The Spirit Keeper

by K. B. Laugheed

  . . .and then it was bright daylight and Syawa was sitting beside me, smiling as I opened my eyes. I looked ’round, startled, expecting to see the riverbank and the canoe, but we were in a beautiful woodland meadow and it was spring and there were flowers everywhere. I rose up on one elbow to look ’round, marveling at the vivid colors of the flowers, the golden sunshine, and the blue, blue sky. I looked back at Syawa, my mouth open in wonder, but he just smiled that smile of his, that enchanting smile . . .

  “Am I dead?” I asked, a wave of anguish rising in me. I so very much did not want to be dead.

  “Not yet,” he said, smiling.

  “Am I going to die?” I was shaking, shivering, in spite of the wondrously warm spring air.

  “Everyone dies.”

  “Like you . . .” I mumbled, which made Syawa chuckle.

  “Not everyone dies like me. But, of course, not everyone has a Spirit Keeper.”

  I sat up, momentarily struck by the fact this conversation was in English. When did Syawa learn English? Then I smelled the glorious perfume of all those flowers, which was so intoxicating, so invigorating. I turned back to Syawa and momentarily lost myself in the intensity of his eyes, his eyes. Oh, I had forgotten how bewitching were his eyes.

  I looked unhappily into my lap. “You have made a liar of me! You made me lie to him!”

  “Did I?” Syawa seemed confounded. He lightly touched my hair the way he used to do, as if he knew he shouldn’t but just couldn’t stop himself.

  I looked at him, surprised how different it felt when he touched me compared to when Hector touched me. “Of course!” I said. “He believes this Spirit Keeper nonsense, and you know it isn’t true!”

  “Do I?”

  “Damn it! I’m sick of the way you play with me! You know damned well I’m not a Spirit Keeper because you know damned well there is no such thing. And don’t say ‘Do I?’!”

  Syawa laughed. I had forgotten how warm and bubbly his laughter made me feel. It felt good, so good. My anger disappeared. He said, “You say there is no such thing. Do you know every thing that is?”

  “No.” I saw him lift an amused eyebrow and tip his head, and I looked away. “But I know I am lying to him. And I know I have to tell him the truth!”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Syawa nodding thoughtfully as he sat amidst the flowers, but when I turned my face we were walking shoulder to shoulder under the enormous leaf canopy of the great eastern forest. “Do you know what the truth is?” he asked gently.

  I stopt and looked ’round, confused. I gaped at him. He smiled. My shoulders slumped as I hung my head. “No.” I thought for a moment, then looked up hopefully. “But I know I love him. I know that is definitely true.”

  Syawa grinned broadly as we walked. “Then that is what you should definitely tell him.”

  I frowned, distracted by the amazing detail of the sticks and leaves on the ground, but when I looked up again the leaves on the trees were gone and the sun was beating down on me, hot, hot, so hot. I looked mournfully at Syawa, who was pensive, quiet, and I said, “I’m going to lose this baby, aren’t I?”

  He gave me a sympathetic smile. “There will be others.”

  I stopt walking and started to cry. “But I wanted this one!”

  He took my hand and squeezed it, and my entire body felt suddenly weightless, filled with light, like a warm breeze. “It is hard, I know, but you will see. You will learn. Then will come acceptance.”

  I wafted my face in his direction, only to find we were sitting now before a raging fire, with darkness surrounding everything but us and the snapping flames. I whimpered, “I took a life so I must give a life, yes?”

  Syawa made a face as he shook his head. “No. You must give a life because you refused to use the gift I gave you. You were supposed to protect him, the way he always protected me, the way he now protects you.”

  “But what was I supposed to protect him from?” I asked, looking uneasily at the darkness.

  The darkness began spinning, spinning. Frightened, I looked to Syawa, whose eyes were so much blacker than the darkness and absolutely, perfectly still. He said sadly, “It was you.”

  “Me?” I asked in disbelief.

  “It was your people. You should have stopt him from drinking.”

  I drew my breath in so sharply a rush of flames from the fire entered my mouth and nose, seering my throat and lungs. I coughed and coughed and coughed as I said, “But I tried to stop him! I told him to stop! He wouldn’t listen to me!”

  Syawa’s eyes burnt into me even hotter than the flames had done, flickering yellow and orange and red. “He would have listened to me!”

  I stared at Syawa, stupefied, but now he was lying on his sleeping robe, dying, and I was leaning o’er him. “That’s not fair!” I shouted. “I didn’t know!”

  He was weak, fading, slipping away from me again. “Make it fair,” he croaked. “Accept your gift. Protect him. You have much to learn, Katie. Learn it. One day you will understand, and when you do . . .” He smiled ruefully at me, the very same way he did before he died. “Well, knowing changes nothing. But at least, until then, you can enjoy the ride.”

  I screamed at him, hysterical—“Syawa! Syawa! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me!” and I heard him murmur he would not just before he was gone and so was I and all was quiet again and nothing, floating formless and weightless and free . . .

  I awoke sometime later, confused to find myself in the canoe. It was moving very quickly and I opened my good eye with great difficulty. I tried to raise my head to look ’round but could not. I gave up and worked on focusing my eye instead. Hector was paddling like a madman, in a full panic. I felt so sorry for him, so guilty for failing to protect him.

  “I can hear your thoughts,” I said in a raspy voice. Oh, it was hard to breathe!

  Hector glanced down at me, tight-lipped. His face was grayer than the sky; his eyes were bloodshot. His hair was covered with snow.

  “You will not have to watch me die,” I croaked. “He says I will be fine.”

  Hector glanced at me again, and tho’ his eyes met mine only for a moment, I saw a glimmer of hope. As he continued paddling, I watched him and loved him and wisht I could help him. After a long moment, he glanced down again. “The baby?” he asked, the tremor in his voice betraying the fact that he already knew the answer.

  I blinked as I became aware of the warm liquid pooling between my legs. “He says there will be others.”

  I saw the spasm on Hector’s face, but then it became stone. He swallowed hard, nodded, and tried with all his might to keep his voice steady. “Do not talk. You must save your breath.”

  It was true that every inhalation was excruciating, but I gave him a reproachful look. I started to say, “I need you more than I need air to breathe . . .” but my lips stopt moving, my eyelids wouldn’t stay open, and the darkness came again . . .

  • • •

  The next thing I knew I was being pulled from the canoe. I tried to fight off all the hands grabbing at me, but there were too many and I had no power. My good eye flickered ’til I found Hector’s face at last, swimming in a sea of strange faces. He was exhausted, gray, nigh dead himself.

  I was taken to a hut where women tended both my pneumonia and my needs following the miscarriage. Again and again a large woman forced liquid down my throat and I choked and spluttered and tried to fight her off, but she was exceptionally strong and she silenced me by wearing a mask, shaking rattles, and blowing smoke in my face. She put compresses on my chest, as others rubbed oils into my hands and feet. I went in and out of consciousness for days, all the while strangely detached from my body, floating, without substance or sensation.

  I’ve been sick many, many times in my life, so this was nothing new for me. I knew what to expect, how to endure. I let my body heal itself whilst my mi
nd just left, taking this opportunity to relive every precious moment I’d spent with Syawa. During those days of illness-induced oblivion, I experienced it all again, right from the beginning, enjoying our brief Journey in every exquisite detail. I watched his pantomimes and listened to his stories. But this time I accompanied him all the way to the end, again and again, until eventually, instead of crying, I was able to smile gratefully as he gave his final message, the words of which I was at long last able to understand: It was worth it.

  I vowed to make it so.

  I have a vague memory of being carried from the women’s hut to a much larger, lighter dwelling made of earth and animal hides, but once there my stupor returned. During this time I dreamt of Hector, only Hector, and I awoke one morning desperate to see him, to touch him, to smell him, to wrap myself ’round him. I tried to sit up, but an old woman put her hand on my chest and held me down, speaking rapidly to people I could not see. I realized how awfully weak I must be if I could not o’ercome this gray-haired grandmother. In a moment she had a wooden bowl in her hand, from which she dug two fingers-full of gruel. When she placed this in my mouth, it seemed the most heavenly ambrosia, and I savored it, swallowed, and opened my mouth for more. The old lady’s face crinkled in a smile as she said something to the unseen others. She scooped more gruel into my mouth, and I sucked her fingers, rolling my eyes in appreciation. She laughed.

  Then Hector was beside me, and the old woman backed away. He looked me over anxiously without touching me; I would’ve grabbed him, but I was too weak e’en to lift my hand. “How long have we been here?” I croaked. Hector said seven days. I made a noise of amazement. “No wonder I’m so hungry!”

  We both tried to smile, but when our eyes met, our smiles melted and we both looked away. “I’m sorry we didn’t make it to the village you wanted to reach by winter,” I mumbled. It was something Hector had striven for every single day I’d known him, yet here we were, his goal unmet—all because of me.

  “That is nothing.” He dismissed my words with a shrug. “These people are kin to those I hoped to reach, and I speak some of their language. They are kind and generous. They have cared for us well.”

  The “us” struck me, making me look at him more closely. He was haggard, gaunt, grim. When I asked how he fared, he shrugged again, but I would later learn he himself collapsed shortly after our arrival. From the morning he found me delirious, he paddled all that day, all that moonlit night, and on into the next day without eating or sleeping. It was a miracle he did not die.

  Of course I did not yet know this. All I knew was that every time our eyes met, we both wilted in an agony of guilt. Our dead baby swirled between us in the tears we were both too afraid to cry.

  O’er the next few days that dead baby haunted me. No longer feverish or delusional, my dreams were now my own, and they were filled with dead babies—my mother’s, my sisters’, my brothers’, mine. All the dead babies, piling up like discarded shoes. How little sympathy I’d had for Mother when we wrapt those ice-eyed carcasses. How cold I myself had been, condemning her always with icy eyes of my own. But now it had happened to me.

  I wondered what my dead baby would have looked like. I imagined it a boy, tall and well-built, like his father, clever and conversational, like me. Hour after hour, day after day, I lived that child’s whole life in my head, gently laying it to rest at last only after it had lived a long, happy, incredibly productive life in my imagination.

  Did my mother go through this, I wondered? Did she give all her unborn, stillborn, or short-lived babes entire lives of their own in her head? No wonder she was crazy. How could anyone live so many imaginary lives and successfully live a real one? And no wonder my mother had always hated me. How could I begin to compare to all those brothers and sisters who were perfect because they ne’er existed, children who disappointed her once and only once—when they failed to cling to life?

  • • •

  Through this melancholy period, Hector oft came to check on me, but his face stayed stony, his jaw clenched, his eyes sunk inside his face. He ne’er stayed for more than a few moments.

  As I gradually crawled out of my own head, I found we were living in the lodge of the Holywoman who saved us, along with her mother (the grandmother who fed me) and three others. The lodge was large, and I was as comfortable as I could be, under the circumstances. Save for that period of blissful isolation with Hector, I had always lived in quarters much more crowded than this.

  I was, at first, intimidated by the Holywoman, for she was big, strong, and strange in many ways, but I owed her my life and I was glad, at least, she was not a man. Probably twice my age, she tended me with a well-practiced, maternal warmth; I wondered if the other people in the lodge were her children, and, if so, what had become of her husband. Her name meant something like “fox running across a log,” so I thought of her as Running Fox. Her aged mother, of whom I became quite fond, I called Gran.

  When I grew strong enough to be unwilling to use the wood bowl Gran provided as chamber pot, Running Fox helped me stand and walk outside, whereupon I very nigh turned right ’round—the snow was deeper than my knees! She urged me onward, however, and by the time we returned, Hector was at the door, holding aside the hide for us. After Running Fox settled me back in my furs, she turned to speak to Hector. He shook his head to whate’er she said, then slipt out the door without coming to me. I pulled my furs o’er my head and wept.

  Whilst I was recovering, I was situated in the middle of the lodge by the fire, with Hector and all our things tucked off to one side. But the day after I first went outside, Running Fox said I was well enough to move back with my husband. Tho’ Hector was not there when we rearranged things, he soon returned, and when he saw I was by his bedding, he froze. He turned to ask a question of the Holywoman, who replied in a firm voice. He then bowed his head and came to join me.

  He sat a few feet from me, his face to the wall. Without looking at me, he asked how I fared. Assuming he was angry I lost the baby, I kept my own eyes on the ground and mumbled I was fine.

  I heard Running Fox sigh, and when I glanced her way, she gestured that my husband and I must share our grief if we e’er hoped to o’ercome it. I stared at her ’til she raised an eyebrow and tipt her head. Then I turned to Hector and released my anguish in a flood of words. I told him I was sorry I lost the baby, so, so sorry, and I knew he’d tried to tell me this would happen but I wouldn’t listen and made him act against his better judgment by enticing him and now our baby was dead, like all my mother’s dead babies, and it was all my fault and I was sorry, so sorry, and I didn’t blame him for hating me now because I hated myself more than he could possibly hate me.

  When I finally took a breath, Hector insisted my words made no sense—the fault was his, he said, for he was the one who failed to protect me and he understood why I didn’t want him to touch me now, why I shrank from him and screamed when I was ill, why I kicked at him and pushed him away, and he said he understood my revulsion and would not impose himself on me further because he had no right to touch me e’er again and he turned away and held his head in his hands.

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him back ’round, telling him he had it all wrong, that my screams and flailing had been on account of my dead sister and I told him about the pox and her death and how my fever had taken me back there and made me go through it all again and it was horrible and I wept and trembled and begged him to hold me, saying the only way I could survive the loss of our child would be if I could please be wrapt in his arms forever.

  The rest of our conversation took place with him clutching me to his chest, rocking me gently as I cried. After a time he murmured again that he had failed me, failed me, because he did not recognize the Evil Spirit when it appeared at our campfire. The baby died inside me, he said, because it could not bear to be born to such a stupid, stupid father.

  If Hector had talked thus of Evil S
pirits only two weeks earlier, I would’ve laughed in his face and explained how such a view was childish and just plain wrong. But by this time I had learnt that in the weird world in which I found myself, Evil Spirits were very real and only a drooling fool would doubt their power.

  Which is not to say I’ve come to believe in Evil Spirits. I do not. But I understand now that these people believe in them. And I understand that e’en tho’ I know those poor traders were murdered by us for no reason other than that they got drunk with the wrong man, I can ne’er explain that to Hector. Nor will I try. It matters not. What matters is he believed he was protecting me and now he believes he failed me, and I love him too much to allow him to condemn himself for something that was in no way his fault.

  After all, I have done a much, much worse thing than fail him—I have lied to him all this time, I am lying to him e’en now, I lie to him every time I open my lying mouth to lie, lie, lie. How dare I judge him harshly? How dare I judge my mother harshly? For that matter, how dare I judge myself harshly? Life is very hard. We all do the best we can.

  “The Seer said the fault was mine, Hector,” I whispered. “He told me how to fight the Evil Spirit, but I hesitated because . . . because I did not understand him. I was the stupid one, the one who failed. That’s why our baby died.”

  I could feel Hector listening intently, understanding what I said, accepting it. “We were both stupid, Katie,” he soothed. “We both failed. But the Seer always told me failure can be a good thing, if we learn from it. We will not make the same mistakes again.”