Spirit and the Skull

by J. M. Hayes

  “But now, Raven, it’s time to return to the murders in this band. You still have another duty to perform for The People—to reveal the identity of the murderer.”

  I nodded. I paused to face Down again and give her a reassuring smile. And I noticed poor Blue Flower standing at her side. She must be feeling especially lost if she had sought solace beside Stone’s daughter. That she was there, surprised me. But not nearly as much as the willow branch doll, clasping a flower, that she held to her breast.

  I took a deep breath. I’d been so naive, though no one had ever trained me for this. “All right.” I finally knew who, and why. And how to reveal and prove it, all at the same time.

  I reached into the pouch I wore around my neck and pulled out Tall Pine’s bone. If it had power, I needed it now.

  I’d seen how easily The Mother manipulated Ice Eyes and Perfect Woman, persuading them to go back into a chamber filled with a poison that would kill them. I thought about my visits to Ice Eyes, and how The Mother influenced Ice Eyes through me until he willingly destroyed his own society. In my frame of reference, I’d just witnessed her kill Perfect Woman. Maybe Second Woman, too. And, through Ice Eyes and myself, perhaps everyone in the huts below the cavern and the places reached by those snakes carrying the Earth’s breath. Possibly, an entire world. If she could do that, I knew she was capable of almost anything. I remembered what she’d told me about Hair on Fire. “He wasn’t suitable for Down. Only you could help her become the next vessel for my spirit.”

  “I know the murderer’s identity,” I said. I stepped around the fire and looked straight into The Mother’s face. I tossed her Tall Pine’s bone. “You. You killed them all.”

  The entire band gasped—a single shared breath—but one immediately torn apart by a deafening roar.

  “Raven lies,” Bear Man shouted. “He’s the killer. He told me so himself. Do you deny that, Raven?”

  I shook my head. “But what about the moccasin prints we found beside our headman’s body? Look at Blue Flower. She came to this council barefooted.”

  Bear Man didn’t answer, but Willow said, “Go on.”

  I pointed at Blue Flower. “Where did you get that doll?”

  She shook her head, torn briefly from her grief by my unexpected question.

  “Under his body,” she said. “I tried to lift him up and make him be all right. But he was dead. I thought he made this doll to show me he loved me. You see, it has a blue flower.”

  “Yes. Would you please bring it to me?”

  She did, though she seemed reluctant to let me have it. The doll was virtually identical to the one Gentle Breeze had found on Tall Pine’s body. And it was tied using the same unusual knot on that one, with its yellow flower, as on the one with the bloody head that had been hidden in my bedding.

  “Does this look familiar?” I asked Gentle Breeze.

  “It looks just like the one I found on Tall Pine,” she said, “but surely you’re not accusing Blue Flower of being the killer…and our witch.”

  I turned to Bear Man. He shook with rage and I wondered whether he’d pick up his club and bash my head in the moment I got close to him. But there was one more item I needed. I stepped in front of him, bent, and pulled Blue Flower’s moccasins from his belt. I walked over to stand in front of Bull Hump and Takes Risks, the only fighters who might be strong enough to keep me alive.

  “Look at these knots.” I showed them the knots tying the doll and the moccasins before them. “Have you ever seen someone tie knots like this before?”

  They hadn’t.

  I tossed them to The Mother. “How about you?”

  The great bear came charging from his place in the circle, batting men aside. People flew everywhere, some from the force of his passage, others trying to get out of his way. But this bear didn’t lumber on four legs. He ran upright, on two. And straight toward me, swinging his massive club. No great bear at all, just Bear Man, but every bit as deadly as his name and nearly twice my size.

  I stepped behind the fire to make him change direction. The Mother had told me all the spirits were with me. That I was a great magician, capable of feats even she couldn’t perform. I wished I believed her.

  Instead, I remembered how Perfect Woman, smaller and weaker than Ice Eyes, dodged his charge and swept his feet out from under him with a spinning kick. I had nothing to lose. I tried it. Imagine my surprise when it worked.

  Bear Man landed on hands and knees directly in front of The Mother.

  “Enough,” she told him. “You aren’t the instrument of my will. You may think you kill for me, but you kill in spite of me. It must stop here.”

  Her words stripped away some of his rage and made him moan in agony. But only for a moment.

  “I am The Mother’s son.” he shouted. “I shall be her inheritor. I’ll take what I want and anyone who stands in my way cannot be allowed to live.”

  He scooped a hand into the fire and threw flaming coals at Bull Hump and Takes Risks. They dodged away. Bear Man leaped to his feet and came for me again and I knew my kick wouldn’t work a second time. He raised the club. For a foolish moment I felt pleased. At least he’d smash my skull, preventing the fate I so dreaded. Just as he got to me, he fell dead at my feet.

  Down danced out from under him as he collapsed, leaving the spear she’d borrowed from Takes Risks embedded in Bear Man’s flesh. She’d gone in low and thrust up from beneath his rib cage and into his heart, the way she’d seen me kill the mammoth.

  I shook my head in disbelief as Down came into my arms. “Now,” she whispered, “there’s finally one I can honestly admit to having killed.”

  “As you should.” The Mother stood, her voice tinged with sadness. “One murderer has been punished. An accomplice has been revealed, as she needed to be. But I’m that accomplice. I foresaw Bear Man’s crimes and, because of the dangers we all faced, did nothing to prevent them. Because I’m The Mother, however, the punishments that apply to you don’t apply to me.”

  “Why not?” I said. “Tall Pine was a threat to Down’s well-being but you have need of Down. So Bear Man stole her garrote and eliminated Tall Pine. He shot Bull Hump. You sent him to shoot the mammoth to attract the animal’s attention so Hair on Fire would die. Bear Man succeeded, but he only nicked the mammoth and turned her attention before the arrow accidentally ricocheted into Bull Hump. Bear Man wanted Down. He persuaded Stone to get rid of me, but you needed me today, so you let Bear Man finish Stone.”

  “True.” The Mother shrugged. “But Bear Man never acted on my orders. As for Down, I told him he couldn’t have her. It would be incest. Bear Claw was my father, and Stone’s. When you revealed him, Bear Man decided to take control of the band by force. He was a fool to think I’d allow that. In the end, I let Down punish him.”

  “He killed,” I said, “and though you can say it was for Down and for power, you didn’t stop him because he accomplished what you wanted. You’re as guilty as Bear Man.”

  I didn’t give her time to answer. I ripped the spear out of Bear Man’s body and hurled it into The Mother’s.

  It didn’t quite get there. Snow flew out of nowhere and plucked the spear out of the air, stopping it no more than a hand’s breadth from The Mother’s flesh. My faithful dog carried it out of the circle, madly wagging his tail, delighted by this new sport he’d found to play with me.

  “Yes, I’m as guilty,” The Mother answered. “But I’m not subject to punishment by you. If I’ve done wrong, my fellow spirits will discipline me.”

  She stood, raised her arms, and addressed everyone. “The wound that threatened our band, and all The People, is healed. Let the murderer lie where he revealed himself. Let the animals and carrion birds feed on his flesh and spread his bones so it will soon be as if he never existed. Let our band move to my mountain immediately and reunite. Once there, we will rejoice. Thanks to Rave
n and Down, The People are healed.”

  The Mother’s Wisdom

  It took another day to move ourselves and our goods to The Mother’s mountain. I had mixed feelings about going back. At least I no longer expected to die there, or not soon. If she’d wanted my life, I finally understood, The Mother could have let Bear Man take it anytime. If she still wanted my skull, she wouldn’t need it soon.

  One reason we went back to the mountain was because The Mother’s camp was better provisioned even than ours. The Mother, who seemed to have become Willow again, told us they had more than enough food for a huge celebration. Every band that passed left the choicest pieces of their latest kills when they learned The Mother resided there. The river below the cave yielded delicious fish and its banks were bordered with edible plants, roots, and berries.

  On the day after our newly recombined band celebrated the murderer’s discovery and Down’s act to cleanse us of him, Willow appeared at our tent. There was no hint of The Mother’s hardness in her eyes or voice. She reached out and gently took both of us by the hands. “Come, walk with me.”

  She led us upstream, along the gravel bars at the water’s edge.

  “I know you still believe The Mother was guilty of killing our band members,” she said.

  I agreed. “You told me, or she did, how the spirits protected me. How they saved Down for me, and then you. Everything we accomplished seems to have been a result of Bear Man’s violent acts. Acts which resulted in what you wanted. I can’t see the will of the spirits in what happened.”

  “The will of the spirits is hard for men to understand. We are rid of evil, self-absorbed men. A murderer was punished. An unacceptable future was averted. Only temporarily, The Mother tells me, but these were great accomplishments and they required a great cost.”

  “And yet you could have stopped your son anytime.”

  “The Mother’s son or mine? And, no, she didn’t stop him, nor did I. Even a Goddess finds it difficult to kill her own child.”

  I moved to my next question. “How could you be certain Down would kill Bear Man and save me?”

  Willow laughed. “The Mother isn’t as infallible as she pretends. She thought Bear Man would kill you.”

  I was taken aback. “Then how would Down give me that son you promised?”

  “Because she’s already pregnant, of course,” Willow said. “Why do you think she stopped bleeding?”

  Down threw her arms around me. “You don’t think I’d let the father of my child be snatched away from me so easily, do you?”

  My head swam, but I managed to hug Down, and the son she carried, with as much fervor as she hugged me.

  ***

  Willow led us to a place where the river had created a beach of small rocks and sand on its rush to the sea.

  “Pick up a stone, Raven,” Willow said. “Toss it far out into the water near the stream’s center.”

  I did so. “And what great truth have I just helped you demonstrate?”

  Willow smiled and lightly punched my shoulder the way she would have decades before.

  “The Mother asked me to point out the ripples your rock caused. They spread forward in every direction from where it struck. The current stops them from going back. Think of the current as time, moving from the present into the future. Except time’s flow would extend beyond these banks forever. Your ripples could make an infinite journey in any direction except backwards. The Mother says it’s the same with what we do in our lives. Every choice leads to all manner of possible outcomes and affects things we never dream of. There are many possible futures. Some are disasters, like the one we saw. She and the spirits needed the help of a special man to stop it, someone who always tries to do what’s right, even when it isn’t convenient.”

  Flattery, I thought, exaggerating what I’d done.

  Down took my arm. “They made a good choice,” she said, making everything seem worthwhile.

  “The Mother believed Bear Man would take matters into his own hands,” Willow said, “but the decisions he made were his own. The future she expected didn’t have to happen. And some of it didn’t.”

  Down turned to face Willow. “What was Bear Man after? Why did he want me?”

  Willow’s face grew sad again. “Bear Man thought he was superior to The People. He enjoyed exercising the power of life and death. He planned to take you so The Mother couldn’t have you. He resented The Mother and was foolish enough to think he could replace her and assume her power.”

  “Who will The Mother pick for our headman now?” Down asked.

  “Raven, of course. But she won’t pick him. The band will do that.”

  I objected. “Wait. Are you talking about me? The band won’t accept me as headman.”

  “You’re wrong,” Willow said. “You’ve already led them. The band meets tonight and they’ll choose you. Who else would they pick? You saved them from Bear Man. You even challenged The Mother. None of them are brave enough for that.”

  “Well, say you’re right. What happens then? Do we spend the rest of our winters in this place, guarding Grandmother Earth’s breath from a repeat of that dangerous future?”

  Willow shrugged. “I suppose that’s our destiny.”

  “No it’s not.” Down picked up a rock and hurled it in the stream. Before its ripples moved far, she threw a handful of sand after it. The original ripples broke, scattered, and found new courses.

  “It’s not just mighty acts or great spirits that affect the future’s ripples,” Down said. “As soon as you’re named headman, Raven, you’ll march us on the trail the animals took, south through the mountains. Before the seasons change, we can be far from this accursed place. Soon, no one will ever dream of bringing skulls back. If your skulls aren’t buried here, those strangers from the future can’t find them and you won’t have to destroy their world.”

  Willow laughed. “See why you and The Mother need this woman, Raven? She’s right. She may not prevent that future, or one like it, but each of our acts alters what will be, in small or large ways. If we follow the animals, we’ll certainly alter the course of our own ripples. Who knows what may eventually happen?”

  ***

  We took the pass through the mountains on the heels of the animals. Spent our first winter in a wide valley bordered by glaciers. The mountains blocked the worst of the storms and many animals wintered in the valley with us. We took only the ones we needed and thanked each animal’s spirit for their gift to us. We survived that winter far better than we deserved after such a long delay.

  My first child, a son of course, was born on the trail south from that valley. He had such pale eyes. And something I thought I recognized behind them. I asked Down if we could call him Ice Eyes. She agreed, and Willow didn’t object.

  By then, Down wore an image of herself, better carved and more of a likeness than the one I’d made for Willow. And Willow wore her own image again. My second carving depicted Down as lean and young and extraordinarily beautiful, and, though it wasn’t the way I’d seen the figurine in the cavern of The Mother’s Breath, I carved it thick with child, the way Down decided she wanted to be depicted.

  I’m a very old man now. My hands are gnarled and twisted and painful, incapable of more carvings. Someone else would have to fashion the one I saw in the cave so long ago…so far in the future.

  Our band follows the herds across lush rolling grasslands where rivers lined with trees twist among golden hills, rich with nuts and roots, fruit and berries. We hunt the nearby mountains, too, thick with fragrant pine forests and clear cool streams. We’ve found The Mother’s bounty everywhere. Our band has grown and prospered. As it should, since Willow carried The Mother’s spirit and Down became a skilled Spirit Woman.

  Before she died, Willow asked to speak to me.

  I sat in front of a tent, no longer able to hunt for myself, but fattene
d by doting children. “Does The Mother require more of us?”

  “No.” Willow eased her shrunken frame to sit on the soft grass beside me, warming herself at our fire. “The Mother hasn’t spoken to me in years.”

  “Did you offend her?”

  Willow shook her head. “She believes both of us endured enough.”

  “You mean when we were skulls.”

  “Were we, really? I’ve come to hope that was a terrible nightmare you and I shared. Not reality.”

  Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wonderful, too, if there were no Mother to link spirits with Down.

  “But just in case,” Willow said, “I’d like to ask a favor.”

  “Of course.”

  “When I die, don’t bury me. Burn me. Burn me until my bones are fragile enough to crumble into ash. Then spread me on the wind, so those people, or their counterparts, can never find me.”

  We did as she asked. And even though I’m no longer so afraid of that future Ice Eyes, Down has promised me the same favor.

  Down didn’t inherit The Mother’s spirit after Willow died. I was relieved. I’d had enough of The Mother. But because of her, we’d prospered, enjoying an amazing string of successful years. Leading a band that had the reputation of enjoying The Mother’s favor proved almost effortless, especially when she no longer made demands on us. After Willow’s death, representatives of other bands still came seeking The Mother’s blessing. Down gave them private audiences, instead. She always wore that oh-so-pregnant image of herself—one more ripple away from my dreams of being a skull.

  I never dreamed such dreams again. Nor anything like them. And neither did Willow or Down…or so they always claimed.

  Now, as I lie dying, I dream of sharing my story with those who need to hear it in a fashion impossible for me to describe. Warning them of the flaws to which we, The People, are susceptible. Flaws that might lead us back to another doomed future.

  Down purifies me with a pinch of pollen and the brush of a grass whisk when I wake from those dreams. She tells me The Mother will let me share my warning.