It rained all night long, with the wind howling at the cottage, threaten to bowl the whole place over and topple the world she carefully was beginning to know. Kaylee tossed and turned in her bed and did not seem to be able to calm her body to the point that sleep came easy to her.
She thrashed and tosseled in the sheets and soon they were all tied up around her in knots. Her body grew warm and hot to the touch and it felt as if she was getting a fever. Her forehead broke out into a light sweat and her eyes darted behind her eyelids.
Inside her head, her mind was just as tormented as the storm was outside. She dreamt that she was sent home after having performed a very short and lousy ritual to figure out which of the four spirit guides was her one and only true guide. The path home was blocked by thorny branches that choked the life of the large and tall redwoods that Kaylee had just seen earlier that day. The were rigid and hard to move and she swore they were alive for every time she pushed one out of the way, another two or three sprung back to whack her in the head and face.
Her leather robe was torn in several places where the thorns cut deep through the material. Smal scratches and bubbles of blood appeared where she had not been as fortunate with the branches. Tears welled up in her eyes as she fought her way out of the horrible briar patch with all the power and strength that she could mustle. Her arms snapped through thin branches while her feet stomped on the low vines that attempted to trip her and drag her deep under the ground.
Up ahead she was able to see the foggy grey veil that separated Vellum Hollow from the reservation home lands. Even though it was less than a few feet away, Kaylee felt as if it were further away than that… like miles and miles further. Her heart beat irratically, frantically, she knew something was wrong and just had to get back. Gran was the only thing on her mind and she fought the evil plants hard to get out of where she felt trapped.
Finally, she thrust her body forward, hard, with all her might and felt the last of the twisted and sharp spiney vines give. She felt as if she were playing a life or death version of Red Rover and knew that her team was counting on her to break through with all her might. She closed her eyes, yelled out a very primal and gutteral scream and felt her body fall down. She hit the ground with a hard smack and a plume of dust thumped up from where she landed.
She had broken through and found herself back in the normal world. Kaylee picked herself up off the ground and dusted her face and arms off. Blood streaked up and down her arms and the wounds began to throb a bit form the pain. She faced the veil and felt a well of anger swell up from deep within her. She felt betrayed and lied to. She was not sure what caused the feeling but knew that something twisted attempted to use her as their pawn and she was not very happy about it.
The veil soon dissapaited from view and Kaylee turned and began running down the hill. She had a vague, old childhood memory recollation of where she was at and wanted to get back to where her gran lived as fast as she could. She gulped down the cold air in short huffy puffs. She was running so fast that she felt as if her lungs and heart were going to tear out of her body.
Finally, she caught sight of her gran’s homestead. A thin line of smoke travelled up and out the chimney and Kaylee held her breath hoping for the best. She was not able to see any lights on in the home however.
“Please oh please oh please please oh please oh please please oh please oh please please oh please oh please,” she repeated over in her head as if it were a sacred mantra where the life of her gran depended on it being repeated.
She clawed her way to the edge of the porch and collapsed on the first steps. She crawled her way into the house and softly croacked through a parched throat, “Gran! Gran where are you? I am back. I have returned.”
She used the wall to help guide her back on her feet. “Gran, are you okay? I am home and I was so worried,” but her words trailed off into the darkness that enveloped her Gran’s room. For when she pushed aside the curtain covering the entrance she saw her Gran, laying motionless on her bed.
Millions of candles were light and Daniel kneeled beside the foot of her gran’s bed. He was not alone. Behind him sat Bobcat, Frog, Weasel and Barn Owl were perched on his shoulder. Coyote and Wolf were even there, hiding in the farthest and darkest corners of the room. Kaylee’s eyes darted to each of them and felt as if she was being disapproved of.
“Gran,” Kaylee whispered before losing herself in a cascade of sobs. “I did my best. I tried. I guess it was too little too late. I have failed.”
She uncovered her face with her hands and saw that the spirit animals were now surrounding them. “It was you. You did this to her. You left the tribe without a successor. What will become of us, you have betrayed the Council and failed.”
Kaylee cried harder and attempted to explain herself but she found that the words were not coming out of her mouth. Only tears.
Wolf raised hir muzzle to the air and opened his mouth in a snarl and she knew that the worst was just waiting to come… And then, she awoke with a scream.
It was still dark in the cottage but it took a few minutes for Kaylee’s eyes to adjust to the familiar surrounds of her place still in Vellum Hollow. The first rays of the sun were peeking out beyond the sun and Kaylee could see that it was almost dawn.
“Man,” she began, running her hands through her hair. She took down the braid from her hair and gently raked her fingers through her hair. She really wished she had a brush but knew that her fingers were doing a fine job of getting the larger of the knots down and out of her hair. “Some dream. I do not recall ever having such a really horrible dream. I hope this is not a sign of things to come.”
She turned her head to face the window and saw the first streaks of pink and red tumble out from the blackness of the sky. She sat in bed and watched the sun rise, wondering exactly what she needed to prepair herself for that evening.
She pushed the images left over from the dream out of her head and climbed down the ladder to the ground floor. She was not hungry yet and was not sure she would be able to eat after seeing the horrid images in her dream. She sat down next to the fireplace where the last remaining embers glowed and pulsed as they ate away the wood turning into charred coals. She lightly traced the spiral rug with one of her fingers, attempting to figure out the secret of making it wander from one side of the fabric to another. The spiral scrolled back and forth on itself and eventually ended in the same spot on the other side of the rug just opposite of where it had started.
Kaylee smiled and thought about what she was doing. She closed her eyes and let the warmth of the fire wash over her, wiping herself clean of any harm. She attempted to steady her breathing and slowed it down. Shortly after, Kaylee uncovered the key to stilling her mind so that no thoughts entered or exited it. She was meditating.
A soft and still feeling of calm and serenity washed over her. She had never felt so at peace and interconnected to the world and everything around her. Every time she found her mind wandering off to think of her gran or the tribe or the stones in her pouch, she refocused and doubled her efforts and brought herself back to the resting and stillness spot.
She had no idea what she was looking for in meditating but it helped to calm the feelings of terror, dread and failure that her dreams and waking mind brought her. She continued her meditative state for quite awhile and when she opened her eyes, the sun had risen into the sky.
Kaylee looked over at the cabinent that made its home just under where she slept. It appeared very old and handmade, joined together with small cuts inbetween the wood slats. It smelled of a mix of old wood and pine and sage and various other scents that she could not identify. The wood was smooth to the touch. She was surprised that wood that old could feel that soft. Strange and unique symbols had been cut into the wood. One lood similar to the squiggly lines that made up her Air stone. Another spiraled inwards and then jutted out, as if it were a double big G. Kaylee mirrored the glyphs with her fingers as she wished to know what strange language they spoke. She was not even sure if her gran could even read this language. It seemed older than Vellum Hollow itself.
There were no handles on the door. Kaylee reached up with her arm and felt the edge of the cabinent. She gave it a short and sharp tug and the door opened with a small creeking sound from an unseen metal hinge. Trapped odors spilled out in a jumble from the cabinent and hit Kaylee’s nose all at once, overwhelming her senses.
She tucked her head under her arm and sneezed a couple of times from unearthing the things. She then looked inside the closet for the first time. There were four shelves, all equidistant from one another. Various items sat on each shelf, there did not seem any apparant rhyme or reason to why there were there at that time.
Kaylee’s eyes wandered up and took stock of all the items that appeared as she swung the other door free. Bottles of stored preservatives sat clumped in the furthest regions of the cabinent while fresh colors of maize and other dried vegetables and herbs hung from hooks placed on the bottoms of some of the shelves. Handmade beeswax candes sat in various forms and shapes on the lowest shelf along with several short sticks and various glittering stones. Handmade items made from fur and fang and feathers and bones sat scattered on each shelf. There was a mask made from the burnt and hollowed out skull of an animal that Kaylee had no idea what it was. It had sharp teeth and was open into a scrowl. Antlers from a different animal sat atop the mask as if it were a crown of some sort.
And then she saw a book. It was a small leather bound tome that seemed to get shuffled in and lost amongst the pantry of odd and magickal items. Her hand reached out and felt the sinew of the spine that held the pages locked into their place. She pulled the book out gently and sat back down on the hardwood floor. She carefully cradled the book in her lap and cracked the soft cover open ever so gently. Dust shook free from the covers as she continued to slowly open the book up to the first page.
She gasped and saw the familiar handwriting of her gran. The book looked like a journal, something her gran had written a long time ago. Kaylee wondered if this was her gran’s account of her own akalam? The words were faded on the page but Kaylee could still make out most of the markings, even in the dim light of the morning.
It took her awhile to read through her Gran’s notes. But it was indeed a book on her gran’s adventures here with the spirits in Vellum Hollow. Much of the book she did not understand because the words were written in the old tongue and Kaylee did not know but save a few words of the native Ser’lapham language. It was only towards the back of the journal that she could understand for her Gran had then switched over to the foreign english.
The book gave some descriptions and details of various rites and rituals that she had performed during her first days as a shaman while being in Vellum Hollow. Some of them seemed to be dedication rites that used blood and bits of animals that had be ceremoniously hunted down and caught and killed for their traits and knowledge. Others were old remedies that she recalled her gran having taught her that could cure sickness and disease.
There was one image in particular that caught Kaylee’s eye. It was a circle that had been divided into four quarters. Feathers and skulls and other strange symbols had been noted across the image. Kaylee guessed that this was a medicine wheel, a powerful symbol and ritual tool that helped shamen like her gran perform their powerful workings and dealings with spirits from this realm of Vellum Hollow.
A light went on in Kaylee’s head and she instantly had an idea of what she wanted to do that night. She was going to use many of the items from the cabinent to make a medicine wheel in the cottage and then she would interview and investigate the spirits that she met and make sure that she was choosing the right one for herself.
Smiling, she set the book back down where she had carefully removed it and thanked it and her gran for the wisdom it gave her. She then started pawing through all the items on the shelf, taking out the items she wanted to use for the evening and stacked them behind her; sorting them into the various directional components.
She spent the rest of the day working on laying out the shape of her ritual, coloring various candles with hand made dyes she found in various bottles and coming up with a list of questions and comments to talk to the spirits about. She felt more ready and more well prepared to do what she was about to do than she would have ever guessed.
Then she carefully assembled the wheel, marking off the cardinal directions with one of the four colored candles she found and painted. She took each gift she found laying around Vellum Hollow out of her pouch and also laid each one down in the appropriate spots on the wheel from where she had found them in the world. Kaylee also decorated the wheel with bones, stones and the feathers that lined the shelves of the cabinent.
When she was finished, she climbed up to the top of the loft to get a arial, bird’s eye view of what she had done. She smiled once more and was pleased. She wished that her gran could see what she made and hoped that it pleased the spirits as well.
Kaylee sat there until the sun started setting behind the mountains and forests of the west. Dark orange, red and purple hues cast shadows on the walls of the cottage. And when the darkness came, Kaylee pulled out the strange animal mask and knew it was time.
“Let us do this,” she said gazing into the eye sockets of the mask, “I am ready.”
