The Shaman's Secret (6 page)

I sat back and listened, though my mind was clouded by terror and I could not take my eyes from the snake on my arm. Why had I not seen it before? Had it just appeared? Was this ugly brand a symbol of my damnation?

That was the most terrifying thing. I could not get the thought out of my mind that Mr. Baker and I bore the brand of the snake for the same reason. We both carried a cursed bug inside us. Was this now slithering out of our insides? Had it appeared on our skin to show our leprous condition to the world?

It had to be. The snakes on our arms had to be linked to the canker in our souls, the disease eating at our guts. Why else would Cyril and I share the same brand? If that was the case, I was truly damned. The snake was the poison I had been infected with in the mountains of India, now made a horrible fleshy reality. I had strayed where I shouldn't—been trapped by my curiosity time and again. True, I had become entangled in the Bakers' foul web, but my own hot-headed pride had played its part in my doom.

The snake was the sign of all this, branded on my own soft flesh.

Back at the boarding house I slept for several hours and awoke feeling wearier than before. A glance at my arm told me that the snake had slept too—it hadn't vanished as I'd hoped. I had a large window with a comfortable ledge on which to perch. Down below, a curious mixture of people paraded the streets of San Francisco. There were the fine ladies, wearing the latest fashions from New York and Paris, some with ridiculously large bustles, as if they had grown two bottoms. Then there were the toughs in red checked shirts, blue trousers tucked into their boots. Miners and cowboys mingled with the best of San Francisco high society. This was a true frontier town, the sort where anything goes.

As I watched I tried to ignore the tension in my mind, which was building up to a screaming headache.

Drearily I went over the conversation with Cyril. He had talked more after he'd shown us the brand of the snake on his arm. Everyone, my aunt and Waldo included, had grown quiet at the sight. Cyril had told us he believed that all the objects the Bakers had sought were linked in “lines of power.”

There were five such objects the Bakers knew about,
though they believed more were scattered around the world. The first one they had acquired and kept in their castle, an ancient Celtic amulet. But then I'd turned up on their trail and things had begun to go wrong. They'd been thwarted in their desire to seize the oldest book in the world, the Egyptian writing of Ptah Hotep. They had not managed to bring back a bottle of the elixir of life from the Himalayas. Finally, the bones of Bodhidharma from the caves above the Shaolin temple in China had eluded them.

The Bakers believed that they had identified one last object. The most holy, ancient and powerful of them all. It was a marble tablet, inscribed with ancient hieroglyphs, eerie stick figures and writing, the meaning of which was lost in the mists of time. Some believed that this tablet was Anasazi, belonging to the “ancient ones,” a lost tribe who had lived in the desert of Arizona many thousands of years ago. The Hopi Indians, who were rumored to have the tablet, believed it had been given to them by their god when the tribe emerged from the womb of the world in the Grand Canyon.

The Bakers had learned about the existence of this tablet from their network of informers. Cecil Baker had become obsessed. He wanted to know everything about it, so for years he had studied shamanism, the magical priestly rites of the Indians. For an outsider, he had becoming very powerful. So powerful that these days Cecil could walk
barefoot over hot coals or lie naked on an iceberg. He was all but a shaman himself.

Yet, despite all his mystical power, Cecil Baker was cursed. His magic was useless against the disease eating him from the inside, the brand of the snake on his arm. (Yes, like his brother and I, he was branded.) But he saw one way out. The Anasazi tablet. He believed that if he had the tablet he would be able to cheat the gates of hell. He would become immeasurably powerful. I asked many questions, but I wasn't told
exactly
how this tablet would help Cecil trick his fate. But in some way, his brother was sure, Cecil believed this tablet would be his salvation.

Cecil sought this relic in the Grand Canyon, a huge area of towering cliffs and gorges in the Arizona desert.

His face contorting with desperation, Cyril Baker had told us he believed his brother had gone mad. He'd become obsessed, consumed by a lust for the tablet. He had hatched plans too dreadful even for his adoring twin to go along with. Cecil would use the tablet to make himself invincible—and into the bargain he would kill me.

“Please, please believe me. We must stop my brother. We must find the tablet first or Cecil will be unstoppable,” Cyril had begged.

“How?” we had asked. How could we find this legendary and fiercely guarded tablet in the Grand Canyon, a wilderness of cliffs? All Cyril had replied was that he had
the same clues as his brother to its whereabouts. With our help,
he
could get there first.

Now sitting at my bedroom window, with my head throbbing, I thought over Cyril's story. On the face of it, there was no reason to trust him. He had always hated me. He had kidnapped me, shot at me, tricked me. I was supposed to believe in his sudden volte-face. Now he was acting as if all he wanted to do was save my life.

Why were the Baker brothers so interested in me anyway? Right from the start of our involvement I had the impression they were focusing on
me
. This feeling was stronger than ever. Cyril had even hinted as much, saying his brother was fascinated by me. That he wanted me, Kit Salter, dead.

Why me? I kept turning the question over in my mind. It had become a niggle, an itch that I had to scratch.

Did we really have a chance to find the Anasazi tablet, with a madman after it?

After I had turned our dilemma uselessly over in my head for some time, I went downstairs to the parlor. My friends, father and aunt were all there, arguing.

Father wanted to stay here and rest. Waldo backed him up fiercely. He could not lead us into any more danger, he said. But the rest, including the cautious Rachel,
surprisingly, argued that we had to find this
thing
lurking in the Grand Canyon. Rachel told me, in a private moment, that she felt some terrible curse hanging over my head. Above all she wanted to “set me free.”

In the end the argument was unresolved. Waldo, Isaac and Aunt Hilda were to set off once again, back to a slum area of the city. Mr. Baker had told them he would prove he'd become a different man. He was going to show them a couple of the charitable projects on which he had spent his dirty money. I wanted to go with them, but was ordered back to my room. For once I didn't protest too much. Rachel was staying behind too. She was to be my jailor.

So I went back to my room and lay down, while Rachel knitted in the corner. After a while, I slept. My dreams were full of twisting snakes: glistening black cobras, adders bright as blades of spring grass, pythons flickering toward me with their eyes glinting. Snakes, snakes and more snakes. I was stepping on a pile of them. A small grass snake detached itself from the heap and began crawling up my leg. “No!” I shouted in horror, backing away. But the thing was on me, wriggling wetly up my leg.

I couldn't shake it off.

When I woke up, my hair was damp with sweat and the front of my blouse wet. Waldo was standing over me, his blond hair golden in the twilight.

“Mr. Baker thinks we should move,” he said. “He thinks
even another night here would be dangerous. He thinks his brother may know where we are.”

I groaned. Waldo took a seat at the other end of the bedroom, as far away from me as possible. Rachel had vanished. Was it my imagination or had Waldo become distant since I'd recovered? He hardly ever looked me in the eye now. The ease in each other's company, the fun we had teasing each other—that had gone.

“Waldo,” I said, “have I done something to offend you?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I don't know. I think you've been … kind of … avoiding me.”

Waldo flushed and looked down at his boots.

“You get the funniest ideas,” he said, still not meeting my eye. He clearly didn't want to talk about whatever it was that was bothering him. “Look, I want to talk about something real. This whole Baker thing—this Grand Canyon idea—it's dangerous. Your father has asked me to have a serious talk with you.”

My heart stopped for an instant, and I found
I
didn't want to look at Waldo.

“About what?”

“Our future …” He blushed. For some stupid reason, I was blushing too. “I mean
your
future.”

“Oh.”

“He wants to see if I can talk you out of this scheme.
This mad scheme to go west—and the Grand Canyon. It's madness. Chasms. Gorges. Wild raging rivers. Hardly explored. I mean, what can you be thinking of?”

The old fight had gone out of me. Once I had been so sure. But now … everything was hazy … the snake and Baker's evil presence looming over us … If he had found out where we lived, even now we could be in danger. It was as if I was walking through a land where everything was coated in a layer of mist. Except Waldo, who was shining bright before me, his eyes sky blue.

“How was your visit?” I asked, changing the subject. “Has Mr. Baker told us the truth?”

“Ye-es,” Waldo admitted, looking down at the floor.

“And?”

“There was a school, very well furnished, and the children were learning. They hail Cyril Baker as their savior.”

“And those poor Chinese laborers?”

“He has set them free. With a few dollars in their pockets.”

“So he really has had a change of heart.”

“Or maybe he's just decided to invest a few thousand dollars into tricking us. That's not a lot of money for a man of Baker's wealth.”

“You're such a cynic, Waldo. I believe him. I think he has repented.”

He glanced at me as I said that, a burning look that made me feel suddenly miserable.

“You're always so restless, Kit. Always so keen to put your life in danger—and the lives of others.”

“No,” I said softly. “I think Cyril Baker has changed, deep in his soul. I think he knows he has done many evil things and is doomed and …”

“Yes, yes.” Waldo rose from his chair. “I can see I'm not going to change your mind. I suppose we will be setting off for Arizona—and more madness.” He moved toward the door, turning his back to me. “I will have to tell your father I cannot reason with you.”

“Waldo!”

From the door he grunted, without turning round.

“Please. Waldo. Please, come here.”

“What is it now?”

“I want to show you something.”

He came slowly, as if pulled against his wishes, to the spot where I was curled up on the window ledge. I was wearing a maroon velvet skirt with a blouse, which had long lace sleeves that came to my wrists. Not my choice of clothes—Rachel had purchased them sometime when I was ill. Now, calmly as I could, I rolled up my sleeve.

Waldo was standing very near, so close I could feel his hot breath.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” His words were impatient, but he was very pale and standing very still.

Wordlessly, I tugged at the sleeve and turned my arm over to show him the soft flesh under my elbow.

He grabbed at my wrist and held it so tight it hurt. I bit back the pain. Then he dropped it and moved away, as if scalded. He was trembling.

The brand of the snake had moved. It had crept up my arm while I slept and now lay curled under my elbow. Even as I talked to Waldo, it seemed as if the tiny tongue flickered.

“It's looking for my heart,” I said. “The snake's trying to kill me.”

We moved to another boarding house that night. It was Isaac who spotted the cowboy with the curling black mustache lounging against the gas lamp opposite us. He wore brown leather boots and a studded belt. The skin on his face was gnarled and wrinkled. Something about his thick, repulsive lips reminded me of someone.