The Spirit Keeper (27 page)

I stared at Hector in disbelief. “And you thought I would just stand there and watch that happen?”

“Now he knows how much pain
you
can take,” he said unhappily, “and how to inflict it.”

I inhaled sharply. “You’re suggesting I’ve made a target of you? I beg your pardon—I saved your life! You and I both know I’m in no danger, because, well, look at me! I’m a prize. Everybody wants me! But you—he’ll keep you alive only so long as he thinks he can use you to control me.”

“You think you are protecting me, but please believe me when I say you will not save me by enticing him.”

I gaped at Hector in much the same way everyone had gaped at me earlier. “
Enticing
him? Exactly how do you think I’m
enticing
him?”

“You speak to him. You smile at him. You look at him.”

Shaking my head in outrage, I raised both hands. “I . . . I know of no way to answer that, Hector. Maybe . . . maybe the Seer got the wrong girl. Because I am someone who
will
look at people. I will smile. I will speak. And if that offends you, or if it violates some of your stupid rules, then that’s just too bad.”

Hector opened his mouth to say something, but I was on a tear and he had to concentrate to follow my flood of words, blurred as they were by my thick accent. “Stop. Just stop. It was better when you wouldn’t talk to me. I think you’re all”—I made a gesture because I couldn’t remember the word in his language, and Hector supplied it for me—“yes, crazy. You people, you’re all crazy. I’m tempted to walk away right now and let you all kill each other. You accuse me of enticing Three Bulls—how dare you? What would you have me do? Bow my head before him, get down on my knees? I’ll ne’er bow before a crazy person! If I let a little crazy bother me, I ne’er could have survived growing up with my mother! So I will thank you not to worry about me, Hector! I can be every bit as crazy as that madman—maybe more. If you must offer someone advice, go tell
him
to bow down before
me
! In the words of the man whose Vision made all this possible—what’s the worst that could happen?”

Hector had been waiting for me to take a breath. “You are right. Maybe the Seer
was
wrong. In that case, the worst that could happen is Three Bulls will kill you.”

I made a disparaging noise. “I’ve been killed before and it didn’t take. So that’s not really much of a threat, is it?”

Hector stared at me, rendered momentarily speechless. “He could . . . take your freedom. He could bind you, like those others—force you to do his bidding for the rest of your days.”

I glanced at our guards, who had been alarmed by my ranting and were now watching us suspiciously. I snorted. “How can he take from me something I’ve ne’er had? I’ve ne’er been free, not for a single moment of my life. When I was young, I did what my parents told me, went where they told me to go, thought what they told me to think. Since I’ve been with you, I do what you tell me to do, go where you tell me to go, think what you tell me to think. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be free to choose my own way, to do what I want to do. I don’t e’en know
what I would want to do.” I paused, thinking, then smiled ruefully at Hector. “So I guess captivity is not much of a threat either.”

Hector was troubled by my words, but determined to make me see the danger I was in. He looked at the guards uneasily, quite uncomfortable about what he was preparing to say. “He could force you to become one of his wives. He could
use
you, violently, as a woman.” Hector would not lift his eyes as he said these words.

I raised my face to the sky and laughed. I waited as the flood of memories poured o’er me, washing away my amusement, before turning my eyes to smile sympathetically at my friend. “Oh, Hector. I’ve been violently ‘used as a woman’ before. It was awful. But hear my words—it was that very experience which brought me to the attention of the Seer. That was when he ‘saw’ me and that was when he resolved to save me. It’s crazy, I know, but that’s what he told me.”

I paused for a moment, lost in thoughts of that grinning little Indian who set me up, who brought me here, and who was still, I was sure, pulling all our strings. My hysteria was gone. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and glanced sheepishly at Hector. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I have no right to speak to you that way.”

Hector would not look at me. He was staring at the riverbank, deeply disturbed. He swallowed heavily before speaking. “Do not apologize. It is I who have no right to speak to you.”

I sighed. I walked to stand as close to him as Three Bulls had stood to me. I put my face in his line of vision, forcing him to look at me. “Hector, I
need
you to speak to me. I need you to look at me; I need you to smile at me. I know that’s not your way, but it’s
my
way, and when you ignore me—don’t you see?—I go crazy.” Hector’s eyes were swallowed by his frown.

I turned to get my pack to finish getting ready for our performance.

 • • •

The festivities which followed were not unlike those we had experienced in many villages. As usual, there was dancing, singing, speech-making, but the speeches all came from Three Bulls, and tho’ I could not speak his language, I suspected most of what he said was rambling nonsense. He reminded me of an old woman I knew in Boston who wandered the streets screaming that the rats in her hair told her Judgment Day was nigh.

As darkness fell, Hector and I told our story, keeping it short and simple so as not to soil Syawa’s memory. It mattered little; the only part of the story that made any impression on Three Bulls was the part in which we said I was to give a great gift to Syawa’s people. As soon as Hector and I returned to our mat, the madman came to question me about this gift, but I feigned illness, claiming I was too exhausted from our performance to engage in conversation. Three Bulls stormed away, posting a circle of guards ’round our mat.

Seeing he expected us to spend the night right there, I urged Hector to get some sleep. He flatly refused, saying if I was ill, I was the one who must sleep. I gave him a withering look. “Hector, I’m fine. I just wanted Three Bulls to go away. I always take the first watch, so you must sleep now.”

Hector frowned as he considered. “Tonight I will watch first.”

I gave him that look again. “You think I am stupid? You will not wake me up.”

Through clenched teeth he said, “I will not sleep as long as we are here.”

“What if we’re here for days? Will you ne’er sleep again? Do you not trust me? Have I not been watching as you sleep for months now?”

Hector raised only his eyes to meet mine. “Chasing off an animal is not the same as fighting a man.”

I chuckled. “I’ve fought men before. I’ve killed a man. If I must, I will do it again.”

This was not a complete lie, but it was a gross exaggeration. The May morning after I was raped, the man who’d raped me offered to let me ride on his horse with him, but I preferred, of course, to walk. Thereafter, whene’er he caught my eye, he winked or licked his lips. I stopt at one point along the trail to break off a twig with several large, needle-sharp thorns, and later, when we all stopt to rest and my attacker was off behind a bush passing water, I tucked my thorn-twig under his saddle.

As soon as the man returned to his seat, his horse threw a bucking fit which tossed him down a ravine. I watched indifferently as people scrambled to help him, and I listened with cold detachment to his agonized cries as the midwife worked to set the shattered bones jutting through the flesh of his arm. Only when rot set in a few days later did I begin to feel a little uneasy, and by the time the whimpering man finally died and was buried beside the trail, I was praying fervently that no one would ne’er figure out what I’d done.

So tho’ I did not kill the man outright, I certainly felt responsible for his death.

Recalling that incident as I sat beside Hector, my smile faded and I bowed my head. “This morning you thought I was stupid, telling Three Bulls how to inflict pain on me, but, Hector, I was really telling
you
something.” I looked up to find his eyes watching me warily. “I will not stand idly by as someone hurts you. I will not. So if that is what must happen for the Seer’s Vision to be realized, then I say again—he got the wrong girl.”

Hector looked away, blinking repeatedly. It took him a long moment to turn his face back to stone. At last he said quietly, “The Seer did not get the wrong girl. His Vision brought us here, and I am sure it will see us safely away.”

Our eyes met and we both half-smiled. Then he lay down beside me and went right to sleep.

~24~

T
HE NEXT MORNING THREE
Bulls came to sit beside me—very close beside me. He looked me up and down, asking again and again what gift I was taking to the foreign land. I told him again and again the Seer said I would know what it was when the time came for me to give it. ’Til then . . .

Three Bulls pouted. “I give you a feast, and all you give me in return is a story?”

I looked at him, his face mere inches from mine. Keenly aware Hector sat on my other side, seething, I lowered my eyes and gestured I would think about what sort of additional gift would be most appropriate for Three Bulls. Pleased, the lunatic bade us rise and follow him and his people, once again, to the prairie, where he would thrill us all with a demonstration of his bravery and daring as he sat atop his big dog.

Things started badly. It took two warriors holding the skittish horse and another to boost Three Bulls up before the demonstration could e’en begin. Then the madman clutched a wad of the horse’s mane, clearly irritating the animal, so that when the warrior with the rope walked, the horse reared and Three Bulls fell off. Everyone gasped as several warriors ran to help their fallen leader, but Three Bulls was unhurt and insisted on getting right back on the beast.

As for me, well, I had to keep my hand on my mouth to stop myself from laughing. I knew nothing was truly funny, as the five rotting corpses constantly reminded me, but Three Bulls looked so silly, bouncing about on the animal, that I oft had to look away just to stay silent. To me the most impressive part of his demonstration was not that he mastered the angry animal but that he somehow managed to fall off only twice.

Actually, ’twas three times. The last time was when he came trotting in our direction and the horse abruptly stopt, causing Three Bulls to fly forward and land at our feet. At that, I could not help it. I laughed aloud.

Three Bulls got up, dusted himself off, and laughed along with me for a moment. Then he stopt as abruptly as the horse and became downright sinister as he gestured he had skinned alive people who dared laugh at him.

I gestured that I laughed only because I was delighted he was unhurt. I also said I knew he would not harm me or my Guardian in any way because then he would not receive the special gift I had decided to give him.

His demeanor shifted again as he beamed like a child about to be given a dripping honeycomb. He wanted to know what his gift was. I gestured that I could give Three Bulls his great gift only after he agreed to allow my Guardian and me to go our way unharmed.

Three Bulls glared at me, his face in my face. He said something in his language, and when I did not react, he gestured: “No one tells Three Bulls what to do!”

I whispered in his ear in English, “You are a nasty little turd!” but gestured that I was confused again. “I plan to give you a gift—is it not customary for you to give a gift in return?”

“Of course I will give a gift!” Three Bulls spluttered. “Now tell me what you will give me!”

I smiled as I gestured broadly I would give him the gift of control o’er his big dog.

His wide-open eyes opened wider and the crowd murmured. He looked at his friends, who were all surprised and hopeful. “Give it to me!” Three Bulls demanded, gesturing for his men to bring me the horse.

I took the horse’s rope and scratched behind his ears. As I gently petted the part of his neck where Three Bulls had been tugging on his mane, the horse leant against me, swishing his tail at a fly. I murmured endearments in English, then turned to Three Bulls to gesture: “Tomorrow!”

Three Bulls was not pleased. He had a bit of a fit—screaming, stomping, flailing his arms about—and everyone, including Hector, shrank before his wrath. But I had been raised by a woman who regularly had red-faced screaming fits, so histrionics have little effect on me. When Three Bulls stopt to take a breath, I gestured again: “Tomorrow!”

At that Three Bulls grabbed Hector’s arm and threatened to slit his throat right now if I did not give him his gift immediately.

I know an empty threat when I hear one, so I forced myself to smile as I gestured: “Three Bulls—nothing would give me more pleasure than to give you your gift right now. But the Spirit of the Big Dog is strong and the power I intend to give is dangerous, requiring many rituals before it can be safely passed on. Were I to give it to you now, without taking the proper precautions, the big dog would turn and trample you into a pile of bloody flesh.”

I was making this up as I went along, but it worked beautifully. The truth was, I needed time to prepare my “gift,” and I knew the Indians well enough by now to know that e’en an imbecile would not knowingly violate the sanctity of a sacred ritual. It would ne’er occur to any of them I was lying to stall for time.

Three Bulls immediately gestured that we would all return to the prairie in the morning so I could give him his gift.

“And then my Guardian and I will leave,” I gestured, making sure everyone saw what I said.

Three Bulls stared at me. He nodded curtly. Then he took the horse and left.

A liar can always tell when another liar is lying. My only hope was that after I gave Three Bulls his “gift,” he would ride far out in the prairie, giving us a chance to slip away.

With two guards following, Hector and I returned to the river so I could “perform my rituals.” On the way I bade Hector help gather an armload of prairie grass, and then we sat under a shady tree whilst I twisted and braided the stems into a rope, singing hymns to make my actions seem more ceremonial.