Redemption by Veronique Launier Page B

ear, unsure where the gesture came from. Not wanting the other people around us to hear me, I leaned into her and whispered in her ear, “What was that? What just happened?”
    She didn’t say anything at first and I pulled back to look at her eyes. They were full of conflict.
    “What was what?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Wherever the chanting came from, it freaked her out a lot more than it did me.
    I inclined back toward her, closer to her ear to whisper in it again, “‘Release your spirit to the man of stone, let him take over your sins.’ Only you chanted it in Kanien’kéha.”
    “In Ga-yoon-gae- huh ?” she asked, trying to mimic my pronunciation.
    “In Mohawk.”
    “Yes, I know what it means, but you speak Mohawk?” Her eyebrows rose.
    Of course, this is what she would focus on, really the most unimportant thing in this conversation.
    “I speak many languages … it comes with all the moving around.”
    “I don’t think I believe you. And one thing I know for sure is that I don’t speak Mohawk.”
    I leaned back on my hands and thought for a minute. Could this be some deep-rooted genetic memory? “Hmmm … Maybe this is something coming to you from your ancestry?”
    “My ancestry?”
    “You are at least part Native, right? Maybe even Mohawk?”
    “No. Well, I don’t think so … ”
    “You don’t know?” Things had changed quite a bit since I last took an active role in society, but I was still rather certain her situation was not a common one.
    “No, I don’t know.”
    The drumming began again as the shaman led the group through another story, this time about a boy who lived with bears. We listened to the man, but from the way she kept sharing glances with me, I could tell the spell-like atmosphere had been broken for her.
    We didn’t get a chance to talk again until we were given a twenty-minute recess. She headed toward the drums on display.
    “Look, Aude, I’d like to talk.”
    She looked between me and the drums and then gave a sigh and nodded.
    I led her to one of the university’s common areas and we sat on a bench together. There was an awkwardness I couldn’t place and we didn’t look at each other for a while. I tugged at my shirt collar and bent forward with my arms stretched out.
    “When you said those words … How did they come to you?”
    I didn’t look at her. I wanted to make her comfortable to make sure she’d tell me everything.
    “I … I don’t know. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense … It’s not really supposed to be happening. It’s in my head … or it was supposed to be in my head, like I’m going crazy or something.”
    “I heard you.” I placed my hand lightly on her shoulder. Her shirt was soft under my hands.
    “It comes with drumming … ” she started. I became immediately interested. These were exactly the answers I looked for. “Both times this happened, it started with drumming … ” She looked right at me then. “This is not the first time this has happened to me. Last time, I heard voices too. But there was no one there,” she said.
    “What kind of voices?”
    “Just normal voices. Well … ” She scraped her boot against the tile floor. “This is going to sound crazy … ”
    “Probably not,” I said.
    “Well, I could swear I heard you. But it seems I keep hearing your voice in strange places, and I didn’t even know you then.” She buried her head in her hands. “It makes even less sense when I say it aloud.”
    It didn’t make sense. To hear our mind speak, she wouldn’t only have to be an essentialist with decent power, but to be one of the de Rouen witches, a line that had died with Marguerite.
    Who was she? Was she really crazy? Had she imagined these things? Considering the traumatic events she had been through, I’d be tempted to believe it if it weren’t for the power I was sure I had seen in her when she chanted. If she was an essentialist, then she could be playing games with us, but