The Spirit Keeper (9 page)

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 pleased 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.