Forbidden Spirits

by Patricia Watters

  Her mother's gaze shifted between Rose and Tyler, coming to rest on Rose, who was having trouble catching her breath. "Maybe Tundra's responding to reactions coming from you," she said. "Dog's senses are very acute."

  Rose didn't answer because she'd momentarily lost her train of thought. Tyler's hair was gathered into a horsetail, and with it swept back, the sunlight splashing across his face emphasized his cheekbones and reflected in his dark eyes, making him look even more Indian than when she'd first met him at the spring.

  As he approached, Tyler looked at Tundra, who continued to growl, but Rose could see that Tyler wasn't intimidated by him, nor did Tyler react the way most people would on seeing a dog that was obviously mostly wolf behaving aggressively. Instead, Tyler walked up to Tundra, ran his hands down his neck on both sides, and taking him by the collar, stared directly at him. Tundra immediately stopped growling and all signs of aggression seemed to vanish. Rose was puzzled because it was as if Tundra had met his match and didn't intend to challenge.

  Releasing Tundra's collar, Tyler ignored him, and said to Rose, "Marc called to say he faxed the registration form for the bow-making camp to the lodge and for you to print some copies and have them since there's an announcement running in the newspaper right now."

  When Rose started to reply, her throat was strangely dry, not from the interaction between Tyler and Tundra, but because Tyler's presence was affecting her. She also wondered if her mother was right about Tundra picking up on that.

  "I'll… umm... print out some registration forms," she said, her eyes drifting down the length of Tyler, who looked like the quintessential half-breed cowboy hero, with his broad shouldered stance, weathered denim shirt, faded jeans, and scuffed western boots. When her gaze moved upward to settle on his face again, she saw perception in his eyes, and she knew he'd been aware of her unintentional inspection. Annoyed and embarrassed, she pulled herself together and said, "This is my mother, Helen Starbright."

  "Yes, I see the resemblance," Tyler said, shifting his gaze to Rose's mother.

  Her mother nodded in acknowledgement, then said in a clipped dry tone, "I stopped by to see the museum since Rose is passionate about passing on the old traditions of our culture and in preserving our sacred sites." The last phrase was emphasized.

  Rose saw the expression on Tyler's face sharpen and she knew her mother's statement was as obvious to him as it was to her. He did not belong in her daughter's life, and her daughter needed to understand that clearly, which Rose did. And Tundra, who seemed to have a sixth sense about people, had just affirmed it.

  ***

  The following morning, with Tundra off his leash and coursing a zigzag path up a ranch road that branched off from the road behind the stable, Rose set out just after sunup to exercise Tundra before the museum opened. Among the things she'd learned during the two months she'd had him were first, that wolfdogs were usually fearful of strangers and not protective, which surprised her when he growled at Tyler, and second, if they didn't get daily exercise they'd pace restlessly unless they found something to chew up or destroy. Just about anything handy was fair game, she'd learned the one time she left Tundra closed in her bedroom for less than an hour, only to return to find the inside of a solid wood door almost dug through and several shoes destroyed. His message was clear. Take me to run a couple of times a day and I might not destroy the house.

  This particular morning, Rose had combined exercising Tundra with searching for materials for her basketweaving demonstrations and classes at the living museum. Marc and Kit were adamant that every artifact produced be made the traditional way with authentic materials, which was the way Rose made baskets for galleries. It was fortunate that hazelnut trees grew in the area because the shoots were one of the strongest and most resilient material for the uprights or radials for her baskets, and it had been widely used by Indians in the region.

  Hanging from Rose's back was an empty backpack, except for a dozen or more plastic grocery bags in it for holding basket-making materials. In addition to locating hazelnut trees, she'd be scanning the forest for maidenhair ferns and tall bear grass, with a goal of collecting the materials for her own baskets while pinpointing locations where materials would be available for demonstrations and basketweaving workshops.

  She loved the idea of teaching the art of weaving baskets, and already she had several women signed up for workshops starting in a couple of weeks. Among them were Emily, who was married to Marc's brother Adam, and Sophie, who was married to Marc's half-brother, Rick. Rose looked forward to getting to know the women, and they seemed eager to learn how to weave baskets. For the two-hour basketweaving sessions, Grace, Marc's saint of a mother, offered to babysit Sophie's four-year-old triplets and three-year-old twins, as well as Emily's three-year-old daughter.

  Rose was also looking for rocks to use in cooking demonstrations. The rocks she was searching for would be heavy with iron so they'd be durable enough to withstand heating to red hot, after which they'd be dropped into watertight baskets to heat liquids held in the baskets.

  She was in the process of stripping the leaves from the fronds of several maidenhair ferns and bundling the stems into a plastic bag, when she looked up to see Tundra standing at alert—ears forward, eyes focused, body stiff, nostrils picking up a scent.

  "What is it boy?" she asked, not expecting a response, just a natural question to be asking a wolfdog she talked to on a regular basis.

  Tundra glanced at Rose then returned to whatever had caught his attention. After taking a few steps forward, he looked back at Rose again, as if asking her to follow, though he didn't wait for Rose's response before starting up the road at a trot.

  Worried that he might run off, Rose called out, "Tundra, come." Tundra slowed some, paused briefly, then continued on. "Tundra, come!" Rose said in a commanding voice. Tundra stopped this time, which surprised Rose because half the time if he had a mind to do something, he'd simply ignore her. When she caught up with him, she said, "You can go on, but stay close." To her surprise, Tundra slowed his pace some, although he still headed in the direction of whatever had caught his notice.

  Rose took a moment to shrug out of the backpack and leave it by the side of the road, then she started after Tundra at a fast clip. A short distance ahead, Tundra left the road and turned into the woods. Because the forest was a stand of tall, big-leaf maples intermixed with old and second growth fir, the canopy of the trees high above was dense enough that little light sifted through to the forest floor, so the undergrowth was mainly ferns and low brush, making it fairly easy to get through. Rose followed Tundra, trusting they wouldn’t get lost because she could see light through the forest, indicating a clearing, but just on the edge of a glade, yet still inside the woods, Tundra stopped, taking on his earlier stance—ears pricked forward, body stiff, eyes straight ahead—while watching intently something beyond the forest. Rose quickened her pace and caught up with him, then stared in stunned silence at the scene before her.

  CHAPTER 3

  In a high-mountain meadow, not more than twenty feet from where Rose stood with Tundra inside the woods, Tyler was jogging through the tall grass with six horses following behind. Unlike the horsetail he'd worn the day before, his hair was loose and flowing out behind.

  The horses, some almost pure white, others moving into shades of misty dappled grays with dark and light manes and tails, followed Tyler as he jumped over a downed tree, stripped of its limbs, that lay in his path, all six horses leaping over the log as a group behind him. Tyler circled back, jumping over the log again, and the horses followed. Then Tyler stopped and the horses gathered around him like children wanting to be praised. He patted their necks and stroked their faces and said words Rose couldn't catch, but their meaning was clear to the horses. In fact, she was in awe of the affection the horses displayed for Tyler, and he for them, like there was a perfect communion between them, a relationship of complete trust and understanding.

  When Tyler turned away as
if to play a new game, one horse followed, staying close to him, like a child clinging to its mother on the first day of school. The horse seemed edgy with the other horses, as if it was new to the herd and hadn't yet been accepted, but when Tyler stroked its neck and said what were obviously comforting words, the horse seemed to perk up. Other horses came up to Tyler too, giving and receiving affection, which Tyler returned, the interaction between man and horses stirring in Rose a reaction that was both curious and humbling.

  Tyler began coaxing the horses into doing something he was asking. Some of the horses reacted in a way that said. "We're having fun," while others seemed to be saying, "I don't understand what you want," but before long, Tyler was directing them in a maneuver so subtle that Rose couldn't catch Tyler's signals, but the horses did, and slowly, with a quiet grace, they came together, all six animals lining up side-by-side and facing Tyler, all looking like they were enjoying what Tyler was instructing them to do, which was obvious to Rose the next moment when all six horses nodded their heads, as if thanking Tyler for the fun.

  It appeared that Tyler was controlling the horses with only hand signals, vocal commands and the whip he held in one hand, which he didn't seem to use except to indicate direction because he never touched the horses with it. When he turned and circled back, the horses moved together like a choreographed act, all the while the expression on Tyler's face as he watched his horses was one of pure joy. The horses, at the same time, were relaxed and animated and spirited, as if excited to be doing what they were doing, which was prancing and playing, full of energy, while moving single file in a circle around Tyler, like a carousel that had come to life in a mountain glade, yet, the horses remained unbridled and free to run off if they wanted.

  The group paused at Tyler's command and he took the moment to vault onto the back of one of them and stand. After placing a foot on the back of a horse that had moved beside the horse Tyler was standing on, the horses, which had arranged themselves so they were six-abreast, with Tyler standing on the backs of the two in the center, started at a lope toward the fallen tree, and in what looked like a perfectly synchronized maneuver, sailed in unison over the log, as if harnessed together, while Tyler remained perfectly balanced on their backs, one arm raised into the air as if addressing an invisible crowd.

  As Rose watched the scene before her, the feeling it invoked was a mixture of reverence and astonishment. What she was witnessing were horses playing and socializing as they would in the wild, but with a man among them, every bit as much a member of the herd as they, except that he was obviously their leader.

  Before Rose could stop Tundra, he moved into the clearing. The horses, catching sight of him, immediately bunched up and stopped in uncertainty. Tyler caught his balance, and when he looked to where Tundra stood, Rose stepped into the clearing so he wouldn't mistake Tundra for a renegade wolf, then clipped on the leash she had tucked into her back pocket.

  Tyler jumped off his horses, and after taking a few moments to calm them, he started over to where Rose stood with Tundra. The horses followed behind for a few paces then stopped in a huddle and watched from a distance as Tyler continued toward Rose.

  Rose again experienced the range of physiological reactions as she had the day before, though even stronger this time because she'd just witnessed something so counter to what she'd expected of Tyler that she couldn't seem to process it. It was also clear that Tyler was the man in her dream, if it had actually been a dream. Maybe the vision at the beach that she'd convinced herself was a lucid dream or a hallucination, because the sight of it had been so unbelievable, had actually happened.

  As when Tyler had approached her at the plankhouse, low growls emanated from Tundra's throat. Again, Tyler walked up to Tundra, took him by the collar and stared at him, and after Tundra settled down, Tyler scratched Tundra's chest long enough for Tundra's eyes to close slightly in pleasure, then he removed his hand and looked at Rose, and said, "Are you lost, or did you come here for a reason?"

  Rose was determined to pull her thoughts together and not be distracted by her reaction to Tyler, which she found both baffling and annoying. "Neither," she replied. "I was looking for basketweaving materials while giving Tundra a chance to run, otherwise he gets restless and gets himself into trouble."

  Tyler held her gaze long enough for Rose to see that he was disturbed, then he looked down at Tundra, and said, "Why do you have a wolf hybrid anyway? Wolves aren't meant to live with people. They need to be free to roam miles every day. You only have to look into that animal's eyes to see the confusion and unhappiness there."

  Rose too had seen confusion and unhappiness in Tundra's eyes, though it took her several days to figure out what Tyler saw instantly. "It was never my intention to own a wolfdog," she said. "I went to the animal shelter to get a dog and found instead an abandoned wolfdog who'd been given two choices and little time for the decision—find someone to take him home or be euthanized. He was pacing continuously, but when I finally caught his eye he looked so sad and lonely I took him home."

  "He would have been better off euthanized," Tyler said. "He has no pack so that loneliness will always be there."

  "He's not so lonely now," Rose replied. "After a few days he was okay with my family, so I figure he's more dog than wolf, but they didn't know his mix at the shelter because the previous owner dropped him off for being unmanageable and left."

  "Most hybrids are unmanageable," Tyler said. "You have an animal trapped between two worlds, not belonging to either, so he'll always be restless, and unlike a dog, he'll never look to you for guidance or anything but to live together as equals."

  Rose couldn't argue his point. She learned early on that you never tell a wolfdog what to do. You have discussions with it, mainly whether or not you're going to share your sandwich with it. But she didn't believe Tundra was as unhappy as Tyler implied. "He listens pretty well and he's intelligent so I think he got the best traits of both wolf and dog," she said. "What I read is that if you breed the best wolfdogs with each other, after a few generations you get nice animals."

  "Actually, what you get are dogs because you’ve re-domesticated the wolf into a dog," Tyler said. "Meanwhile, you have the problem of what to do with the culls—euthanize them or put them in overloaded rescues where they spend their lives pacing around in a world that doesn't work for them. And I hope you don't plan to breed him."

  "Don't worry," Rose said. "He's already neutered." Looking at Tyler with curiosity, she asked, "How do you know so much about wolfdogs? I assume you've never owned one."

  "I haven't, but I worked one summer at a wolf sanctuary up in Washington, which was long enough to know that a wolf hybrid is a complete misfit," Tyler replied. "It doesn't think like a dog, respond like a dog, or relate to its owner like a dog, and it isn't a wolf because without its pack it's socially crippled. A low content hybrid may appear gentle, but when you look in its eyes you know you can never trust it because you'll always see the call of the wild in them."

  Rose too had seen something in Tundra's eyes at times but she'd never been able to define it. "I know he's restless and I want to understand him, so what exactly do you see when you look in his eyes?" she asked, while looking down at Tundra, who was watching the circling of a hawk.

  "I don't know. I can't explain. It's just there," Tyler replied. "It's a feeling that comes when our eyes connect, like the animal's silently talking to me. Sometimes it works with humans too."

  When Rose glanced up she found Tyler looking at her, like he was studying her, for whatever reason. He was a baffling man. "Is that how you knew it was okay to walk up to him when he was growling, by reading what was in his eyes?" she asked.

  "No, I applied pack instinct," Tyler replied. "A wolf in a pack can stop something instantly with just a look, so when you force them to look into your eyes they can't bite you. I'm curious about one thing though. Both times he growled at me he had his ears up and his eyes wide open, like he was excited. It's a mixed message.
Does he do that with everyone who approaches you?"

  The question caught Rose off guard. She hadn't been aware of anything when Tyler approached her both times, except how strikingly handsome he was, so the idea that Tundra was reacting to her response to Tyler was not so implausible, but she wasn't about to let Tyler know what she now suspected. "He has a kind of sixth sense about people and his own reasons for not liking certain ones," she replied. "Are you still planning your attack on the spirits in Whispering Springs by opening fissures?"

  Tyler looked as if he were holding back a smile, as he said, "Are you saying that Tundra growls at me because I don't believe in spirits?"

  "That could be a good assumption," Rose replied. "I guess the only way you can find out is to stop what you're doing at the spring and see if Tundra changes his attitude."

  Tyler's eyes brightened with amusement, making her heart skip some, as he said, "You mean, roll over and join his pack."

  At once, the female silliness of moments before was replaced by irritation. "You're very one-sided in your quest, having no regard for the feelings of those who place great importance on the spiritual nature of the spring," Rose replied.

  "That spring is no more spiritual than Old Faithful Geyser," Tyler said. "The only difference between the two is that the geyser beneath the spring doesn't rise to the surface because the water's trapped, so instead, steam seeps through fissures and cracks while those sitting in the pool let their imaginations run wild."

  Feeling increasingly exasperated with Tyler's callous attitude, Rose said, "Whether you're right or wrong makes no difference. You're being insensitive in that many people believe there is something mystical about the spring and you should respect that."

  Tyler let out an ironic snort. "If scientists respected everything people considered mystical, they'd still be teaching in school that the earth is flat and ships could fall off. But to relieve your mind for now, I won't be doing anything there until after the rodeo in Wyoming where I'm contracted to perform at the Cody Stampede."