Hannah & the Spindle Whorl (11 page)

I stuff my journal back in my pack and shut off my key light. No wonder they keep the fire going all the time. It’s really dark out, and really quiet. There are no voices from nearby boats. No clacketty-clack of fingers on a keyboard. Nothing is moving, everything is still — too still, if you ask me — I’m not used to quiet like this.

I KNOW IT’S EARLY
when I wake up in the morning because the light is still faint and watery. I hear gulls screeching on the beach, and voices, men’s voices. They’re loud, and some of them seem upset. It sounds like there are quite a few people already down on the beach even though the day has only just started.

I sit up and when I glance around in the soft light of the longhouse, I see that Skeepla is already up, working around the fire. She looks even more tired this morning than she did last night. She moves slowly and uses two flat wet paddles to lift large smooth stones out of the fire that burned all night.

She places them into a beautifully carved wooden box filled with water. The box hisses loudly when the rocks hit the water, and steam surrounds her for a few brief seconds. It looks like she fades away and then comes back into focus. She repeats this one more time and I hear the water in the box sputter to a boil. Skeepla adds more rocks until the water bubbles furiously and then she drops a few handfuls of small butter clams into the water.

The sound of the men’s voices on the beach grows even louder and she looks up, stopping for a moment to listen. Even Nutsa, who is either kind of bored and don’t-carish or giving me dirty looks, comes to life and pays full attention to the voices coming from the bay.

Skeepla looks at me as though she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. I wouldn’t understand her anyway. I look around for Yisella but she’s nowhere to be seen. A few members of her family are still sleeping but several are sitting up and listening too. I recognize the voice of the headman — he’s sort of a chief but not really. Yisella told me that every house has a headman who kind of acts like the organizer of the house. I always thought all First Nations people had just one chief, but the way they do it here in Tl’ulpalus seems better. More fair.

I look around the inside of the longhouse. No one says anything to anyone; they’re just listening. Whatever these men are talking about out there must be pretty important.

I decide to get up and investigate, because no one seems to be that keen on checking anything out. I dust off my jeans which are really grubby and damp and totally disgusting now, and try to pat down my ridiculous hair. I know it won’t do any good but I go through the motions anyway.

When I poke my head outside, my nose fills with smells of salt and seaweed. There’s a heavy mist in the air, and the sky is dull and dark and a strong breeze has kicked up — not unusual weather for Cowichan Bay. I know these mornings well and I’m amazed that even though I’m in a different time, it is definitely the same place. The sounds, the smells, the feel of the bay are all so familiar to me as I step out into the cold morning air. I feel better, as if I’m not that far from Dad and Chuck and home after all.

Yisella is down on the beach, her arms folded in front of her and a heavy cape pulled around her shoulders. Her hair whips at her face as she turns sideways to brace herself against the wind.

I also see a group of men arguing at the shoreline where the river meets the ocean. They stand near several huge canoes pulled onto the beach and away from the churning sea of whitecaps. The men appear to be shouting instructions at each other and, as I watch, they stop what they’re doing again and again to look up and down the bay. Yisella sees me approach, and waves for me to join her.

“Yisella?” I yell against the increasing wind and the crash of the waves. “What’s going on? What’s everyone doing?”

She narrows her eyes and pulls her cape around her more closely in an effort to keep out the chill. “Not sure yet,” she says, straining to listen, “but it sounds like some of the men want to go up the bay to trade with the
hwunitum
. There are more
hwunitum
who live up that way.”

“But why do they sound so mad?” I ask, just as Yisella’s father, Squwam, smacks the side of a sturdy canoe with his paddle and yells at a younger man. Squwam is usually pretty quiet, at least so far, so it startles me to see him so angry. The young man, who is leaning on the other side of the canoe, shouts back.

Yisella sees this and says, “Some of them don’t think it’s a good idea to trade for so many
hwunitum
things. It’s risky. There’s a bad sickness in some of the other villages, and my father thinks we should be satisfied with the things we already have. He thinks that so much change for our families isn’t a good thing.” Yisella’s forehead is wrinkled with concentration, almost as though she doesn’t quite know how she feels about it herself. Her eyes take on a faraway look. “No, some things are good. Flour and sugar are good to have for bannock. And Auntie has a white woman’s skirt that is much warmer than the Tl’ulpalus skirts in our village. And it is so beautiful: the colour of maple leaves just before they fall off the trees before winter. I’ve never seen cloth that bright colour before …” Her voice trails off.

“What do you guys use to trade for stuff like that?” I ask. I think of home and how people at the marina are always lending or giving stuff back and forth. Things like coffee, bits of rope, cat food or jumper cables for when their cars won’t start. It’s kind of like everyone shares everything even though half the time you’ll lend something and never see it again. But no one really seems to care that much, except for old Mr. and Mrs. Turnquist, who whine and complain about pretty much everything.

“We give them deer meat and furs, like otter and rabbit. They seem to like furs and skins the most.”

That’s when I remember what Mrs. Elford said in school, about how the Hudson’s Bay Company had a fort in Victoria, and that there were camps set up all over the place. Yisella must be talking about them.

“Well, it sounds like a pretty fair trade, I guess.”

“Yes. But some things aren’t so good for us, I think. Things like the whiskey and other alcohol that the
hwunitum
have.”

“Oh, right,” I say. “Booze.”

“Boos? Is that what you call it? It’s a crazy name for a crazy drink. It changes your face and the way you talk when you drink it. I think it can make you see spirits and do foolish things without thinking. I’ve seen men fight when they drink too much of this …”

“Boozzze,” I repeat.

Yisella’s fists are clenched in front of her now and her cape is blowing open in the wind, but she doesn’t seem to notice the cold. She doesn’t even feel the rain that is falling now in big fat drops that hit her face with an icy sting.

I think of Walt, the old guy who lives three docks over from Dad and me on his big fish boat. Walt fought in the Vietnam War and people say he’s been drunk ever since it ended. It’s really sad to see what booze has done to him. Most of the people in the marina keep an eye out for Walt, but no one was watching the night he passed out at the table with a cigarette in his hand. It dropped onto the floor and rolled under his greasy stove, starting a fire. Walt was okay but his kitchen was totally destroyed. Thing is, he never seems to get around to fixing it. Instead, he mostly just eats up at the Salty Dog Café or at the pub.

Yisella and I don’t say anything else. We both turn to watch as half of the men leap into one of the big canoes that they pushed out into the lapping water. They begin to paddle furiously against the wind and over the choppy whitecaps, ignoring the calls of the others who have chosen not to go.

Squwam has stayed behind and remains on the shore long after the other men have gone. He watches until their canoe has disappeared around the point. Now he stares up at the sky, his face under full attack from the driving rain, and raises his hands in front of him.

“Wow,” I say. “What’s with your dad, Yisella?”

“He’s talking to the great Creator,” Yisella says quickly. “He’s asking for guidance. For help.”

“What kind of help?”

“He thinks there are bigger changes coming. My father’s like that. He can sense things that other people can’t. He wants to know how to deal with the changes. To know who to trust,” she explains.

Yisella and I head back to the longhouse. On the way, I can’t stop thinking about her dad, his worries about the changes coming. It’s kind of like the feeling I had last night. The calm before the storm.

We are back in the longhouse and everyone seems to have forgotten all about the earlier commotion. And they seem to have forgotten about me as well, which is a relief. One thing that I’ve noticed about these people: they sure are busy a lot of the time. Don’t they ever just chill and do nothing?

Skeepla is in her corner, seated cross-legged on a mat. She’s holding a long spindle in both of her small, strong hands. The whorl, my whorl, is rhythmically spinning three-quarters of the way up the rod. It keeps the fleece, which looks a bit matted and dotted with twigs, in place. Yisella tells me that those bits of twig are actually softened little pieces of cedar that her mother will weave in with the goat wool.

I see a single thin strand of the spun wool forming on one side, and Nutsa seated alongside her mother carefully twining the cord into a fast-growing ball at her feet. She looks as bored as anything. Not like Skeepla, who is very focused. Her eyes fix on the whorl, and so do mine; its images blur, so much so, that the carved fish on the surface appear to swim right before my eyes.

There’s a bead of sweat on Skeepla’s forehead and she looks pretty serious and red in the face. She must be in the dream state — the one that Yisella told me about earlier. It’s what happens when the power from the carved images connects with the spinner. These special spirit powers guide the spinner so they are able to perfect their talent. At least that’s what Yisella says and I believe her, because the unfinished blanket on Skeepla’s loom is really, really cool. My mom would have totally loved it. The pattern around the edge reminds me of a similar pattern I saw on the baskets in Mr. Sullivan’s office, only Skeepla’s is more detailed.

I switch my gaze from the loom back to Skeepla, and as I stare at the wild spinning blur of images, once again I feel my own pulse quicken.

Without warning Skeepla pitches to one side, and the spindle and whorl drop from her hands onto the ground. The whorl rolls a few feet away, pulling the strand from Nutsa’s hands with a sudden jolt. Nutsa looks up from her work as Yisella rushes in to catch her mother’s shoulders before she keels over, limp and heavy.

“Ten
!” Yisella screams, shaking her mother’s shoulders.
“Ten
! Mother!”

I see the look in Yisella’s eyes, wild, terrified, as she turns to me. “Mother! What’s wrong with her?”

Skeepla groans softly, not moving. When I kneel beside her, I can see the beads of sweat running down the side of her forehead. Her eyes search mine as though she is looking for … something. She takes my hand weakly in her own before she collapses. Her eyes close once again but not before I see her fear.

Then I notice Nutsa watching me, and I don’t like the look in her eyes as she stares as me — the
hwunitum
stranger — with her family.

A FEW DAYS PASS
and the rain hasn’t let up for one second. I wake up to a day that reminds me of late fall — definitely not summertime. Before, on days like this, I would usually just read, or maybe write stuff in my journal. If it was the weekend, I might stay in my pajamas for an entire day. My dad totally gets it but my grandma thinks it’s horrifying.

I can’t do that here through. Inside the longhouse the mood is as dark as the sky outside. Skeepla is lying on her cedar mat, covered with blankets. Yisella, Nutsa and many of the other women are constantly at her side. Skeepla doesn’t open her eyes even though she is not sleeping comfortably. And I notice that she’s started to cough, violently, without waking, every few minutes. Every so often, Nutsa shoots me a look that is anything but friendly, and I feel guilty, although I’m not sure why. Yisella holds her mother’s head and tries to get her to drink something from a cedar cup, but Skeepla won’t take it. Maybe it hurts to swallow, as it did when I had tonsillitis.

Yisella’s great-grandmother says something in a soft voice but she’s not really speaking to anyone in particular.

“The sweating will help her to fight the demon in her body,” Yisella explains to me. “But she’s coughing so badly now.”

Her great-grandmother steps in and says something to her. Even I can sense the worried tone in her words and her attention now is on me. And now, everyone else is looking at me as though seeing me for the first time. Their eyes are cold, but no eyes are colder than Nutsa’s. What did I do? None of this is my fault. I didn’t ask to come here.

“Nutsa wants to go and find Kalacha,” Yisella tells me. She has both of her hands wrapped tightly around her mother’s.

“Kalacha?”

“She’s a powerful medicine woman in the next village,” Yisella explains. Her sister is already up and draping a cedar cape around her shoulders. Yisella leans forward, gestures toward me, and says something to Nutsa. Nutsa shakes her head angrily, and shoots me an icy glare. I now feel more than just a little uncomfortable. The two sisters argue until Nutsa finally rolls her eyes and grabs another cedar cape and throws it at me. I catch it with both hands before it can hit the ground.

“You can go with Nutsa to see Kalacha,” Yisella says. “I will stay here with my mother.”

“Yisella? I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

Nutsa is waiting impatiently by the door, looking at me with her usual dagger-like stare. Why does she hate me so much?

“It’s okay. Nutsa never wants company,” Yisella explains. “But it’s always better not to go into the woods alone.”

I think of that big dark thing in the trees and I remember how scared Yisella looked in that moment when I first saw her. I have to admit that I’m not exactly excited about going back in there, especially with Nutsa.

“Bears?” I say.

“Bears are fine. But cougars are different.”

“Cougars?” I interrupt, thinking about the cougar with the marble eyes in the museum.

“Sometimes they’ll follow you. It’s best not to be alone in the woods.” Yisella thinks she’s making me feel better, but I don’t feel better at all. Not only is she sending me into the woods with a girl who hates my guts, but now a cougar could stalk me too? Do I get any say in this?

Nutsa sighs from the doorway. She’s clearly irritated with me so I obediently put on the cedar cape and the root hat that Yisella hands me. I’m glad to take off my hoodie because it’s pretty much soaked right through and it weighs about a hundred pounds. I pull it off over my head and place it over a box by the central fire that never stops burning. I get a few quizzical looks from people when they see the crazy graphics on the front of my blue T-shirt. I’m now so used to what everyone else is wearing that I forget about my own clothing and how weird it must seem to these people.

The cape is heavy but I feel warmer right away. I’ve never been a fan of capes and ponchos — so ’70s — but this one is actually pretty cool. I run my fingers over the tightly woven fabric, and I’m amazed at how smooth and soft it is even though it’s made of tree bark.

“Oils in that cedar will help keep you dry,” Yisella tells me as I struggle to make the cone-shaped hat fit over my frizzy curls. Of course, like most of the stuff here, it’s made of cedar and I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit goofy looking, like some kind of grassy wizard’s hat.

Nutsa and I head out into the streaming rain. The wind is still pretty intense and the raindrops fall at an angle, stabbing the earth like icy little daggers. On a day like this at home, I’d never be out walking in the woods, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in this ridiculous hat. I’d probably just be a lazy slob and watch
Friends
reruns or something. Life’s sure different for a kid here in Tl’ulpalus.

Nutsa walks way ahead of me, occasionally glancing back over her shoulder and frowning, as though she’s frustrated to discover that I’m still here.

I feel a pang of homesickness as we follow along the deer path, passing by dark green salal and Oregon grape growing alongside. My mom taught me not to step on growing things, but Nutsa doesn’t seem to care. She tramples over everything that gets in her way. The trees are huge and close together and some of their trunks are wider than any trees I’ve ever seen before. A couple of trees could be as wide as our old Jeep. I raise my eyes to follow the length of one, but most of the treetops are lost in the swirling fog that hangs overhead. The light is dim in the forest and my eyes sting as I try to keep up with this bad-tempered girl.

I miss Jack, who stayed behind with Yisella in the long-house. I keep expecting to see him hopping along beside me, or flying from tree to tree just a few feet away. I wonder if ravens get tired; all that hopping around seems like hard work.

Nutsa finally slows down and stops. I get closer and can hear the rushing water of a river just beyond the trees. She leads me through a tangle of giant sword ferns as we begin to pick our way down a steep embankment. I follow her because, well, what else am I supposed to do?

We move, single file, along the narrow edge of the steep riverbank. Nutsa practically runs over the snarl of wood, rocks and mud at her feet. My running shoes are useless as I try unsuccessfully to keep up. I slip again and again on the wet roots. Why won’t she wait for me? Why did I have to come with her? I find myself getting more angry by the minute. I’m thinking the idea of Nutsa ending up as cougar dinner might not be such a bad thing.

She stops ahead and peers over the edge. The river below is moving pretty fast, spilling over large grey rocks into churning pools of deep dark green. Even though it’s summer, the river looks really cold. Watching the rushing water makes me feel more than a little dizzy so I turn away from the edge, and see Nutsa looking at me. Her face softens as she extends her hand toward me. At first I don’t take it — I don’t trust her. But then she smiles at me, and I’m pretty sure her smile is genuine because she looks like an entirely different person. She looks, well, nice. I cast another glance over the side of the embankment to the water ten feet below and my stomach lurches. I’ve never been a great fan of heights and now that I’m perched here on this sketchy bit of trail, wearing slippery basketball high tops, I’m even less of one. Gratefully, I accept Nutsa’s help and take her hand.

She grips my hand in hers like a vice as we pick our way along the edge once again. Every couple of steps she glances over her shoulder, smiling at me as though I’m suddenly her best friend in the world. We only have about five more steps to go before we’re back onto wider safer ground when Nutsa stops and turns around to face me. Then she drops my hand.

“What?” I ask, even though I know she can’t understand me. “Why are we stopping?” Nutsa just smiles, but not the best-friend kind of a smile. This time, her lips curl as if in a snarl. Her eyes are black and bottomless. I look down and feel a strange pull from the water below me.

“Nutsa?” I practically plead, and I hear the quaver in my voice.

My head spins and then Nutsa is hovering next to me. I didn’t even see her move! I’m confused, and for a moment I think that she is going to hug me. But then I am falling, as if in slow motion, into the river below. My body plunges into the freezing water and the sudden shock of cold rips the air from my lungs. As the water pulls me down, I force my eyes to open to the light above, swirling on the surface of the jade green water. I know that I must get there to breathe. My head is spinning and my lungs are burning as I struggle furiously to swim against the powerful undertow holding me captive underwater.

Up, up, up … my ears are roaring and my lungs are about to burst. It’s taking too long. I feel so heavy. I fumble underwater, yanking desperately at the strings of my cape until it breaks loose. Free at last, I spiral up, gasping as my face breaks the surface and meets the air.

I am carried on the surface as easily as if I were an old shoe. I struggle to keep my head above water but my foot catches on something. I feel a sharp pain in my knee and then I am sucked under again. I hardly have time to fill my lungs.

“Help!” I manage to scream when I come up for a third time. I reach for a large piece of wood floating out of nowhere, but it crumbles in my hands, rotten and soft. “Please! Help me!”

Just before I am sucked down into the icy darkness once more, I think I see a figure on the shore. I summon all my strength and, ignoring the pain in my knee; I force myself back up to the surface. I gasp twice. Once for air, and then once again when I see the shadowy hulking shape in front of the trees. It moves closer, close enough for me to see its matted dark fur before the water pulls me under. When I resurface, a big alder log explodes into the water beside me and I throw my body against it, my arms wrapping it in a steely grip.

“HANNAH!”

Bursting through the trees, looking terrified, is Yisella.
“HOLD ON! DON’T LET GO!”

I do not intend to let go, even though I’m now floating toward much faster and more powerful rapids.

“
YISELLA!
Get closer. Pull me in!”

Yisella breaks a long sturdy branch off a nearby tree and wades out into the river. She leans out, stretching her body and her arms as far as they will go, extending the branch toward me. When the current bites into her calves and threatens to carry her off as well, she steps back.

“I can’t reach, Hannah! Kick your legs! You can do it!”

I think of Dad and Aunt Maddie, and Chuck with a Cheerio stuck on the end of his nose. And then I smell a familiar scent, something good. Lemons! It is all the extra encouragement I need. I kick my legs as hard as I can, willing myself toward the shore. In seconds, I grab the end of Yisella’s branch and finally let go of the log.

“Now, Yisella, now! Pull me in!” And moments later, I am standing knee-deep in a slow moving eddy, shivering uncontrollably.

“Hannah. Hannah, are you okay?” Yisella rushes over. She takes off her cape and wraps it around me, and then hugs me tight against her.

“Did you see that thing,” I ask, “that animal?” The vision of the dark shape in the trees is still crystal clear in my head. I can see the mass of dark matted fur, the loping gait.

Yisella looks confused. “What animal? You mean the raven?” Jack appears out of nowhere and caws frantically from a low-lying branch on the riverbank.

“No, not Jack!” I shiver and my teeth chatter from the cold, and the fear. “Like before! Like that other time, right after I got here. Didn’t you see just now? In the trees? It was coming toward me. I couldn’t really see what it was. Some kind of bear! Some kind of … ”

“Thumquas,” Yisella says solemnly.

I don’t say anything because there’s a part of me that thinks she might be right. Or maybe my brain is partially frozen and I’m seeing things. That’s just it, I don’t know what I saw but I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t a bear.

The ends of my fingers feel numb, so I rub my hands together vigorously trying to warm them up. I stop thinking about the hairy thing on the shore and remember the chunk of alder exploding into the river.

“Thanks for tossing me that hunk of wood, Yisella. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t done that.”

“What piece of wood?” She looks confused. “You mean that log you were floating on? I didn’t throw that; I doubt I could even lift it!”

I blink at her. It doesn’t make sense. But then I remember Nutsa and my freaky fall into the water. Did she have an attack of guilt and heave the log to me at the last minute? Come to think of it: where is she?

And what is Yisella doing here?

“Yisella, why are you here? I mean, I’m really glad to see you but I thought you were going to stay with your mother.”

“I was, but not long after you two left, we had a visitor from Clem Clem. She had heard that my mother was very ill, so she came to help. When I told her that Nutsa had gone to get Kalacha, she told me that Kalacha’s village has gone to the mainland already and that Kalacha has gone with them. So I came to bring you back.”

Yisella stops talking when we hear a rustle in the trees, but it is only Nutsa. When she sees Yisella, she slaps her hand over her mouth in horror, a wild look in her eyes, and rushes forward. I step back, my foot splashing into the water, but Yisella quickly pulls me back. The river current wouldn’t think twice about dragging me out into the rapids again.