The Spirit Keeper (23 page)

He lifted his chin in acknowledgment, but his face remained stone.

“And I . . . I am sorry I hit you. People hurt me before.”

He nodded and turned away, only to stop short and turn back to me. “
I
will not hurt you,” he said, speaking slowly so I would be sure to understand.

I gave a humorless laugh. “People tell me that before, too.” I stared at the fire, but I knew he was still kneeling there, staring at me. I kept brushing out my hair. Then I heard him crawl into his sleeping fur.

 • • •

The next day we resumed paddling as before, but I remained uneasy, expecting always to be reprimanded for my many faults, ne’er knowing when the next awful “lesson” might occur. But when I noticed a large, dark bruise on Hector’s arm where I’d hit him, I felt terrible. My guilt o’er that bruise kept me from fighting against the swimming lessons I must endure each morning.

Our silence continued, but I had come to realize that e’en when Hector made a big show of not looking at me, he was watching me all the time from the corner of his eye—wary, worried, wondering what stupid thing I might do next. Sometimes when I set up camp or prepared our meal, he watched me openly, as if making sure I followed the proper procedures. I was very self-conscious about this scrutiny, expecting him to criticize my every move, but when I met his gaze, defiantly, he looked away, jaw muscles tight, as if I had caught him doing something he shouldn’t.

Sometimes he couldn’t stop himself from offering suggestions about an easier way to do something, and sometimes I had no choice but to ask for help. I expected him to respond to these requests with a scolding for my stupidity, but he was ne’er nothing but polite and respectful, if a bit terse and impatient. He tried always to say as little as necessary as quickly as possible, as if it pained him to speak to me, and this way he had of talking through clenched teeth made it very difficult for me to understand his words. I decided he spoke this way because if he allowed himself to speak freely, he would ne’er be able to stop pointing out my many flaws.

It didn’t help that I spoke his language so poorly. Hector had a much harder time understanding me than Syawa e’er did, and he was oft puzzled by my meaning e’en when he could understand my words. I knew I must improve, but how could I learn his language if I did not practice? Sometimes I was desperate to talk—simply desperate—but I was determined not to bother Hector more than I must.

The loaded silence began to grate on me. I remember complaining about the heat one day, because the weather had turned brutally hot, but Hector said nothing. I asked if the summers were always this hot, and he shrugged, saying it was ne’er this hot where his people lived. Stunned that he’d voluntarily said more than three words in a row, I asked him about the place he lived, the place I would soon live. He shrugged again, saying there was nothing to tell. But what about the weather, I asked, the land, the plants, the trees? What about the people, their houses, beliefs? I peppered him with questions, to no avail. The moment had passed and his answer to all questions was essentially the same: I would see for myself when I got there.

I refused to give up. There were so many things I wanted to know, so many things we needed to discuss. One evening after eating in silence I finally had enough of his wordless shrugs and halfhearted grunts, and said, “Hector, why you refuse talk with me? We were friends, before . . .” I stopt and exhaled sadly. “Now you not talk.”

He looked at me blankly, as he always did. “I talk,” he said. He turned his attention back to the pile of berries we’d gathered, picking through them with his finger.

I sighed. “Yes—you talk. Well. Then I ask you something. You now . . .” I paused, considering carefully how to word my thoughts. “You believe in his Vision—same as before, without him?”

Hector did not hesitate. “Yes.”

“But I think . . . I think you not like me.” I was not coyly fishing for compliments, and I knew Hector would not take it that way. “If you believe I am one he sees in Vision, then how you not like me?”

“It is not for me to like or dislike. You are not what I expected.”

“What you expect?”

Hector looked at the fire and pursed his lips, considering. “Someone like . . . White Buffalo Woman maybe, or maybe the Corn Maiden.”

I waited for him to continue, but he was finisht. I thought for a moment, then smiled and said, “I see. You expect someone not stink, someone not stupid.”

Hector raised his chin and lowered his eyelids, staring at me in a calculating way. “I expected someone who doesn’t cry all the time.”

I tipt my head apologetically. “You expect story-woman. You get crying girl.”

Hector tossed several of the berries into his mouth and chewed for a moment before shrugging and saying, “Not anymore.”

I held my breath. Was he talking about my not crying so much anymore or about my being Syawa’s Spirit Keeper? Either way, this topic was too charged for me, so I steered the conversation in a new direction, to a question I had been dying to ask. “You remember my family house?”

“Of course.”

“I saw man at bottom of . . .” I pantomimed stairs, Hector gave me the word, and I repeated it. “Yes, stairs. I saw dead man at bottom of stairs. You kill that man?”

“Yes.”

“But men you are with know that man! He one of them. You not afraid you kill him, they kill you?”

Hector finished the berries, wiped his hand on his leg, and shrugged. “The Seer said I must kill that man. He said it was part of his Vision. I did as he told me.”

I numbly watched as Hector unrolled his sleeping fur. “I owe you my life,” I said quietly.

He grunted an affirmation as he lay down on his fur. He started to wrap himself up, then stopt to look at me. “Are we done talking?”

I grunted a mocking affirmation and watched as he curled up under his covers. I added wood to the fire and picked up the hatchet before sitting down to ponder what I’d just heard. Only slowly did I perceive the full import of Hector’s words: Syawa had given me an awesome power. Hector always did whate’er the Seer told him to do and he would continue to do whate’er the Seer told him, only now the commands would have to come to him through me.

I wondered—was this, then, why Syawa set me up as his Spirit Keeper? So that I could make Hector do my bidding? ’Twas possible. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it did not matter where my newfound power came from. E’en if this strange situation was naught but a curious side-effect of a gross misunderstanding, the end result was the same.

I needn’t be afraid of Hector anymore.

~21~

A
S WE PADDLED WEST
on the Misery River, we stopt at a few—but by no means all—of the villages along the way. They blend together in my mind now, for they were all small and similar, nothing like the large towns east of the Great River. The people, too, were different. Whilst the Indians of Pennsylvania were warriors, the people along the Misery were mostly fishermen who had little to do with the world beyond their small stretch of riverbank. They were all, needless to say, astonished by me.

We stopt at these places because Syawa and Hector had stopt on their journey eastward, and Hector felt duty-bound to let the people know how their Journey turned out. At each place, he gestured a summary of Syawa’s Vision, then reviewed the adventures the two of them had on their way to my family’s farm. From that point, I gestured a description of our hike through the forest and a brief explanation of what happened after we crossed the Great River. I was compelled to tell the villagers the Seer gave me his Spirit, because if I didn’t, Hector would. At least if
I
told them, I could keep the story short and simple.

Tho’ my white skin, red hair, and blue eyes were viewed as wonders in the Indian world, it was the fact that I was a Spirit Keeper which inspired the greatest awe. I disliked the pretense, but saw no graceful way out of it. The benefit to being a Spirit Keeper was that most Indians were deathly afraid of me, which meant they left me alone, and because no one seemed to know what sort of supernatural powers a person with two souls might possess, any odd behavior on my part was always excused as “being the sort of thing a Spirit Keeper might do.”

Whereas I had, at first, been uneasy about stopping in strange villages, I soon realized the advantages. Indian villages were islands of safety and security in the midst of the vast, ominous wilderness, places where people could watch out for each other, love one another, and live comfortable lives. They could also entertain each other, which is where Hector and I came in. As traveling storytellers with a real-life drama to share, we were welcomed and celebrated like royalty. Not only were we given ready-to-eat food in payment for our story, but both Hector and I were able to sleep the whole night without worrying about taking turns at watch.

In addition to food and lodging, we were also given gifts at every place we stopt, but because we gave most of these gifts to other villagers in exchange for gifts they gave us, we mostly just recirculated the wealth of each community. Thanks to these exchanges, I acquired two soft deerskins and thereafter spent my hours at night-watch huddled by the fire, sewing new garments.

For the top I made a laced bodice with roomy armholes for ease of paddling, but because of my fear of sunburn, I left broad shoulder flaps draping o’er my arms like wings. For my lower half I saw no choice but to make breeches like my father’s, tied at both the waist and calf to keep the sun off my legs and the mosquitoes away from my nether regions. I knew my outfit, once completed, would be strange to everyone who saw it, but most people I met were mostly naked most of the time, and Hector rarely spoke to me, so was unlikely to comment on my appearance.

The land we paddled through as we headed west on the Misery was as different from the eastern woodland as were the Indians. Instead of huge, dark forests, we passed scrubland, then open meadows, then more and more wide, rolling grasslands. The grains in the fields were ripening at this time, so one night I made a stuffing for our fish. When Hector, unprompted, said the stuffing was good, I almost fainted from shock. Thereafter we spent many evenings walking the meadows, stripping seeds, which we stored in skin sacks.

During one of these walks I encountered a snake slithering on the ground and nigh jumped out of my skin. I screamed, dropt my seedbag, and ran back to the canoe in the time it took Hector to blink. I was certain he would be disgusted by my cowardice, but he gathered up what I spilt and brought it back to camp where I was cowering. “I will stay closer to you,” he said quietly, “and make sure you see no more snakes.”

Pretty much the only time Hector initiated a conversation was when we were in a village and he needed to confer with me. I found it curious that when we were with others he made it very clear we were a team, a partnership, but when it was just the two of us, we were completely separate, isolated, alone. The breakthrough came one evening when I was preparing dinner and had to ask Hector something—just what, I cannot recall. At any rate, I said, “Hector?” and asked my question, which he answered before adding quietly, “And that is not my name.”

I jumped on the opportunity to start a conversation. I apologized for still not being able to pronounce his name, but pointed out he ne’er used any name at all when addressing me. If he wanted my attention, he usually just grunted. I told him my name was “Katie,” not “Huh!”

He almost smiled at that, but caught himself in time.

Seeing an opening, I told him that “Hector” was actually a famous name amongst my people, an honorable name, the name of one of the greatest warriors of all time. He looked me full in the face for a moment, his interest clearly piqued. “Tell me,” he said, lifting his chin.

I smiled to myself, pleased I had broken through the formidable wall of silence. “It is a long, long, long story,” I warned.

Hector nodded as he returned his gaze to the fire. “We have a long, long, long way to go.”

 • • •

I must have been about ten when Father made us read the
Iliad
aloud. It took the entire winter because he made the boys read the passages in Greek after we girls read them in English. Times were hard for my family, but listening to the trials and tribulations of the ancients somehow made our troubles more bearable. ’Twas comforting to know the same sorts of jealousies, quarrels, and misfortunes that plagued us had been plaguing people for thousands of years and would no doubt continue to plague people for thousands of years to come.

With Hector waiting expectantly, I feared the story of the Trojan War was too complicated, full of abstract concepts which would be difficult to translate. I looked at him doubtfully. “I not speak well. You must help with words.” He shrugged and nodded at the same time, still looking into the fire.

I started by describing the strategically placed city of Troy and the group of city-states that was ancient Greece. I told about King Priam, and his sons Hector and Paris. Then I ran into trouble, because I must explain the involvement of the Greek gods in the lives of men, but Hector readily accepted the notion of powerful beings in some other realm who affected things in our world. Thereafter I had to stop many times to describe objects or ideas I knew no words for, but the challenge became almost a game, with Hector trying to figure out what I was talking about so he could supply the word. He oft corrected my pronunciation or changed my phrasing, but he did so politely, gently, reluctant to break the flow of the story.

After we ate, I explained how Aphrodite rewarded Paris with the love of Helen, a woman already married to someone else, and Hector nodded, saying he knew of a situation where a man from one village stole the wife of a man from another village and the resulting discord led to a big fight. “That’s exactly what happened in Troy!” I exclaimed.

That’s about as far as I got the first night. The next night Hector bade me continue, so, with his help, I explained how the Greeks gathered together, got into big canoes, and went to besiege Troy. There I ran into trouble again. I could explain the concept of “besiege” well enough, but I knew no number-words in Hector’s language. I counted in English on my fingers. Then I picked up some pebbles on the riverbank and counted them out. “Give me the words,” I said to Hector.