My fingers felt hollowness beyond what I could reach. A rotten smell lapped at my face. I crawled inside a burden basket. Tightness pressed around my face. Too close. Too tight. I could not catch my breath. I eased back out, gasped in cool air, felt rotten wood clutch my hair.
Search, search, fingers frantic, find nowhere safe, hear their voices, coughs, know Stink Bug’s laughter carried by the wind.
The log alone had been provided. I turned back. This time I pushed my feet first against the narrow, wet and rotting, felt it close around my back and belly, skirt slipping upward. The log scraped my shoulders, dropped stinking smells and creeping things across my bareness. Only scant room, only enough to pull my head in like a turtle, arms tight beside me, face to wet and rotting, angled toward the ground. I closed my eyes.
I could not feel the basket at my waist, did not feel it still attached. I had lost it! I heard them in the distance and prayed they had not seen my shadowed movements, prayed they could not hear my heart beat, hoped they thought I had scaled the ridge.
My eyes pinched closed, as though to make me smaller. The rotting smell spread through me, overpowering. The snake that lived in small places crawled up inside my stomach, moving to my heart, my throat, threatened to shut off breath.
Think sky and trees, imagine open spaces, lakes and birds in flight, a field of flowers, shell flowers, a sign that I was loved.
I heard the footsteps coming closer, stopping near the fallen log. All senses turned to sound.
“She could wander by this light,” Salmon Eyes said, clearing his throat. “Keep on going.”
“The ridge would challenge a weak girl,” Stink Bug said. “Maybe we passed her? Maybe she hunches beside the stream someplace.”
I heard the soft swish of moccasins on grass. The log remained quiet but for the pounding in my head.
“Ayah! Look here!” Salmon Eyes said.
Stink Bug snorted. Quiet, then: “She was here.”
“We climb rocks?”
I imagined them scanning the rocky ridge, eyes stopping at the top. If they started climbing where would I go? The desert would reveal me in the moonlight.
I heard movement, and then wood creaked. A kind of panic seized me. I shivered as I felt the tree bark groan beneath Stink Bug as he sat. He was right above me, closer to my being than he had ever been since the day he helped me from Lukwsh’s lodge to sit in the sun. I imagined his wide bottom spread across the log that hid me, his bare flesh beneath his breechcloth pressed against the rough bark, and I almost laughed. How strange that terror can breed a laugh.
I made my mind a splinter sticking up into his soft flesh, making him miserable with irritating pain. He shifted his weight. The log held.
“Rest,” he said, grunted, his own breathing hard from the effort of his search. “Such a slug will not go far.”
“She could have used this. Stupid girl can’t even hang onto her treasures.”
“Greater trouble than a bad agent,” Stink Bug agreed. “Lukwsh made a pet of her. Shard, too.”
They sat quiet, doing something. I heard Salmon Eyes’s voice come from a slight distance, heard him make water while he spoke.
“If we go back without her …” His words were spoken with the weight of dread.
“Let Summer Rain go in her place, another stupid one who tested the antelope.”
“Summer Rain has no worries about burning,” Stink Bug said, “not sleeping in Thunder Caller’s lodge. My brother has more to worry over.”
A long silence followed.
“Will Wuzzie accept his offer?” Salmon Eyes asked, moving closer to the log. I heard scratching on the thin space that separated me from them, carving or marking the log or pulling on rotted bark. Could they hear me breathe?
“Leave the basket,” Stink Bug answered finally, softly. “Let her spirit take it to her in its own time. Maybe she will not die as quickly as with the fire.” He grunted. “I will miss hearing white skin sizzle in those flames, but she will die before she reaches wherever it is she is going. Or my brother will, or both. We leave it to Wuzzie.”
I heard crunching and creaking as the log breathed with his departure, hoped his movements drowned out the whimper that grew in my throat.
Salmon Eyes argued briefly, wanting words to say when they returned with empty hands. Stink Bug made some offers, said I had been taken off by spirits, my belongings left behind.
“We say we found her basket and some bones with meat on. Not bring anything back she might have touched.”
Salmon Eyes seemed satisfied. I heard someone yawn.
“Wait till morning?”
Stink Bug coughed and spit. “We can make some distance yet. I would like to scratch myself on my own mat by morning.”
“Clouds, west. Maybe with her gone the rain will come, as Wuzzie says.”
“It would be a better sign if the herd appeared. Then my brother’s offer would be accepted, and I would be rid of two thorns that have poked my backside for as long as I can remember.”
I heard someone make noises like a stretch and hoped the moon was not so bright they could see my crawling tracks. I heard swishing sounds, moccasins on water-pressed ground, voices growing duller as their feet slipped and crunched against rocks. I listened for horses disappearing in the night.
Long minutes passed, maybe hours. My breath came in deeper, quieter sighs. But each time I planned to move, I imagined them turning back, finding me, knowing all along I hid beneath them like a buried soul left in a rotten grave.
The soft patter of raindrops dribbled on the log like a child tapping fingers on a drum. Tears pressed against my cheeks. Stink Bug’s words rang true then: my leaving brought good things to the people, a rain to water the parched earth, to fill the streams, bring the ducks.
In that moment I grasped the meaning of the rest of Stink Bug’s words.
Shard must have offered up himself to keep me from being found! Someone else would die at the log near Wuzzie’s wehe! The weight of Shard’s offer, the price of his gift was so large, so beyond what I could measure, that I could neither grasp the meaning nor keep thinking the thought. The terror of my closed space became stronger than the fear of what awaited me, of what I must learn to live with once I left. I opened my eyes.
The moon burned bright, sneaking out between dark clouds that spattered rain in unplanned places. Enough light to see, to make my way. Stiff and cold and numb, my limbs refused to move. For a moment I believed I would simply die there in that log. I even thought I wished to. But Shard’s words carried greater weight: Gather farther, stay out longer, and do not return.
I eased my shoulder inch by inch to pull forward, opened my eyes to the light beyond.
I scraped my arms and pulled myself out to face a pale light fragrant with freshly washed sage, dark with crying clouds.
Unworthiness threatened to steal the thoughts I needed to survive, and I remembered a lesson from my passage time: routine. Follow a routine. Be an arrow heading toward a mark.
Soft rain fell. I pressed spring water to my face and lips, squeezed rain- water from my tangled hair. I left the ants and larva in the thick of it, no time to comb it with my fingers or reset the barrette. A quick brush took sticks and bugs from my torn dress, and I shivered with the thought of where I had spent my night. I stared at the hollow log and allowed myself a fleeting sense of pride at having conquered—when I needed to—such an overwhelming fright.
I looked for the basket and found it dropped beneath the log. Inside, crumbs of dried cakes stuck to my wet fingers. I patted the ground, found another cake or two dropped there when they tossed the basket. I licked only the crumbs, savoring them one by one. The basket held more, but I laced it to my side, pushed now by the need to get away, to not risk someone’s swift return. Routine. Routine. Straight as an arrow. Gather farther, stay out longer, and do not return.
I slapped a handful of soft mud on the cuts and scrapes left by the log. The rain stopped. I took one last lo
ng drink from the beginning of Home Creek and began the ridge cap climb, heading east to end up north.
It was not unlike the time I reached as a child for the high place on Dog Mountain and later fell into Wuzzie’s charms. This time would be different. It grew darker in the shadows, but my moccasins were of hide, my feet and fingers strong enough to pull me up, hold me steady.
Sharp, rough rocks scraped against my legs. Each step was a thought first, a movement second. I spoke quietly to the snakes that made their beds in the cool of flat rocks my hands reached up to.
“Snake, snake, snake,” I chanted quietly before I reached my hand up, “I’m too big to eat. Too big to eat.” I breathed relief each time my face pulled up even with the rock and no snake awaited. Once I caught a glimpse of a tail slithering deeper into the rocks. Another time, I jerked from the scamper of a lizard or scorpion leaving tracks across my wrist.
Wind picked up mats of my hair, blew pale strings across my face. Instead of raindrops, sweat trickled along my forehead and into my eyes. On a solid foothold I stopped and lifted my skirt to wipe my eyes.
In the distance, far behind me, looking back from where I came, I sensed a follower. I saw nothing moving low among the willows. I squinted, my heart pounding, breathing hard from the effort of the climb. I could not afford time spent in wondering, must keep going: gather farther, stay out longer, and do not return.
Rocks dribbled from my scrambling, pushing, pulling with every fiber of my strength. Each time I gained a foothold, I moved with greater hope, stretched across rock cuts, reached, pulled up to narrow ledges, resting, panting, pushing, pulling. The climb took time and all the strength I had.
On a ledge, I gasped only for a moment and hugged the side. I listened to the rocks move, waited to hear someone panting ease up behind me, feared whoever chased me—if someone chased me—might know an easier way, even meet me at the top. I shook my head. My imagination followed me, the spirit of my guilt. I was too frightened to return, too weak to rescue Shard, did not yet know what led me on.
At the top, I pulled myself over the ridge rock and rolled low onto grasses growing tightly to the edge. No time to celebrate, no one to share my momentary joy at having climbed the ridge rocks in the moonlight-spattered night.
Beyond stood tall grasses. I eased myself upward toward dimples filled with juniper and scrawny pines. No time to wait. I ran, grasses cutting at my face, my hands, as I pushed through them, too scared to turn around. I darted quickly into sagebrush, pushed back rabbit brush and bunchy grass. I located a cluster of trees with broken branches and made a wide berth, made it look as though my body left the grasses in another spot. I stepped quickly, barely missing a small pond of brackish water. I splashed my face and decided to rest.
The ground softened near the water. With my hands I dug in the wet earth, gathered sage and slender boughs. I lay down in the impression and rubbed my legs aching from the effort. Finally, I pulled leaves and limbs up on me and made an arch I could see through.
I reached to pull my hair back and felt no barrette. Lost somewhere in my efforts. I closed my eyes. It had been two nights since I had slept, one night since Shard had pressed his lips to my face, a lifetime ago.
The sun burned high in the sky when my sticky eyes opened, my arm numb from the position it held me in for sleep. Drool pooled on my arm. I slowly scanned my surroundings. I saw nothing to fear. Neither rabbit nor deer nor human. I tossed back branches, sat and pulled my treasure basket to the front and removed it from my waist. I reached inside for a cake and took the time to see what other treasures Lukwsh had sent.
The basket held a tiny wehe like the kind Lukwsh gave to Wuzzie at my naming. Smooth, black obsidian with a streak of rust running through it. Two edges. It fit the palm of my hand, and I thought of her words, of the importance of a good knife to my life.
At the bottom of the basket a strip of cloth curled. It had the markings of a headband worn by Shard. I lifted it, buried my face in it, breathed in his scent, and swallowed back tears I could not afford.
Beneath Shard’s headband lay another gift: a piece of flint for fire and a tiny tule dog Wren had twisted just the day before. Could it have been only the day before?
Something from each of them had been sent, something to knot into my memories. I wondered then if my soft leather ring of knots was stuffed inside, but it was not. Still, I emptied the basket into my lap and discovered something more.
I held the thumb-sized cedar basket made for me by Sunmiet, the cover like a fingernail, still attached. Would it hold a tiny wehe? Some herbs, perhaps? With little effort, I pried off the woven lid and turned the basket upside down in my hand.
It was a treasure basket almost without equal when I felt the smooth, gold chain that had once been worn about my mother’s neck, once swung against my childish chest.
When had Lukwsh found it? Or had Shard? Why had they kept it from me, given it now? Did they wish no remembrance of the child they called their own? Or maybe they had sent it to speak to me of what was past, of where I once belonged, and what might be my future.
It had been cleaned and shimmered in the sun. I turned it over in my fingers. Hadn’t Sunmiet said a search without a treasure, a name, or likeness would be wasted? But here, perhaps, I held what I needed to find my family, after all.
The thought of family delivered a piercing pain.
I shook my head of it, felt instead the smoothness of the chain against my fingers and recalled the touch of Shard’s hands against my jawline, the softness of his breathed words. Perhaps it was sent to remind me to come back, to see if I could save him from the consequences of his care. Or were the treasures of the basket but an ending of a refuge freely given, but a refuge only, not a place where I belonged?
The smallest bubble of joy welled up inside me as I thought of who I called my family—Wren and Lukwsh and Shard. But it formed itself into the deepest sobs of loss and longing, wonderings and wounds. So much I would not know, could never tell them or myself. So much behind me. My eyes swelled in the sobbing; my breath came in gasping starts deep from my stomach, caught like a frightened wail born in a baby’s chest.
The chain dripped between my fingers and fit back into the basket. I wiped my nose. Splashed water on my face. A faint smell of smoke drifted then disappeared, and I wondered if the scent was real, perhaps marked the mounds, the presence of a herd, the ending of Shard’s life.
The sun had moved. I had not noticed.
Only one cake remained. Soon I would need to gather berries, make up something to lure a rabbit to a dead-fall. I must have left the area, though I do not remember how or why I moved. I recall spots of green amidst the desert, moving from spring to spring. The ridge land sloped to the north. I headed in that direction. Once there and dropping down, the river from Snow Mountain would let me follow it to the lakes and then beyond, though I did not know to what.
I spent a second long rest near a spring in what I hoped was a safe distance from where I started. To get there, I crossed over man-dug ditches that marked a boundary. Cattle mashed around the seeping spring, causing dark water to puddle in the tracks, making the clearest water shallow and framed by mud. I had trouble reaching it. In the distance I could see the shape of animals with the look of dullness radiating along their long horns. They idly munched. Their presence meant ranchers came here, had marked a field with their ditches and tried to mark the land. I wondered if Shard’s blacksmith Johnson helped with these cattle or if a less friendly rancher set them to graze here. I scanned the horizon for signs of men and wondered if I should stay.
Still, it beckoned as a good place to rest in the heat of the day, and I wedged myself far enough from the water to avoid being trampled by a cow, close enough to watch all who might venture near the spring.
I did not sleep well and awoke with the sense of being followed once again. The sun threatened to set as I scanned the horizon behind me. Nothing moved. I had no reason to wear my dread like an old threadbare
blanket tossed around my head.
My feet took me from there with all quickness, skirting the edges of tree clusters, dipping into shadows of cool, avoiding open spaces, resting as dark overtook the day. I ate one half of the last remaining cake, rolled each dried berry around on my tongue, savoring it like the most precious of tastes. When the moon rose to my right, casting shadows, I moved out again, eyes directed toward the bright star that shone over both my head and the lakes I knew I should reach in a day or two. My eyes glanced behind me. The hair on my neck bristled until I turned, but I found nothing.
I felt so small in this still, vast country I moved across alone. I imagined myself standing on one of the stars that twinkled above me as I walked, balancing and looking down at the sea of grass and sage. I knew I could not recognize even the slightest speck of myself from that distance. I wondered if a herd of pronghorns had been recently charmed. I wondered if I could see what followed me if I looked down from that high sky.
Toward dawn of the third day, I awoke to rustling in the grass. No time to run or hide deeper. I reached for my treasure basket and grabbed the sliver of a wehe. I would make my stand there, tired of being prey. My heart pounded, my throat felt dry. My stomach ached in hunger, but all were set aside to see if the being crawling like a snake through grass would kill me or try to take me back.
I waited, squatting on my heels, wehe ready, and watched the grass part.
“It’s you!” I whispered in amazement. “It’s you!”
He thrust himself upon me, bowled me over with his weight. A joyous bark greeted me. A hemp rope, torn, still dragged behind him in the grass.
Flake’s big head pushed against me, weak in my joy. He rolled against me, licked and barked. I savored the softness of his muzzle on my throat, cherished the wetness of his tongue on my cheek, cried into the ruff of black hair around his neck. He whined, then whoo-whoo-whooed, head thrown back in triumph. He pushed me again. His tongue hung to one side, and his big chest heaved with his breathing. I wrapped my arms around him, held him close enough to hear the slow beat of his heart.
Love to Water My Soul (Dreamcatcher) Page 19