Raven Stole the Moon

by Garth Stein

“Nils figures it was Indian poachers, stealing his cows. So the next night, he gets his shotgun and waits for them to come back. He stays up all night, but around dawn he can’t stay awake anymore and he nods off. When he wakes up, two more of his cows are gone. Same way. Nothing but puddles of blood.

  “Well, now Nils is mad. The next night he takes a stool and puts it on top of a real tall box and he climbs up there with his shotgun and he waits. Sure enough, around dawn, he falls asleep again, but this time he falls off the box and wakes himself up when he hits the ground. And you know what he sees? He sees four or five men on one of his cows and they’re chewing on the cow’s neck and the blood is going everywhere. And when the cow is finally dead, they drag it off and start on another one.

  “So Nils stands up and points his shotgun right at the back of one of their heads and says, ‘You’re going to hell, poacher.’ And just as he’s gonna blow the stranger’s head off, the man turns around and it’s Nils’s brother. He’d drowned a couple years earlier out fishing. You can ask Eddie about that. He knows about Nils’s brother.”

  Rolfe looked at Eddie, who rolled his eyes and shrugged. Rolfe went on:

  “So, Nils says to his brother, ‘I thought you drowned.’

  “ ‘Nope,’ says the brother. ‘These nice folks saved me. Come on, let me show you where I live.’

  “And off ol’ Nils goes with his brother.

  “Well, the next morning Nils’s wife is going crazy. Now all the cows are gone and her husband is gone, too. She’s afraid the poachers are gonna come after her next, so that night she sleeps with a butcher knife in her bed to protect herself.

  “In the middle of the night, Nils’s wife wakes up because she hears a noise in the house. Someone’s broken in and she’s scared to death. But then she hears her husband’s voice. He’s come back.

  “ ‘Honey,’ he says, ‘I’m back. I found my brother, he’s not dead after all. He took me to where he’s staying and it’s real beautiful there. I’ve come back to get you.’

  “Well, the wife is so happy, she reaches for the lantern to light it.

  “ ‘We don’t need a lantern,’ Nils says.

  “ ‘I’ll trip and fall if I can’t see,’ his wife says, and she lights it. Well, when she turns the light on her husband, she see’s what’s going on. It’s her husband, all right, but he’s got beady little eyes and pointy little teeth and this look of evil about him so much that the wife almost has a heart attack. See, she’s heard the Indians tell the story of the kushtaka. She knows that they’re otters that can change into any form. But the only thing they can’t change about themselves is their eyes and their teeth.

  “Well, the wife is so scared, she grabs the knife she has in the bed and stabs Nils with it. Stabs him right in the heart. Kills him on the spot. And she grabs little Whitey and runs out of that house screaming bloody murder all the way to town.

  “When she gets to some folks, she tells them that she murdered her husband because he was a kushtaka. They all laugh. See, like Eddie, nobody believed in the kushtaka. So they all go out to the farmhouse to see what really went on, and when they get there, ol’ Nils is gone. But you know what they find?”

  Rolfe leaned in to Jenna and looked her square in the eyes.

  “They find a furry little otter laying on the floor next to the bed. And I’ll be damned if that otter ain’t got a big old butcher knife sticking right out of its heart.”

  Rolfe leaned back, crushed his beer can, and tossed it into the water.

  “That night, Nils’s wife burned that otter. That’s the only way to keep a soul from getting captured by the kushtaka. That’s why the Tlingit always burn their dead. So their souls won’t get stolen by the kushtaka.”

  There was silence on the boat for a moment. Jenna looked around and sensed that everyone else had been sucked in like she was. Sucked into believing for a moment.

  “Hey, Eddie,” Marc called out. “Show her your teeth so she don’t think you’re one of ’em.”

  All the guys leaned back and laughed as the tension was released. Even Eddie grinned at Jenna, pulling his mouth open with his fingers and revealing his teeth and gums. But Jenna didn’t relax like the rest of them. Her mind was going fast. She knew something they didn’t. Otter teeth and otter eyes. Change faster than you can blink. A little hairy squirrel boy. A bear cub. A man. It can change into anything. But it can’t change its black eyes or its pointy teeth. She tried to shake herself out of it. Eddie touched her arm.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She looked at him and smiled. “Yeah, I just get all scared at stuff like that. I had to sleep with the lights on for a year after I saw The Omen.”

  Everyone laughed. Rolfe leaned back into his stoned reclining position and Jamie got another beer. Jenna turned to Eddie.

  “I’m going to look for Oscar some more and wander around for a while. Are we really having halibut cheeks tonight?”

  “You got it.”

  Jenna climbed onto the dock and turned to wave good-bye. Behind the boat she could see a small island in the middle of the bay. Tourists from the cruise ship milled about on the island, on which stood a large wooden house and several totem poles.

  “What’s that?” Jenna asked, pointing to the island.

  Eddie turned and looked.

  “Shakes Island. Chief Shakes was the big Tlingit chief around here. Actually, I think the last one died only about twenty years ago, or something. You should check it out. It’s Wrangell’s big tourist attraction.”

  Jenna nodded. “Maybe I’ll head over there. See you guys. Thanks for the story, Rolfe.”

  Rolfe saluted her as she headed up the dock back to town.

  JENNA WAS STARVING so she decided to go into the diner on Main Street for some lunch. The diner was crowded with women smoking and drinking coffee. Jenna took a seat at the counter. She ordered a bowl of split pea soup, which was surprisingly good even though the croutons were a little too buttery.

  About halfway through her bowl, a young man took the stool next to hers and ordered a cheeseburger. He was carrying a backpack with a sleeping bag and a guitar case. He was good-looking with a studied amount of scruff, like Jack Kerouac with a trust fund.

  He ate his cheeseburger silently, though he threw a couple of looks over at Jenna. This part always bugged Jenna. Like riding on an airplane. Crammed next to someone, a complete stranger, forced by proximity and the greed of airlines into a senseless conversation. An old friend of hers actually met her husband that way. She sat next to her future mother-in-law, and they had such a wonderful, in-depth conversation, the woman just had to introduce Jenna’s friend to her son. The rest was, as they say, history.

  “Excuse me,” the young man began.

  Jenna looked up from her soggy croutons and forced a smile.

  “I just got into town, and I was wondering if that was the only hotel.” He pointed toward the Stikine Inn.

  “You know what? There is another hotel, up by the airport. But I don’t know what it’s like.”

  He nodded and ate some French fries.

  “You don’t know if I can pitch my tent there in the park, do you?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. I’m just visiting. You could ask someone else, though.”

  He nodded thoughtfully again and took a sip of his Coke. Jenna hoped that was it, but she feared the worst. More obligatory conversation. She should have taken a booth.

  “Are you off the cruise ship?” he asked.

  “No,” Jenna answered, trying not to show her impatience.

  “Are you staying at that hotel?” he asked, pointing, again, toward the Stikine Inn.

  “No,” she answered. Where was she staying? “I’m staying with a friend.”

  “Oh. That’s the best way to go. That’s what I try to do always. Save a buck.”

  He laughed and took another bite of his burger. Jenna turned back to her soup and tried to finish quickly.

  “Sorry I’m talking so much,” the
young man said, apologetically. “I’ve been traveling alone for such a long time, I love to talk to anyone I can.”

  Jenna felt bad for the kid. He seemed nice enough. But she wasn’t really too interested in his life. She had something else on her mind. Actually, about three other things on her mind, and she didn’t want to become caught up in any distractions. On the other hand, she was always a sucker for being polite to strangers, so she offered the young man an opening.

  “Where are you from?”

  He beamed at her attention and tried to swallow his bite so fast it got stuck in his throat. He drank some more Coke to get the wad of burger and bread down his gullet.

  “Oklahoma. I rode my motorcycle all the way up to Skagway on the Alcan Highway. Then I sold it. That kind of broke my heart. It was the first bike I had that was good enough to get me from Oklahoma to Alaska. It was an old BMW job with a sidecar. Those Germans sure can build things.”

  “The ultimate driving machines.”

  “Yeah, the commercial. Anyway, I sold it for a ticket on the ferry back to Bellingham. Then I guess I’ll get a job for the winter and continue my journey.”

  “Where is your journey taking you next?”

  “Point or points unknown. Me and my guitar, making music and poetry on the highway of life.”

  She signaled for her check. That was her good deed for the day. Talk to some slacker kid who was trying to live in somebody else’s romanticized vision of life.

  “Look,” Jenna said, getting up, “it was good talking to you. Good luck on your adventures.”

  She started toward the cash register.

  “Thanks a lot. Hey, I didn’t get your name. I like knowing everybody I meet who was nice to me so I can thank them all when I get my first Grammy.”

  “That’s sweet. I’m Jenna.”

  “Jenna,” he repeated, taking her hand and looking into her eyes. “It’s been good talking to you, Jenna. I’m Joey.”

  Jenna paid her bill and left the diner, turning right and walking past the windows toward Shakes Island. Joey watched her go, then quickly paid his check and asked the waitress where he could find the nearest pay phone.

  Chapter 23

  A NARROW, WOODEN FOOTBRIDGE LED ONTO THE SMALL ISLAND. Stagnant water gathered brown foam at the base of each trestle that secured the bridge, and the sour smell of rotting fish hung in the air. Jenna quickly crossed the bridge and stepped onto the burnt grass of the island, mingling among the tourists, who busily snapped endless photos of each other in similar poses.

  Directly in the middle of the island stood Chief Shakes’s house, about fifty feet wide and a hundred or so feet long. It was encircled by eight tall totem poles. A brass plaque mounted to a large piece of granite in the center of the island explained that the island was a national landmark and had been restored to its pristine state a few years earlier. The totem poles were actually duplicates of the originals, kept in the museum in Juneau to protect them from the elements.

  The front of Chief Shakes’s house was painted with an elaborate black and red face. Each detail of the face was made up of smaller faces, and so on, until it was too hard to find the smallest element. It was like looking into opposing mirrors: the reflection goes on forever. The only entrance to the house was a small hole, just big enough for a person to crawl through hunched over. A red blanket was draped over the opening from the inside.

  Jenna pushed the blanket aside and stepped into the building. Inside, it was cool and dark. At each corner was a post: an elaborately carved totem pole, covered with different faces from top to bottom. Some of the faces were adorned with mother-of-pearl eyes, animal teeth, or human hair, which Jenna found pretty creepy. Although most of the house had a floor of cedar, the center was sunken into the dirt, and the clay pots that were resting on the dirt suggested that it was the fire pit. Above the fire pit was a small hole in the roof to allow the smoke to escape. Various other carvings and decorations were laid out around the perimeter of the house.

  Jenna looked around, hoping to find the kushtaka somewhere in the carvings, and she was surprised that it came to her so quickly. The face she wanted to see. The face that she expected to find with a great deal of difficulty, like scouring the Cathedral of Notre-Dame for the one gargoyle that’s winking. But it wasn’t hard at all. It popped out at her. Near the floor, on the post at the northeast corner of the house. She could see it from across the room, as if she had some kind of special radar to guide her. It was the kushtaka.

  She moved to the post swiftly and crouched before the carving. The body of a fish, with two faces, one upside down and one right side up, interlocked in some kind of battle. The image was almost hidden among all the other ornamentation, as if it were an afterthought or a begrudged obligation. Jenna took off her silver necklace and held it up to the carving. It was a match.

  Logically, of course, it all made sense to Jenna. The Tlingit have a finite number of images, faces that represent different animals and creatures. Different faces, used in combination, mean different things. They tell a story. It’s only natural that she would see the same symbol over and over again. But why did the kushtaka keep popping up? Why not the killer whale or the frog? Why did Debbie, the girl on the boat, randomly select the kushtaka charm for Jenna? Why did Rolfe know some strange story about it? Some man with black eyes and pointy teeth chased Jenna in the woods. Was he after her necklace?

  Jenna turned and scanned the room for someone who might be connected to the place, someone who could give her some answers. She found him. He was a little old Indian man wearing a Snapple T-shirt, sitting behind a table with a coffee can and a sign that read DONATIONS. She crossed to him, pushing through some amateur photographers and dropped a ten-dollar bill in the coffee can. A bribe.

  The old man smiled at Jenna, and she set her silver necklace on the table. He picked it up and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. He examined the figure carved on its face. Then he set it back down.

  “What is it?” Jenna asked.

  The man stared at her blankly. Then he pointed to the corner where Jenna had found the same image carved on a post.

  “You already found it,” he said.

  “But what is it?”

  “It’s the kushtaka.”

  Well, Jenna knew that already. But the way the old man said it kind of nailed it home. Now it actually meant something. It was solid and heavy, a word that was attached to an object, even though Jenna had no idea what kind of an object.

  “What is the kushtaka?” she asked him.

  “It’s a Tlingit Indian spirit. The spirit of the land otter. All animal spirits have power, but the kushtaka is the spirit a shaman covets the most. Without the power of the kushtaka, the shaman is not complete.”

  He wasn’t getting Jenna anywhere. He wasn’t telling her anything that made any sense. She didn’t have time to work out riddles; she needed an answer.

  “But why? Why is the kushtaka so powerful?”

  “Raven gave the kushtaka the power to change shape and to rule over the land and the sea.”

  Jenna was getting a little exasperated. ”I thought they stole people.” She snorted.

  The man laughed softly and shook his head.

  “Yes, the kushtaka steal souls. They convert them. They make them into kushtaka. The kushtaka were given the power by Raven to watch over the woods and the seas and to rescue lost souls who are weak and on the verge of death and convert them into kushtaka.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “Yes, that’s very bad. The Tlingit soul is born many times. When a person dies, the Tlingit burn his body so he can pass safely to the Land of Dead Souls. From there, his soul will return to his family. If he is saved from drowning by the kushtaka, his soul will be trapped with them forever.”

  Jenna stared at the little man a moment.

  “Saved from drowning?” she asked.

  The old man nodded. “That’s the most common way. A fisherman is overturned in his canoe. He cl
ings to it, but as he gets tired, the kushtaka appear to him in the form of family members and try to trick him into following them. Finally he cannot resist their powers, and he gives up.”

  He sinks into the water. He calls out. She watches him disappear under the waves.

  Jenna felt she had to move away from the old Indian. She was too close. She could see him too well, even in the dim room. He knew that Jenna had something to hide and he was looking inside her. She took a couple of steps backward, just to put a little distance between them, just so she could be a little more comfortable.

  “The kushtaka will cast a spell over its victim. It will make him drowsy and tired; it will sap his strength so he can’t move.”

  She couldn’t move her arms. She watched as he sank into the darkness.

  “And when the kushtaka has prevailed, it will take its victim to the kushtaka den, where the conversion is completed and the victim is made into a kushtaka forever.”

  The dangerous tide. The sandy bottom. Body not recovered.

  Jenna took another step backward, but the floor had ended. Her foot dropped off into the fire pit. She heard a pop when her ankle hit the dirt floor sideways, bending her foot up in a grotesque way, and she stumbled backward onto the ground.

  The old man got up from his table and tried to help, but several tourists had already come to Jenna’s aid. She sat up and looked at the old man, crouched above her, asking if she was all right. She climbed to her knees, a little disoriented.

  “How do you save someone? Someone who’s been converted?”

  The man looked at Jenna silently, questioning her question. She grabbed for his shirt, to shake him, to make him answer, to force him to tell her the truth, but she missed his shirt and fell against the floor, wrapping her hand around his ankle instead.

  “How do you save someone?” she cried out.

  Looking down at her with his shriveled-up little face, his face like an apple doll, a dried-up green apple, his teeth brown and crooked, he understood, finally, that Jenna needed to know, she had to know the answer because the rest of her life depended on it.