QUILLER
Jawbone? Can you hear me?”
Jawbone tightly clamps his jaw as his head is pulled back severely, seemingly against his will, forcing him to stare at the sky as though something up there amid the first campfires of the dead requires his attention. In the past he’s told me that when we think he’s having one of his spells, he’s actually walking across the sky with ghost dogs trotting at his side. Is that where he is now?
Wrenching his head down, he starts walking toward the village, but he’s gone deaf and mute.
I grab for his arm and hold tight to keep him away from the precipice. I never know what to do when this happens. Nothing seems to bring my son back to this world. I can’t shake him, or shout at him, or coddle him. He stays gone for exactly the amount of time he needs, and then he returns. At least, so far.
“I’m right here beside you, Jawbone. Don’t be afraid.”
As we enter the sea cave, Crow rises and trots over with her ears pricked to lick Jawbone’s white-knuckled fist.
I reach down to pet her head. “He’ll be all right, Crow. He’ll come back soon.” These spells began on the twentieth day of the Moon of Wolves Pawing Snow. Neither RabbitEar nor I were there when the first one came upon him. The elders say Jawbone cried out and fell over as though speared through the heart. They tried to rouse him, but he did not wake for three days. When he finally opened his eyes, he was little more than a stuffed child-skin. He couldn’t speak or move.
Crow whimpers and walks at our side toward the village fire where the elders wait for us. The squeal of an infant drifts from inside Mink’s lodge. It’s a bittersweet sound. Soon we will vanish just like the Mericans.
I lead Jawbone to the fire and pull him down atop a hide. “Let’s speak with the elders.”
When I sit down cross-legged beside him, he curls on his side and rests his head in my lap. His unblinking gaze fixes on my right knee as though nothing else exists in the entire world.
Crow stretches out at my side, hindquarters close to the fire, forelegs extended out in front, and gently licks Jawbone’s arm.
“Quiller, how are you feeling?” Elder Crystal Leaf asks. Sparse white hair blows around her wrinkled face. “You were ill when you got back two days ago. Are you all right tonight?”
“Just queasy. It will pass.”
Crystal Leaf’s gaze shifts to watch Jawbone’s leather boots waggle, rhythmically thumping the cave floor. I’m fairly certain my son doesn’t know he’s doing it. The elder looks more closely at his hollow eyes. “Is he gone again?”
“Yes.” I stroke Jawbone’s hair.
“That’s three spells in the past quarter-moon, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
RabbitEar heaves a disappointed breath. “I’m going to check on the girls. Should I bring back a hide for Jawbone so he’ll be warm until he returns?”
“That would help, thank you.”
RabbitEar strides toward Mink’s lodge. Mink’s wife, Gray Dove, always watches over our children when we are away. The girls must be asleep, or they would have come running out to greet us the instant they heard our voices.
“What was the cavern like, Hoodwink?” Elder Stone Bowl has seen fifty summers pass. A few wisps of gray hair cling to his age-spotted scalp; otherwise, he’s bald.
“It’s just as Quiller told us.” Hoodwink leans forward and extends his cold hands to warm them before the fire. “Haunting. Hundreds of glowing blue faces are buried in the ice. Almost all are women and children.”
“And they whimper?” Crystal Leaf asks.
“The childlike whimpering eddies up the tunnels from deeper in the earth, so it’s hard to tell the source.”
Crystal Leaf draws her collar more tightly about her wrinkled throat. “What does it mean?”
Hoodwink lifts a shoulder. “I think the old stories about the Jemen war are true. Our creators split into two factions, the Sky Jemen, led by the Old Woman of the Mountain, and the Earthbound Jemen. These poor souls may be the victims of Old Woman’s wrath.”
I say, “Lynx told me that Jorgensen and Arakie’s families are both in those caverns, so I think that’s right.”
As though the Sky Jemen heard our conversation, far out over the ocean a ship of light sails westward through the green zyme light, leisurely winking in and out of the drifting clouds.
“No! I—I won’t!” Jawbone’s feet scramble for purchase against the cave floor as he curls up tighter on his side. When he finally settles, he’s crawled half into my lap with his head limply hanging over the other side like a soaked string doll. Grabbing hold of my arm, he pulls it across his chest and keeps it there, exactly as he did the first time I witnessed one of these spells. Just before they strike, he tries very hard to get to me, so that he can curl up in my lap and ride them out. Beyond the cave, tufts of mist are being born above the zyme. Jawbone blankly watches them gather.
“Won’t do what?” Hoodwink gently asks.
I whisper, “Does the other boy want you to go somewhere?”
For a time, there is only the crackling of the fire and the far-off growling of lions filtering down from the Ice Giant Mountains.
Hoodwink reaches over and tenderly pats Jawbone’s foot. “Ask the boy what he wishes to show you.”
I feel my son tense before I see it. He’s recoiling because someone has just crouched beside him, someone I can’t see. Did the other boy emerge from the cave in his head and come to visit him in this world?
Jawbone retreats into the strange silence inside him like a turtle pulling his head and feet into a shell. His soul seems to have crossed over into the seductive darkness of the dead.
“When did this spell start, Quiller?” Elder Crystal Leaf’s faded old eyes turn to me.
“On the trail just before we got here.”
Jawbone sobs.
“It’s all right, son.” I examine his tormented eyes. “I’m right here.”
He tucks his head into the folds of my cape. If he were awake and well, he would never allow anyone to see him lying in my lap like this. Especially not his father.
Mist has begun to fill the cave and turn the firelit air sparkling.
With one groping hand, Jawbone reaches up and grabs a lock of my red hair, then pulls my face down close to his mouth. His teeth gnash, but no words come out.
“You’re very tired, son. Just try to rest. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
Every muscle in his body quivers, then the seizure strikes.