Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) by Ferenc Máté

it was the night air, or maybe nerves. Nello was right: I took things seriously. Too damned seriously. Had to learn to enjoy what I had: the wind, the moonlight, the ketch. If only she sailed faster. My mind had drifted and I had gone off course and pointed too high, luffing the sails. They slatted loudly until I fell off again.
    “You have good eyes, Captain,” Nello said, looking over the side. “I wouldn’t have seen that deadhead to save my life.” I turned back and saw the round, dark shape bobbing in our wake. But it bobbed too much for a deadhead—it was just a flimsy sawn end of a log and Nello knew that. I took a deep breath.
    The breeze stayed steady, bringing warm air from the land.
    “Mr. Hay,” Nello began. “After the Kwakiutl left your yacht, you didn’t notice a piece of your clothing missing, did you?”
    “No,” Hay replied. “Why?”
    “Because when we Kwakiutl want to hex somebody, bewitch ‘em, we take a piece of his clothing, and some strands of hair.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Have you counted your hair lately?”
    “I’m afraid it’s serious business, Captain.”
    “I quite agree,” Hay piped in. “I studied many of Boas’s field papers. Years he spent with the Kwakiutl; and witchcraft was the thing they feared most. If you were found out putting a spell on someone, you could be put to death. Isn’t that so?”
    “Sure is,” Nello said. “At least in my village.”
    “Which was that?”
    “Qa’logwis. Crooked Beach.”
    “I heard it’s a beautiful area,” Hay said wistfully. “Tiny islands in a gentle inland sea.”
    “Islands everywhere,” Nello said, “Like a maze. Some are just rocks, some with a few twisted spruces, others a tangle of salal bushes so dense you can walk on them. Mist and rain, fall and winter.” He paused. When he started up again it was like someone telling a story to a child.
    “That’s when the spirits come. And that’s when your soul wanders off in the mist and you get sick. That’s when a hex works best. If you go down to the water, you can sometimes coax it back inside. If not, a pexala, a shaman, comes and gets it back for you. Sometimes not. Then you die. Then we take you over to the little island across the way and lay you on the salal bushes.”
    He fell silent and stared at the waves. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bore you.”
    “On the contrary,” Hay burst out so loudly I had to tell him to keep it down. “I am an anthropologist. I collect Indian objects not just to have them but because they tell stories. It’s part of the science. But objects are only second-best story tellers, when there’s no one left alive to tell them; nothing can replace an oral account. The most precious are personal stories. My respect for your people is profound; nothing fascinates me more than their stories.” Then he added almost as an afterthought, “Even under the circumstances.”
    “Mine aren’t what you call scientific material. Just stories.”
    “They might be that to you, but for me it could be a gold mine of information. Take one of your creation stories. They tell not only the mythology, but hidden in there is so much ethnography, from foods to clothes to habits.”
    “Well.” Nello laughed. “I have one of those. Of our na’mima , our big house. Na’mima means ‘one of a kind’—family—wives, kids, brothers, uncles, cousins. There were eight na’mimas in our village; our tribe. Our tribe was called Kwexa, Murderers. We had a bastard of a chief and one of the na’mima chiefs put a knife in his neck. The tribe broke up. Some moved away. We stayed. Some call us Kwe’xamut, Those Who Stayed After the Murder. Charming name.
    “Anyway, each big house too has its own name, its own fishing grounds, hunting rights, berry grounds, and—believe it or not—its own creation story. Myth at the end of the world, we call it. I guess we mean the beginning end. Our name was Echo of the Woods and you’d never guess in a million years