The Spirit Keeper (31 page)

The next night, just before he went to his sleeping fur, he once again approacht me with a burning stick. He asked, once again, if I wanted anything else. This time I was e’en more puzzled than before because we were no longer in imminent danger and he surely knew he needn’t keep checking on me.

I assured him, once again, I was fine, but he withdrew slowly, as if making certain of my response. I wisht I could think of something for him to do, just to make him happy, but I couldn’t, so he threw the stick on the fire and went to his fur.

As soon as he fell asleep, I stared and stared at his unconscious body as I alternately smiled and cried. It was actually becoming painful to keep my feelings to myself.

~26~

A
FTER DRYING ALL THAT MEAT,
Hector was anxious to make up for lost time. We paddled hard ’til the river turned west again, at which point there was another large village. Shortly after we arrived, my monthly began, and so I once more found myself cloistered for several days with a group of women I did not know.

The women were kind, but different from those I’d met so long ago at Tomi’s village. Their homes were ingeniously constructed hide tents—similar to those used by Three Bulls, but much more elegantly constructed and maintained. The women wore more clothes than the eastern Indians, and they were fascinated by my garb. We talked about sewing quite a bit.

But the main topic of interest was my story. Sometimes every inch of the women’s lodge was crowded with curious women and children, all eager to get a first-hand look at the Spirit Keeper. It was an excruciatingly uncomfortable situation, trapt as I was. I have said I no longer dreamt of Syawa, which was still true, but whilst in that women’s lodge, I dreamt of Hector wickedly and repeatedly. More than once I woke with a start, longing to see him, to talk with him, to touch him. Then I remembered I was surrounded by strange women and I curled up under my bearskin, wishing I was done with my time so I could go.

When I was finally able to walk in the village, I felt his eyes upon me long before I knew where he was. I scanned the area, looking for the source of heat I felt, and there he was, staring at me. He did not smile as I approacht—in truth, he looked rather sad. But by the time I reached him he did smile, and I melted like butter on a hot skillet.

We left the next day at dawn and paddled hard for several days.

Before long the river veered north again. Not only did the terrain continue to change, but the weather was beginning to turn as well. There was a chill in the air at night, and the vibrant green of summer was fading fast into the yellowing hues of fall. Finally, after so many days of good weather, it began to rain. It rained and rained and rained and rained. For the most part we paddled in spite of the constant dribble interspersed with heavy downpours, but we stopt early on those days to dry out before sleeping. Hector fastened a hide jutting out from the upturned canoe, under the edge of which we could keep a small fire going.

Those were deliciously intimate evenings and I was happier than I’d e’er been, sitting side by side with Hector under the canoe, watching the rain drip into the fire. We enjoyed many long, lingering discussions. I remember, for example, talking about how we made the metal used in hatchets and knives. I was hardly a metallurgist, but one of my brothers spent a lot of time at a blacksmith’s shop, so I shared as much information as I remembered.

Hector found my story amusing. “They make rocks from trees which burn hot enough to melt other rocks?” he asked. “The rocks where I come from are not so interesting. Or maybe my people do not have the same magic as yours.”

I tried to assure him that neither the rocks nor the people where I came from were in any way magical, and that, in fact, charcoal kilns were horrible places where men frequently burnt to a crisp and blast furnaces were e’en worse, rendering most men who toiled there either dreadfully disfigured or dead. I also tried to explain it was the Spanish ambassador’s lust for a certain rock that had been the subject of our conversation back at the Great River, but I fear my explanation made little sense to Hector. In any case, I loved to hear him laugh, and if he was amused by my Story of Melting Stones, that was fine with me.

During those rainy nights, one of us slept curled under one end of the canoe whilst the other sat at the other end, keeping an eye on the fire. The fishing was generally bad, so Hector taught me how to cook the meat we’d dried. We discussed ways of cooking and preserving food, but sometimes Hector seemed disinclined to talk, and that was also fine with me. I was content to enjoy the comfort of his companionship.

As the rainy days wore on, Hector seemed increasingly distracted, but I knew him well enough by now to know that sometimes he had to work himself up to sharing his thoughts. So I waited. Eventually he asked about the rituals my people observed. I wasn’t sure what he meant, so he explained about his people’s Manhood and Womanhood Ceremonies. I listened, fascinated, then told him my people had no such rituals. I thought our birthday celebrations were the closest thing to what he was describing.

I suddenly realized my birthday had come and gone. I was born in July, and by now it must be mid-September. I was eighteen. I tried to explain this to Hector, but he tipt his head, puzzled. “How can you know what day you were born? Seasons change, and the moon marks the passage of days, but one day is pretty much the same as the next.”

I explained calendars, with our months and weeks and names for days. He was stunned by the complexity of record-keeping required just to know when our birthdays were, and I tried to explain it was more than that—so much more. But it was almost impossible to discuss such huge concepts without the necessary words, so we both ended up frustrated.

The next day the rain was so heavy Hector said we should not keep fighting the sky, and I heartily agreed. So there we sat, side by side, staring into the fire. Again I could sense Hector wanting to say something, so I waited, my curiosity growing. He brought up rituals again, and for a time we talked about funerals and births, neither of which interested him.

It was mid-day before he managed to work ’round to his real interest. “You have told me many things about the way your people do things,” he began stiffly. He was choosing his words carefully; I could not understand why. I waited for him to continue. “One thing you have not told me is how your people
.”

The word he used was not familiar to me, so I asked him to gesture. Without looking at me, he moved his hands the way Tomi had shown me so long ago. Hector was asking me how my people marry.

My heart began pounding. Why would Hector want to know such a thing? “Um, when two people . . .” I tried to pronounce the word he used; he corrected me and I said it again. He nodded and I went on: “...marry, they generally go to a . . . a Holyman, who performs a ritual to unite them.” I turned my face to see if this was what Hector wanted to know, but he was looking at the ground, listening intently.

He nodded and without turning his head asked, “But who decides when it is time for a man and woman to marry? How do . . . how are the choices made?”

I looked into the fire, trying to keep my breathing steady, but it was already fast and shaky. “Oh, uh, sometimes parents choose, but usually a man chooses a woman and begins visiting her. If he decides to marry her, he asks her father or perhaps asks her.”

Hector listened, staring at the ground, and, after a long, long pause, he said, “Among my people, it is the woman who visits the man to show interest. If she wants him, she makes a pair of shoes and leaves them at his door. Then, if she sees him wearing them—”

“Wait. So a woman chooses a man?” I interrupted. A glimmer of understanding was beginning to dawn on me.

“Yes,” Hector said. “It is always up to the woman. Unless . . .” He paused and inhaled deeply, clearly forcing the next words out of his mouth. “Unless a man wants to encourage a woman to think of him in that way, and then he goes to her after dark with a lighted stick. If she is interested, she takes the stick and extinguishes the flame, to show she trusts him e’en in the dark. If she does not take the stick, he knows she is not interested and then she—”

“Stop!” I said, my heart pounding so hard I could scarce hear his soft, halting words. “I understand. I understand!” In English I added, “Oh, sweet Jesus, I am so stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!!” I was rocking back and forth holding my head in my hands, horrified to realize Hector believed I had rejected him. I knew all too well the pain of rejection—e’en Syawa had rejected me in the end—and the very last person in the world I wanted to suffer such a bitter blow was Hector. I could feel him beside me, watching me with that puzzled expression he so oft had. I suddenly crawled forward and grabbed the small stick we had been using to poke the logs in the fire. I held the end in the sizzling flames ’til it caught, then crawled back and held the stick out to Hector. “Here!” I said. “Try again!”

Hector reached for the stick slowly. He took it, looked at it, then looked at me. I was on my knees beside him, waiting. He thought for a moment, then held the stick out to me.

I grabbed it from him, leant out from under the canoe, and shoved the stick flame-first into the wet mud. I pulled it out and shoved it into the mud again and again ’til it was not only extinguished but would most likely ne’er burn again. I looked at Hector.

He was watching me, his eyebrows raised. “This means . . . you trust me?”

I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. “Oh, yes!” I whimpered. I held my face in my hands, not wanting him to see me like this.

His voice was perplexed. “Then why are you crying?”

“Because I don’t know how to make shoes!” I sobbed.

Hector laughed. When I looked at him, my tears dried up. He was gazing at me in that way he had—silent, stone-faced—but in his eyes I saw wonder, longing, love, and I returned each of those sentiments a thousandfold. We stared at one another for an infinite moment before he looked away. “We need a Holyman,” he said. “Both your people and mine require—”

“But we have one!” I said brightly, holding my hand on my heart. “It was really all his idea anyway. He wanted us to be together. It is what he told me at the end. He said I was ne’er meant for him—I was meant for you.”

Hector’s head turned so swiftly I felt a little breeze. “What did he say, exactly?”

I looked into the river, remembering. “I . . . I told him he should not have given his life for me, and he said he did not—he gave it in exchange for his Vision. He said
you
were the one who saved me, the one I owed my life to.”

Hector turned his face back to the ground. “I release you from the debt. You are under no obligation to me.”

I got on my knees and put my hand on his shoulder. Lightning flashed between us, and he lifted his face, shocked. “I
will
give my life to you,” I said firmly, “whether I owe it or not. Now give me the words.” I made the gestures Tomi had shown me, the same gestures I once offered Syawa, which he refused with a shake of his head. Hector watched me now, and as he watched, his stone face turned to mush. “Give me the words!” I demanded.

His eyes were wet as he said “I love you,” and I made him say the words again. He said them with feeling, and I tried to repeat them, and he corrected me, and I said them again and he said them again and he rose to his knees and I rose to mine and our foreheads came together and we said the words to each other at the same time, soft and slow, our lips mere inches apart.

Hector pulled back, smiling faintly. “Come,” he said, and I followed him out from under the canoe. It was raining only lightly now, but the day was still gray and cool. “Leave your clothes,” he said as he removed his breechclout.

Altho’ I had been naked in Hector’s presence before, I knew this time would be different. This time he would look at me. His eyes were on me as I unlaced my bodice with trembling fingers and slowly took it off. He watched as I untied my breeches, let them drop, and stept out of them. He stared as I unfastened my own loincloth and tossed it, with the rest of my things, under the canoe. Then he took my hand and led me to the river.

I ne’er liked water, but I had long since learnt to accept the Indian obsession with it, and so I had gritted my teeth and endured the required bathings and swims. But I need not grit my teeth through the ritual cleansing I was about to receive.

Hector led me slowly into the water ’til it was just above our knees. I began shaking pretty violently. He turned to me, concerned, asking if I was afraid of him. “No,” I said.

He leant over to whisper in my ear, “I am still a little afraid of you.” I smiled broadly and he smiled back. Then he began to wash me.

I have noted that in the past men have used me—violently, painfully, disgustingly. Hector’s gentle, loving touch was as unlike the rough handling I had previously received as the sun is from a speck of dirt. He scooped the water of the river into his hands and trickled it upon me, starting with my face, my neck, and my shoulders, working his way down. Once I had been entirely baptized by him, he slowly, delicately, began rubbing the water against my flesh, exploring every inch of my body. In this way he touched every part of me. My body, he said, was now his.