Hannah & the Spindle Whorl (15 page)

IS IT THE WEEKEND?
Is it a school day? Am I in my own bed? I wake up the next morning not knowing what day it is or where I am. The first thing I hear is Jack, cawing madly from an arbutus branch directly above my head, squawking louder than usual. I’m about to cover my ears when I hear the ocean and the seagulls calling just above its surface. I wake up to those sounds almost every day of my life. As soon as I shift my body, I get a sharp pain in my hip, and I feel that my leg has gone to sleep. Then it hits me: I’m not at home on my houseboat; I’m not even at Yisella’s on my sleeping platform; I’m lying on the hard ground with a sharp rock digging into me. My knee throbs and I remember last night, how I slipped and fell. I’m miles away from Cowichan Bay, or should I say Tl’ulpalus, on a rocky bluff, and I’m still wearing the cedar skirt. I’m cranky and it feels scratchy.

I sit up and rub my eyes. The day is another beautiful summer day with the sun’s rays already warming the top of my head. Jack stands a little way away, craning his neck out toward the sea, the wind ruffling his feathers in every direction. He looks as if he just rolled out of bed too.

I squint and try to focus on the ocean when I see something moving way out on the water. Six dark specks, in a group, are swiftly moving past Salt Spring Island, about to disappear from sight. I nudge Yisella who is still sleeping, and when she only groans and rolls onto her back, I nudge her even harder.

“Ouch!” she cries, and stirs again.

Then I blast her with, “
YISELLA!
”

She’s up like a shot, as disoriented as I was, and checking her surroundings for a clue as to where she is. A look of horror comes over her face when she looks at the sky, to the sun.

“Oh no, Hannah … we’ve slept so long! It’s close to midday …” but she doesn’t finish her sentence when she sees the look on my face. She follows my gaze to the dark specks in the distance and she knows, just as I do, that those specks are canoes from her village. Canoes that will wind through the twists and turns of Active Pass before they cross over the wide open Strait of Georgia.

The colour drains from her face and her shoulders slump. For the first time ever, she looks like she’s totally had enough and ready to give up. “It’s no good,” she says. “They’ve gone.”

“No way! They wouldn’t leave without us … I mean you!” I shout, angry at the entire village. Didn’t they notice Yisella was gone? Didn’t they try to find her? How could they just leave her without knowing if she’s okay?

“They can’t wait for just one person. Not when they were already late to go. Not when everything was right for leaving. They have to go when the time and tide are right. I shouldn’t have slept! I should not have let this happen!”

“What’ll we do?” I’m starting to panic but the last thing Yisella needs is a frantic friend burdening her with hysterics. I try to be calm, except I know that the villagers took most of the food with them and the cooking tools as well. Tl’ulpalus will be like a ghost town when we return.

“It’s okay.” Yisella stands up and brushes off her skirt with both hands. “There’s plenty of food here. We won’t starve, it’s summer. I mean, there’s lots of things to eat here at this time of year. But we have to stay calm.”

Stay calm? Who is she kidding?

I’m amazed how quickly Yisella recovers from stuff. Sure, she freaks out like anyone else, but she seems to be able to pull herself together so much faster than I ever could. Doesn’t she ever come completely unstitched and just pitch a fit?

“When they get back and discover that I’m unharmed — that I stayed behind because I fell asleep — I’ll have shamed them.” She twists and untwists the shining abalone shell on the cord around her neck.

“But what about those cannons? What about the boat?” I ask, recalling the strange booms we heard last night.

Yisella doesn’t answer right away. I know she’s worried about that too. She doesn’t stop twisting the abalone shell. “We have to go back to Tl’ulpalus. We should stay in the village until they return. That’s all we can do. I don’t want to leave my village empty. Not now. They won’t be gone for too long.”

We head back through the thick undergrowth of the forest, back to, well, nothing. Or should I say no one. My stomach growls, so I keep an eye out for something edible. I spy some blackberries. They’re not the big variety that was introduced later on but they are incredibly sweet. I stuff them into my mouth, and instantly I picture myself on my first day here. Yisella’s right. There is plenty of food. If we had to, we could probably live on blackberries alone. I am instantly energized.

When we get back to Tl’ulpalus, the houses already look bleak and deserted even though it can’t be more than a couple of hours since everyone left. Somehow, the buildings look older and more weathered. Jack flies overhead and lands on one of the welcoming poles facing out to sea.

Yisella and I make our way up the beach and there I spot Poos, hunkered down in the grass beyond the sand. He looks anxious until he sees us, then he runs out and wraps himself around my leg as if he’s a furry little piece of Velcro. I pick him up and carry him as he purrs happily in the crook of my arm. I bury my face in his fur and close my eyes.

“Oh, Poos,” I murmur, squeezing his little paw tenderly, “I thought I’d lost you for good. I’m so glad you’re back!”

We walk through the village checking for any stored food they may have left behind. We’re relieved to find enough dried salmon, butter clams and berry cakes to last us for quite a while. Yisella says that we can pick more berries and she knows how to dry them into strips, a kind of blackberry fruit leather.

We’re both pretty quiet for the rest of the day. It’s like neither of us is quite sure what to say or do. I can tell that Yisella is ashamed to have missed the summer trip. I think she even feels she may have let her imagination — the “booms” far out on the ocean — get the better of her, although I know she wonders if that something is still there? And what if her feelings do mean something? Maybe there is a reason why she’s supposed to stay here at the end of the summer? I want to share my thoughts, but my instincts tell me it’s better to leave her alone for a while. Even though she believes that her village had to go, I can’t help wondering if she’s feeling abandoned. I can’t imagine my dad not looking for me if I ever went missing.

While Yisella is down on the beach collecting something in a woven basket, I decide to try spinning some more of the goat hair and fireweed cotton into yarn. I want to keep busy; sitting around, especially when my mind is confused, is not something I like to do. Also, there’s nobody here to stare at me now, like I’m some kind of red-haired freak. There’s just Poos following me around even more than he did before. Of course, there’s also Jack, who is never far away.

I go into the longhouse to check out the baskets of fleece. Some are still full and I wonder if I’ll be able to get through a whole basket at the speed of light, the same way I did the last time. I sit down and pick up the long smooth spindle and whorl that rest beside me.

There it is again! The electric jolt in my fingertips and the heat radiating over both of my hands. I can feel the pulse in my temples quicken. Before I have time to think, the whorl is spinning faster and faster — the salmon images again thrown into a perfect synchronized swim, holding my gaze and steadying my hands. Again and again, without thinking, I grab a handful of fleece, separating it with three fingers as I was shown, and guide it gently into the long strand of off-white yarn. I’m no longer conscious of time. The only sensations present are the sound of the spindle turning on the hard ground, the rustle of baskets and the warmth on my back from the sun streaming through the longhouse door. I feel wonderfully calm, like the way Aunt Maddie says she feels when she meditates.

I stay like this for a time, spinning, enjoying the sun, not really thinking about anything, and then, as quickly as I began, I’m finished. The basket is empty and once again the spindle is full of yarn. This time I don’t stop there. I find the goat hair and the fireweed cotton, and I work the two together until I have another evenly mixed basket ready for spinning. I even remember to add the white powdery stuff, a clay-like dust that Yisella showed me, into the mix to make it less oily. Then away I go again, turning, spinning, and feeding, stopping only occasionally to shift my weight or stretch my back.

I know I spend most of the afternoon doing this because by the time Yisella comes through the door, the sun is much lower and her shadow much longer on the longhouse floor. Poos is curled up in a basket full of fleece, which reminds me of Chuck curled up in his favourite spot, the laundry basket.

Yisella isn’t surprised to see what I’ve done all afternoon. It’s as if she expected it. She inspects the rolled balls of goat hair yarn, pulling on a length to test its strength. “This is really good, Hannah. It’s as good as Mother’s.”

I know that this is very high praise. I’m so happy; finally, I feel useful. I also feel tired in a good way, the kind of tired you get when you’ve worked hard and you have something to show for your efforts at the end of the day.

Yisella and I have a dinner of roasted roots, from a plant with a name I can’t pronounce, some more dried butter clams and some green shoots of something that tastes a lot like onions.

Despite the bad start to the day, I am smiling when I crawl into bed. Poos curls up beside my head and goes to sleep with his paw on my eyebrow. It’s such a little thing, but so familiar that it makes me feel safe. I think about writing in my journal, but I can’t move. I might disturb the cat.

DÉJÀ VU.
I’ve heard about it before. Aunt Maddie talks about stuff like this a lot. About how something happens and you feel as though it’s happened before? Or someone is talking to you and you pretty much know what they’re going to say next? Well, when I wake up in middle of the night, after Poos lands on my stomach and scares me into launch mode, I see that Yisella is up. Exactly like the night before, only this time she’s standing at the door of the longhouse, straining her ear toward the ocean. She doesn’t have to say anything because this time I hear it loud and clear. A boom, and then another one just minutes later, even louder. I jump to my feet as a third boom shakes the ground we’re standing on.

Yisella and I hold on to each other fiercely. We both grab blankets and on silent feet we fly down to the shoreline. This time there’s no waiting or straining to listen. There on the horizon, perfectly illuminated by the full moon overhead, sits a big ship, its white sails flapping from two tall masts. A dull glow spills out of several windows toward the back of the boat, and although it’s still quite far out, we can see that it’s totally headed our way! Right into Cowichan Bay!

Instinctively, Yisella and I duck behind a large boulder on the beach. Even though it’s the middle of the night, the light from the moon is pretty intense, and there’s no way we want to be spotted. Who are they? Are they friendly? And why is the ship headed straight for the village of Tl’ulpalus?

Yisella grabs my shoulders, pleading with me. “Hannah, I’m scared! I dreamed about this. It isn’t good. I dreamed that lots and lots of
hwunitum
were coming here and it seemed like something bad might happen.”

“What should we do?” I’m so sick of my own voice, always asking what we should do. At home, I usually feel so sure of myself, but here I’m out of my depth. I can’t just call Dad on my cell phone or run into the Toad in the Hole for a quick bite and a rest stop. Here you have to think on your feet all the time and act even faster. For Yisella and the people here, there’s no time to dither around.

She looks me squarely in the eye. “Will you help me, Hannah?”

“Of course I’ll help you!” I tell her, thinking it’s an odd question. We’re friends, after all. Isn’t that what friends automatically do?

“We’ll watch for a bit, but only until we’re sure,” she says solemnly.

“Sure of what?” I ask. How can we be sure of anything?

“Until we’re sure that they’re coming here. To Tl’ulpalus.”

“And if they are?”

“Then we have to go. And we’ll take mother’s blanket with us,” Yisella says firmly.

“But it’s not finished!”

“It doesn’t matter. The
hwunitum
have taken village baskets before. They like the weaving and the patterns on them. I’ve heard that they took dancing masks from villages too. And for these beautiful things our people only got whiskey, and some sugar and flour. If there are lots of
hwunitum
on that boat then all our things might be taken away.”

I get it.

“You’re right,” I say. “We’ve got to keep at least your mother’s blanket from them.” Even though the blanket isn’t finished, it’s valuable in more ways than one. Just like Mom’s things, hidden away in that chest. Even though I still can’t open that chest and look at them, there’s no way I’d ever want to lose them.

In my mind, I see the museum in Victoria, full of artifacts collected over hundreds of years. I see clothing, stone tools and photographs of people dancing in colourful ceremonies. I’ve seen blankets there too. Not like Skeepla’s, but similar.

Yisella looks at me, her voice pleading, “All I have left of my mother now is her blanket on the loom and her spindle whorl. I have to protect those things. I can’t let them be taken away!”

It’s the first time that I’ve seen real tears in her eyes. She doesn’t even try to brush them away as they slide down her cheeks.

“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “No way will we let that happen.”

“If we could —
HANNAH! LOOK! THEY’RE SO CLOSE!”
Yisella isn’t exactly yelling, but her voice is still shrill and edged with fear. I swing around and see that the flickering light from the ship has grown brighter. I hear the sound of heavy sails bucking and flapping against the towering masts. The wind is stronger and, there’s no question about it, the bow of the boat is definitely pointing straight at us. Another boom breaks the stillness of the night, followed by the heavy smell of smoke. It reaches all the way across the bay to the boulder that hides us. And then we hear voices. Men’s voices, yelling instructions to each other. They’re close enough that I can hear what they’re saying. I can’t believe it — they speak English! My heart jumps in my chest. Who are these people?

“You! On the port side!” A deep voice booms.

“Hold your fire! The captain says hold your fire! No more warning shots.” Another voice this time.

“Governor Douglas and the captain have given their orders.”

WHAT
? Governor Douglas? Governor James Douglas? He’s on the boat? This ship! I remember lots of stuff from my socials textbook. It’s one subject that isn’t boring, so I’m positive that this is the
HMS
Hecate
! About to sail into Cowichan Bay with a whole bunch of European settlers! People who want to make their new home right here on the southeastern part of Vancouver Island. This means I’m right about the year. It is 1862!

My stomach knots up even more because now I know for sure: I am witnessing a major part of history and it is not a good time. At least, not for Yisella’s people. When they return, Yisella’s people will have to move their village to an isolated place reserved just for them. At least, that’s what the book said. I remember it clearly because our class talked about how it didn’t really seem fair. How it seemed more like a mean trick. The
Hecate
is sailing in now because the Native people are away on the mainland, and most of the passengers and crew aboard know it!

“Yisella!” I say urgently and she looks at me, confused and scared. Although she doesn’t understand the shouts coming from the ship, she understands the intensity in the voices. I tell her why they’re here. I tell her a bit of what I learned in school. And I tell her we need to leave right now! This time I’m calling the shots. I need to protect my friend.

She doesn’t question me and we both move fast. In minutes, we’re back in the longhouse. Yisella snatches two large root baskets and fills them with all the dried food she can find. Then she’s at the loom, carefully removing the warp threads from the bars. The half-finished blanket falls, limp, into her arms. She folds it carefully around her mother’s spindle whorl and places them both in the bottom of the largest basket. She piles food on top to hide her treasures.

She places a second blanket in another basket, along with dried plants wrapped in a thin piece of tree bark. I throw my hoodie over Poos as he sleeps curled up in his usual basket. Grabbing the basket and my backpack, I give Yisella a look that says, “Hurry!” With one last quick check, she is satisfied that we have everything we need.

We stay in the woods bordering Tl’ulpalus and wait, as still as mice, hidden behind a thicket of salal. And there it is. The big ship is right in the bay, its sails now flapping listlessly against the masts. The wooden stern creaks heavily, pitching first one way and then the other. There are many people on deck, maybe even a hundred, and they’re all talking excitedly. I can hear women’s voices too. The flickering light from the boat spills onto the water, illuminating the sea and casting an eerie glow. It looks like a pirate ship, the way it creaks and lists over as the passengers gather on the starboard side to survey their surroundings.

I take in the shape of the ship now, with its tall, straight steam funnel between two imposing masts at either end. A horizontal line of portholes dots the wooden hull, a few of them glowing, and two smaller wooden vessels hang from one side. We see a group of men wrestling with something, and when they shout to more men at the other end of the ship, I know that they’ve dropped anchor.

The
HMS
Hecate
. Here in the bay, directly in front of Yisella’s village. I may be witnessing this historical event but all I really care about right now is Yisella. She was totally right. She sensed that they were coming the night before. She said that things were about to change and I doubted her. Why didn’t I believe her? Now I feel so bad.

But we can’t leave Tl’ulpalus yet. Not without knowing what the people from the boat will do next. Will they stay or will they move upriver to another village? I don’t remember any details like that in my social studies text. We bravely inch our way closer to where we have a clearer view, keeping cover under the arbutus and willow shrubs nearby.

It seems like we are waiting forever, and after a while the night turns to dawn and the lights go out on the ship. A small boat ferries a group ashore, women and children among them, and they wander through Yisella’s village with their arms linked, chatting and pointing as though they are a group of sightseeing tourists! They stop to pick up items off the ground, and marvel at the carved welcoming figures that face out to sea. Two of the children imitate the carved gesture, holding their arms out straight before them, and then laugh as they chase each other around the poles. A woman wearing a long, white cotton dress trimmed with lace, speaks to a bearded man in a tweed coat, “My, but it’s quiet.” She reties the mauve ribbon attached to her bonnet, which seems entirely out of place on this wild beach.

“Well, well, it’s just as they predicted,” the man replies, checking a watch on the end of a gold chain that leads to the pocket of his brown waistcoat. He snaps the watch shut. “They’ve all gone to the mainland. I’m told that the island villages are empty most of the time during the summer.”

“But how odd! They’ve just left all their things behind.”

“Well, Eleanor, have a look around. I don’t see why you shouldn’t take what you like. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever find curios like these anywhere else.” The man leans over to inspect a partially carved pole that is lying on the ground. It’s the pole that the old man, the naked man, was carving when Yisella first brought me here.

“Fascinating,” the man says, leaning over and adjusting his eyeglass, “absolutely fascinating.”

The woman returns from one of the longhouses with several cedar baskets in her arms, and joins the man waiting for her beside the tallest welcoming figure. He casts a glance up at the carved bear sitting proudly at the top of the pole, its paws curled forward in a crouch-like gesture.

“Incredible in a sense, isn’t it, my dear?” he says to the woman, who now brushes the front of her dress with a white-gloved hand.

“I beg your pardon? You mean these wooden monsters?” she sneers. She takes a step backwards, as if she’s worried that the bear is going to spring to life and pounce on her. There’s a part of me that wishes it would.

“But, they’re so primitive, so uncivilized!” The woman puts her hands on her waist and does a complete turn as she takes in her surroundings. “I’ve heard that they run around without any clothes on. Women and children as well! Dancing to drums and worshipping the strangest things! Can you imagine?”

“Ah, Eleanor,” chuckles the man, stroking his full beard. “Look at you. It’s the perfect place for you to do God’s work when the villagers return. We’ll have a place for them to live, farther away of course, and you and the other ladies can work alongside them. You can teach them how to be civilized, and teach them about Christianity. But Eleanor, I do hope you know what you’re in for. I’ve heard some very colourful stories from men who have travelled into Nootka territory farther north on the island. These savages might not be the most cooperative bunch. And the Cowichan? Well, they’re notorious warriors!”

“Oh my!” The woman says, flapping her hand in front of her face. They laugh together, call for their children, and then start back for the beach where most of the others and a couple of the sailors from the ship are gathered, waiting by the boat.

Moments later Jack appears, restless, just feet away, his gaze fixed on the spot where we hide.

Yisella looks at me with her dark eyes, which now seem almost as black as Nutsa’s. She does not understand the settlers’ conversation but I’m able to tell her what happened. I try to explain what the Englishman and his wife were discussing.

“What do they mean when they say ‘we’ll have a place for them to live’? This is the place where we live! This is where we’ve always lived.”

“I know, Yisella,” I reply. I don’t want to tell her everything that I learned from my history text: how things end up for her people, the challenges they will have to face. Then I see how large the crowd of people has become on the beach.

“Yisella,” I say quietly to my friend. “I think we need to leave.”