Bone River

by Chance, Megan

  Junius studied the drawings. “Nothing except the fact that the patterns on the pottery look very like those on the basket. And look at the way these are drawn, Lea. There’s something similar here, too.” He pointed to the antlers on the elk. “Here, for example. The line stroke—these drawings must have been made by the same people.”

  Junius was so positive that I found myself suddenly uncertain. I had no reason to disbelieve him except for my own feelings, which I knew weren’t to be trusted.

  “You aren’t looking close enough,” he said to me. “Bring up your light—there, like that. You see the similarities now?”

  He looked at me, intent, and I peered at the drawings, trying to see what he saw. Perhaps he was right about this. Junius was better at making conclusions than I. I was always so hesitant, so...slow. He was brilliant, and what was I? Only a woman, as Papa had told me a hundred times. It’s not your fault, Leonie. We shall make a scientist of you yet. I remembered his intensity, the way he’d looked at me as if he could make me what he wanted through sheer force of will: Promise me you’ll fight such sensibilities. Logic, my dear. Logic is your only friend.

  Now, that memory kept me silent. I was more aware than ever of my shortcomings, how I’d let dreams and feelings lead me, how disappointed Papa would be in me now if he were here. Because no matter what Junius said, no matter the evidence, I could not make myself believe the drawings had anything to do with the mummy. They were beautiful, but they were not hers, and I could not bury my feelings in logic. My flaw, again.

  Junius reached out to touch them, following the curve of the line with his finger. “That’s paint, not charcoal. Whoever did this wanted it to be permanent. I wonder if there are any others?” He stepped away, walking about the cave, raising his candle to look, crisscrossing the walls with the dim light.

  Daniel said quietly to me, “What does he mean, a mother lode? Are these worth something?”

  “Monetarily? I don’t know. But in terms of knowledge...they could be very important.” I reached out to touch the bear. Candle wax dripped over my gloves, which were thick enough that I didn’t feel the heat of it. In the wavering candlelight, the figures almost seemed to move, as if the elk were truly leaping across some field, the cave bear growling as it gave chase. I studied the long, simple lines, the way one faded at the end as if the artist required more paint on his finger or his brush. I was caught up in the drama of the story the figures told, the beautiful simplicity of it. I could not take this ceiling with me, but I knew I would never forget these drawings. “Perhaps these will tell us something to change everything we know about the past,” I said quietly. “Perhaps we’ll be the ones to discover it. Perhaps not. But these don’t belong to anyone. Some things can’t be bought and sold.”

  Junius was still scrabbling about the edges, searching. I knew, though I couldn’t say how, that he would find no other drawings here, that these were the only ones. But again, it was just a feeling. I noticed the way the ceiling was blackened a short distance away. Soot, from a fire, and I imagined it: the cave filled with smoke, the flames dancing, someone dipping his finger in a pot of paint, red and then black and white, drawing so quickly in the firelight the elk and the bear looked alive, animated by flame and smoke. Laughter as another described what had happened, hands moving rapidly in gesture and paint.

  “It was a hunt,” I murmured. “They were hunting elk, and the bear came from nowhere, and here”—I pointed to three parallel lines—“the spears from the hunters. One struck him”—I touched the bear’s shoulder—“here. The bear turned on them. The spear wounded him and made him angry, and he was a cave bear three times their size. The elk ran off, and then there were only the two of them and this bear...” I saw him advance, the sharp yellow of his teeth, the rotten scent of his breath, claws like razors and wild eyes—

  “And in the end?” Daniel asked.

  His voice intruded. I blinked; the vision faded. There was no fire and smoke, no man painting the story on the ceiling while another told it. No laughter. Only a barren, cold cave, the sound of our breathing and Junius’s moving about and the patter of rain on the leaves outside the entrance.

  Daniel was standing very close, watching me with this look of puzzlement, and I took a step back and tried to smile. “I...I don’t know. I suppose they killed it, don’t you? Else who would tell the story?”

  I reached into my pocket for my notebook. “I’ll need to draw these,” I said, handing him my candle so I could get the pencil too. “If you don’t mind holding the light.”

  “You’re freezing,” Daniel said. “Why don’t you draw them after we get a fire going and you warm up?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re shaking,” he said, and I realized suddenly that I was, that I was numb with cold, that I would not be able to hold the pencil steady enough to draw.

  “I’ll see if I can’t find something dry enough to burn,” he said, handing me back my candle and leaving the cave.

  Junius straightened and sighed. “I think those on the ceiling are the only ones.”

  I didn’t tell him that I already knew that to be true. He stepped over to me and stared up at the drawings. “Make sure you get the detail. The way that one trails off, the exact proximity of each to the other—”

  “I know, June.”

  “This could be important, Leonie. We’ll send your drawings to Baird and see what he thinks. Perhaps he’s seen others like them. But they need to be exact.”

  “I’ll do the best I can.”

  He nodded. “I’ll help the boy get a fire started.”

  I was alone, and the cave was very dark now without their light. Only me and my candle, flickering with my breath so the very shadows seemed to pulse in time, as if the cave had somehow taken on my spirit, and it was lurking in the shadows, watching me, waiting, and the thought was so strange and disconcerting that I laughed in an attempt to banish it. The sound echoed in the darkness, more spooky than reassuring. Will you like what you discover, I wonder?

  I shook away Lord Tom’s words and tried to forget that this was a tomb. Instead, I looked up at the drawings and forced myself to focus on them. I opened the notebook, set it in the crook of my arm, and held my candle to the images and tried to draw, but it was too awkward, and I was too cold, my fingers too numb to work well, to capture how dynamic these were, the movement of legs as they sped across the stone, the antlers tossing, the growl of the bear...

  A clatter at the cave entrance made me jump. I turned to see Daniel returned, unloading the wood he’d managed to find. “Did we bring matches?” he asked.

  “In June’s bag,” I said, and then I tucked the notebook back into my pocket and went over to him. He was right; I would do better when I was warm, and I was suddenly glad I wasn’t alone.

  He gave me a knowing glance as he dug about in Junius’s bag. “Creepy, isn’t it? It feels like—what did your Indian call it?”

  “Memelose illahee. The land of the dead.”

  “Yes, that.” Daniel found the matches, tossing them in his hand as he turned back to the pile of wood. “Not a place I’d want to be by myself. I wonder how Sanderson stood it.”

  “He didn’t know what it was.”

  “I don’t think one has to know.” Daniel glanced about and shuddered. “It feels like death. Except for those few moments when you were describing the hunt. I could almost see that. It was as if you’d been there.”

  I settled myself onto the dirt floor as he arranged a bunch of tiny branches and dry leaves in a small pyre. I thought of the soot on the ceiling, the smoke that had filled the cave, and I was glad Daniel had thought to put the fire near the entrance, where the smoke had somewhere to go. “I have a good imagination. Sometimes too good.”

  He struck a match and put the flame to the tinder, patiently waiting for it to catch, leaning down to blow on it gently, coaxing the half-wet tinder into flame. He added some thinner branches, feeding it slowly and carefully. “What do
you mean, too good?”

  “Sometimes I get...too involved. More than I should. More than any good scientist should.”

  “You see more than just facts, you mean.”

  “Facts are what matter.”

  He fed the fire more wood. The flames grew. I held out my numb hands to them.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “People’s lives are made up of more than just facts, aren’t they? What about faith? Or spirit?”

  “Facts as well.”

  He said, “Really? Is that what you believe?”

  I shrugged. “Even belief is quantifiable. All cultures move through the same stages as they progress. So we can tell what earlier primitives believed by learning what the Indians believe now. Facts.”

  He laughed a little. “All of human experience reduced to a chart. How humbling.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if such things are quantifiable, as you say, it means that things can only have one meaning, doesn’t it?”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well—” he hesitated. “I suppose...take a still life of...of apples, say. A priest might tell you those apples represent the temptation of Eve in the garden. The fact that they’re red...well, that’s Satan’s color, so that means the painting is clearly a warning of evil. Is that how you scientists go about assigning meaning?”

  “I suppose that’s a good example.”

  “But what if that wasn’t the artist’s intent? What if it was a beautiful autumn day, and the apples reminded him of his wife’s cheeks, and that was why he chose to paint them? Or perhaps it was his mother’s apple pie that he meant to evoke, or the scent of an orchard in the fall, or even the fact that the taste of a good apple can be as perfect a thing as exists in the world? By that interpretation, the painting of those apples is the very opposite of evil. It’s...a paean to God. To heaven, even. How can you claim to know which it is?”

  “That’s why we collect Indian stories. So we can know which it is.”

  “I’ve never heard an Indian story. Are they so literal?”

  “Well, no. They’re quite...symbolic, I suppose.”

  “How so? Tell me one.”

  “Leonie should be drawing cave paintings, not telling stories about primitives.” Junius came through the entrance, his arms laden with wood, which he let fall with a clatter.

  I felt chastened, ashamed again.

  Junius went to his bag and rifled through it and mine, bringing out the dried salmon and corn pone I’d brought. He came over to the fire, squatting down, handing out the food while the firelight played over his chiseled face. We ate for a while in silence, and I was thinking over what Daniel had said, about the apples and the interpretation of meaning, things I’d never considered before, and I felt vaguely uneasy, as if there were something there I should have known, should have suspected, as if I’d pounded hard on a locked door, trying to escape, before noticing there was a key to turn.

  Daniel said, “Why don’t you tell me one of those stories now? While you’re warming up, of course. I’d hate to take you from your drawing task.”

  Junius glanced up. “Stories are for children.”

  “We’re just sitting here. What’s the harm?”

  Junius frowned. I shook my head and lied, “I can’t. I don’t remember one well enough to tell.”

  “Really? I find that hard to believe. You said you’d been collecting them.”

  I wished Daniel would be quiet. I felt Junius’s tension.

  “They’re a waste of time,” Junius said. “The only good reason for them is to preserve the language.”

  “Just the language? The stories don’t matter?”

  “Only if you believe the Chinook were formed from eggshells.”

  “How is that different from God making Adam out of dirt? Or Eve from a rib?”

  Junius lifted a brow. “Not much of a churchgoer, are you?”

  “If you want to believe that all of the world’s knowledge was gained because a woman bit into an apple”—Daniel’s gaze flicked to mine—“then by all means, believe it. I can’t stop you.”

  “Does your girl’s missionary father know you think this way?”

  Daniel ignored him. “It’s just another telling of Pandora’s Box. Most cultures have some story about the release of evil into the world. Even the Indians, I’d guess.”

  Junius sighed.

  “Maybe it’s not the truth,” Daniel said. “But who’s to say which version is the most true?”

  Junius laughed. “Your imagination is a good as your stepmother’s.”

  “I would guess that imagination tells a good story.” Daniel’s voice was quiet. “I’d like to hear one. Why not let her tell it? What can it harm?”

  Junius’s jaw tightened. He threw the last bit of his dried salmon into the fire, where the oily skin curled and hissed and crackled. “Go ahead, Lea. I suppose I can’t stop you.” His tone was clipped. He rose abruptly. “Tell him one. I’ll get more wood for the fire.” Without another word he left the cave.

  Daniel looked startled. “He objects that much?”

  I sighed. “He thinks I spend too much time on them. Papa forbade me to listen to them when I was a child. He said they were too indelicate for a girl’s ears. June agrees with him.”

  “Are they?”

  “Some of them,” I admitted. “Junius is only trying to protect me.”

  “It doesn’t look like protecting to me.”

  I sighed. “You’re very young, Daniel.”

  “And that was very condescending,” he said.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re no old crone yet. You don’t look ready to hobble off into the sunset.”

  “Perhaps not, but I’m older than you.”

  “But I’d guess I know more of the world than you. That makes us even. Tell me one of your stories.”

  I shook my head. “I shouldn’t.”

  “Are you so completely his creature?” Daniel asked, and his voice was very soft, gentle enough that my immediate response died in my throat, and I was suddenly caught by the way the firelight gilded his hair and played over his face, shadows and the glint of skin tight over bone, impossibly sculpted, strange and beautiful.

  He smiled beguilingly, whispering, “Tell me a story, Lea.”

  I jerked my gaze away, feeling a sudden heat in my cheeks, and then I realized what he was doing, how he was manipulating me. I can be very persuasive. Yes, he could. That charm that led me into irritation with my husband, that lulled me into trusting a man I hardly knew. Don’t let him come between us, Junius had said, and I suddenly knew exactly the tale to tell.

  “A long time ago, back when the mountains were people, and Coyote was changing the world, he came to a hollow tree that opened and closed in the wind. Coyote climbed inside for a nap. When he woke, the tree would not open. He called for help, and the woodpeckers pecked a hole for him to get out. But Coyote was lustful and greedy, and when a pretty woodpecker came close enough to catch, he grabbed her and tried to have his way with her, and after that the birds refused to help him.

  “The hole wasn’t big enough for him to escape through in one piece, so Coyote took himself apart. He threw out his eyes first, and Buzzard grabbed them, so when Coyote put himself together again he couldn’t see. He put rose hips on the end of two long stems to use for eyes, and they were hardly good enough, but they served to get him to a house where there lived an old woman. He decided to fool her into trading her eyes for his.”

  Here I paused. Very deliberately, I said, “Coyote could be very persuasive, and he charmed the woman into trusting him. He told her about a bug he saw climbing on the ceiling. When she said she could not see it, he offered to trade eyes with her so she could. She thought he was very kind and helpful, so she did. And as a reward for her foolishness, Coyote turned her into a snail with weak eyes on stems who must crawl around with her house on her back. ‘You will think you are gettin
g somewhere,’ he told her. ‘But it will be the same place.’ And so everyone now knows the tale of the snail, and knows not to trust charming strangers.” This last line was not part of the story, but my own invention. I finished, “Kani, kani,” and then I looked at Daniel.

  He was watching me consideringly, with a very slight smile that I thought might have been a trick of the light. “Is that meant to be an admonition?” he asked quietly.

  And I said, equally quietly, “I’m not a fool, Daniel.”

  “Believe me, I never took you for one.”

  “Then we understand each other.”

  Again, that considering look, that strange and gripping beauty in the firelight. He said, “Do we?”

  Just then, Junius stepped around the jutting rock face, his arms full of wood, and the moment burst like a bubble. Daniel looked away, as did I. Junius dropped the wood on the other side of the fire and straightened, wiping his hands. “Story over?”

  “All done,” I said. “You’d like the one I told.”

  “Would I?” His mouth was tight.

  “The one about how Coyote made the snail.”

  “I don’t remember it,” Junius said shortly. “I never paid much attention to those things.”

  “She’s a very good storyteller,” Daniel said. “A lesson in every word. But I think now I’m going to bed.” He rose and went to where the bedrolls had been dropped by the wall, grabbing his, disappearing into the darkness, and Junius looked at me and held out his hand.

  I let him help me to my feet before he put out the fire. “Did you draw the ceiling?”

  “I will in the morning,” I said as the two of us went deeper into the cave. I heard Daniel moving about in the shadow beyond the candle flame, spreading his bedroll, and Junius and I did the same. I took off my boots and crawled into mine, and Junius pulled his blankets close, reaching to draw me into his arms, burying his face in my hair so I felt the warmth of his breath against my skin, and I closed my eyes, trying to lose myself in the familiar comfort of him.