Our Elsewheres: Excerpt From The Rain-Maiden And The Bear-Man, By Easterine Kire

The New Road 

‘Don’t let your brothers come home by the new road, Nino,’ her mother-in-law begged in the morning. Very late the night before, her brother and a kinsman had come to their house, too drunk to walk the rest of the way home. Her mother-in-law was visiting them for the weekend. She was a quiet woman, not the interfering sort at all. So, Nino was alarmed with this request.  

‘Why, Mother?’ she asked, ‘Why not the new road? It’s shorter and wider. And when they are so drunk, they are surely safer on that road?’  

‘It is not a good road, Nino.’  

‘Why not, Mother? Is it a spirit thing?’  

‘Yes. But don’t ask me more.’  

‘But they’ll want to know why. They won’t listen if I tell them not to go that way.’  

‘All right then, I’ll tell you but, mind, you don’t let the children know.’ 

‘The first night they came home late, I was so troubled I could not sleep at all. Spirits of the road had followed them home, and they troubled me all night. You remember I left a little before dawn? Some of the spirits even had wings. Those were the most troublesome. As I lay in bed, I could feel their wings, light as a moth’s, soft and fuzzy, brushing against my face. I kept waking up and swatting them away, but they just wouldn’t leave.  

‘The men must have drunk a great deal because the spirits were drunk too—and not as harmless as the spirits of the road usually are. The ones that followed them home last night are malicious and mean. A new breed of spirits, home-grown. Didn’t you hear them knock over the water pitcher? Did you think that was the cat? In my village, a man ran into them and they beat him so badly that his nose bled, his mouth bled, and in the morning, they found him dead by the village gate. We couldn’t bury him in the village, because that sort of death is abominable and such people need to be buried far away.  

‘Last night I heard the spirits talking, they’re vicious and vile. I kept very quiet. When your brother’s friend opened the door to answer the call of nature, they finally left the house. 

‘You don’t know that people in the village never open their doors after nine at night? You live in the town, you’ve forgotten the ways of the village. But the spirits never forget, they are the same in village and town. If you are late going home, they follow you, and, when the door is opened, they enter the house with you. And then plague you all night. Haven’t you been startled awake by a pot falling to the floor? That was the work of spirits. But when you go to the kitchen, you find there’s nothing there. Nothing has fallen to the floor, and you wonder what it was.  

‘At other times they wake you, but you feel too lazy to get up and see. You think maybe it’s the cat, and you turn over and go to sleep again, only to hear another clang from the kitchen. You wonder if it’s morning yet, and you look out the window—but it’s night still. That is what happens, Nino, if you open your door late. The spirits follow you in.  

‘The most dangerous are the river spirits. I wonder if they brought one home last night. Through my sleepy eyes, I thought I saw a beautiful woman in the room. She was so beautiful—I cannot find the words to describe her. And as I gazed at her, I felt a cold breath on my cheek, and my eyes snapped wide open. The air in the room was moist, as though someone had splashed river water about. And I smelt the river-mud smell of the river spirits long after the cold had gone. You must warn them not to come by the new road again.’ 

Nino knew the old woman was not lying because she was a strange soul, Paul’s mother. People said of her that she has the gift, that she could see spirits and even communicate with them.  

That night she heard her brother’s voice hissing her name. It was very late, much later than the previous night. She pulled her quilt over her head and refused to go to the door. ‘Nino, open the door,’ he hissed, knocking softly again and again. Nino struggled to stay still. The spirits stayed for a few minutes, hissing and knocking. She could hear them talking too. ‘Guess she’s sleeping too deeply tonight,’ said one voice. ‘Let’s go to Akru’s then,’ said the other. She heard the heavy shuffling of feet on her porch and her heart turned over, but she couldn’t risk the children being harmed. Let it go, she thought to herself, tomorrow when they’ve slept off their drunkenness, I’ll tell them. Then she turned over and lay awake all night, listening for sounds that never came. 

Excerpted with permission from Seagull Books.