The Spirit Keeper (19 page)

Once in the canoe, I struggled to control myself, to stop making things worse for Hector. He ignored me as he pushed the craft into the water, jumped in, and began to paddle. The other paddle was in the canoe, but Hector needed no assistance from me. In no time at all we were in the Great River, and shortly thereafter we were halfway across, angling with the current.

I was quiet now. I sat staring at the eastern shoreline, watching the woods loom gradually larger and larger. That woods was the way back home, to my family, to my life. My meaningless life . . .

I did not want to go back to that life. Suddenly I knew I would rather drown, right here, right now, than return to that life. How could I go back to being nobody, nothing, to being tortured and tormented, to being miserable, when I had experienced what it was like to be somebody special, to be loved and cherished, to be the object of someone’s sacred dream? I picked up the paddle at my feet and stuck it into the water. The canoe immediately wobbled. I began pushing the paddle against the water in a movement exactly the opposite of what Syawa had taught me. The canoe jerked into a hard spin.

Hector yelled, startled. “What are you doing? Stop that!”

“
You
stop!” I shouted back, turning to glare at him. “Why you do this?”

Hector leant back, his forehead furrowed. I hadn’t really looked at him yet that morning, but now that I did, I was appalled. His skin was gray, his eyes were sunk in dark circles, his short hair was sticking out in all directions, and he was still covered in dried blood. “I am taking you back to your people!” he exclaimed. “I will take you to the village of trade. From there the Black Robe will help you.”

“No!” I shouted as he put his paddle back in the water to pull the canoe out of the current. “No! I not go back there! We go that way!” I pointed to the west.

Hector ignored me the way he’d ignored me earlier, so I turned ’round and began paddling furiously against him, which nigh upset the canoe. “Stop that!” Hector screamed, hard-presst to steady the canoe. “You’ll turn us over!”

“Good!” I screamed back, slapping the water so that a great wave washed o’er him.

“Stop!” Hector shouted again, trying to grab my paddle. I swung it at him, narrowly missing his head. He leant back again, his eyes now filled with fear. “What’s wrong with you? You cannot swim! Do you want to die?”

“Do I want to die?” I repeated, then laughed at the thought. “I cannot die! How can I die? I am already dead!” I laughed again, and the more I laughed, the more hysterical I became. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Between my bouts of laughter, I heard the eerie silence that accompanied Hector’s horrified stare, and that silence eventually reached me, sucking all the humor out. When I recovered myself, I sat breathing heavily, staring into the depths of that deep, dark river as we drifted slowly ’round and ’round.

“What did you say?” Hector asked, his voice low and quiet. His eyes were narrowed, and he held the paddle in mid-air, forgotten. The canoe righted itself, and we rode backwards with the current—smooth, steady, picking up speed.

I swallowed thickly before turning to Hector to use a combination of words and gestures. “You must take me to your people. That is what Syawa wanted.”

“That is not his name.”

“That is what I call him.”

“You do not know his real name.”

I sighed impatiently. “Well, I know
him
. And I know Syawa says I must—”

“Do not speak of him!” Hector snapt. “We do not speak the names of the dead!”

I raised one eyebrow. “I thought you said I do not know his name.”

Hector breathed heavily, clearly at wit’s end. “Please do not disregard my beliefs.”

“Well. Then let us speak of you. You promise him you take me to your people.”

“I did not.”

My mouth fell open. I thought for a moment, then shifted ’round to gesture more clearly, for I was sure we were just failing to communicate. “Of course you promise him you take me to your people!
He
taking me to your people! Before he die, he ask you—take care of me, yes?”

Hector shook his head, his face blank. “No.”

“But . . . but his Vision!” I stammered, completely undone. “You two come on Journey looking for me, and you find me, and I take gift to your people! You know his Vision more than me!”

Hector looked to the west, his focus a couple thousand miles away. “Seers can be wrong.” I saw him blink several times, swallowing hard as he worked to keep his face stony.

I saw something then, something I had not seen up to that point because I was so absolutely blinded by my own pain, my own tragic loss. I saw Hector. I saw so much suffering in his eyes, so much sadness, so much betrayal. If I had been shocked to lose Syawa in the way I did, how much more terrible must have been Hector’s shock, Hector’s loss. Hector was devoted to Syawa, sworn to protect him, and yet . . . he had failed.

“He not tell you he die on Journey?” I asked slowly.

Hector continued to stare to the west. “No.” He suddenly turned his eyes to me. “Did he tell you?”

“Same time he tell you.” I pondered for a moment as Hector turned his face away again. “You not think, not ask him—does his Vision show you two returning to your people?”

“I thought to ask,” Hector said sharply, “but I chose not to. No man should know the time and place of his own death.”

I sighed. Whether I wanted to know or not, I was now keenly aware of the precise time and place of my own death—after all, I had experienced it a dozen times in my dreams. Alas that my time and place had come and gone without bothering to take me with it! Now, as humiliating as it was to have to force this angry, unhappy man to let me stay with him, the truth was, as Syawa recently assured me, I simply had no choice. I had nowhere else to go.

Nor was I the only one with no choice. I considered my companion and the loneliness that loomed before him—well, it was unimaginable. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for him to proceed on his perilous journey and successfully arrive at his extremely distant destination by himself. Suddenly I understood he needed me every bit as much as I needed him.

“Hear me,” I said softly, “I know this is bad for you. It is bad for me, too. All I have now is he say I must go to your people. So you must take me with you.”

Hector glanced at me, his eyelids heavy, his mouth twisted in a terrible frown, his nostrils flared. He said nothing, but his doleful gaze spoke volumes. He lowered his eyes to the canoe and shook his head. “It is too far, too dangerous. I cannot promise your safety.”

“No, but
he
can.” Hector’s eyes shot up to my face and I decided to build a fire from this spark of a response. “Hector, you not see—he is not gone! How is he gone? He is here!” I put a hand on my heart, thinking of Gran and her hovering relatives. “He is always here, watching o’er us.”

Hector’s frown melted into uncertainty, then puzzlement, then a dark and naked fear. His eyes narrowed as he said in a low, tense voice, “He gave you his
?”

It sounded like a statement, but it was clearly a question. In either case, I did not understand the word Hector used. I knew I’d heard the word before, or a word very much like it, but I could not recall exactly what the word meant. I was sure it had something to do with spiritual things, and I deduced it must mean something like “sacred vow.” I was certain that was it. Hector was asking if Syawa had given me his sacred vow, and tho’ Syawa did not, perhaps, use that exact word, his intent was beyond doubt—he said I would live with his people.

“Yes,” I said to Hector, lifting my chin to meet his gaze confidently. “Yes, of course.”

Hector’s narrowed eyes narrowed e’en further as he studied me. Then he abruptly nodded, shifted his eyes to the river, and put his paddle back into the water. He slowly turned our craft and began paddling steadily upstream. He would not meet my eyes further, so I turned ’round and put my paddle into the water. Remembering all Syawa had taught me, I handled the paddle well enough, and we actually began moving forward.

Looking back on that moment, I shudder to realize just how stupid I was, how naïve, how blissfully unaware of all the things I did not know. I said, “Yes—yes, of course,” as if I understood Hector’s question perfectly, as if I knew exactly what I was talking about. But I did not know—
I did not know!
The only thing I knew for certain was that there was no place for me back in the world of my family. I was dead to them. The person who had once lived with them was dead to me. I was someone else altogether now.

I was Syawa’s Creature of Fire and Ice.

~18~

T
HE THING I REMEMBER
most from the days immediately following Syawa’s death is pain—huge, rolling waves of excruciating pain. Pain from the loss, pain from the loneliness, pain from uncertainty, pain from struggling to understand, pain from paddling. So much pain from paddling.

As we slowly made our way upstream, Hector and I strove to work together, to communicate with one another. He oft yelled at me, demanding I hold the paddle this way or that, constantly criticizing my efforts and ne’er being satisfied with the results. Quickly exhausted, I must soon ask him to land the canoe to let me relieve myself, and when I jumped from the canoe before he did, he screamed furiously. Only after he made it clear with wild gestures I was never,
ever
to get out of the canoe first did I realize he was thinking of what happened when Syawa jumped from the canoe, and he did not want the same thing to happen to me.

I sat on the shore with my arms wrapt ’round my legs, my head upon my knees, unwilling to look at Hector as he paced back and forth. I asked why he kept hollering at me and told him I could not understand his words. Because he also had trouble understanding me, I must repeat myself several times, then ask him to repeat himself, and only through this laborious process did I figure out he was merely telling me to switch sides with the paddle to avoid straining myself unnecessarily.

But there was no way to avoid straining myself. Tho’ he was amazingly adept at choosing the channel with least resistance, I was wholly unaccustomed to this particular form of physical labor, which meant I immediately shredded every muscle in my arms, shoulders, neck, and back. Indeed, the challenge of paddling was almost as severe as the challenge of accepting Syawa’s sudden disappearance from my life.

Hector expressed little sympathy for my suffering, but, then again, I expressed little sympathy for his. Whene’er he wasn’t yelling at me, I sat in the front of the canoe, staring straight ahead, feeling utterly alone in all the world. Blinded by my own thoughts and feelings, I scarce remembered Hector e’en existed, much less that he was sitting not eight feet behind me.

My thoughts and feelings were completely consumed by Syawa. Did he truly have supernatural powers? Was such a thing possible? I wanted to believe it, and I was sorely tempted to believe it, but part of me always resisted, part of me always wondered, part of me always reasoned it away. He was a shrewd man—this I knew—and, as I myself had experienced, he was keenly capable of reading people and making intimate connections. But was he able to “see” events from afar? Was he able to “know” what the future would bring? Surely no man could do that. And yet . . .

I knew how close I’d come to dying in my parents’ house. And I knew Syawa was offering me a chance to start o’er with a life of meaning and purpose. More than anything, I knew he loved me and I loved him. But I did not understand why he had to leave me. I did not understand what “gift” he expected me to bring to his people. And I did not understand why he suggested I was meant to be with Hector, not with him.

It’s not that I didn’t care for Hector. For all his bluster, Hector was a decent fellow, capable of great loyalty and depth of feeling. But he just wasn’t the sort of man who would e’er appeal to me. He was bold and brash and belligerent and self-obsessed. As well-formed as he was, he was used to getting whate’er he wanted, and I preferred men like Syawa, who had to work to be noticed and were less likely to be surrounded by eager young girls. I had no desire to compete for someone’s attention and, besides, Hector didn’t e’en like me and had made his views plain enough on several occasions. The more I thought about it, the more I decided Syawa’s deathbed declaration that I was meant for Hector was, frankly, offensive. Hector certainly required no one to procure ladies for him, and I did not appreciate feeling as if I had been deliberately procured.

I concluded Syawa’s final wish was simply that—a wish—which would expediently resolve the rather messy situation left by his untimely demise. He did not want to leave me in the lurch, nor did he want to abandon his lifelong companion; naturally he hoped we might find comfort in one another.

We did not.

Once I got the hang of what I was supposed to do with my paddle, we traveled in silence, speaking only to convey essential information. Hector occasionally gave me paddling advice, and I told him when I needed to relieve myself. In the evenings we said nothing, avoiding eye contact. We performed our chores the way I once saw a pendulum clock perform in Boston—the brass disc swinging relentlessly back and forth, back and forth, heedless of anything going on in the world ’round it.