33

Over my shoulder, twilight cast Phantom Peak orangey-purple. Around me, it translated the colors, and as I followed Súmáí’s mom, that light made me remember myself strapped down in that ski-patrol sled, bucking over the moguls at the top of Last Chance, easing left onto the road as Big John drove, the quills in my cheek swaying. In my mind’s eye, Dad whizzed past on skis, towed by that snowmobile. The sensation was so real that I felt the heat pack across my chest, the goose bumps on my flesh, and my innards churning at Mom’s absence.

2/22.

The first star winked on. “Please let me find Mom,” I whispered to it. “And please don’t let me hurt Dad again.” Could a person make two wishes? Mom had never clarified that.

We entered an open area between the tepees where people gathered—sitting on logs, standing, eating, talking—around a big fire. Bodies parted and everyone quieted as Súmáí’s mom led me across the space to where Chief Úwápaa stood. Súmáí stood beside him, dark eyes glittering. The chief nodded and I nodded back. He spoke.

Súmáí said, “My father says you are now ready. He says for a white woman you look nice.”

I smiled and bit my lip. My shoulders longed to hunch, but stiffness kept them back.

Chief Úwápaa gestured to a log adjacent his. Stiffly, I sat on it, and a woman brought me a metal plate of meat with something wet, ground up roots with berries, maybe.

“Towéiyak,” I said.

She nodded.

Súmáí settled next to his father, and his uncle sat on the chief’s other side. The two other guys sat next to Súmáí.

There weren’t any utensils, so I scanned around and saw that people ate with their fingers. I was too worked up to eat, but people were watching, so I took a bite of the meat.

I’d never tasted game before. It had a pungent flavor, and I wondered what kind of animal I chewed. I hadn’t eaten since those cookies of Crispy’s before leaving the cabin, so my hunger took over. The wet stuff tasted like a cooking disaster—bitter, with the little bits of berries making me able to choke down the other part. I frowned, trying to figure out what from this valley might be filling my mouth.

My eyes met Súmáí’s. He grinned and nodded. I remembered how he’d frowned at the brownie and hot chocolate I’d given him in the cabin. Okay, I thought, we’re even.

A woman gathered my plate and cup. The last light diminished in the sky, and the fire illuminated one side of all things around it, casting sinewy shadows. Súmáí’s mother appeared at the fire’s edge. She must have gone back to change because she wore a fine dress, and a bead was weaved into the front of her hair’s part. I noticed she wore a necklace made of teeth—maybe elk. Some looked like mini-tusks and some looked like molars. Her sagging face matched the chief’s. Their eyes met and then jumped to me. I tried not to show my fear. Get answers. For Mom, I thought.

Súmáí’s mom began speaking, and as Súmáí translated into Spanish, I had to force myself to concentrate on his words. “This night, we honor the Bear Spirit, but also the trees. Long ago, two brothers hunted in spring. They came upon a bear. The bear rubbed itself against a tree, turning and attacking the tree with its claws and growling.”

This grabbed my attention. Súmáí glanced at me but continued to translate.

“They watched and watched the bear. Finally, they grew brave. ‘What are you doing?’ one brother said. The bear said, ‘To learn that story, one of you must stay with me a year. The other must return to your village and tell your people what has passed.’

“The next spring, the brother from the village returned to the tree. He came upon two bears. ‘Where is my brother?’ he said. ‘You do not recognize him?’ the bear said. ‘He stands next to me.’

“The brother stayed for a while. They talked and sang songs, and then the bear sent him home to his village. ‘You must go back and teach your people these songs. Tell them that when you dance for me, the woman must choose the man. Make two lines. The women must face the sunrise. The men, the sunset. You must dance as a standing bear. In this way you honor and celebrate winter’s death, spring’s birth, and my waking.’”

There was nothing around me but Súmáí’s voice, translating. The bear, the spruce, and me: it couldn’t be coincidence. The bear in this story understood the trees’ power; the bear today did too. Bears had probably always known that certain spruce were gateways. No doubt that tree in the tale was a spruce. And could the two brothers actually be two selves, one visiting the other? As I had done?

Súmáí had first gone to Gage. I looked from Súmáí to the chief and considered the tension between them. A déjà vu of the cocked-gun way Súmáí had stood before his father, his mouth slightly open with calculation, came into sharp focus. Súmáí was shorter, slimmer than Gage and not nearly so attractive to me, but his body’s profile was Gage’s exactly.

I was standing, but I didn’t remember rising. My hand covered my mouth. All activity stopped.

“Sovern?” Súmáí said.

“You’re Gage!”

“Gage?”

“Dammit! ”

His face took on sadness, and he nodded slightly.

I searched the stars for something to cling to, but they spiraled away. I’d been seeking answers, but this?

I was screaming before I realized it—a raspy wail—and my fists rose to my chest to ease the soreness from the bear. I screamed again, even harder. All that time, I’d hung with Gage feeling like I could be someone else. Now I saw it had been me being exactly me. No wonder he’d felt like we were supposed to be together. There was no escaping me. Across universes. Across time. What sort of cruel test was this?

“I hate tests!” I yelled. My fists dropped to my sides and I breathed through my teeth. I reeled, that scream from the day of my accident right there, overlapping this moment. Maybe the last few weeks had all been a dream. Maybe I was still strapped to my snowboard, standing beside the lifthouse on 2/22.

My teeth cooled as air whistled through them. My chest heaved as it had that day, and then I felt a new pain. Not the black-hole pain of Mom’s loss, but a blinding white pain that radiated out of the scabs on my chest.

Before me was not snowscape, but a pool of golden light and Ute faces. My eyes groped them, even the chief. Finally, they landed on Súmáí. From his expression, I could see he understood how I felt.

Chief Úwápaa spoke.

Súmáí smiled sadly. “He says this is strong magic.”

No, I thought. It’s science and math, and we’re just digits in an equation. I buried my face in my hands and sought something anchoring in their smell but found only the scent of meat, roots, and berries. “Too fast,” I said. I needed room to slow my mind so I could reason through what was happening. I turned and ran.

I loped along the creek’s bank, headed in the direction of the pool, but I had no destination so didn’t run long. Besides, I was too sore. I ran through the pines about a half mile, until a stand of aspens appeared that stretched up the mountainside. There was no moon, and beneath their canopy it was ink dark. I wandered in, hands out, then stopped and spread my fingers, touching the darkness, savoring its blank screen. I inhaled the dark, let it fill and calm me. After a bit, a night bird started cooing at regular intervals.

Steps approached through the grass.

“Súmáí?”

“Sí,” he said.

“That bear today. It was a mother bear, and she—”

“I saw the claw marks,” he said.

I listened to the grass give way as he sat, listened to him pull his knees up and clasp his hands around them.

“She also marked that tree the day she chased me,” he added.

“It’s like the story you told,” I said. The scent of the campfire rode the breeze.

“I have thought this too,” he said.

“I think that bear was my mother.”

Súmáí said nothing.

“How can you be Gage?”

“Gage. That is his true name?”

“Yes. Sorry. ‘Dammit’ is a thing we say in anger.”

Súmáí snorted. “He is white.”

“He’s the enemy, you mean?”

He nodded. “The trees kept bringing me to him. He does many things as I do. Also, there is the father.”

“How can this be happening? I’ve seen other Soverns, other versions of me, but never me in another—”

That Mom-bear’s cub was probably me.

“I cannot say how I know he is me,” Súmáí said. “I just know.”

I hated to admit it, but I also knew Gage was Súmáí. I wished I knew if we were in my universe. Then I’d have to contemplate reincarnation. Yet reincarnation could exist in other universes and maybe across them. I considered time moving vertically and laterally again. Maybe it even moved in parametric vectors or spirals. It was a maze of possibilities that set my head on fire. I needed solid answers. Some knowns for my equation.

“The trees seem to bring me to different … ” I paused, realizing Súmáí might not know the word “universe,” but he certainly understood the concept. “To different lands for a reason. Why am I here? Today?”

He didn’t answer.

“Was it so I’d have another chance with this Mom, in your world?” I said. “She’s a bear, Súmáí. How does that help me?”

“Another chance,” he repeated, almost a whisper.

He grasped my moccasin just above my ankle, moved up its leather till he found my bare knee. “I cried out—like you did tonight—when I first understood that Gage was my spirit,” he said. “I was angry with the Great Spirit. For many days I planned to kill Gage. To end my life afterward so I could never become white. Then I saw other Gages in other lands—”

“You mean, you saw Gage having other lives?”

He nodded. “I knew I could not kill them all.”

I kept touching the darkness—a lifeline to sanity—but his hand was warm on my knee.

“Then the trees brought you.” He turned quiet, and we listened to the night birds and the crickets. “Sometimes I worry you are not real,” he said. “That my mind makes you from want. That none of this happens.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Gage has you there.” His grip tightened. We listened to one another breathe. “You are real.”

I knelt in the grass beside him. “First you don’t talk, then you say these … things. It’s not fair.”

“I am a skilled hunter.” I could hear his smile in the dark as his hand moved to the small of my back.

“Too fast,” I whispered.

His hand moved away, and where it had been felt cold and hollow.

“Why us? Why now?” I said.

“I do not know.”

I felt like I was streaking across time. Across existence. Pain radiated out of my chest, and my mind ached. I needed an anchor, something solid beneath my hands, and despite thinking Too fast! I found Súmáí’s arms, groped up them to his face and traced it. His fingers found my face and traced it.

“You are real,” I said.

He nodded.

My fingertips followed the curve from his neck, over his Adam’s apple, to the underside of his jaw. I found his ear, pictured how its tip peeked out of his hair. The second tip of ear I’d fallen for, or maybe the first. How could we be here together?

Yet over the last year, living on without Mom had seemed less real than this.