The Shaman's Secret

by Natasha Narayan

  “Put me down, Waldo.”

  “No need to shout about it.”

  He hoisted me off his shoulders and plunked me down. I got to my feet, a little unsteadily. All the others were crowding round me, Aunt Hilda, Rachel. I saw Isaac was carrying Cyril Baker slung over his shoulders.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  Isaac shrugged. “He fainted.”

  “Always thought he was a bit potty,” Aunt Hilda said.

  “He fainted at the same instant as you,” Rachel said.

  My eye fell on Boy, who was standing next to Aunt Hilda, her eyes flashing from her copper face.

  “Why did you shoot? That deer meant us no harm.”

  “It was no deer. I have already told you this.”

  I stared at her, absolutely bewildered. “Of course it was a deer. You saw its antlers.”

  “That was not a deer it was a …” and Boy said a word in her language I didn’t understand.

  “A what?”

  “A skinwalker.”

  “A skinwalker?” I had no idea of what she meant, though I had a vague memory of hearing the word before.

  “A skinwalker is a bad medicine man. One who can transform into the shape of any animal. No one knows who the skinwalker is. By day they pretend to be a kind, right-living person. A medicine man who helps all.

  “Then by night they transform into an animal and they go through the country doing evil. As soon as I saw the tracks I knew that was no deer. I knew it was a skinwalker. Now I have proof.”

  “How?”

  “You cannot kill a skinwalker. I put three bullets in its body and not a single drop of blood. This is proof.

  “This skinwalker wishes you harm, Kit. If you had let it in the wickiup, evil would have befallen us all. The skinwalker was entering your mind. When you came near, it had its chance. You and that man—” she waved at the waxy-faced Baker—“the thing that made you both fall down was the skinwalker leaving your soul. The shock of separation made you—how do you say?—made you a little bit crazy.”

  None of this made much sense to me. But something she’d said before struck me.

  “What about the tracks?” I asked. “I can’t understand how you can tell by an animal’s tracks that it is a skinwalker.”

  Boy glanced at me, superiority in her big black eyes. Her plump mouth was curling upward, as if she found my ignorance comical but charming. “Come with me.”

  She led the way back to the wickiup. Waldo, Rachel and Aunt Hilda followed, while Isaac and a crowd of awakened Apaches stayed with the still unconscious Baker. There Boy squatted and showed me the deer prints. I am no tracker, but I could see that they were strange indeed. Rather than following each other as a dog’s or horse’s will do, these deer tracks were at all sorts of odd angles. They were also spread apart, as if the deer had been walking with its legs right open. Walking like a man would do.

  That was it. If anything, the tracks looked like they’d been made by a man walking, wearing deer-hoof shoes.

  “The skinwalker’s footprints,” said Boy.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When I woke up the next morning, the eerie happenings of the night before seemed a bad dream. No trace remained of the chase through the bushes except a few broken twigs. Had that nocturnal ramble been a fairytale? Some witchery that had sneaked into my mind? With the sun blazing hot above us, normality had returned.

  We had a somber breakfast around the still-smoking juniper-wood fire. We ate hash made from mescal, the paste I had seen the women grinding, with the juicy flesh of a cactus and ripe berries. I enjoyed the unusual meal, overhung as it was with the scent of smoke and earth. Somehow food always tastes better out in the wild.

  Food, though, was the last thing on any of our minds. Cyril Baker had not recovered from his faint. I went to see him in the wickiup he shared with Waldo and Isaac, where he lay under a pile of animal skins. He looked pale. Of course he always looked pale; even at the best of times the man was a living ghost. But now there was a bluish tinge to his pallor. It was ghastly to look at him, and to my shame I felt a desperate need to get away. I restrained myself and put a hand on the white arm that rested on the skins.

  “Cyril,” I said. His arm was cold and damp. “Can you hear me?”

  He did not stir.

  “Cyril, it’s me, Kit Salter. Can I do anything to help?”

  There was not a flicker in his gingery lashes, not a tremble to show he had heard my voice. Waldo was beside me. He coughed and I glanced at his face. His expression was strained, almost as ghastly as Cyril’s.

  “What is the matter, Waldo?” I asked.

  “I can’t stand it any longer,” he muttered, and crashed out of the tent.

  I stayed a little longer, talking to Mr. Baker, speaking kindly to him; I felt more affection for the man than ever before. I was just telling him I believed he was good, would have lived a better life if it wasn’t for his brother’s evil influence, when he opened his eyes and smiled at me.

  “I’m glad you still think there’s hope for my soul,” he said. “It’s a great comfort.”

  I reddened, for I had been babbling on in the belief he was unconscious.

  “You do understand, Kit, what happened last night?”

  I nodded. I felt it, his brother’s dark presence.

  “Cecil visited this camp.”

  “The deer?” I asked. “He controlled the deer?”

  “Yes, the deer was Cecil. It must be one of the many shapes he can take at will. He has become a more powerful skinwalker than I ever imagined, Kit. Before I left his side, he would strain to leave his body for an instant. It would be a great task to flit into the body of a pigeon for the merest moments. Now he attacks us openly in the guise of a deer.”

  “It was only a deer, not something ferocious,” I said. “I mean, couldn’t he have been a bear if he’d wanted to attack us?”

  Cyril waved his arms. “You miss the point. It was a warning. Cecil was warning us all, especially me. He was showing me his power.”

  “Boy has explained about skinwalking,” I said, slowly, “but I don’t really understand. What is your brother’s game?”

  “As I’ve told you, he studied the native Indian arts and the black arts for many years. He has great mystical power. You know he is sick, Kit. He is dying. He believes he can cheat death by leaving his body and taking on other forms. This is why he studied the ancient Indian magic for so long.”

  “So—it’s like a trick he’s playing on his own destiny? His body is infected with the Himalayan curse, so he leaves it and takes possession of another creature?”

  “Yes, but there are limits to his power. I believe he can only invade another skin for a short time.”

  I looked at him for a long moment, the silence heavy between us. Everything seemed to have gone dark, and I was haunted by fears I couldn’t easily name. Cyril Baker didn’t help; he just gazed at me with those strangely empty eyes.

  “This is awful,” I said finally. “It means your brother could be anywhere … spying on us, trapping us.” I indicated the world through the flap of the wickiup, a peaceful scene of hairy tents and Indians in the sunshine. “Cecil could be in that humming-bird hovering over the cacti, or the eagle that swoops over us while we ride in the desert. In the raccoon or the skunk under our horses’ hoofs—”

  “Enough!” Cyril raised his hand. “Don’t let fear infect you, else Cecil has won.”

  When I emerged from the wickiup, the camp was in the midst of preparations for our departure. Even the ancient medicine man had emerged from his tent to see us on our way. He had selected, personally, a horse for me to ride. He indicated which one it was, his dark eyes shining under his thatch of white hair. The horse was a magnificent stallion called Rolling Thunder. Apparently it was a great honor for me, that the famous Far-Seeing Man had himself selected my horse. It showed he liked us and wished us well.

  The Apaches were generous to give us several horses, as they
were clearly poor and in the midst of a dangerous war with two enemies: the American settlers they called White Eyes and the Mexicans. I did not think these brave warriors had much chance of survival. Even if the Apaches had stolen and mastered the art of shooting with guns, the Americans would counter with more powerful weapons. What use was an ancient musket against a howitzer or a cannon?

  These thoughts were running through my head as we mounted our horses. We were provisioned with some of their mescal paste, a few strips of dried meat and fresh water in our canisters. The Apaches had returned our own clothes, freshly washed and dried in the sun. But Mr. Baker and I both wore deerskin moccasins. Embroidered with beautiful patterns, they came up to my knees and were very soft. Sadly, Baker could not ride and had been propped up behind Waldo on a roan stallion. Waldo was chosen as he was the best rider.

  As Waldo took directions to the nearest town, a day and more of hard riding away, I said a silent goodbye to the Apache camp with its wickiups lit up by the streaky sunshine filtering through the pinyon pines, the brook burbling in the distance, the horses chewing contentedly. And the people: the women in their bright beads and buckskins, busy at their domestic tasks; the infants scrabbling besides their mothers; the children playing with bows and arrows. It looked a peaceful, time-honored scene. Then Boy was at my shoulder, her round face showing sadness.

  “I come with you,” she said. “I like you, so I will be your guide.”

  “You hardly know me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I spend much time with Far-Seeing Man. Now I too can see into people souls. You and me, we are—” Boy stopped short, blinking hard and looking into the distance. “Maybe it is not safe for you alone. There are Apaches in the mountains.”

  “But, Boy, you are an Apache.”

  “Other Apaches. Hostiles.”

  “Would you really want that? To go back to the world of white settlers? To civilization?”

  She shuddered, biting her lip. “I never want be civilized again.”

  I had to laugh at that—she said it with such ferocity. Silly to say, but her sudden fierce attachment had produced an answering affection in me. She was so hot-headed, with her eyes flashing with indignation. It must have been hard for her to be accepted as a warrior in a world where women on the whole were wives and mothers, content with domestic work. Boy was a funny thing—odd name and all.

  But had I been silly to dismiss her? She had shown real bravery last night, fighting the skinwalker. I was going to shake Boy’s hand, because I could hardly embrace her, but she moved away. I understood then that she did not want me to touch her. For a moment I was offended, then I realized it must seem a strange custom to these Apaches to shake hands.

  “I will fight the civilized forever,” she said, holding her hands behind her back. “The White Eyes are cruel and have no respect for the earth or the sky.”

  The shaman had appeared at her side and said something to her. She listened, replied angrily and then turned to me. “Far-Seeing Man, he says the White Eyes’ day is coming. He says the White Eyes will rule all … He speaks truly, always, but this I can’t believe.”

  I looked from Boy to Far-Seeing Man and a wave of sadness overwhelmed me. The shaman indeed must be wise to see this future. It struck me as already happening. Many groups of Indians had been defeated by the American settlers, rounded up and sent to live on reservations. Others had been felled in their hundreds of thousands by the diseases that the white man brought with him in his huge ships. Smallpox was fatal, but even relatively mild illnesses like chickenpox and measles killed countless Indians.

  Looking at the wickiups and the smoke drifting in the sunshine, I could see no future for this way of life. It was vanishing, and would soon be just a part of history. Better that the Apaches surrendered than be brutally cut down amidst more bloodshed.

  “He speaks the truth,” I said. “Nothing, I think, can stop the White Eyes.”

  Far-Seeing Man held up a hand, almost as if he understood my words, and spoke rapidly to Boy, who listened with her head tilted.

  “The White Eyes’ day is coming, but Far-Seeing Man says his day will also end,” she translated. “The foreigners, they do not love the earth that gives us life, but scar it with great gashes of rock and rivers of iron. They dig up its soul looking for silver and gold. The earth is not mother and father to them, but only something they can own. So they will destroy it and in the end the earth will rise up—”

  Her words were interrupted because Far-Man began to talk. His eyes rolled so all I could see were the whites. The pupils had almost vanished. A high thin voice came out of his mouth, a voice that spoke English:

  “The Black Snake is coming. To the land of the White Sun.”

  Chapter Twenty

  We had no maps to guide us to the small mining camp, which Boy had said was home to the nearest white men. I rode Rolling Thunder savagely, with desperate speed, through the twisting mountain paths, downward to the arid desert. As we rode, we prayed we were going in the right direction. Several times I wished I had taken up Boy’s offer to be our eyes and ears. Having someone who knew exactly which way to go might make the difference in saving Cyril’s life.

  He was desperately ill. He had come back to consciousness in a state of high fever. He spoke in wild, disconnected sentences about snakes and his beloved twin. His face was white, white as a dying moon. Yellow pus collected in his eyes and dribbled down his face. The last thing he needed was to be ridden so hard, propped up like a tailor’s dummy behind Waldo.

  We stopped for lunch after four or five hours’ riding. Cyril’s hands were burning hot. I helped Waldo bring him down from the horse. We propped him against a pinyon pine and poured a little water into his mouth. His eyes were rolling around as if seeking something. Perhaps he was looking for his brother. When Waldo went to help prepare our basic meal, I tried to get him to eat some dried deer meat, but he shook his head in refusal. Then he groaned, because the motion was painful.

  “Be still,” I said. “Don’t move if it hurts.”

  “I’m sorry, Tabby,” Mr. Baker replied in a clear voice, looking straight in my eyes. “We never meant you any harm, Tabby.”

  I froze. Tabby. It was the affectionate family nickname for my mother, my long-dead mother. Her name was Tabitha, but my father always used to refer to her as Tabby. I had a fuzzy memory of calling her that myself.

  My mother, Tabitha … Tabby.

  But how could Mr. Baker know?

  I must have misheard. Or had I used the name when my mother’s oval locket was stolen by the bandit?

  It was several minutes before I could compose myself to ask the question.

  “Are you speaking of my mother, Tabitha—Tabby?” I asked. “How do you know her nickname?”

  But that flash of lucidity in his eyes had gone. They now swung dully over me—and to the barren lands beyond.

  I ate the rest of my dried meat and berries. Tabby? He had repeated it, said it twice. Did it have some other meaning? Or was Mr. Baker apologizing for some harm he had done my mother? The very idea was ridiculous. She had died long before he had come into our lives.

  As we rode on after our brief rest, questions tormented me. Everything conspired to make me uneasy. The snake on my arm, wriggling each day. The skinwalker. The shaman’s odd words about a snake and a white sun—which set off strange echoes in my mind. Now this. Mr. Baker’s mention of my mother. None of it made any sense.

  Mr. Baker himself was in a desperate state, but all of us were very weary by the time we rode over the brow of the mountain and sighted the mining camp. From the distance it was a ramshackle affair, a few clapboard houses in the middle of a series of rocky heaps where precious metals had been dug from the earth. What a relief the sight was. It had been hard riding through the day and much of the night. My legs and thighs ached; my vision was blurred by dust and sand.

  The sun was setting over the mountains when we rode into the camp. Grimy miners were returning from thei
r day’s work. The place had a bit more to it than I had first thought. A saloon bar, a hotel of sorts, a grocery store and a jail, off the beaten dust track. We rode down the main street and every eye in the place turned on us. I felt a swell of pride at riding behind Waldo. In his cowboy hat, his blue eyes gleaming, he was a fine leader.

  “Howdy,” he called out. “We got a sick man here. Is there a doctor in town?”

  A huddle of men in those rough blue overalls, carrying pickaxes and shovels, turned their eyes on Waldo and the limp figure of Cyril Baker behind him. It needed but a single glance to see that Baker was dying. But nobody said a word; all eyes just rested on us.

  One man who was chewing a wad of tobacco spat it in our direction. It landed on the ground in front of my stallion, just missing the horse. There were a few chuckles at that.

  “Please help. We’re peaceful folk, American patriots,” Waldo said. “We need your help.”

  I would have done anything for Waldo after an appeal like that, but in this hostile hick town nobody moved. From the direction of the saloon next to us I heard twanging guitars and a gust of wild laughter.

  “For goodness’ sake,” Aunt Hilda burst out. “Are you all numbskulls? We need a doctor fast!”

  At that there were a few resentful murmurs. The man who had spat tobacco in our direction turned to a dull-looking man with a bull neck standing beside him and said, “Better call Dobie.”

  “Dobie?” Bull Neck asked, his mind moving with the slowness of a beetle.

  “Yeah, Red Dobie,” the first man replied.

  I looked at the bunch of miners despairingly. They were tough, weather-beaten men, their skin tanned by the harsh sun and scoured by the sand and grime of the mines. They had wrinkled faces and a stunted look of surly hostility. I had heard these parts were primitive and savage; the white settlers as well as the Indians were said to resent outsiders. Life was of less value out here, in this Wild West, than gold or bullets.

  But these men seemed to be positive halfwits. We had done them no harm, Cyril Baker was clearly dying and yet they stood there gazing at us like a herd of cattle.