Hannah & the Spindle Whorl Read online

  “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.

  Tuesday, June 16, 2010

  Dear Diary:

  Well this sure beats sitting in math class at school. How many kids get to be part of a real archaeological excavation just minutes away from where they live? And everyone is so nice to me and Max. I think Max totally has a crush on Kelly. She’s the university student who’s here too. I can tell because he keeps smoothing his hair and I could swear he’s trying to make his voice deeper.

  Anyway, Jim Williams – he’s the expert – just told us some stories about the Coast Salish. There’s this one legend that’s really cool. About a woman who would eat children and fly through the air. It kind of freaked me out but at the same time you want to know more. Archaeology seems pretty fun, but there’s a lot of boring stuff you have to do, too, like math problems and reading maps and looking at tons of data that just look like a bunch of jumbled numbers. That’s why I’m writing now. They’re all busy doing that kind of stuff (major yawn). Oops, gotta go – it looks like they’re finishing … more later.

  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 wr
ite 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.

  12

  Raven Magic

  THE FIRST THING I DO when I wake up the next morning is clasp my hands together to stop them from shaking. I reach under my bed for my journal. My fingers feel clumsy, like fat sausages, so it’s hard to write fast. I need to get everything down about this dream before I forget.

  Wednesday, June 17, 2010

  Dear Diary:

  I spoke to the Native girl in my dream! I met her in the woods. She was standing right there in front of me. It was so real and I can remember everything. Her face, her clothes, the shocked look on our faces when we each realized that, even though we spoke different languages, we could both totally understand each other. The smell of wood smoke was strong and I could see it curling from a clearing beyond the trees. And the raven – my raven – was sitting on the branch of that same cedar tree, the one just off the trail by the cave. I’m sure it was the same place! He was watching us carefully, and hopping around and fluffing his wings, and he stayed there for the whole dream.

  In the dream, I just knew that this girl was from another time. A time way before mine. She told me that she’d been waiting for me, that she’d seen me in her dreams, in the same forest. And just when it was really getting interesting, the raven cawed loudly, flapped his wings, and flew right between us. Then he disappeared high up into the trees. Me and this girl were both trying to figure out where he’d gone. Somehow, we knew that he knew more about what was happening than we did – and then I woke up!

  This dream is the most real of all. I remember so many of the teeny details, like the smell of the smoke and the sound of the raven’s wings rustling. I especially remember his black beady eyes, the way he stared at me as though he was reading my mind, or maybe the other girl’s. There was something about him. My raven. Was Jim right? Does that bird know things I don’t? Why am I the one having these weird dreams anyway? I need to know more, especially about ravens.

  School drags until Max and I tell everybody where we’d been yesterday, and why we’d been there. No one can believe it, and they ask a ton of questions.

  “Well, my dad says that archaeology is just an excuse for the government to spend money it doesn’t have,” Sabrina Webber says. She’s sitting primly at her desk, and she’s wearing hot pink lip gloss with silver glitter in it. Gross.

  “All I know is that it felt pretty cool to find something that might be two hundred years old,” I tell her. I know she’s hoping I’ll argue with her because Sabrina looks for an argument with anyone who has the time. Aunt Maddie says “little Miss Webber” has anger issues.

  Mrs. Elford suggests that Max and I do a report on the excavation for our history class assignment. We look at each other and grin. It’s going to be so awesome. And we have some really good photographs to go along with it too. Maybe we can even get Mr. Sullivan to come and speak to our class.

  At lunch, I tell Max I’m going to the library to get a jump start on some research, so he goes off to eat with Zach and Nathan. They always share the potato chips, root beer and fruit gummies that their mom puts in their lunches.

  The library is quiet. Only Mrs. Mason, the librarian, is there, and she’s busy on the computer. She looks up briefly, pushes her glasses higher up on the bridge of her nose and says, “Do you need any help, dear?”

  “Ummm. Actually I’m looking for a book on Cowichan Native legends and folklore.” I tell her, having rehearsed this line in my head all morning.

  She doesn’t hesitate at all, and points to the aisle by the window. “Right at the back, dear — bottom two rows.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Mason.” I pull off my backpack and set it down near the old radiator by the windowsill.

  It isn’t long before I find a big hardcover book called Stories of the Salish Sea. I flip through it looking for animals and their symbolic meanings, legends, anything to do with ravens. And I find it almost immediately, but when I read what it says, a chill runs through my whole body. This just keeps getting freakier!

  The raven can travel between different worlds, coming and going into the darkest places to bring back visions and instructions for both the seeker and the healer. Ravens are figures of magic and symbolize change. Messages that lie beyond time are nestled in the black wings of the raven, and can be read only by those who are worthy of having the knowledge.

  What does this mean? I know my last dream was from a different time. Is my raven really a figure of magic, just like the book says? Is he really flying between space and time? And if he is, what’s his reason? What’s the message? I have my journal with me, so I copy this information, word for word, onto a page in the back. I finish writing just as the bell rings, and pack away my journal. On my way to class, I can’t stop thinking about ravens.

  Later on, our class plays a game of volleyball and I suck so badly that even Mr. Ramsey, my P.E. teacher, asks me if I’m feeling okay. I tell him I went to bed really late and that I’m just tired.

  Max asks me if I want to hang out after school but I decide that I want to head right home. I haven’t seen Nell in a couple days so I want to stop by the bakery.

  “But I’ll ride the bus with you to your place ’cause I want to walk the trail home.” I kind of have an even bigger appreciation for the woods now.

  Mr. Bussman is our bus driver. Really. That’s his actual name: Buss Man. He seems pretty nice but he never says much. It’s barely detectable, but he has a hint of a smile on his face most of the time, as if he’s got some private joke going on. I think he has a secret life somewhere else. Anyway, Max and I bet on who can make him crack a real smile first, but we don’t have any luck. Mr. Bussman didn’t so much as twitch.

  “He’s made of plastic,” Max whispers to me. I stuff my face into my backpack to muffle my laugh, but soon I have to get up because it’s our stop.

  “See ya kids,” Mr. Bussman says as we step down off the bus. “You two sure crack me up.” Max and I look at each other and then collapse into a mad laugh attack right there on the side of the road. Once it passes, we go our separate ways.

  “See ya, Hannah. Don’t forget to upload your pics and email them to me,” Max reminds me.

  “Okay. See you tomorrow,” I call over my shoulder, as I head across the road to the trail.

  The air is still and warm, and buzzing insects have appeared out of nowhere these past couple of days. The ground feels kind of springy under my feet as I bounce along the trail, probably because it rained a little in the night.

  My stomach growls and I start thinking about dinner. My dad goes to his writing group on Wednesday nights so I’ll probably just have a sandwich, even though I’m craving chicken caesar wraps. Dad and I love them, especially the spicy kind. Good thing I plan on stopping at the Toad to see Nell. She always has brownie edges that need to get eaten. I don’t even care if they’re a little burnt.

  Suddenly, I’m not thinking about food anymore. I stop walking and listen. There it is again. “Hannah.” My name. Louder now. It’s that girl’s voice again. Okay, I’m not going crazy; I heard it plain as day. I stand there with my feet rooted to the ground, my body stiff. I don’t know whether to run as fast as I can, or stay completely still. First the dreams, and now her voice! Is it because I’m so hungry? Am I
lightheaded, delirious? I tell myself not to be scared, and I make myself sit on a rock beside the trail. I wait, listening for everything, hearing nothing. Except for the raven. He’s back, and he’s making that weird call that ravens make … blah-doo … blah-doo. I always got a kick out of that call. I spend a lot of time in the woods, and it’s one noise I can mimic pretty well. The raven’s kind of familiar now — my raven — not so strange or scary. I call back to him just for fun. The woods are silent at first, and then he calls again, more intensely than the first time, as if he really is answering me.

  We go back and forth for a bit and I start to feel like my old self again. What was I thinking? Hearing voices! It was obviously the raven. They can imitate almost anything. And if Sadie the parrot can say “Kitty-on-a-stick,” then why can’t a raven say “Hannah?” He was hanging around the cave a lot while we were there. He must have heard my name spoken aloud at least a zillion times. “Yes, that explains it … now, don’t you feel better?” I stand up, about to continue on my way, and then realize I was just talking to myself. All this thinking about history and legends, together with those crazy dreams, has made me kind of sketchy! What next?

  Mom always told me I had enough imagination for two — usually after a bad dream woke me up, when I was a little kid. I remember how she would pad into my room in her woolly hand-knit slippers and whisper, “Uh-oh, Hannah Banana’s brain is working overtime again, isn’t it!” I cross my arms in front, hug my hoodie close, and continue my walk down the trail. Even though I’m getting closer to home, something just doesn’t seem … right. It’s too quiet, and the light on the trail is unusually misty. Kind of hazy; like looking into a steamy bathroom mirror. I try blinking, but the more I try to focus, the more disoriented I become.