Spirit and the Skull

by J. M. Hayes

  “No,” the big man shrugged. “She said you’re more important.”

  He showed his teeth again and Down smiled with him. She thought he teased her. I thought he meant it, and wondered what we were getting ourselves into.

  ***

  “We’re here,” Bear Man said. That was his name. He’d told us as we followed a series of creeks and then climbed the base of a mountain our band had passed a day before. Near the bottom, we came to a steep cliff that curled off toward the east, where the sun would rise once we began experiencing normal nights again. I couldn’t see any evidence of people or habitation and I wondered if our friend was making some kind of joke. Not that he seemed inclined to them. Then a clump of blueberries at the foot of the cliff swung aside. It had masked a narrow opening into a not much wider canyon. An old man with white hair stepped out of the shadows and gave us a friendly wave.

  “Good,” the old man said. “You’re here, Raven. And you, Down. The Mother will be pleased.”

  How did he know our names? Then I recognized him. His hair was longer and whiter now, but he was Sings While He Works, one of the elders Stone had persuaded to walk into the snow last winter for the good of the band.

  Down ran to him and threw her arms around him. “I’ve missed your songs.”

  “Then I’ll sing for you later. But first, come see who else is here.”

  Down stuck her head behind the blueberries and cried out in delight. “One Arm! Walks in Darkness!” She ran into the canyon behind the bush and out of my sight.

  One Arm and Walks in Darkness were the children who’d also walked into the snow.

  “How is it that you have our people?” I asked Bear Man.

  “We’ve been following your band for a long time. Mother told me where to find them. She said Stone didn’t want them anymore, so she sent me to gather them and bring them to her. We have more than a few of your strays.”

  He led me behind the blueberries. I embraced Sings While He Works, Hungry Woman, and the children, our winter’s snow hunters. Then Bear Man introduced me to all manner of people, most of whose names I forgot as soon as I met the next person. Their camp clustered about the opening of a cave where still others lived. They were a large band. Almost double our size. But they consisted of an unusual number of the old and lame.

  “How do you feed so many?” I almost asked how they kept so many who couldn’t contribute to feeding themselves, but several who qualified for that description were nearby and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. Besides, I’d argued against any of the people from our band exposing themselves to the winter’s cruel cold.

  “Mother provides,” Bear Man said.

  An old man ambled out of the cave. He caught my eye immediately because he looked so much like Bear Man. He was shorter, broad-shouldered, and broad-faced with dark eyes that burned beneath heavy brows. His arms and legs were thick with muscle and covered with hair, like Bear Man’s.

  “This is my father,” Bear Man said. “His name is Mammoth Rider, because he did so on a bet when he was young. I believe you have questions for him.”

  The old man grinned and hugged me hard enough that I thought my ribs might crack. When he spoke, his voice was even deeper than Bear Man’s, and laced with an accent that made me think The People’s tongue wasn’t the first he’d learned. It took me a moment to understand that he’d greeted me by name and said he’d heard much about me. How could he?

  I pointed at the figurine hanging from Bear Man’s neck. “Your son told me you found this pendant in the water of a distant river. I carved it. When I last saw it, it hung from the neck of a young woman. She was swept away and drowned as we crossed that river.”

  Willow had been at my side one moment—gone the next. She must have stepped in a hidden hole or lost her footing on a slippery rock. I should have been holding onto her. The water was chest deep with a swift, icy current. It snatched her. I dropped everything I carried and threw myself after her. For a long time, there was no sign she’d ever existed. Then, for the briefest moment, Willow’s arms reached into the air, already twenty paces farther downstream than I’d gone. I plunged after her. Tried to follow. Tried to find her. I never saw her break the surface again. And I nearly didn’t find the surface, either. Somehow, just as my consciousness ebbed, my numb hands brushed against a floating willow trunk. I grabbed it and pulled my way up till I could gasp for air. When I had my breath again, I managed to guide the trunk back into shallow water and claw my way onto a bank. Our band had been astonished to see me alive again. They’d made camp at the edge of the river above where Willow disappeared and had already begun mourning both of us.

  I looked in the old man’s eyes. “Did you find the woman’s body?”

  “He did.” Another voice spoke from within the shadows of the cave. “He found my body. And then he cared for it until my soul found a way to return and take possession of it once again.”

  I turned as Willow stepped out of the cave. Her hair was white as snow, though otherwise she seemed hardly changed at all. The years had treated her gently.

  I wasn’t sure how to react. I’d loved her so deeply. Missed her so much. Been sure she was dead for so many years. And now I’d come here with Down.

  “Mother,” Bear Man said.

  His voice was echoed throughout the camp. “Mother,” they all said. And bowed in respect. Awe, maybe.

  “Willow?” I whispered, not quite believing it.

  “Willow’s here,” she said. Her voice was different. Deeper, fuller, more commanding. “But hers wasn’t the only spirit to find its way into this body.”

  I felt a chill as she drew nearer. As if her body had never warmed after emerging from the terrible cold of that river.

  “Not the only spirit?” I repeated.

  “It’s your fault,” she said. “You carved an Earth Mother with Willow’s features. You made me curious, Raven. Caused me to wonder what it would be like to share her flesh and not just her image.”

  “Are you saying…?”

  “You may call me Willow or you may call me Mother,” she said. “Because I am both the woman you knew and The Earth Goddess you worship.”

  She had been in the river too long. It had affected her mind.

  “The river killed Willow” she said. “Mammoth Rider is a skilled shaman, an expert in a form of forgotten magic. He called Willow’s spirit back. But Willow was beyond the ability to come alone. She could only live again if I lived with her. It has amused me to do so. For now, it suits my purposes. One of those involves you, Raven.”

  Had I slipped into yet another impossible dream? If I looked down would I discover I was only skull again?

  “There’s been a murder in the band from which you and I came. All the spirit world cries out for vengeance. You’ll deliver it.”

  I shook my head in confusion and denial.

  Willow whispered this time, but her words rang clearly inside my head. “You must do this, or the perfect woman will possess our world and blunt my power. If that happens, your spirit will never join the others among the campfires in the stars. You won’t be reborn over and over. Your future lives will forever end right here, with your soul trapped inside a skull for all eternity.”

  ***

  The people who formerly belonged to our band had questions about their friends and relatives. It wasn’t until after a meal of fresh roast caribou that Down and I were able to talk privately. Even then, the mound of soft grasses covered by skins and robes where we were to sleep lay too close to similar sleeping places for us to feel any privacy.

  “Who’s The Mother?” Down whispered.

  “Her name is Willow,” I told her softly. “Or was Willow. She says she’s Willow but also The Earth Mother.”

  “Can she be both?”

  I remembered the way Willow’s voice changed when The Mother spoke. And how differ
ent her personality had become.

  I shrugged and shook my head. I really didn’t know. If she was Willow, and she certainly appeared to be, her near-death in the river had changed her. I supposed she could be The Earth Mother. I’d spoken to The Earth Mother countless times in my years as Spirit Man. This would be the first time she’d answered. Or someone had. So, while I doubted, I wasn’t sure. How could she know about my dream if she were only Willow?

  “She’s definitely not the Willow I used to know,” I told Down.

  “Someone said Willow was your woman once.”

  Did I detect a hint of jealousy? I hoped so.

  “Yes, long before you were born. She was a kind and clever girl. Not as clever or brave as you, but you’d have liked her. This woman looks like Willow. Says she’s Willow, but then she speaks with a different voice and claims to be The Earth Mother. I don’t know what to make of her.”

  Down snuggled against me under the privacy of our robes. “Did you love her?”

  I admitted I had. “I mourned her for a very long time. But she’s been dead to me for twenty years. I hope you understand you’re the only one I love now.”

  “Thank you,” Down said

  “Whatever this Willow is, she’s not the woman I loved. This one scares me.”

  “As much as Bear Man did when we met him in the clearing?” Down teased.

  “More,” I admitted, “but in a different way.”

  “Don’t worry,” Down nuzzled my ear. “I’ll protect you from her. Didn’t I protect you when we thought Bear Man was real?”

  I admitted that, too. “You were very brave, though you should have been smart instead. You should have turned and run. You should have…” I stopped thinking about what she should have done because she began touching me in a way that refocused my mind.

  “I’m not sure we should…” I looked around the dimness of the cave to see whether people were watching us. They weren’t. And from the movements beneath other robes, many of them had similar things on their minds. Then I saw Willow’s pale eyes on the far side of the cave. They stared straight at me and didn’t seem to blink. It felt like they looked into my soul. I’d been aroused. Suddenly, I wasn’t.

  “What’s wrong?” Down whispered.

  “Willow’s watching.”

  “I don’t mind. Maybe we can teach her something.”

  “Maybe we could find a private spot,” I suggested.

  Down shook her head. “No. Here in front of her, or not at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I can’t.”

  Down turned away from me. I knew I’d regret this, but what I’d said was true. I wasn’t capable of satisfying Down with Willow looking on. Not this new, strange Willow. I looked across the cave again and saw a small smile beneath The Mother’s pale, unblinking eyes.

  ***

  I woke hours later. Down had cuddled into me in her sleep and I’d been dreaming of her firm young body. I peeked from under our robes. Willow no longer sat where she had. I didn’t look for her elsewhere. Instead, I ducked my head back into the darkness of our robes and gently touched Down. Here, and here. Stroked there. Rubbed against her. She half woke and responded sleepily. Then with enthusiasm. Finally, with a ferocity that consumed both of us. And scared me, in its own way.

  ***

  I couldn’t sleep. I dreaded another visit to the place where I was skull. Especially after the threat Willow made.

  I slipped quietly from the robes that had been loaned us, pulled on my skins, and stuffed my feet in my boots. I grabbed my spear and stole softly from the cave and through the blueberries onto the side of the mountain. I found a flat rock just down slope from the cave and sat on it. The spot was high enough that I could see a very long way. A herd of caribou followed the valley below, headed toward the same gap in the mountains and ice our band and so many others planned to take to the land Grandfather Eagle promised us. Those herds would feed us as we went. Apparently the spirits smiled on our journey, but they didn’t seem to be smiling on me.

  I’d cured Down’s hurt, for now at least. That was something in my favor. I’d planned for us to talk over our future today. Should we head south on our own? Maybe try to find another band that would accept us. Willow’s obviously wouldn’t. Not after her instructions to me last night. Or should I collect some fine pelts, maybe including that dire wolf’s I’d thought might please Stone? After a few days away from our band, we could try going back. Everyone would have cooled down. I’d find a spot above the band, a place from which I could make another hurried exit if Stone was still intent on punishing us. If Stone and his friends listened, I’d show my gifts, the pelts I hoped to exchange for his daughter. And I’d explain how the spirits had decided Down had to be both my woman and my pupil. I’d convince him eventually.

  For now, we were in a situation over which I had no control. What was happening to me? Nothing in the life I’d led predicted dreams like those I’d had. Nor demands from a woman who claimed she’d died and come back to life, sharing her body with a Goddess.

  I wasn’t born into Stone’s band. Nor was it Stone’s band when I entered it. Before Grandfather Eagle dreamed of the new land, I’d been born the third son of Hawk Talon and the first child of his second wife, Thistle. My mother was killed by a great bear the summer after Beast Slayer visited our band. She died making time for me to run to safety. Small wonder I’d been so overwhelmed by our encounter with Bear Man.

  Hawk Talon had loved my mother. He didn’t want another woman, he wanted Thistle. Since she’d died to save me, he blamed me for her death. I was my father’s bad luck. When we visited the annual spring gathering of The People at Lake Between the Mountains a few days later, my father traded me for a fine elk hide.

  I was a runt and a favored target of bullies in my age group. But the man who bought me, whose name I never knew, must have seen something in me, some evidence of intelligence or shrewdness. He walked me around the lake to where the band of Stone’s father, Bear Claw, had camped. Bear Claw’s Spirit Man, Hears Voices, had recently lost the son he’d been training to follow in his profession. The boy had preferred hunting to dealing with spirits and never came back after setting out on a fine fall day, tracking the bloody trail of a moose he’d wounded.

  Hears Voices asked me where I’d come from and why a stranger had bought me. Other questions, too, which simply puzzled me. I tried to answer honestly because I knew I was unwanted in my old band. Hears Voices finally led me into his tent, lit a fire, and sprinkled me with pollen. It made me sneeze but the Spirit Man didn’t care. His daughter brought us a bowl of muddy water and Hears Voices told me to take it in my mouth, swirl it around, and spit it back in the container. Then he sat and stared at the contents of the bowl until I thought he might have fallen asleep. Finally, he raised his eyes and looked at me. “You’ll do.”

  Hears Voices swapped me for his daughter. An even trade to the stranger who’d bought me. Trades like that were common enough. It was one of the ways The People brought new blood into their bands and enforced the laws against having children with relatives closer than cousins.

  I never knew whether Hears Voices considered me a good investment. If he had second thoughts, he never told me. Nor did he ever indicate satisfaction with me. He immediately began teaching me about the spirits and I did my best to solve the riddles he used as his favorite teaching devices. I brought him the bad luck I’d carried from causing my mother’s death. He died shortly after my vision quest and long before I learned most of what he planned to teach me. But I’d learned enough, barely, to satisfy Bear Claw, and then Stone, to keep my place inside their band.

  I’d become Spirit Man for our band due to circumstance instead of a calling. But I quickly understood that my position as Hears Voices’ trainee, and later as Spirit Man, made my size less important than my mind. I’d found myself in a band where the Spirit Man ne
eded a new initiate. Then, too soon, a new Spirit Man. I was willing to become both because I’d been a boy who needed a purpose that made me worthy of a place in my new band.

  Ever since Hears Voices died while I was only a teen, I’d spoken to the spirits for my people. And conveyed answers. Not answers I’d actually heard from spirits. Just what I’d learned the spirits would want if I could hear them. I was, in a sense, a fraud. Or had been until that morning when I first dreamed myself a skull. Before that, I’d never experienced anything like a real vision or revelation. Not even on my spirit quest.

  The People believed that when a young man comes of age he should receive a dream telling him to visit the sacred mountain. Or, since the migration began, some other spot consecrated by the spirits. The boy went to his Spirit Man for guidance. The Spirit Man explained how the boy should prepare himself. Go away from the people. Not touch a girl or a woman. Not kill, even flies or mosquitoes. Recognize the holy place. Remain there for three days, eating no food.

  If a boy did all that, the spirits sent his vision. After that, the boy became a man.

  Other boys my age had already had their dreams. They’d come to learn from Hears Voices how to prepare themselves. Left on their quests. Come back to consult the Spirit Man and receive their secret names. I could tell Hears Voices was becoming concerned because I’d not had my own calling dream. I only dreamed of girls. Maybe they were my calling. In a way, I’d hoped so. Not that I shared that with Hears Voices. Finally, I told him I’d dreamed my calling. He instructed me, purified me, even gave me sacred herbs and told me to chew them if, by the third afternoon, no vision had come to me.

  It didn’t surprise me when that turned out to be the case. Especially when the wind stopped blowing shortly after I’d found my sacred place. By the third day the mosquitoes had nearly driven me mad. I broke that afternoon, slapping wildly at them, killing them in their hundreds, and painting myself with my own blood. I shouldn’t have done that, but I hoped the herbs would save me.

  They didn’t. Even after I chewed them, nothing happened. I was crossing a stream on my way back the next morning when a raven scolded me from a nearby tree. My namesake mocked my failure, I thought. I’d been named Raven because I was quick and dark and had a sharp nose, and because my mother thought I had a clever mind. Not clever enough to leave this bird alone. I bent and picked up a stone and threw it at him. He screamed at me and dropped something as he lifted into the air. He circled for a moment as I went to look. As I searched for what he’d left, he crowned me with his excrement.