THE SKY WAS DULL gray and my hair was still quite damp. By afternoon the wind picked up again, and e’en inside the buffalo robe I was numb from head to toe. When my hands grew so numb I dropt my paddle, Hector grabbed it from the water, pulled the canoe to shore, started a fire, and bade me sit under the canoe behind the flames. “I know you do not want me to touch you,” he said in a strained voice, “but you must allow me to warm you.” He took off his shirt and wrapt his body ’round mine before pulling the buffalo robe ’round us both.
I leaned the uninjured side of my face against his chest, sucking in his body heat the way a chimney sucks up smoke. “I want you to touch me,” I whimpered. “I was just so frightened . . .”
“Of me?” he asked, incredulous.
“Yes.”
Saying he could remember little from the night before, he asked me to tell him what happened. I told him what I knew, his fingers gently exploring the swollen parts of my face. When I described the way the man dragged me, Hector’s hand stopt in mid-air and began to shake. Suddenly he writhed out of the buffalo robe and crawled across the riverbank to vomit. After he finally stopt heaving, he remained on his knees with his head in his hands, saying he had failed me and could never, ever ask me to forgive him.
And then a very strange thing happened, a thing I ne’er imagined, a thing I could not believe e’en as it was happening to me. I suddenly understood my mother.
All those times she forgave my father, all the times she took him back—I always thought she was insane. But now I understood. There was nothing else she could do. She needed him, and, what was worse, she actually wanted him. When he was sober he was charming, smart, funny, fun. Of course she wanted him. She loved him. And so she forgave him. Time and time and time again. Just the way I was going to forgive Hector. Just the way I must, sooner or later, finally forgive my mother.
I was so much worse than she had e’er been. Her husband did what—made drunken threats, blustered, bullied, lost a few fortunes? Mine snapt people’s necks and tore out their intestines. My father had turned my mother into a screaming harpy who beat and tormented defenseless children. My husband had turned me into a loathsome murderer. But none of this mattered. I still loved him. I still wanted him. And I would forgive him, whether he asked me to or not.
Because just like my mother, I had no choice.
I begged Hector not to dwell on my injuries. “I’ve been beaten more times than I can remember,” I reminded him. “It truly means nothing to me.” He moaned that it meant everything, everything to him, and he would not look at me, he would not come back to me ’til I said that seeing him suffer this way hurt me much more than any beating. At that he looked up sharply, nodded, and went to wash his face and get a long, slow drink. As he came back to wrap himself ’round me again, I told him he must not blame himself for what happened—it was all because of the bad water.
In a raspy voice punctuated with coughs, I told him how the intoxicating spirits had devastated my life long before I was born. I told him about my father and my mother and my brothers and myself and all the ways demon rum had tormented us. He listened silently, his cheek against my hair, his hand absent-mindedly rubbing my arm. Whilst I talked, I couldn’t stop thinking about how those gentle hands which touched me now so tenderly could snap my neck as easily as they had snapt the neck of that flathead. I couldn’t stop thinking about how he had been prepared to accept permanent exile when he thought he broke some petty rule, but he evinced not a flicker of remorse or regret after eviscerating another human being. I understood so little about this man, and yet here I was, commending myself entirely into his hands, body and soul.
What a leap of faith is love.
When I, at long, long last, exhausted myself in talking, Hector quietly asked why my people made the bad water if they knew it was bad. I sighed. It was a reasonable question. “I wish I knew. It’s almost as if we must make it now, as if . . . as if it makes us make it somehow. It makes us do so many things we do not mean to do . . .”
Hector nodded, saying that was the way of Evil Spirits. If he had known the water contained an Evil Spirit, he said, he would have tossed it in the fire.
By this time my shivering had subsided, tho’ my chest was beginning to burn and my cough was getting thick. Hector left me rolled in the buffalo robe as he went to heat some of our dried meat. He warmed water in the drinking horn with hot rocks, then tossed in shredded bark. Nothing e’er tasted better to me than that warm beverage, but I wasn’t much interested in the meat. I ate enough to satisfy Hector, then lay down and closed my eyes as darkness settled in.
Suddenly I was a child again, sick in bed with some combination of my siblings. Throughout my childhood, one or another of us was always sick, and as bad as it was for us to fight each other when we were well, it was much worse to struggle against one another when we were ill. One disease after another, year after year, left us perpetually rolling back and forth in alternate chills and fevers, trying to create a space for ourselves in the crowded bed so we could lie in our own bodily fluids instead of those of someone else.
The worst was the pox. This was, far and away, the most traumatic memory of my early years, the most wretched experience I’d known before that fateful day in May some ten years later. I was in the sickbed with four or five others, somewhere in the middle of the straw ticking, which was ne’er a comfortable place to be, filled as it was with elbows, knees, and feet kicking from both sides. I was gruesomely ill, but for me, at least, the burning pox were confined mostly to my hands and feet, with only a few erupting on my face. My sister Ellie was not so lucky—her face literally bubbled with the vile pustules. Ellie was seven to my five, and we had formed an alliance against the others, fighting always as a team, side by side. Now we fought the illness together, and I held her close e’en tho’ it made me feel sicker each time I looked at her pox-covered countenance.
Day after day we petted each other and murmured loving encouragements. After moaning and tossing in feverish dreams for more than a week, I dissolved into delirium, regaining my senses a day or two later when my fever finally broke. I awoke in a prodigious pool of sweat and immediately felt bad about befouling the bed. I turned my head to look at Ellie to commiserate, but she was lying on her side, staring at me with vacant, glassy eyes. The curled hand beside her cheek was like a door latch, the ice-cold fingers stiff and hard. I screamed and screamed.
As I lay under a canoe somewhere in the middle of a wild continent, I found myself, once again, face-to-face with the cold cadaver of my dead sister. Her eyes were icy blue, exactly the same as mine, but hers were empty, dead, abandoned, and the pustules on her face bubbled, burst, and oozed; from every one of those popping pox an evil liquid dript and from every sizzling drop of evil liquid a Demon Spirit erupted and writhed and danced. I screamed and screamed, trying to get away, but the flood of dancing demons had fallen upon me, pinning me to the ground. I screamed and kicked and rolled helplessly under the weight of them, which felt like the entire universe of stars sitting on my chest. Then I realized it was the buffalo robe I was kicking and it was Hector I was trying to get away from as he hovered o’er me, his face pale with fear. He said a string of things I could not understand and my head flopt back and forth because I could not keep my eyes open, I could not make myself wake up, and I was hot, hot, so hot with fever. I heard a sob—from Hector or Ellie, I knew not which—and then there was only silence and softness and nothing . . .
. . .and then it was bright daylight and Syawa was sitting beside me, smiling as I opened my eyes. I looked ’round, startled, expecting to see the riverbank and the canoe, but we were in a beautiful woodland meadow and it was spring and there were flowers everywhere. I rose up on one elbow to look ’round, marveling at the vivid colors of the flowers, the golden sunshine, and the blue, blue sky. I looked back at Syawa, my mouth open in wonder, but he just smiled that smile of his, that enchanting smile . . .
“Am I dead?” I asked, a wave of anguish rising in me. I so very much did not want to be dead.
“Not yet,” he said, smiling.
“Am I going to die?” I was shaking, shivering, in spite of the wondrously warm spring air.
“Everyone dies.”
“Like you . . .” I mumbled, which made Syawa chuckle.
“Not everyone dies like me. But, of course, not everyone has a Spirit Keeper.”
I sat up, momentarily struck by the fact this conversation was in English. When did Syawa learn English? Then I smelled the glorious perfume of all those flowers, which was so intoxicating, so invigorating. I turned back to Syawa and momentarily lost myself in the intensity of his eyes, his eyes. Oh, I had forgotten how bewitching were his eyes.
I looked unhappily into my lap. “You have made a liar of me! You made me lie to him!”
“Did I?” Syawa seemed confounded. He lightly touched my hair the way he used to do, as if he knew he shouldn’t but just couldn’t stop himself.
I looked at him, surprised how different it felt when he touched me compared to when Hector touched me. “Of course!” I said. “He believes this Spirit Keeper nonsense, and you know it isn’t true!”
“Do I?”
“Damn it! I’m sick of the way you play with me! You know damned well I’m not a Spirit Keeper because you know damned well there is no such thing. And don’t say ‘Do I?’!”
Syawa laughed. I had forgotten how warm and bubbly his laughter made me feel. It felt good, so good. My anger disappeared. He said, “You say there is no such thing. Do you know every thing that is?”
“No.” I saw him lift an amused eyebrow and tip his head, and I looked away. “But I know I am lying to him. And I know I have to tell him the truth!”
From the corner of my eye I saw Syawa nodding thoughtfully as he sat amidst the flowers, but when I turned my face we were walking shoulder to shoulder under the enormous leaf canopy of the great eastern forest. “Do you know what the truth is?” he asked gently.
I stopt and looked ’round, confused. I gaped at him. He smiled. My shoulders slumped as I hung my head. “No.” I thought for a moment, then looked up hopefully. “But I know I love him. I know that is definitely true.”
Syawa grinned broadly as we walked. “Then that is what you should definitely tell him.”
I frowned, distracted by the amazing detail of the sticks and leaves on the ground, but when I looked up again the leaves on the trees were gone and the sun was beating down on me, hot, hot, so hot. I looked mournfully at Syawa, who was pensive, quiet, and I said, “I’m going to lose this baby, aren’t I?”
He gave me a sympathetic smile. “There will be others.”
I stopt walking and started to cry. “But I wanted this one!”
He took my hand and squeezed it, and my entire body felt suddenly weightless, filled with light, like a warm breeze. “It is hard, I know, but you will see. You will learn. Then will come acceptance.”
I wafted my face in his direction, only to find we were sitting now before a raging fire, with darkness surrounding everything but us and the snapping flames. I whimpered, “I took a life so I must give a life, yes?”
Syawa made a face as he shook his head. “No. You must give a life because you refused to use the gift I gave you. You were supposed to protect him, the way he always protected me, the way he now protects you.”
“But what was I supposed to protect him from?” I asked, looking uneasily at the darkness.
The darkness began spinning, spinning. Frightened, I looked to Syawa, whose eyes were so much blacker than the darkness and absolutely, perfectly still. He said sadly, “It was you.”
“Me?” I asked in disbelief.
“It was your people. You should have stopt him from drinking.”
I drew my breath in so sharply a rush of flames from the fire entered my mouth and nose, seering my throat and lungs. I coughed and coughed and coughed as I said, “But I tried to stop him! I told him to stop! He wouldn’t listen to me!”
Syawa’s eyes burnt into me even hotter than the flames had done, flickering yellow and orange and red. “He would have listened to me!”
I stared at Syawa, stupefied, but now he was lying on his sleeping robe, dying, and I was leaning o’er him. “That’s not fair!” I shouted. “I didn’t know!”
He was weak, fading, slipping away from me again. “Make it fair,” he croaked. “Accept your gift. Protect him. You have much to learn, Katie. Learn it. One day you will understand, and when you do . . .” He smiled ruefully at me, the very same way he did before he died. “Well, knowing changes nothing. But at least, until then, you can enjoy the ride.”
I screamed at him, hysterical—“Syawa! Syawa! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me!” and I heard him murmur he would not just before he was gone and so was I and all was quiet again and nothing, floating formless and weightless and free . . .
I awoke sometime later, confused to find myself in the canoe. It was moving very quickly and I opened my good eye with great difficulty. I tried to raise my head to look ’round but could not. I gave up and worked on focusing my eye instead. Hector was paddling like a madman, in a full panic. I felt so sorry for him, so guilty for failing to protect him.
“I can hear your thoughts,” I said in a raspy voice. Oh, it was hard to breathe!
Hector glanced down at me, tight-lipped. His face was grayer than the sky; his eyes were bloodshot. His hair was covered with snow.
“You will not have to watch me die,” I croaked. “He says I will be fine.”
Hector glanced at me again, and tho’ his eyes met mine only for a moment, I saw a glimmer of hope. As he continued paddling, I watched him and loved him and wisht I could help him. After a long moment, he glanced down again. “The baby?” he asked, the tremor in his voice betraying the fact that he already knew the answer.
I blinked as I became aware of the warm liquid pooling between my legs. “He says there will be others.”
I saw the spasm on Hector’s face, but then it became stone. He swallowed hard, nodded, and tried with all his might to keep his voice steady. “Do not talk. You must save your breath.”
It was true that every inhalation was excruciating, but I gave him a reproachful look. I started to say, “I need you more than I need air to breathe . . .” but my lips stopt moving, my eyelids wouldn’t stay open, and the darkness came again . . .
• • •
The next thing I knew I was being pulled from the canoe. I tried to fight off all the hands grabbing at me, but there were too many and I had no power. My good eye flickered ’til I found Hector’s face at last, swimming in a sea of strange faces. He was exhausted, gray, nigh dead himself.
I was taken to a hut where women tended both my pneumonia and my needs following the miscarriage. Again and again a large woman forced liquid down my throat and I choked and spluttered and tried to fight her off, but she was exceptionally strong and she silenced me by wearing a mask, shaking rattles, and blowing smoke in my face. She put compresses on my chest, as others rubbed oils into my hands and feet. I went in and out of consciousness for days, all the while strangely detached from my body, floating, without substance or sensation.
I’ve been sick many, many times in my life, so this was nothing new for me. I knew what to expect, how to endure. I let my body heal itself whilst my mind just left, taking this opportunity to relive every precious moment I’d spent with Syawa. During those days of illness-induced oblivion, I experienced it all again, right from the beginning, enjoying our brief Journey in every exquisite detail. I watched his pantomimes and listened to his stories. But this time I accompanied him all the way to the end, again and again, until eventually, instead of crying, I was able to smile gratefully as he gave his final message, the words of which I was at long last able to understand: It was worth it.
I vowed to make it so.
I have a vague memory of being carried from the women’s hut to a much larger, lighter dwelling made of earth and animal hides, but once there my stupor returned. During this time I dreamt of Hector, only Hector, and I awoke one morning desperate to see him, to touch him, to smell him, to wrap myself ’round him. I tried to sit up, but an old woman put her hand on my chest and held me down, speaking rapidly to people I could not see. I realized how awfully weak I must be if I could not o’ercome this gray-haired grandmother. In a moment she had a wooden bowl in her hand, from which she dug two fingers-full of gruel. When she placed this in my mouth, it seemed the most heavenly ambrosia, and I savored it, swallowed, and opened my mouth for more. The old lady’s face crinkled in a smile as she said something to the unseen others. She scooped more gruel into my mouth, and I sucked her fingers, rolling my eyes in appreciation. She laughed.
Then Hector was beside me, and the old woman backed away. He looked me over anxiously without touching me; I would’ve grabbed him, but I was too weak e’en to lift my hand. “How long have we been here?” I croaked. Hector said seven days. I made a noise of amazement. “No wonder I’m so hungry!”
We both tried to smile, but when our eyes met, our smiles melted and we both looked away. “I’m sorry we didn’t make it to the village you wanted to reach by winter,” I mumbled. It was something Hector had striven for every single day I’d known him, yet here we were, his goal unmet—all because of me.
“That is nothing.” He dismissed my words with a shrug. “These people are kin to those I hoped to reach, and I speak some of their language. They are kind and generous. They have cared for us well.”
The “us” struck me, making me look at him more closely. He was haggard, gaunt, grim. When I asked how he fared, he shrugged again, but I would later learn he himself collapsed shortly after our arrival. From the morning he found me delirious, he paddled all that day, all that moonlit night, and on into the next day without eating or sleeping. It was a miracle he did not die.
Of course I did not yet know this. All I knew was that every time our eyes met, we both wilted in an agony of guilt. Our dead baby swirled between us in the tears we were both too afraid to cry.
O’er the next few days that dead baby haunted me. No longer feverish or delusional, my dreams were now my own, and they were filled with dead babies—my mother’s, my sisters’, my brothers’, mine. All the dead babies, piling up like discarded shoes. How little sympathy I’d had for Mother when we wrapt those ice-eyed carcasses. How cold I myself had been, condemning her always with icy eyes of my own. But now it had happened to me.
I wondered what my dead baby would have looked like. I imagined it a boy, tall and well-built, like his father, clever and conversational, like me. Hour after hour, day after day, I lived that child’s whole life in my head, gently laying it to rest at last only after it had lived a long, happy, incredibly productive life in my imagination.
Did my mother go through this, I wondered? Did she give all her unborn, stillborn, or short-lived babes entire lives of their own in her head? No wonder she was crazy. How could anyone live so many imaginary lives and successfully live a real one? And no wonder my mother had always hated me. How could I begin to compare to all those brothers and sisters who were perfect because they ne’er existed, children who disappointed her once and only once—when they failed to cling to life?
• • •
Through this melancholy period, Hector oft came to check on me, but his face stayed stony, his jaw clenched, his eyes sunk inside his face. He ne’er stayed for more than a few moments.
As I gradually crawled out of my own head, I found we were living in the lodge of the Holywoman who saved us, along with her mother (the grandmother who fed me) and three others. The lodge was large, and I was as comfortable as I could be, under the circumstances. Save for that period of blissful isolation with Hector, I had always lived in quarters much more crowded than this.
I was, at first, intimidated by the Holywoman, for she was big, strong, and strange in many ways, but I owed her my life and I was glad, at least, she was not a man. Probably twice my age, she tended me with a well-practiced, maternal warmth; I wondered if the other people in the lodge were her children, and, if so, what had become of her husband. Her name meant something like “fox running across a log,” so I thought of her as Running Fox. Her aged mother, of whom I became quite fond, I called Gran.
When I grew strong enough to be unwilling to use the wood bowl Gran provided as chamber pot, Running Fox helped me stand and walk outside, whereupon I very nigh turned right ’round—the snow was deeper than my knees! She urged me onward, however, and by the time we returned, Hector was at the door, holding aside the hide for us. After Running Fox settled me back in my furs, she turned to speak to Hector. He shook his head to whate’er she said, then slipt out the door without coming to me. I pulled my furs o’er my head and wept.
Whilst I was recovering, I was situated in the middle of the lodge by the fire, with Hector and all our things tucked off to one side. But the day after I first went outside, Running Fox said I was well enough to move back with my husband. Tho’ Hector was not there when we rearranged things, he soon returned, and when he saw I was by his bedding, he froze. He turned to ask a question of the Holywoman, who replied in a firm voice. He then bowed his head and came to join me.
He sat a few feet from me, his face to the wall. Without looking at me, he asked how I fared. Assuming he was angry I lost the baby, I kept my own eyes on the ground and mumbled I was fine.
I heard Running Fox sigh, and when I glanced her way, she gestured that my husband and I must share our grief if we e’er hoped to o’ercome it. I stared at her ’til she raised an eyebrow and tipt her head. Then I turned to Hector and released my anguish in a flood of words. I told him I was sorry I lost the baby, so, so sorry, and I knew he’d tried to tell me this would happen but I wouldn’t listen and made him act against his better judgment by enticing him and now our baby was dead, like all my mother’s dead babies, and it was all my fault and I was sorry, so sorry, and I didn’t blame him for hating me now because I hated myself more than he could possibly hate me.
When I finally took a breath, Hector insisted my words made no sense—the fault was his, he said, for he was the one who failed to protect me and he understood why I didn’t want him to touch me now, why I shrank from him and screamed when I was ill, why I kicked at him and pushed him away, and he said he understood my revulsion and would not impose himself on me further because he had no right to touch me e’er again and he turned away and held his head in his hands.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him back ’round, telling him he had it all wrong, that my screams and flailing had been on account of my dead sister and I told him about the pox and her death and how my fever had taken me back there and made me go through it all again and it was horrible and I wept and trembled and begged him to hold me, saying the only way I could survive the loss of our child would be if I could please be wrapt in his arms forever.
The rest of our conversation took place with him clutching me to his chest, rocking me gently as I cried. After a time he murmured again that he had failed me, failed me, because he did not recognize the Evil Spirit when it appeared at our campfire. The baby died inside me, he said, because it could not bear to be born to such a stupid, stupid father.
If Hector had talked thus of Evil Spirits only two weeks earlier, I would’ve laughed in his face and explained how such a view was childish and just plain wrong. But by this time I had learnt that in the weird world in which I found myself, Evil Spirits were very real and only a drooling fool would doubt their power.
Which is not to say I’ve come to believe in Evil Spirits. I do not. But I understand now that these people believe in them. And I understand that e’en tho’ I know those poor traders were murdered by us for no reason other than that they got drunk with the wrong man, I can ne’er explain that to Hector. Nor will I try. It matters not. What matters is he believed he was protecting me and now he believes he failed me, and I love him too much to allow him to condemn himself for something that was in no way his fault.
After all, I have done a much, much worse thing than fail him—I have lied to him all this time, I am lying to him e’en now, I lie to him every time I open my lying mouth to lie, lie, lie. How dare I judge him harshly? How dare I judge my mother harshly? For that matter, how dare I judge myself harshly? Life is very hard. We all do the best we can.
“The Seer said the fault was mine, Hector,” I whispered. “He told me how to fight the Evil Spirit, but I hesitated because . . . because I did not understand him. I was the stupid one, the one who failed. That’s why our baby died.”
I could feel Hector listening intently, understanding what I said, accepting it. “We were both stupid, Katie,” he soothed. “We both failed. But the Seer always told me failure can be a good thing, if we learn from it. We will not make the same mistakes again.”
I nodded, for I had no intention of making the same mistake again. From now on, I planned to follow the advice of my delirium-induced dream and use my power as Spirit Keeper for all it was worth—if I could figure out what this alleged “power” was supposed to be.
Whilst we sat in silent thought, Hector tenderly moved his fingers along the scars on my face. I had forgotten them, but realized now those scars were at least part of the reason he couldn’t look at me. “They’re not my first scars,” I reminded him gently. “I doubt they’ll be my last.”
“But these are my scars,” he said, his voice trembling. “And every time I look at you, they taunt me with my failure. You have suffered so much in your life. I wanted to save you from that. I was sure that’s why the Seer put you in my hands—so that I would be the one who gets the scars from now on. I was so sure.”
Ah, yes. How well I recognized that stunned feeling of disbelief, that shocked frustration. I looked up at my beloved and murmured, “I’ve been sure of things, too, Hector, only to find out I was completely wrong. But when you look at these scars, please do not think of our failures—think of how lucky we are to have found each other. Let these scars remind us both of the one thing we can be sure of, the one thing we can ne’er be wrong about—we are supposed to be together. The Seer said so. We can be wrong about everything else, but not this, ne’er this. We’re stuck with each other, you and I.”
Hector frowned at my scars for a long moment before looking sadly into my eyes. “I do not want you to stay with me only because you are stuck with me.”
I half-smiled as I lost myself in his deep, dark gaze. “It matters not what you want, Hector. And it matters not what I want. All that matters is what he wants—at least until we fulfill his Vision.” I waited for him to consider the truth of these words before adding, “And, honestly, I’m relieved we’re stuck with each other, aren’t you? Who else could put up with either one of us? We’re both so stupid it’s a wonder we can walk without tripping o’er our own feet!”
The unexpected jibe made Hector laugh, which gave me a surge of joy almost as strong as if we were engaged in a bout of passion. He held me tight, his face in my hair, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Running Fox glance our way with a smug smile. I gave her a long blink of thanks. She nodded before bending o’er her sewing.
• • •
In the months we have been here, Hector has oft been gone from me, out hunting or fishing or helping the villagers in one way or another. To cope with my loneliness, I dug through our packs ’til I found the leather satchel containing the beaverskin pouch with the two ledgers. I asked Running Fox if I could use some black paint and asked Gran for a large goose feather.
I tried to explain about writing. I told Hector I hoped to send this first ledger back east someday, to whate’er remains of my family, but he could not comprehend how marks I make on paper can reveal my thoughts to people who are not here. Everyone has concluded it must be some sort of magic my people use to recover from illness, and I let them think what they will.
I’m not sure why I wanted to write my story down. Part of my motivation, I know, has been to create a private space for myself in these close quarters. When I write, everyone stays well away from me, leery of my supernatural powers, and I am in my own little world. For that I am grateful. Another reason is that this past year has been so incredible, so providential, that I needed to get it all out of my head, to organize it, to control it, to put it down on paper to see if I could somehow make it all make sense. In a very literal way, filling this ledger with my thoughts has healed me, because it has helpt me establish some small isle of sanity in the swirling madness of this crazy savage world.
Shortly after I began writing, Running Fox was out late one night, tending a sick baby. As she arose in the morning to get dressed, I glanced up from my writing and happened to see that she had male organs. I immediately looked back at my ledger, dumbfounded. Running Fox is not a woman after all. She’s a man.
She must’ve seen my face—or is it he must’ve seen my face? At any rate, she came to me when she was dressed and looked at me inquisitively. She gestured, saying I seemed disturbed.
I gestured that I was just tired of being stupid. “I think I know how things are. Then I find out I am wrong, always wrong!”
She laughed as she gestured, “Getting tired of being stupid is the first step to wisdom!” She said that because I have the Spirit of a man inside me, we are alike, she and I, and she believed I had been sent to her for a reason. I could not argue with that. Then she said something that will stick with me for the rest of my days. “Rules do not apply to people like you and me,” she gestured. “Our power comes to us because we go where others cannot go, see what they cannot see, and know what they cannot know.”
I stared at Running Fox as understanding began to dawn. Being a Spirit Keeper is like having a Guarantee of Safe Passage signed by the King himself. I can go where I please, do what I want, say what I will, and no one can stop me. My power is limited only by my imagination.
And so I have spent the rest of the winter learning many, many things from Running Fox. She is teaching me to be a Holyman, a Spirit Keeper. Many things are clear to me now that were not clear before, but one truth stands out above all others:
In a world full of scrupulously honest people, my greatest power is my ability to lie.
• • •
When I am not writing or learning the Sacred Ways, I talk in gestures with Running Fox’s mother; she is the only person other than Running Fox who isn’t deathly afraid of me. One day in mid-winter, after Hector set off for an overnight hunting trip, I asked Gran to help me with something. She did so happily, and when Hector returned, Gran and I exchanged giggling glances when he came into the lodge. We waited in breathless anticipation as he went to put his things away. He suddenly froze, staring at the beautiful new pair of shoes perched on his sleeping fur. He looked at me, his eyes filling as he grabbed me and buried his face in my hair. I think e’en Running Fox was crying by the time Hector had the shoes on his feet.
Every day I yearn to be alone with Hector, but the weather is far too cold for me to spend much time outside and the lodge is oft filled with people eager to hear my strange tales. Hector has encouraged me to tell about my chickens and cows and big dogs. After watching Running Fox and other storytellers gesture their stories, I have e’en dared to act out Hamlet’s tale again, as well as that of Romeo and Juliet. My storytelling ability has improved with each tale I tell, and the villagers clearly appreciate the diversion on these long, dark winter days.
The only time Hector and I are truly alone now is when we are wrapt in the buffalo robe. Then we lean our foreheads together and whisper for hours. It has been good for us, I think, to talk again instead of always wrestling in lust, and we enjoy sleeping together as we ne’er could before. We hold each other as we sleep, and if I roll outside my husband’s grasp, he snaps awake, looking for me.
The night after I gave him the shoes, I presst myself against him and moved my hands upon him, but he pulled away, gently holding my wrists, and said we must not do that. He said he would not do it. Touching my scarred temple with his fingertips, he said, “Katie, I will not risk your life again. I will not risk putting you through what you have already been through, and, in any case, I could not go through it again myself. We must wait ’til we are home and you are safe.”
“But I miss you!” I said pitifully, nuzzling his chin with my face.
“I am right here,” he whispered, e’en as he held me firmly away.
I flopt onto my back, breathing heavily. “So we must wait for what—a year?” He murmured an affirmation, and I gasped. “But Hector—I need you! You know I go crazy without you!”
Hector put his fingers on my mouth and felt my lips slowly, sensuously, in such a way that I knew he wanted nothing more than to touch them, to kiss them, to lose himself in them. That’s when I knew I had him. He might protest, and he might feel bad, but if I wanted him I would have him, and there was not a damned thing he could do about it. All I need do is say “If you truly love me, you will do this for me!” and he would give in. How could he not give me what I want if he truly loves me?
Then he spoke again, and my reason was undone.
“I know this will be hard for you, Katie, but you are not alone. I am right here with you, suffering the same way you are suffering. All I can do is ask you to have mercy on me. Before I met you, he told me how smart you were, how strong, how brave. You must be strong now, and, as you love me, you must not torture me. I am not as strong as you, and if you entice me, I will fail, and then I will hate myself. Please do not make me hate myself. Love me enough to be strong for both of us.”
How was I to argue with that? In my world, love was manipulation, a power struggle, an endless cycle of self-gratification and guilt. In his world, love is trust, mutual support, and a willingness to put the needs of another before your own. I rolled o’er and wept ’til I fell asleep, as he gently stroked my hair. E’er since that night I have buried myself in writing so that I do not succumb to temptation, entice him, and thereby destroy everything we have.
• • •
Sometime thereafter, Hector repaid our hosts for their hospitality by taking a group to the site of our battle, where they recovered the traders’ canoes and all the goods therein. They had to drag the canoes back here, for the ice on the river was thick. But then, just yesterday, Hector reported the ice is breaking, and we will soon be able to resume our Journey. I was terribly excited, ’til he added that he has convinced three of his new friends to travel with us to the perilous mountain passage. We need their help, he said, because, as he put it, “You may keep the Spirit of a man inside you, Katie, but your body is definitely that of a woman.” His eyes twinkled as he said this.
I knew I should be happy about this news, but I had been looking forward to being alone with my husband again. However, when he pointed out this plan should cut many months off our journey, I agreed it was an excellent idea. I am ready to leave the moment the river allows.
• • •
It has been a year now, since Hector and Syawa burst into the loft and took me away from the miserable life I had been living. I have suffered greatly on this Journey, but I have also experienced exquisite joy, far more than I knew existed. As I look back thru the ledger I have filled with my words, I am struck by an obvious question: how is it possible for someone to know almost nothing, yet every day feel as if she knows less and less? Clearly no one could be as stupid as I seem to be and yet survive. Therefore, it cannot be that I am so stupid; it can only be that I truly am in a different world than the one into which I was born.
Things are different here. I understand that now. Everything is different. Consider, for example, my delirious dream of Syawa. Was that a message from the Spirit I keep, or was it merely a delusion, spawned by fever and fear? In this world that question itself is a joke, for e’en if I knew the answer, which I do not, I have it on good authority it wouldn’t matter anyway. Knowing, I’ve been told, doesn’t change a thing.
Indeed, what good is knowing in a world where time and space themselves are strange—always shifting, transforming, swirling ’round and ’round like the relentless current of a river? As I bob along, subject to the whims of those whirling circles, only one thing remains constant regardless of the world I am in, only one truth remains inviolable no matter how much I lie and lie and lie. Love. I love Hector—he loves me. Love is all we have to keep our heads above the water, and it is all we need. I understand now that it is love and only love which enables us to whisper at the end of our Journey: It was worth it.
So, Syawa, if you can hear me and e’en if you can’t—I understand my mandate now. I will do whate’er I must to keep your friend, my husband, safe and sound. If, in order to protect him, I must lie to him, then I will ne’er again hesitate to lie. And tho’ I may fret about what the future holds, I intend to enjoy the ride in any case, because life itself is, after all, such a glorious gift.
I thank you, Syawa, for the great gift you have given me; I will use it well. I will be your Spirit Keeper. And I will see you safely home.