~17~

AGAIN AND AGAIN THAT NIGHT I was jerked from sleep just as my throat was being sliced open with a sharp knife. I was back home in the sleeping loft with the children, and, as before, when we heard the mayhem outside I got the musket and the children cowered behind me. But in these repeating dreams, it wasn’t Hector and Syawa who crept up the stairs—it was the savage I’d seen lying dead on the farmhouse floor.

In my dreams he was very much alive, his scalp plucked bald save for the stiff brush atop his head. His war paint was hideous; his black eyes gleamed in murderous rage. He sneered at the musket I pointed at him, knocking it from my hand before I could lift it to swing. In one smooth motion he grabbed my arm, spun me ’round, and pinned my back against his chest as, with his other hand, he drew his razor-sharp blade from left to right across my throat. He released me and I crumpled, the light of life fading from my eyes as he threw the children down the stairs, one by one.

Every time I felt that knife slice into my flesh, I jerked myself awake, so that the last glimmer of life in my dream was also the last glimmer of the dream as I awoke. But I was so exhausted that I kept falling right back to sleep e’en tho’ I didn’t want to, e’en tho’ I knew the dream would happen again and again and again.

Finally it didn’t. Finally I slept deeply and well and as I awoke, I could feel Syawa beside me, his hand resting lightly on my arm. I heard him breathing and I smiled, knowing that when I opened my eyes, he would be lying there, smiling that smile of his, about to ask if I was ready.

But he wasn’t.

I opened my eyes to naught but woodland, and I sat up with a start. Like it or not, I was still alive and Syawa wasn’t. He was gone, gone, and I would ne’er see his smile again. As I looked ’round the camp, all my dreams dissolved and the enormity of reality piled on top of me like a million invisible blankets. I was sure I would suffocate under the weight.

Hector had packed and was waiting impatiently for me to arise. I slowly rolled my bearskin and tied it to my pack. I accepted the cold food he gave me and ate slowly as we hiked through the woods. I felt numb. I could not taste the meat, nor could I feel the earth beneath my shoes. Everything about me was numb.

We neared the spot where Hector had pulled the canoe into the bushes. I stood on the muddy creek bank, staring at the mucky remnants of a large snake that had been chopt to pieces, apparently by Hector’s paddle. I began to tremble. Then I began to scream.

Startled, Hector spun ’round, his hand on his knife, bracing himself against the canoe as he looked for trouble, but I was just standing there screaming, staring at the pieces of snake. Hector must’ve assumed the sight of the snake terrified me, but it wasn’t that—it wasn’t that at all. It was what the snake represented, what it meant, what it was saying to me. This precious interlude in my life was finished, irrevocably gone, lost forever. As sweet as it had been to have a few brief weeks in which I wasn’t miserable and suffering, the respite was done and the misery could begin again, a million times worse than before.

How could I not scream?

Hector sighed before coming to take my pack from me. He strapt it in the canoe, then said something, clearly urging me to get in. But I couldn’t. This was the spot where it happened, where everything changed, where my life was ruined. I fell to my knees crying, my heart broken, bleeding. Without another word, Hector leant over and picked me up the way Syawa once did. I felt his arms shake as he carried me to the canoe and knew his heart, too, was broken. I wanted to reach out to him somehow, to comfort him, but I could not stop crying.

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.