Edgewise (9 page)

“Well, I'm glad about that,” said Lily. “But how exactly are you going to get my children back?”

Hazawin brought in a tray of herbal tea, in hand-decorated mugs. The tea smelled like nothing that Lily could put a name to, yet for some reason it reminded her of something. A room. A garden. A face turning to smile at her.

“What is this, Hazawin?”

“Verbena, and some other herbs. It will help to protect you against anybody who wishes you harm.”

“Heap powerful medicine,” said John Shooks. “Not as powerful as Wild Turkey, but pretty powerful.”

George was standing at the window. Outside, the snow was still falling, and Shooks's car was almost buried.

George turned around and said, “Lily, have you ever heard about the Wendigo?”

“The Wendigo? Sure. I saw a movie about it once. It's some kind of forest spirit, isn't it?”

“It's a demon that inhabits the north woods,” put in Hazawin. “It is called by many different names—We-tee-go, Wi-ti-ko. But most white people know it as Wendigo, because of the famous story by Algernon Blackwood. And, of course, that movie you saw.”

“Some people think that Algernon Blackwood invented the Wendigo,” said George. “But it has been spoken of by the Sioux for centuries. The name actually means ‘flesh-eater,' and in particular, ‘cannibal.' ”

“Cannibal?”

“Yes. The elders of the Sioux tribes used to tell their people that if ever they were tempted to eat human flesh, they would gradually turn into a Wendigo—a lonely, hungry, predatory creature, doomed forever to hide in the forests, with nothing to eat but any unwary hunters who might happen to wander their way.”

Uninvited, Shooks poured himself another whiskey and knocked it straight back. “The popular theory is that the Sioux elders invented the Wendigo to discourage their tribespeople from feeding on each other when food got short in the middle of winter.”

“Of course, the story's been embellished, over the years,” said George. “Some Dakota storytellers say that the Wendigo swoops down from the sky, seizes your shoulders in its claws and makes you run along so fast that your feet catch fire. That's what happens in the Algernon Blackwood story. A French Canadian guide gets snatched up, and—”

“
‘Oh! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of fire!'
” John Shooks quoted, and widened his eyes at Lily in a way that she didn't really understand. Was he warning her? Or mocking her? Or was he mocking George and Hazawin?

Hazawin said, “Some naturalists believe that the Wendigo may even be a real, crypto-zoological creature, like Bigfoot, or the Yeti.”

There was a moment's silence. A log in the front of the fire suddenly lurched and gave off a thick shower of sparks.

“And you're telling me all this—why?” asked Lily.

George said, “This may be difficult for you to believe. But the Wendigo is a real force of nature. Not a Yeti. Not a hairy beast with a long tongue and claws. It smells, though—not like lions, like Algernon Blackwood said it did. More like overheated metal, after a lightning strike. The nearest way I can describe it is to say that it's the spirit of the hunt. It's the very essence of the Native American connection between man and the world he lives in. Lost now, mostly, but not entirely.”

“So you're trying to tell me that the Wendigo is real?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever seen one? Has
anybody
ever seen one?”

“Nobody has ever seen the wind, Lily, but the wind is real enough to blow down the grandest of trees.”

“So what you're telling me is: you're planning on using the Wendigo to find my children?”

Hazawin said, “George has done it before, Lily, six or seven times.”

“I can't believe this.” Lily put down her mug and stood up. “I'm sorry, George. I'm sorry, Hazawin. I think we've been wasting each other's time. John—do you think you can drive me home?”

Hazawin repeated, “Lily . . . George has done it before, and every time the children have been brought home safe.”

“Look at Myron Burgenheim,” said John Shooks. “
He
has his kids back, doesn't he?”

Lily hesitated. “I guess.”

“Well, then. What do you have to lose? If the Wendigo
can't
find Tasha and Sammy, what harm's been done? But if it
can
. . .”

“But you're talking about a
demon
. The whole idea of it—it's absurd.”

George said, “The Wendigo is not a demon in the Christian sense, or the Islamic sense. It's not like Beelzebub, or Iblis. The Wendigo comes from the Native American need to survive, in the harshest of conditions. The Wendigo
is
our need to survive.

“Once the Wendigo goes in pursuit of somebody, it always finds them and it never loses them—
ever.
It doesn't matter how fast you go; it doesn't matter how far you go. The Wendigo will come after you and it will follow you one step behind you until the time comes when it can take you without being seen.

“If you feel it close behind you, if you feel it breathing down your neck, you can turn around as quick as you like, but it'll still be behind you. You might sense that it's in the room with you, but you won't be able to see it. It's so thin that when it turns edgewise on, it's invisible.”

“And it can really find Tasha and Sammy?”

“If it doesn't trace them by the end of this week, then you will have every right to say that this is absurd. But if it doesn't—I shall be very surprised.”

Lily looked from George to Hazawin to John Shooks. With the snow falling steadily outside, and the fire spitting, this all seemed like a dream. It reminded her of the time when she was seven years old and she had visited her grandparents' house on a snowy day just like this. She had been standing in their pear orchard, listening to the utter silence, when she had heard a trudging noise. A naked man had suddenly appeared, as if from nowhere, carrying a bunch of branches. He'd had a beard like a bush of traveler's joy, and bright red cheeks, and a big round belly.

“Hello!” he had exclaimed. “A little snow fairy!” Then without another word he had trudged off again, between the pear trees, and disappeared. She hadn't told her grandparents about this encounter, because she'd thought they would be angry with her, or think that she was making it up. But years later, when he died, she had learned that a Swedish fruit-grower called Bertil Arnesson had lived close by, and that in winter he had been in the habit of taking a sauna and then going for a walk in the snow, lashing himself with birch twigs as he went.

George said, “Maybe the best thing we can do is take you to meet the Wendigo for yourself.”

“I thought you said that it was invisible.”

“Most of the time, it is. But you will see its brightness, and you will feel its presence, unmistakably, when it arrives.”

Lily hesitated. But she couldn't stop herself from thinking about the last time that she had seen Tasha, almost completely buried under her quilt, and Sammy, sprawled across his bed with his hair tousled and his mouth wide open, and the loss she felt was physically painful. What if this
was
insanity? What if this
was
a dream? So long as she could get Tasha and Sammy back, she didn't care.

“All right,” she said. “Where do we have to go to meet it? Is it very far away?”

“The Wendigo is nowhere and everywhere,” said Hazawin. “All we have to do is go outside, into the forest, and call it. It will come.”

John Shooks tipped one more drink back. “Dutch courage,” he explained. “I'm only one-eighth brave, remember?”

They stepped out onto the verandah. The day was enormously quiet—so quiet that Lily could hear the snowflakes falling all around her, like people whispering. George pointed to the birch woods off to the right. “We'll go up this way. The Wendigo prefers plenty of cover.”

He took Hazawin by the hand and the two of them started to climb toward the woods, their boots squeaking in the snow. George was wearing a thick black bearskin coat and a bearskin hat to match. Hazawin was dressed in an ankle-length sheepskin coat decorated with embroidery and beads, and sheepskin earmuffs. Slung across her back was a long leather bag, with feathers and fringes on it.

Shooks held out his hand to help Lily down the steps, but she said, “I can manage, thanks.”

She followed George and Hazawin up the hill. Shooks stayed a little way behind her, as if he were worried that he might have upset her.

“You're probably thinking this is totally crazy,” he said.

“Yes, I am.”

“I didn't want to tell you too much about it before we came here—you know, the Wendigo and everything—in case I put you off.”

“It's all right, Mr. Shooks. I understand perfectly.”

“Like George said, the Wendigo isn't a demon like the demon in
The Exorcist
, or anything like that. It's more of a
force.
”

“I realize that. I'm trying to keep a very open mind here.”

The snow was falling so thickly that George and Hazawin had almost disappeared. Shooks said, “I've used other Native spirits, too, in my investigations. Crow in particular. Crow is great for finding lost property. Coyote—Coyote has a nose for adultery like you wouldn't believe. He can sniff out marital unfaithfulness like rotten chicken.”

Lily didn't answer. She was struggling too hard to catch up with George and Hazawin.

It took them nearly ten minutes to reach the edge of the birch woods. By the time they were making their way between the trees they were all breathing heavily and their cheeks were inflamed with cold. Birds rustled in the branches above them and Lily could hear rabbits scampering through the snowy undergrowth.

They reached a small clearing. In the center of it rested a huge sandstone boulder, the size of a dining-room table. George guided Hazawin right up to it, and brushed the snow off the top of it with his sleeve. Hazawin lifted her leather bag off her shoulder and opened it, taking out two human thigh bones, painted in red and yellow and tied with hanks of hair, as well as a polished copper mirror and a necklace made of three separate strands of wood and bone beads.

She laid the mirror flat on top of the boulder. Then, without any hesitation, she took a small bright knife out of her pocket and cut the ball of her thumb, so that five or six drops of blood fell on to the mirror's surface. Unfazed, George wrapped up her thumb with a strip of cotton, and knotted it.

“The Wendigo always demands a blood sacrifice,” he explained. “Even if you give it no more than a token.”

Now Hazawin picked up the bones and knocked them loudly against each other. “Wendigo, I call you to this place!” she said, very softly. Then, a little louder, “Wendigo, spirit of the forest, I call you to this place!”

She began to knock the bones quicker and quicker, in a complicated rhythm that sounded like a skeletal horse cantering across a hard-frozen prairie. “Wendigo! Wendigo! Spirit of the forest! Hunter of men! I call you to this place!”

Lily glanced at Shooks uneasily. She wasn't sure which disturbed her more: the possibility that the Wendigo might really appear, or that George and Hazawin might both be seriously unhinged. But Shooks gave her a “don't worry” type of look that was plainly meant to reassure her.

Hazawin knocked the bones more slowly now, but still in a complex, scattered rhythm. “Wendigo! I feel you close by! Wendigo! I hear your breathing!”

Breathing?
Lily listened hard. She couldn't hear breathing, but she could hear something else—the softest of hissing noises, like a TV set that has been left on long after the night's programs have finished. Except that
this
hissing noise seemed to be coming closer, and circling around them, somewhere off to Lily's right.

“Wendigo, listen to me!” Hazawin called out. “There is a man to be hunted, and hostages to be returned to the lodge where they belong! Your reward will be great! In return for the hostages, the place where Haokah appeared to Little Crow will be given back to the Mdewakanton!”

The hissing sound seemed to be coming from behind them now. Lily couldn't stop herself from turning around, but there was nobody there. All she could see was the thin, scaly trunks of the silver birch trees, and the snow-crusted tangle of the briars.

Hazawin lifted both thigh bones and rattled them together faster and faster. “Wendigo, listen to me! Wendigo!”

For a very long moment, there was silence, and darkness, and nothing but the snow falling. Lily thought:
This is bullshit; why am I doing this?

Then—behind the trees—she saw a dim flicker of silvery light—tall and attenuated, like the figure of a very thin man.

“Wendigo!”
Hazawin screamed.
“Wendigo!”

The light flickered again, and this time Lily was sure that she could make out a face in it, but it was too blurry to see if it was a man or an animal. One second it looked like somebody with dark smudgy eyes and his mouth wide open; the next it resembled a deer, or a wolf.

“Wendigo!” sang Hazawin, and her voice was high-pitched and triumphant. “Wendigo!”

Hazawin was rapping her bones together at hysterical speed. For some reason that she couldn't understand, Lily began to feel a deep sense of dread, as if she had set some appalling sequence of events in motion—a sequence of events that it was already too late to stop. She turned anxiously to Hazawin, but as she did so, the light reappeared close behind Hazawin's shoulder, and now she could see that its mouth was stretched open in what looked like a furious but silent scream.

She turned to Shooks, and the light appeared close behind
him
, too. It seemed to be everywhere at the same time. She spun around again, and again, and it was still there, only a few yards away from her now, yet still indistinct, as if she were seeing it through a fogged-up window.