Demon Spirit, Devil Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  As we approached Ninstints, Gene reduced our speed. “Good place for your samples?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Try to maintain just enough forward momentum to keep the net a few feet below the surface. I’ll stand back there with you and play the net out.”

  We slowly traversed Ninstints Bay. When Gene cut the motor, I hauled in the net, stood on the seat, and held the net upright over the side. Ted clambered onto the seat next to me and poured seawater around the mouth to wash debris caught into the mesh down into the collecting bottle. Holding the bottle up to the light, I peered in. It was opaque and light brown. Tens of thousands of microscopic phytoplankton, the marine equivalent of trees, colored the water.

  “Great. Gene, let’s do fifteen more traverses just like the last one.”

  “What will you do with these bottles?” he asked.

  “I’ll use a microscope to count different types of algae in these samples and ones we got off the research vessel. There’s a large alga called Pseudo-nitzschia that has responded to iron in other places. I’ll be looking for that.”

  He grinned. “And you think Haida is hard to pronounce.”

  Two hours plus later, I had numb hands, a wet jacket, and bottles full of preserved Haida Gwaii plankton. Their identification would have to wait until I returned to Maine. If the kelp we sampled showed a strong iron signal, Harvey would probably test the plankton as well.

  The inflatable rounded a headland and swung into a small cove. I whispered “my god” at our first glimpse of totem poles. With towering spruces as a backdrop, a row of stout, weathered poles stood proud just above the beach. A few lurched sideways, others lay on the ground. Their dignity and symbolism marked this as a timeless place.

  Gene pulled up the engine, and the boat slid onto the pebble beach. We climbed out and stared up at the poles. As they’d done for countless years, whales, bears, eagles, and crows stared back down at us with huge, menacing eyes.

  Anna slipped away and headed down the beach.

  With our help, Gene pulled the inflatable above the day’s high-tide line. We gathered around our guide.

  “The Haida call this Sga’nguai, which means ‘Red-cod island.’ At one time, three hundred people lived here year-round in seventeen longhouses.”

  Harvey frowned. “What happened to them?”

  “Nearly all died from smallpox in the eighteen-sixties. Trading with Europeans brought things like metal to the islands. Pole carvers improved their craft and made good money. But it came at a terrible price—diseases for which we had no immunity.”

  We followed Gene as he stepped up onto rich green turf and paused beneath a well-preserved pole in the center. It stood a good twenty-five feet high, and I craned my neck to follow faces and figures piled on top of each other to the last ragged, decaying icon. Intertwined into patterns with repeating shapes, the designs appeared to be a mystical rendering of something other-worldly, vital.

  Gene put his hand on the pole. “Each pole represents a clan—its achievements, stories, and history.”

  I followed his lead and gently touched the relic. The cedar felt cool and smooth. “So they’re a kind of story of the family’s ancestors?”

  “That’s right. When I was a kid, my father left me here for the day. He wanted me to know the place. I wandered around and came to understand that this is partly a graveyard of sorrow. The stories some of the poles tell, it’s like the people knew something was coming. More than ten thousand people lived on all the islands out here. Suddenly, people died from disease in every village, some half-in, half-out of their canoes like they were trying to escape something terrible.”

  Deep in the forest, a crow cawed.

  “But let’s think about the people when they were alive. You all know Emily Carr, the Canadian painter?”

  We each nodded.

  Gene spoke to the poles in the proud, clear voice of a preacher. “Carr visited Haida Gwaii in nineteen twelve. She called the people dignified and generous. Some of the women looked so much like people carved on the poles, Carr thought the poles were portraits.”

  He turned to us. “The totems are mostly decorated with images of animals. These are super-human ancestors the Haida descended from.”

  Ted came closer. “Did people worship the poles?”

  “No, never. They’re kind of like a national emblem. One of yours is an eagle. You don’t worship the eagle, right? It’s a symbol of greatness and power, not a god.”

  Harvey pointed to a half-rotted adjacent pole. “But these magnificent artifacts are crumbling into the ground. Why don’t you preserve them somehow or take them to a museum?”

  “In nineteen fifty-seven, about a dozen were removed in a big salvage project. You can see them in an anthropology museum at the University of British Columbia. But the ones here remain untouched. Haida believe that even when the poles become part of the earth, our ancestral spirits will still be here.”

  Like cemeteries. My parents were buried on a hill overlooking Spruce Harbor and the Maine Oceanographic Institute where they’d worked. How many times had I stood there and felt their presence? Body and spirit, a collective human concept.

  Gene explained the animal symbology of a well-preserved pole. He pointed to a creature with a long, hanging tongue, short snout, and little peaked ears. “That is bear, an animal with great self-awareness and humility. Above bear is eagle, a very intelligent animal capable of transforming itself. Eagles mate for life and symbolize deep and lasting love between man and woman. Frog is perched atop eagle and signifies rebirth. Butterfly sits at the very top of this pole and is revered for its ability to accept change in the midst of confusion.”

  Self-awareness, humility, transformation and change, and deep and lasting love. Invaluable traits, certainly.

  “Why don’t you walk around for a bit? Look out for little jokes—figures carved upside-down and tiny creatures winking or peering out of a creature’s ear.”

  I wandered beneath the poles. Lightly stroking the weathered cedar, I made out salmon people, bears, frogs, and other creatures carvers had released from the wood so long ago. They stared across the ocean at something we mortals couldn’t see.

  I looked around for Gene. He stood at the edge of the forest and touched the stout end of a toppled tree. Carpeted with moss, the wood crumbled beneath his fingers. In the dripping wet forest, parasitic threads of fungi and other unseen beings were clearly hard at work. Wiping his hand on his pants, Gene called out, “The longhouses, what’s left of them, are back here. We’ve cleared a trail.”

  Harvey and Ted picked their way over moss-covered mounds toward the trail.

  A pole at one end of the row drew me to it. I raised my voice so Gene could hear. “Join you in a couple of minutes?”

  Layers of undergrowth muted his “Okay.”

  Gene had said that the compelling pole displayed features of the trickster Raven more clearly than any of the others. Standing back, I could make out beaks, wings, and eyes. I fixed on a set of eyes near the bottom and couldn’t stop staring at them. Suddenly, they twinkled and glowed. I gasped.

  I knew that glow. William emerged from the murk off Augustine Island right after the thing with a glowing eye streaked by my kayak. The creature on the totem and William were both ravens. My vision must’ve been a raven, too.

  Blinking, I turned my back on the totem pole and faced Ninstints Bay. Whispers of wind slipped through the spruce. Mara…Mara…Mara.

  The hush mesmerized me. My feet were glued to the ground. I strained to hear insects, a leaf fall, anything, but life had gone still. Minutes went by. Frozen, I stood and listened.

  Finally, I could move, had to move.

  I turned and squinted at the spot where I last saw Gene. An elongated black blur with a trailing tail streaked by. I twisted around to see the thing race over the water and evaporate to nothing. It was like the dying moment of a single firework rocket.

  “It’s this place. My imagination’s running amuck.”


  A single black feather lay at my feet. A feather that hadn’t been there earlier. I picked it up, shoved it into my pants pocket, and stumbled over half-buried rocks and tree litter in my hurry to join flesh and blood. I put my hand on Harvey’s shoulder. “Didn’t mean to be gone so long.”

  She turned and frowned. “But Mara, it was only a minute.”

  12

  Gene educated us about the longhouses. I only half-heard a “handful of moldering longhouses,” “cedar beams lying in moss-covered heaps,” “ancient hills of clam shells.”

  I touched the feather in my pocket, pricked my finger on the quill, and tried to convince myself that Gene’s stories about Ninstints had inspired my imagination to create a nonexistent vision. But, damn it, I saw a black streak and had a feather in my pocket to prove it.

  Gene left us so he could visit his ancestor’s homesite. Harvey, Ted and I returned to the poles and view of the bay.

  “Want to walk the beach?” Harvey asked.

  “Think I’ll just stay here for a bit.” I closed my eyes and tried to think about anything but the black blur. It didn’t work.

  Gene touched my shoulder and scared the hell out of me.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Ah, there’s something I wanted to ask. It’s about the night William died.”

  Surprised, I said, “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “What time did you go into that pool? I mean, when you found him.”

  I blinked. “Um, a little after midnight. I had my dive watch on. Why?”

  “I saw William at eleven that night. From a distance. He was walking up the path to the bathhouses. I told Sergeant Knapton but didn’t know when you’d discovered William’s body.”

  Fatigue washed over me. Details of William’s demise were the last thing I wanted to discuss. “So he was alive at eleven and dead an hour later,” I mumbled.

  “I guess so,” he said. Gene clambered down the bank on his way to the boat.

  The tide had risen, which made the launch easier. Gene grabbed rubber boots from under my seat, waded in, turned the inflatable around, and steadied it. “Climb aboard, folks.”

  Harvey slid beside me while Ted settled onto the opposite seat. Anna took the bow again and Gene shoved off.

  As we floated away from the beach, Gene referred to Emily Carr again. “Carr writes that the poles never lost their dignity, no matter how crooked or tilted they’d become. Bent over or tipped backwards they might look sad, she said, but they were still forever noble.” Gene paused, then asked, “Thoughts about Sga’nguai?”

  I looked over my shoulder at poles standing tall and silent. There was profound power here. Dignity, mournfulness, and ancestral spirits. I hadn’t been prepared for what I’d experienced. It spooked me.

  “Well,” Harvey said, “The people who lived here were sophisticated and cultured. Their art alone shows that.”

  Ted turned around to face us. “They had pride and their own kind of wealth.”

  “And,” I added, “a passion for making the supernatural visible.” To that, Anna slowly nodded.

  We were nearly back at the Kinuk dock when I realized Harvey was speaking to me. “Mara, you there? You’re awfully quiet.”

  I touched her arm. “Sorry. Guess Ninstints, the whole thing, got to me.”

  “It’s a mind-blowing place.”

  If only she knew.

  Harvey and Ted headed for the longhouse. I wanted to walk the beach, and said I’d meet them at the dining building. Strolling along, I tried to reconcile two incongruent ideas. As a scientist, I trusted what I could measure and see. Visions of birds were figments of my overactive mind. Still, what I saw at Ninstints and off Augustine Island seemed so very real. Despite going back and forth a dozen times, I reached no satisfactory conclusion.

  Dinner was in the building where we’d eaten the night before. We insisted that we help cook, serve, and clean up. Only Gene and Anna joined us for a meal of lingcod, something I’d never eaten before.

  I took a bite. “Gene, this fish tastes fabulous.”

  “That’s one reason why its numbers nose-dived. But it’s coming back now.”

  “So it’s a cod?” Harvey asked.

  He shook his head. “Lingcod’s a type of greenling that lives around kelp. Ugliest fish you’d ever see—dozens of long sharp teeth, greenish with blotches.”

  Anna hadn’t said a word as we prepared dinner, so when she did, we all turned toward her. She looked directly at me. “Lingcod turn from ugly to beautiful food. Like the raven that constantly changes form.”

  Transformation. The same but different. Charlotte talked about that, too.

  The five of us washed and dried the dishes.

  “Where in Maine do you live, and what’s it like?” Gene asked.

  I took the plate he handed me. “It’s a village called Spruce Harbor. There’s Maine Oceanographic Institute where we work on the water, a good-sized pier for the research vessels, fishing boats in the harbor, shops, a couple of places to eat, and a dozen or so houses. Pretty and quiet.”

  “Sounds nice. What’s the biggest news story in the last couple of months?”

  Ted jumped right in. “Mara and Harvey worked together to solve a murder.”

  Gene raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  Harvey added dried plates to a pile already on a shelf. “I didn’t do much. It was Mara. She got the evidence and figured out the bad guys. They were arrested.”

  She didn’t say I nearly died in the process.

  I changed the subject. “Gene, the meeting tomorrow with the whole Environmental Council—fill us in.”

  “There’ll be a dozen or so members there besides Charlotte, Jennie, and me. I’ll say something about William and ask others to speak if they want. The official meeting will be after that.”

  “And the purpose of the meeting?” Ted asked.

  “We’ll give the rest of the committee an update of the project, what we think is happening. Then it’s questions for you folks. We have another vote coming up about whether to continue with Roger Grant. So this meeting’s real important.”

  I took another plate. “Since you hired Grant, I assume most Council members agree with the iron project?”

  “Most did. But things have changed since we voted to pay him all that money. William was a big supporter, and now he’s not here. And since salmon runs are still thin, people are restless.”

  “So you don’t know how people will vote this time?”

  “Like I said, William was the iron defender, but now he’s gone. Caleb will try to take William’s place. Vote could go either way, I suppose.”

  “Wow,” Harvey said. “I didn’t realize that.”

  Based on what I learned from Charlotte, William would probably have voted against continuing the project. Others discouraged by ongoing poor salmon runs, never mind the large financial outlay, might very well have followed his lead. But with William’s death, that calculus had totally changed.

  I opened my mouth to ask Gene something, but the question faded into the back of my mind before I could articulate it.

  Gene wished us a good night and headed for his cabin. I was about to follow Ted and Harvey down the stairs and up to the longhouse when Anna touched my arm.

  “Mara, could I talk to you?”

  Her deep chocolate eyes searched mine.

  “Sure.”

  “Not here. Somewhere more, um, private.”

  “Be right back.” I caught up with Ted and Harvey and said I’d head up soon.

  Anna practically ran down the dark path to the beach. I could hardly keep up. She marched toward the pier, stopped at a large flat rock, and sat down facing the sea.

  I joined her. “A favorite spot?”

  “For William and me. We watched stars move across the sky, planned our future…”

  “Anna, I’m so sorry—”

  She cut me off. “What happened. It wasn’t natural.”

  I sucked in a breath. “What do you mean?” />
  “William. Somebody did it.”

  Shifting my weight, I tried to see her face. But she was only a dark silhouette against the black night sky. “You think someone killed William?”

  “Yes.”

  I had my own doubts about William’s death, but this wasn’t the time to voice them. “Anna, sometimes even healthy young men, like William, die from natural causes.”

  The voice from the darkness was firm and angry. “No. My ancestors told me his death was evil, wicked.”

  Ancestors? I had to be careful. “I don’t understand. Explain what you mean.”

  She stood and walked to the water’s edge. I followed. The cold Haida sea slid up and down the shingle.

  “At Sga’nguai, I went to my family’s ancestral home and heard whispers. My ancestors said William’s death was wrong. It wasn’t his time.”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  “Mara, you saw the spirit world’s messenger. We both did.”

  I stepped back. “What?”

  “ On Sga’ngua. The Raven. Like smoke, it disappeared over the water.”

  My mouth went dry. How could she know? I swallowed and wet my lips. “Anna, what do you want from me?”

  “Follow the trail like you did in Maine for your friend. Find out who killed William. His death must be avenged.”

  I had to tread carefully here. “Yes, I discovered who was behind Peter’s death. But don’t you see that’s entirely different? Spruce Harbor is my home. I know most everyone, their ways, the water, all of it. Here, I’m on foreign ground.”

  “I can help you.”

  Mindful of this lovely young woman’s burden, I said, “Look, let’s wait until William’s parents talk to Gene about the coroner’s report. What do you think?”

  She toed the shingle. “Okay. I guess that makes sense.”

  In silence, we picked our way up the beach and to the bathhouse complex. After a quiet “Good night,” she was gone.