolically frames them as peers, setting Sees Behind Trees up to surpass his mentor in maturity over the course of their journey. This contributes to the depiction of Mentorship and Intergenerational Learning as bidirectional.

“I felt so bad that I had been disrespectful to Gray Fire that I hung my head and told him a secret I had never admitted to anyone else.

‘What I want too much,’ I said, ‘is for my eyes to see the way other people’s see, if only just once.’

‘I understand, grandson,’ he answered softly. ‘But remember what I told you about not letting a thing be too important. The truth of it is, you already see better.’”

Sees Behind Trees’s confession foreshadows the particular way in which the beautiful place will tempt him—by allowing him to see clearly. However, instead of telling Sees Behind Trees not to wish for better eyesight, Gray Fire emphasizes the importance of “not letting a thing be too important.” Gray Fire’s hubris led to his downfall, while rediscovering the beautiful place has since become the only important thing to him. Sees Behind Trees can “already see better” because he understands the importance of other elements in his life, like helping Gray Fire and his community. The passage thus develops the theme of Maturity Achieved Through Responsibility and Empathy.

“‘From earliest childhood, she was clever and quick.’

The weroance I knew was heavy and slow moving. Her voice rumbled like stones tumbling down a hillside. But once, I realized in a flash, she had actually been a girl just as now I was a boy.

‘What was she like? Otter?’ I felt daring to use the weroance’s name, but Gray fire didn’t seem to mind.”

Imagining the weroance as a child continues the process of demystifying adulthood for Sees Behind Trees, underscoring that adults were once children themselves. Sees Behind Trees’s use of her given name, Otter, reflects this realization, while Gray Fire’s acceptance of its use shows his respect for Sees Behind Trees as a fellow adult.

“‘And there she is,’ he agreed. ‘Frowning. Worried. Bandaging my foot and blaming herself for allowing me to become separated from her.’

‘And you didn’t tell her where you’d been?’

Gray Fire did not like my question. ‘I told you before. I was selfish about my discovery. I am ashamed that I kept it to myself.’”

While Gray Fire’s fragmented memories foreshadow the reveal that Otter trapped him in the beautiful place on purpose, he also reflects on the parts of that experience that make him feel guilty. He did not tell Otter where he was because he wanted to keep the experience to himself, much like Sees Behind Trees hesitates to tell Gray Fire how he passed the coming-of-age ceremony. This “selfishness” ultimately cost Gray Fire his toes, revealing its dangers.

“‘It’s my sadness,’ he said, ‘and my sister’s, that neither of us ever married, never had sons or daughters. It was a promise we made to each other after my accident. That day—it set us apart from the usual flow of life, froze us together as we were, as we had always been. Otter said that the whole village would be our children.’”

Though Gray Fire and Otter made a conscious decision not to marry or have children, he describes this choice as a “sadness,” implying that he did not want to freeze time after the accident. Though Otter is the weroance, an important figure in the community, Gray Fire did not take on the same leadership role as his sister. Instead, Gray Fire withdrew, focusing only on returning to the beautiful place.

“‘The same reason we do,’ he answered. ‘They are relieved. We are no trouble.’

As soon as he spoke I realized that Gray Fire and I had been chuckling a lot also. Not ordinary laughs, but ha-ha-ha-aren’t-we-having-a-good-time laughs that took the place of words. Sometimes Gray Fire and I and Karna and Pitew did nothing but look at one another and laugh reassuringly. Sometimes even Checha seemed to laugh, too, joining in.”

This depiction of language differences contributes to the novel’s overarching exploration of perspective. Such differences can make it difficult for people to communicate and understand one another, but laughter, like changing Sees Behind Trees’s training, shifts the paradigm: By laughing, Gray Fire, Sees Behind Trees, Karna, and Pitew make it clear that they are not threatening. Checha laughs, too, showing that this behavior is learned, just as Sees Behind Trees learns about strangers from Gray Fire.

“The water was soothing, warmer than the air, clean as tears. In its embrace I lifted my chin, inhaled a long filling breath. Blinked. And saw. The shock of sure sight was so great that it didn’t surprise me […] I couldn’t move, I was as still as Gray Fire must have been when his foot got stuck, but it seemed as though I was spinning very fast—seeing made me dizzy.”

Sees Behind Trees’s experiences in the beautiful place blend realism with the supernatural, as he sees with total clarity for a moment after entering it. This sudden sight only lasts until Sees Behind Trees breaks his focus to find Gray Fire. His comparison of his feelings to Gray Fire’s initial experience in the place reflects the idea that it is dangerous to have too great a desire, which, for Sees Behind Trees, is to see like everyone else.

“It had to be the stone man I had seen from high above—for ‘man’ was the only way to describe it. No wood-carver could have done a better job of imitating a human form […] I reached down to touch the bottom, found the feet where they merged with the rock floor—feet that would never move. My fingers counted the bumps of toes. Five on the left foot. All five on the right.”

Continuing to blend of fantasy and realism, the novel implies that the stone man statue is Gray Fire himself, frozen in the place he loves so much. Sees Behind Trees emphasizes that the statue is beyond human construction, suggesting its supernatural nature. Meanwhile, the novel uses the presence of all 10 toes as a symbol to indicate that Gray Fire has returned to a state of spiritual wholeness by coming back to the beautiful place; more than the bodily injury, the memory of the place left Gray Fire feeling incomplete, but he has now regained what he lacked.

“Gray Fire was my torch in the night, the hand on my shoulder, the voice that would answer when I asked a question […] Without him, I expanded in all directions, limitless, thinning, the scent of a rose once it has leapt from the flower where it was born and mixed into the air. Without him I was dispersed, a part of every other thing, purposeless, unanchored.”

Sees Behind Trees has relied on adult guidance throughout the novel, and he realizes that he is totally alone without Gray Fire. However, the terms he uses, like “limitless,” “dispersed,” and “unanchored,” suggest both chaos and freedom. Part of Sees Behind Trees’s journey is self-discovery—understanding that he can become whoever he wants. Without Gray Fire, Sees Behind Trees is forced to reckon with this, accelerating his maturation.

“If Gray Fire had still been with me I was sure he would have followed the fresh trail, saved Karna and Pitew from whoever had stolen them away. He would have known exactly what to do, but I didn’t. All I could do was comfort Checha and promise him, over and over, ‘Someday we’ll find your mother and father. Someday you’ll be with them again. I’ll get people to help.’”

When Gray Fire and Sees Behind Trees first meet Karna, Pitew, and Checha, Gray Fire cannot hold Checha. Now, Sees Behind Trees thinks about what Gray Fire would do to save Karna and Pitew, but he forgets that he is already doing something Gray Fire could not: taking care of Checha. Sees Behind Trees holds Checha and offers him comfort, which is a way of taking responsibility for the child and thus of showing maturity.

“‘Thank you, Gray Fire,’ I whispered, understanding, at last, why his dreams of the land of water had been so important to him. Except mine were not tied to that place, trapped and left behind as his toes had been. Mine were in my eyes and mine, I now knew, might come true from time to time.”

Sees Behind Trees has experienced the same kind of wonder and supernatural beauty that haunted Gray Fire, but he makes a clear distinction between Gray Fire and himself. Where Gray Fire was obsessed with recovering his dreams by returning to the beautiful place, Sees Behind Trees gained literal sight in the place without leaving anything behind; in fact, he walks away from it with a more important, metaphorical form of vision that allows him to “dream” without having those dreams take over his life.

“Why was she so angry? Did she blame me for not taking better care of her brother?

‘He ran past me,’ I explained. ‘Just when I could see.’

‘Ran,’ she repeated. The word was as tired as if the weroance had just completed a long journey. ‘He never stopped running in his dreams.’”

At first, Sees Behind Trees is worried that he upset Otter, but she is only angry with herself for taking away Gray Fire’s ability to run. Sees Behind Trees casually mentions that Gray Fire ran past him, even though Gray Fire has not been able to run quickly since he lost his toes in the beautiful place. The weroance knows that Gray Fire always kept running in his dreams, but returning to the beautiful place made that dream a reality.

“Most people learn what it’s like to be alone by getting used to it gradually in small bites […] The first time that Gray Fire kept going beyond the point I could match his endurance, aloneness dropped over me, wrapped around me, caught me in its gluey web. Half of myself was suddenly gone. I breathed out but I could not draw breath back in. I looked with one eye, heard with one ear […] I was half alive.”

Sees Behind Trees initially wonders if being alone is the key to adulthood, looking to Otter and Gray Fire as examples, but this passage shows that growing up was difficult for Otter and Gray Fire, as well. Being twins, they always had each other, and Otter felt abandoned when Gray Fire started running. Rather than adapt and find her own way to adulthood, Otter tried to ensure her brother remained a child with her forever. Her description of being “half alive” reflects Sees Behind Trees’s fears of never growing up, but he ultimately moves beyond this state of suspension.