The Writers' Circle

This is short. The reason being that there is a change in direction.				

Chapter 2

Jake stood naked, waist deep in ice-cold water, several feet out from the shore-line. In the distance, about a mile further up the lake, a small plume of smoke gently threaded its way towards the purple sky. 
       After being in the water for over an hour, his mind built a barrier against the numbing cold. Slowly, sensuously, Jake's left hand moved the honing stone back and forth along the razor sharp blade of his Bowie knife, gently kissing it as the early morning sun kisses the tree-tops.
	Jake's life and soul belonged to the lake and the Wind River Mountains, it always had, and would do so until he drew his last breath; here he was born, here he would die. The Shoshone blood that coursed through his veins tied him to the lake and the surrounding forest. Jake knew every rock, hollow tree, ditch and hidey-hole. In his mind, the creatures that roam the forest and swim the lake were his to cherish, succour, but it had been a bad year. Too many people, too many fires, too much killing.
       This Utopia that was his ancestors' land needed change if it was to survive. Since Jake's induction into the Ritual of the Lake as a five year old, his blood had been sacrificed as a gift for the gods, the guardians of the lake.
	Jake raised his arms above his head and drew the point of the blade across the palm of his left hand. He looked up as a small cascade of blood fell to the lake. The moment his blood hit the water, dark, menacing clouds rolled over the mountains. A fierce wind began to blow and whipped the still water into waves of stinging spray. A lone wolf howled nearby as trees swayed and bowed at the sudden onslaught of wind.
	Jake looked at the clouds as they swept across the sky like phantoms in the night before lowering himself below the waves. Wraith-like ghosts rose from the depths and carried him further and deeper into the lake, and Jake knew that once again, the ancestral blood that flowed through his veins and into the lake was not enough to satiate the gods.
	Now, naked, washed clean by the spirits, Bowie knife in his right hand, Jake made his way towards the gentle plume of smoke and three sacrificial lambs.