Love to Water My Soul (Dreamcatcher)

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  I dropped my own roots near her, stepped back, away from the force of future words. I stumbled briefly over Flake, who shook his black, wet body and flopped hard in the sun.

  “Oytes fell in a flooded corral, remember? That friend of my son.” Grey Doe poked her chin to the ground.

  “He landed on water instead of hard ground,” Lukwsh said, brushing the wetness from her arms with her cupped hand. “Doesn’t hurt his head so much.”

  She reached for a cloth shirt lying on the grass and covered her shivering body. Grey Doe’s latest marsh hawk flew low, landed on a tule lodge, and rocked back and forth on tiny feet, waiting for a field mouse.

  Grey Doe snorted a rare laugh. “He is good with horses, that Oytes.” She pushed the brown tubers into a single row with her good hand. “He is a good friend to my son—was a good friend.”

  She turned to me to share a rare secret. “He gains power now, learns about Smohalla and his medicine. Maybe he will be stronger than Wuzzie. Wren says he comes often when she is there, helping Wuzzie with his baskets of herbs.”

  To Lukwsh she said: “Oytes didn’t need to travel so far to find his wife. One of his own proved good enough for him, both times he picked. Not like my son.” Her dark eyes narrowed and slipped upward at Lukwsh. I felt the pain of Grey Doe’s stabs that pierced other hearts, not just mine.

  Lukwsh did not bite back. She took what others gave and did not bleed from their cuts nor let their words make wounds in her soul that refused to heal.

  “Your words cut,” I said, as brave to Grey Doe as I had ever been.

  “It is not your place,” she hissed at me, her eyes angry in a flash. “Your tongue—”

  “Is kind,” Lukwsh said, “but misplaced.”

  She stepped between Grey Doe and me, made it look as if she looked for something, then said to Grey Doe: “Missing Eagon is one thing we still share, my mother.”

  “We could share a living place,” Grey Doe said almost too quickly. “You have room for her but not your husband’s mother?”

  Lukwsh sighed. I had overheard this old argument often, one they had long before Lukwsh gave an obsidian knife for my meager bones.

  “I have a dog in my lodge and your hawk would not be happy there.”

  “Shard took Flake with him,” Grey Doe said.

  “Your sister would miss you if you left her lodge for mine.”

  “She is like an old bee. She buzzes at me so that I wish to swat at her. But don’t. She is older, more frail.” A pause, then, “Wren could stay there and this one”—she pointed at me—“could help Wuzzie. Or maybe Stink Bug. Or my sister and I could come here.”

  Lukwsh turned from her toward me, and I saw a small smile open her face and light her eyes. I wondered if someone wished to swat old Grey Doe, too.

  Wren appeared and changed the subject. Her arms overflowed with roots to take us from this familiar spat. Her eyes sparkled with excitement. I hoped Lukwsh would not trade Grey Doe for Wren.

  “I have news,” Wren said.

  Her hands looked shriveled as did my own from spending much time digging deep for tubers. She had grown taller, and the two of us looked more like sisters with our reedlike bodies turning now to bumps and curves. I wore my lighter hair longer, pulled back like Lukwsh wore hers, held with a cattail string. It was my third year with the Wadadukas, and I remained in cautious luxury, still sleeping in Lukwsh’s lodge. I tried not to distress, but found that words came more quickly to my mouth, words that sometimes took me into trouble.

  Wuzzie had complained; I had heard him. Something about an owl sharing space and stealing power from a warrior, which Shard had become. I wondered if this could be another reason Shard had left.

  Lukwsh treated me well, scolded me, and sometimes smiled if I deserved it. She seemed stronger to me than Wuzzie, though I knew this could not be.

  Stink Bug had become a man now, too, and his bad manners took new twists. I had difficulty seeing him as someone who protected those of this lodge while his older brother worked away. Once I caught him holding a hot stick from the roasting fire against the paws of a dog, his wide hand clamping the animal’s mouth closed over its whimper, a sneer easing across his face at the dog’s struggle. The scent of singed flesh hung fresh in the air. Stink Bug’s eyes lifted to mine, but he did not release the squirming animal even when I started toward him. Only when the stick had lost its sting did he kick at the dog limping away, tail clutched between its legs. The salves Wren and I made from Wuzzie’s baskets did little to help the dog’s healing.

  Wren’s words interrupted. “We are to have the flower festival, Moo’a. You must tell us how it is.”

  “Who said?” Grey Doe asked, surprised.

  “Wuzzie.”

  Grey Doe snorted.

  “Because all the rains have made the flowers grow,” Wren said.

  “You will not be a part of it,” Grey Doe told her. Her words were heavy, like those of someone who had brought home a big antelope for all to admire but only she would eat. “You with your bird name cannot hope to create a song or walk with a mate at a flower festival. Too bad your Lukwsh did not think to have a naming for you that would fit.”

  Her smile at Lukwsh was like Stink Bug’s when he plays a trick, then blames another.

  Wren’s warm eyes began to swim. She blinked and her nose turned red. I swallowed back tears for her.

  “When does Wuzzie say the festival—”

  “Five days,” Grey Doe answered Lukwsh, nodding wisdom as she turned a root in her fingers and held it up to the light as if examining it. “Those who know, know how this is. The time is set for five days from the idea.” Her teeth squatted on her lip.

  Wren nodded, some of her enthusiasm gone. “Five days, Wuzzie says. But it is of no matter now.” She sighed, began her dance of feet and fingers, and turned away, still tapping her head.

  I walked with her and noticed Flake followed. I heard Lukwsh say something in biting words to Grey Doe in the distance.

  “Does Wuzzie say more? About the festival?” I asked.

  “It is of no matter. We will not be allowed. Except to stand and watch.”

  “We can have our own festival,” I told her, walking faster. “My name is not a flower. And we can invite others.” The disappointment weighed less heavy on my shoulders because someone shared it.

  She shook her head. “It is not how things are done. Wuzzie would be angry.”

  She sighed again but walked with strong steps away from the lake, along the grassy banks of the Silvies. I kept up with her. I watched broken willow branches and old leaves swirl with rapid speed past us in the mud-streaked river, pushing against the water-slicked banks. In the shade, thin slices of ice still stuck to the sides. It seemed the river came up slowly, though the banks were wide and deep, not alarming.

  Flake sniffed the grasses, flushed up a cinnamon teal believed itself hidden in an eddy close to shore. The dog raced ahead, and I imagined him rushing at the fish caught behind weirs.

  Red willows clustered up toward the sky like reaching fingers. Beyond, in the narrow pines across the river, a golden eagle pushed the air with her wings and dropped feet first, settling into her tree-top nest. Fallen trees reached out into the cold flow on both sides, their tips disappearing like slick otters beneath the surface.

  The men had placed their weirs among the roots and windfalls. When Flake wandered off toward a being in the far distance, I imagined Shard standing like a sandhill crane, stocky chest, sturdy legs, steadfast beside the shore, his black-tipped spear pointed like a beak, waiting to pounce on the big suckers or small trout when trapped. Others waited and watched, conquering the spring catch in their own way.

  “Wild Rose and Lupine and Thunder’s Flower will all go,” Wren said as we walked, her mind on her shame. “They’ll gather up Buck Brush’s interests and Stink Bug’s and Shard’s and we won’t even be a part of it, not like the flowers. They will all have a good time. But you and I and Willow Basket … and
Vanilla Leaf and …” she spoke names of those who shared our winter without benefit of flowers. “We have no fragrance,” she said.

  “Vanilla Leaf has a scent,” I said and pinched my nose. “Like Stink Bug’s.”

  She did not smile. Instead, she shook her head as though she had water in her ears.

  “It is not the smell,” she told me. “Just because deer spend hours in vanilla leaf and Lukwsh stuffs it into hemp piles beneath our heads at night does not mean it is a flower. Only girls with flower names are honored at the festival. The rest are left to carry rocks.”

  “It will not be so bad,” I told her. “Lukwsh says, ‘There is always another way.’ We will find it.”

  “We are too young,” Wren said, bumping me, stopping to stand beside the river, catching her balance.

  We watched a swirling stick move slowly, bounce against the shore, then pick up speed as it rushed quickly into the current. It moved out into the center of the river and was lost to the rush and boil of snowmelt and springs.

  I could see across the Silvies. It was not so wide, though broad enough that none could cross it in the spring without becoming wet or risking cold or illness. A water-soaked log bobbed and dipped in the faster current, shot out yards downstream.

  “Too young to talk of ‘being in full bloom,’ as the kasas say, or to make up songs,” Wren said.

  I started to suggest we speak to Lukwsh and find out more, when Wren shook her head again, like Flake just out of water. She stared at the river, her eyes lost of excitement.

  “Wren?”

  She did not answer but began the toe-tap dance. I chose not to interfere. I looked upriver to the men moving to a new site to fish. I stepped on tiptoes to spy Shard’s form.

  My mind stayed on other things, so I did not see Wren’s moccasined feet slide closer to the grassy banks, closer to the rushing Silvies River. I did not notice until she slipped, her body sliding like an otter into water.

  It happened quickly.

  I could not grab her washing, washing hands. She did not tap her head, did not reach out for help. Instead she began the shaking, which did not stop even when her arms and elbows hit the river and her face went under.

  “Wren!” I shouted. “No! Wren!”

  She did not answer. Her body shook in the water, rolled, jerked until her face turned upward toward the sky then down, moving ever farther toward the center where the Silvies rushes fastest in the spring.

  I could hear Wuzzie in my mind saying, “Do not interfere; you do not know the songs,” but his spirits picked poor times to speak. Wren’s eyes were staring now, her limbs twitching less. She bounced against the slickened bank like a hollow log without direction. I ran beside her, kneeled down, and tried to grab her hand. Before I reached her slender fingers, her legs were swirled around, and she shot like a willful spear into the faster flow. Her eyes were glassy, staring at the cloud-streaked sky. Her shaking did not stop. Her face was washed with water as her body bobbed, then dipped beneath the surface, came upward, under.

  My heart pounded in my ribs, my eyes a blur of tears. I heard a voice inside of me say, “Save her! Save her!” I did not wish to interfere, but with new courage, I challenged what Wuzzie said. And so I chose, plunged in, dipped under into a cold and closed-in world.

  The river sliced like ice across my body, ached especially where my leg had healed. It rushed swifter than it looked, smelled of rot and leaves. I could not touch the bottom. I forced myself upward, grabbed a breath, shook wet hair from my face, and paddled with my hands and legs as I had seen Flake do. I was often in the lakes, gathering tules, making water be my friend. But this river had no time for play; it demanded strength and power and serious thinking.

  My nose and eyes sat just above the surface, and I saw Wren, like a slender reed, beyond me, swirling in the current. My bones were cold. I felt the water’s power against my legs and small arms, and knew I was too weak, too insignificant to struggle against currents and hope to win.

  But it was hope I had, though I knew no word for what I felt, whispered only in my mind. “Help us.” Even then I seemed to know of something greater than Wuzzie’s spirits.

  As if in answer, I saw a way.

  Not far beyond Wren, along the other shore, a pine snag reached out into the main flow. I could not make Wren’s body move that way, but in my mind I hoped it, willed it, whispered my wish. She turned and dipped, went under, floated up and swirled. Yet in an instant I saw her pushed toward the other side, just the distance of a willow branch, but enough. I paddled hard, grabbed a breath, and pushed my face beneath the water, tried to swim, turned on my back to kick and splash. I heard a barking, barking and caught a black spot racing side to side along the shore we’d left, noticed boys or men running, saw a splash, watched the current carry one black dog downstream. I turned in time to see Wren slam against the pine snag, face scraped on jagged bark.

  My heart soared! I forgot the cold and numbing in my hands and legs and fought against the current. I forgot that Wuzzie might not wish her to be caught. Instead, I reached her, wet and clammy, but silent now, without a song. Dead leaves and dirty bubbles like frog’s eggs stuck to her face and hair.

  Careful, crying, I turned her over, watchful that the pine snag held her and did not spit her back into the river.

  My fingers touched her clammy skin. Her eyes were closed now as if sleeping. I could not let my mind say it was more.

  My one hand hung onto broken branches that stuck out like stubby fingers from the snag, one arm reached across Wren’s small chest. I tried to make my way along the snag, the water still too deep to walk, and so I paddled with my legs. I made distances no greater than the width of my small palm. My shoulder ached, my arms. Wren’s legs tangled in the branches below the surface. I breathed and rested, knowing I must get her from the icy cold, find a way to dry her, warm her, see if she still lived. In a distant thought, I wondered what my Spirit would do next.

  Then Flake appeared, swimming close beside me, his soft round ears flat against his head, eyes wet and shiny as obsidian. He pulled on Wren, ripped the cloth clinging to her body.

  “No! No!” I said.

  I saw him push against her then and believed he could keep her legs afloat if only he swam with me. His weight lifting her let me creep my arm along the log that held us all until I got another grip, pulled Wren beside me. The log’s bark scraped against the tenderness of my arm and ribs, but I felt my feet touch the muddy bottom and my pain was now forgotten.

  “Now, Flake!” I told him. He stood on shore, head low, tongue hanging, ears forward, eyes alert. “Now grab on her. Get her!”

  Together we pulled her, wedged her between the bank and tree crotch while I scrambled to the bank on legs as soft as wet reeds. I took deep breaths. Flake barked. Then I reached beneath and around her and pulled, slipped, stepped back, pulled again, again, like the landing of a heavy fish with no resistance until her body lay atop mine, her black hair wet against my cheek, her eyes still closed.

  I rolled her off me, folded her arms across her chest, pushed the dark hair strands from her mouth, eyes, strands stuck wet to her cheek. Her lips were shriveled huckleberries. A trickle of blood oozed from her ears. I said her name, called her, started to sing a song that came from nowhere, a kind of chant I hoped would call her back, make Wuzzie forget I interfered.

  Her chest lay quiet, still.

  Flake barked and barked; his tongue hung red and dripping. He licked her cheeks, wet arms, legs, laid down beside her.

  I did not feel her breath. “Save her, save her,” was all that I could say, and I spoke into a silence.

  And then I opened wide my mouth and covered hers with mine and gave her breath. I held her in my mind, kept her with me, did not let her drift away. Something made me lean across her, push against her chest to feel her air return, and so it did! I shared my breath, pushed down, once, again, again. I did not care about the time that passed, made my own dance now with Wren.

&nb
sp; Only in a distant place did I become aware of shouting and talking coming closer. Wren was all I cared about, sharing breathing, sharing space.

  Flake barked, a who-o-o-ing. He sat up, eyes alert.

  Shard ran toward us, Salmon Eyes, his uncle, others.

  I bent to feel Wren’s breath against my cheek. I felt a flicker, the flutter of a hummingbird. It moved no more wind than a butterfly’s wing, but it was there. I sensed it. It was there, and then my heart began to sing.

  It was more than I could hope for.

  Shard’s dark eyes accused first, then dropped to Wren. He reached for her throat, his fingers gentle.

  “She lives,” he said, lifting eyes to Buck Brush. He removed his shirt, laid it over her, rubbed her arms between both his hands. “Make a fire,” he said.

  One grabbed an arm, then a leg and rubbed warmth to her limbs like a firestick. Buck Brush sang to the sounds of rushing water. Another gathered grass to start a warming fire. Someone left to look for Lukwsh.

  I shivered in cold but felt only a glow from inside.

  The fire burned low. The crackles held little smoke but much warmth. Wren coughed then, her body lurching. She rolled herself and liquid spurted from deep within her like a person sick of what’s inside. Her skin paled, my own color. Her insides gave up more, her back pushing, shaking, until she lay quietly, breathing hard.

  “What happened?” Shard asked her.

  Wren sat up slowly. Shard rested his hands on her back, holding. She did not speak. Her eyes searched the faces, places all around her. She gazed at the river.

  “The other side,” she said, looking at me, shivering and shaking, lips less blue. “I walked on the other side.”

  I did not know if she spoke of what happened in the water or with me.

  “We talked of flowers,” she said. “I felt the need to dance, wash my hands, and then nothing. Until I am here all wet and cold. Did we go swimming, Asiam?”

  “We did swim, though I did not choose it,” I said to her, so happy to hear her voice, see her moving and alive.

  She shook her head. “Did we, Asiam?”