My people have lived at the bottom of the Mourn Mountains for as long as time has been recorded. It is our duty to look after the sacred mountains and to accompany those who come to mourn their loved ones.
I am a spirit walker. I take the living to speak to the dead.
I paint my face white with paste and Mama draws intricate patterns all over my cheeks and forehead. Sometimes it’s flowers, sometimes it’s animals running in the wind, sometimes it is swirls or a tiny row of dots, indicating the thin line between life and death.
‘One day you will do this for yourself,’ she says, holding my chin firmly so I don’t squirm.
I wear bells around my ankles; with each step the spirits know we are coming. As we get closer to the top of the mountain, I clap out a rhythm with my hands and sing, summoning the spirits, so that those that mourn can talk to them.
I retreat a safe distance away, not wanting to be drawn up into the spirit world and to pay my respects to the mourners. What they have to say to the dead is their business and private; I am just the guide.
I tidy the offerings; I say a prayer to the mountain of my own, asking it to deliver us safely home and thanking it for protecting the living and dead.
I wear deer hide and share dried meats along the way. Mourning is hungry work and often those who arrive, pale and weeping, are revived after connecting with those they love.
But then Mama grows sick. She can’t get out of bed or paint my face for the spirit walking ceremony. I try to draw my own symbols, but everything is back to front in the mirror and my hand shakes with worry as she groans from her bed.
I settle for simple stripes down my nose and each cheek, but all day as I walk the mountain, guiding people, I worry about Mama back home in bed.
When I get home, I don’t wash the paste off my face, I go running in and she is lying on the bed, her face a sheen of sweat, her eyes unseeing.
‘Mama?’ I clasp her limp hand. ‘Mama, what do you need?’
The medicine woman covers Mama’s body in damp cloths, trying to cool her raging fever. ‘Your Mama is very ill,’ she tells me, I need you to run to my medicine supplies.’
She instructs me to bring her barks and dried herbs from the mountain.
I run as fast as my legs will carry me. When I return, Mama is saying something unintelligible and thrashing from side to side. The medicine woman restrains her arms, but Mama has already scratched her face.
I run to her side, trying to soothe her with my words, but it is like Mama is elsewhere. Her body is in the room, the heat coming off her is like sitting before the fire, but Mama’s spirit has gone; she has become untethered. I try to call it back so that the two can rejoin and Mama will be well again.
The medicine woman mixes herbs by the fire. The whole room feels stifling, I want to open the doors and windows, but she says the heat is good.
Mama is shivering and I wrap her in blankets and then a fur, but it doesn’t stop her trembling.
I sing to her and this seems to soothe her spirit slightly.
The medicine woman feeds Mama broth, but it dribbles out of the side of her mouth. She turns her head away from the spoon.
‘She must eat a little or at least drink.’
I take the bowl and try to pour a little of the broth into Mama’s mouth, but she chokes and fights me. I stop.
We repeat this pattern throughout the night. The medicine woman cooling Mama with cloths and trying to feed her and me singing every song I can remember, as the only way to soothe her.
A branch snapping in the fire wakes me. All is quiet, the medicine woman is asleep in a chair.
I sit up slowly, Mama is still and at last I think the fever is broken, but when I take her hand, it is cold and then a sound comes from my lips that I have heard people make on the mountain. A sound of loss and despair that tells the world you will never be the same because the person you love most has been taken from you.
The sound gets louder and louder and the medicine woman takes me in her arms, but nothing can soothe me now.
‘She didn’t teach me how to paint my face,’ I say, my warm tears dressing Mama’s hair like liquid pearls.
They wrap Mama in blankets and lay her on a giant fire in the middle of the village. I watch the sparks rising up into the sky and wonder if that is her spirit leaving her body. They sing songs and chant for her to safely pass up into the spirit world and all who are waiting to greet her.
I find no comfort in this.
The medicine woman asks me to stay with her, but just the smell of her stores takes me straight back to Mama lying sick in her bed.
Instead, the women of the village take turns in coming to visit or sit with me. They take on the household chores, as I sit in the same chair and wish whatever fever took Mama would come and take me.
On the fifth day of not eating the medicine woman is summoned and she feeds me broth like I am a baby, spooning the mixture into my mouth. When I can eat no more, she wraps me in a blanket and sends me to bed.
I sleep for a week. On waking, the pain rushes back into me and I lie sobbing, calling for Mama.
After a week of this the medicine woman comes to me, putting her hand on my shoulder. ‘There is a party that needs to be led up the mountain.’
I flinch at her words and shake my head.
‘It is your duty,’ she says, squeezing my shoulder tighter.
I squirm out from under her. ‘No!’
I see that she is holding the pot of white paste.
‘You are the only one that can bring the spirits,’ she says, her grey eyes fixing me to the spot. ‘Some of these people have travelled for days to commune with those they love.’
I feel my eyes burning hot. My mother is now one of those spirits.
‘When you are ready, she will come to you,’ the medicine woman says.
I feel my hands tightening into fists. She has no right to ask this of me.
‘Would you like me to paint your face?’ The medicine woman’s smile is kindly, but I snatch the pot from her hands.
I smear the paste on thick and fast. I paint angry black zigzags on top, like lightning coming down to strike. How am I meant to sing to the spirits of the mountain when my heart is rendered in two?
‘This is the last time I will spirit walk.’
It comes out almost as a growl and the medicine woman doesn’t question me, just gives a small nod.
I stomp up the mountain, my party finding it hard to keep up. My bells ring out short and sharp with each stamp of my foot. I will let the mountain gods know how angry I am for taking Mama.
We reach the top. I want this over with. The sky is pink as the sun begins to go down, it should be black to reflect my mood.
The party is exhausted. I lift my hands to the heavens and begin to sing, the sweat from the climb stinging my eyes and intermingling with my tears. This will be my life every day from now on, a searing pain that takes hold of my chest, where my heart should be and leaves me with nothingness.
I stamp my belled feet in time to the song. The party of mourners gathers round me, half watching me, half looking up to the sky. There have been times when I have seen unexplained movement and known that we are being joined by those who once walked the same path.
A few begin to cry, others watch in wonder, some cling to those they love or fall on their knees as if in supplication. I recognise all of these reactions, I have seen them many times before, but I am now a member of the party. I’m not just singing to unknown spirits, one of them is my own, waiting to be called back to me.
My voice catches in my throat, I find it hard to continue and then someone takes my hand. It is a woman, around Mama’s age, she has tears in her eyes, but she gives me a warm smile, encouraging me to continue.
It is twilight now; the temperature drops and I strain my eyes in the purple light looking for my own spirit and wondering why she hasn’t come. Is it too soon? Does it take time to be reborn?
We set up camp. It’s not a sensible place to settle, it is windy at the top of the mountain, we are too exposed, but everyone is tired from the climb and I don’t want to lead a party halfway down the mountain in the darkness.
I light a fire, watching the sparks float away in the darkness. Some gather round it; others turn in for the night, exhausted.
I stay with the fire until the last person goes to bed, waiting for Mama to appear alongside me, but she doesn’t. I search for her in every flame before I put them out.
I watch each star slowly reveal itself – a person lost on earth, but settled in the fabric of the sky. I try and work out which one will be Mama and choose the brightest one I can see.
In the morning, I am woken by a sound. At first, I think I am dreaming and that Mama is cooking in the kitchen singing, her voice gently waking me as it had done so many times before and then I remember – I am on the mountain and she is gone.
I am stiff from sleeping on the ground and stoke the fire for breakfast, when a small bird alights on the top. It is singing, the song that Mama used to sing when she was cooking.
The bird pauses in its singing, tilts its head, as if checking that I am watching before continuing with its song. I feel that warm flush through my chest, as if Mama is close by and then she is gone, taking to the sky on the wind, her song carrying out behind her.
The pain is still there, the hole has not been filled or sealed, but somehow the burden is slightly lighter. I can talk to her each time I climb the mountain with those who share my pain.
Sian Chaney-Price – ran away from teaching to do a Masters in Writing for Young People, is now a librarian, but more than anything wants to be a writer when she grows up. She has had a short story published by Scholastic, won a place on The London Library Emerging Writer’s programme in 2019 and her YA novel was long-listed by Guppy Books in 2020. She has recently completed a place on the Firefly Press Ignite mentorship programme. She attributes all of her best work to her cat, who is also her editor. Follow her on twitter @SianChaneyPrice
