When Boy was captured, her fate was slavery. She was put to work in a silver mine, digging all day long. She watched and learned—all sorts of things, like how to tell the time and speak English. One day her brother was shot for refusing to obey a petty order. The next day, seizing her chance, Boy escaped back to her tribe.
Though she didn’t tell me this, I guessed that her bravery won admirers and that she grew to have a special status among the tribe. There had been an occasion when she narrowly avoided being struck by a bolt of lightning. Also, it must have been useful to them to have someone who knew the ways of the outside world, who could keep watch on their enemies, the Mexicans and the White Eyes or Americans.
Velvet night had fallen over the mountain by now. A mantle of stars and the nearly full moon hung low. The fire had been banked up and sent a wash of orange flaring over the camp. Boy had disappeared somewhere. I found myself alone with Waldo in the flickering firelight. Well, nearly alone. Rachel and the others were busy talking and not paying too much attention to us.
“I’m sorry,” he said to me, very low.
“For what?”
He didn’t reply, letting the silence hang between us.
“What are you sorry for, Waldo?”
“You know.”
I gave him a sidelong glance. He looked so miserable I nearly relented. Steeling myself to be hard, I said,
“You tell me.”
“Why do you have to be such a beast, Kit?”
“Me … a beast?”
“You win. I’ve been horrible. Ghastly. Mean to you. There. Satisfied?”
“I just don’t understand what I’ve done. I mean, why? I’d been in a coma for months. What could I have done wrong?”
He made a sound between a snort and a groan. “You still don’t know, do you?”
“No. I don’t.”
“You’ve put me through so much—I didn’t think I could stand—”
I didn’t hear what he couldn’t stand about me, because at that moment a chant began by the flickering fire. Masked men wearing swaying headdresses appeared, their bare chests daubed with paint. They began dancing around the flames, their legs pounding round and round in an increasing frenzy. While they danced, they sang. Not a song exactly, there were no words, but it was haunting nonetheless.
“Mountain spirits,” said Boy, who had reappeared by my side. “The Gan dance.”
I think I recognized some of the boys who had been playing earlier, but I may have been mistaken because there was no way to make out features under the black masks. I realized that the rest of the tribe had gathered while I’d talked to Waldo. I had the sensation of pairs of eyes watching me, of murmured voices.
The shaman appeared at the head of three other medicine men, whose bodies were daubed with greenish blue. Each of the men had a yellow snake crawling up one arm to the shoulder. One had a yellow bear painted on his bare chest, another a flash of lightning. They wore kilts and moccasins and followed the shaman with bowed heads.
The shaman himself was splendid in a buckskin cloak and a medicine hat ornamented with eagle feathers and turquoise stones. From his seamed face, old eyes looked out, sought and enfolded me. When I looked at him, I felt as if I was falling into the deep sea.
The medicine man beat on a drum, leading the dancers, drawing us back to ancient times, the dawn of man’s history: the wild flames raging over dark Apache eyes, the sweet smell of the juniper smoke, the ragged cries, the swaying figures with their eerie headdresses recalling monsters and devils, and around us the dark night, the coyotes, wolves, lynx and bear—the night hunters kept at bay by man’s fires.
“Stand up!” Boy hissed in my ear, making me start.
I did as I was told, and she pushed Baker and me toward the medicine man. Baker stumbled, terrified. I caught him, feeling a surge of strength. My earlier wild imaginings had disappeared, dissolved in the strangeness all around us.
The medicine man began to mumble. His white hair gleamed in the moonlight as he puffed tobacco smoke out of a long pipe, which Boy wafted toward us. He was smoking strong-smelling herbs, which made me cough. But still Boy sent the smoke in our direction, scowling at our attempts to avoid it. When the shaman had smoked the whole pipe, Boy turned to us.
“Far-Seeing Man says that you are witched. Not by an Apache. By a Navajo medicine man. A skinwalker, a bad medicine man.”
I knew that the Navajos were another tribe of Indians who lived in these parts, but I didn’t understand what Boy was talking about.
“These Navajo practice bad magic. Sometimes they are friend, sometimes our enemy.” Boy continued: “The shaman, he say he has found bad medicine on you. You must find this thing and burn it.”
“Bad medicine? What does that mean?” Waldo asked.
“It means a curse. Someone has put a curse on your friend,” Boy said.
“It is common among these tribes to use fetishes, small objects with bad powers, to bring ill luck,” Aunt Hilda explained, but I wasn’t listening to her. I knew we were cursed—the snake and the strange feeling in my head were proof of it. But I also understood the curse was older than these people—no Navajo medicine man was behind it.
“We must find the curse and pull it out,” Boy announced. “This is important, Far-Seeing Man say, not just for you but for our tribe.”
Mr. Baker and I looked at each other. We had been stripped clean; each of us now wore nothing but Apache clothes. From what Boy said, the curse was a thing, an object like a totem doll that could be burned. How could we have been cursed by an object when at this time we had not a thing to our names?
“We have nothing,” Mr. Baker said. “You took our clothes—and everything the robber left us.”
It took some time, but Boy sent a woman to fetch our clothes. She came scurrying back with an armful of stuff: Mr. Baker’s pale cream suit, my sensible traveling blouse and skirt and both our hats as well as two pairs of boots. Mr. Baker’s black boots, dusty now. My own stout brogues. Boy shook them out—there was clearly nothing there. No cursed object, no horrible twisted doll.
The shaman now came up to us slowly. He ignored the clothes, but picked up my left boot. It was of tan leather, with a small heel, pretty stitching and a rounded toe. A nice, comfortable brogue. Then he picked up Mr. Baker’s right boot, which looked to be of the softest, creamiest leather. He said something to Boy.
“The curse is here.” Boy indicated the boots the shaman held.
“No!” I shouted, because a rock had appeared in Boy’s hand, like the one the women used to pound their flour. Now my brogue was in Boy’s hand. She began to smash the heel of my shoe with the rock.
“I need that,” I said. “I don’t have any other shoes now.”
Too late. The bottom of the heel came off just before it split, revealing a small hollow. With a smile of triumph Boy picked something out of the heel. It was a fetish, gleaming white. No bigger than a bird’s egg. She held it out to me and I took it with a trembling hand.
It was a tiny bird skull, spliced by a minute arrow ornamented with scraps of eagle feather. Running down the sides were scarlet threads, looking uncannily like tiny trickles of blood. Worst of all, gazing at the horrible thing I realized that a few hairs were glued to the skull.
My hairs.
Mr. Baker had a similar object in his right boot. The look on his face, as he held it by the tips of his fingers, was sickening. He was terrified of this thing.
The medicine man was keening another of his wild songs as the totems were picked out of our unresisting hands and thrown into the fire.
“The curse must burn,” Boy said.
The tiny fetishes crackled for a few minutes and then quickly burned down to ashes. Perhaps it was this wild setting, this camp of Apaches far from civilization, that made me feel so strange. But as the fetishes crumbled to dust I felt a great burden lifting from me. My head no longer felt leaden, prickling with something else crawling around. No longer was I a listless body, driv
en on by some remaining spark of a person called Kit Salter.
We dismiss this Apache medicine as primitive, but I felt its power that night. I was at peace with the night. With bird, beast and the rest of the silent, waiting natural world. Whatever Far-Seeing Man had done to me was more effective than the powders and potions I had taken since I had come out of my coma. Much better than that mud bath I had so enjoyed.
I stood up and stretched. My heart sang with the new freedom. There was no longer a sick creature crawling in my head. My waking hours would no longer be filled with the sense of something trying to invade me, to fill my thoughts and take what it wanted.
KIT SALTER WAS BACK.
The shaman said something, looking at us, his filmy eyes full of sadness. Boy listened, then translated.
“The curse burns. You are free. You will stand tall. Tomorrow you can leave this place.”
Chapter Eighteen
As the shaman had decided that I was not a witch I was allowed to sleep in the wickiup with Aunt Hilda and Rachel. Boy announced she too would share our shelter, though I saw that she drew shocked glances from some of the other Apache women. She took no notice. I guessed that Boy usually got her own way.
“I am interested in you, Kit Salter,” she said, as we all curled up under the animal skins. The moon hung just above the firepit in the center of the wickiup, its silver light streaming through the hole in the ceiling. “You are an unusual White Eyes.”
“Thank you,” I said, “if it’s a compliment.”
Boy propped herself up on her elbow to look at me. She had the typical Apache smell, of grease and animal hides. Strong but not unpleasant when you got used to it.
“What is this? Compliment?”
“It means a good thing. If you’re being kind about me.”
“It is neither kind nor unkind. It just is.” She turned to Rachel. “You, Rachel, are not different, I think. You will get married and have many children. Not Kit.”
“Kit will get married,” Rachel said. “She’ll probably get married before me.”
“No, I won’t,” I said, blushing hotly.
“Don’t want to be an old maid like me,” Aunt Hilda put in. “Better snaffle up the first fellow that comes along.”
“Can you all stop talking about me and marriage? It’s really embarrassing. I don’t want to get married and—”
“What about Waldo?” Aunt Hilda interrupted. “He’s a pretty good catch. Better bag him before someone else comes along and takes his fancy.”
“Stop it!” I said. “Would you all just leave me alone?”
Boy was sitting bolt upright, regarding us with amusement. Her eyes twinkled. “Who is Waldo? Ah yes, the yellow-hair brave. Has he come to your wickiup with a horse?”
“What are you talking about?”
“In my people, when a boy wants to marry a girl he talks to her parents. If they agree, he takes a horse to her wickiup. If she feeds the horse, it means she consents. Has the yellow-hair brought his horse to you?”
“It doesn’t happen like that among us,” I said stiffly, while Aunt Hilda and Rachel guffawed. But Boy’s eyes were on me, unsmiling. She was deadly serious.
“I look at you, Kit, and I do not think this is your path. You are a warrior, like me. This is why I am your friend.”
“You must be quite unusual among the Apaches.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I fight. By fighting and by wisdom I get much honor. But it has been hard. When my brother was killed, I knew this was the path I must take. You too, I think, have a hard road. You have the signs of being set apart. I can see great struggle for you and maybe great wisdom. Marriage is not—”
“I feel very sleepy,” I said, interrupting her, because I could guess what she was saying. She seemed convinced that a normal life of marriage wasn’t for me. Maybe she was right, but I was far too young to think about such things. Why did everyone talk such nonsense? Anyway, what did this wild girl know about me? “Do you think we could all go to sleep, please?”
So we settled down for the night. I think the others were soon fast asleep, but I stayed awake thinking over the events of the past days. The shaman with his mystical powers. The chilling fetishes in our shoes. Who had put them there?
Well, that at least I could answer. Cecil Baker. But what purpose the ugly little fetishes served I did not know. Witchcraft, the shaman had said. What would a man born in nineteenth-century England, brought up in the modern world, know about witchcraft? The whole thing was absurd, with its aura of Stone Age magic, a belief in demons and spirits that had surely vanished with the coming of the railways, the flushing WC and gas lighting.
Thinking such thoughts, I drifted off to sleep with the muffled hush of the night camp in my ears. Aunt Hilda’s snoring, Boy’s soft breathing. Behind it all the murmur of the wind through the pinyon pines and the shush of prowling night creatures. It was very peaceful and I felt safe. Which was strange when you consider I was still a prisoner of the Apaches. Somehow I knew that Boy would never harm me, if only because she seemed convinced that I was her White Eyes twin!
I woke with a jerk. My dreams had been full of dancers swaying above me with the faces of dogs and pigs. I think I’d been asleep several hours as my limbs felt stiff and my mouth tasted sour. By the weak moonlight I could see the others were still sleeping.
Something was snuffling at the door, trying to get in past the deerskin that covered it.
I rose quietly, thinking it was most likely some small animal I could shoo away. I put on the long moccasins that Boy had given me in place of my boots. I was just removing the hide from the hole in the wickiup that served as a door when Boy awoke, bleary-eyed.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s something out there. I’m just going to check that an animal isn’t hurt.”
“NO, KIT. COME BACK HERE!”
Too late. I was already out of the wickiup. I closed the flap of skin and looked around me. The mountain wind was high, and it was chilly without the blazing fire to keep us warm. A wash of rainclouds hung low over the mountains, which I knew would please the Apaches, who longed for the rains.
The moon bathed the camp in enough light to see it was quiet. I saw no humans moving around, or animals. Just the hairy domes of the Apache homes, with their inhabitants asleep inside. But I had definitely heard something. Snuffling breath around the wickiups, with something hard scratching the earth.
I bent down and could see the faint tracks of some creature. Why had it been so determined to get into our tent? I decided to follow it and moved toward the outskirts of the camp. I heard Boy moving behind me, calling softly out to me from the wickiup.
“Where are you going? Come back. Come back.”
There were several large thorny bushes dotted around the edge of the camp, shading into the ever-present pinyon pines. Walking toward them, I noticed a movement in the shadows and heard the snapping of twigs.
Calling softly, I moved toward the bush. In a flash, a dark shape jumped out of the bush and dashed away. It seemed strangely furtive, keeping out of the patches of moonlight, lurking in the shadows. It was a big animal, and for a moment I was scared and thought I would go back to the wickiup. But on second thoughts it was moving so clumsily I was sure it was injured.
An injured horse—or deer. By its running shape I could tell it was on four legs and so not a bear.
Still calling, I moved stealthily toward the other clump of bushes in which it had taken shelter. Poor thing, it was so clumsy.
I gained on the bushes and then suddenly the thing charged out, running straight for me. At the last minute it veered off in another direction into another bush. At the edge of it, it turned its head with a jerky movement, and stopped and looked at me.
I am an English girl. I have been brought up in Oxford, taught by a succession of governesses. Though I have traveled a lot, I am not used to life in the wilds. But even I knew something was seriously wrong with this deer. It did not run
as a normal four-legged creature would, its gait elegant and loping. The movement of one living thing is different from another; even the city dweller would not mistake a running horse for a running deer, or a flying duck for a swallow.
But this deer ran in a very odd manner, halfway, indeed, between a horse and a human. In the bright patch of moonlight I could see it held its head up straight, its neck stretched right out. A huge pair of antlers quivered above its head. Its eyes stared at me, the pupils flaring in yellowish pools. Strange to say, the eyes were dull. This will sound fanciful, but it was looking at me with malice.
The deer hated me, Kit Salter.
Boy was breathing hard behind me.
“What an odd deer,” I said.
“That’s no deer.”
“Look at its antlers.”
Roughly, from behind, Boy pushed me aside. “Stand back.”
As I turned, she raised her shotgun and fired. The bullet whizzed past me, smacking bang into the flank of the deer.
“NO!” I screamed.
Boy shot again. And again. The bangs reverberating through the camp.
“Stop it!” I shouted. I ran toward the deer as fast as I could, Boy yelling at me. Fury coursed through me. That animal had done nothing to Boy and she had callously shot it. The deer looked at me, one last long glare through eyes that did not shine, then bounded clumsily off.
I saw it being shot. I saw at least two bullets burying themselves in its flank. Yet it had sped off, as if nothing had happened.
All around, people were emerging from their wickiups, roused by the bangs. I had a glimpse of Waldo, and Mr. Baker, who had fallen down on the ground and was rolling over and over. Then I fell down as well, the world turning black.
When I woke up, the first thing I saw was the ground swishing under me from side to side. I was skimming over it, like a gliding bird. I looked up and saw a pink cheek and a lock of blond hair.
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