Underground (33 page)
“There’s a lot of uncanny stuff around this house. I don’t think she’s bad—I’m not even sure she knows about everything that’s gathered around her—but she is a bit unsettling.”
“That’s a word for it. Fish really jumped when she took notice of him.”
“Wouldn’t you? I mean, even if she’s not some kind of witch, the ghosts around here are paying her a lot of attention and there’s a bunch of other things—magical things—running around in here.”
“In here?” Quinton asked, his eyes a little wide as he pointed at the floor.
I thought about lying to ease his nerves, but instead I said, “Not so many in here and none in the living room.” OK, so I’d downplayed the number of things in the kitchen a little. “In the entry and outside there are a lot of bits of magic and . . . elemental things, I guess. They don’t seem to be interested in us except that we’re visiting Mrs. Graham and they’re interested in
her
.”
her
.”
“Hurry up in there!” The old woman’s voice rang in the air of the kitchen without her raising her volume in the living room.
We both started a little, and then I took a deep breath and picked up the tray. “You know, I flunked food service in college,” I said. “Let’s hope I don’t drop this thing.”
“I can take it,” Quinton offered, his hands full of other bits and bobs.
“I have the impression she expects it to be me. Remember what Fish said about catering to her old-school attitude.”
Quinton nodded. “Yeah, right.”
We marched back into the living room and put the tray down on the floor near the fire, which earned a gap-toothed grimace from Grandma Ella. There was no place else to put it at that end of the room and no place else to sit but on the strewn cushions, so that’s what we did. Fish sat beside the old lady—apparently to play the part of translator and servant—while Quinton and I sat across the hearthstone from her. The whites of Fish’s eyes were showing.
“Hmph!” the old woman grunted, and I realized she was sucking on one of the chocolate-covered caramels from the now-opened gift box. “Salty. Good.” Fish breathed a sigh of relief and loosened a little.
There was a ridiculous amount of rigmarole with distributing the bread and coffee and getting one of the cigars lit, putting the coffee pot near the fire so it stayed hot, finding just the right spot for the cigar so the smoke curled into the air properly and the tobacco stayed alight. Mrs. Graham grinned at us the whole time. Then she turned her sharp, dark eyes—barely etched by age—on me and I shivered even in the sweltering room.
“Sisiutl,” she said, her voice a mixture of serpent hiss and bird cry. She glowered as she said it, as if she’d just noticed something about me she didn’t like. The wing shapes around her head in the Grey heaved slowly upward and fell back down, folding tight around the old woman. “Sisiutl zeqwa . . .” She continued in Lushootseed for a sentence or two, and Fish translated while she stopped for a sip of coffee.
“You call him Sistu, but he’s properly called Sisiutl. A zeqwa— a monster—Sisiutl is a creature of the water—a sea serpent—that lives in the waters of the Sound,” Fish said. “He is the emblem of warriors who may bathe in his blood to harden their skin against the arrows of their enemies. He is the death of many seals and many men.”
“Sisiutl?” I asked, unable to keep an edge of amusement out of my voice at the sound of the word.
Fish looked nervous and the air near him turned the color of light through ferns. “That’s his proper name. It’s a Kwakiutl word—”
“Funny, is it?” Grandma Ella shrieked. “If you respect the creature you call him by his true name! He won’t heed your call if you name him something else. Sisiutl is crafty and cruel and hungry. He tells the warrior, ‘Bathe in my blood and be strong,’ but he must not, or he’ll be turned to stone! A single drop is enough for strength. A foolish, greedy man will become a rock and Sisiutl will laugh at his fate. He will become a canoe and offer to take the hunter to the best seals, but if the hunter does not pay him a seal, the canoe becomes Sisiutl again and will devour the man. The man cannot escape him. Sisiutl is strong and fast. Three-headed is Sisiutl—the double-ended serpent.”
“Three heads?” I asked, not sure how a double-ended snake could have three heads.
“One head at each end like a snake—as quick and as vicious, with a viper’s tongue and horned brow. In the middle”—she covered her sunken belly with one hand—“a man’s face with mustaches like a sturgeon, horns, and two clawed hands beside it. This is its true head, from which Sisiutl speaks. Between his scales grows hair like cedar strings and he can change his form at will. In water, he swims faster than the seal, faster than orca, but on land he is slower and moves like a snake. He is the guardian of Qamaits’s pool outside the house that leads to the land of the gods, and worthy men may call upon his help, but if they fail to pay him, he will eat.”
“Who or what is Qamaits?” I asked. You’d think I’d be pretty used to the weird and unsettling by that time, but the oddity of the house and its occupant threw me and left me feeling a bit at sea.
Grandma Ella waved my question aside and glared at Fish as she helped herself to more bread.
Fish bit his bottom lip before replying. “She’s another zeqwa, an ogress who eats children. She’s kind of like Baba Yaga and she lives in a magical house. She’s got a bunch of other names, too, but all her aspects are kind of half-magic, half-monster. Umm . . . I’m trying to remember the rest of the legend about the house. . . .”
Ella Graham snorted. “See what leaving your people causes? Ignorance!” She returned her glare to me as Fish blushed and lowered his head. “Inside the house of Qamaits lies the staircase to the sky—where the gods live. You can climb to the sky through a hole, like the sisters who married stars did, but that won’t bring you to the gods. If you want to talk to the gods in the sky, you go up the stairs, past Qamaits and past her guardian, Sisiutl. If you please the gods, they will bless your hunting with his help. But if you anger them, squander their gifts, or do not feed their helper well, the gods will be angry and let Sisiutl eat
you
.”
you
.”
“Is there more than one Sisiutl?” I asked.
She scoffed. “No! He is
the
Sisiutl.”
the
Sisiutl.”
Now came the crazy bit, but I figured there wasn’t much crazier than three-headed sea serpents that eat people and turn into canoes, so I dove in. “What would happen if the—if Sisiutl got loose from his pool?”
“He would eat. As he ate after the earthquake.”
“Which earthquake?”
“After the Second World War. I had been worried for my sons but they came home safe. Then Sisiutl shook the ground and ate the men he found there. Horrible. To survive the killing in Europe only to be eaten at home. We didn’t have the casino and the houses and the shops then. Many people went away from the reservation to work. When Sisiutl came, our people were the only ones who knew it was him. It was difficult to find Qamaits and make her call Sisiutl back to the pool. If Sisiutl had been hunting men, the gods would have been furious, but he was only hungry after so long asleep. No hunters were fed to Sisiutl that day and only Qamaits could put him back into the pool.”
“Where was Sisiutl’s pool? Where did your people send him?”
“It was in the garbage dump, then. But there’s no water there now. When you fight Sisiutl, you’ll have to find another pool for him or send him back to the gods.”
I was taken aback. “Why would I fight Sisiutl?”
Ella Graham spat into the fire and started to get up from her cushion. Fish jumped up to help her to her feet.
Clutching her cane, she glared at us, batted Fish aside, and hobbled to the fieldstone mantle above the eastern fireplace, her white braids dragging on the floor and her loose flesh swaying like weeds in water. She took something off the shelf and returned. Fish helped her down.
“Get me another cushion, Reuben,” she ordered, and Fish gave her his. She sank down and over, so she was reclining on her side, her face gone waxy from some pain. She held out a long brown and gold feather toward me. “You take this, Pheasant Woman. You’ll need it to unpick the knots of dead things.”
I was flabbergasted and shot an irritated glance at Fish. He shook his head rapidly, eyes wide, scared. “What makes you think—?” I started.
Grandma Ella cawed a nasty laugh that made me bristle. “You’re just like Pheasant. Pheasant’s daughter died but he loved her so much he went to the land of the dead to bring her back. He couldn’t see the dead with his open eyes, only when he closed them, but he couldn’t keep his eyes closed and he stepped on the dead and made them angry. They tried to send him away, but Pheasant didn’t want to leave his daughter. He wanted to stay, but the land of the dead is not for the living. So one eye died, and Pheasant sees the dead through one eye and the living through the other. Like you. Take this,” she repeated, thrusting the pheasant tail feather at me again.
Reluctantly, I took the feather and felt her shudder as I touched it. It didn’t seem special, but I could see the wings that folded around Ella Graham unfurl and refold, glittering—they reminded me of something. . . .
“You remind me of Grandpa Dan,” I whispered, unable to keep the words back.
Ella Graham snorted. “Dan! A horse for spirits to ride. He cannot stop Sisiutl,” she sneered and pulled away from me, glowering. “You think I don’t hear the whispers of our ancestors saying Sisiutl comes to the land between? Hm? Our people have grown weak and small in numbers, and Sisiutl feeds on too many. Who but you to gather spirits and send him and his spawn away again, Pheasant? Now you go away. Get out of my house. You, too, Reuben. Come back when the dead sleep properly.” Her voice began fading and her eyes dimmed as she continued. “Bring more chocolates. And tell that rascal Russell I forgive him for sinking my boat.” She dropped her cheek onto the cushion and let out a sigh, closing her eyes, and the house seemed to sigh also, becoming subdued and darker inside than the darkness falling outside would account for.
The three of us exchanged startled glances. Fish put his hand in front of her mouth and looked terrified. Then he slumped in relief.
“She’s just asleep. But we’d better go.”
We all agreed on that point, struggled to our feet, and shuffled out through the topsy-turvy Grey and the cloud of spirits to my truck in nervous silence. No one said a word until we were back on the main road out of the rez. Quinton had returned to his brooding and Fish kept casting nervous glances at me as I drove.
When I had the truck safely back up on I-5, I shot him a look. “What?” I demanded, half irritated but mostly curious what made him so skittish now when he’d gone along so well before.
“Do you really think Sisiutl is killing those people?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I mean—wow. Uh . . . ancient Indian monsters . . . umm . . . chowing down on homeless people in Pioneer Square? It’s kind of . . . kind of . . .”
“Outlandish?”
“Nuts.”
“It’s your monster, Fish; your culture. If you and Russell really think Grandma Ella can curse you for sinking her boat—even if you only think it a little bit and late at night—is it more nuts to imagine that a monster might be real—just a little bit and late at night—down in the Square where things get strange?”
He didn’t look at me. “And you . . .” He gave a nervous giggle, which was pretty funny coming out of a stocky guy who looked more like an outlaw biker gone straight than a doctor. “You see dead people?”
“I hate that movie,” I said, truly nettled and frowning—I knew that was unfair, but still . . . Then I nodded, keeping my eyes on the road. “Yeah. I see dead people. Things that linger, things that go bump in the night. Mostly harmless.”
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