Love to Water My Soul (Dreamcatcher)

  I scanned the horizon behind him, suddenly wondering if he had come alone. It was a fleeting thought. He was the last of who my eyes would see of what I left behind. I knew this. I scratched his neck and felt a collar, soft with nubby knots.

  “My memory,” I gasped. “You brought my knots of memory.” Lukwsh or Shard or Wren had tied it as a collar, must have kept him back so none could follow him to me, let Stink Bug come out first and fail.

  To the west, tips of mountains rose in the far distance. The land rolled like a vast bowl toward them. To the north stood more hills rich with huckleberries and the promise of my future. I would carry this place in my mind, tied into the knots of my memory. But it would be only that now, not someplace I would call my own. I did not let my mind wonder if the fuel I’d gathered just three days past had been burned around another. I chose to believe that Shard would find a way to outwit Wuzzie, would not give up his life for someone so unworthy as me.

  Flake’s big paw lifted to my shoulder as I sat. He pulled at me. I untwisted the ragged hemp rope.

  “Kept you tied, did they? Didn’t want you trailing after me? Fooled them,” I told the dog.

  He cocked his head, then pushed back and lifted his leg to scratch at his neck.

  “Stink Bug lacked your nose,” I said, burying my face in his fur. And his big heart. “He’d never get this far. Only you could find me.” I actually laughed out loud, amazed at how the dog’s very presence lifted me and gave me new hope.

  Rested now, Flake whined impatience.

  “I know,” I said, gazing at the horizon, considering the land we traveled, the future we faced. “I know. It’s time we moved.” I draped my arm over his broad back and patted his shoulder. “Time to leave, that’s certain. We will head to the lakes, pick up a water basket at the camp. But after that, Flake, where do we walk after that?”

  THE THIRTEENTH KNOT

  FULL CIRCLE

  On the sixth morning out, the final day of the charming of the antelope—if all went well—I knew that Shard had died.

  I felt chilled over my bare arms. A breeze wisped through the shreds of my buckskin and twirled between the tangles of my hair. New tears formed against my eyes, behind my nose. I did not know where the water came from to flood my face. It did not press in a caress against my cheeks. I thought the pond that formed my heart would soon run dry, but each new thought of loss discovered more.

  The certainty that Shard was dead brought pain that cut the deepest.

  I had dreamed of him the night before. I talked to him in words crisp and clear, though I do not remember speaking. Rather, soft impressions and feelings moved between us.

  Flake and I had nestled down beside a juniper, brushed the hard blue berries from where we wished to lay our heads. In another day, we would be near the lakes and could pick up baskets, rework old food caches to see if some crumbs remained. The night did not cooperate, the moon hid behind a growl of clouds. Along the far horizon, lightning spiked the earth, exposing clusters of clouds embedded within larger shadows spilling toward fragments of dark, open sky.

  My sleep came quick and deep.

  Shard arrived in the dream almost instantly. He told me to hurry on, that he would follow if he could, that we would meet again after a charming of the future. I did not understand him, argued with him, said I should turn back, tried to convince him I could rescue him now that rain had come and the herd had been found.

  “Wuzzie will change his mind. I can make him,” I said. “I have a powerful Spirit who walks with me. See? I have lived these days when I should have died. I cheated death. There must be some reason.”

  Shard paused just as he would have, then nodded his head. “There is reason,” he said.

  Then in my dream his eyes turned tender as a rabbit’s and pooled with water. Those eyes left his face to watch me. I had to look up to see him then.

  “Where Wuzzie lives is not for you, not now. You have a reason. Find your place away.”

  I whimpered in my sleep. Flake pushed against me, warming me with his dark body stretched next to mine. A roll of thunder furled across the vast sky like the sounds of antelope thundering between mounds, between fences made by minds. I willed myself back into my dream, unable to let Shard disappear, clinging to him as a wet hide, clutching at his form as the last leaf of aspen flaps hopelessly against a winter’s wind.

  “The journey,” he said, “is like a charming circle.” His gentle voice hovered at the edge of a sob. “Our paths will cross again. We will wander wide and far but always with direction. And when we meet again, I will recognize you as having been there with me all along.”

  “And me?” I said, crying now, trying not to for fear that I would wake and he would go away.

  “This is a promise: I will hold you in my mind, and someday we will walk as one.”

  The dream ended then, and his name would not be spoken by my lips until the mourning time had passed. I knew he was dead.

  My hands stretched out to hold him, instead seized wispy air. Deep sobs burned my chest and woke me. And even though I knew it was a dream, knew my crying could not bring him back, I seemed powerless to stop the tears from flowing, could not make my sobbing cease.

  Flake nuzzled me, let me cry into the fluff of his neck until my eyes were swollen and pinched. He whined and nudged, licked at my face hugged to my knees. His wide tail beat against me as he stood to protect me, facing away.

  For a long time after, I simply sat. Flake decided to wander a short distance. He sniffed at night birds, lifted his head to watch me. My arms clasped in rocking around my knees. I watched lightning through a prism of tears, spied shafts of rain sweep across parched sage. My neck tingled along the gold chain I wore as lightning flashed close.

  Flake returned. I clutched at his collar, fingering memory knots. My mind memorized the knots that marked each word, each touch, each look that passed between us. Beyond, where the sky opened into a cloudless raven black, the full moon broke through. A lance of light raced across the sky and pierced the last of raindrops seeping into night. Then like a flower opening to the sunrise, pressed into quiet, an arc of color formed, so soft, so light, so like familiar things I loved—the shades of still lakes, faded sunsets, pale pollen, and shooting stars. It sprawled across the sky, this pillowed brilliance of the night, spread itself from earth to heaven, then disappeared from sight, its course a memory, a savored memory washed upon my heart. It faded to morning light. I treasured it, that rainbow of the night sent to warm the chill and remind me of a promise.

  In the morning, I moved at a gentle lope along a deer trace I hoped led to water. Flake panted at my heels. My mind lived far away, distant, trying to decide where I would go once I left the empty village by the lakes. My thoughts were interrupted by the strong memory of the dream, not asked for, but arriving just the same. A coldness chilled my skin despite sweat beading above my lips. Without thinking I reached for the gold chain I wore again around my neck. I held smoothness between my fingers with only the memory of his love and a faded flicker of hope.

  Flake barked behind me. I turned to see his tail lifted high, still, his neck hairs stiffly arched along his back, brown eyes locked in stare. How could he know I thought of death?

  “It’s all right, Flake,” I said, patting my thigh so he would come to me. His tail dropped to wag. His big head lowered in embarrassment.

  A golden eagle screeched high above us, dipped its wings, set its talons as it plunged to the ground. It rose in a moment, a plump rabbit still squirming beneath it as it flew north to an unseen nest.

  Together, Flake and I killed a rabbit, too, and used its innards to comfort the dog. Wren’s flints gave up a low flame. I roasted the meat, shared it with the dog. He took a small bite from my hand, his mouth gentle as cottonwood fluff, his teeth tugging at the meat but leaving me always with the final bite.

  At the lakes I walked as though among the dead. Only bird sounds stirred the air that settled around the lodges like o
ld gossip, stale and distorted. It seemed years had passed since I walked there, touched his hand in friendship then in love, let Lukwsh trade an obsidian knife for me.

  Flake helped me unearth a small cache of seeds and a forgotten one that allowed me to eat my fill of dried duck buried between layers of grasses. Filled, I moved between the mats and wickiups like a silent spirit, unnoticed, touching familiar things of others and my own. A small water basket with its cords of tule twists lay windtossed beside a lodge. I tied a leather thong across my head and settled the basket on my back. Beneath an old rabbit robe, I found the larger basket given me as a gift from Sunmiet when I became a woman. I decided not to carry either, though both would have comforted as I left. Instead, I found a spear point I could fish with, more dried cakes, a stash of pine nuts, and a small burden basket I slipped onto my back.

  I made one circle walk around Lukwsh’s wickiup, leaving touches upon a rawhide rope, her rabbit blanket, her clay pot with the chipped lip. “Blend,” she had said. “Take what power you are given and blend it. You will be stronger.” Sunmiet’s cedar basket stared at me, and in my looking I considered: I could seek out Sarah to see if she could help me use the gold chain to find those I once thought I could not live without. She lived in two worlds, might help me live there, too.

  Or I could make my way toward Sunmiet’s place, Tlhxni, where owls and dark-skinned people mixed as one.

  It was as good a plan as any.

  “Perhaps I’ll meet her friend there, the tibo named Jane,” I told Flake, not knowing that finding who I was mattered even more.

  The dog plunged into the still shallow lake, swam about, his black nose just above water. He surged out and ran toward me, shook himself of the wet, and panted, ready.

  At Wuzzie’s wickiup we paused. Flake stuck his head low, sniffing below the hide flap. I considered stepping inside to destroy what he left there, to let him know when he returned that someone who hated him still lived.

  A shiver of anger thrilled through me, burning like bad fish swallowed. Wuzzie. Because of Wuzzie I had to leave. Because of him, my life tossed about like a stick on spring water. Because of him, the one I cared for had been asked to die.

  I pushed open the flap to the wickiup and entered, my anger cutting through the fear this place breathed out. In the cold darkness I felt—or heard—Do not let what Wuzzie does choose for you. Be grateful for what is.

  I suspected my young imagination, tiredness, and sporadic food were really speaking, but with the words, I backed on out, backed away from this whole empty village that once held me in love.

  “We will go without Wuzzie’s potions or his herbs or his dances,” I told the dog, feeling stronger with direction and a plan.

  Slowly, we made our way north, through the dried grasses already looking stronger from the bursts of rain my leaving brought this portion of the desert. We passed the narrows between the lakes without getting our feet wet so shallow were they, not yet refreshed from the rainfall in the mountains. Pelicans gathered on the mud flats far beyond us, their whiteness like ice along a river’s edge.

  I left it all behind me, hoped to find my reasons somewhere else, blend in, be strong, maybe find the past I longed for.

  We went north, toward Canyon City country and the river they call John Day’s. I skirted the small town, not wanting to be shouted at by the men using words I did not know and whose faces leered like Stink Bug’s or scowled like Grey Doe’s and Lives in Pain’s. Flake and I moved beside the trails most traveled by shiny-eyed miners, kept ourselves in the ripples of land, away from the ranches raided by our band. I bypassed stands of juniper dulled black and red by an old fire. I hid behind juniper and pine, watching, walking, resting in the day hours, moving most at dusk and dawn. We stepped untroubled beside the streams and rivers and followed their meandering only as a trail to somewhere else.

  A ripple of activity caught our attention on a ranch where stages stopped. Stacks of grass hay dotted the distance. The black posts and dead junipers that surrounded the new-looking house exposed remnants of a past fire. Several soldiers with their dogs lounged on the covered porch.

  For just a moment I thought of walking forward, attempting with my hands to tell them who I was, see if old English words might come back. But I heard them laugh heartily, sitting on boards with legs that tipped as they leaned back against the wall or dropped forward with a thud.

  Flake growled low, and so we slipped on by.

  A pack string of loaded mules wove its way along a dusty road. More pairs of soldiers passed them, moving toward the lakes, and I wondered if this might be that highway Sunmiet spoke of! Dalles Military Highway, where soldiers moved between the city of The Dalles and Canyon City and perhaps a future reservation. I overheard words I did not understand, and thought of the man in uniform who taught me to answer, “As I am.” No name. No likeness. Only a gold necklace. I fingered the chain, but something told me not to show it to anyone, especially people riding along a lonely dirt highway.

  We veered northwest along a fork of the rock-lined river. I learned later that the man whose name it bears was once Kahkwa Pelton, “lost in his head,” and needed help to rid the strange and strangling spirits that moved inside his mind along this stream. I wondered if my Spirit might be gone, left behind. Or would he leave me like Kahkwa Pelton if I could not learn to live without the people? I walked this trail before. But this time I left, was forced to. It surprised me that the pain felt no different, cut just as deep as when others rattled along the ruts away from me. But I was older now, had a keener edge, and knew what took me time to learn before: I must seek the ones I thought would love me above all others.

  Only years later, as a wiser woman still, would I discover that on that very journey I would find myself.

  There were edges so narrow I could not walk beside the water. Rocks jutted out into the channel and forced Flake and me to climb above, keep the stream in our vision but farther away. Stands of dense pines blocked the sky. Rocks of reds and greens separated by strips as dark as Flake rose up like wide rainbows of rock. In places, the boulders crumbled to a pale powder that puffed up as green dust as we walked. In the distance, I saw men dressed in suits and hats pounding with small hammers, holding up chunks of the tinted rocks and strange bones, excitement in their voices carrying across the still, lava-rich lands. Their mules pawed restlessly at men who were not miners, not looking for gold. Something from a story told in a wickiup came to me, of places north, where leaves are pressed into rock, bones of shaggy-haired cats are caught by stone.

  “Do not go near this place,” Wuzzie warned. “Only bad things will follow.”

  “We have traveled too far, Flake,” I said, not wanting to test Wuzzie’s views. We turned west into the sun and into my future.

  For a long time, we passed by small herds of mule deer, and once, wiggling my hands above my ears, I almost charmed a fawn beside its mother. It walked toward me with precise pauses and exaggerated movements of his arched neck and head as though each step were a beginning and an ending in itself, not part of a forward path. His mother snorted a warning, but he, curious, tendered on until I could look into his eyes, my fingers still fluttering at my ears.

  I stared.

  He startled, spun in one fluid movement, the black tip of his tail flipping as he darted after the doe. I laughed out loud, a sound so strange to my ears I almost did not know it. I felt a twist of guilt.

  The trail Flake and I paralleled meandered north with the river. We traveled daylight hours, so few people marked the dirt roads. Those that did made noises ahead of them like porcupines scrambling up trees, providing warnings for us to hide. I made small fires, found myself unfilled by the few berries I picked from sparse bushes. I wondered what Flake lived on, felt his ribs beneath my fingers. I tore slices from my hide dress which we both chewed to answer the growling in our stomachs.

  In a rocky area where I could see the ridge cap but had no plans to climb, we spent the night, warmed b
y the rocks holding the daylight heat. I dreamed of a steaming antelope roast, smelled the spit of duck fat dropped in the flames. My mouth moved to the chewing of tiny seeds, the mash of pine nuts soft between my teeth. At dawn, I heard the baby cry.

  I thought I dreamed, but Flake growled low, hair rising behind his neck. After a time, we moved quietly beyond the rocks, circled around where the sound came from. I peered down into a treed landscape separated by sparse grasses, short shrubs for browse. Tall tamarack trees felled by the wind leaned against each other like skinny men suddenly tired, full of unbalanced spirits. A lone deer moved there, thin, a back leg as slender as a reed dragging in the dirt as it moved, head bent to browse, nose lifting to catch scents in the air.

  I grabbed Flake’s collar, felt the low growl in his chest, told him, “Quiet,” in a whisper. We watched.

  Nothing happened. We did not see people nor hear the baby cry. No sign of travelers besides us two. I almost let Flake loose.

  Suddenly, a pale creature the color of sun eased past us, entering low and left, like a sleek-muscled dog. It dragged a long, thick tail, and wore its small ears pinned to its round head. It’s muzzle sprouted whiskers thin as spider webs. It paid us no mind as it eased its way to the deer, a soft, snake-like hiss pushing out of its mouth. I had never seen one before but knew its name from descriptions, had heard they took cattle and even small children.

  Flake pulled and lurched against my hand. I held him tight as we watched the thing spring. In an instant of fluid motion, its huge paw curled down across the deer’s shoulder, leaving four tracks of blood. The deer could barely startle the lunge came so quickly, full of fur and power and motion and blood. The whiskered animal cried like an unanswered infant.

  Flake lunged and chewed on my hand holding the leather necklace against his will.

  The deer’s legs twitched, then stopped as the victor ripped at its throat, then its flank. To the sounds of death gurgling, the cat ate its fill, turned its head once or twice to scan around, face smudged red against the deer’s tawny brown.