Shells for teeth and weeds for tongue

I have no good reason to associate Scott O'Dell with autumn, except that The Serpent Never Sleeps (1987) came as a birthday present* and I read Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) near the beginning of the school year. I should re-read him. The latter gave me an indelible piece of the numinous:

I turned the canoe around and started back toward the opening. Above it, on a deep ledge that ran from one side of the room to the other, my gaze fell upon a row of strange figures. There must have been two dozen of them standing against the black wall. They were as tall as I, with long arms and legs and short bodies made of reeds and clothed in gull feathers. Each one had eyes fashioned of round or oblong disks of abalone shell, but the rest of their faces were blank. The eyes glittered down at me, moved as the light on the water moved and was reflected upon them. They were more alive than the eyes of those who live.

In the middle of the group was a seated figure, a skeleton. It sat leaning against the wall with its knees drawn up and in its fingers, which were raised to its mouth, a flute of pelican bone.

There were other things there on the ledge, in the shadows among the standing figures, but having drifted far back in the room, I again paddled toward the opening. I had forgotten that the tide was coming in. To my great surprise the opening had narrowed. It was too small now for me to get through. We would have to stay there in the room until the tide went out, until dawn came.

I paddled to the far end of the cave. I did not look back at the glittering eyes of the figures on the ledge. I crouched in the bottom of the canoe and watched the shaft of light grow weak. The opening out to the sea grew smaller and finally disappeared. Night came and a star showed through the crevice overhead.

This star passed out of sight and another took its place. The tide lifted the canoe higher in the room, and as the water lapped against the walls it sounded like the soft music of a flute. It played many tunes throughout the long night and I slept little, watching the stars change. I knew that the skeleton who sat on the ledge playing his flute was one of my ancestors, and the others with the glittering eyes, though only images, were too, but still I was sleepless and afraid.

With the first light, another high tide almost setting, we left the cave. I did not look up at those standing quietly on the ledge or at the flute player playing for them, but paddled fast out into the morning sea. Nor did I look back.

So years later, I could hear "The Black Swan" at a student recital and shiver: it's one of my old childhood ideas of a place that is at once terrifying and holy, where the dead cross immanent with the sea. This is a good time of year for that contemplation.

* I feel somehow obligated to mention that this year my birthday falls (again) on Yom Kippur. I am planning to spend the day at the MFA's "Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Musem." Theirs is really the only Semitic language I can read.