The Spirit Keeper Read online

  My heart continued to thump against my ribcage, and at last I sat down on the bed. My hands were clammy with sweat, and I rubbed them against the duvet in a futile attempt to dry them. “What are you talking about?”

  “I loved my sister with every ounce of my soul,” Meg said. “I know that sounds melodramatic, but it’s true. I looked up to her, and David . . . your mother could do no wrong in his eyes. She was his everything, and he was like a little pet to her.”

  My eyes stung with tears, and I swallowed hard.

  “But she invited trouble into the tribe,” Meg said, her voice and eyes hardening abruptly. “There were many who paid the price for her actions, including our own family.”

  My head snapped up. I couldn’t understand what Meg was talking about. What tribe? What trouble?

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I know you don’t understand,” Meg said. “And I’m sorry for that. We—your grandparents, your mother, David and I—we hid the truth from you. We didn’t think there was any reason to tell you, but now I see how very wrong we were.”

  Life-altering, David had said. That word pinged around the inside of my head like an arcade pin-ball.

  The subject of our heritage and where we’d come from had always been a closed book. My classmates could trace their ancestry back to exotic continents and what seemed like mythical times, but I couldn’t. There was a time I’d been curious and begged my family to tell me, but they’d always find a way to put me off. “We’ll talk about it later,” they’d say, or, “I’m busy right now. Go find something else to do.” After a while, I gave up and stopped asking. But that didn’t mean I’d stopped wondering.

  I’d always hated knowing there was a large part of myself I knew nothing about, that there was a chunk of my life that didn’t make any sense. But here Meg was now, offering to sort everything out for me. As much as I desperately wanted to learn about my family and our past, I couldn’t help but wonder why Meg had chosen this moment to tell me. Why the urgency? Why now?

  “Does this have anything to do with how you and David were acting last night?” I said, narrowing my eyes at her.

  Meg sat down next to me and took a deep breath. She nodded. “It does. I’m not exactly sure where to begin, so you’ll have to bear with me. And this will probably sound strange to you.”

  She cleared her throat and shook her head as though to mentally prepare herself. Then she took another deep breath and let it out in one great whoosh. She looked at me, fixing me with her gaze. “Our people come from the earthly children born of the Sun and Moon.”

  I held up a hand. “Hold it right there, Meg. Do you plan on feeding me myths and fairytales, or are you going to tell me something that’s actually relevant to my own life?”

  Meg’s mouth gaped as though I’d personally offended her. “This is a relevant piece of our history, Sarah. Are you going to give me a running commentary, or will you let me say what needs to be said?”

  I looked down at my lap, trying to hide my guilty, embarrassed smile. “Sorry.”

  “There were two children born of the Sun and Moon,” Meg began again. “The first was a son. They called him Ka-mut. The second was a daughter, and her name was Kai.

  “From the beginning, Ka-mut was a wretched and mean-spirited child, but Kai had a very gentle and loving way about her. The Sun and Moon were ashamed of Ka-mut. They saw a dark and terrible path stretching out before him, and so they commanded the earth to open up and swallow him whole. For many years he remained in his earthly prison, and there was peace on the land. But Ka-mut’s evilness grew too strong for even the mighty earth to contain. It opened up again and spit him out, like it could taste his vile, tainted blood.”

  Meg’s eyes were glassy and faraway as she focused, not on me, but on some other place and time. It was clear to me that this was a story that had likely been told to her many times before, and she was now passing it down to me. I sat up straighter, making sure to pay attention.

  “Ka-mut, now a grown man, wandered the land. And in his wandering, he came upon a beautiful young girl and used his cunning to bewitch her. He held the girl captive under his spell for the rest of her life, and she bore him six sons who were all of them as dreadful as their father. They became the leaders of their own tribes in time and spread their father’s wickedness through their bloodline.”

  As intrigued as I was by the story, I interrupted again when there was a lull. “And you actually believe this? I mean, like, really believe it all happened once upon a time?”

  Meg gave me a patient smile. “I’m simply recounting the story of our genesis as it was told to me, and my parents before me. You can either choose to believe or not believe. And to be fair, there’s always room for speculation.”

  “All right,” I conceded after some thought. “Go ahead.”

  “Whatever dark magic and influence Ka-mut possessed,” Meg continued, unperturbed, “he passed on to his sons. It is said there was not one ounce of redeeming goodness in them. The Sun and Moon, who regarded their decedents as animals, cursed the brothers to spend their nights roaming the earth as wolves. When the brothers were wolves, they lived as wolves. But when they were men, they lived as savages, ruled by the animal spirit within.

  “In spite of their ruthlessness, they each took a wife. Among them, many children were born. All of the male descendents bore the same curse as their fathers.”

  Meg stopped then and looked at me.

  “So according to your story,” I said, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard, “there are people, men, out there who can change into wolves at night?”

  Meg nodded. “Once the sun sets.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry, but all of this sounds like a load of crap. And I don’t see what any of it has to do with us.” I laughed again, a thought occurring to me just then. “Not unless you’re trying to tell me that David turns into some deranged animal every night.”

  Meg covered her mouth with her hand, unable to keep her own laughter from escaping. “That would explain a lot about your uncle, but no. And I’m not talking about the fabled werewolf. As far as I know, they aren’t real.”

  “As far as you know,” I said, the tone of my voice heavy with sarcasm.

  I couldn’t deny that Meg’s story had definitely captured my attention, but the things she was talking about could not happen. It was physically and biologically impossible. On the other hand, if it was just a silly story, why had it been kept secret from me my entire life?

  “Remember that I told you Ka-mut had a sister?” she said, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Kai,” I said.

  “That’s right. Kai became a woman of stunning grace, strength, and compassion. Unlike her brother, she did not need to cast a spell on any man to make him fall in love with her. There were many warriors who fought for her. They all loved her, and they died willingly for the honor of marrying her.

  “She chose a husband at last, and not long after they were married, a daughter was born to them. They named her Katori. When Katori reached womanhood, she became the leader of the seventh tribe descended from the Sun and Moon.”

  Meg squeezed my leg. “It is to the Katori tribe that you belong. The blood of her body runs through your veins, Sarah.”

  I sat waiting for her to say more, but she didn’t go on. Was that it? Was that the big secret they’d been keeping from me my entire life? It was all so very . . . anticlimactic.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  The crease in Meg’s brow deepened. “What don’t you get?”

  “I don’t get why you didn’t tell me any of this before,” I said. “I don’t get what the big deal was or is. There’s got to be more to the story than this.”

  Meg smiled, but it was a smile filled with sadness. “Well, yes. I’m afraid there’s quite a bit more, in fact.” She took a deep breath before continuing.

  “The Sun and Moon were so pleas
ed by Katori that they blessed her in a very special way. She had the unique ability to control the five elements: Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and, most importantly, Spirit. It was a powerful kind of magic, one that only a very strong woman could wield properly.

  “When Katori became an old woman and her physical strength began to wane, she breathed that elemental magic into another’s body. And so it was passed down through the generations.”

  My heart was thumping in my chest again at the implication of Meg’s words. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? That you . . . or that I’m . . .”

  Meg shook her head quickly, understanding at once where my thoughts were. “I do not possess that ability, and neither do you.”

  I laughed uncertainly, relieved that my aunt wasn’t claiming to have otherworldly powers. “I have to be honest with you, Meg. Talk of magic and the ability to control the elements . . . that sounds pretty far out there to me.”

  “I know,” Meg agreed. “Sometimes I can hardly believe it myself. But I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes. That’s how I know it to be true.”

  I raised an eyebrow, still not believing. “So what does any of this have to do with my mother?”

  Meg closed her eyes and sat in silence for a moment. At last she opened them and said, “Katori feared her savage cousins, those who were descended from Ka-mut’s sons, and rightly so. Their numbers were great in comparison to her own tribe’s.

  “Katori used the power of Spirit to shield the tribe, to protect her people from those who might do them harm. None with evil in his heart could breach the barrier and enter her land. And until seventeen years ago, the Katori people lived in relative peace.”

  Meg shook her head and gave a small, cynical snort. “Of course, times do change. Some people are not content to stay in one place, not even for their own good. Least of all your mother. She was such a stubborn, headstrong girl.”

  Meg got up then and went to stand at the window again. “I told you that your mother invited trouble into the tribe.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. My mouth had gone dry, now that we were standing on the brink of a great revelation, and I licked my lips. This was it. This was what all this secrecy had been about. This was what they had kept from me my entire life.

  “Melody began sneaking off the reservation with her best friend, Charlene. I was eleven or so, old enough to know that what she was doing was wrong. I caught her one night. I should have told someone then, but I didn’t. I loved Melody too much, and I didn’t want her to get in trouble. In some ways, I blame myself for everything that happened.”

  She moved to the vanity and began mindlessly rearranging my collection of antique perfume bottles and framed photographs, picking up the picture of my mother to have a closer look.

  “Charlene was a wild girl,” she said. “She was a few years older than your mother and already had an infant son at home and a husband she hardly paid any attention to at all. Mama and Papa were having a hard time with Melody, so she went to live with Charlene and her little family for a while.”

  Meg waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, jumping ahead in her thoughts.

  “It was late January and very cold,” she said. “Melody had gone for a walk in the woods. She liked to do that.

  “But an hour became a few and then many, and yet Melody still had not returned home. The entire tribe was frantic with worry. There must have been at least a few hundred people out looking for her. And then a storm blew in, one of the worst I can recall. It got so bad you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. They had no choice but to call off the search and wait until the weather cleared.”

  “Obviously she made it back, or I wouldn’t be here.” I’d gotten so caught up in Meg’s story for a moment that I was actually worried about my mother’s fate that snowy night. But everything had turned out okay in the end.

  Meg tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and licked her lips. “By the following afternoon, the storm had cleared. And then Melody, by some miracle, showed up. She looked . . . I don’t know. Different. Her eyes were wild, and there was a flush to her cheeks that had nothing at all to do with the cold. She refused to talk about what had happened to her, or even where she’d been. Then some months later, it became all too obvious.”

  Meg met my eyes with an intensity that left no doubt as to what she was implying. “My mother was pregnant with me,” I said.

  Tears had begun to leak from the corners of Meg’s eyes. “She wouldn’t give us his name. She said she loved him and that she would never betray him. She only said that he hadn’t hurt her and that he loved her, too. They were going to be together one day. The three of you.

  “Then many months later a white wolf appeared on the reservation. It was just after twilight. No one had ever seen a wolf on Katori land before then, and they were all understandably frightened. We knew the legends, the stories that had been passed down from generation to generation. And yet, there was a sense of incredulity, as though some wondered if the curse could really be true.

  “There was one man, Victor Hunt, who wanted to kill the wolf. But your mother threw her body on the animal and screamed for no harm to come to it, that she loved him. Only then did we realize who your father was.”

  My heart seized in my chest, as though it had suddenly stopped beating. I shook my head—slowly at first, and then more adamantly. They’d told me little about my birth father; only that he’d abandoned my mother and me before I was born. But what Meg was saying now was so much worse. How could it be true? How could it even be possible?

  “No. You’re lying,” I said.

  But Meg went on as though I’d not spoken at all. “Victor shoved your mother away from the wolf, saying that she had allowed Evil into the tribe and deserved to be punished for it.

  “Things quickly got out of control. The wolf went after Victor and had him cornered, but then Victor’s wife, Aida, shot at the animal. Turns out it was a nothing more than a child’s BB gun she’d grabbed out of the hands of some little boy. I think she only meant to scare it back into the woods. She didn’t have a violent bone in her body. But the wolf turned on her and attacked, fatally wounding her before escaping.”

  “You’re lying,” I said again.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Meg said, though the look on her face revealed how much she wished it wasn’t so.

  “A week later the Council gave Melody two choices: either she could give up the baby once it was born and let it be brought up outside the reservation, or she could leave that day and never return. In their eyes, you were not a child of our tribe. You were an abomination. They believed the same evil that ran through the wolf-man’s veins ran through yours.”

  I sprang to my feet. “But that’s insane! Asking a woman to give up her baby or leave the only home she’s ever known because they think her child is evil is just ridiculous. I’m just a girl. I’m just . . . me!”

  Meg splayed her hands. “It’s unthinkable. I know. But you have to understand the Katori people are ingrained to believe the descendants of Ka-mut are inherently evil. You were an anomaly to them—a child of both Good and Evil—and they were willing to do whatever it took to protect themselves against even a perceived threat.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself tightly against the nonsense that Meg was spouting. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of this!”

  “It’s not for you to believe or disbelieve, or even to question. It is for you to accept as truth for the simple fact that’s what it is. It’s what happened, Sarah. I was there!”

  “Then you’re just as crazy as they are! How can you blindly accept something so, so . . . stupid?”

  “Stupid” wasn’t exactly the word I was looking for, but I was too angry to clearly articulate how I was feeling at that moment.

  “Our entire family left,” Meg said more quietly, after a moment of awkward silence. “We left with a lingering doubt that our voluntary exile would be enough. A woman die
d because of your mother’s carelessness, Sarah, and because of what she allowed to happen.”

  “No! She didn’t kill anyone. It wasn’t her fault.”

  But Meg went on. “Despite our worry, we never heard from the tribe again. We grew comfortable in the safety of our new home and way of life. And your mother . . .” At that point, her voice cracked. “Well, Melody was the best mom a kid could ever hope for. She loved you so much. But then everything changed again.”

  “Because of the fire,” I said. Our eyes met, and that was all the confirmation I needed.

  Meg wiped her damp cheeks and sat on the edge of the bed. She met my eyes, a haunted expression on her face. “I think someone from the tribe set that fire.”

  “What? You can’t be serious.” But based on what I’d already heard, I could believe it. That didn’t mean I wanted to.

  “David and I never told anyone, but we have our suspicions.”

  “But the fire was ruled an accident,” I protested.

  Meg shook her head. “Victor’s wife, Aida—she had the elemental magic. She was called the tribe’s Spirit Keeper, because it’s Katori’s spirit that lived in her, and all the women like her.

  “Before she died,” Meg went on, “she passed that magic on to her infant daughter, Shyla. She was just a baby at the time, though. Aida should never have made her the tribe’s new Spirit Keeper. It was too much responsibility for such a young girl. The power should have been passed on to someone better capable of understanding and controlling it.”

  My mind raced as I tried to grasp what I thought Meg was saying. “Are you telling me you think it was this girl Shyla who set our house on fire?”

  I quickly did the math in my head. “Eleven years had gone by from the time you all left the reservation until my mom and grandparents were killed. Shyla would have been just a kid, no more than twelve or so herself. How could a kid commit arson and murder?”

  “Shyla might have been too young to be motivated by personal revenge,” Meg said, “but I can think of someone else who had a reason. Can’t you?”