Hannah & the Spindle Whorl (6 page)

“HANNAH?” NOW MAX
looks more worried than angry. “Hannah, how come you’re crying? Will you please tell me what’s wrong? I don’t understand.”

Of course, how could he? He doesn’t know that much about me. He was just goofing off; guys are like that. And I understand how it must seem to him since he knows absolutely nothing about my mom. So I take a deep breath, and I tell him everything, about how she died in a car accident almost two years ago. When I’m done, he looks like he wants to sink right into the ground.

“I’m really sorry, Hannah. I … I didn’t know,” he says.

“I know. It’s okay.”

“I just thought your parents were, like, divorced or something.”

“It’s okay. I mean, I’m okay. It felt good to talk about it.” I smile and the tension vanishes. “Besides, I figured I’d better tell you, before I sucker punched you for being such an idiot.”

“Oh really? Like you could, Anderson!” He gives me a good-natured shove and I trip him and knock him to the ground. We’re both laughing when we catch sight of a big green pickup truck pulling up outside the bakery. The driver gets out first and I recognize Mr. Sullivan, wearing a grey sweater. As he grabs a backpack from the box of the pickup, another person, a woman, gets out. She’s wearing khaki cargo pants and a Green Day T-shirt, and she looks pretty young. The last person to leave the truck is a tall guy wearing a hat. He looks real serious and I think he’s younger than Mr. Sullivan, but it’s hard to tell ’cause of the hat. Max and I run across the road to meet them.

“Hi there!”

“Good morning, Hannah. Hey, Max,” says Mr. Sullivan. I smile and secretly hope they can’t tell that I’ve been crying. I’m not a pretty crier. In fact, I look like a Hawaiian blowfish after I’ve cried.

Mr. Sullivan introduces Max and me to the team: Jim Williams is a speleologist — he studies caves — and an expert in the field of First Nations culture; Kelly Parker is a graduate student at the university. I can tell Max thinks she’s cute by the way he tries to stand taller. And he’s kind of staring at her dark wavy hair, piled loosely on top of her head, and the freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose.

We’re ready to hit the trail but first Kelly darts off to buy juice and butter tarts from Nell at the bakery. She says she didn’t have time for breakfast but I know it’s the smell of those baked raisins that got her. Max watches her jog across the road and then he looks up at Jim and blurts, “Hey, are you Coast Salish?”

“Good guess. What was your first clue?” Jim teases, pointing to the hat on his head. Max reads the word
Quw’utsun’
, part of the Cowichan Cultural Centre logo embroidered in plain view on the front. He looks over at me and I can see his face turning red. I just shake my head and look away. Duh.

Then Kelly comes back and Mr. Sullivan says to me, “All right, boss, lead the way.”

“Sure,” I say, trying to sound calm, but I can’t wait to get started. “It isn’t very far at all.”

Everyone is so anxious to see the cave that no one stops to look at anything on the way, so we get there pretty fast. I show them where to shimmy under and through the underbrush, one at a time, ’cause it has to be the exact spot. Within minutes, we’re all standing in front of the ivy-covered rock face.

“Wow,” says Jim, shaking his head. “That’s been growing here for a while. Wish they had nabbed the twit who brought that stuff over on the boat!”

“What stuff?” I ask.

“The ivy,” says Mr. Sullivan.

“Oh, I like it. It’s pretty.” I tell him my grandma has ivy covering the whole front of her house in Vancouver. There was even a robin’s nest buried in it last spring. A turquoise eggshell fell out of that nest, and I still have it sitting on my dresser at home.

“It may look nice, but it’s an introduced species. They choke out all the native plants, and they are impossible to get rid of once they start.”

Jim studies the ivy for a minute or two and then checks to see what else might be growing in and around it. Mr. Sullivan tell us that Jim is also an ethnobotanist, and explains that this means he studies the history and use of local plants, especially where they grew and what the people native to the area used them for in ancient times.

Jim starts pulling away the ivy in one corner of the rock face, just over by the cave entrance. “Whoa … will you look at this?” he says excitedly.

“
WHAT
!” Max and I screech at the same time.

Jim carefully removes more of the ivy to reveal a dull red line on the rock. “I’m not sure but I think we might be looking at the edge of a very big pictograph,” he explains.

“That’s rock art, for us laypersons,” Kelly laughs and pulls out her camera.

“For real?” I ask, stepping closer.

“For real,” Mr. Sullivan confirms with a half-smile. He puts down his pack and tells us all to set about the business of removing the rest of the ivy from the rock. “Hannah, you and Max can start over there, slowly, and with care, like this.”

“But what about the cave?” Max pipes.

“All in good time. First things first.” Mr. Sullivan and Jim both say it at the same time. By the expression on Jim’s face, and Kelly’s, too, I get the feeling that it’s one of Mr. Sullivan’s favourite sayings.

Max and I take off our own backpacks and get to work. We pick up an ivy runner each and begin pulling it away from the rock, very gently.

About eleven o’clock, we all stand back to look at our progress. I can’t believe what I’m looking at! Before us is a crudely drawn human figure — a girl — and not far from it, another girl. The two figures have their arms open to each other, as if they are going to hug or something. They’re painted in a dull red, which is faded in spots, especially near the bottom. There’s this big circle between them and it has a tiny circle in the middle.

Mr. Sullivan thinks that the ivy covering them all these years is probably what protected the figures from the elements.

“Maybe the ivy’s good for something after all, then,” I say, rubbing some dirt off the end of my nose.

“You could be right, Hannah,” he says.

I pull out my camera and, together with Kelly, I take a zillion photographs of the rock art. Mr. Sullivan and Jim start talking seriously about site protection and funding. They also need permission from the Cowichan Band for a full-scale excavation. If there’s enough money, Mr. Sullivan wants to involve the university’s summer field school, which means Kelly gets to stay on.

“This is a very rich site,” Mr. Sullivan adds. “We know that Tl’ulpalus village was only a stone’s throw from here, very close to where your houseboat now sits, Hannah. There must have been some significance to this cave for that village.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because of this pictograph,” Jim explains. “The locations for rock art carvings and paintings were chosen very carefully by the Coast Salish. These places were usually places of mystery, where spiritual forces were believed to be especially strong.”

“This discovery is sure to excite a lot of people,” Mr. Sullivan adds.

I look at the crudely drawn picture on the rock, and study the strange circle between the two figures. Could that circle be a drawing of my spindle whorl?

WE STOP FOR LUNCH
and everyone is chattering at once about what this means for the museum and how it adds another piece to the puzzle of Vancouver Island’s rich history. Mr. Sullivan fiddles around with his iPhone, makes a bunch of calls, and then scribbles some stuff in a spiral notebook. His handwriting is even worse than my dad’s.

“What’d they use for that paint?” Max asks Kelly, before biting off a corner of his tuna sandwich.

“Mmmm … things like charcoal, and crushed shells, and berries and stuff. And they’d usually mix in fish eggs or animal fat to make it last longer.”

“How’d they figure that out?” I ask. Who’d ever think that fish eggs would make paint last longer?

“Well, I guess the first people here had thousands of years of trial and error,” Kelly explains. “Probably used oolichan oil too,” she adds, pulling her hair into a ponytail. Max is staring at her again.

“Ola-what?” I ask.

“Oolichan. A tiny oily fish. Big staple food for the Coast Salish.”

“Well, I’ve lived near the sea my whole life and I’ve never heard of them.”

“It’s true. They were a handy fish to have around. There aren’t many critters that will help you write a letter before you eat them,” Jim says, smiling.

I have no idea what he’s talking about. Maybe all the excitement of the day has gone to his head. I think that Jim senses my confusion because he goes on to explain. “Oolichan. Candlefish. That’s another name for them. So oily you could run a wick right through them, light them up and use them like candles.”

“No way. Really?” I wonder if Dad has ever heard of them. He knows a little about a lot of things.

“Really,” he assures me.

We talk more about fish and spirits and shamans and stuff. Jim tells us a few Coast Salish legends that are pretty intense and kind of spooky. Especially the one about Quamichan, a wild woman who lived on Salt Spring Island, who ran around with a basket that she’d made out of a snake. She ate people, and would sneak into different villages at night and steal the children. Jim said that one time she hid a hundred little kids in a cave until she was ready to eat them for dinner. Then she invited her sister to come and help her cook them, but in the end she got pushed into a big fire and burned up. It’s a pretty freaky story.

I move a couple of feet farther away from the cave after Jim tells that one! But, scary or not, I’m glad that I now know a little bit more about the people who used to live on the island and the stories they would tell.

“What about Sasquatches?” Max asks, out of the blue. Figures.

“What about them?” Mr. Sullivan says, sticking his pencil into the pocket of his sweater.

“Do you think they’re real?”

“What do you think, Max?” Mr. Sullivan tries to look serious.

“I’m not sure. There was this guy — Richard Carr — that I knew in 100 Mile House, and he said he saw one when he was hunting.”

“No kidding,” says Kelly.

“He said it didn’t try to hurt him or anything.”

It’s now my turn to raise an eyebrow.

“He told me,” Max went on, “that the Sasquatch actually saved him from a rockslide. Wouldn’t let his horse pass by this dangerous ravine.”

“You never told me that part,” I say, wondering if he’s making it up to impress Kelly.

“You never asked.”

Jim reties his bootlace and puts his hat back on his head. “Well, that’s not too weird. Some people say Bigfoot has a good heart. That is, if you’re a good person.”

“Richard Carr was a pretty nice guy. He used to repair all the ranchers’ fences up there for nothing.”

“There you go,” Mr. Sullivan nods. “You get what you give.”

“Yeah,” Max agrees, “in this case, Mr. Carr got to keep his life.”

I look at them all like they’re cracked. Sasquatches. Right.

When lunch is over, Mr. Sullivan, Jim, and Kelly start comparing notes and measuring stuff and talking in scientific terms, so I pull out my journal from the side pocket of my backpack and lean back against a cedar tree. Max finds a clearing a little farther down the trail and lies flat on his back with his eyes closed.

When the team has finished their notes, we get down to the nitty-gritty: checking out the inside of the cave. But I soon learn that it isn’t as simple as turning on the flashlight and going in. It’s painstakingly slow: pictures are taken, measurements are made, and soil has to be brushed aside using paintbrushes. The tiniest bits of rocks and stuff are bagged and labelled. Worth the wait though. Just beyond the place where I found the whorl, the cave opens up a bit and you can stand instead of belly crawl. It is totally cool.

After two solid hours, there are definitely some things to take back to the museum: bone fragments and two tool artifacts. One artifact is part of an adze, a tool with a stone blade, and the other one looks like a needle made from a piece of antler. There are a few shell fragments as well. Mr. Sullivan says there’s a midden near the shore not far from here, and the bits of shell are probably from that site.

I can’t believe it when Kelly says, “Hey, it’s 4:30 guys. We should head back now, Graham, don’t you think? Lots of people to see about this.” Then she turns to Max and me. “And you guys have been wonderful! How does it feel to be responsible for a very significant archaeological find?”

“Are we famous?” Max asks hopefully. I notice that he’s blushing a bit. Actually, he’s blushing a lot.

“Of course you are!” Jim says slapping Max on the shoulder. “We wouldn’t have any reason to be here unless your friend here had contacted us.”

Kelly takes the artifacts and packs them carefully in sealed baggies with even more labels attached. Then she puts everything in a wooden box and adds some figures to a weird kind of graph. We walk back toward the main road on the trail, all of us tired, very dirty, and definitely hungry. I keep thinking about ancient feet wandering similar forest trails through Cowichan Bay. Where were they going? Who was at the other end? And all the time I’m thinking this, I have this feeling I can’t quite explain. The same kind of feeling I had when I was showing Max the cave earlier. Then I hear it. The wind has returned, and I stop on the trail. There it is. The girl’s voice again. It sounds familiar, like the girl in my dreams.

“Did you hear that?” I ask the others, stopping dead in my tracks.

“Hear what?” Kelly asks, looking at me, and then following my eyes up to the tops of the cedars.

“I thought I heard a girl calling someone. I heard it before. Earlier.”

Kelly hesitates. “Nope. I don’t hear anything.”

We listen for a second or two more, but all we hear is a woodpecker tapping off in the distance, and a dog barking down at the marina. But it’s harder to ignore this time. I know what I heard.

“Maybe it was him?” Kelly says, laughing and rubbing some dirt off the end of her nose.

“Who?” I ask, confused.

“Him!” Kelly points to a big black raven sitting on a stump just off the trail. “He’s been hanging out there for a while. I noticed him earlier.”

No way! Not him again. I totally get the heebie-jeebies, although Kelly seems unfazed by his presence.

“Weird,” I begin. “He was there a couple of days ago, in the cedar tree, and before — on the rock above the cave opening. Watching me.”

“Hmmmm. The trickster,” Jim says. “Messengers of magic. Maybe he knows something we don’t.”

I know that Jim is teasing, but I secretly wonder if maybe he’s right.

After we say goodbye to Graham Sullivan, Jim, and Kelly, I tell Max that I feel as though that raven has been watching me.

“You’re nuts, Anderson,” he says to me. “You just got freaked out by all that talk of Bigfoot and crazy witch women and stuff.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe my imagination is working overtime. The crazy dreams. And now this. There has been a lot of talk about mythical animals, shape-shifting and, of course, those intense legends. That would get anybody’s adrenaline pumping.

Max and I say goodbye, and I head past the bakery. Nell has locked up. I know she’s still in there, but I don’t bother telling her all the news because I know she’s counting money and doing “the books,” as she calls it. She absolutely hates it when people bug her between five and six at night.

As I walk down our ramp, I can see Dad walking down dock five with a newspaper in his hand. I can’t wait to tell him about the day, and the photographs, and Mr. Sullivan, Jim and Kelly. Not to mention the stone tools and the pictograph. He’s going to flip.

We spend the evening going over every single detail of the day. He wants to know everything. He doesn’t go near his laptop the entire night and he even ignores his cell phone. That doesn’t happen very often.

“You writing all this stuff down, Han?” he asks me.

“Of course,” I tell him. “I’m a writer’s daughter. I’m programmed to keep a journal. It’s genetic.”

He laughs and tells me he’s been keeping a journal since he was twenty-six years old. “Still have every one of ’em too,” he boasts proudly.

I do the math in my head. My dad is forty-two, which means he’s been keeping a journal for sixteen years.

“Can I read them?” I ask him, knowing he’ll never go for it.

“Sure. If I can read yours.” He smiles, looking almost wise.

“Um … nah. That’s okay,” I say. Some things I write are for my eyes only.

“Figured as much,” he chuckles.

By nine o’clock, I’m so tired I can barely drag myself up the staircase to my loft. My feet feel like they’re made out of cast iron. I flop onto my bed and lie there thinking about the events of the day. I wonder what Cowichan Bay looked like one hundred years ago, when the Native villages were still around: before the mountains were scarred by clear-cuts and the highways had pushed their way through the forest. When there weren’t any ferries stinking up the ocean, and zillions of salmon came back each year for their autumn run.

I feel like I got to see a piece of that world today, a hint of another time and place. I go to sleep thinking about silent forests with big, big trees, a ghostly voice and a strange black raven.