Points of Departure: Stories

by Pat Murphy

  “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.”

  “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.r />
  “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.