Syawa looked at me critically. Then, having reached some conclusion, he breathed deeply, slapt his thighs, and said, “If your dream was a message, the meaning is not yet clear. When you need to know more, the answer will come.” He urged me to eat what they had left for me and gather my things so we could go.
The strange start to the day left us all in a somber and pensive mood. Whilst I kept hearkening back to the flood of emotions connected with that dream, Hector seemed preoccupied by something, and Syawa, well . . . something was clearly troubling him. Usually he smiled every time I caught his eye, but during our hike that morning, every time I looked his way I found him staring vacantly into the distance with a wistful expression.
As the day wore on and I moved farther from the dream, I was increasingly embarrassed by it. Obviously I had been more bothered by the cyclone than I let on, and my nerves were working through the fear I experienced whilst hiding in that tree trunk. I knew Syawa was worried about me, but I also knew he was reading more into my dream than was there. After all, I had once told him I was a dreamer as he was, so why wouldn’t he now interpret my jittery nightmare as evidence of some sort of supernatural message? I blushed at the thought of misleading him, however unintentionally.
By mid-day the land we crossed was unpleasantly swampy and our forward progress slowed to almost naught. Hector stopt frequently to look ’round. At first I thought he was looking for a better path through the muck, but then I realized he was searching for something—some landmark, perhaps. Eventually he stopt to confer with Syawa before going on by himself. Syawa, looking grave, urged me to sit and rest whilst awaiting Hector’s return.
“I must tell you something,” he said and gestured, looking at me steadily.
I sat on a large rock and waited, tension tightening my throat and rolling my belly. I immediately thought of that strange dream I’d had. Spinning . . .
“I know how you dislike water,” Syawa continued, still staring at me, “but we are approaching the largest river you will ever see. I do not mean to frighten you. I am telling you this merely so you will not be surprised. I want you to”—he gestured emphatically to make his meaning clear—“be prepared. If you are prepared, you will not be frightened.”
I was strangely relieved. I don’t know why, but I had thought for a moment Syawa was going to say he could not take me any farther and was going to leave me here in the forest, all alone. Compared to that, a river seemed a silly thing to fear.
I nodded and assured him I understood. I signaled that I would cross whatever river we encountered. After all, had I not conquered my fear and crossed countless streams and rivers? Did I not now bathe regularly? “I prepare myself,” I said dutifully, and Syawa put his hand on my shoulder and smiled.
• • •
Ah, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when we arrived at the banks of the Great River. How could I be prepared for such an awful sight? It was not a river but, for all intents and purposes, a huge, fast-flowing lake whose distant shore was almost undetectable from where I stood. I stared at the vast expanse of water with a gaping mouth.
To make matters worse, e’en Syawa and Hector were surprised. From their conversation, I gathered they’d crossed this river in early winter when it was perhaps half the size it was now. At half its present size, the monstrous beast would have horrified me; at its current level, there was simply no way I would go anywhere near it. “How we go ’round this?” I broke into their conversation to gesture.
They both stared at me. Syawa took a deep breath. His eyes bored into mine as he said, “We must cross it.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, my lips presst tight. “No. No, no, no, no, no. I not cross that river. I cannot. We find other way. We find a . . .” I did not know the word in their language, so I just said “bridge” in English and tried to depict a bridge with my hands.
Syawa and Hector exchanged a weary glance. “There is no other way,” Syawa said in words and gestures. “Kay-oot-li, you must accept this. We are not just going to cross this river. We are going to travel on it for many days. We have a canoe.”
I kept shaking my head, saying, “No, no, no . . .” as Syawa went on to explain they had buried their canoe somewhere nearby, but Hector was having trouble locating it because the floodwaters had altered the terrain.
“Well, it’s gone then, and we’ll just have to find a different way!” I said in English whilst gesturing. My voice was tight with rising hysteria. “We can walk upstream. If we go far enough, there will surely be less water!”
Hector gave me a withering look and mumbled to Syawa that we had no more time to waste. In order to reach a certain village before winter, we must proceed up this river now.
I just kept shaking my head, saying “no,” ’til Hector stormed off to look for the canoe. In the meantime, Syawa stood still, looking at me sadly. He waited whilst I paced and ranted and raved and raged. I reminded myself of my mother when she was in one of her red-faced screaming fits. In his language I said it was a stupid plan to cross this stupid river and I was not so stupid I would do it. There had to be another way. There had to be another way.
When I finally worked myself into tears, Syawa took my arms in his hands and stopt my pacing. “Enough,” he said firmly. “You have said your words. Now you must prepare yourself. There is nothing to fear in water. It is the source of all life.”
I looked into Syawa’s gentle but strong eyes and struggled to match his cool demeanor. But every time I so much as glanced at that massive basin of water, I panicked all over again. I saw an entire tree bobbing along as if it weighed nothing, and everywhere were huge logs swirling like little twigs. The wind formed foamy caps upon the waves, and giant birds circled o’er the waters the way gulls circled o’er the ocean in Boston.
“I cannot do this,” I gestured simply. “I’m sorry, Syawa, but I cannot do this.”
Syawa’s face showed no emotion as he kept looking at me. “You are smart. You will learn. I will teach you. Like talking and washing and cooking and gift-giving.”
He was right. I had learnt many new things in the past two and a half months, and if anyone could teach me to embrace water, it would be Syawa. Besides—what was the alternative? If I did not calm down and do what Syawa said, he and Hector might very well go on without me, and then where would I be? Syawa was right. I was smart. I could learn.
He took me to the water’s edge, telling a story about the river his village was on and how the river gave his people food and riches and life. He assured me that I, too, would learn to understand the river the way I talked about my people understanding books, and when I did, I would have access to a whole new world. Then Hector came o’er the ridge, shouting that he had found the canoe, and Syawa and I hurried to join him.
As we walked, Syawa explained they had planned to paddle the canoe all the way to my family’s farm, but by the time they reached this point in their journey, the days were short and the river was freezing o’er. He said he could not wait through another winter, and so they set off on foot, determined to reach me by spring. Besides, he said, he thought the walk to the Great River would give me time to get accustomed to my new life.
I was stunned by this news. I had ne’er really believed Syawa was looking for me—I assumed he was looking for someone, and when he met me he decided I would do. But to hear him talk, he knew precisely where he was going and he was driven to get there as quickly as possible. And somehow he convinced Hector to abandon their canoe and walk hundreds of miles through strange land, just to arrive at my family’s farm on that particular spring day. It was an insane story. Yet he told it in such an off-hand, matter-of-fact way that I could not doubt that he, at least, believed it to be absolutely true. And I had no way to dispute it. To the contrary, the circumstantial evidence suggested the facts were without question. But how could it be true? And why?
By the time we c
aught up with Hector, he had the canoe half-uncovered, and with all three of us working, it was soon unearthed. The men checked o’er their buried supplies whilst I worked on setting up our camp. Before I e’en managed to get a fire going on the soggy landscape, my companions had dragged their canoe to the water, washed it off inside and out, and jumped inside.
The sun was setting golden on the other side of the river, with all the yellows and reds and oranges and purples stretching out, shimmering, on the rippling water. I watched my friends glide into the middle of that pulsating palette and felt a thrill of horror, knowing how absolutely alone I was. I sat holding my knees to my chest, thinking of all the wild creatures and malevolent Frenchmen who might be eyeing me from the underbrush.
From the rise on which our camp was located, I could see Syawa and Hector e’en when they were far, far away. They controlled their canoe as easily as I control my own feet, and the longer I watched them, the more my dread began to dissipate. It didn’t look so bad. It looked easy. It looked almost fun. Maybe I could do this. Of course I could. Why couldn’t I do this?
I saw them confer for a moment before maneuvering their craft ’round. Riding with the current, they soared, and suddenly Syawa stood up in the front of the canoe to thrust a stick into the river. This was a stick they had stored under their buried canoe, and when Syawa pulled the rope attacht to the stick, a huge, writhing fish emerged from the water. I smiled. By this time I knew very well how to cook a fish.
• • •
After we ate, Syawa asked me to tell another story, like the one I told about the creation of the world. I knew he was trying to keep me from fretting about what I must do in the morning, so I obliged him by telling the story of Adam and Eve, which was, of course, the continuation of my previous tale. Tho’ I hoped to restore the light mood my other story created, I failed completely. I don’t know if I didn’t translate well or if my listeners were too distracted or if I was just too on edge, but, whate’er the case, when I was done, I was met with an awkward silence that went on and on.
Finally Hector asked if all my people can talk with snakes. Sure he was mocking me with basically the same question I’d asked Syawa about his turtle story, I stared into the fire, tight-lipped. But his question made me think. Did Christians believe the snake really talked? Odd, I’d ne’er wondered about that before. When I said nothing, Hector frowned and rolled himself in his sleeping fur as if I’d offended him.
Syawa breathed deeply and exhaled very slowly. “Are you saying your people believe their own actions caused all the miseries in this world?” he asked, clearly troubled. “How can they e’er be happy, believing this?”
I shrugged, confused. “Maybe they can’t.” I tried to remember the good times in my seventeen years—the weddings, the successful births, the times when someone made money—and I realized how rare those moments were. Syawa was shrewd to recognize the self-loathing that fueled every aspect of a world he’d only glimpsed.
He went on to ask if this perfect place I described, this Garden, still existed. I said I didn’t know, but if it did, it didn’t matter—we would not be allowed back inside. Syawa glanced at me, quickly turning his eyes back to the fire. “And yet you still speak of it,” he said with both words and hands. “You still yearn for it. You still seek it, tho’ you believe it is forbidden to you. You torment yourself with this hopeless longing.”
“Maybe we need believe in Garden.” I shrugged as I gestured. “Life is hard, bad, much pain. With no Garden, how we go on?” I smiled feebly, hoping to tease Syawa back into a lighter mood. “Maybe you take me to Garden now, yes?”
Still staring into the fire, he quickly said and gestured, “No. Life is not perfect anywhere. People are not perfect. But my people do not seek perfection. We strive for balance. We enjoy life as we find it, the good and the bad. We are grateful for all.”
When Syawa said no more, I said good night and curled up in my bearskin, pondering what he’d said. I was almost asleep when I felt his hand on my shoulder. I snapt to attention, my heart racing, sure something must be wrong. He leant over to whisper so as not to disturb Hector. “Kay-oot-li,” he murmured, “you must not blame yourself when bad things happen. You are not the cause.”
I thought for a second, flustered by his closeness, his warm breath on my ear. “You talk of story? Of Eve in Garden?”
“No. I talk of you, of living with my people.”
I tried to sit up but Syawa held me down with his hand on my shoulder. I felt a surge of fear as I realized how vulnerable I was, but he was not threatening me in any way—he was just staring at me, staring and staring, as if trying to memorize every pore in my face. “But I cause my life,” I said, hard-presst to add gestures from my prone position. “You say I must choose come with you, and I choose. I choose and cause my life, yes? We all are blame for chooses we make!”
Syawa smiled but seemed sad as he brusht a wisp of hair from my face. He leant so close his lips touched my ear as he whispered, “You never truly had a choice. I just said that so you would feel good about coming. What else could you do? You had to come.”
I frowned, pulling back so I could see his face. “What you say? Yes, I have choice! I have choice right now. I have choice tomorrow. Tomorrow—is this what worries you? You think I choose not go with you?”
“You will go. And you will live a good life with my people. But bad things will happen. They always do. And when they do, you must not blame yourself. You must enjoy life in spite of bad things.”
Then Syawa launched into one of his lectures, only a fragment of which I understood. He went on and on about rivers and currents and how they can appear one way but be another or be one way and appear another and he used words I did not understand, whispering along at such a breakneck speed I could not possibly question him or tell him I was lost. As was so oft the case, he seemed determined to throw at me everything he knew on a subject and be satisfied if I managed to pick up a few bits and pieces as I followed along.
Toward the end of this discourse, Syawa’s babbling veered off into an unexpected direction. All this time he had been talking about blame and rivers and things in the way when suddenly he said there was something he wanted me to tell Hector. At this point I was only half-listening, but I remember Syawa’s sudden request caught me by surprise, and I frowned at him, puzzled.
His face was only a few inches from mine, our breaths commingling. “Why you want me tell him?” I asked. “Why not you tell him?” I glanced at the lump on the other side of the fire that was Hector.
Syawa’s smile seemed sad. “He is sleeping now. We will be busy tomorrow and I may forget. I want you to remember for me. Is that so much to ask?”
His dark eyes were right in front of mine and I was as powerless before him now as I was the moment we met in my family’s loft. O’erwhelmed, I murmured, “No.” His eyes warmed tho’ his smile stayed sad.
“Good. Then I want you to learn the words I am going to say and remember them exactly. Can you do that?”
I nodded, thinking that memorizing a few words was nothing compared to getting into that canoe tomorrow. Syawa slowly said the words he wanted me to remember, then asked me to repeat them. When I did, he corrected my pronunciation and asked me to say them again. The only part of the message I fully understood was the end, which was an admonition to enjoy the canoe ride. He made me say the entire message several more times before inhaling slowly and deeply, apparently satisfied.
“Do not forget to tell him,” he said, and before I could respond, he gently stroked my face with his hand, got up, and walked off into the darkness, leaving me to stare into the glowing embers of the fire.
~14~
I AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING screaming again.
This time I rolled o’er and vomited in the weeds before I was e’en fully awake. When I finisht, I looked ’round miserably and found Syawa sitting nearby, watching me. “Wha
t did you see?” he asked.
“Spinning,” I said as soon as I remembered the word. “Spinning and spinning . . .” I stopt for a moment and thought, then looked at Syawa in surprise. “This dream I see snake.”
Syawa looked up into the brightening sky, his face haggard, as if he had not slept at all. “What did the snake do?”
I glanced o’er at Hector, who was packing things up, pretending not to listen, but I knew he was. I was embarrassed to go on. “He . . . he spinning me. And he say, ‘Ye’ll ne’er get away from me, Katie.’” I didn’t mention the snake spoke English with an Irish brogue, like my mother.
Syawa was staring at the ground, a strange, humorless smile on his face, but he said nothing.
“I think story last night . . . frighten me,” I said, working hard to pronounce the foreign words. I got on my knees to begin rolling up the bearskin. “I worry about river, and I am . . .” I didn’t know the word for “nervous,” so I just said “frighten” again.
Syawa took a deep breath and said dreams like mine can dispel fear by giving us a chance to prepare. Such Visions, he said, cannot change the course of events—only prepare us to accept them. “Acceptance is what allows us to enjoy life,” he said.
I thought it more likely my dream was telling me Christian Scripture had no place in the savage wilderness, but I said no more. Instead, I finished packing up camp and forced down my share of food left from the night before so I could steel myself to meet the challenges to come.
“Can she do this?” I heard Hector ask Syawa. I glanced at Hector, who was looking my way skeptically. I resented him talking about me as if I still couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I suppose I had given him plenty of reasons to be skeptical.
“She will be fine,” Syawa said.
Hector thought for a moment, then ventured a question he seemed reluctant to ask. “Did you dream anything?”
The Spirit Keeper Page 11