The Spirit Keeper (29 page)

A screaming young man intercepted us. He held a wooden club with both hands, raised to knock one of us in the head. He should’ve chosen his victim more carefully, because as he went for Hector, I stept up and punched him hard in his unguarded gut. I’ve been punched like that before and I know how completely it takes the wind out of you. The poor fellow froze in mid-air for a long moment before falling sideways, his club still raised above his head. After looking at me with wide eyes, Hector bent down to slit the man’s wrists. It was my turn to look at him with wide eyes. Then he grabbed my arm again and off we ran.

We raced down the riverbank. Hector pushed our canoe down to the water as I hacked holes in the two larger canoes. There were only four other boats, so I hacked a hole in each whilst Hector grabbed up all the paddles he could find and threw them into the front of our canoe. Then he shouted for me to get in. With a dozen or more paddles in my usual spot, I had nowhere to sit, but Hector pulled me into the back of the canoe with him. From that position, I couldn’t very well paddle, so he bade me lean back and let him reach ’round as he changed the paddle from side to side.

I’d seen Hector paddle hard before, but now that we were going
with
the current, we truly flew. It reminded me of being on the horse, only this time Hector was the animal, and I had to move with him as he pulled, up and back, up and back. I don’t know about him, but for me this intimacy became nothing short of pure torture. I tried not to notice his powerful muscles pulling as I leant against his chest, enwrapt as I was by his strong arms, but try tho’ I might to ignore it, I felt his mouth right beside my ear, his heavy breath warm upon my neck. I had to force myself, again and again, not to turn my face to meet his, not to let my cheek rub deliciously against his chin. I wanted to so badly, but I knew I must not. This was Hector, my only friend in the world, and I could not risk putting him in an awkward position or embarrassing him with a momentary whim. I turned my face away and held it there through an act of sheer iron will.

What had been a half-day’s hike on foot was a canoe ride of less than an hour. We arrived at our campsite and gathered what was left of our things. I packed the canoe as Hector threw the extra paddles into the Misery, where the current quickly carried them away. I jumped into my usual seat in front and picked up my paddle. As Hector pushed us into the river, I asked, “Do you think they will follow us?”

“I think they are afraid of you,” he declared. He jumped into the canoe and slid his paddle into the water as he added, “I think
I
am a little afraid of you!”

I turned to look at him, taken aback. He smiled at me then, his whole smile, unlike those stingy little half-smiles he usually gave. I’d ne’er felt the full force of Hector’s smile before, and I inhaled sharply, feeling as if I’d just been punched hard in the gut. Something inside me melted.

I turned back to the front of the canoe, o’erwhelmed. Syawa’s smile had warmed me, but this—this was something else altogether. This was a white, hot, pulsating blaze that rivaled the sun in intensity. Maybe it was the leftover exhilaration from the fight, or maybe it was the heat generated between us as we rode presst together in the canoe, but . . . I suddenly knew it was not. My hands shook as I put my paddle into the water. After everything we’d just been through—the captivity, the fight, the escape—the only thing I could think about was the fact that despite my best efforts I had fallen desperately in love with Hector.

And so Syawa was right after all.

~25~

H
EADING NORTH ON THE
Misery once again, we paddled determinedly ’til darkness prevented us from seeing. Then we pulled under the cover of an overhanging tree, keeping the canoe in the water. Hector propt a large rock beside it and showed me how to kick it aside to push the canoe back into the river should pursuers appear.

In darkness we gnawed some dried meat and the two ears of corn I carried, listening to the loud babble of the river as it beat upon a nearby sandbar. Then Hector surprised me by speaking, his voice so soft I could scarce hear him. “Did you . . .” He stopt and I leant toward his end of the canoe. “Did you think you were captured that day, at your family’s lodge?”

I sat back, surprised. “You mean the day you captured me?”

I heard his sharp intake of breath. “We did
not
capture you! We
saved
you.”

I laughed a little, softly. “You pointed a bloody knife at me whilst my family was being slaughtered. I was bound and forced to march for days with the constant threat of death hanging o’er me. I know now that all was not as it seemed, but Hector—I was your captive.”

“But those men had already planned their attack! We went along only to save you. For two years, he talked of nothing but saving you.” Hector sighed. “I . . . I did not realize how it seemed to you.” There was a long, long pause during which wild dogs howled in the distance. “You know you are not my captive now?”

“Yes,” I said, wishing I could see him.

“And you are free to do as you will?”

Now it was my turn to let the croaking frogs fill the silence. I thought about that moment on the prairie, how good it felt to believe I could do anything, and how quickly that moment passed. “I am not free, Hector,” I whispered at last. “And neither are you. We’re bound together, you and I—to each other, to his Vision, to this canoe.” Silence wafted like the light fog arising from the dark water. “But I’m not complaining. I’m rather enjoying it. Aren’t you?”

I heard him chuckle and my pulse quickened. He told me I should lie down and sleep, but I insisted he must sleep first, as was our habit. When he hesitated, I dug out the hatchet, still crusty with blood, and said I could do what must be done.

Dark tho’ it was, I knew he was frowning. “That ax will not stop an arrow,” he said bluntly.

“Nor would anything stop an arrow from hitting
you
,” I pointed out. “Either way I am dead. So, as a free woman, I tell you this: I sleep only after you do.”

He had no choice but to curl up in his end of the canoe whilst I sat at my end with the hatchet in my hands. Now that all the excitement was o’er, my hand was aching from the fight and I rubbed it absent-mindedly as I gazed at the thick darkness of the surrounding trees, the pulsating darkness of the river in both directions, and the twinkling darkness that was the moonless sky. But no matter where I looked, again and again, my eyes were pulled back to the dark shape curled up in the rear of the canoe. All my thoughts were of Hector, and I stared at him the way our cat used to stare at a mouse hole—intent, unblinking, hungry.

I watched as he woke up. It was still very dark, but I saw him move, heard his breathing change. Finally he sat up and leant over the canoe to splash water in his face. With arm outstretched, he asked for the hatchet, and at the last moment I purposely moved so that he grabbed my hand instead of the handle. It was a silly thing, but I wanted him to touch me. He jerked his hand back as if it had been burnt. The second time he reached more carefully.

I slept curled up in my end of the canoe, enjoying the way it rocked with the passing current. When I awoke we were already moving. I sat up slowly, trying to get my bearings. “How long have you been paddling?” I asked.

“Long,” Hector said, and because the sun was scarce o’er the horizon, I knew he must have started well before dawn.

Shortly after noon we encountered four large canoes heading downstream, all heavy-laden with furs, four men to a canoe. They told us they were going to the Big Bend to trade; we told them about the ruffians. Hector explained how we fought our way out of the camp and said it was possible some of the miscreants might be following us. The traders listened with growing displeasure. One man apologized for what we had been through, saying his son may have been one of the marauders. The unhappy father assured us we need not worry about pursuit—no one would get a canoe past them.

After that, Hector was less tense. Late in the day he suddenly dived into the water and killed a fish with his knife, for the ruffians had broken all his spears. I was amazed, but also a little frightened—it was up to me to paddle the canoe to shore.

This was the first time in a long time we camped alone. Tho’ we were silent as we set up camp and prepared the fish, everything felt different to me. Any time we happened to catch one another’s eye, a split second passed before we turned away. Whene’er this happened, something in me flared up, like grease dripping on a log.

As we waited for the fish to cook, Hector sat across the fire, staring into the flames. I felt as if he was working up to something, and, sure enough, after a time he said, “Did
he
give you that dream?”

I blinked rapidly, looking at the ground. “What dream?” I finally had to ask.

“About Three Bulls and the people turning against him. How they hit him with stones.”

My eyes opened wide. I had not really had a dream, of course, but I said, “Oh, uh, yes . . . I suppose he must have.” Hector started talking about how quickly the dream came true, which I scarce understood because few details of the alleged “dream” were matched by what happened, but I was no longer listening because another thought had come to me, a strange and startling realization: I had not dreamt about Syawa the night before. Nor had I dreamt about him when we were in the outlaw village. Now that I thought about it, I had not dreamt about him since . . . since before the ruffians captured us. Before that, I had dreamt of him every single night since the day he died, but now the dreams were gone.

After remarking on the accuracy of my dream, Hector went silent again, staring into the flames. I wisht I could tell him the truth—how it wasn’t a prophecy at all, but the result of my understanding of human nature and his own conviction that my dream was bound to come true. But how could I tell him that? He had his beliefs, and I had mine.

We ate in silence, but the more I thought about how impresst he was with my prophecy, the more it bothered me. As I was cleaning up, I took a deep breath and said, “Hector . . .” but when he looked at me from across the fire, his eyes thrilled me to distraction and I forgot what I was going to say. I blinked, keeping my eyes on the ground, berating myself for being a soppy fool. “Hector,” I tried again without looking up, “you do realize, don’t you, that
he
wasn’t the one fighting yesterday? I wasn’t using some sort of special Spirit Keeper powers, you know. Not everything I say or do is because of him.”

“I know,” he said. He was staring into the fire with that familiar half-smile, but then he looked up at me and briefly graced me with the full one. “He knew nothing of fighting. That is why he needed me. But you—well . . . I remember your mother.”

I bowed my head, o’erwhelmed by both his smile and the embarrassing memory.

“You fight well,” he added. “A true warrior. You are smart, strong, and brave.” I was just beginning to swell before these compliments when he added, “You are everything he said you would be.”

I felt as if I were an ocean vessel whose sails had just gone limp. I sighed. How could I get Hector to see me as a person, not just the object of Syawa’s Vision?

Before I could pursue that thought, Hector himself went on. “Among my people, women do not fight.”

“Only the men?” I asked, eager to talk about anything but Syawa.

“Even the men prefer not to fight,” Hector said slowly. “It is better to talk than to fight.” He looked into the fire, his thoughts miles away. “My father thinks I fight too much. He says I am too quick to anger, too quick to act. He said this Journey would teach me restraint.”

“How goes that lesson?” I couldn’t help but tease.

Hector laughed and my heart thumped. “I still have much to learn.” A long moment passed. His face grew serious as he glanced across the fire. “You have been in more fights than I have.” It was a statement, not a question.

I shrugged and looked away. I told him about the first big fight I could remember, when I was out with a gang of kids on the streets of Boston. I couldn’t have been more than four, maybe three, and for some reason two kid armies were lined up on opposite sides of the street, throwing rocks, sticks, and anything else we could find. A mud-ball hit me square in the eye, knocking me backwards. One of my siblings eventually led me home to Mother, who shrieked and dragged me down to the river’s edge.

“The river was enormous,” I continued, “as much salt water as fresh, and when my mother dunked me, head first, I was terrified. I suppose she was trying to wash the mud from my eye, but I thought she was trying to drown me. It was awful.”

Hector listened to this story with an expression of sympathetic horror. “No wonder you dislike water,” he said. I shrugged and said he could be right, or perhaps it was the time my brothers built a raft and put me on it to see if it would float and when it didn’t I ended up in the bottom of the river looking up through the water as they stood laughing on the bank ’til one of them realized I wasn’t coming up and dived in to pull me out. Or maybe it was the time my sister and her friend stole a rowboat to go visit a boy up the creek and had to take me with them because they were supposed to be watching me but ended up capsizing and I had to hold on to a tree limb ’til a fisherman came and rescued me and helped me find my sister but by the time we found the other girl, she’d drowned.

I had plenty of reasons, I said, not to like water.

Hector stared into the fire, stunned. “You have suffered much.” Another statement.

I shrugged again. “It wasn’t as bad as I make it sound. We didn’t know we were suffering. We didn’t know any other way to be. We were all in the same situation.”

“And your mother—did she always treat you the way she did when . . . when I saw?”

I cringed before the memory. “Sometimes worse. She beat us fairly regularly. But she wasn’t the only one. We beat each other. Complete strangers beat us sometimes, and we beat them back. That’s just the way it was.” I thought for a moment, then looked at Hector, who was still staring at me. “Didn’t your mother beat you?”