the end, my father crouches, staring into the depths, cocking his head to one side as if listening for something. “Probably just shifting from your weight,” he says as he straightens up. “Paul and I will fix it up tomorrow, okay?” He tugs my braid and wanders off.
But something deep within me whispers that it wasn’t just my weight. It was something else, something from the depths.
Something that is hunting me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I turn the pages of Madda’s book of healing-her herbal, she calls it-slowly, reading, trying desperately to commit all the knowledge to memory. Poultices, tinctures, alexipharmicals, coagulants, abortifacients. The book holds the secrets of life and death, and will I ever know which is which? One plant heals, the next kills, and that’s all before I walk into the world of spirit and encounter what lurks there.
Give me a broken arm, I’ll mend it. Give me a wound, I’ll suture it. Those are concrete things, things I can hold and touch. This stuff of mystery is no province of mine.
Madda hovers nearby, adding sage bits of advice that I scribble in the margins of the herbal. “It’s already there,” she says when I write
I nod, wondering when I can leave herbs and lore behind and begin to wander the paths of spirit. Didn’t she say that was what we were doing next? I suspect if I ask about it, she’ll answer with an enigmatic comment about seeking the way of water or some other Zen thing, so I don’t mention it and wait.
I feel like I’m waiting for everything.
Madda sits across the table from me and watches as I read. I raise an eyebrow at her. She laughs. “Well? You gonna stare at that book all day, or are we going to talk about spirit?”
I open my mouth. All that comes out is a hiss of air. I try again, but my throat is tight. I don’t think I’ve ever realized how frustrated I am. Why couldn’t my abilities have come with an instruction manual?
Madda reaches out and takes my hand. “Take your time. You’ve been holding a lot inside you, and these past few weeks haven’t been easy. Nothing says you have to give words to all of it right now.”
“Thanks,” I say. She offers me a handkerchief and I blow my nose. “Things
“This is an old land,” Madda says with a nod.
“The other day, when the earthquake came? I could feel it. Before, I mean.”
Madda sits back and strokes her chin. “You could? Hmm…” She hums to herself for a moment and then nods. “Let’s not worry about that right now. I’ll have a chat with my spirit guide about it tonight. What did yours say?”
“Who?”
“Your spirit guide.”
Something outside the window behind Madda catches my eye. It’s a raven, roosting on the fence. He watches me watching him, and I’m pretty sure I see him smile.
“I don’t have a spirit guide,” I say, knowing the raven can hear my words.
Madda frowns. “Have you asked it to come forth?”
“Yes!”
She laughs. “Okay, let’s try a little something here.” She pushes herself away from the table, turns, and spots the raven. “Hey, you! Get out of here!” The raven bobs his head and cackles at her, but doesn’t move. She runs to the window, clapping her hands. “Go on! Get! We don’t want your tricks here!” The raven croaks at her again but this time, flies away, his wings whooshing through the air. “Gotta watch those ravens,” Madda says. “They seem to like you a little too much.” She takes a bowl from the windowsill and sets it on the center of the table, then stuffs it with sage. “It’s gonna get smoky in here. You don’t have asthma or anything, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Good.” She lights the sage and then blows the flames out. Smoke curls up from the smoldering leaves. Madda wafts it toward me. “Breathe it in, and close your eyes.”
I try not to cough as I inhale. My eyelids seal away the world, but I still try to look through them. Somewhere out there is my spirit creature, my shade. Madda said a shade is a bit of the divine, that spark that gives a person her soul. If I have no totem, what does that mean? That I’m soulless?
“Stop looking,” Madda snaps. I can hear her take a seat and shuffle around until she’s comfortable. “Looking’s my job right now. Yours is to breathe.”
Gradually my breathing steadies as my mind drifts. I see a pool of water so black it’s blue. A lake. It stretches out as far as time. A single drop of water falls into it, sending ripples racing across the darkness. I follow the ripples, I become the ripples, I am the water, I am sinking down, down…
Madda touches my hand. “Open your eyes,” she whispers.
I do, though it takes several seconds before I recognize the room I’m sitting in, and several more before I feel like I fully inhabit my body.
Madda fixes me with a serious stare. “You learned to do this by yourself?” she says.
I nod.
“Hmm.” Her hand returns to her chin. “Herbs might have to wait for a bit. Take this.” She turns to grab a pouch on a string from the counter. “I was going to wait to give this to you, but you need it now.” She pushes the pouch into my hand. “This is your medicine bag. There’s something inside, but don’t look at it-not just yet. You’ll know when the time is right. You can add your own stuff as you go along, things that have deep meaning to you. Remember what I said about dreaming, about having something to lock on to, to get back? This is part of it, like home base in a way. It should do the trick.” She pauses to give me a hard look. “Don’t ever take it off.”
I slip the string around my neck, wondering why I can’t take it off or look to see what’s inside. How, exactly, is a pouch going to protect me? “Did you see anything?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I was told that I shouldn’t interfere. Well, they used terms a little stronger than that, but you get the idea. This is between you and your totem. You have to figure it out. That doesn’t mean we can’t work on the other stuff. The roads to the spirit world are many. We can walk the other ones together while you figure out what your totem is. But I think that’s good enough for today, don’t you? Off you go.” She fans the remnants of the sage smoke away and then nods to the door.
I try not to think about the pouch hanging around my neck on the way home, but with every step I take, it bounces against my breastbone, begging me to open it and see what’s inside. I make it halfway home before I give in. After all, Madda said I’d know when the time was right, and though something in my mind whispers that I should wait, I don’t. I can’t. The pouch and its contents are driving me crazy.
Inside is a carving, a tiny woman’s face chiseled out of cedar. Her eyes are pebbles and her lips are painted red. I tuck the carving back inside the pouch as a feeling of dread pours over me. Madda’s right. I should have waited. I should have heeded her words. As I set off again, a whisper takes up in my mind, one that doesn’t come from within me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it came from the tiny carved woman in the pouch. What she says, I can’t make out, but she’s there, tickling my mind, laughing at me because I don’t know what she’s saying. How can something like this protect me? Maybe Madda was wrong. Or, maybe, I’m the wrong one. I should have left well enough alone, and I didn’t.
I try to ignore the whispers as best I can, but by the time I reach the top of our driveway, I can’t stand it anymore. I slip the pouch off and tuck it into my pocket. The whispering stops as suddenly as it started, and relief floods through my body.
Will I tell Madda what I’ve done? No. I’ve managed this long on my own.
But when I fall asleep that night, the whispers flood my dreams. The first thing I do when I get up is walk down to the water and throw the pouch into the lake.
