Spirit and the Skull

by J. M. Hayes

  Perfect Woman wore soft blue leggings that hugged her form, and a gray jerkin that didn’t. From the way she waved her free hand at the panorama below, it was clear she could communicate with the skull she held in her other hand. The same way I communicated with Ice Eyes. I couldn’t speak to Perfect Woman, but this second skull could evidently talk to both of them. And to me. Willow’s voice rang in my head. No. Not Willow’s, The Mother’s, icy and deep, but uncharacteristically frantic.

  “Raven. You’ve seen this horror. You must stop it. Prevent it. This cannot be allowed to happen to our world.”

  I would have answered but Ice Eyes lowered his shoulder and charged Perfect Woman. He might have bulled her over the wall at the edge of the cliff if he hadn’t roared out in anger as we approached. “You killed her,” he howled.

  I already knew Perfect Woman was lithe and flexible. Well muscled, too. I’d watched those muscles ripple as she manipulated Ice Eyes into a variety of mating positions.

  This time, she dodged him, and kept him from carrying me over the edge to a fall that would have smashed both of us to pieces. She did it by spinning and whipping a leg across his ankles, sweeping his feet from under him. I landed on top of him before rolling to the edge of the wall. He scrambled back to his feet. She turned and put The Mother’s skull on the ground. Then the woman faced him and set her body in a way that made it clear she intended to hurt him if he came at her again. Ice Eyes wanted to do just that. I sensed the loss and anger in him, but I sensed, too, that he was no fighter. That he knew he was stronger than she but didn’t have the skill to overcome her without a great deal of luck.

  When he paused, Perfect Woman spoke. “I didn’t kill anyone. Ask this skull.” She gestured at The Mother. “Your woman was fine when we left her. We argued, sure, but that’s all. Then the skull begged me to show her the world outside her cavern. That’s what I was doing.”

  The Mother’s voice agreed. “This woman didn’t harm the other. We left her there, examining the chamber she just discovered. That woman wouldn’t bring me outside. She wanted to record exactly how I’d been left, measure precisely where I lay among the artifacts that surrounded me. I sensed something terribly wrong out here, so I persuaded this one to let me see for myself.”

  “Then why is she dead?” Ice Eyes demanded.

  Perfect Woman relaxed enough to shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe the skull can tell you.”

  The Mother claimed not to know either. “But,” she added, “Raven and I might be able to bring her back to life.”

  “Who’s Raven?” Perfect Woman asked.

  “I am,” I said.

  “Only the man can hear him,” The Mother told her. “Raven is the other skull. The one this man brought here with him. Raven was a great Spirit Man in our time. With my help, he may be able to bring the other woman back from the spirit world.”

  I started to explain my doubts but The Mother stopped me. “Think your words only to me. The abomination they’ve made of my world must be undone. Only you can accomplish that.”

  “Me? You’re The Mother, The Goddess. You do it. I’m only a fair healer and no magic maker. You know me. I’m a fake. A fraud. I know the laws. The ceremonies. But the spirits don’t commune with me.”

  “You underestimate yourself, Raven. You will survive, your place in the band assured even after Stone inherits leadership from his father.”

  That confused me. “What do you mean will? Stone’s been our headman for years. Or was until today. You commanded me to solve murders, including his. Will I be able to go back and do that? Be allowed to live the rest of my natural life with Down?”

  “Ah,” she said. “We’ve come to this place from different times within our own lives. Tell me the last significant event you remember.”

  That mystified me even more, but existing as a skull in some alien future left me inclined to accept the illogical and obey her. I told her about Stone again, about the gathering of the men just after his funeral. About how she, The Mother, had taken a place among us. How Down had told everyone I believed she was the murderer.

  “I see why you’re confused,” she said. “I came here from a much earlier time. In my life, Willow just drowned. I brought her spirit back to her body only weeks ago. She and I are still learning to share it. Your precious Down hasn’t been born yet. But, since I’m The Mother, I know much of the future. I knew you and I would meet again and that it was important for us to do so. But I knew nothing of this…this world of the dead.”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “Not until these people awakened me here when they broke into the inner cave. I do know, or did, that you’d outlive Stone. I know much more, as well, but this isn’t the time for us to discuss our narrow lives. You’ve seen what they’ve done to our world. The vanished tundra. The absent herds. The poisonous cloud that hangs in the air. We must change all this if we’re to have the future I thought I knew.”

  I shook my head, or tried. “How?”

  “Agree with what I told them. Persuade him to take us back inside the hidden chamber. Explain that we must be near the other woman to reunite her spirit with her body. Tell him we need to go there immediately.”

  I didn’t understand at all. Not any of it. Not how we could be here as skulls. Not how I’d come from a different time than The Mother. Not how we could do anything here that might affect what happened to us so long ago. But I agreed this place where we’d once lived had turned into a nightmare. I’d do what The Mother asked for the possibility of waking from this horror and a chance to be with Down again. I told Ice Eyes what The Mother wanted and he told Perfect Woman.

  “I’ll let you have all the artifacts,” Ice Eyes begged Perfect Woman. “Use them for your personal profit or to enhance your position. Sell them, hide them, give them away. You can have the skulls, too. Anything, only please help me save her.”

  Perfect Woman agreed. They picked us up and ran, cradling us in their arms, back to the cavern where the mountain breathed.

  ***

  Second Woman lay where we’d left her.

  “What now?” Ice Eyes asked.

  “Place our skulls on the rock just above her,” The Mother said. “We should each face her. And the artifacts you found in here, all of them, must be put on the rock beside us.”

  Ice Eyes and Perfect Woman bent and gathered colorful rocks, carved ivory, and fine tools of flint and bone. They arranged them carefully around us.

  “Will this do?” Ice Eyes asked. “We’ve put them in the same pattern we think they formed.”

  “Something’s missing,” The Mother told me.

  I extended my vision beyond what my eyes could see. I looked beyond the glare of the torches Ice Eyes and his lover used, and saw it right away. The object glowed in my mind. A pendant. The one I’d carved of Willow in the days before she became The Mother. It was in a pouch in the perfect woman’s jerkin. I told Ice Eyes.

  “The pendant you’re hiding,” he said to the girl. “Put that up here, too.”

  Perfect Woman flushed, but she reached into her vest, pulled it out, and placed it beside The Mother’s skull.

  As she gently placed the figure on the rock, I realized I’d been wrong. This was a different pendant. Very similar to the one I’d expected. But the workmanship was better. The figure, trimmer. It showed no indication of pregnancy at all, carved with small breasts and lean hips. It was Down. Exactly the way I remembered her only moments ago, an eternity away.

  “Yes,” The Mother said. “This one is Down. She’ll be a beautiful girl, full of life and great wisdoms. The People will profit greatly from her time with them. Your carving captures her, just as the spirits tell me she’ll be. Her figurine does that even better than mine.”

  That was when I realized the original pendant also lay in Perfect Woman’s vest. Glowing, too, though not nearly as bright. I told
Ice Eyes.

  “Both figurines,” he said.

  The girl didn’t argue. She put it beside Down’s on the rock that breathed.

  “How can there be two?” I asked The Mother. “I haven’t carved an image of Down.”

  “Perhaps you have yet to carve it,” she replied. “But whether you’ll get that opportunity will be determined by what happens now.”

  “You mean whether we can bring the woman back to life?”

  “Not exactly,” The Mother said. “Watch.”

  As she said it, Perfect Woman lost her balance. She knocked a few of the colored stones off the rock as she tried to catch herself, then crumpled to her knees on the cavern’s floor.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I feel dizzy.”

  “Me, too.” Ice Eyes sat heavily beside her. “What’s happening to us?”

  “Can you get up?” The Mother asked.

  The girl made a half-hearted effort, then sprawled on the floor.

  Ice Eyes struggled mightily. “What have you done?” He crawled in our direction. “Stop it. Stop it now or I’ll smash you both.”

  “We haven’t done anything,” The Mother said. “You brought yourselves to a sacred place we were unable to guard from you. You looted it. Had you heeded the warnings we represented, you would never have entered this place.”

  That was true. They brought themselves here to begin with. But they’d returned at our bidding. Because we promised to try to save the dead woman.

  The Mother spoke again. “This chamber is filled with the breath of Grandmother Earth. The same breath that you steal to give yourselves every convenience. In the process, you’ve destroyed the partners with whom you were meant to share the Earth. Because of your greed, it’s only appropriate that Grandmother Earth’s breath poisons you. You have to leave here if you want to live. But it’s too late. Now you’ll both die.”

  Perfect Woman managed a whisper. “Help me,” she begged Ice Eyes.

  Ice Eyes looked into my eye sockets. “I meant you no harm.”

  He was right. He’d expected to benefit from me, and he’d been willing to trade our artifacts and skulls for Perfect Woman’s help. But he’d only wanted to save a life. And earlier, to know who we were so he could tell our story. I tried to think him to his feet. I’d been able to hurl a spear point at Perfect Woman once. Not very effectively. Maybe I could help him move. And I did, a little, though he fought me because he wanted to take Perfect Woman to safety with him. It was too late for her. Not that I cared about helping her, anyway. Her body, however perfect, had been a vessel harboring only greed and self-interest.

  Perfect Woman stopped struggling. Her breath came shallow and fast. She wouldn’t last long. I shoved him the other way. He collapsed after a pace or two. I scooted him a little farther before I realized I couldn’t possibly get him out in time.

  Perfect Woman shuddered as she breathed her last.

  “If I can still get them out of here,” I asked The Mother, “away from Grandmother Earth’s breath, can you give them life again? Can we?”

  “No, Raven. It’s rare that I can restore any spirit to the body it just left. These people have only bodies and minds. No spirits. They’re empty shells. I can’t do anything for these three. Nor can you, even though you have more powers than I.”

  “No, I don’t,” I protested.

  “Your mind can grasp hold of things here. Move them. The way you just moved the man, though it was too late for him. I can’t do that.”

  I was shocked. “Me? I have powers you don’t? How can that be? There aren’t any spirits here to help me. Only you, and you’re The Goddess. I’m just a man.”

  “Not just a man, Raven. How do you think you came to be here, outside your body, outside your time? Existing only inside your skull? What normal man can do that?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You were chosen, Raven. By all the spirits. We aided you, guided you, even let you deny us. How do you think you reached that moment you just left in your camp? Leading your band? Seeking to discover who killed men that preferred to see you dead?”

  I didn’t believe her, and yet…

  “I know,” she said. “You still aren’t sure who the murderer is. And you can’t understand about the boy with red hair and why I call that a murder, too. Think about it, Raven. He wasn’t suitable for Down. Only you could help her become the next vessel for my spirit. When Willow dies, Down will share her body with me. She, too, will become Earth Mother.”

  “I lost one woman to you. Why would I let you take another?”

  “Because I’ll let you keep this one to yourself. I’ll only share her eyes. I won’t rule her mind and body. It’s clear to me, if we’re to avoid this future, I must have Down’s help. And yours. We have to learn and understand the flaw that lies within ourselves. The one that led here. Together, we may help guide the spirits to regain control and preserve our world for as long as possible.”

  “Why not preserve it forever?”

  I felt her shake her head, though neither of us moved. “Nothing is forever, Raven. Not our Earth, and not this place. Now is the time for you to end it.”

  I actually turned my skull so our eye sockets stared into each other’s. “How?”

  “In our time, I showed you this place, right? I showed you a flame burning on the stone, put it out and relit it, so you understood how Grandmother Earth’s breath burns.

  “Yes. That happened.”

  “Study the image of Down you may create. Remember the profusion of life that migrated past this place. Consider what’s outside this cavern now. Then move a piece of flint with your mind. Scratch it on the rock. The spirit of fire has been waiting here for as long as you and I. Waiting to end this world. To turn this mountain into a tower of flame and destroy what Ice Eyes’ people built beside it to steal Grandmother Earth’s breath. The flame will free the breath they’ve captured and ignite it, too. Without this terrible place, and without the plants and animals they’ve killed, they can’t survive.”

  “I don’t want to kill people. Not even people who’d do this to their world.”

  “You won’t kill anyone. These are only empty bodies. They have no sprits. They aren’t People. They’re soulless, like mosquitoes, sucking Grandmother Earth dry. You can’t hurt them or the world they created because they already destroyed everything that’s important. All that’s left is evil. It must burn.”

  “Then what happens to us?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. “Perhaps we die with this world. Wouldn’t that be preferable to remaining in it while its occupants finish committing the suicide of the flesh already done to their spirits? Think about that second pendant. You haven’t carved it yet. Maybe…”

  I looked at Down’s image. I remembered the lifeless world outside. I agreed. It needed to end. But I didn’t think I could do it.

  “You must,” The Mother screamed.

  “I can’t.” I answered. “You won’t tolerate murder in our band, but you’d have me murder every inhabitant of an entire world?”

  “I told you,” she howled. “There are no longer people here to murder. Just meat, empty sacks of walking flesh.”

  Ice Eyes managed to pull himself back to the edge of the rock. He reached, at first, I thought, for me. He grabbed a piece of flint instead.

  “She’s right,” he said. “We should’ve saved the animals, shared our world with them. You showed me your world. It had a balance ours lost. There’s nothing left worth saving.”

  He swung the flint toward the fracture in the stone.

  “See,” I told The Mother. “You’re wrong. This one has a soul.”

  The flint met the stone and sparked. The world turned brighter than the sun. I felt myself fracture into splinters, then a haze of dust, slipping beyond thought, but still feeling wo
nder as the fire’s spirit joined Grandmother Earth’s breath and consumed everything.

  Confrontation

  Willow watched me. No, not Willow. Those cold hard eyes belonged to The Mother. We were back in the band’s council circle, but I could tell she knew where I’d been and what happened there.

  World-consuming flame had been replaced by a small, dung-fueled fire. My band sat around it, intent on saving their world instead of destroying it. And Down’s statement, that I believed she’d committed the murders, still echoed in everyone’s ears. My eyes were on The Mother, but I saw Down just over her shoulder.

  “You killed them.”

  I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until I saw Down look away. She must have thought I meant Tall Pine and Hair on Fire and Stone since I’d said it here, in this circle. She couldn’t know it was The Mother I accused, or that victims existed in some distant future. And yet, I knew it wasn’t The Mother who killed them or even Ice Eyes when he scraped the flint. I had done it. I’d convinced Ice Eyes of his people’s terrible crime. Because he sympathized with me, believed in an idealized nobility of The People and our way of life, he annihilated his own world to try to preserve ours.

  “Oh, Raven,” Down said, “if you don’t believe me anymore, I can’t think of any reason not to confess. It doesn’t matter, now, whether I live or die.”

  “No,” The Mother said. “That’s not what Raven means. I’m the one he accuses, but the crime he speaks of took place in another world. The spirits let the two of us travel there to see it. Its people were a terrible, evil race, a great threat to us all. I did kill them, with Raven’s help. We made that sacrifice for the good of Grandmother Earth and all her People and animals.”

  The band sat stunned in rapt silence. They didn’t understand a thing, of course, but they trusted that what she said was important to them. And it was. After a fashion, it was even true.