Demon Spirit, Devil Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  His dark eyes locked with mine for an instant.

  “Um, terrific. Thanks to you, of course.”

  “Good. When you’re finished, we’ll take the boat around to Eagle River. There’s a hut where we store everything. You can see our equipment, go over our methods, whatever you want.”

  Harvey handed me a bag of chips. “Sounds perfect, William. And from what I hear, you’re hero for the day.”

  A huge smile made crinkles around his eyes. “Never been called a hero before.”

  William held the dinghy while we stepped in. Given the grungy bilge water, I was happy to be wearing paddling wet shoes. From the way Harvey tiptoed to the stern, I was sure she thought the same thing.

  We sped along Augustine’s eastern shore. Above the motor’s drone William yelled, “Eagle flows west, into the Pacific. Ancestors named it “the river that never sleeps” because salmon run pretty much year ‘round.”

  I called out, “What’s running now?”

  “Coho. That’s what we’re counting.”

  We rounded the point where I’d screamed like a crazy woman and witnessed the bizarre vision only an hour earlier. It seemed like a scene from a bad movie. I shook my head to erase the image.

  William beached the boat at the mouth of Eagle River. I hopped out, looked upstream, out at the Pacific, back upstream.

  “I’ve never seen a trout or salmon stream like this,” I said.

  William tipped his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

  “In Maine, rivers and streams that carry salmon are rocky and run fast. This looks like a wide, slow-moving, meandering river with a pebbly bottom.”

  “Eagle flows fast after a rainstorm, then it slows down.”

  “Makes sense. Augustine’s watershed’s small.”

  Harvey interrupted the geology lesson “William, why don’t you give us a quick overview of the iron, ah, experiment.”

  William clapped his hands together. He spoke quickly. “Sure. We chartered a ship and added the iron about twenty-five kilometers out there.” He gestured toward the Pacific. “Last week was the third time.”

  “Iron slurry, right? How much?” I asked.

  “Yes. Two hundred tons.”

  I’d read the number. But standing on the beach, it was hard to imagine anyone dumping that volume of cherry-red slurry into the stunning archipelago’s water. I tried not to show my disbelief. “My goodness. That’s a lot.”

  “Mr. Grant said we needed that much.”

  Roger Grant, in my opinion, was a slimy businessman who’d conned the Haida into giving him a load of money for a bogus scheme. I’d have to figure out a polite way to voice my concern.

  “We’ll talk more about this later,” Harvey said. “But give us a quick overview what Grant claims about iron and your salmon.”

  William tipped up his chin. “You know. Iron fertilizes the ocean, more salmon run up the rivers, and we make more money selling fish.”

  I looked at the ground, pressed my lips together, and counted to five. We would confront the whole iron thing with the Haida environmental council the following day.

  Harvey jumped into diplomat mode with an “okay, thanks.” A brilliant chemist, she delighted in the glorious complexity of marine biogeochemistry. Pour iron slurry into the ocean and catch more salmon? Too simple and quite likely wrong. A vein in her neck throbbed.

  William said, “I understand the UN hired you, Dr. Allison, and Dr. Tusconi to study what happened out here with our iron project. Why is that?”

  Noting the “Dr. Tusconi,” I used my professional oceanographer’s voice. “Plus Dr. Ted McKnight. He’s arriving in Kinuk today with our research equipment for the cruise. We’re all from the Maine Oceanographic Institute. As you know, the UN considers dumping tons of iron sulfate into the ocean an international violation. They want an unbiased team—people not from this region—to visit the site and duplicate some of your sampling to verify results.”

  William opened his mouth as if to reply, but Harvey cut him off. “We’ll talk more about this tomorrow on the ship when Ted’s there. Okay?”

  William’s fists were clenched. “But—”

  “Lots of work to do now, William,” Harvey said.

  He relaxed his hands. “All right.” William pointed to a shed above the high tide line. “I’ll go over how we count fish.”

  We followed him up the beach. “We want to get in the water and survey a reach ourselves,” I said. “When was your last count?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Good. We’ll compare our data with yours.”

  “The number of fish changes a lot from day to day.”

  Harvey and I glanced at each other.

  3

  In the shed, William showed us the equipment he and an assistant used on the river. He picked up a device with wheels and revolving metal cups. “We have two current meters.”

  I nodded. “Stream gauge?”

  “It’s upstream. Each time we count fish, we record river height.”

  In the corner, a wooden box overflowed with dive gear—wetsuits, booties, hoods, gloves, masks, and snorkels. Clipboards, waterproof paper, and markers lay on a shelf above.

  “And your counting methods?” Harvey asked.

  “We enter the river from downstream and slowly move up. Whoever’s in the water calls out data to the other person walking alongside. Numbers of salmon and length. We estimate size from a ruler attached to a dive glove.”

  “One person covers the full width?” I asked

  “Yes. The river isn’t that wide.”

  “Time of day?”

  “After sunset and on moonless or cloudy nights.”

  Harvey looked at her dive watch. “It’s about four now. Let’s go back, eat, and be here at six. Moonrise is around nine.”

  At camp, wood smoke laced with aromas of grilled salmon and roasted potatoes zinged my taste buds, despite the late lunch.

  William gestured toward a log bench. “Sit. There’s a story about Salmon Boy I think you’ll all enjoy.”

  Harvey and I and the three other women lined up on the log and tucked in.

  William stood with his back to the ocean. Medium-tall and athletic, he wore slim-waisted, worn jeans. Unlike other Haida people I’d met, his face was delicately sculptured with fine features—thin nose, hint of cheekbones, delicate lips. In shadow, his eyes were chocolate-black and when he turned, long lashes stood out against the sky.

  William spoke with confidence and dignity beyond his early twenty-odd years. He had the full attention of each woman on the log, including me.

  “Long ago, there was a boy who didn’t revere salmon. No matter what his parents tried to teach him, the boy walked on the bodies of fish they caught or kicked them out of the way. He said the fish tasted bad and wouldn’t eat them. One day, the boy was caught by a big current and drowned. His spirit found the Salmon People, and he followed them far out to sea and turned into a salmon. Two years later, in the spring, he returned to the very river he’d left. But now he was a salmon. His mother fished that river and caught him in her net. She dumped him on the ground and was about to kill him when she saw the necklace he wore. It was the very same one she’d given her son. Very carefully, she carried the salmon back home. There, over seven days, he shed his salmon skin and was human again. To his dying day, Salmon Boy taught his people, especially young boys, everything he’d learned about this fish honored by the Haida people.”

  The fire crackled and waves sloshed up and down the beach.

  Gwen said, “Lovely story, William.”

  “What a great way to teach Haida children a love of nature,” I added.

  William nodded quickly. “It is. When I was a kid, an elder would make a fire on the beach—evenings just like this—and tell us these tales. There are so many—the woman who married a bear, how the whole earth flooded, the man who became an octopus.”

  And glowing creatures that fly?

  William pointed down the b
each. “Later tonight, we’ll set up a sauna beyond Bart there. A teepee made of tarps and line. We pour water onto hot rocks from the campfire, and the teepee fills with steam. At about ten, when Mara and Harvey get back from their snorkel.”

  Five pairs of eyes watched him stroll away.

  Gwen turned toward us. “Snorkel?”

  “In a river on the other side of the island. We’re counting fish.”

  “Sounds cold. Better you than me.”

  “Have you kayaked before?” I asked.

  “Never done anything like this. We’re only here one night. Tomorrow, the hot pools back on Kinuk’ll be heaven. Then we fly home to Vancouver.”

  Harvey asked, “Is this overnight kayak/hot-pool trip popular?”

  “You bet. Folks on Kinuk do well with it, I’d imagine. Looks like they expect us to put up our own tents, though. I need help with that.”

  Gwen’s friend offered, and the trio left for the tent site.

  Harvey waited until they were out of earshot, straddled the log, and leaned toward me. “Okay, girlfriend. What happened?”

  I swung my leg over the log to face her and described my hopeless fight with the outgoing current—how the kayak slapped against the waves, swept past Augustine Island’s tip, was awash in fog.

  Harvey’s eyes widened with each step in the saga. “My god, Mara. Haida Gwaii’s one of the windiest places on earth. There’s a twenty-five-foot tidal range. With an outgoing tide, all that water sweeping past the island?” She put a hand on my arm. “You’re incredibly lucky William caught up with you.”

  “There’s more. The most bizarre thing happened right before William motored up. You won’t believe it.”

  She sat back and crossed her arms. “I can believe almost anything about you, Mara.”

  “Promise you won’t say I’m crazy.”

  Significant eye roll. “For goodness sake, what is it?”

  I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “I’d swept past the tip of Augustine. There was no hope of paddling back. I was beyond panic. Out of nowhere, this piercing shriek came from behind. It scared the hell out of me.”

  “I’d imagine.”

  “Wait. Something blood-red zipped by my port side. Its eye—super black—looked at me. The rest was a blur longer than my boat. And the thing glowed.”

  Harvey’s gray eyes were huge. “Damn.”

  I sat up and brushed sand off my hands. “Of course, it wasn’t real. Adrenaline does weird things to your brain. I think it’s called Tachypyschia. Time slows or speeds up. People see things rush by in a blur. I’m sure that’s what it was.”

  “Maybe.”

  Not at all the reaction I expected. “What’d you mean?”

  “Think about all the people who see a bright light right before they die. Thousands of identical descriptions from around the world. Even ancient Greeks wrote about it. Seems like there’s really something there.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. There’s a biological explanation. I’ll send you the link for the paper. It’s tunnel vision caused by blood in the eye and oxygen depletion. So-called spiritual experiences all have scientific explanations.”

  William walked up. He’d heard what I said.

  “For Haida, the physical—what you call real—is only one part of our experience. We know animals are powerful, their spirits potent. There’s constant talk between us and creatures. Our myths and tales are full of it.”

  “Do you have a favorite myth?” Harvey asked.

  “The story of how Raven brought light into the world. Want to hear it?”

  “Sure,” we said in unison.

  William sat cross-legged on the ground. We swung around to face him. He spoke softly. “In the beginning the world was dark. The Raven was tired of bumping into things. He learned that an old man had a wonderful treasure in his house. It was the light of the universe and hidden in a box inside many other boxes. Through complicated twists and turns of deception, Raven stole the light. It was in the form of a beautiful, incandescent ball, and the bird flew off with it. Raven flew high and far and marveled at mountains and rivers below he’d never seen.”

  Our storyteller cocked his head from side to side and peered at the ground. He leaned in.

  “But Raven was so busy looking at this beauty he didn’t see Eagle until that bird was nearly on him. Raven dropped the ball, which shattered on the earth below. Some of the pieces bounced back into the sky, where they remain to this day as the moon and stars. That is how light came into the universe.” William leaned back on his arms.

  “What a great story,” Harvey said. “Maybe your ravens symbolize the space-time continuum.”

  I looked at Harvey like she was nuts.

  William raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “Einstein. Space occupies three dimensions and time is the fourth. Ravens have the normal three dimensions—height, width, and depth. Maybe their flight represents the fourth. In that way, they’d be part of the physical world but not bound to it.”

  “Is there a fifth dimension?” William asked.

  Harvey shrugged. “Possibly. Some physicists say there are ten.”

  William stood and brushed off his jeans. “That’s wild. Funny. Those physicists would probably scoff at the Haida’s beliefs, which seem a whole lot simpler than ten dimensions.”

  It was time to bring things back to earth. “I wasn’t worried about ten dimensions out there on the ocean. I was cursing fates that handed me a kayak with a useless rudder.”

  “I know,” William tossed another log on the fire. “I heard you.”

  I laughed. “I’ll bet you did. They probably heard me all the way back in Vancouver. I was shrieking like a banshee.”

  “In a dense fog, Raven is a better guide than sound.”

  Did he mean Raven led him to me? He stared so intensely, it seemed he could read my mind. I shivered as if an ice cube had run down my back.

  Down the beach, Bart knelt beside a kayak.

  “Excuse me,” William said. “I need to do something before we leave.” He headed in Bart’s direction.

  I waited until he was out of earshot. “Harve, do you think William actually believes the Haida legends or tells myth stories just because tourists enjoy them?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “What I think is that he’s sincere and you’re cynical.”

  “About animal myths, I agree. Mrs. McCarthy’s fault.”

  “And Mrs. McCarthy is…?”

  “My first grade teacher.”

  “I gotta hear this.”

  “Before Mom and Dad moved to Spruce Harbor to help set up Maine Oceanographic, we lived in western Maine. Out there, moose were all over the place. One day, a young one walked right by our classroom. We ran to the window to watch. I asked why the moose was alone, and Mrs. McCarthy said its parents had to be close because they lived in big family groups.”

  Harvey looked skyward. “I’m missing something.”

  “At dinner that night Dad told me Mrs. McCarthy was wrong. Moose don’t live in family groups. We’d seen a yearling its pregnant mother chased away. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “That momma moose abandon their yearlings?”

  “‘Course not. That what my teacher said was incorrect. She must’ve known it was.”

  “Come on. You’re way too hard on your teacher. You guys were, what, six?”

  I raked my fingers through tangled hair and picked off a red snarl. “Doesn’t matter if we were two. You don’t make up nice stories about animals to protect kids. That’s just wrong.”

  “Mara, wasn’t it Einstein who said ‘if you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales’?”

  I pushed up off the log. “Because they use their imagination. But that’s very different from what Mrs. McCarthy did.”

  Down the beach William spoke to Bart, who stood, hands on hips.

  “Looks like Bart’s getting a talking-to that not’s working,” I said. William left Bart and strode f
arther down the beach. It was my turn to vent. “Meet you by the dinghy in a couple of minutes, Harve.”

  The guide knelt on the far side of the kayaks. Lined up in perfect order, the boats looked like crayon-colored sardines. He appeared to be fiddling with foot pegs in one of them.

  I walked over. “Bart.”

  Bart jerked his head up so fast he nearly toppled over. Thick ebony hair cut straight across his forehead framed large almond eyes and rugged features that hinted at Asian and Siberian ancestry. A black T-shirt with sleeves cut off at the shoulders hugged his chest, and his washed-out jeans were wet and sandy at the ankles.

  “Do you know why I was late?”

  The guide stood, slowly. He was several inches shorter than my five-seven but made up for his height with bravado. The T-shirt showed off impressive biceps, and tattoos of long, slithery creatures ran down both arms. He crossed them.

  “William told me.”

  I waited for an apology. But he only looked down, out over the ocean, anywhere but at me.

  “Bart, have you ever paddled at the other end of the island?”

  He shrugged and mumbled, “No.”

  “Well, let me tell you. The current’s a riptide. With a rudder, it’s fierce, without one, hopeless. I could’ve died out there.”

  He jutted out his chin and glanced at me. “Sorry.”

  “Has the rudder stuck before on that kayak?”

  “No. And I checked them all before we left.”

  “So, what happened?”

  He shook his head and shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  I don’t avoid confrontation, but we had fish to count and it was obvious I wasn’t going to get more out of the guide. Needless to say, the exchange was less than satisfactory.

  I snatched a towel from my kayak’s forward hatch, left Bart on the beach, and marched off to meet Harvey and William. We were halfway down Kinuk Bay when the dinghy’s motor coughed, then shut down.

  William swiveled toward the silent motor. “Not again.”

  Harvey and I eyed our watches and each other. William hovered over the motor and muttered in what I assumed was Haida as he tried to bring the errant machine to life. We drifted back toward the campsite on an incoming tide.