Points of Departure (11 page)

“We can be foolish,” I say.

“We must hunt.” There is an undercurrent of fear in his voice. “If you don’t hunt with me, I’ll hunt alone.”

I frown, but I do not ask why—the mood that is on him leaves no room for argument. “The moon’s full tonight,” he says. “We can roll the bones and let the spirits decide.”

I know that Marshall does not believe in the spirits;
he wears the bear claws around his neck as a courtesy to me.

He believes in what he calls the laws of probability—and I know that he hopes that the laws will bend in his favor tonight.

“We will roll the bones,” I agree, admitting defeat. The spirits will decide and I fear I know what their decision will be.

At dusk, I leave the hut to hunt for our dinner. I take Kirsten with me.

The insects
in the grass call to each other with shrill cries as I follow the stream around the edge of the meadow. We walk in silence except for the sound of Kirsten’s pant legs brushing against the tall grass.

When she speaks, her voice carries the power that I can see in her eyes. “Why don’t you ever leave this valley, Sam?” she asks.

I have not left the Preserve since the decision of the World Court
granted me the land. “There is nothing for me outside,” I say. “I live here now.”

“Do you wish you could go back to your old world?” she asks.

“The World Court would not allow it. They fear the consequences of sending me back,” I say. I have wondered what would have happened if I had returned to my tribe. How would I have disturbed the flow of time in my world?

“But do you want to go back?”
she asks again.

I consider her question, remembering the day I arrived in the Preserve. I was a confused youth, brought into a world I did not understand by rich men who were playing with a new toy. I learned to live without the comfort and strength of my tribe. I learned to negotiate with the spirits with no shaman to aid me. I learned my own power.

“I changed by coming to this world,” I say.
I shrug and repeat, “I live here now. This valley is enough for me. I am old.”

She hesitates, then says, “My father is afraid he is getting old, Sam. That’s why he must hunt again.”

“He is old,” I say. “I am old.” I do not understand these people. Though Marshall and I are blood brothers, I do not understand him.

She shrugs. “It is different for him. He must go hunting again.” She is tense,
but I cannot tell the source of her fear.

As we walk close by the stream, a mist rises from the water. The mist solidifies and the great she-bear paces by Kirsten’s side. The spirit nuzzles Kirsten’s hair and snuffles on her neck, but the woman walks on, unaware of the beast that looms over her. I stop, watching the spirit and the woman. Though Kirsten has the eyes of a shaman, she does not see.
Her power is unfocused.

In the Old Tongue, the she-bear growls that she grants us permission to hunt the cave bear. I read trickery and deception in her eyes; she is a capricious spirit: sometimes generous, sometimes vindictive, but always dangerous.

Kirsten frowns back at me, not knowing why I have stopped.

“Do you promise success in the hunt?” I ask the spirit in the Old Tongue.

“What?”
Kirsten asks. “Who are you talking to?”

The spirit dissolves into mist without answering my question, and Kirsten repeats, “Who are you talking to?”

“I saw a spirit following you,” I say. “You did not see her?”

She shakes her head, looking as doubtful as her father had when I had first told him that I must ask the spirits for permission to hunt. “Your father does not see the spirits,” I tell
Kirsten. “He does not believe in them. But you have the eyes of a shaman. You do not know your own power.”

“A magic worker?” she says. “No, not me.” She looks around her, surveying the grass and the stream. “I don’t see any spirit.”

“She is gone,” I say.

“I didn’t see anything,” she insists, and follows me as I walk beside the stream. After a moment she asks, “What kind of spirit was it?”

I motion her to silence, because I have spotted a herd of wild swine in the distance. They raise their heads as we stalk them, but they are confident that we are too far away to do them harm. In the Old Tongue I call to them, asking one of them to die. An aged boar shakes his head and steps toward us. Muttering an apology to the spirits for the use of the rifle, I lift the weapon and kill him with
a single shot. The rest of the herd scatters.

Kirsten follows me to the kill. “What did you callout before you fired?” she asks.

“I asked which beast wanted to die.” Kneeling by the boar’s body, I untie the obsidian knife from the thong at my side. The boar’s tusks are strong; his shoulders are broad. His spirit could aid me in the coming hunt. I slit his throat and his spirit slips out and
stares at me with ferocious eyes. The spirit stamps its feet in the grass and nuzzles its dead body.

“Can you see the boar’s spirit there in the grass?” I ask Kirsten.

She glances at me, follows my eyes, and shakes her head. “All I see is grass. If my father doesn’t see your spirits, why do you think I can?”

The spirit glares at me and I call to it in the Old Tongue. It charges but I am ready.
The battle is silent; the spirit roars within me and my spirit roars with it. It stamps its feet, but I surround it, holding it close as a mother holds a child.

I open my eyes and Kirsten is standing before me. She looks puzzled, worried, and she asks hesitantly, “What were you doing?”

“I have taken the spirit of the boar. When you kill an animal, you must take his spirit. Or his spirit will
take yours. Your father does not understand that.” I stop, still clutching the obsidian knife, my hand sticky with blood.

When Marshall killed the she-bear so many years ago, he should have taken the animal’s spirit. If he had she would not be stalking us now.

“You really believe that?” she asks, and her voice is young.

I shrug. “The spirits are all around us. How could I not believe?” I shoulder
the carcass and we start back to the hut in silence.

“What kind of spirit was following me?” she asks again.

“A she-bear,” I answer. “She says you are hers.”

When we are a short distance from the hut, she speaks again. “Don’t tell my father about this, all right?”

“It would not matter,” I say. “Your father does not believe.”

When we reach the hut, I help Marshall skin and bleed the boar while
Kirsten sets up the shelter that they brought with them. Marshall talks as he works about his life in the Outside. Though he does not say so, I know that he has not been happy during the past few years. “Kirsten and I are finally trying to get to know each other,” he says.

“Her mother and I were divorced years ago. I never visited them much when she was a kid: But she’s my only child.”

I watch
Kirsten setting up the shelter and beside her, the she-bear spirit walks. “Do you see the gray shadow beside your daughter?” I ask him. He frowns, squinting in the direction of his daughter, then shakes his head. “The spirit of the bear that you killed has claimed Kirsten for her own,” I continue. “She is following your daughter.”

“Sam—” he begins, but I interrupt.

“Just because you cannot see
it, do not deny it exists,” I say.

“Hey, look,” he says. He lifts the bear claws from around his neck and holds them in one hand. The she-bear looks toward us with interest. “You said that these would protect me against the spirit. I’ll give them to Kirsten.”

“Put them back on,” I say sharply. The spirit is shambling in our direction. “You need them. Your daughter is strong; she can do without.”
The spirit pauses as Marshall slips the chain back over his head, then turns back. I face Marshall and say, “I will teach your daughter to fight the spirit. She will learn.”

That evening, we eat roast pork and drink the wine that Marshall brought in from the Outside. When Kirsten pours her wine, she spills a few drops on the ground. A gray mist swirls above the damp spot, but no spirit forms.

Marshall is yawning when the moon reaches its zenith. I pull the bones from the pouch at my side and explain to Kirsten that they are knucklebones taken from the first cave bear I killed. The three bones are rubbed smooth on one side and are marked with a notch on the other.

At my command, Marshall smooths the dust on the ground before him, facing toward the moon so that his shadow falls behind
him. As he casts the bones on the ground, I chant softly in the Old Tongue, asking whether the hunt will succeed.

The bones fall with the smooth side up—all three. “The hunt will succeed,” I say. Marshall smiles at me. The flickering light of the fire catches in the wrinkles under his eyes. Though he looks tired, some of the tension has left him.

“We’ll have a long day’s hike tomorrow,” he says.
“We’d better turn in.”

Kirsten remains by the fire. “I’ll join you soon,” she says. “I’m really not tired yet.” The tension returns to Marshall’s face I can see the fear that Kirsten spoke of: he fears old age; he fears the passage of time. But he goes to the shelter alone.

I crouch by the fire and fill my pipe with the tobacco that Marshall brought for me. I puff the sweet smoke thoughtfully.
Smoking is the only human habit I have acquired since I was brought from the past. A pipe is a boon to a man who sits by the fire to contemplate his past and to consider his future.

“Why did you come here?” I ask Kirsten. I need to know more about this girl-woman who does not realize her own power.

“My father asked me to come,” she says. I wait, asking no more. She continues, after a pause,
in a lower voice.

“My father found something here when he was young. I thought—” She breaks off her sentence and shrugs. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”

I nod. She is much like her father was as a youth. But where he was a raw warrior, hers is another sort of power.

“Tell me about the spirit that was following me,” she asks. “Why does it follow?”

“The she-bear follows because you
are powerful but you do not know your strength.”

“I am not powerful,” Kirsten says.

“Why do you back away from your power?” I ask. When she does not speak, I continue, “She will enter you as the spirit of the boar entered me. Unless you recognize your power, you will not be able to fight her.” I blow a puff of smoke from my pipe at the gray mist that swirls beside Kirsten and the bulky shape
of the spirit appears. She grumbles and snuffles, twitching her hairy ears and squinting her tiny eyes to gaze at me across the fire “Look, there,” I say to Kirsten. “The spirit is back.”

Kirsten stares in the’ direction that I am pointing. “I can’t see anything.”

The she-bear interrupts me, growling in the Old Tongue that I must not teach Kirsten: the woman is hers. I growl back, asking her
if she fears a fair battle. In answer, the spirit opens her mouth and rears back to her full height, towering above the fire, twice as tall as a standing man.

From there, she vanishes, fading into mist.

Kirsten still gazes at the spot where I pointed and I say, “She is gone. But she will be back. You must learn to fight her. I will teach you how.” But even as I say the brave words I wonder if
I can teach this woman with a shaman’s eyes to see what she does not want to see.

At dawn, we, begin the three-day journey to the cave of the bear. Marshall is alert at breakfast and Kirsten watches him with concern. “He’s taking stimulants,” she tells me when Marshall is out of earshot. “He can’t keep that up all trip.”

During the morning hours, we hike along the stream through the foothills,
passing herds of bison and swine.

We see a herd of mammoths across the valley and give them a wide berth. Toward afternoon, as we start to climb higher in the grassy hills, Marshall hikes more slowly. His shoulders sag beneath the weight of the pack, and he sweats more than the sun and heat demand. “Are you well, brother?” I ask when we stop to rest and he snaps, “Of course. I’m fine,” then tries
to soften his tone with a smile. “We should worry about the youngest in the group.”

He gestures toward Kirsten, who has been carrying her pack steadily without complaint. She lags behind when we begin hiking again and I know the reason is her father’s weariness, not her own.

We make camp earlier than I would have wished, but I am concerned for Marshall’s health. At dinner, he eats only a little
dried meat, and he goes to his bed while the moon is rising. “My father is burning himself out,” Kirsten says. “He’s relying on drugs to keep going: He’s afraid to slow down.”

I smoke my pipe, savoring the taste of the tobacco, and watch her face. “He says he does not know you well, that he left your mother when you were young. How is it that you know so much of him?”

She laughs, a harsh, abrupt
sound. “I watched him on TV. I read his books. I saw every film he made a dozen times. Of course I know him. He’s the best-loved adventurer around.” She stares into the fire. “People say that I am very much like him. Maybe that’s why I can’t see the spirits that you do.”

“You will see,” I say. In a shadow some distance from the fire, the she-bear laughs. Kirsten does not look up from the flames.
The spirit paces toward her and stands beside her. Kirsten makes no sign that she senses the spirit’s presence. “Can you see the shadow that looms above you?” I ask.

“I see moonlight and firelight,” she says. But she blinks and for a moment, I think that her eyes focus on the spirit.

But she shakes her head in denial. “I can’t fight what I can’t see.”

The next day’s journey is longer and harder.
We are climbing the shoulders of the mountain. Kirsten trails behind her father, intentionally slow, holding back her power and pretending to be weaker than she is. Marshall is pale. When we stop at lunch I see him take a white pill from his pack and wash it down with water from his canteen. My own legs ache from the climb; I too am growing old. But after lunch, Marshall walks with the energy
of a young man.

That night at the campfire, Marshall nods as he stares into the flames. The pill has worn off. “We should not be hunting this late in the year,” I say to him. “We can still turn back.”