The Shaman's Secret (14 page)

The medicine man was keening another of his wild songs as the totems were picked out of our unresisting hands and thrown into the fire.

“The curse must burn,” Boy said.

The tiny fetishes crackled for a few minutes and then
quickly burned down to ashes. Perhaps it was this wild setting, this camp of Apaches far from civilization, that made me feel so strange. But as the fetishes crumbled to dust I felt a great burden lifting from me. My head no longer felt leaden, prickling with something else crawling around. No longer was I a listless body, driven on by some remaining spark of a person called Kit Salter.

We dismiss this Apache medicine as primitive, but I felt its power that night. I was at peace with the night. With bird, beast and the rest of the silent, waiting natural world. Whatever Far-Seeing Man had done to me was more effective than the powders and potions I had taken since I had come out of my coma. Much better than that mud bath I had so enjoyed.

I stood up and stretched. My heart sang with the new freedom. There was no longer a sick creature crawling in my head. My waking hours would no longer be filled with the sense of something trying to invade me, to fill my thoughts and take what it wanted.

KIT SALTER WAS BACK.

The shaman said something, looking at us, his filmy eyes full of sadness. Boy listened, then translated.

“The curse burns. You are free. You will stand tall. Tomorrow you can leave this place.”

As the shaman had decided that I was not a witch I was allowed to sleep in the wickiup with Aunt Hilda and Rachel. Boy announced she too would share our shelter, though I saw that she drew shocked glances from some of the other Apache women. She took no notice. I guessed that Boy usually got her own way.

“I am interested in you, Kit Salter,” she said, as we all curled up under the animal skins. The moon hung just above the firepit in the center of the wickiup, its silver light streaming through the hole in the ceiling. “You are an unusual White Eyes.”

“Thank you,” I said, “if it's a compliment.”

Boy propped herself up on her elbow to look at me. She had the typical Apache smell, of grease and animal hides. Strong but not unpleasant when you got used to it.

“What is this? Compliment?”

“It means a good thing. If you're being kind about me.”

“It is neither kind nor unkind. It just is.” She turned to
Rachel. “You, Rachel, are not different, I think. You will get married and have many children. Not Kit.”

“Kit will get married,” Rachel said. “She'll probably get married before me.”

“No, I won't,” I said, blushing hotly.

“Don't want to be an old maid like me,” Aunt Hilda put in. “Better snaffle up the first fellow that comes along.”

“Can you all stop talking about me and marriage? It's really embarrassing. I don't want to get married and—”

“What about Waldo?” Aunt Hilda interrupted. “He's a pretty good catch. Better bag him before someone else comes along and takes his fancy.”

“Stop it!” I said. “Would you all just leave me alone?”

Boy was sitting bolt upright, regarding us with amusement. Her eyes twinkled. “Who is Waldo? Ah yes, the yellow-hair brave. Has he come to your wickiup with a horse?”

“What are you talking about?”

“In my people, when a boy wants to marry a girl he talks to her parents. If they agree, he takes a horse to her wickiup. If she feeds the horse, it means she consents. Has the yellow-hair brought his horse to you?”

“It doesn't happen like that among us,” I said stiffly, while Aunt Hilda and Rachel guffawed. But Boy's eyes were on me, unsmiling. She was deadly serious.

“I look at you, Kit, and I do not think this is your
path. You are a warrior, like me. This is why I am your friend.”

“You must be quite unusual among the Apaches.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I fight. By fighting and by wisdom I get much honor. But it has been hard. When my brother was killed, I knew this was the path I must take. You too, I think, have a hard road. You have the signs of being set apart. I can see great struggle for you and maybe great wisdom. Marriage is not—”

“I feel very sleepy,” I said, interrupting her, because I could guess what she was saying. She seemed convinced that a normal life of marriage wasn't for me. Maybe she was right, but I was far too young to think about such things. Why did everyone talk such nonsense? Anyway, what did this wild girl know about me? “Do you think we could all go to sleep, please?”

So we settled down for the night. I think the others were soon fast asleep, but I stayed awake thinking over the events of the past days. The shaman with his mystical powers. The chilling fetishes in our shoes. Who had put them there?

Well, that at least I could answer. Cecil Baker. But what purpose the ugly little fetishes served I did not know. Witchcraft, the shaman had said. What would a man born in nineteenth-century England, brought up in the modern world, know about witchcraft? The whole thing was absurd, with its aura of Stone Age magic, a belief in demons and
spirits that had surely vanished with the coming of the railways, the flushing WC and gas lighting.

Thinking such thoughts, I drifted off to sleep with the muffled hush of the night camp in my ears. Aunt Hilda's snoring, Boy's soft breathing. Behind it all the murmur of the wind through the pinyon pines and the shush of prowling night creatures. It was very peaceful and I felt safe. Which was strange when you consider I was still a prisoner of the Apaches. Somehow I knew that Boy would never harm me, if only because she seemed convinced that I was her White Eyes twin!

I woke with a jerk. My dreams had been full of dancers swaying above me with the faces of dogs and pigs. I think I'd been asleep several hours as my limbs felt stiff and my mouth tasted sour. By the weak moonlight I could see the others were still sleeping.

Something was snuffling at the door, trying to get in past the deerskin that covered it.

I rose quietly, thinking it was most likely some small animal I could shoo away. I put on the long moccasins that Boy had given me in place of my boots. I was just removing the hide from the hole in the wickiup that served as a door when Boy awoke, bleary-eyed.

“What are you doing?”

“There's something out there. I'm just going to check that an animal isn't hurt.”

“NO, KIT. COME BACK HERE!”

Too late. I was already out of the wickiup. I closed the flap of skin and looked around me. The mountain wind was high, and it was chilly without the blazing fire to keep us warm. A wash of rainclouds hung low over the mountains, which I knew would please the Apaches, who longed for the rains.

The moon bathed the camp in enough light to see it was quiet. I saw no humans moving around, or animals. Just the hairy domes of the Apache homes, with their inhabitants asleep inside. But I had definitely heard something. Snuffling breath around the wickiups, with something hard scratching the earth.

I bent down and could see the faint tracks of some creature. Why had it been so determined to get into our tent? I decided to follow it and moved toward the outskirts of the camp. I heard Boy moving behind me, calling softly out to me from the wickiup.

“Where are you going? Come back. Come back.”

There were several large thorny bushes dotted around the edge of the camp, shading into the ever-present pinyon pines. Walking toward them, I noticed a movement in the shadows and heard the snapping of twigs.

Calling softly, I moved toward the bush. In a flash, a dark shape jumped out of the bush and dashed away. It seemed strangely furtive, keeping out of the patches of
moonlight, lurking in the shadows. It was a big animal, and for a moment I was scared and thought I would go back to the wickiup. But on second thoughts it was moving so clumsily I was sure it was injured.

An injured horse—or deer. By its running shape I could tell it was on four legs and so not a bear.

Still calling, I moved stealthily toward the other clump of bushes in which it had taken shelter. Poor thing, it was so clumsy.

I gained on the bushes and then suddenly the thing charged out, running straight for me. At the last minute it veered off in another direction into another bush. At the edge of it, it turned its head with a jerky movement, and stopped and looked at me.

I am an English girl. I have been brought up in Oxford, taught by a succession of governesses. Though I have traveled a lot, I am not used to life in the wilds. But even I knew something was seriously wrong with this deer. It did not run as a normal four-legged creature would, its gait elegant and loping. The movement of one living thing is different from another; even the city dweller would not mistake a running horse for a running deer, or a flying duck for a swallow.

But this deer ran in a very odd manner, halfway, indeed, between a horse and a human. In the bright patch of moonlight I could see it held its head up straight, its neck
stretched right out. A huge pair of antlers quivered above its head. Its eyes stared at me, the pupils flaring in yellowish pools. Strange to say, the eyes were dull. This will sound fanciful, but it was looking at me with malice.

The deer hated me, Kit Salter.

Boy was breathing hard behind me.

“What an odd deer,” I said.

“That's no deer.”

“Look at its antlers.”

Roughly, from behind, Boy pushed me aside. “Stand back.”

As I turned, she raised her shotgun and fired. The bullet whizzed past me, smacking bang into the flank of the deer.

“NO!” I screamed.

Boy shot again. And again. The bangs reverberating through the camp.

“Stop it!” I shouted. I ran toward the deer as fast as I could, Boy yelling at me. Fury coursed through me. That animal had done nothing to Boy and she had callously shot it. The deer looked at me, one last long glare through eyes that did not shine, then bounded clumsily off.

I saw it being shot. I saw at least two bullets burying themselves in its flank. Yet it had sped off, as if nothing had happened.

All around, people were emerging from their wickiups,
roused by the bangs. I had a glimpse of Waldo, and Mr. Baker, who had fallen down on the ground and was rolling over and over. Then I fell down as well, the world turning black.

When I woke up, the first thing I saw was the ground swishing under me from side to side. I was skimming over it, like a gliding bird. I looked up and saw a pink cheek and a lock of blond hair.

“Put me down, Waldo.”

“No need to shout about it.”

He hoisted me off his shoulders and plunked me down. I got to my feet, a little unsteadily. All the others were crowding round me, Aunt Hilda, Rachel. I saw Isaac was carrying Cyril Baker slung over his shoulders.

“What's wrong with him?”

Isaac shrugged. “He fainted.”

“Always thought he was a bit potty,” Aunt Hilda said.

“He fainted at the same instant as you,” Rachel said.

My eye fell on Boy, who was standing next to Aunt Hilda, her eyes flashing from her copper face.

“Why did you shoot? That deer meant us no harm.”

“It was no deer. I have already told you this.”

I stared at her, absolutely bewildered. “Of course it was a deer. You saw its antlers.”

“That was not a deer it was a …” and Boy said a word in her language I didn't understand.

“A what?”

“A skinwalker.”

“A skinwalker?” I had no idea of what she meant, though I had a vague memory of hearing the word before.

“A skinwalker is a bad medicine man. One who can transform into the shape of any animal. No one knows who the skinwalker is. By day they pretend to be a kind, right-living person. A medicine man who helps all.

“Then by night they transform into an animal and they go through the country doing evil. As soon as I saw the tracks I knew that was no deer. I knew it was a skinwalker. Now I have proof.”

“How?”

“You cannot kill a skinwalker. I put three bullets in its body and not a single drop of blood. This is proof.

“This skinwalker wishes you harm, Kit. If you had let it in the wickiup, evil would have befallen us all. The skinwalker was entering your mind. When you came near, it had its chance. You and that man—” she waved at the waxy-faced Baker—“the thing that made you both fall down was the skinwalker leaving your soul. The shock of separation made you—how do you say?—made you a little bit crazy.”

None of this made much sense to me. But something she'd said before struck me.

“What about the tracks?” I asked. “I can't understand how you can tell by an animal's tracks that it is a skinwalker.”

Boy glanced at me, superiority in her big black eyes. Her plump mouth was curling upward, as if she found my ignorance comical but charming. “Come with me.”

She led the way back to the wickiup. Waldo, Rachel and Aunt Hilda followed, while Isaac and a crowd of awakened Apaches stayed with the still unconscious Baker. There Boy squatted and showed me the deer prints. I am no tracker, but I could see that they were strange indeed. Rather than following each other as a dog's or horse's will do, these deer tracks were at all sorts of odd angles. They were also spread apart, as if the deer had been walking with its legs right open. Walking like a man would do.