SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 4: The Spirit Walker (part 1 of 2)

Tull and Ayuvah got up from the table in Scandal's inn and went to the door, where circling flies glittered, emerald and sapphire. Tull looked out into the sunlight. Down the street, old Caree Tech stood in her yard, stirring a stone cooking pot full of lye and lard as she made a batch of soap. Her eyes were red from the fumes, and the acrid greasy scent carried on the wind.

"I can feel your father's spirit in me," Tull told Ayuvah. "He's moving from place to place, as if my body were filled with rooms, and he is flinging open forgotten doors. He is so cold. There-he has opened a door to my left lung."

Ayuvah chuckled. "I think he is making Connection with you. He cannot walk the paths of your future until he becomes you."

"He's moving up, toward my head." Tull gasped and as the cold touched his sinuses, he staggered a bit.

"He is taking his time, learning you." Ayuvah said. "He would not do this for a human, they are too alien."

"There . . . he is moving out now."

"No, he is still within you, just more Connected," Ayuvah said. "Feel him, just the slightest cold. You'll feel it at the top of your belly. He is walking your future."

Tull sensed it now, a cold lump in his stomach, much like a rising fear. "How long will he take?"

"It depends," Ayuvah said. "Your future may be short, it may be long. Your path will branch a thousand, thousand times. He will try to travel all of your futures, see all of your potential. He may be with you for only an hour, or perhaps he will be there all night."

Tull imagined carrying Chaa inside him for a day, and wondered if he would become accustomed to the sensation.

He looked downhill toward Pwi Town. The shanties there were made with faded gray planks, bleached by salt spray and sun. The walls of many homes leaned at odd angles, their foundations sagging under the weight of many years. Tull felt intimately familiar with every stone, every board, and every person in this town.

A fisherman across the street, Beremon Smit, waved good-bye to his wife and four children and set out south of town, heading toward the mines down at White Rock.

Another man gone, Tull thought. One less to protect the town, just as Scandal said.

A cloud floated overhead, casting a sudden shadow. Caree wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her leathery hand and looked up. Behind Tull, in the inn, a guest began shouting drunkenly, "You mutant! I'll abort your mutant butt! Where's my knife! I'll abort you!"

Scandal shouted, "Here sir, calm yourself!"

But the man growled, "I don't know which is worse here-the food, the booze, or the company." It was a line meant to offend everyone in the inn, but meant to offend Scandal most of all.

Scandal broke a bottle over the counter and shouted, "All right! He's mine! He's mine!"

Tull did not turn to see the fight. He imagined Scandal, big bear of a man, waving the bottle as he threatened the guest into submission. Scandal was a businessman, and if it came to fighting, he would fight like a businessman, beating the customer into submission with slow punches calculated to minimize the damage, as if he were beating dust from a rug. No profit in killing the customers. Tull knew Scandal too well, knew this town too well.

Tull smiled. He'd had many good meals here at Moon Dance Inn, and the accumulated emotions, the kwea, of those good meals left him feeling intoxicated and fulfilled.

He felt inside him, felt the icy presence still there. A Spirit Walker is walking my future, he thought. He will know everything about me. The sense of wonder and fear that came with this knowledge tainted the kwea of satisfaction.