Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) (20 page)

Their struggle fanned the flames and churned the ash until they vanished in a cloud of dust and smoke. When it thinned, the floor was empty; only the shard of mirror lay there, throwing a jagged reflection into the darkness.

W
hen I felt a warm breath on my neck, I thought Hamatsa, and I yanked out the pistol, fell against a mound of biscuit tins, and aimed squarely at the cousin’s face. I was glad she couldn’t see me go red in the dark. She glanced around to see if anyone had noticed but the fire was low and no one looked our way. Frightened groups broke up and people returned to their places, but the few raised voices were hushed as if one loud word would trigger the Hamatsa’s return.

An old chief stood up, raised both arms, and in a voice so calm and melodious he could have been inviting us for tea began an interminable speech. The cousin leaned so close I felt her breath again and whispered, “The
paxala
left. We follow.”

It was well after midnight but nowhere near dawn; the hole above us still yawned black. “In the dark?” I asked.

“The moon,” she said. She turned and whispered something to Nello, then with quick motions climbed up the carved corner post and pulled herself through the hole into the night. I followed.

Below us, the islands and the village, snow-clad in the moonlight, seemed the most serene, peaceful place on earth. She scrambled up to the gable, where the open arms of the bear of the entrance pole towered over her. She grabbed the bear’s arm, swung out, then, groping with her toes for footholds on knees and in open mouths, she climbed slowly down. We sneaked along the walls to the end of town and stopped near the shore. She leaned down in the snow and pointed to where small feet had left sharp-edged hollows. When she rose, there was a fierce look in her eyes that would have unnerved me even in broad daylight, but here, at the end of the earth in a half-light more eerie than darkness, I involuntarily grabbed her arm and she stiffened but she didn’t look afraid—just defiant.

“Why are you helping me?”

“I’m not,” she snapped. “I’m helping me. Find your stupid woman and go. This is
our
Tseka.” And she pulled away with force. “Ours!” she said, stepping backward in the snow and swinging her arm wide to include the village, the woods, the islands, and the stars. Then she strode off into the woods without looking to see if I would follow.

T
HE PAXALA WAS
either very old or very drunk, because he dragged his feet so much his toes rarely left the snow, and his path made no sense at all: weaved here, swerved there for no apparent reason in this open woods with gentle rises. He seemed to walk in arcs: one to the left, one to the right, then another to the same side. I lowered my feet cautiously so as not to crackle snow.

She walked slightly bent, nimble as a child, looking for the footsteps, which grew less distinct now in the tree-filtered light. Just ahead a big bird, roused, took flight, shaking a tree limb, and the snow drifted in sparkling clouds and thudded down in clumps. She stopped and knelt, but the clumps had cratered the snow over a wide patch and the footprints were gone. I looked for them where the craters ended, but there was only virgin snow.

“Go right, I’ll go left,” she whispered.

I had taken but a few steps when a hard gust shook the treetops and clumps thudded all around. I looked back; my steps were gone. Nothing moved in the moonlight.

“Calm down, Cappy, calm down.”

Someone touched my shoulder.

T
HE OLD PAXALA
fanned the coals with drunken determination, until they flared and filled his small cave with light. He and the cousin talked in low, warbling sounds, patiently, waiting until the other had his say, then the
paxala
looked at me and launched into an oration. When he finished, the cousin said to me, “Very beautiful.”

Quietly, I said, “Thank you.”

“Not you.” The cousin laughed. “Your woman.”

Maybe it was the rum, or just the nerves of long days, but I laughed too. After that, I felt no need to be polite.

“When will I see her?” I asked.

The
paxala
’s reply was long. The cousin’s face grew taut.

“He said,” she began, and stumbled, “that she will come at midnight. With the ghosts.”

The cave started tossing like a skiff in a storm. I put my hands on the ground.

“Alive or dead?” I blurted.

The
paxala
flung a log into the fire and sparks flew in the air. He spoke but the cousin said nothing, just looked at my face, as if what she saw there would in some way determine what she’d say.

“You white people,” she began, then stopped as if the words defied continuance, then said simply, not accusing, “Have a simple world: day or night, alive or dead. What about in between? You have few words for rain, and few for the sea; we have them without end.”

He stirred his fire, then spoke in rhythm with his stirring. The cousin spoke so softly her voice blended with his, and at times I couldn’t tell whose words they were, or if they were at all.

“We have killer whale ancestors, and other ancestors that return as ravens. Live ones die, then come back: come and go like the tides. Dead, half dead, many times dead, many times returned, never-born, part-born, part-died. I was dead once,” the
paxala
went on. “I died and they wrapped me in blankets. There was heavy snow falling, more than tonight, so they just took me to the end of the village and left me in the snow. They heard wolves howl there all night and in the morning I was gone. Many nights later they heard me singing. When the moon rose, I was on the point with the wolves around me…I don’t look so bad, do I?” He stirred his coals to an unhurried time. “The Tuxwidl had the water of life.”

A chink of light glowed beside the door: the moon, or the dawn, or something in between. The cave rolled again; this time putting my hands on the ground didn’t help. I reached into my coat, pulled out the gun, but wasn’t sure where to aim it, so I pointed it at the ground. He didn’t even look up, just stared at the coals.

“Are there fences on the sea?” he asked. “Or borders among the stars?”

Then he said something with a sigh, and the cousin smiled.

“He said to pass you the rum.”

I
FOLLOWED THE
setting moon among the trees out to the salal that blocked the shore, then turned north toward the village. The drums and the singers’ voices were dampened by the snow. At the house of the Hamatsa, there was no lock on the door, so I stopped and tried it; it opened. There was silence inside. I left the door ajar. The long-dead woman lay there as before, only alone; she was even more beautiful now with the stray light from the moon. I thought of saving her; wrapping her in the sheet and carrying her down to the sea and the skiff. The tide had come in; I wouldn’t have far to push. Then row out to the rocky islet just beyond the ketch and carry her up, shuffling through the snow. There was a cleft in a rock; I could lay her there and let her bask in the moonlight.

A
S
I
NEARED
the big house, children’s laughter rang out and echoed over the cove, again and again mingling with their shrieks, drifting over the snow like Christmas morning joy.

The big house was filled with that uncertain gloom of firelight and dawn. Overhead, dangling from ropes, a huge bird—a chaos of feathers, human limbs, and a great carved head with coppery eyes—fluttered and circled. On the floor, a black-bearded giant with long wooden breasts threw glittering dust from a basket over the crowd, and children leapt and grabbed for it amid long shrieks and laughter. Later a chief spoke but by then few listened; they leaned against the walls, or lay in each other’s arms, and slept in the warmth of those around them. And the voice of the chief was a distant drone. We drank more rum. When no more came, we rowed back to the ketch, blinded by the sparkles of the low sun on the snow.

T
HE SHIP’S CLOCK
struck eight bells. I awoke with a start, not knowing whether it was morning or midday or late afternoon. Only when I saw the sun through the portlight did I realize it had already crossed the sky having left the snow in the trees and a pink glow in the clouds. The fragrance of roasted meats drifted from the village. I saw Charlie’s tiny feet sticking out from the covers, saw the space beside her empty, saw Sayami in the cockpit, oiling the Winchester, and the sun sinking behind him. I came fully awake only when the skiff bumped the ketch. It was Nello, with a weary look in his eyes, not just fatigue but resignation, as if something was now unfolding with nothing to be done. He held on to the gunwales and stared at the sea.

“A canoe came from the south,” he began. “They paddled all night. There’s a big boat coming. Fancy, lots of windows. Slow, sticking its head into every nook; but coming.”

He looked up at Sayami.

“It could be anyone,” Sayami said, pumping the lever and sighting a tree top.

“Sure,” Nello said.

The ship’s clock struck twice. Seven hours till midnight.

When the drums started again, we wrapped ourselves in blankets, hid the rifles beneath them, and rowed ashore. Nello stared at the pass leading to open water.

“Whoever it is can’t get in here in the dark. We’re safe until morning.”

When we landed on the beach, they stepped one at a time from the bow to keep their feet dry, and then they were all ashore, getting the gear comfortable in their arms, ready to haul the skiff up high, waiting for me to follow. But I didn’t. I just sat there. The dark current caught the skiff and washed it south toward the mouth of the pass that fed into the strait. I glanced up at the three of them standing there, then I looked over my shoulder. I felt an irrepressible urge to row out and get help from some of my own kind—whoever they were, the church boat, the police, even the bloody yacht—ones who would understand, intervene, set things right—against the savagery, the barbarity, the phantoms in the darkness. And I lowered the oars into the water and set the blades upright. And the village? The hell with them! Don’t they do the same? Aren’t they driven by a madness they cannot see? And if they perish—these half-beasts, dead-eaters—what of it? Didn’t they exterminate whoever was here before? Why should they be spared? It’s just their turn to go and ours to conquer. As it will be for those who exterminate us.

The smoke from the village spread like a veil over the waters; bloodthisty savages—let it all burn to the ground. But I held the left oar still and pulled hard on the right. The skiff turned around. Back toward the cove.

They stood on the shore, said nothing, showed nothing. The skiff ground the shells and I leapt out and began to haul, then let the bow down.

“I’m not hauling it. I’m not the bloody crew.”

They pulled the skiff up, poor Charlie struggling, and only when they moved past me did I see the man standing in the sea. I recognized his shoulders, his carriage, the sharp lines of his face—the Kwakiutl who took Kate—and then he turned toward us and even in the dusk I could see his steely eyes. He was thigh-deep in the water with his arms out, walking slowly deeper, until the water reached his chest. He stood there with palms down as if blessing the waters, then, lifting his face, basked in the twilight. “Cooling his skin to dull the pain,” Nello said, pulling the blanket tight around the rifle. “You’ll see.”

“
He
must know where she is,” I blurted. “We can make him talk.”

“And start a war? You said she’d come at midnight anyway.”

The pink glow had faded from the sky and left the colorless cold of winter. A hollow whistle blew.

“Let’s go have some rum,” he said. “And some eulachon oil. Your favorite.”

A
S IF SOME
inexhaustible horn of plenty had opened, laden trays kept coming in through the door and were passed around the fire: deer meat in long strips, whole roast duck, roasted eagle that Nello said was best at this season when nice and fat on salmon, whole roasted perch, bear steaks, thin-sliced halibut, skewers the length of swords packed tight with smoked clams, a mud-looking thing that was
migwat
, or seal-blood soup, and seal tongue, curled fern shoots, sweet hemlock-bark sap, and berry cakes of every kind. And rum. The smoke thickened. We ate for hours.

Then came the announcement of the gifts, all that we had seen before plus rifles, chisels, axes, all given by the chief to the other chiefs in order of importance, and with all drums and rattles thundering, each chief danced wearing the great wooden masks of wolves, eagles, bees, unrecognizable birds, and unimaginable beings. Some danced with the solemnity of priest, others wildly like children, and some—singing softly to themselves—moved with a lulling motion, like a canoe on a rolling sea.

T
HE FLAMES WERE
low. A belligerent banging on the outside walls circled the house. Nello covered Charlie’s eyes. The Kwakiutl burst in, his wet body gleaming in the firelight, a knife flashing in his hand, and abalone shells dangling from wires through his skin. There was no sign that he had been hit by my bullet. He came down the steps, circled the fire, and all the while, with short quick swings, he slashed his forehead with the knife.

One of the chiefs came down, laid the tip of a knife against the Kwakiutl’s back, and, sliding down, cut a deep slit. Blood ran. Then he moved his knife a few inches and cut again, and again, four times in all, then knelt and cut the back of his thighs and calves the same way. The Kwakiutl shook his head to shake the pain away. The chief lifted the skin away from the flesh and ran long stripped branches under the skin and out the other side.

Nello leaned close to me. “Maybe he’d talk if I threatened him with a slap.”

The chief took ends of ropes that dangled from above and tied them around the branches, made sure the lengths were even, then the ropes were hauled tight. The Kwakiutl stretched his arms as he had over the water, and with his head back and face basking in the darkness, he was raised slowly toward the roof. The ropes were swung in circles and he began to fly: over the fire, in and out of the light, until a bear threw a bucket of oil and the flames roared in twisting columns and engulfed him. When they ebbed, the ropes dangled empty.