The Last Sin Eater

  “What’s your name?” Fagan asked.

  “Sim,” he said after a slight hesitation. He lowered his hands to his sides. “Sim Gillivray.”

  Wet and shivering, I took his hand. “Can we go back to your cave now, Sim Gillivray? I’m cold.”

  He made an odd choking sound and didn’t move.

  “What is it?” Fagan asked, stepping closer. He took the leather hood from the man’s hand and tossed it away. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Sim’s voice was hoarse. “It’s just that . . . no one’s touched me since the day my name was drawn from the mazer bowl.”

  N I N E T E E N

  Sim Gillivray and Fagan talked far into the night. Sim was hungry to know every word the man by the river had said, but I wore out and fell asleep to the lull of their conversation, the crackling fire, and the rain pounding outside. It was a good sleep, sound and deep, all through the night and much needed after days of wondering and worrying about too many things beyond my control. In it, I imagined Lilybet stroking my hair and telling me God loved me and was watching over me. I didn’t know then that the Lord was preparing me for what was coming next. Peace dwelt in my heart and soothed my soul.

  But outside that cave in the valley below, a storm was brewing the likes of which I’d never seen before nor would ever see again.

  When I awakened, the rain had stopped. Light seeped in from the split in the leather curtain Sim Gillivray had hung long ago to keep the weather out of his cave. A thin brilliant line of light speared the dimness so that I could see dust particles dancing in it. That stream of sunshine ended at a wide crack in the back wall of the cave and darkness beyond as though it was a target. I’d never noticed it before.

  Curious, I rose, stepped across Fagan sleeping curled up in a blanket, and crept over to see if anything lay beyond that crack. There was cooler air, but I could see nothing beyond a few feet of narrow stone corridor. The blackness was so deep and so thick, it was like a wall. Far back, I could hear the slow, steady drip, drip, drip of water. I had heard it before but thought not much about it, too curious about other things. Yet now, the questing spirit Granny had talked about came up in me so strong everything else was forgotten in my desire to venture back and see what lay inside that darkness.

  First I needed to make a torch. Creeping across the cave, I ducked outside and into the woods. I collected long twigs and sticks and a strong vine and sat down to make a fagot. It seemed large enough to last me a good bit of time, time enough at least to get a look. Hurrying back, I set it afire from the hot coals.

  The narrow passageway wound back and forth like a snake down a rabbit hole. I’d just about lost my courage when it opened into a chamber several times bigger than the one Sim Gillivray had made into his home. Toward the back were rock formations coming down from the ceiling and up from the floor. They looked like giant fangs, and I imagined myself standing inside the mouth of a dragon. The floor of the cavern was slick, smooth, and damp, like a monster’s tongue might be. I had to stop my fanciful thinking, for my heart was pounding its way right up into my throat.

  Drip, drip, the drops of water fell, the sound louder now to my ears. The columns of stone shone with moisture.

  I kept telling myself to think of something other than a dragon, but the mind of a child is a fixed thing at times. I needed something to distract me and held the fagot higher looking for it. It was a strange place with an oppressive feeling about it. Like something terrible lived inside. Shaking, I turned slowly round about looking from ceiling to floor, wondering if there were eyes watching me.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  One area on the curved wall was blackened by soot. Beneath the dark stains on a dry dirt surface was a circle of rocks and the gray ash of a long-dead fire. As I turned more, I saw painted figures all along one side of the cavern. The stick figures seemed to dance in the flickering light of my small torch. Dance and tumble . . .

  A piece of burning twig dropped onto my hand. Hissing in pain, I dropped the fagot. As it hit the rock floor, the small flame went out, leaving only small glowing embers. Hand shaking violently, I picked the fagot up quickly and blew softly on it, desperate to revive the flame. One by one, the embers died. Darkness enfolded me and pressed in tight.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  My heart pounded in my ears. I could hear my own rasping breath. I held the fagot up to my face and could see nothing, nor feel even the smallest hint of warmth. It was dead out, and I didn’t remember where the corridor was. I’d turned myself around. I turned again, slowly, straining my eyes, desperate to see some small dot of light that led back to Fagan and Sim Gil-livray.

  Nothing.

  I had never been in such darkness before. It was utterly devoid of all light. And that blackness was heavy, pulsing, and full of terrors to my child’s mind.

  Drip . . . drip . . . drip.

  I imagined those white, glistening teeth.

  Drip . . . drip . . .

  Was it saliva trickling as the dragon thought about chewing me up and swallowing me?

  I screamed. The sound swelled as my own panic-stricken voice surrounded me, echoing back from all directions. A sudden swift flapping of wings and high-pitched keening sound came rushing and swirling. Terror filled me so that I was para lyzed. When something brushed my hair, I screamed again, dropping to my knees and covering my head. I imagined all the demons of hell coming at me, intent upon grabbing hold and taking me down into the black pit. “Help me!” I screamed again.

  “Cadi!” Sim Gillivray shouted from a distance. “Don’t move! We’re coming, honey. Stay where ye are!”

  “Where are you?”

  “Sim’s gone to make a torch!” Fagan called.

  “Hurry! Oh, please, hurry!”

  “Hold still, girl!” he shouted back at me.

  “They’re coming for me!”

  “Who’s coming?” Fagan called, alarmed.

  “Demons! There’s demons in here.”

  “No demons. Sim says there’s bats. He says to hold your peace, and they’ll return to their roosts. Stay low! For crying out loud, Cadi! Stop your caterwauling! Sim’s back. He’s lighting the torch.”

  Curled on the cold floor of the cave, I listened to the rushing sound above me. It grew fainter as light flickered from the narrow corridor down which I’d come.

  “Cadi, where are you?”

  Looking up, I now saw the last few bats swoop between the stone columns and disappear into the darkness beyond. Clambering to my feet, I ran toward the light in the narrow corridor and straight into Fagan. He gave a grunt of pain and fell back. He would’ve fallen had not Sim caught hold of his shoulders and steadied him.

  “What do ye think ye’re doing?” Fagan said, gasping in pain, trying to pry me loose of him.

  I clung like lichen to a tree trunk. “There’s ghosts in there.”

  “Ghosts?” Fagan whispered, eyes brightening.

  “On the walls round about. Everywhere! I swear. Don’t go back in there!”

  “They’re just pictures, Cadi,” Sim said quietly, holding back. “Nothing to be afeared of.”

  “Pictures?” Fagan said. “Pictures of what?”

  “People.”

  “I want to see.”

  “We ought to get Cadi out of here, Fagan.”

  “Just for a minute. Stay here, Cadi. We’ll be right back.”

  “No! I ain’t staying here!”

  “There’s only one torch, and we’ll be wasting it taking ye back. Now, buck up and don’t be such a coward.”

  His words stung, for I wanted Fagan to think well of me. “What about the bats? They was coming down on me by the hundreds, maybe thousands.”

  “Not so many as that,” he said, glancing at Sim.

  “There’s plenty of the beasties, but I reckon they’re back in the other chamber by now. They keep to it unless something startles them.”

  “Like Cadi screaming her head off.”

  “I’d like to see
what you’d do without a torch in that cave!” “They go out by another way, farther along,” Sim said. “There’s a narrow cut in the mountainside that opens to the sky. It’s far back from here.”

  “How far back have you gone?”

  “About as far as a man can go, I reckon.”

  I was in awe of his courage. Who would be brave enough to go deeper into this dreadful place, the home of bats and who knew what else?

  “I’ve had twenty years to explore this cavern. I know near every inch of it. Even the places only big enough for a man to crawl into. Some places are better left alone. That big chamber back and east of us is one. It’s where the bats live. Thousands of ’em landing upside down on the ceiling. I stay clean out of that place.”

  Fagan looked intrigued. “What’s it like?”

  “Has scat knee-deep on the floor and a stench so bad ye can hardly breathe. I reckon the bats laid claim to that place more than a few lifetimes ago.”

  Fagan took the torch from Sim and went on ahead.

  He was going right on in just like I knew he would. “Fagan!” I whispered after him.

  “I’m going to see the pictures ye was talking about is all. Ye can come on along or wait there. Your choice.”

  “It’s all right, Cadi,” Sim said. “Ye can wait right here and be fine.”

  Filled with consternation, I followed them, hoping Fagan hadn’t set his mind on seeing that bat cave as well. The cold air hit me again, sending a chill up my spine as we stood in the center of the chamber.

  Fagan moved closer, holding the torch high. “Did you paint ’em, Sim?”

  “No. They was here long before I was. I spent a few weeks in this chamber the first winter I was the sin eater. Couldn’t sleep much for looking at ’em.”

  The people were stick figures, simple to draw. Even I could’ve painted them, and maybe done a better job. “Ye think a child painted ’em?”

  “Too high up,” Sim said.

  “What are those humps supposed to be?” I said. “Hills or something?”

  “Indian hogans, I think,” Fagan said, studying them.

  “That’s what I reckon they are,” Sim said, moving no closer.

  “Men, women, and children playing.” Fagan moved on to the next. “Look at that one. They’re dancing and playing. And the next one, there’s a man wearing a hat.”

  “A white man,” Sim said, his voice soft and grim.

  “They’re shaking hands, ain’t they? The white man and the chief.”

  “I think so.”

  “More whites, two women with them. What’s this one?”

  I stood beside him. “Looks like fire.”

  “You’re right. The hogans are burning,” Fagan said. “That’s what’s happening, isn’t it, Sim?”

  “Reckon so.”

  Moving closer, I looked up at the painted sticklike figures scattered about. The man wearing the hat held a stick pointing toward another line of figures. A line of black went from neck to neck, linking them one to another. Some of the stick figures were bent over. Were they wounded or old? Some stood straight, but were smaller. Women? Three held babies. The next picture showed the people standing in a linked line above six thick black lines straight up and down and two wavy lines beneath. The man in the hat stood behind them pointing his stick.

  I looked to the next. Then small lines came out in all directions from the stick the man held, and the people tumbled, arms and legs out, down into the wavy lines. The last picture scene showed stick figures lying still beneath three vertical lines ending in swirling circles.

  The only sound around us was the drip, drip, drip of the water.

  None of us moved. We just stood staring at those pictures. I looked behind me. Sim Gillivray looked grim and sad. Fagan stared up at the cave wall, his eyes filled with horror. I looked from them to the last scene. All those people, old men and women and babies. Their bodies seemed to float in the swirls. I wasn’t sure I understood what the pictures were telling me. Shaking, I knew in the heart of me but didn’t want to face it.

  “He shot the first one in line, and the rest fell with him,” Fagan said. “The man in the hat murdered ’em.”

  “It’s the Narrows, ain’t it?” I said. “They fell into the Narrows and went over the falls.”

  “Not all,” Sim said, stepping forward and pointing to one stick figure hiding in the woods in the third picture. “He escaped and lived long enough to come up here and hide. He’s the one who painted these pictures.”

  “What happened to him?” Fagan said.

  “He died. I found his bones over there behind those two pillars.”

  “Is he still there?” Fagan said, heading for them.

  I’d seen Granny laid out for burying, but I’d never seen human bones before. The skeleton, still clad in decaying leather leggings and shirt, was stretched out flat, one leg bent up to the side. The skull was tipped toward us, jaws open. I could imagine the eyes of his soul staring up at me from those black empty sockets and drew back behind Fagan.

  “He can’t hurt ye, Cadi,” Fagan said.

  “What’s that beside him?” I asked.

  Fagan leaned down and picked up a small wooden bowl while I drew back, moving closer to Sim Gillivray.

  “His paint bowl,” Sim said.

  “There’s still some encrusted in it.”

  “Put it back where ye found it,” Sim said gently. “It tells the end of the story.”

  “The end?” Fagan put the bowl down. “What happened to him?”

  “Near as I can figure, he was wounded and dying when he come in here. What I know for sure is he was determined to leave the truth behind.”

  I looked up at the pictures on the cave wall. “That’s why he painted those pictures.”

  “Aye, that’s so.”

  “How do you know he was wounded and dying?” Fagan leaned over the skeleton and studied it.

  “Either that or he killed himself.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “Because he didn’t use clay or soot and ash to paint those pictures. He used his own blood.”

  “I’d like to know when it happened and who done it,” Fagan said when Sim had gone out to check his traps.

  I wasn’t sure I believed it. “I ain’t never seen an Indian in all my born days, Fagan. Only heard of them.”

  “That may be so, but as far back as I can remember, I’ve heard people talking about ’em like they was a terrible threat. Pa’s said more than once they’d as like to kill ye as look at ye. And now, I reckon I can see why they’d feel that way.”

  “We didn’t do ’em ill. We wasn’t even thought about when all that was happening, Fagan. It ain’t our fault.”

  “Don’t matter. Don’t ye understand, Cadi? We’re blood kin to whoever done it.”

  “No kin of mine would do such a thing as murder women and children. I won’t believe it!”

  His mouth tightened as he looked at me. “But ye can believe it of mine, can’t ye?”

  The heat came up into my face and lingered there. It was terrible true. Having seen Fagan’s own da beating on him with the face of the devil and swearing to kill him, I could imagine ’em all capable of anything. The Kais were a bloodthirsty lot, except for Iona and Fagan. “I’m sorry,” I said, eyes downcast. I was sorry to believe as I did and even sorrier Fagan was born a Kai.

  “I know my kin have a lot to answer for,” he said, grim faced, “but there were others in the third picture. Remember? The man in the hat wasn’t alone.”

  “I don’t want to think about those pictures anymore.” And I didn’t want to think about the man who’d used his own blood to paint them. I didn’t want to think about who else might have been with the man who’d fired the gun and sent all those people to their deaths. “Can’t we talk about summat else?”

  “No. I’ve got to know.”

  “Why? What good’ll come of knowing?”

  “I can’t just forget what I saw back there! It’s l
ike a knot in my chest. I have to find out when it happened and who did it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think the Holy Spirit’s telling me to go looking for the answers.”

  “God already knows who done it, don’t ye think, Fagan? He don’t need us to find out for him.”

  “Course God knows, Cadi. That ain’t the point.”

  “What is?”

  “God wants us to know.”

  I chewed on my lip, wondering what path God was sending us down this time. Would it be one with more heartache for Fagan and more disillusionment for me?

  “What do ye say, Cadi?”

  I was not eager to seek the answers, but felt it was the stirring of the Holy Spirit that was urging Fagan ahead. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him to rebel against the leading of the Lord, even though I felt safe inside Sim Gillivray’s cave. Long as we stayed where we was, Brogan Kai wouldn’t come after us. I’d seen the look on his face and knew it was fear kept him away. But it was dead certain that man had nothing to fear in the valley. He was waiting down there for us. I’d had scares enough for one day being caught in darkness, surrounded by bats and seeing a dead man’s bones. I didn’t feel brave enough to face the living.

  “It’s all right,” Fagan said gently. “Ye don’t have to come. I can take care of myself.”

  Blinking back tears, I saw Lilybet through the blur of them, sitting across the fire from me, beside Fagan. She smiled at me tenderly. “Remember the night by the river, Katrina Anice. Remember when Brogan Kai was beating Fagan. Who threw the stone?”

  “I did.”

  “You did?” Fagan said, cocking his head slightly, bemused. “Did what?”

  “I threw the stone.”

  “What stone?”

  “God has not given you a heart of fear,” Lilybet said. “And ye shall go two by two.”

  I sat up straighter, the fear and hesitance washed away, and looked across the fire at him. “I’ll go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Wherever you go, I’ll go.”