Spirit of the Lonely Places

II: Nòkomis

By the time Akseli arrived back at her village, the entire field was ablaze with the waning light of the sun.

Yellows and goldenrods danced on the long, wild grasses, hiding from the shadows that stretched from wigwam to wigwam. Here and there, a few rebellious plumes of smoke poked out from the houses and curled into the sky. They mingled with the pink-tinted clouds and painted nonsense pictures above the ground, identifiable only to the eye of a child, who could decipher meaning within chaos. It was not uncommon to see small children outside throughout the course of the day, admiring the images woven by the clouds. The children who didn't look for pictures in the sky, though, usually came outside during the sunset and chased the fleeting shadows of the clouds overhead, playing games with them. It was a tradition Akseli had once delighted in.

Nowadays, Akseli admired her own solitary shadow as she shuffled along the grounds, watching her twin braids swing side-to-side with each step. The clouds would pass her by time and time again, but she told herself she'd outgrown cloudrunning—no matter how she wished she could play. She had to become a proficient hunter for her father's sake, which meant she had to venture to the Ikwa and stay there the majority of the day. It broke her heart a little more each time to return to the village, but such was the price of growing up.

Sometimes, she hated it.

To make matters worse, Sooleawa's wigwam was at the far side of her village—which meant Akseli had to trudge through the fields for several minutes until she reached her destination. She was subjected over and over to the haunting laughs and mindless chatter of the young ones, refreshing memories of her childhood like opening a fresh wound. The stinging pain in her heart did not dull with each new evening. It never had—not since the day she'd given up her childhood.

Her eyes flickered slowly between the ground and the horizon. Blushing, as if embarrassed to be caught by her gaze, the sun bowed the last of its head behind the line of trees and rolling hills. A myriad of shadows grasped fruitlessly at Akseli's braids as she passed through the village, lapping over her face like the tide on the shore, ebbing and flowing. It was as though they knew the impending doom of the oncoming dusk. When the veil of night draped over her village, the shadows were chased back into the dark and melded with the landscape, losing their forms and becoming once again nothing. They would be permitted to return if the clouds shrouding the moon dispersed, but for tonight, it seemed they were condemned to their lonely hiding places.

"Nòkomis?" Akseli called, voice reverberating within the wigwam that stood before her. A faint light glowed from inside, but even as she peered in the open hole that gaped in the wall, she could not see the silhouette of her grandmother amongst the furs and bones that lined the home.

For a moment, no answer came. So she tried again: "Nòkomis? It's—it's Akseli. I heard you sent for me?"

This time, she heard something stir from within the wigwam and the light grew stronger. The door coughed a cloud of smoke into Akseli's face, and she scrunched her freckled nose at the stench. It reeked of deer and stagnant water, among other, more unsavory things.

"Akseli, my child! I thought that might be you. Come in, come in!"

Breathing a sigh of relief, the girl stepped into the warmth of the wigwam. Almost immediately upon entrance, her senses were overpowered with the same deer scent that had assaulted her nostrils just moments before, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from retching. Wherever the odor originated from, it was most certainly dead—and from what she could gather, it must've died recently. How her grandmother would've procured a deer carcass was unknown to her, but all signs pointed towards that as the source of the smell. She'd smelled rotting deer only once before this instance, and it was nearly the same—except more muted, as the creature was partially buried under vast piles of leaves the time before.

"What—what is going on?" Akseli coughed, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. It was much easier to speak like this rather than with her hand over her mouth. Plus, she could stave off the smell a bit.

"You're a funny girl, aren't you? Hoo! I—" Sooleawa paused to inhale a deep breath of the smoke that wafted around the room, "—am preparing a tribute! As if you didn't know that, my little apprentice. You'll have to do this too come the day you become a true shaman."

Akseli grimaced, face contorting like it had when she first encountered the rotting deer-stink. Was shamanism really this messy? She wasn't squeamish around dead things, sure, but her nose was incredibly sensitive and the putrid odor that the husk of flesh produced was entirely too nauseating for her liking. When she thought about it, she wasn't sure she'd be able to handle the dirty work that came with appeasing the spirits—why did they like dead offerings anyway?

"I have to do this? Killing animals? I don't want to hurt them..."

"Oh-ho! Not necessarily, little one; that is but part of it. The killing is sacrificial. After all--you have a gift for talking to the spirits and seeing them, do you not?"

Akseli nodded slowly, unsure of what her grandmother was getting at.

"You see, my girl, that's your calling! You could become the messenger of the spiritual realm for our tribe, you know. We have had maybe one or two shamans in the past who could do this, but they have since passed..."

"What good could I even bring, Nòkomis? The spirits are shy of our village; they've told me so! They only like to come out during our fires when we sing and dance... and Ininì does not let me near the fire. He's afraid."

Sooleawa clicked her tongue as she circled around the floor of her wigwam, ushering Akseli towards the strange smoking—or was it steaming?—object in the center of her home. Upon closer inspection, she recognized it as a clay bowl that one of the adults in the tribe had sculpted, and it held sheared portions of deer skin and meat, as well as an assortment of berries, leaves, and bones.

"Your father is a curious one. He always resented me a little for being a shaman—he was jealous, I believe. It must be the same with you. He hates himself for not inheriting my gift and for passing it down to you, who adopted it."

"So he...he resents me?" Akseli blurted out, panic heavy in her small voice. Even though she and her father did not always get along or agree on matters, she never wanted him to hate her, nor did she ever want to hate him. At the end of the day, he was still her father. He was the one who taught her to walk and hunt and play games; how could she ever hate him?

Glancing to her grandmother, Akseli saw a cloud of uncertainty pass over the elderly woman's face. It seemed to her that Sooleawa's eyes sunk further into her wrinkled skin, the rings below them darkening as the fire at her feet danced.

"He does not resent you, child. He just wishes to be like me, like you. Like us."

"We were never even given a choice in being what we are."

"Exactly, my dear. The fates selected us and not him; why that is, we may never know. But you and I have a duty to the spirits and to our tribe, and your father has no right to obstruct that."

Akseli's gaze began to shift slowly from Sooleawa back to the clay bowl, where wisps of smoke broke off from the fire and ribboned around one another in the air. She watched the smoke weave antlers, then a body, and for a split second, she could swear she saw the face of a deer staring at her from the film of smoke.

Was that his spirit saying goodbye?

"So...you see it too, my girl. Hoo! Like I said, the fates selected us. Imagine—with some proper training, you could contact these spirits whenever you desired. How about it?"

The answer Akseli wanted to give was on the tip of her tongue, raring to leap into the open and be heard. But she knew her father would be furious if she went against his wishes; he'd told her over and over not to meddle with spirits, for that job belonged to the elders, and yet—how absurd it was that she found herself filled with a new courage, one which stoked the fires of her small, shy heart. Her hands curled into determined fists, blooming white at the knuckles with all the force of her being.The words demanded to be freed, clawing at her mind with talons of anguish and guile. Akseli knew she could no longer oppress them—so she didn't.

"I'll do it."