EXCERPT

CHAPTER I

SPIRITS SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF TIME and move through it like a song through air. They prick my skin in warning. Of what? I don’t know. I shadow my two cousins who don’t notice the sudden otherworldly presences near us. Maybe it isn’t a warning. Maybe it’s just Grandfather sending one of his spirit familiars to see that I’m safe, his invisible spies that electrify the space around us like lightning charging in a thunder cloud, making the hair rise stiffly on my body, on my neck, on my scalp. But his familiars give me signs, signals of which spirit is here—these ones simply pulse danger. I should stay home, but the southern pirates came for me this time, specifically for me, demanded that T’ky of Atlaleedis be handed to them or they would burn our village and slaughter everyone. This caught everyone by surprise, as summer, the season of raiders and pirates, has passed. They should be home, putting up their ships for winter. Instead, they lined their tall ships facing our village.  

“Give them T’ky,” my aunt Laisdel said. “Give them our curse.”

My sister Ganeesela said nothing in my defense, but stood beside my aunt and glared at me as if I’d conjured the pirates myself. Grandfather is furious with them both. Though we defeated the pirates, the dead men and women it cost us has left me with a sharp ache in my guts like I’ve swallowed knives. So my cousins are tasked with guarding me from my kin more than anyone but every person is needed for the hunt, so we’re a part of the tidy-up crew, adults among boys barely raised to warriors, far behind the hunting parties on the trail of the pirates who escaped.

We follow the quarrelling croak of ravens to the body that has been attracting the grizzly. We’re half-way up Sleeping Giant Mountain. Winter Haven, the main village of Atlaleedis lies below us—grand, wooden longhouses lining a curved beach, my home nestled against the forest and the mountains. A rain squall drums on the turning autumn leaves that flutter to the ground from the sun-yellow cottonwoods and browning alders that ring this meadow. This is the time when bears will eat anything, when the last spawning salmon have rotted in the rivers and unpicked fruit has withered in the cooler days, the frost-glazed nights. Our feet shush through the waist-high grass, whose golden heads shudder in the downpour, drooping like weary mothers.

My cousins drop back to flank me, brothers born close together, often mistaken for twins. Tall, lean young men who suddenly care about the neatness of their braids, the quality of their clothes, having discovered that women are an unknown world they long to explore. They both have their father’s long nose, but Pawi has the beginnings of a beard, proud that he has one and his older brother does not, not even a moustache. Their father is our chief of the Eagle Clan and they have finally been crewed on a war canoe, making them bachelors many girls follow with their eyes and their smiles.

A raven cries a shrill warning to the others as we near them. They cover the body like a blanket of night before they shoot upwards, their wings whooshing as they swoop into the nearby trees to sullenly watch our approach. The southern pirates attacked our village last week. When it was evident that they were losing, their ships abandoned a handful of men where they fought on our beachfront. The men shouted curses as the anchors lifted, as white sails billowed in the north wind that pushed them south, back to their lands, their rich lands. The marooned men fled into our forest. We stop before a dead pirate, his face eaten to the skull, his strange clothes ripped and shredded. His empty eye sockets fill with rain that spills like tears, his guts a splay of rotting offal. A wide path of bloody, flattened grass would most likely lead us to the desperate bear who now has tasted human flesh, and so lost his fear of us, haunting our village for tender scraps, children who wander too far, elders too slow to run.

My cousins crouch to examine the body. I remain standing, scanning the trees, the meadow, the nearby thicket of devil’s club where I would fast when I was young and hopeful. The thicket of these shrubs is old, their lanky limbs covered in barbed thorns the way a sea urchin is covered in spines. Their broad leaves twitch in the downpour that makes it through their preferred territory, the dark understory of cedars and spruce. A hollow red cedar is near the thicket, like a small cave. I lived there many summers trying to become a shaman like my grandfather. I drank only the devil’s club bark made into a strong tea, fasting and vomiting until the sky itself vibrated with strange colours and the rocks beneath me rang like struck bells. If that shamanic power was meant for me, I would have seen The Between World, and the ghosts and spirits who inhabit that strange place that lies on the edges of our world and the Land of the Dead. A shaman, a true shaman, could see the chief of the devil’s club. The chief of this thicket would shimmer with power to a shaman’s eyes. It would lead him to the most potent medicines. But I saw nothing with my plain eyes.

The smell of the body is like soured, rotting shrimp. I can’t bear to move closer, and, in fact, step back. Nawilh, the older brother, slides his knife from his sheathe to lift a piece of shirt. Pawi wrinkles his nose, patting the dead man’s pants, squeaking when he finds a small bag of silver coins. Nawilh mocks his brother’s voice, still breaking though they are the same height. Pawi shoves him and gives annoyed punches that land without conviction while Nawilh chuckles and returns slaps. The play-fighting turns more serious and they wrestle on the sodden ground.

I feel eyes stuck to me, but can’t find the source of my unease, crouching to make less of a target. I say Nawilh’s name to catch his attention and point my chin to the trees. They fall silent and still, listening. The rain streams down my face, down the neck of my cloak into my tunic.

A cold hand grabs my ankle and yanks me down. I land on my back as a strangely fletched arrow flies past where my heart had been. The wind is knocked out of me so I gasp, startled by the pain, dizzy as my cousins, bent over, drag me by my arms to the woods. Nawilh shouts a warning to the other searchers.

“Pirates!” Nawilh says. “Pirates!”

Figures follow us, flickering in the trees and arrows twang around us, badly aimed. Other searchers call out as they approach. Nawilh releases my arm, listening as the underbrush breaks close to us, as the people chasing us near. I stand, catching my breath. Pawi continues to grip my upper arm, squeezing when I try to pull away.

Who runs towards us, bow drawn, is our cousin wearing pirate’s clothing. Aiku. Who I healed in the winter caves. Aiku, my aunt’s youngest son, his face disguised with clay, raises the bow and fires at my heart. His two best friends emerge from behind him, raising their war clubs.

Pawi tackles me to ground. I hear the wind; see the leaves falling in the downpour; hear the creak of the trees, the whisper of an arrow as it skims my cheek.

Nawilh meets our cousins with his knife. He throws so hard the knife goes into Aiku’s stomach up to the hilt. Nawilh reaches for his ax while Aiku clutches his belly and falls to the ground, shrieking. The other two boys also wear pirate’s clothing. While one of them attacks from the front, the other comes up beside Nawilh, arm raised.

In the woods beside the meadow near the thicket of devil’s club, the air shivers in warning. Nawilh has the gift of making the very air burn. The blast he has released roars, curls, sinuous. I clutch Pawi before he can leap to his feet. I turn my face from the flare. Pawi fights me, punching repeatedly. Our warriors, our braves, race towards us through the long grass. The boy in front of Nawilh shrieks while the other boy, his clothes flaring like a falling star, brings down his club.

Nawilh’s head cracks. He falls to the ground, stunned and dead.

The air curdles above us—it’s like being too close to a bonfire. Rain steams from our clothes. The grass around us shrivels, smoking. The branches above us blaze in the sudden furnace. The two boys standing are bathed in flames. They run blindly, batting at their burning torsos. The smell of their flesh is sweet and acrid. Pawi crawls to his brother and grieves, rocking them both. The men arriving grab the boys and roll them on the ground as they howl.

Aiku shouts his friends’ names, weeping. He clutches the knife in his belly. Aiku’s eyes meet mine then flinch away. The men make him lie on the ground and wrap cloth around the knife to hold it steady. I lay on my back and watch the rain extinguish the fires that sputter in the branches then flicker out as quickly as they started.