The Spirit Keeper (33 page)

Adrian pushed a glass of punch in my hand, bringing me back to the present moment. “Where were you just now?” he said, bending down to kiss the crease between my eyes. He’d become sensitive to my growing anxiety these last few weeks, not to mention my many mood swings.

I took a sip of the punch and forced a smile, “Nowhere that’s better than here, that’s for sure.”

Adrian wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me forward, and then he brushed his lips against my cheek. “Stop worrying. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

From across the room, Priscilla shouted for us to either get a room or join the party. There was a tittering of laughter and a few hoots as the others saw us together, which effectively did the job of forcing us apart. Then there was an unexpected knock on the door, and I let go of Adrian’s hand in order to answer it.

A delivery man holding a vase of mixed flowers looked down at the clipboard in his free hand before looking back at me. “These are for a Miss Sarah Redbird.”

“I’m Sarah.”

“Then these are for you,” he said. He smiled and passed the flowers to me. “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you so much,” I said to the man before shutting the door. Then turning to Adrian I said, “These are beautiful. Thank you.”

He shrugged and held up his hands. “I wish I could take credit, but my present is on the table with the others.” He snatched a small, rectangular card peeking out from behind a carnation and handed it to me. “Here. Check the message.”

I made my way to the dining room and set the vase on the table to the collective
oohs
and
ahhs
of the others who, like me, assumed they were from Adrian.

“They’re not from Adrian,” I said.

“You must have another admirer,” said Priscilla. She jabbed Adrian in the side. “I hope you’re up for a little competition.”

I opened the card and read the few nicely printed lines, feeling the smile fade from my lips. “Oh. They’re not from an admirer.”

“Then who are they from?” said Meg.

I slumped into the nearest chair and put my head between my knees.

Meg took the paper from my hand and read it out loud: “The people of the Katori Tribe formally request your presence at the next Council meeting, to be held on the fifteenth of August. Cordially, Charlene Moon, Council Head.”

Imogene snorted. “Cordially? She makes it sound as if Sarah is being invited to the royal ball. Is that all it says?” There was a rustle of paper as Meg passed the note to her.

“One week from today,” I said.

How was I ever going to get through this?

Without another word, I got up and walked, as if in a trance, down the hall to my bedroom and closed the door with a soft click behind me.

Suddenly, I was in no mood to celebrate. 

About the Author

Melissa Luznicky Garrett is an author of adult and young adult novels. She lives in upstate New York with her husband, three children, and numerous animals. Melissa is currently hard at work on her next project. Connect with Melissa on Facebook at  
http://www.Facebook.com/MLGarrettwrites

Author Q&A

How did you come up with the idea for your book?
As it so happens, the general plot idea for
The Spirit Keeper
went through several transformations. In fact, only a shadow of the original plot (which is now too embarrassing to share publicly) remains. Let’s just say there were birds involved and leave it at that!

I’ve always been somewhat mesmerized by Native Americans. The Iroquois confederacy, made up of the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Tuscarora tribes, once had a strong presence in upstate New York. When you live in an area that still bears the names of these tribes, it’s hard to ignore their influence.

The idea for a story based on a Native American girl came to me one summer afternoon as I was standing in my back yard. A thunderstorm was rolling in, and something about the sound of the wind blowing through the trees and the way the light was reflecting through the leaves was incredibly inspiring. There was a strong feeling of magic and mysticism in that moment, so much so that it left me feeling incredibly overwhelmed with emotion and quite speechless.

Right off the bat I had three basic elements at hand: a Native American girl, the woods, and magic . . .
but not a whole lot else!
For the record, I
do not
recommend writing a story without some sort of road map. You’ll eventually get to where you’re going, but you’ll take a lot of wrong turns getting there!

To start, I began teasing out ideas while researching the Iroquois confederacy. Originally Sarah belonged to “the seventh tribe,” a completely fictional tribe of the Iroquois people. But the story I began to write portrayed the other six tribes in a very negative light, and I started to feel uncomfortable with the road I was headed down. Not being an expert in Native American or Iroquois culture, I felt I had no right to slap the word “Iroquois” to the Native American characters in my book just for the sake of making them seem more authentic. I needed to come up with something truly my own.

I ended up scrapping the first few chapters of my story, but I stuck with the main elements. I still had a Native American girl, some vague idea about the woods, and some sort of magic that was involved. At that point I had given my book the working title of “The Seventh Tribe,” which, as you know, is the title of the second book in the series. So then the story became all about
who and what is the seventh tribe, why are these people important, and how does Sarah fit in?
Then I adopted a new title, realizing then that I was writing the obvious prequel to
The Seventh Tribe
.

Because the struggle between Good and Evil is such a universal idea, and used widely in fiction, it felt very natural to incorporate it as a central theme of the story. In
The Spirit Keeper
, we have Kai vs. Kamut, the Katori tribe vs. the other six, Sarah vs. Katie, The Redbirds vs. The Hunts, Shyla vs. Victor . . . I could go on.

How did you come up with the Creation story (of the tribes)?
Some people might argue that the root of all Good and Evil started with Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel. With that in mind, I knew I had to have some overarching story of the tribes’ creation, how they became divided, and how that division affected future generations. The legend of Kamut and Kai, the two earthly children born of the Sun and Moon, was admittedly difficult for me to write. I am not a high-fantasy writer, and here I was attempting to write something very much out of my comfort zone. The legend itself went through many, many revisions before I felt satisfied.

Was it hard not to stereotype Sarah?
The short answer to that question is no. After all, Sarah grew up not knowing a single thing about her heritage. In fact, it could be said that her family, after they fled the reservation, completely shunned who they once were and adopted a very non-ethnic lifestyle. In essence, Sarah grew up much like any other “normal” teenage girl . . . but with a very secret past.

If anything, it was Katie and her friends who placed Sarah in a box with their references to Pocahontas and Sacagawea and other culturally stereotypical ideas. Even Priscilla couldn’t refrain from joining in the teasing when she wondered if Adrian had ever slept in a tepee, or dressed in leather pants and moccasins.

What emotional processes does Sarah go through on a regular basis as she deals with being “the odd man out” in her school, along with the internal struggle of the bullying she faces from Katie?
Bullying has become a hot-button issue with schools’ “zero-tolerance policy.” Unfortunately for Sarah, she has learned that nothing good comes of confiding about the bullying, and so she deals with the harassment by keeping quiet and not seeking help. It’s a shame, but true to the nature of a lot of kids who fear they’ll make the problem worse by speaking out against it. 

As for being the “odd man out,” it was never something that Sarah gave much thought to until Katie singled her out for being who she is—a Native American girl. However, no one outside Katie’s group of friends taunts or teases Sarah, so the problem is truly of Katie’s own making. And yet it’s not entirely clear
why
she doesn’t like Sarah.

Rest assured that’s one storyline that will definitely be elaborated on in
The Seventh Tribe.