Read Seaweed in the Soup for Free Online Page B

again.
    Immediately below me on the beach was Chief Alphonse. Naked except for a leather necklace and leggings that jangled with small bells and deer hooves when he moved, he was dancing around a pit-fire in a counter-clockwise direction.
    The chief had wrapped rice root and other bulbs in pouches made of thimbleberry leaves. Then he had dug edible roots to go along with the rice root. When the fire became hot enough, the chief had piled swordfern fronds and salal bushes on top. Potatoes, onions and carrots were laid on next, then the roots of springbank clover, Nootka lupine and Pacific silverweed. I was standing at the window, drinking Red Rose tea, when the chief caught my eye, waved me over and invited me to join his traditional feast. It had been cooking for about three hours by then. There was more than enough food for both of us, but I would have much preferred macaroni and cheese. After we’d eaten our fill, we had a sweat.
    The chief was still very fit—tall upright old man with a large raptor’s nose and, as usual, an eagle feather poking through his long grey braids. He went down on his knees and crawled into the sweat lodge. I turned my face away because I didn’t want to look at the chief’s skinny butt—not that he’d care. Once he was inside, I picked hot stones off the fire with a pair of deer antlers and dropped them into a hole dug inside the sweat lodge. The chief sprinkled the rocks with water ladled from a bucket. It was hot enough to scorch lungs inside there—heat surrounded us as if we’d entered a stove. To save my life, I opened a flap in the tarpaulin and let in some breathable air.
    I broke a long companionable silence. “I saw two old petroglyphs this morning. They were carved onto a boulder hidden in the woods above Echo Bay. One of our constables stumbled across it by accident while he was chasing a couple of runaways.”
    â€œWas these runaways Coast Salish?”
    â€œPossibly. They were young Native women. Persons of interest in a murder investigation. The constable said that he lost the women in the bush, but he kept on looking. After a while, a sudden apparition startled him. He didn’t see the apparition clearly, he said. He said it wasn’t human, but it could have been a bird, or an animal.”
    â€œDid you find a cave near the petroglyph?”
    â€œNo. A wind blew up and I was too busy getting out of the way of falling trees.”
    â€œLook for a cave the next time you’re up there. I would.”
    Before I could respond, the chief said, “Them old shamans would sometimes carve a bird on a big rock, then lie on top of the carving and become that bird. Fly away. Maybe your constable saw a flying shaman.”
    â€œIt’s been a good day for weird sightings,” I said, adding, “and there are four ravens roosting on Pandora Street right now. Two adults and two chicks.”
    â€œTe spokalwets,” Chief Alphonse said portentously.
    Te spokalwets : In Coast Salish, those words mean corpse, or ghost. Our old people go all weird when it comes to ravens. Every time they see a raven, or hear one calling, they expect somebody to die.
    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s a good thing there aren’t more ravens around Victoria.
    â€œAnd maybe you saw four ghosts,” the chief said.
    â€œNo, the ravens were real,” I said.
    â€œCoast Salish dead people are all ghosts, although you generally don’t see ’em because they spend most of their time in the land of the dead, Silas,” the chief remarked, speaking in the calm unhurried voice of a man who knows that his words will be heeded attentively. “Mind you, though, I’ve seen plenty of ghosts. I saw a White woman’s ghost once. Years ago.
    â€œThere were just three of us. We were fishing up Desolation Sound way. I was just a kid at the time. Georgina Bell was the boat’s name. It was owned by