“Which of my
ribs do you plan on driving those between?”
She doesn’t answer. Her silence sometimes is enough to make him
stop but he persists.
“Are you going
to channel a warrior, do a rain dance?”
He is teasing of
course, she knows that, but her father made a bit of ceremony as he gave her
the arrowheads, telling how he found them in the fields and the series of
dreams he had afterwards. Harvey mocks
far too often and he shouldn’t mock her father at all.
Suzy picks up
one arrowhead, raises it above her head and begins to hum. Almost of its own accord her mouth opens and a
very passable, plausible chant erupts, her body follows in a parody of pow-wow
dancing. Funnily, in that moment she feels
native, her white English Anglican heritage circumstantial.
Harvey laughs; the
signal that he is done with his joke, but Suzy continues to wail and dance. Then her eyes became glassy and seem like
they are seeing far beyond the objects in the room, even not focusing on Harvey. He glances over his shoulder to see what she is
looking at. It occurs to Suzy that her
performance is rather good, although it doesn’t feel like pretend.
“Quit kidding
around.” He tells her. “Stop it.”
A different note is in his voice now, and Suzy reaches the point where
she would let it go normally, but a new inflexibility holds her to the
game. The joker is on the other foot;
she thinks as her vocals reach an eerie crescendo and a breeze comes from her
twirling body even though she wears no fringes or feathers. Harvey backs out of the room.
“You’re crazy.” Harvey
announces as he leaves the house.
The door shuts
behind him but Suzy’s thoughts follow her father’s enigmatic story about the
arrowheads. He told of spirit keepers
and conduits. She twirls, her arms
spread like wings. To possess them is to
be chosen by ancient ones. She keens
again. Then she grows still.
She will put the
box of arrowheads away except for one she will leave out as a reminder. But which one? She takes the box of arrowheads to the
bedroom.
She notices a something
lying on their bed. She picks the
arrowhead up and a tingle bites at her finger.
But there is no wound and no blood.
“Caution.”
A breeze lifts
her hair as a shiver runs down her spine.
They are sharp on the edges.
