The Spirit Keeper (22 page)

I closed my eyes, o’erwhelmed by the memory. Yes—I heard Syawa use that word during their big argument, and I guess it somehow stuck in my brain. But Hector, of course, assumed Syawa was speaking to him through me. I opened my eyes to apologize for berating him, but he beat me to it.

“Please forgive me,” he said, his face lowered. “I will try to be less petty.” He glanced at me, then stared off at the river. “I think we should leave in the morning. It is difficult being with people now, talking . . .”

I agreed. Things between us were confusing enough without adding the complication of other people and their inexplicable issues. It was time for our Journey to resume.

~20~

S
HORTLY AFTER LEAVING THE
Trade Center, Hector turned our canoe west, entering a smaller (tho’ still formidable) tributary of the Great River. I soon learnt the Indian name for this river was something like “Misery,” and tho’ I know not what the word means to the locals, to me it meant God has a wicked sense of humor. I was
in
misery
on
the Misery—floating on misery, bathing in misery, drinking in misery, and listening to misery whisper in my ears all night long. I wisht I had someone to talk to about the irony of the river’s name, but Hector and I had once again lapsed into silence, which was familiar, if not exactly comfortable.

Little about my situation was comfortable. Tho’ my neck and shoulders had benefited from our rest at the Trade Center, the blisters on my hands returned with a vengeance. They burst and oozed and by the end of the second day on the Misery I could scarce hold my paddle.

When we camped that evening, I asked Hector if I could use a scrap of hide to make myself something. He said the hides were mine as much as his, to do with as I pleased. After we ate, I began sewing, and by the time Hector rose to take his turn at watch, my new paddling gloves were finisht. When I put them on in the morning, he lifted his chin in acknowledgment, which pleased me greatly. So hungry was I for any sign of approval from him that I interpreted e’en this slight gesture as a great triumph.

But that afternoon he started hollering again, and for the longest time I could not figure out why. When I adjusted my paddling, he only hollered more. Finally he steered the canoe to the bank and dug in his pack for a small pouch of grease, which he gestured for me to smear on my neck and face. My neck and face
were
very hot, for the sun was fierce and there was no shade on the river, but the grease didn’t help at all; it made me feel like a chicken rubbed with butter, sitting in a frying pan. By evening, any place my white skin had been exposed was red as a beet and throbbing.

This, I eventually realized, was what Hector had been yelling about—he saw my skin reddening and thought I should do something. Because the grease was no good, the only solution I could come up with thereafter was to tie our old tent cover o’er my head and shoulders as we paddled, which not only protected me from the sun, but also shielded me from the prying eyes of passers-by, much to Hector’s relief.

Like the blisters and sunburn, the forced intimacy between us also caused me great discomfort. Having grown up in very crowded quarters, I was not troubled by the lack of privacy, but Hector made me uneasy, for I e’er expected him to grumble, yell, or otherwise express his enormous disapproval of me. I could ignore him well enough during the day, e’en tho’ he was sitting only a few feet behind me, but when evening came I made an effort to stay as far from him as possible, preferably with the fire between us. For safety reasons, of course, he rarely let me out of his sight, but when he saw how I shrank from him, he went to great pains not to touch me, refusing e’en to make eye contact if he could help it.

Thanks to our physical proximity, he knew immediately when the time came, shortly after we started west, for my monthly. Our forward progress promptly came to a halt because Hector would not get in a canoe with me whilst I was in that condition. Therefore, we camped ’til my infirmity passed.

Being prohibited from speaking or e’en looking at one another proved to be no problem at all, because that was how we interacted all the time anyway. The truth was, our grief was still so raw that all we could do was feel it, live with it, and wait ’til we somehow became accustomed to it. I cannot speak for my companion, but I spent most of my waking moments during this time curled into a tiny ball inside my own head, crying and crying in unceasing sorrow.

At least I rarely cried aloud anymore, which must have been some relief for Hector.

To occupy myself during my monthly, I gathered a great armload of grass stalks and set about twisting the straws to make a broad-brimmed sunbonnet like those my gran used to make. Whilst I thus busied myself, Hector plucked his whiskers and worked on arrows or fish spears. I know not where his thoughts went during this silent time, but as I worked, I thought about Syawa, only Syawa. I basked in my memories—every word, every look, every touch, every smile—for I could not afford to forget a single precious moment, so few were those we shared.

As the shock of Syawa’s sudden death slowly faded, I found myself inundated by a flood of new emotions. In addition to being devastated, I was also hurt, angry, and increasingly bitter. I had assumed Syawa wanted to marry me, but it turned out he only wanted someone to fulfill his stupid “Vision.” And all those crazy things he told me—why had he not warned me about this Spirit Keeper business? He must’ve known Hector would view me as such. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Syawa had gone out of his way to encourage Hector to believe that very thing.

But why would Syawa want Hector to believe something that simply wasn’t true? It felt like some sort of trick, as if Syawa was setting me up the way I might set up pieces on a chessboard. Everyone I’d e’er known had used me in some way, so why should Syawa be any different? And while I was perfectly willing to honor his last wish by trying to convince his people of his Visionary powers, still—’twas hard not to feel as played as a hapless pawn.

No sooner did I think these ugly thoughts than I was swirled into a maelstrom of guilt—guilt for thinking badly of Syawa, guilt for allowing Hector to believe this Spirit Keeper nonsense, and, more than anything, guilt for being here in the first place. The only reason I’d come was to vex my mother; now my mere presence had completely changed the world. Of course, the moment I started blaming myself, I remembered Syawa’s admonition, but that only made me feel guilty about feeling guilty, at which point I knew I must stop thinking altogether or I would go mad.

Ah, well. If my days were long and lonely, filled with questions and self-recriminations, my nights, at least, were short and sweet, filled with dreams which gave me brief relief. I dreamt of Syawa obsessively, going all the way back to the beginning of our acquaintance, when he was chattering on and on and I understood naught of what he said. As I revisited those days in my dreams, I gradually began to understand his words, or at least to imagine I did, and in this way I committed to memory every conversation we e’er had, right up to the cyclone storm. At that point my dreams inevitably whirled me back to the beginning, as if my slumbering mind durst go no further for fear of the agony embedded in more recent memories.

’Twas a curious sensation, this vivid reliving of past events. I know it was happening only because my thoughts were so entirely fixated, day and night, on Syawa, but I was grateful for the phenomenon, whate’er the reason. As long as I could dream of him, I still had him in my life.

Near the end of my monthly, as I took my turn at night-watch, a movement behind a bush caught my eye and I watched a shadow with increasing alarm. When I threw a rock at it, it disappeared, but before long it was back, circling our camp. E’en when I added wood to the fire, the shadow didn’t run off. I lifted the hatchet, my mouth set in a determined line, and when I had a clear shot, I hurled the weapon, sending the shadow screaming off into the darkness.

The scream brought Hector to his feet, knife in hand. Knowing I mustn’t talk to him, I pointed, and he rubbed one eye sleepily as he trotted into the bushes. I fretted o’er a commotion in the distance ’til Hector returned, carrying the hatchet distastefully between two fingers, the carcass of a bobcat draped o’er one shoulder. He said nothing and would not look my way, but he did jerk his head toward my bedding as if to suggest it was my turn to sleep, which I was glad to do.

By morning my monthly was done and everything I’d touched whilst bleeding must be washed or purified in smoke to Hector’s satisfaction. I continued to be offended by these odd rituals, but I knew it was useless to argue, especially since I didn’t know Hector’s language well enough to make my position clear.

When we were finally permitted to speak again, he stared for a moment at my hat and I trembled, expecting him to tear it off my head and declare it somehow unacceptable. Instead, to my surprise, he almost smiled, and as we set off in the canoe, I was very pleased with myself.

Thanks to my new sunbonnet, I need drape a hide only o’er my shoulders, which enabled me to look ’round more freely as I paddled. Near the end of that day, I remember looking up to watch an odd bird fly by, only to find myself suddenly floundering in the river, for my looking up had somehow upset the canoe. Luckily, the water was only a few feet deep at that point, so as soon as I realized I could just stand up, I stopt splashing hysterically. In the meantime, Hector collected the canoe and our things—everything except my hat, which was floating in an eddy not far off. I started slogging toward it, only to have the earth fall out from under me as I stept off a shelf into much deeper water.

Because I immediately tried to scream, my lungs filled with water, causing me to panic. The harder I strove to arise, the farther down I went.

It seemed like hours, but ’twas only a matter of seconds before Hector was tugging my arm to drag me to the surface. The moment my head popped above the water, I coughed and coughed, clinging to him as he swam us to shore. He left me on the riverbank, still spluttering, still gasping, as he leapt back into the water and swam downstream to retrieve my hat.

When he returned, he stood staring at me as I miserably wrung out my hair. I waited for him to yell at me, but he just asked if I was hurt. I said no. He said, “Well, then. It is time for you to learn to swim.”

I looked up at him, horrified. “I cannot!” I protested. “I cannot!”

“You can and you will,” he said. He reached out his hand to me.

I turned and began scrambling up the bank to where he’d laid our things to dry. He came after me to grab my arm just as he’d done a few minutes earlier, when I was under water. This time, instead of clinging to him, I struggled to get away, screaming, inordinately terrified. “Let me go! Let me go!” I shrieked, but he pulled me back down the bank, a determined look in his eye.

With my free hand I hit his arm repeatedly with a tight fist ’til he abruptly released me, sending me flying backwards onto the muddy bank. From there I started scrambling away again, screaming, “No touch me! No touch me!”

I was sure he was coming after me, enraged, but when I finally dared look back I saw he was just standing there staring at me with narrowed eyes and lifted chin. I sat in the mud, breathing heavily, defiantly glaring up at him. For a moment our eyes locked exactly as they did when we first met in my family’s loft. Then Hector broke the silence. “You must learn to swim.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Why? He say if I fall in water, the worst that happens is I get wet.”

“That was before, when there were two of us. Now there is just me.”

I glowered at Hector, my head lowered, my eyes still locked on his. I had absolutely no intention of getting back in that water, and I was about to tell him as much when he spoke again.

“Sometimes the canoe tips,” he said, his words slow, tight, and clipt. “It just does. And sometimes you will fall in. I will try to save you, but if I cannot get to you in time, you will drown. Please—do not make me watch you die . . . again.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, what was I supposed to say to that? I rolled my eyes, sighed, and stared into the water, wishing I’d ne’er made that damned hat. “Well,” I said at last. I sighed again as I slowly got to my feet. “Well. We do this quick—be done. What must I do?”

“Take off your leggings.” I gasped and reared back, but my indignant reproach was lost on him because he was staring at the ground. “They will weigh you down,” he said apologetically.

I rolled my eyes again, muttered voluminous curses in English, and angrily stript down to my short shift and loincloth. “Now what?” I snapt.

“I will have to touch you,” he said, still not meeting my eyes.

I sighed again, enormously. “Well. Do not let me drown!”

We walked into the river and Hector showed me how to wave my arms and legs to stay afloat, treading water. I was surprised by how easy it was. Then he showed me how to take breaths by turning my head to the side. With great discomfort, apologizing again for having to touch me, he held me up as I practiced paddling and turning my head. Finally he made me swim up and down in the shallows near the bank, with him walking along to monitor me. He was pleased with my efforts, saying that was enough for now, but hereafter he would require me to swim every morning.

We ate, as usual, without speaking. As Hector laid out his sleeping fur, I sat by the fire, still drying my soggy hair. Having had time to reflect on the incident, I was thoroughly ashamed of my behavior. In my defense, all I can say is I was so accustomed to ill-treatment, I e’er expected to be hit, screamed at, or otherwise abused. Knowing how Hector disapproved of me, I was particularly suspicious of him, and I cringed to think my childish fit must have only confirmed his poor opinion of me. I owed it to Syawa to make amends. I mumbled, “Hector?”

He stopt spreading out his bedding and turned ’round.

I looked at him meekly as I mumbled, “Thank you for teaching me swim.”