At last, the two horses reached the dock and the waiting canoe. The soft greenish wood of the dock boards looked to be in worse shape than before. The decaying canoe looked little more than a barely coherent assemblage of wood and moss. Meriwether knew it would hold them, though. He paid no attention to appearances here in the land of the dead. He dismounted and hurried a trembling Sacagawea down to the canoe after turning the two horses loose. He had to remind himself the animals were already dead.
The canoe’s bottom held sloshing, brownish water, but they climbed into it, ready to paddle away. With Sacagawea’s weight in addition to his own, the canoe rode low in the current, but he started paddling to get out into the stronger current.
He remembered how long he’d rowed downstream to get here, and the prospect of rowing the same distance against the current dismayed him, but he continued paddling, his arms numb, his whole body tired. He just wanted to sleep.
Though quiet, Sacagawea was weeping. She used her cupped hands to bail out the water that kept seeping into the bottom of the boat.
He tried to reassure her. “Don’t cry. We’re not yet doomed.”
As the canoe moved along, finding its way as he paddled furiously, he saw people gathering on the banks, moving out of the mist. He could discern little about them, whether they were white men or natives, friendly or hostile. Quietly, they sang the hymns he’d heard in church in his youth, but his ears were buzzing loudly. He was covered in sweat, and his arms protested with each stroke of the paddle, pushing the canoe back to the land of the living.
“I don’t weep because we are doomed,” Sacagawea said, bailing steadily. “I weep because I left my husband behind, and now he is dead for all time.”
“I am sorry,” Meriwether said, and he meant it. A cold gray mist swallowed the riverbanks, or maybe it was his vision growing dim with tears. They passed the island where he’d met his long-dead father, and he thought he saw William Lewis on the shore, waving, but he couldn’t be sure. He was so tired he might have been dreaming with his eyes still open.
“He chose his own path, as you say,” Sacagawea spoke up. “It was the hero’s path, but he died trying to protect me. I never thought Toussaint would do that.”
Meriwether was also surprised, and reassessed his opinion of the man somewhat.
He rowed and rowed, in a trance of pain and labor. From the mist-shrouded banks came a song about Jordan, but this wasn’t the river Jordan. Whatever land of the dead this was, it had nothing to do with the heaven he’d learned about in school or from the Bible. This was no pious place of order and angels.
Still crying, Sacagawea continued to bail, but the canoe, beginning to sink, took on more water. The sloshing water at the bottom now reached to Meriwether’s ankles, making his feet and calves numb. They could not drift much farther.
Gray mist surrounded them, and he couldn’t recognize the scenery around him. He couldn’t tell if they were close to where he had departed. He needed to find out how to return to the living.
He considered the dismal future the world would face should he die here, his quest incomplete. He drew strength from the terrible thought of his mother receiving news of his death. But that was unlikely. As the dragon sorcerer surged in power from the untamed land, he would swiftly subsume even the eastern lands beyond the Mississippi. He lamented for the poor boy Pompy, who would never know why he was dying, or why the evil force possessed him.
Meriwether vowed to keep paddling, to get Sacagawea home.
He lifted the paddle, which seemed to weigh as much as the combined sins of humanity. He let his arms fall again, and he rowed, and rowed, and rowed. He wasn’t even sure that the canoe was moving. He could feel the current the other way.
The mist was so thick around them he could barely see Sacagawea in the front of the canoe. But he could hear her cry softly.
As he paddled, he heard a sharp crack right at his feet, like thunder.
The canoe broke in half, spilling them into the river.
Funeral Rites
“Stop struggling!” Captain Clark’s voice said, while someone pushed Meriwether’s hands aside, firmly. He coughed sour water out of his mouth, and he found himself quite blind. He fought against the hands now restraining his wrists. “Stop! My friend, it is I. I am on your side.”
How could his dearest friend be there, when he was in the land of the dead? How could he trust that even Clark was there to help him? “I can’t see,” he half shouted, his voice echoing harsh and hoarse in his ears.
He heard relieved laughter, the last thing he expected. Finally, the grip around his wrists let go and peeled a dripping cloth away from his face. Clark tossed it into a nearby basin of water.
Meriwether blinked, trying to focus. “Why were you blinding me? It was a damnable prank.”
“Not a prank. You were burning up with fever, and you know I’ve studied your own notes and medical journals. Is it not accepted practice to endeavor to cool a patient in such a state?”
Meriwether blinked again, and took in his surroundings. He was inside the shelter with walls of carefully bound grasses, and he lay on a buffalo robe. His rifle and ammunition were at his side, as was the bag of provisions, all intact. He remembered giving the rifle to Floyd’s ghost in the land of the dead, so they could get to the canoe. “I was rowing,” he said, followed by a long silence.
He heard a deep voice at the door, recognized it as Cameahwait. He blinked at the chief of the Snake People. Cameahwait said, “You brought Sacagawea back. She’s very tired, but she’s alive.”
With a supreme effort of will, since it felt as though his arms were dislocated from the efforts his spirit body had made, he raised himself onto his elbows. “And Charbonneau?”
The Shoshone chief shook his head. “My sister is now a widow. Her husband did not return from the land of the dead.”
Meriwether let himself fall back onto the thick furry robes, conscious of his failure.
All he wanted to do was sleep, but Clark managed to make him swallow some water and then thin gruel, before he fell headlong into slumber. While he dozed, he was conscious of Seaman crawling in and lying next to his legs.
He woke a long time afterwards when someone entered the tent. When he opened his eyes, he saw Sacagawea carrying little Pomp.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said, very softly. “For the risk and trouble you took on my behalf.”
“Ah, but I failed you and your husband,” he managed to say, his voice very rough. “And your son.”
She shook her head. “No. The shaman says what I did was wrong. Brave but foolish. I could never have rescued Toussaint because he was already dead. Long dead, but the magic wouldn’t let his body know it. He says if you try to bring spirit bones from the other world, they simply rot, and the person dies twice.” Her shoulders drooped. “I didn’t know. I thought we could get him back. I thought he could help us.”
Finding his words, Meriwether told her what the Whiskey Revenants had told him, that she and Meriwether, the spirit eagle and the spirit dragon, were all that stood as bulwarks against the horrors of the dragon sorcerer.
Though she looked as confused as he felt, she inclined her head. “I don’t know how all this is to be.” She looked tired, he realized, but composed. Her eyes had that look people get when they’ve cried so much that they feel drained of grief.
Feeling as if he were a million years old, as if he had seen civilizations rise and fall, he dragged himself to a sitting position. “We must call everyone together so we can organize an attack on the evil—”
“No.” Sacagawea shook her head for emphasis. “First, we must bury my husband. The dragon sorcerer took him from me, but I will see that he is properly returned to the land.” She came to sit on her heels next to him before he could ask about her people’s traditional funeral customs. “We have sent LaBiche, who knows where there is a Catholic priest who can come and give Charbonneau a proper burial. I shall have my husband buried in the way he would prefer. Perhaps it will ensure his spirit goes to the right heaven?”