Shadows Cast by Stars (26 page)

“Comfy enough.”

“Good.” She dips the needle again, holds it close to my shoulder, and then stabs. At first I feel each pinprick deep in my flesh, as if Madda is burrowing the needle to the bone, but slowly, as it bites into me again and again, the pain fades until it’s little more than a dull ache, like an ember trapped under my skin. Madda sings under her breath as she works, sweat beading on her brow, and all the while, the monolith watches, humming in counterpoint to Madda’s tune.

“There,” she says at last, sitting back to admire her work.

“What is it?” I strain to see, but my skin is angry and swollen, marring the image. All I can make out are grotesque, protruding lips, a squat torso, and huge, swollen breasts.

“Some call her an earth mother, and some the wild woman of the woods. She has other names too,” Madda says as she rubs more alcohol over my skin. “I got her from the medicine woman before me, and she got it from the medicine woman before her. Sort of like our own clan, you know, a clan of women. Lots of power in her, the woman of the woods. Strong medicine. She’ll protect you, watch over you. She looks ugly, but that’s the way she likes it. Ugly demands respect.” She takes a swig
from her flask and then hands it to me. “Just a mouthful,” she says when I shake my head. “We have more work to do, and pretty soon that shoulder of yours is going to be hurting bad. Don’t be a martyr. Have a little. Go on. It won’t kill you.”

I pull my shirt over my head and take a swallow. The whiskey burns its way to my gut.

“So.” She puts away her supplies and then shifts around until she’s comfortable. “Part of what comes with being my daughter is learning the stories that were passed on to me by my teacher, so pay attention. You’re going to have to pass this stuff on one day too, because without it, we lose sight of where we came from, and if we’ve lost that, we aren’t anything. These stories are living things, as alive as you and me. Just in a different way, that’s all.” She picks up a pebble and inspects it. “Like this stone. It’s got a soul, and I’ve got a soul, so in that, we’re the same, but what houses the soul, that’s completely different. The stories are like that—alive, just housed in a different body, a body our words give them. And our voices are their food. They need us to keep them alive.”

I nestle myself into the gravel, pull a branch out from under my rump, and nod that I understand, though I don’t, not really.

“Let me explain. In the days before the treaties that
formed the territories, people knew what was coming,” Madda says. “They knew there would be a time when the world would be hurt bad, so bad it would actually cry. But knowing isn’t enough. It has to be more.

“So, some of the medicine women back then, they knew that the earth was tired and unhappy, and pretty soon, things would happen that would scare them right down to their bones. They knew that the old creatures, the supernaturals, were fed up with humans. They had taught us everything we knew, and we forgot to be grateful for their gifts. The few of us who remember, who honor their teachings by living the Old Way, well, there’s still hope, right?”

I nod. Yes, there’s always hope.

“Anyhow, those women, they got together and made a big magic. Back then, there were still lots of spirit stones, you know, like the one I wear inside this amulet, like the one Bran’s given you. They had a different name back then, but that’s the thing about time—it transforms everything. Names change, but the essence of something doesn’t. So, the women gathered up the stones, as many as they could find, and brought them here, and when they had finished, they had a pretty big pile. ’Course, all the men were upset that the women took the spirit stones, but the women did it anyhow because it needed to be done.

“They met here and once they placed all the stones on the land, they started to dance and after a while, Raven came to see what was happening. Well, he took one look at all those spirit stones and decided he wanted a few for himself, because everyone knows Raven loves shiny things.”

She pauses to make sure I’m listening, and I am, though my hand has found its way to a stick. My fingers curl around it and I scratch in the dirt. It’s not the same as knotting or weaving, but I need something to hold me here.

Madda clears her throat, and continues.

“Raven, he landed on the pile and watched the women dance for a bit, because he liked their dancing too, the way women sway and all, but he was so interested in the dancing that he didn’t really notice when they started to sing. He just got a big, happy smile on his face and stood on the pile of rocks, watching the pretty women, and then got to thinking about which one might make him a good wife, because it had been a long time since Raven had taken a wife. One of those pretty stones might make a good wedding gift, too. Some of the other supernaturals joined him—Sisiutl and Dzoonokwa, for example. Not Thunderbird. He just watched from high in the sky. Smart, that Thunderbird. The others, what they didn’t
notice was that as the women were dancing and singing, they were weaving a web of spirit right over top of those spirit stones, binding them all together, and when Raven picked up a stone and tried to fly off, he couldn’t. He was stuck, bound here on the Island, along with the other supernaturals. Raven started to struggle, and as he struggled, two of the stones fell out of the web and rolled toward the dancing women. One of them is the spirit stone you wear around your neck. I have the other one here in this amulet I wear. The woman who picked them up was the first medicine woman here on the Island, after all the tribes came together and formed the Band and the treaty lands were made.

“Anyhow, the women saw that Raven was trying to steal the stones, so they danced faster and faster until the spirit stones were coated in sticky spirit threads and Raven and his friends were trapped inside. And so Raven swallowed the stones, thinking the spirit threads would dissolve in his gut, but when he swallowed the first stone, his left foot turned to obsidian, and with the second stone, the right. He tried to stop, but a powerful hunger came upon him and he gulped and swallowed and gulped and swallowed until he had eaten all the spirit stones. And here he stands, after all this time, and I imagine he’s pretty mad that he’s still stuck here, but that’s what you
get when you go taking things that don’t really belong to you.”

My skin rises into goose flesh. The raven is trapped here. Is that what he’s been after, all this time? He wants me to free him?

Madda rubs her temples. “So now you know, and you’d better not forget. It’s time to get some work done. Close your eyes. I’ll guide you through the rest.”

I do as she asks, though the image of the monolith doesn’t leave my mind. It pulses behind my eyelids, sings to me:
My sweet doe, my gentle dove
, and when I realize it’s my mother’s voice, I let go. I slip into the monolith and let it consume me.

I float between the stars, carried by the currents of the night. The stars smile down at me. Each has a face; each has wings. Behind them I can see a double-headed serpent swimming among them. I only know it’s there because stars disappear when it draws near. It swallows them whole.

“What are you?” I say.

You
, it replies as it stretches forth and swallows me too.

I spiral in the icy cold of nothingness, down and down and down, slipping through the great serpent’s bowels,
screaming as it pushes me through its body. I rake it with my fingers; I bite, I claw, I try to grab hold of anything, and then it expels me and I’m falling, falling, falling …

Back into myself.

Above me, the serpent slithers down from the stars to wrap itself around the moon. It tastes the night with its tongue.

I reach for it. My fingers touch its scales as it winds itself around my wrist, twisting my arm. It rears back, and before I can stop it, sinks its fangs into my neck.
Be careful what you look for
, it whispers just before dropping away into the night.

I hear the hum of the monolith and from far away, a woman’s scream. Me? Madda? I don’t know. I can’t tell. I begin to cry. I’ve learned nothing. I’ve failed.

No
, a voice says.
You are the serpent that flies by night
.

And then the real world falls away once again and I’m stretched across the sky until I am the sky, I am the air, I am the fire of stars and the water of rain. A kingfisher flies with me and catches me in its bill and I know Bran still lives, but behind us, racing through the dark, is something else. I can’t see it, but I can smell it, a foul stink, like rotting flesh.
Faster
, I say to Bran.
We must go faster!

The kingfisher releases me and vanishes in a burr of song.

I fall, but I don’t hit the earth. Instead I open my eyes.
The horrible smell is still in my nose, my mouth. I grab the bottle of whiskey and drink, hoping it will burn the smell away, but I swallow wrong and cough it back up instead.

Madda doesn’t help. She just sits across from me, waiting. “Well?”

I struggle to find my voice. “I saw Sisiutl,” I say, though my throat is hoarse and my neck burns where it bit me.

“I suspected as much. He wears many skins, that sisiutl, and has many names. Dragon, Wyrm, Wyvern, those are some of them. Doesn’t really matter what you call him. He is what he is,” Madda says as she presses a cup of water to my lips. “Drink. Come on, open up and drink.”

I push it away. “I’ll be sick.”

“No, you won’t. Spirit is trying to pull you back under. Drink.”

The water sends my stomach into spasms and the pain on my neck gets worse. I touch it and discover blood on my fingers. “I’m bleeding.”

“Let me see.” Madda moves in close to inspect it, so close I can smell the stink of her perspiration. “How did that happen?”

“Sisiutl bit me.”

“Hold still. Don’t move a muscle.” She thrusts a knife
into the fire and then pulls it out, pressing it against my neck without warning.

And all goes black.

I dream
.

I dream that I’m surrounded by people I can’t see because it’s so dark, though I can feel them. They’re pushing me, shoving me, kicking me. All of us are fighting for room, for we’re contained within something that’s small, far too small for all of us. And then the tapping begins. Someone is drumming outside the dark space, drumming so loud my ears ache and we begin to moan
.

A beam of light breaks the darkness. An eye is peering at us—a black eye, so highly polished it reflects my face. The eye blinks, and then a beak reaches in. The others around me scream and try to hide, but they needn’t worry. It only wants me
.

I see you,
the raven says as it tries to pull me out
. I’ve got you now.

I wake. The fire is dead. The moon hangs above my head like a great pearl in the sky. The monolith is silent.

And Madda?

She’s gone.

T
his has been the longest day of my life. The monolith started humming again hours ago, keeping me company as I wait for Madda to return.

Am I to stay here? Is this some kind of test where I’m supposed to try to find her? I don’t know and can’t find any trace of where she went, or even how to get back to the boundary, so I bide my time walking around the crater, searching the woods surrounding the clearing while the monolith watches.

The wound from the sisiutl throbs. I clean it with the water left in Madda’s canteen, and then clean it again— anything to stop myself from dwelling on the fact that Madda is missing.
What if she’s hurt?
The thought makes my throat grow thick. I call her name over and over until
I’m hoarse. No reply. No sound at all, save for the hum of the monolith. No bees. No birds. No frogs. Nothing but the monolith’s incessant hum.

I dream
.

I dream of Paul, floating in the ocean. His hair fans out around his shoulders and moonlight catches in his eyes. He spreads his arms and legs until he is a star, a spinning star in the sea, a starfish, a sea star. He looks at me and says something, but I can’t make out his words. I lean close, and realize I’m in the water too, swimming toward him, when a great fin pierces the water and a creature swallows Paul whole
.

And then I scream until water fills my lungs and I wake, drenched in sweat
.

Night comes and goes, and still no Madda. I stuff moss in my ears, but it doesn’t stop the hum.

Could I find my way back? Maybe, if I had paid closer attention, but the woods all look the same to me and I’m just as likely to end up back here at the clearing as at the camp. But the humming is getting louder and I can’t shake the feeling I’m being watched.

I pass the time first by drawing concentric rings around the monolith, as if that will stop the hum, and when I grow tired of that, I use stone to make a great
wheel, radiating out and away from the slab of obsidian. The stones are heavy, and before long, my hands are blistered and sore, but I don’t stop. I just keep on working, doggedly, as if that will bring Madda back.