Stephen Lawhead - The Spirit Well

Cassandra was caught. The wind, funnelled by the canyon, surged over her, dashing cold water into her face. Blinded by the rain, she scooped water from her eyes and dived for whatever cover the overhanging ledges of stone could provide. A blast of icy wind slammed into her with the force of a jet engine, stealing the breath from her lungs and driving her along the canyon floor. She staggered forward, tripped, put out her hands to break her fall, and gritted her teeth.. but the expected jolt did not come.

To her horror, the ground gave out beneath her, and she continued to tumble.

Between one step and the next she was airborne, plunging into an unseen void. The landing, when it came, was abrupt, but not the bone-breaking shock she instinctively feared. The ground on which she landed had an odd spongy granularity she could not have anticipated.

Her first thought was that she had somehow fallen through the roof of a kiva-one of the underground ritual houses favoured by the pueblo-dwelling natives of the past. These were often hidden, and the roofs were known to give way beneath the weight of unwary hikers. But whoever heard of a kiva hidden in a canyon floor?

Her second thought-an absurd possibility-was that a tornado had plucked her up and dropped her miles away. Did she not feel that she had been flying? How else to explain what she was now seeing? For stretching before her was a vast, arid plain of volcanic gravel without a single cactus or mesquite tree in sight. The towering red rocks of Sedona were gone, and in the far distance a band of black hills lined the horizon.

And that was all.

What had happened to Arizona?

Cass stared at the alien landscape, whirling in panicky pirouette like a dancer who had inexplicably lost her partner. Panic rising, she gulped air in a futile effort at forcing herself to remain calm. Two thoughts chased each other round and round in her spinning thoughts: What happened? Where am I?

Cass, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth to stifle the scream she felt gathering there, struggled heroically to make sense of this exceedingly strange turn of events, and was on the verge of collapsing on the path and gathering herself into a tight foetal position when a gruff and irritated voice startled her.

“What are you doing here?”

Distracted momentarily from her panic, she whirled to look behind her. “Friday!” Relief of an oily, queasy sort spread through her. “Thank God it’s you. Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“No.” He put his hand to her upper arm. “You must go back.”

She looked around, the strangeness of the situation increasing by the second. “Where are we? What happened?”

“This is not for you.” He started walking, pulling Cassandra with him.

She wrenched away from his grasp. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened,” she insisted. She glared at him. “Well?”

An uncertain mixture of pique tinged with amusement squirmed across the Native American’s sun-wrinkled features. “This is Tsegihi,” he told her. “You do not belong here.”

Cassandra frowned. If she had heard the word before, she could not place it. “I don’t understand.”

“You crossed the Coyote Bridge on the Ghost Road.”

“There was no road, no bridge. I-”

“In the canyon.” He made to take her arm again, but Cass stepped away. “We must go back before it is too late.”

“Why?” She glanced around at the elaborately empty landscape. “What could happen?”

“Bad things.”

Cassandra allowed the Indian to take her arm. He turned her around and began walking along a path scratched in the pumice chips that covered the plain to a depth of several inches. The path stretched across the empty landscape in an absolutely straight line as far as she could see.

“Is this the Ghost Road? How did I get-” she began, but her next words were stolen by the wind that gusted out of nowhere, snatching her voice from the air as, between one step and the next, her feet left the ground.

When Cassandra could see again, she was once more in Secret Canyon, sopping wet, her head throbbing with a headache so virulent she could not see straight. Hands on hips, bent low at the waist, she gulped air and fought down a queasy motion sickness.

Friday towered over her, frowning.

“What?” she demanded. “You might have warned me that was going to happen.”

“You are weak,” Friday replied, looking at the sky. The roiling black clouds were already dissipating as the storm sped off into the distance.

“And you are both stubborn and arrogant,” she countered, wiping her face with both hands.

“We will go back to the dig now.” He gave her a cursory glance and started walking. When she failed to follow, he stopped and looked back.

“I’m not taking a single step until I get some answers, mister.”

“Okay,” he sniffed. “You can stay here.”

He started off again.

Cass watched him striding away and understood from the set of his shoulders that he would not be turning back a second time. She hastened after the lanky figure. “Listen,” she said, falling into step beside him, “I want an explanation. You owe me that much at least.”

“You followed me.” He did not look at her, but kept walking. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“That place we were just at-where was that? How did we get there? What happened? Was it something to do with the storm?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Hey!” she shouted. “I want to know what’s going on. I mean to get to the bottom of this.”

“You won’t.”

“Try me,” she shot back.

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Then tell me. Make it simple so I’ll understand.”

“People will think you’re crazy.”

“So what?”

Friday turned his broad, weather-creased face to her. He was smiling. “You don’t care if people think you’re crazy?”

“Do I look like someone who cares?” she demanded. “Give it up. What happened back there?”

“I already told you.”

“You said it was what-Zay-ghee-hee?”

“Tsegihi,” he confirmed. “That’s right.”

“What does that mean?”

“In English?”

“If possible.”

Friday nodded to himself. “You would say it is the Spirit World.”

“That was no Spirit World. That was real.”

“I said you wouldn’t believe it.” He strode on.

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Cass hurried after him. “Continue, please. How did we get there?”

“I already told you.”

“I know, I know-the Coyote Bridge on the Ghost Road.”

He made no reply.

“But that is just a-what do you call it? — a myth, or a metaphor, or something.”

“If you say so.”

“No, tell me. I want to know. What is the Ghost Road?”

“It is the way the Medicine Folk use to cross from this world to the Spirit World.”

“You mean literally, physically cross over.”

“Yes.”

“That’s impossible.”

“If you say so.”

They had almost reached the mouth of the canyon. She could see the desert beyond and, judging from the long shadows cast by the saguaro and mesquite bushes, the afternoon was waning towards evening.

“Among my people, there are those who travel to the Spirit World to perform sacred duties.” He paused, then added, “I am not one of them.”

“So what are you then? A tourist?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “Maybe so.”

“A tourist,” she harrumphed. “I don’t believe you.”