Points of Departure (12 page)

“No,” he says, just as stubborn as he was as a youth. “The bones predicted success.”

“Success in the hunt,” I say. “But what are you hunting for?”

He stands, still a tall man, but his shoulders
droop. “If you turn back, Sam, I’ll go on alone.”

“Your daughter—” I begin, wanting to remind him of her danger.

But Kirsten interrupts. “Not alone,” she says.

He smiles at her as he turns away, a flash of teeth that makes him look almost young again. Kirsten watches him walk to the shelter and duck inside. “I can take care of myself,” she says to me softly. “I fear for my father.”

“You do
not know how great your danger is,” I say. “The spirit will take your body and leave you with nothing.”

“I am different from your people. Maybe the spirit will not hurt me,” she says. Her eyes are bright, as if with fever, and she does not see the spirit that prowls just outside the circle of light cast by the fire. I think for a moment that her eyes start to follow it, but she looks away.

She fears to claim her power. “You could go back, Sam,” she says.

I shake my head. “Marshall is my blood brother. I will stay by him.”

She sits without speaking, watching the flames while the moon rises. “Let me roll the bones,” she says when the moon is near the peak of its journey.

“You may not like the answer,” I say, but she holds out her hand and I give her the bones.

I chant as she rolls
the bones. The bones gleam white in the moonlight: three white sides up—success. The she-bear chuckles and shakes her heavy head in the darkness.

Kirsten does not hear. She is studying the bones that lie in the dust. “Success in the hunt,” she says. “Now if only I knew what it is I am hunting.” She gives me the bones, hesitating as she places them in my hand. “Will you roll the bones, Sam’?”

I shake my head. “No. I do not hunt anymore. I do not seek anything.”

The next morning, the morning that we hunt the bear, I awaken at dawn. Kirsten is awake. She stands by the burned-out fire and I watch her. She stares at the slope of the mountain above us, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Beside her, unnoticed, stands the she-bear.

The spirit vanishes when I approach. I touch Kirsten’s
shoulder, but she does not look at me. Watching her set face, I remember a long-ago dawn when Marshall and I gathered bear brush to burn at the entrance to a she-bear’s cave. Beneath his bravado, Marshall had been afraid.

I lift the thong on which the bear claws hang from around my neck and place it around Kirsten’s neck. I say, “She cannot touch you now. You are safe.”

She raises a hand and
runs a finger along the curving length of one claw. Her expression is a strange mixture of fear and anticipation, relief and a kind of regret. “She can’t touch me, but what about you?”

“I have hunted the bear before without protection. She does not want me.”

“My father—” she begins.

I interrupt. “Your father will not be able to keep you safe from something he does not believe in.”

She falls
silent for a moment, then says, “I’m afraid for you and for my father.”

“We will take care of ourselves,” I say, and she raises her hand again to touch the bear claw, feeling the sharp tip. Together we gather the bear brush for the fire.

“What did my father find here when he hunted the bear with you?” she asks:

“He found the power of the young warrior. He faced death and found strength in it.”

“I wonder what I will find,” she mutters.

At breakfast, Marshall is quiet. If he notices the bear claws around his daughter’s neck, he does not comment.

He checks his rifle once, twice, three times, and tests the edge of his spearhead.

I carry the bundle of bear brush as we climb the granite slope of the mountain, following a path that twists around boulders and through brush. I will light
a fire to drive the bear from the cave, and I will stand on one side of the ledge in front of the cave. Marshall will stand—rifle and spear ready—at the other side of the ledge. Kirsten will wait on a ledge above the cave, a rifle in hand.

I follow Marshall along the narrow path to the cave. The ledge in front of the cave mouth is not much larger than the floor of my hut. The ledge ends in a
sheer drop; jagged rocks lie below. The wind that swirls in and out of the cave carries the scent of bear and rotting meat.

I build the fire quietly. As I light it, I hear the sound of movement within the cave. I run to my spot, waving to Marshall to tell him: “She is coming,” and I whirl to face the entrance, holding my spear ready, for I hear the bear behind me.

As she charges, I dodge to
one side, ducking a halfhearted swing of her paw, made as she is turning toward Marshall. He is shouting at the beast. The animal is full-grown, almost the size of the bear spirit. Even on all fours, she towers over Marshall. Roaring, the she-bear rises on her hind legs.

The wind changes and the pungent smoke of the bear brush fire surrounds us.

There is smoke and the roaring of a bear.

There
is smoke, there is shouting, there is confusion, there is a gray mist through which I start to step to go to the aid of my blood brother.

But the mist becomes solid. The she-bear spirit stands before me, blocking my path. She swats at me with a paw, and I duck back; but I am on the edge of the cliff, and there is nowhere to run. She grins at me as she rears back on her hind legs.

“Sam!” I hear
a shout from above. The spirit looks up and the bear claws that Kirsten throws rattle against the stone beside me. Even before I snatch them up, the spirit is gone. I turn and see the girl-woman on the ledge above me, facing a shadow that looms far over her.

Marshall shouts and I look to him. The bear has him.

He is on the edge of the cliff. His rifle lies several feet away and he holds only
his spear. As the bear swings a paw at him, he thrusts with the spear, missing but ducking away from the bear’s sweeping blow. He smiles as he did when he was young—old eyes burning with the flame of a warrior. Joyous. The wrinkles are gone from his cheeks, his eyes are clear. I start toward him, then hesitate in the face of his smile.

From the ledge above, I hear Kirsten’s voice. She calls to
me in the Old Tongue, in a voice of power that stops me. She grins down at me. I can see both in her eyes: woman and bear. Large spirit. Sometimes vindictive, sometimes generous, sometimes angry, sometimes compassionate.

I look to Marshall. Kirsten could shoot now. The she-bear within her could turn the bear away from her father.

Marshall shouts curses at the animal and thrusts again with the
spear. He wears the face of a man meeting death as he wants to meet it. The bear towers above him, hesitating.

Sometimes compassionate.

The bear’s paw sweeps down in a mighty blow that catches Marshall and tumbles him off the cliff. Even as he falls and the bear turns away, Kirsten is scrambling down from her ledge, almost falling herself, stumbling, almost running. She rushes down the slide
of loose rock to the base of the cliff, slipping with the shifting talus, almost falling, catching herself—clumsy, quick, powerful, graceful woman-girl-bear-woman. I follow more slowly, picking my way down the slope.

Kirsten stands over her father’s body, fists clenched. A thin trickle of blood flows from a scrape on her arm where she fell against a boulder. She looks up when I approach and I
see the wild flicker in her eyes: woman-bear-girl-bear.

“I could have stopped the bear,” her voice stammers softly. “I met the spirit and she … and I … we …” She growled in the Old Tongue the word for merging, for union, for when two streams join to form a river. The spirit has not overpowered her; they have become one: one woman-bear, one bear-woman. “I knew then that I could stop …” Words catching,
halting, beginning again. “I could have … but it was better that … better, but I could have stopped …” Her eyes fill with tears, but the wild changes—woman-bear-girl-bear—do not stop, and her fists do not relax.

I reach out and touch her shoulder, and the tears spill over. For a moment a fearful child, Marshall’s only daughter, peers from the blue pools where she mourns her father and says, “He’s
dead, Sam. Do you think he wanted to die?” Tears spill, and she kneels by her father’s battered head. I stand with my hand on her shoulder; I understand now why she had been afraid of her power. With the power, she had been able to help her father find what he sought. I understand, but that changes nothing.

We leave the bear claws around his neck, and we leave his rifle and his spear at his side.
We build him a cairn, Kirsten and I, rolling and carrying rocks to surround him, to pile over him, to keep back the animals, and to protect him. I do not know who I will see each time I look at Kirsten: woman, bear, or girl-child.

When we finish, Kirsten stands over the mound of rocks. Her hands are scratched and bruised, but they are relaxed now. “I wonder if he truly wanted what he found here,
Sam.” Her voice is puzzled and wondering. “I wonder if he is happy now.”

We make the journey back to my hut in two days; and as we walk, she becomes at ease with herself and the forest, moving quietly. Her eyes are wise and calm. She tells me I must continue to wear the bear claws around my neck, but I cannot tell whether the woman speaks or the bear.

Perhaps both. She is my friend.

She speaks
the Old Tongue, and the birds and the beasts listen. We dine on fish that she calls to her from the stream edge. She hears the voice of the wind and the rattling complaints of the hones of the earth.

But her quiet eyes betray her greatest strength: she is no longer afraid of her power. I do not know what she will do when she leaves my valley. What strange fishes will she call forth in the Outside?
Will she ask the earth to tremble and the winds to blow a hurricane gale? Will she fill the cities with beasts? Or will she watch the humans and laugh: large, compassionate, sometimes generous, sometimes vindictive.

I do not know what the shaman-woman-bear-girl-child will do.

At my hut, she turns toward the Outside. When she lifts her pack I touch her shoulder and say, “Fortune go with you,
Kirsten.”

She smiles tentatively. It is a small smile, but it carries hints of great wickedness, hints of great joy and great sorrow.

“Did I do right, Sam?” she asks.

“You did what you had to do,” I say. “You did well.”

“Can I come back to visit, Sam?” she asks and I can see the girl-child peering from her eyes.

“Come back whenever you wish, my friend,” I say, and lift my hand in farewell.

She walks toward the Outside, casting a shadow larger than herself.

G
REGORIO IS A
hammock vendor in the ancient Mayan city of T’hoo, known to the Mexicans as Merida. He is a good salesman—el mejor, the best salesman of hammocks.

He works in Parque Hidalgo and the Zocalo, T’hoo’s main square, hailing tourists as they pass, calling in English, “Hey, you want to buy a hammock?”

Gregorio is short—only about five feet tall—but
he is strong. His hands are strong and the nails are rimmed with purple from the plant dyes that he uses to tint the hammocks. Two of his front teeth are rimmed with gold.

He is, most of the time, a good man. He was married once, and he has two little daughters who live far away in the village of Pixoy, near the city of Valladolid, on the other side of the Yucatan peninsula. Gregorio’s wife threw
him out because he drank too much and slept with other women. When she married another man, Gregorio left his village and traveled to Merida. He sold hammocks and lived in the nearby village of Tixkokob. Once, he went back to his village to visit his daughters, but they looked at him as if he were a stranger and they called the other man Papa. He did not go back to visit again.

Gregorio was sad
when his wife threw him out, and he misses his village and his daughters, but he knows that drinking and sleeping with women does not make him a bad man. He has stopped drinking so much, but he has not stopped sleeping with women. He believes in moderation in virtue as well as vice.

Gregorio met the very thin woman in the sidewalk cafe beside the Parque Hidalgo. She was watching him bargain with
an American couple: The bearded man in the Hawaiian shirt had been determined to get a good deal, and the bargaining took about an hour. Gregorio won, though the tourist never knew it; the final price was slightly higher than Gregorio’s lowest, though lower than he would usually drop for a tourist. The gringo was pleased and Gregorio was pleased.

Gregorio noticed the woman when he was tying up
his bundle of hammocks. She was a thin woman with pale blond hair cropped close to her head and small breasts and long thin legs that she had stretched underneath the table.

She held a notebook on her lap and a pen in one hand.

She wore white pants and a white shirt and dark glasses that hid her eyes.

“Hey, you want to buy a hammock?”

She shook her head slightly. “No,
gracias
.”

“
Porque no?
Why not? You ever try sleeping in a hammock?”

“No.” She was watching him, but he did not know what was going on behind the dark glasses. There was something strange about her face. The eyebrows, the cheekbones, the mouth—all looked fine. But there was something strange about the way that they were put together.

Gregorio set down his bundle of hammocks and looked around. It was late in the morning
on a sunny Sunday.

Chances were that most tourists were out visiting Uxmal or some other ancient site. He pulled out a chair. “Okay if I rest here a while?”

She shrugged again, setting her notebook on the table.

Her fingers, like her legs, were long and thin. Gregorio noticed that she wore no rings. And even though there was something strange about her face, she was a good-looking woman.

He whistled for the waiter and ordered
cafe con leche
, coffee with milk. When it came, he poured six teaspoons of sugar into the cup and sat back in the chair. “Where are you from?”