Chapter Thirty
Returning that afternoon with some licorice root and a bundle of wood for the fire, Keasik discovers Hearn standing alone, gazing across the river with a drawn and desolate look on his face, and she guesses right away what must have passed in her absence.
Ever since they arrived back at Ox Lake three days before and found the camp destroyed and Datsanthi and Pawpitch dead with their skulls crushed and their bodies mutilated, she has understood that a spitefulness and anger as deep and relentless as Nabayah’s is far too powerful to be ended by something as straightforward and commonplace as death.
Her husband’s unhoused spirit won’t rest until all the people he hated with a passion have suffered as much as he did; she’s certain of that.
So if Abel Walker, the young one, has died of his spear wound, although it’s sad and frightening, for her at least, it’s hardly a surprise.
She puts down the wood and looks inside the tent to see if her guess is correct.
The young one is lying on his side staring into space with that look of wonder and dismay on his face that dead people often have.
Already, there is a sour-sweet smell of decay rising from the body, and when she touches his cheek it feels cool and hard.
Outside again in the sunlight, Hearn is waiting for her.
His eyes are red, and he looks wretchedly tired, like he hasn’t slept for several days.
“I need an implement,” he says, “so I can bury the boy’s body.”
Keasik offers him the hand trowel made of a moose antler that she uses to dig up plants and scrape for lichen, and he takes it and thanks her.
While Hearn marks out the grave and then begins to dig, she builds a fire, fills the copper kettle with water from the river’s edge, and starts cleaning and chopping the licorice root.
As she works, she tries her best to stay calm and remember happier times, but the memory of Nabayah looming over her with his hands gripped tight around her throat and a look of murder in his eyes is so vivid and powerful that however hard she tries to push it away, it only comes back stronger.
She wonders, with a sinking heart, how she can possibly survive the long journey homeward with only Hearn and Shaw for protection and her husband’s angry spirit chasing after all of them, bent on revenge.
If she was still here, Pawpitch would tell me to be brave and not give in to my fears, she thinks, but I’m not a soothsayer or a healer, so how can I defend myself against an angry ghost?
After Hearn has finished scraping out a shallow grave with the trowel, the two of them drag Abel Walker’s body out of the tent and bury it, then place a layer of stones on top to protect the corpse from scavengers.
When this is done, Hearn stands alone by the grave mound with his hands clasped in front of him and whispers something under his breath.
Then he pinches his eyes and turns back toward Keasik.
He tries to smile at her, but she can tell he doesn’t mean it.
Perhaps I should explain about Nabayah, she thinks, so at least he knows the truth.
Even if it makes no difference, it’s probably better if he understands.
“Ever since I killed my husband, this journey has been cursed,” she says. “His spirit is angry and wants to take revenge on all of us.”
Hearn looks confused at first, then shakes his head impatiently.
“No,” he says. “You’re not the one to blame for this. If there’s a single cause for all our various misfortunes, it lies elsewhere, in the doubtful origins of this expedition, and not in anything you’ve done.”
“His spirit follows after me in the form of a fat-bodied raven. I saw him just now when I was out gathering wood.”
Hearn looks away for a moment, as if he wishes she weren’t there, then sighs and turns back again.
“In losing your husband and your friends, you’ve suffered a grievous blow, I understand,” he says.
“But Nabayah is dead, just as Abel Walker is now dead, and whatever anger and hatred he felt died with him, I promise. There’s no spirit chasing after us, and the bird you see is just a bird, so you shouldn’t trouble yourself with such wild imaginings.
We have a hard journey ahead of us, there’s no doubt about that, but believing we are cursed will only make it harder. ”
Keasik senses she has made him angry and wishes now she had never spoken. Whether he believes me or not makes no difference, she thinks, because the curse is still a curse. I suppose I was hoping that if he knew, he might help me in some small way, but now I see that’s impossible.
“I don’t mean to insult you,” Hearn continues, sounding more saddened now than angry. “We think in very different ways, of course. I only offer you my opinion.”
For a moment, seeing the hollowness in his eyes, Keasik feels a strange kind of pity for Tom Hearn and his kind—how confusing it must be to exist in this world yet see and understand so little of how it truly works, she thinks—but then, just as quickly, she remembers all the trouble and all the bloodshed they have caused through their ignorance, and the pity passes away and leaves behind, like a falling tide, a tangled wrack of wariness and fear.
For two more weeks, they walk due south, across gravel screes and hummocked fields of sphagnum moss and sedge, and as the days repeat themselves and the landscape remains as uniform and unyielding as a painted backcloth, the land rough and reticent, the sky vaulting and cloud-pocked, Hearn begins to wonder if they have slipped out of time altogether, if instead of moving forward or growing older they are stuck in this one place and one moment forevermore, doomed like souls in limbo to travel endlessly toward a destination they will never reach.
John Shaw, without Abel Walker by his side as squire and confidant, is much subdued.
As they walk along, instead of singing or joking as before, he chitters and mumbles lowly to himself and then hugs the bag of gold tight against his chest as though at any moment expecting to be assailed by cutthroats.
Keasik, after her confession that day by the riverbank, has not mentioned her superstitious fears to Hearn again, but the manner in which she performs her duties, always with a weary, haunted look, and the way at night in her sleep she yells out suddenly or moans as though in great pain, make Hearn feel certain that she still believes that Nabayah’s vengeful spirit is abroad and bent on persecuting her.
He supposes there is nothing to be done to help the girl, no useful remedy to be applied, for now at least, since reason alone will not alter her opinions, and so he decides to leave her be in the expectation that when they reach the woods again and the immediate danger is passed, her mind will settle.
His complacency is shaken, though, one day when, after Shaw and he have killed a deer at last and dragged it back to camp so that Keasik may skin and dress it, he’s roused from his afternoon rest by what sounds like a sob or scream.
When he raises himself to look, he sees Keasik crouching by the body of the half-skinned deer holding out her knife with a trembling right hand as if to defend herself from an assailant.
A few feet away, perched on the largest point of the upturned antler, is a raven, perhaps twice the usual size, its utter blackness badged against the pale sky like a wound or a portal.
Hearn sees right away that the bird’s appearance has put her under a spell of some kind, mesmerized her, and she is far too terrified to move or speak.
When he calls her name and tells her to be calm, she doesn’t look back at him or answer; only the raven from its bony pulpit condescends to notice him, and then, having stared a moment with its glossy, pinprick eyes, turns back disdainfully.
Hearn reaches for his musket, loads it as fast as he can, and, after calling out a warning, gets to his feet, takes a quick aim, and fires.
The raven, which only a moment before appeared so stately and domineering, is flung backward into the air and transformed in an instant, as if by a feat of magic, from a living creature into a ragged, tumbling clump of blood and feathers.
Keasik, seeing what has happened, lets her right arm drop down to her side, lowers her head, and, with her eyes closed, starts to gasp and sob.
Hearn lays the musket back down on the ground, walks forward, and crouches beside her.
“The raven is dead,” he says, “and whatever powers it had are destroyed, so you have nothing to fear anymore. Give me that knife and let me finish. You go over there and rest for a while.”
Shaw, who has been startled awake, demands to know what the commotion is about, and Hearn, after Keasik has given him the knife and wandered away, explains what has happened and why he shot the bird.
“The girl is plainly unwell,” he says. “It’s more than just the usual superstitions; her mind has become disturbed. We’ve all seen a good deal more than we’d wish to lately, but you and I have experience of weathering such shocks. Keasik is too young to bear them.”
Shaw looks over to where she is lying curled up on the ground, then looks back at Hearn and shakes his head.
“I never heard of an Indian woman coming down with an attack of the vapors afore,” he says. “There’s an original notion.”
“Her husband is dead and her friends were both murdered. You cannot expect her to continue unaffected.”
“Her husband is only dead because she killed him. A woman who is capable of such a bloody act has no need for coddling, in my opinion. She has a savage streak inside her.”
“She had to defend herself,” Hearn says, “and ever since then, she’s been scared nearly to death by the thought that Nabayah’s ghost is stalking her.
She needs to be with her own people again; that’s the only sure way to cure the disease.
As soon as we get back to the woods, we must do our best to get her home. ”
“We’ll get ourselves home safe with the gold first of all and worry ourselves about other things later.
I doubt it’s our good company that’s causing the problem anyway.
More likely it’s some complication inside.
The womb is the usual cause of women’s ailments, I believe.
Perhaps the baby isn’t growing quite right. ”
Hearn looks back at him, amazed, and then, instead of answering, kneels down with the knife and starts slicing through the skin along the deer’s neck and spine and, with his free hand, tugging it loose, inch by inch, from the muscle and the bone.
The girl with her ghostly raven, he thinks, and John Shaw with his holy bag of gold: Both of them are mad in different ways, and perhaps I’ll soon go mad as well, because out here in this dismal, cheerless place, thrown back upon itself, the mind, if left unguarded, too easily expands beyond its natural limit and, godlike, populates the void with hectic products of its own devising.
He pulls the last piece of deerskin free from the scarlet haunch, shakes it once, and tosses it onto the ground to dry.
With the hide all peeled away but his dead eyes still open wide, the deer looks both surprised and ashamed of himself, Hearn thinks, with a sudden impulse of pity as he begins to cut the meat into pieces for roasting, as if this abject state of death and nakedness is a long-held secret he was hoping no one else would ever learn.