Yisella’s great-grandmother says something in a soft voice but she’s not really speaking to anyone in particular.
“The sweating will help her to fight the demon in her body,” Yisella explains to me. “But she’s coughing so badly now.”
Her great-grandmother steps in and says something to her. Even I can sense the worried tone in her words and her attention now is on me. And now, everyone else is looking at me as though seeing me for the first time. Their eyes are cold, but no eyes are colder than Nutsa’s. What did I do? None of this is my fault. I didn’t ask to come here.
“Nutsa wants to go and find Kalacha,” Yisella tells me. She has both of her hands wrapped tightly around her mother’s.
“Kalacha?”
“She’s a powerful medicine woman in the next village,” Yisella explains. Her sister is already up and draping a cedar cape around her shoulders. Yisella leans forward, gestures toward me, and says something to Nutsa. Nutsa shakes her head angrily, and shoots me an icy glare. I now feel more than just a little uncomfortable. The two sisters argue until Nutsa finally rolls her eyes and grabs another cedar cape and throws it at me. I catch it with both hands before it can hit the ground.
“You can go with Nutsa to see Kalacha,” Yisella says. “I will stay here with my mother.”
“Yisella? I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
Nutsa is waiting impatiently by the door, looking at me with her usual dagger-like stare. Why does she hate me so much?
“It’s okay. Nutsa never wants company,” Yisella explains. “But it’s always better not to go into the woods alone.”
I think of that big dark thing in the trees and I remember how scared Yisella looked in that moment when I first saw her. I have to admit that I’m not exactly excited about going back in there, especially with Nutsa.
“Bears?” I say.
“Bears are fine. But cougars are different.”
“Cougars?” I interrupt, thinking about the cougar with the marble eyes in the museum.
“Sometimes they’ll follow you. It’s best not to be alone in the woods.” Yisella thinks she’s making me feel better, but I don’t feel better at all. Not only is she sending me into the woods with a girl who hates my guts, but now a cougar could stalk me too? Do I get any say in this?
Nutsa sighs from the doorway. She’s clearly irritated with me so I obediently put on the cedar cape and the root hat that Yisella hands me. I’m glad to take off my hoodie because it’s pretty much soaked right through and it weighs about a hundred pounds. I pull it off over my head and place it over a box by the central fire that never stops burning. I get a few quizzical looks from people when they see the crazy graphics on the front of my blue T-shirt. I’m now so used to what everyone else is wearing that I forget about my own clothing and how weird it must seem to these people.
The cape is heavy but I feel warmer right away. I’ve never been a fan of capes and ponchos — so ’70s — but this one is actually pretty cool. I run my fingers over the tightly woven fabric, and I’m amazed at how smooth and soft it is even though it’s made of tree bark.
“Oils in that cedar will help keep you dry,” Yisella tells me as I struggle to make the cone-shaped hat fit over my frizzy curls. Of course, like most of the stuff here, it’s made of cedar and I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit goofy looking, like some kind of grassy wizard’s hat.
Nutsa and I head out into the streaming rain. The wind is still pretty intense and the raindrops fall at an angle, stabbing the earth like icy little daggers. On a day like this at home, I’d never be out walking in the woods, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in this ridiculous hat. I’d probably just be a lazy slob and watch Friends reruns or something. Life’s sure different for a kid here in Tl’ulpalus.
Nutsa walks way ahead of me, occasionally glancing back over her shoulder and frowning, as though she’s frustrated to discover that I’m still here.
I feel a pang of homesickness as we follow along the deer path, passing by dark green salal and Oregon grape growing alongside. My mom taught me not to step on growing things, but Nutsa doesn’t seem to care. She tramples over everything that gets in her way. The trees are huge and close together and some of their trunks are wider than any trees I’ve ever seen before. A couple of trees could be as wide as our old Jeep. I raise my eyes to follow the length of one, but most of the treetops are lost in the swirling fog that hangs overhead. The light is dim in the forest and my eyes sting as I try to keep up with this bad-tempered girl.
I miss Jack, who stayed behind with Yisella in the long-house. I keep expecting to see him hopping along beside me, or flying from tree to tree just a few feet away. I wonder if ravens get tired; all that hopping around seems like hard work.
Nutsa finally slows down and stops. I get closer and can hear the rushing water of a river just beyond the trees. She leads me through a tangle of giant sword ferns as we begin to pick our way down a steep embankment. I follow her because, well, what else am I supposed to do?
We move, single file, along the narrow edge of the steep riverbank. Nutsa practically runs over the snarl of wood, rocks and mud at her feet. My running shoes are useless as I try unsuccessfully to keep up. I slip again and again on the wet roots. Why won’t she wait for me? Why did I have to come with her? I find myself getting more angry by the minute. I’m thinking the idea of Nutsa ending up as cougar dinner might not be such a bad thing.
She stops ahead and peers over the edge. The river below is moving pretty fast, spilling over large grey rocks into churning pools of deep dark green. Even though it’s summer, the river looks really cold. Watching the rushing water makes me feel more than a little dizzy so I turn away from the edge, and see Nutsa looking at me. Her face softens as she extends her hand toward me. At first I don’t take it — I don’t trust her. But then she smiles at me, and I’m pretty sure her smile is genuine because she looks like an entirely different person. She looks, well, nice. I cast another glance over the side of the embankment to the water ten feet below and my stomach lurches. I’ve never been a great fan of heights and now that I’m perched here on this sketchy bit of trail, wearing slippery basketball high tops, I’m even less of one. Gratefully, I accept Nutsa’s help and take her hand.
She grips my hand in hers like a vice as we pick our way along the edge once again. Every couple of steps she glances over her shoulder, smiling at me as though I’m suddenly her best friend in the world. We only have about five more steps to go before we’re back onto wider safer ground when Nutsa stops and turns around to face me. Then she drops my hand.
“What?” I ask, even though I know she can’t understand me. “Why are we stopping?” Nutsa just smiles, but not the best-friend kind of a smile. This time, her lips curl as if in a snarl. Her eyes are black and bottomless. I look down and feel a strange pull from the water below me.
“Nutsa?” I practically plead, and I hear the quaver in my voice.
My head spins and then Nutsa is hovering next to me. I didn’t even see her move! I’m confused, and for a moment I think that she is going to hug me. But then I am falling, as if in slow motion, into the river below. My body plunges into the freezing water and the sudden shock of cold rips the air from my lungs. As the water pulls me down, I force my eyes to open to the light above, swirling on the surface of the jade green water. I know that I must get there to breathe. My head is spinning and my lungs are burning as I struggle furiously to swim against the powerful undertow holding me captive underwater.
Up, up, up … my ears are roaring and my lungs are about to burst. It’s taking too long. I feel so heavy. I fumble underwater, yanking desperately at the strings of my cape until it breaks loose. Free at last, I spiral up, gasping as my face breaks the surface and meets the air.
I am carried on the surface as easily as if I were an old shoe. I struggle to keep my head above water but my foot catches on something. I feel a sharp pain in my knee and then I am sucked under again. I hardly have time to fil
l my lungs.
“Help!” I manage to scream when I come up for a third time. I reach for a large piece of wood floating out of nowhere, but it crumbles in my hands, rotten and soft. “Please! Help me!”
Just before I am sucked down into the icy darkness once more, I think I see a figure on the shore. I summon all my strength and, ignoring the pain in my knee; I force myself back up to the surface. I gasp twice. Once for air, and then once again when I see the shadowy hulking shape in front of the trees. It moves closer, close enough for me to see its matted dark fur before the water pulls me under. When I resurface, a big alder log explodes into the water beside me and I throw my body against it, my arms wrapping it in a steely grip.
“HANNAH!”
Bursting through the trees, looking terrified, is Yisella. “HOLD ON! DON’T LET GO!”
I do not intend to let go, even though I’m now floating toward much faster and more powerful rapids.
“YISELLA! Get closer. Pull me in!”
Yisella breaks a long sturdy branch off a nearby tree and wades out into the river. She leans out, stretching her body and her arms as far as they will go, extending the branch toward me. When the current bites into her calves and threatens to carry her off as well, she steps back.
“I can’t reach, Hannah! Kick your legs! You can do it!”
I think of Dad and Aunt Maddie, and Chuck with a Cheerio stuck on the end of his nose. And then I smell a familiar scent, something good. Lemons! It is all the extra encouragement I need. I kick my legs as hard as I can, willing myself toward the shore. In seconds, I grab the end of Yisella’s branch and finally let go of the log.
“Now, Yisella, now! Pull me in!” And moments later, I am standing knee-deep in a slow moving eddy, shivering uncontrollably.
“Hannah. Hannah, are you okay?” Yisella rushes over. She takes off her cape and wraps it around me, and then hugs me tight against her.
“Did you see that thing,” I ask, “that animal?” The vision of the dark shape in the trees is still crystal clear in my head. I can see the mass of dark matted fur, the loping gait.
Yisella looks confused. “What animal? You mean the raven?” Jack appears out of nowhere and caws frantically from a low-lying branch on the riverbank.
“No, not Jack!” I shiver and my teeth chatter from the cold, and the fear. “Like before! Like that other time, right after I got here. Didn’t you see just now? In the trees? It was coming toward me. I couldn’t really see what it was. Some kind of bear! Some kind of … ”
“Thumquas,” Yisella says solemnly.
I don’t say anything because there’s a part of me that thinks she might be right. Or maybe my brain is partially frozen and I’m seeing things. That’s just it, I don’t know what I saw but I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t a bear.
The ends of my fingers feel numb, so I rub my hands together vigorously trying to warm them up. I stop thinking about the hairy thing on the shore and remember the chunk of alder exploding into the river.
“Thanks for tossing me that hunk of wood, Yisella. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t done that.”
“What piece of wood?” She looks confused. “You mean that log you were floating on? I didn’t throw that; I doubt I could even lift it!”
I blink at her. It doesn’t make sense. But then I remember Nutsa and my freaky fall into the water. Did she have an attack of guilt and heave the log to me at the last minute? Come to think of it: where is she?
And what is Yisella doing here?
“Yisella, why are you here? I mean, I’m really glad to see you but I thought you were going to stay with your mother.”
“I was, but not long after you two left, we had a visitor from Clem Clem. She had heard that my mother was very ill, so she came to help. When I told her that Nutsa had gone to get Kalacha, she told me that Kalacha’s village has gone to the mainland already and that Kalacha has gone with them. So I came to bring you back.”
Yisella stops talking when we hear a rustle in the trees, but it is only Nutsa. When she sees Yisella, she slaps her hand over her mouth in horror, a wild look in her eyes, and rushes forward. I step back, my foot splashing into the water, but Yisella quickly pulls me back. The river current wouldn’t think twice about dragging me out into the rapids again.
Yisella and her sister talk a mile a minute. Their voices swirl around inside my head. I recognize the emotions even though I can’t understand the words. Anger. Fear. Concern. That reminds me … where’s Jack? I thought I saw him earlier, sitting in a tree.
And what about Nutsa? Do I tell Yisella? Do I tell her that I’m pretty sure her sister pushed me into the river? That I think she tried to kill me? Or am I imagining that? Did I just have a dizzy spell and fall? Was Nutsa worried for my life? Is that why she has appeared on the riverbank?
I’m still a little dazed, and my legs buckle. I sit down on the gravel bank, grateful to take the weight off my injured knee. Yisella sees my ripped jeans, and the blood oozing from the gash on my knee. “Wait here,” she orders, and darts off into the woods. Wait here? I don’t really have a choice but I don’t want to be stuck beside a raging river with Nutsa, who is staring at me again.
“You pushed me, didn’t you!” I accuse, knowing that she can’t answer me. I don’t care; I need to say it out loud anyway. She doesn’t even try to answer. She doesn’t even bother to look confused.
“Why? Why do you hate me so much?” I’m actually yelling and there are tears of frustration in my eyes. “What did I ever do to you?”
Nutsa just stands there, looking smug. I want to slap her.
Suddenly out of nowhere, Jack returns, flapping and hopping around frantically beside us. Before I can say anything more, Yisella bursts through the trees.
“Here, put this on your knee.” She opens both her hands to reveal a pulpy wet greenish-grey mess of … I don’t know what.
“Ew. What is that?” It looks like something Nell’s dog, Quincy, could have upchucked.
“Yarrow,” she says, slapping the disgusting mess over the top of my knee.
“Ow!” I wince at the sting and squeal in protest as she pulls on my ankle to stretch out my leg.
“Don’t worry,” she says, “this will stop the bleeding. I just need to wrap it in this.” She picks up a strip of cedar bark and wraps it around my knee, making sure the oatmeal-like sludge is covering the wound.
“Doesn’t look like yarrow to me,” I say, thinking of the lacy flowerlike weed that grows almost everywhere in summer.
“Not anymore,” Yisella smiles, “not now that I’ve chewed all the flowers up.”
“What? My knee is covered in your spit?”
She finishes tying the cedar strip on my leg and when she’s sure it’s good and tight, she looks up at me and says, “Yes. That’s right.”
“Gross.”
“Gross? I don’t know this word.” She looks so earnest that I laugh out loud and forget, for a moment, about Nutsa. I’ll make sure she walks well ahead of us on our way back to Tl’ulpalus. I want to keep my eye on her. I wish I could tell Yisella my suspicions about her sister, but she’s got enough to deal with right now, so I keep my mouth shut. I just want to get back to the warmth of the fire and dry out.
We have barely started back when Yisella stops dead in her tracks.
“What?” I say, when she just stands there staring at the ground.
She looks up at me, her eyes huge, and points to the ground. I look down and there, in broad daylight, are two of the biggest footprints I have ever seen in my whole entire life. They look human, only they’re at least twice the size of any human foot I’ve ever seen.
That was no bear I saw on the riverbank.
19
Fever
WE DON’T TELL anyone what happened in the woods. And no one questions why I am wet or walking with a limp. Skeepla is worse, and that is all any of us care about now.
Nothing seems to help her. People are trying all kinds of stuff, an
d all I can do is watch. I hate feeling like this. I’m not the sort of person who likes to sit around and watch other people work. I like to get in there. This sucks. I can feel the tension in the air. Everyone is silent, casting worried looks over to the sleeping platform where Skeepla moans quietly, her hair damp and lifeless. Yisella’s grandmother is kneeling beside her, chanting softly in a deep steady voice as she sweeps the air above Skeepla with a thick cedar bough. No one interrupts her or joins in. She is left alone, sweeping the air for what seems like hours and hours. You can feel the sadness inside the longhouse. What’s worse for me is knowing that I’ve seen all this before. I remember in one of my dreams that I saw Skeepla and this old woman with the cedar bough. I heard the chanting and I saw the beads of sweat on Skeepla’s face. But in my dream, Skeepla doesn’t get better because, in my dream, she is dying. I really hope it is one dream that doesn’t come true.
It isn’t long before Yisella’s mother breaks out in a rash that spreads over her face and hands, and soon her whole body is covered with strange red bumps. Skeepla drifts in and out of her fever, not able to eat any food at all. I try to help as much as I can but, when the rash turns into big angry blisters, there seems to be little that I, or the people of Tl’ulpalus, can do for her.
The villagers are really scared of this illness. They have heard stories about other people dying up and down the island — how none of their medicines could save them. Men, women and children are powerless against it. I feel totally crappy because I know that this sickness has to be smallpox, the awful disease that wiped out so many of the first peoples on the west coast of Canada. We learned about it in social studies class. There were huge epidemics happening everywhere and there was a major one on Vancouver Island in 1862. Is this the start? Have I really travelled back almost one hundred and fifty years? And am I going to stay here forever? What is the point of all this?
Hannah & the Spindle Whorl Page 11