Hannah & the Spindle Whorl

by Carol Anne Shaw

  When it grows dark, and many of the kids are getting sleepy, Yisella gets up to speak. Her people seem surprised, so I guess it isn’t often that someone her age speaks during the whole fire circle thing. But she did say it’s unusual to have one in the summer, so maybe this one is different. Yisella wants to talk, and does she ever — for what seems like a really long time! Everyone else listens patiently but I’m so tired, I can’t stop yawning. I’m not used to just sitting and chilling for hours at a time. Still, I guess when you don’t have Google and YouTube and iTunes, you just talk a lot.

  I open my eyes as Yisella sits down beside me. I must have dozed off.

  “Was my story that boring, Hannah?” Yisella jokes.

  “Sorry, but I think I’ve heard it before,” I say with a sheepish grin.

  Yisella laughs and then says, matter-of-factly, “It will be fine for you to be here now.”

  “It will?” I hadn’t really been aware that it might not be.

  “They’ll trust you now because I told them that we were in each other’s dreams.” She adds, “I told them about the raven, and they know that you’re here to help.”

  “To help? But how can I help? What do you need help with? What am I supposed to do?” I wonder what Yisella knows that I don’t.

  “I’m not sure yet, but we’ll find out. When the time is right we’ll know why you’re here,” Yisella says, motioning toward the door. “The raven has given us magic talk. He wouldn’t do that unless there was a good reason for it.”

  I glance over and see that the raven is there, standing on a piece of driftwood just outside the doorway, dividing his gaze between us and the ocean. It occurs to me that he should have a name. I’m sick of calling him “the raven,” so I call him Jack. Probably a dumb name for a magical and all-powerful raven, but it just came to me and, for some reason, seems to suit him. He reminds me a lot of Sadie, the parrot at the marina — the way he holds his head to one side when he looks at you, as if he knows exactly what you’re thinking.

  “Did you tell everyone about the spindle whorl?” I ask, remembering the electric feeling that flowed through my fingers earlier when I picked it up.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I can’t believe that she didn’t tell them how I came to be in their village in the first place! Surely finding Skeepla’s spindle whorl in a cave was kind of an important detail to just forget to mention?

  “I don’t know,” Yisella tells me. “I didn’t feel it was the right time to mention it. I’m sure we’ll know when it is.”

  “But you can’t know that for sure, Yisella. We need to find out what’s going on now.” I’m feeling a bit frantic, not at all calm like Yisella seems to be. How can she be taking all this in stride? Doesn’t she want answers too?

  She pokes me in the ribs. “Your mind is always so busy, Hannah. Try not to think so much, then you’ll see things more clearly.”

  “You sound like my Aunt Maddie,” I tell her. Aunt Maddie meditates and has a little bronze Buddha figurine on the dashboard of her Volkswagen. She’s always going on about mantras and blocked energy and chi and stuff.

  Yisella pats my arm. “Come on. The sun has set a while ago. You must be so tired. I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

  Within no time at all, I’m lying on a platform, on a soft cedar mat, with a heavy woven blanket over me. Yisella lies on a mat a few feet away, and it isn’t long before I can tell she’s fast asleep by the way she’s breathing. In a few more minutes, everyone is asleep except me. Thanks to my power nap earlier, I lie awake listening to the wind blowing up the beach and I try to unscramble my brain.

  My journal! I almost forgot about my journal! I feel around in the dark until I find my backpack and then reach inside until my hand comes to rest on the familiar smooth cover. I sit up and open it on my lap. Instinctively, I reach over beside me to switch on a light. Duh. Of course there’s no light here. And I don’t know anything about those ooly-whatever-they’re-called lamp fish that Jim Williams talked about. But I do remember my key ring. I fish around in my backpack again, making as little noise as possible, and pull out the orange ceramic starfish attached to my houseboat key, my bike lock key, our marina storage locker key, and — voilà — my handy dandy mini-flashlight. I whisper a quiet thank you to Santa Dad, who put it in my stocking last Christmas.

  Thursday (I think, but I can’t be sure), June 18, 2010

  (although I’m pretty sure that it’s the middle of

  August where I am, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t 2010)

  Dear Diary:

  Before today, if anyone told me that time travel was real I would have called them capital “N” nuts. Well, looks like those days are over. Because here I am, in Cowichan Bay, but it sure isn’t 2010. I’m not sure what year it is, but I’m guessing it’s eighteen hundred and something or other. It sort of all makes sense now. You know, the dreams and the raven calls and finding the spindle whorl and hearing a girl’s voice calling me. It really was real. I’m not a psycho after all! The girl is Yisella and she lives here. Or lived here. Or… you see what I mean? How confusing is this? It’s crazy.

  And Jack is here too. You know, the raven. I call him Jack now. I wish I could explain all this stuff but I don’t have a clue what I’m doing or why I’m here. All I know is that Yisella was expecting me. At least that’s what she told me. The people here are really cool, and don’t seem to be that bothered by me, at least not now. I wonder why everyone seems so chill about all of this except for me? Maybe I missed something when I fell asleep during the fire circle. Oh yeah … I’ll write about the fire circle tomorrow ’cause right now I feel like a zombie.

  I stuff my journal back in my pack and shut off my key light. No wonder they keep the fire going all the time. It’s really dark out, and really quiet. There are no voices from nearby boats. No clacketty-clack of fingers on a keyboard. Nothing is moving, everything is still — too still, if you ask me — I’m not used to quiet like this.

  17

  Hwunitum

  I KNOW IT’S EARLY when I wake up in the morning because the light is still faint and watery. I hear gulls screeching on the beach, and voices, men’s voices. They’re loud, and some of them seem upset. It sounds like there are quite a few people already down on the beach even though the day has only just started.

  I sit up and when I glance around in the soft light of the longhouse, I see that Skeepla is already up, working around the fire. She looks even more tired this morning than she did last night. She moves slowly and uses two flat wet paddles to lift large smooth stones out of the fire that burned all night.

  She places them into a beautifully carved wooden box filled with water. The box hisses loudly when the rocks hit the water, and steam surrounds her for a few brief seconds. It looks like she fades away and then comes back into focus. She repeats this one more time and I hear the water in the box sputter to a boil. Skeepla adds more rocks until the water bubbles furiously and then she drops a few handfuls of small butter clams into the water.

  The sound of the men’s voices on the beach grows even louder and she looks up, stopping for a moment to listen. Even Nutsa, who is either kind of bored and don’t-carish or giving me dirty looks, comes to life and pays full attention to the voices coming from the bay.

  Skeepla looks at me as though she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. I wouldn’t understand her anyway. I look around for Yisella but she’s nowhere to be seen. A few members of her family are still sleeping but several are sitting up and listening too. I recognize the voice of the headman — he’s sort of a chief but not really. Yisella told me that every house has a headman who kind of acts like the organizer of the house. I always thought all First Nations people had just one chief, but the way they do it here in Tl’ulpalus seems better. More fair.

  I look around the inside of the longhouse. No one says anything to anyone; they’re just listening. Whatever these men are talking about out there must be pretty important.

>   I decide to get up and investigate, because no one seems to be that keen on checking anything out. I dust off my jeans which are really grubby and damp and totally disgusting now, and try to pat down my ridiculous hair. I know it won’t do any good but I go through the motions anyway.

  When I poke my head outside, my nose fills with smells of salt and seaweed. There’s a heavy mist in the air, and the sky is dull and dark and a strong breeze has kicked up — not unusual weather for Cowichan Bay. I know these mornings well and I’m amazed that even though I’m in a different time, it is definitely the same place. The sounds, the smells, the feel of the bay are all so familiar to me as I step out into the cold morning air. I feel better, as if I’m not that far from Dad and Chuck and home after all.

  Yisella is down on the beach, her arms folded in front of her and a heavy cape pulled around her shoulders. Her hair whips at her face as she turns sideways to brace herself against the wind.

  I also see a group of men arguing at the shoreline where the river meets the ocean. They stand near several huge canoes pulled onto the beach and away from the churning sea of whitecaps. The men appear to be shouting instructions at each other and, as I watch, they stop what they’re doing again and again to look up and down the bay. Yisella sees me approach, and waves for me to join her.

  “Yisella?” I yell against the increasing wind and the crash of the waves. “What’s going on? What’s everyone doing?”

  She narrows her eyes and pulls her cape around her more closely in an effort to keep out the chill. “Not sure yet,” she says, straining to listen, “but it sounds like some of the men want to go up the bay to trade with the hwunitum. There are more hwunitum who live up that way.”

  “But why do they sound so mad?” I ask, just as Yisella’s father, Squwam, smacks the side of a sturdy canoe with his paddle and yells at a younger man. Squwam is usually pretty quiet, at least so far, so it startles me to see him so angry. The young man, who is leaning on the other side of the canoe, shouts back.

  Yisella sees this and says, “Some of them don’t think it’s a good idea to trade for so many hwunitum things. It’s risky. There’s a bad sickness in some of the other villages, and my father thinks we should be satisfied with the things we already have. He thinks that so much change for our families isn’t a good thing.” Yisella’s forehead is wrinkled with concentration, almost as though she doesn’t quite know how she feels about it herself. Her eyes take on a faraway look. “No, some things are good. Flour and sugar are good to have for bannock. And Auntie has a white woman’s skirt that is much warmer than the Tl’ulpalus skirts in our village. And it is so beautiful: the colour of maple leaves just before they fall off the trees before winter. I’ve never seen cloth that bright colour before …” Her voice trails off.

  “What do you guys use to trade for stuff like that?” I ask. I think of home and how people at the marina are always lending or giving stuff back and forth. Things like coffee, bits of rope, cat food or jumper cables for when their cars won’t start. It’s kind of like everyone shares everything even though half the time you’ll lend something and never see it again. But no one really seems to care that much, except for old Mr. and Mrs. Turnquist, who whine and complain about pretty much everything.

  “We give them deer meat and furs, like otter and rabbit. They seem to like furs and skins the most.”

  That’s when I remember what Mrs. Elford said in school, about how the Hudson’s Bay Company had a fort in Victoria, and that there were camps set up all over the place. Yisella must be talking about them.

  “Well, it sounds like a pretty fair trade, I guess.”

  “Yes. But some things aren’t so good for us, I think. Things like the whiskey and other alcohol that the hwunitum have.”

  “Oh, right,” I say. “Booze.”

  “Boos? Is that what you call it? It’s a crazy name for a crazy drink. It changes your face and the way you talk when you drink it. I think it can make you see spirits and do foolish things without thinking. I’ve seen men fight when they drink too much of this …”

  “Boozzze,” I repeat.

  Yisella’s fists are clenched in front of her now and her cape is blowing open in the wind, but she doesn’t seem to notice the cold. She doesn’t even feel the rain that is falling now in big fat drops that hit her face with an icy sting.

  I think of Walt, the old guy who lives three docks over from Dad and me on his big fish boat. Walt fought in the Vietnam War and people say he’s been drunk ever since it ended. It’s really sad to see what booze has done to him. Most of the people in the marina keep an eye out for Walt, but no one was watching the night he passed out at the table with a cigarette in his hand. It dropped onto the floor and rolled under his greasy stove, starting a fire. Walt was okay but his kitchen was totally destroyed. Thing is, he never seems to get around to fixing it. Instead, he mostly just eats up at the Salty Dog Café or at the pub.

  Yisella and I don’t say anything else. We both turn to watch as half of the men leap into one of the big canoes that they pushed out into the lapping water. They begin to paddle furiously against the wind and over the choppy whitecaps, ignoring the calls of the others who have chosen not to go.

  Squwam has stayed behind and remains on the shore long after the other men have gone. He watches until their canoe has disappeared around the point. Now he stares up at the sky, his face under full attack from the driving rain, and raises his hands in front of him.

  “Wow,” I say. “What’s with your dad, Yisella?”

  “He’s talking to the great Creator,” Yisella says quickly. “He’s asking for guidance. For help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “He thinks there are bigger changes coming. My father’s like that. He can sense things that other people can’t. He wants to know how to deal with the changes. To know who to trust,” she explains.

  Yisella and I head back to the longhouse. On the way, I can’t stop thinking about her dad, his worries about the changes coming. It’s kind of like the feeling I had last night. The calm before the storm.

  We are back in the longhouse and everyone seems to have forgotten all about the earlier commotion. And they seem to have forgotten about me as well, which is a relief. One thing that I’ve noticed about these people: they sure are busy a lot of the time. Don’t they ever just chill and do nothing?

  Skeepla is in her corner, seated cross-legged on a mat. She’s holding a long spindle in both of her small, strong hands. The whorl, my whorl, is rhythmically spinning three-quarters of the way up the rod. It keeps the fleece, which looks a bit matted and dotted with twigs, in place. Yisella tells me that those bits of twig are actually softened little pieces of cedar that her mother will weave in with the goat wool.

  I see a single thin strand of the spun wool forming on one side, and Nutsa seated alongside her mother carefully twining the cord into a fast-growing ball at her feet. She looks as bored as anything. Not like Skeepla, who is very focused. Her eyes fix on the whorl, and so do mine; its images blur, so much so, that the carved fish on the surface appear to swim right before my eyes.

  There’s a bead of sweat on Skeepla’s forehead and she looks pretty serious and red in the face. She must be in the dream state — the one that Yisella told me about earlier. It’s what happens when the power from the carved images connects with the spinner. These special spirit powers guide the spinner so they are able to perfect their talent. At least that’s what Yisella says and I believe her, because the unfinished blanket on Skeepla’s loom is really, really cool. My mom would have totally loved it. The pattern around the edge reminds me of a similar pattern I saw on the baskets in Mr. Sullivan’s office, only Skeepla’s is more detailed.

  I switch my gaze from the loom back to Skeepla, and as I stare at the wild spinning blur of images, once again I feel my own pulse quicken.

  Without warning Skeepla pitches to one side, and the spindle and whorl drop from her hands onto the ground. The whorl rolls a few feet
away, pulling the strand from Nutsa’s hands with a sudden jolt. Nutsa looks up from her work as Yisella rushes in to catch her mother’s shoulders before she keels over, limp and heavy.

  “Ten!” Yisella screams, shaking her mother’s shoulders. “Ten! Mother!”

  I see the look in Yisella’s eyes, wild, terrified, as she turns to me. “Mother! What’s wrong with her?”

  Skeepla groans softly, not moving. When I kneel beside her, I can see the beads of sweat running down the side of her forehead. Her eyes search mine as though she is looking for … something. She takes my hand weakly in her own before she collapses. Her eyes close once again but not before I see her fear.

  Then I notice Nutsa watching me, and I don’t like the look in her eyes as she stares as me — the hwunitum stranger — with her family.

  18

  The River

  A FEW DAYS PASS and the rain hasn’t let up for one second. I wake up to a day that reminds me of late fall — definitely not summertime. Before, on days like this, I would usually just read, or maybe write stuff in my journal. If it was the weekend, I might stay in my pajamas for an entire day. My dad totally gets it but my grandma thinks it’s horrifying.

  I can’t do that here through. Inside the longhouse the mood is as dark as the sky outside. Skeepla is lying on her cedar mat, covered with blankets. Yisella, Nutsa and many of the other women are constantly at her side. Skeepla doesn’t open her eyes even though she is not sleeping comfortably. And I notice that she’s started to cough, violently, without waking, every few minutes. Every so often, Nutsa shoots me a look that is anything but friendly, and I feel guilty, although I’m not sure why. Yisella holds her mother’s head and tries to get her to drink something from a cedar cup, but Skeepla won’t take it. Maybe it hurts to swallow, as it did when I had tonsillitis.