The Spirit Keeper

by K. B. Laugheed

  It was a silly dream, clearly caused by the story I had told the evening before, but that was not how Hector saw it. When I looked at him, he was sitting back as if I had pushed him, his face ashen, his eyes haunted. “Hector?” I said. He did not seem to hear me, so I sat up and touched his arm. “Hector—it was just a dream!”

  But when he turned his face to me, I saw that odd look he got when he spoke of Syawa. “It wasn’t a dream,” he said, his voice shaky. “That truly happened. Exactly as you described. Except, it wasn’t you—it was him. The others picked on him. Because he was small. Always. They followed him, chanting. They never did it when parents could see, but they did it whenever they could.”

  “And you defended him,” I prompted gently, for Hector was lost in the memory.

  “Yes. One boy always hated him. He led the others. That boy threw dirt in his face, just as you said. I stopt him. I stopt them all.” I saw Hector’s face transfigured by the same sort of rage he’d felt for Three Bulls. I felt the muscles of his arm tighten.

  I remembered what I’d seen in my dream—was it possible I was sharing Syawa’s memory, as Hector assumed? Preposterous! It seemed obvious my dream was sparked by my own memories, by the conversation we’d had, and by my obsessive closeness to my husband, both emotionally and physically. But it was peculiar, I’ll own to that.

  Then I thought about what it must’ve been like for the two of them as kids—Syawa, small but smart, endowed with incredible insight and perhaps e’en supernatural gifts—and Hector, younger but fearless, willing to do whate’er it took, fighting in spite of the fact his culture frowned upon fighting, risking not only his own well-being but also his personal reputation and his father’s respect, all to defend someone who needed defending. I thought I loved Hector before, but now, seeing him as the champion of the downtrodden, my love for him swelled ’til I feared my heart might explode.

  Once again I felt the awful enormity of the loss he suffered when Syawa died, and tho’ I was certain my dream was just a dream into which he was once again reading things that were not there, I was not about to snatch whate’er comfort he derived from believing his lifelong friend lived on inside me.

  “I wish I had been there to fight beside you,” I said gently, and Hector took me in his arms. We held each other for an infinite moment before our passions once again o’ercame us.

  • • •

  Thereafter I sensed something troubling Hector. He said nothing, but I could feel it—a barrier between us, some sort of obstruction I could not get ’round. It occurred to me he might feel odd about bedding me now that I’d reminded him of the Spirit I purportedly kept, but our passionate encounters continued as enthusiastically as before. Still, something was troubling him.

  On occasion he e’en grew testy.

  Since teaching me to swim, he had required me to join him each morning, but I ne’er enjoyed the water, e’en after our swimming turned into aquatic coupling. My problem was that when my hair got wet, it stayed wet, and so I slept always with damp hair. This was not a problem when the nights were warm, but now that the evenings were increasingly cool, I needed to keep my hair dry.

  When I awoke one morning to find my hair covered with frost, I told Hector I would no longer dunk my head. He argued, insisting his people regularly broke through ice to swim, but I pointed out my hair was not like his, as my skin was not like his, and he must make allowances for the differences between us. He grumbled at me, then turned his grumbling on the frost, which, he said, was a warning. It was just as well I would not swim, he snapt, because we must pick up our pace in order to reach our winter destination.

  A day or two after this disagreement, we passed a fairly large village, and I was surprised when Hector put his head down and kept paddling. I saw people on the shore pointing and shouting, and soon a large canoe was following us, the four men inside paddling with deep, hard strokes. As I looked back at the pursuing canoe, I saw Hector’s face was stone.

  The larger canoe easily o’ertook us. The men seemed friendly enough—concerned, even. They remembered Hector and were eager to renew their friendship. With broad, welcoming gestures, they invited us back to their village, but Hector responded with short, impatient signs, telling them he was sorry, but he must push on to a certain village before the snow came. They reluctantly accepted his explanation, but kept looking at me. When they finally asked who I was, Hector bristled like a dog with a bone, saying he had said all he was going to say.

  The men were shocked by Hector’s rudeness, as was I. After they left and we set off, I paddled without looking back. Something was very wrong.

  We spoke not a word all day, my imagination running wild. Why did Hector refuse to tell those men I was his wife? Was he ashamed of me? I kept going back to the fact that he had not asked me to marry him in the first place—what if he had changed his mind about the whole thing?

  When Hector speared a fish late in the afternoon, he pulled it into the canoe and said we must keep going. We paddled ’til almost dark. After we camped, Hector worked on fish spears as I prepared our meal, but as soon as it was cooking, I turned to ask the question I’d been asking myself all day. “Why did we not stop at that village?”

  Hector froze, his eyes on the ground, his lips tight, his nostrils flaring.

  I continued: “It’s been a month since we stopt. We’ve skipt at least one other village, haven’t we?” The accusation hit him like a slap in the face. “That’s what I thought. So all day I’ve been wondering, asking myself why. It’s not that we’re in such a hurry. We’ve always been in a hurry, yet we’ve always stopt. The only difference now is that we’re married.”

  The fish spear fell, forgotten, onto the riverbank. “It’s not what you think,” he mumbled.

  “Indeed? How would you know? Can you hear my thoughts?”

  His eyes shot up to my face. “I want to explain it to you,” he began, then stopt, looking pained. “But it’s . . . complicated!”

  Complicated. Aaaaaah, yes. How well I knew that frustration, that inability to explain a concept because it was so complicated it simply could not be translated. I sighed. “This is a problem we have, you and I. Our worlds are very different. But no matter how hard your thoughts are to explain, you must try. I will try to understand.”

  He nodded, his arms on upraised knees, his head hanging between them. I could see him swallow hard as he considered. “It’s his Vision,” he said in a meek voice.

  “His Vision?”

  “I have forfeited my right to tell the story. I can no longer help fulfill his Vision.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, staring at him in disbelief. “Why?”

  Hector launched into a slow, miserable explanation of how he was responsible for Syawa’s death.

  I stopt him right away. “How can you possibly believe you are responsible? I was there. I saw what happened. There was nothing you could have done!” I softly said his real name as I put my hand on his shoulder. As something of an expert on guilt, I knew what it was to carry a staggering burden, and because my own guilt arose from the very same event, I desperately wanted to relieve him if I could. There was no reason both of us should suffer on account of Syawa.

  “Of course I was responsible,” Hector insisted quietly. “I should have gotten out of the canoe first. But I accept my failure. We all fail. What I can’t accept is—”

  “Listen to me!” I interrupted, grabbing his upper arm with both hands. “You did not fail in your promise to protect him—you didn’t! Your promise just shifted to me. That’s why he didn’t make you promise to take care of me. He didn’t need to! You had already promised to protect him, and he is here, safe and sound.” I put my hand on my heart, but Hector would not look at me.

  “I understand all that. But you do not understand. I . . . I caused his death.” Hector let this shocking statement hang whilst he swallowed thickly. Then he went on
: “When we began our journey, I did not understand how far we must go. I thought we would just cross the mountains. When he kept going and going, I wanted to turn back. Many times I threatened to leave him, but he said he would go on without me. I couldn’t let him do that. To distract my thoughts, he spoke of you, endlessly, through all our hardships. The things he said about you—I didn’t believe you were real. And then I saw you, and . . . it was all true. You are like no other woman. You are so smart, so strong, so brave. So beautiful.” He stopt to glance at me as I stared at him with an open mouth. “I did not expect to love you, to want you so much. I knew it was wrong because you were for him, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it.”

  “But . . .” I mumbled, my thoughts spinning with the flood of memories, “but you hated me at first! You resented me! You were always so vexed . . .”

  He shook his head, his face a tragedy. “I was afraid of you at first. I still couldn’t believe you were real. But then I saw you begin to respond to him, and, well—it was him I resented, not you. I was jealous. I wanted to be happy for him. I was happy for him. But when I saw you were falling in love with him, I couldn’t bear it. I said he was stupid, I said you were stupid, I said his Vision was stupid. We argued . . .”

  I was staring again, my mouth still open, my eyes narrowed, remembering. That argument they’d had back in the eastern woodlands—that was because Hector wanted me?

  He still couldn’t look at me. “Every time he touched you, I wanted to kill him. I was petty and childish. I said things I never should have said . . . unforgivable things. I wisht him dead, Katie. And then he died.”

  “Oh, Hector,” I moaned, leaning my forehead on his shoulder, “things don’t happen just because you wish them.”

  “Sometimes they do.” He turned his unhappy face to me. “I wisht you were mine. And now you are.”

  I drew in my breath sharply. It broke my heart to hear the pain in Hector’s voice, and it was all because of me . . . me? How could it be because of me? I was nothing, less than nothing, one of millions and millions, but I knew I would ne’er be able to explain that to him. To him I was special, unique, endowed with supernatural powers. I suddenly understood that just as Syawa had set me up, he had set Hector up as well, priming him like a pump so that he must fall in love with me.

  “Hector—do you not remember he said he knew he was going to die on this Journey?” My voice wavered, the memory still so painful. If it was this painful for me, I wondered, what must it be for Hector? “He knew everything, so you must believe he knew how you felt about me and he wanted you to feel that way. It was important for you to feel that way, because . . . well, otherwise you would ne’er have had the patience to put up with me. I needed time to learn your language, to learn your ways. Don’t you see? He was preparing you for me, me for you. Because I was meant for you, Hector. He told me so.”

  Looking down at the ground again, Hector shook his head. “He loved you. You loved him. By marrying you in the deceitful way I did, without his permission, without his approval, I insulted you both. I should not have done that. I betrayed the trust he put in me and violated the most sacred beliefs of my people.”

  “If anyone did anything wrong, it was him,” I snapt. Hector looked up sharply, a flash of anger in his swimming eyes. He was still protecting Syawa—e’en from me. I met his gaze defiantly, but my voice was shaking, my own eyes filling. “Yes, Hector, I loved him—I did—but he would not accept it. He told me he was wrong to make me fall in love with him. He apologized and said . . . he said he just wanted to know what it felt like. Maybe you were jealous of him, but the truth is he was far, far more jealous of you. He was jealous of us, of what we have now, of what he knew we would become. You can’t blame him for that. Because what we have is so good . . .” I leant into him, devouring him with my eyes.

  He turned his face to me, amazed. “How can you still want me, after what I just told you?”

  “What can I say, Hector?” I murmured, shaking my head. “I could try telling you again how special you are, but you will not understand me any more than I understand you when you tell me the same thing. It makes no sense, any of it. Maybe we’re both just stupid.”

  Hector wanted to smile, but couldn’t. “You are not stupid, Katie, but I think you still do not understand what I am telling you. I married you without his permission, without his blessing, and the rules of my people are clear. I cannot go home. If you truly want to stay with me, after all I’ve said, then we must find another place to live, maybe up in the mountains . . .”

  He cannot go home? This was Hector’s horrible secret, the source of his mortifying shame—by marrying me without Syawa’s permission he had thrown his life away, a life he loved, a life he longed to return to. What’s worse, he had destroyed Syawa’s Vision. My mind reeled. But . . . but how could he do that? And how could I let him? I knew with absolute certainty that, sooner or later, he’d come to hate me for all he’d given up because, after all, my mother told me so, she told me so . . .

  “Hector,” I whined, “you have to believe me when I say he told me I was meant for you! He did! He did!”

  “But he did not tell me!” Hector’s face contorted in pain. “All that time we traveled together and not once did he say you were for me. If he told you, why did he not tell me? E’en as he lay dying, all he talked about was . . .” and then Hector started going on and on about the river and currents and how the way things look on the surface can be caused by things underneath and how the surface may be still e’en tho’ there are obstructions below, and he used words I didn’t understand but then I started to realize I’d heard those words before in this very context, in reference to blame and guilt and acceptance, and then I frowned and then I remembered and then I knew . . .

  “God Almighty!” I exclaimed in English, which made Hector stop and look at me, startled. I jumped up and staggered along the riverbank, my head in my hands, shouting, “God! Oh God!” over and over. Finally I stopt and stared at Hector, but I was not seeing him at all. I was seeing Syawa.

  Syawa was kneeling beside me there on the banks of the Great River, going on and on about how a river can appear one way but be another and how important it was not to blame myself for things that were not my fault, and I thought he was talking about my story of Adam and Eve, but he wasn’t, he wasn’t, he was giving me a message, a message he said I must pass on to Hector, e’en tho’ I did not understand all his words at the time and what I did understand made no sense and so I had completely forgotten his instructions because of all the other things that happened but now the memory flared up and I blushed scarlet, remembering.

  I held up my hand to Hector and said, “Wait! I am supposed to tell you something! Let me think!” I closed my eyes, concentrated, and told him, sound for sound, the first part of the message Syawa bade me memorize after making me promise I’d tell it to his friend.

  When I was done, I opened my eyes and saw Hector had blanched and was staring at me with wide, frightened eyes. “How do you know these words?” he demanded, his voice cracking with tension.

  “I don’t. What do they mean?”

  Hector looked down, o’ercome with emotion. He closed his eyes and shook his head, and then, to my amazement, he chuckled. He opened his eyes, smiling in wonder. “What you just said is something we say when a canoe becomes lodged on an obstruction in a river. Some obstructions are invisible, unavoidable, but if you struggle against them, try to push backwards, you will flip your canoe. To break free, you must lean forward, move into the obstruction.” Hector smiled at me. “It is something he said to me many times on our Journey.”

  This “saying” was as hard for Hector to explain as it would be for me to explain to him the meaning of the phrase “Ne’er look a gift horse in the mouth.” These were river people, for whom flowing water was the basic metaphor of life, and the message Syawa bade me tell Hector was one only he could send. E�
�en without understanding the message, however, I could see the effect it had on Hector: he was transformed.

  I told him there was more, and when he asked what it was, I said I must first know the meaning of a certain word. I told him the word, which he defined as “items held within something else”—that is, contents. “Contents!” I exclaimed. “Contents? I think I’m offended!” Hector stared at me, perplexed, ’til I recited the second half of Syawa’s message: “I leave the canoe and all its contents in your capable hands—enjoy the ride.”

  Hector laughed and laughed as I went on a bit of a tirade, proclaiming myself the Creature of Fire and Ice, not some small part of a canoe’s contents, but eventually I, too, had to laugh. Tho’ I did not appreciate being handed off along with the tent cover and paddles, I could not very well remain offended because these words were, apparently, all the permission Hector needed in order to feel our marriage was legitimate.

  With this blessing, we could go home now and Syawa’s Vision could still be realized.

  • • •

  As our fish burnt to a crisp, Hector and I sat side by side on the dark riverbank, silent, staring into the flowing water, lost in our separate thoughts. I cannot say what Hector was thinking, but as for me, well, Syawa’s intoxicating smile just kept flashing in my brain. My God, what a mastermind! Somehow he had set all this up, playing both me and Hector the way I’d seen Hector play a fish—slowly, methodically, watching and waiting ’til just the right moment, knowing exactly when and where and how to strike the lethal blow. How had Syawa done it? I didn’t know, but I knew he had done it and I knew he had done it quite deliberately.