The Spirit Talker

By Abby Pelaez, 2016. To be edited.

When I sneak out to ride the waves at night, those exhausting trances, hours of dialogue and silence, and Mama’s supervision by the doorway, all evaporate like smoke brushing salmon above the fire. No kin expect that I’ll officiate their special conversations. I inhale cedar breeze and salty, pure air. I focus on the scent and not on the animal and plant spirits pulsating in the basin of life all around, busy with energy production, nurturing, business transactions, fighting and dying. It gets too much, so I tune it out until I need to find a particular spirit.

My paddle slices through silky water, swish, splash, drip. The musical motion makes the bioluminescence dance within the moon’s shadow cast by Mama’s canoe. Rather than delight, I frown. If those algae didn’t glow in the dark, would I disturb the water? Am I wrong to take advantage to enjoy the light? Are villagers wrong to ask me to mediate conversations with passed ancestors since I have a gift? Mama says I’m doing great service for all my relations but I can’t find the courage to tell her I hate this work.

When I was younger, things were as black and white as an orca whale. Now, things are grey like the horizon smudging into the seam of the star-ridden sky. While showing me how his relatives play golf, Papa told me that part of growing up involves thinking about things with complexity.

The wooden ball had been paces from the hole Papa dug. I tapped it with the branch and it was denied passage by a tuft of grass. Papa leaned over. “Try more force. When you are far away from that hole, you need a good three-sixty swing. But if you’re almost there, tap gently. The obstacles make it hard to know which way and how hard to swing. Good job!” After having joined Mama’s village, Papa keeps this game from his past.

I’m far enough to view the lands bordering mine when I feel the all-too-familiar warm, attractive hold that indicates someone wants to speak with me.

Oh no, not now… I only ever speak with spirits in a house, with people around in case I pass out. No one knows I snuck out on Mama’s canoe. I paddle like a bear back to shore, my red regalia flapping over my shoulders, sweat building under my woven hat, but though I break away diagonally I am no match for a spirit’s will. I gulp, bracing myself as Mama’s canoe shoots towards waves masking and exposing rocks. The neighbouring lands hold white, sandy beaches fringed by danger. Sharp rocks on every south. Riptides on every north. Freezing water and huge waves. When the pull draws me on this path, an instinct to defend myself from earth’s destruction seizes me.

A behemoth wave lifts inches over the highest rocks. With a battle cry, I thrust my paddle into the rock, leveraging to launch my boat over. I’m suspended at least twice Papa’s height above the wave’s trough. The fall propels my stomach into my throat and Mama’s canoe thuds like a cedar crashing. Even scarier, the pull defeats the riptide.

I’m pulled over more rocks and riptides until I’m in the neighbouring territory. I shrink at a horror from the sickest nightmare.

Bloated bodies bob in the spray seething around rocks. Already, birds and sea creatures descend and rise to feast where sky and sea kiss. I tremble to see fellow creatures, heroes in our stories, become scavengers on human flesh. Above looms a doomed iron giant. It’s not the iron pots Papa’s grandparents used during the fur trade. This is all the iron in the world. Inside it, splintered beams yawn. I paddle fiercely to keep my distance now that death is here.

At my arrival, the air opens in spots so that the cedar breeze, rotting stench and salty spray dissipate. An intelligent presence fills the voids by the dozens, until a congregation of ghosts hovers, facing my canoe.

The most spirits I’ve interacted with at once was two. This crowd has over a hundred, more than my village. There are more women and children than men. They wear strange clothes: britches, bonnets, long dresses. What people wear where Papa comes from. I yell as he would over the waves. “Who are you?”

A woman steps forward, eyes judgmental and voice level. “We were passengers on the Valencia when we missed Seattle in a storm. We ran aground. It was …violent. A hundred thirty-six of us perished.” I’d never had so many people look at me and felt uncomfortable.

“If you please,” she continues, “we would like to be brought to Heaven.”

Their story is believable and tragic, but what’s Heaven? I’m tired of paddling to avoid bodies and rocks. “I don’t know where that is.”

“It’s where good souls go after they die to be with God.”

I’m at a loss. I can’t find an afterlife I don’t know. “Look,” I explain, “I can speak with you, and I mediate for the living”- I wince when I blurt out my cursed gift- “but I can’t find your Heaven. The people who live over there might know.” I gesture to the neighbouring lands. “They send their dead to places like that. I should go now,” I say, hoping I was helpful and turning my canoe from the grisly mess.

The pull tightens. My canoe glides back.

A boy my age with railroad labourer’s clothes crosses his arms. “We don’t know where to rest. You do.”

Like waves eroding rock over generations, the ghosts take up cries that erode my resolve in seconds.

“Help us!”

“No one will save us, still!”

“We’re trapped in this godforsaken wasteland!”

On and on.

“Fine!” I shout. Why is it so hard to say no? “I’ll look for Heaven for you. But you have to keep me safe from the waves and your bodies. I mean it. Then I’m going home.”

The canoe becomes still. The waves and bodies spill around the eye of calm. At least I got them to do this. Grumbling, I close my eyes and enter a trance.

My senses sharpen. Every drip from a twig in the forest reaches my ears. I smell perfumes on the rich victims’ clothes, the warmth of my mother in the canoe. I open my eyes to tens of thousands of glows in the spirits of trees, rodents, dune grass, kelp, barnacles…The ghosts glow, too.

I look for an object directing me to Heaven. Predictably, none appears. I strain, expanding my senses. Nothing. I’m already drained from the effort. Satisfied that I did my part to help these strangers, I begin receding my consciousness into the confines of my body.

“No!” the first woman hisses. She seizes my intangible self before I can fill into my body. “You must find the way to Heaven!”

“Let me go!” I gasp.

“Heaven!” Her hands are claws.

“Stop!”

The sensations dim until all I see are bioluminescent stars spiraling into madness as my body splashes into the ocean.

The cold stabs a thousand arrowheads. Seawater chokes, smothers my scream, and a dwindling bubble escapes. I’m contained in my drowning body. The ghosts observe like they’re watching golf.

Anger renews me. Why are they pushing this on me?

Flickering through the dark waves, the lead ghost stares into me hungrily, seeing only the part of me that I hate, that can help her, that slim chance of an exit.

It’s because they’re fighting for what they want.

But I’m entitled to do what I want for myself too.

I kick and break the surface, gulping air. Flopping over the canoe’s side, I haul myself in, water rolling from my hat and weighing down my clothes.

While I shiver, the woman cloaks the fatal order in encouragement.

“Come, now, only you can show us.”

I stare her down. “No.”

The woman straightens, nose upturned. “What?”

“You heard me!” It’s my turn to swing. A tap won’t suffice, but a three-sixty is also undue. I have to find the right grey for the circumstances.

I stand up shaking. I might as well. “You have disrespected me by bringing me here against my will, ignoring me, and making me fall and almost drown.”

“I’d hardly”-

“Enough.” It’s my icy resolution, or the earthquake rattling my bared teeth, but somehow the ghost falls silent.

“Your options.” I steady myself. “Bring me home, and I can guide your souls to become plants or animals. It’s that, or I leave you to find Heaven yourselves.”

They murmur. I feel warm despite violent shivers.

Finally she concedes, even nods acknowledgement. “Very well. If that is your ultimatum, we will bring you back.” I sigh. A curiously old sigh, a flood of peace as high as a wave.

The forest exhales birds as a parade of spirits guides my boat. On the familiar beach I re-enter the trance, sending each spirit into the land and sea to become new life. I’m so weak I collapse in Mama’s canoe.

“More force. Good job!”

I did, Papa…I need to tap now to tell you and Mama I can’t do this anymore.

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