Spirit Hunger

Chapter 1-2

Honi inhaled deeply without slowing his long-legged march to the red-bricked building that was now coming within view. Everywhere he looked, students were moving from class to class or chatting with others. He felt a little wistful because even after three years, he had no close friends. Sure, he knew a lot of people, but between his studies and traveling back to the reservation to see his family, he didn’t have much time to socialize.

The trill of a bird calling to its mate distracted him from his maudlin thoughts, and he soon smiled again, following the birds’ flight against the clear blue sky. This day was too damn beautiful to feel down for any length of time.

When he arrived at his destination, he pulled open the front door and entered a different world. Where it had been bright and loud outside, inside the building it was dark and quiet, smelling of plastic and laminate. The sharp unpleasant odor invaded his nostrils and made him sneeze. Honi bent over and the hall echoed with the sudden eruption of noise. His nose was still itchy. He pinched his nostrils and walked towards his instructor’s office, only to see him talking to another student in the hallway.

Honi was about to open his mouth to greet Diepger, when Ho’neo stopped and growled. Honi patted his head absentmindedly and looked closer at the scene before him.

The TA leaned into a student’s personal space. Honi knew the girl. He had seen her in his Anthro mythology class and knew that she was very bright, but also strident and a little bit aggressive. She seemed to have a chip on her shoulder and had to be right all the time. He didn’t like the instructor’s body language. It was threatening, and the girl seemed to shrink under his attention.

Honi tried to think of her name, Ali, Anni—no, Adi. That was it. Unusual, but then so was his name. Adi looked very shaken up, and Diepger was obviously furious. Then Honi noticed the TA’s spirit animal. He reared back a little. Oh crap, he’d never seen it before in class, and he was sure he would have noticed.

The animal was gross, monkey-shaped and twisted. In Honi’s experience, spirit animals represented the character of their owners, so that would explain why Diepger always seemed to be such an asshole in class. The animal hissed at Adi, and Honi’s eyes widened when Adi flinched back. What the hell? Had she just reacted to the monkey?

Honi had seen spirit animals since he was fourteen. He had never met anybody else who had the gift. Then he shook his head. It was probably something the TA had said to her. She seemed fearful and cringed away while Diepger whispered something to her.

Honi’s eyebrows drew together. He hadn’t forgotten when he was bullied, and he didn’t like seeing an instructor do that to a student. He was just about to walk over and interrupt, when Diepger pulled back and walked towards his office. His spirit animal dug its claws into his forehead and the TA winced. It was rare that a spirit animal attacked its owner, but it happened.

He watched as Adi looked at her shaking hands. She still looked scared, her auburn hair falling over her luminous brown eyes. Was she crying? His throat felt dry and he swallowed sharply. She was cute in an unassuming way, and he felt like he should do something, say something to make her feel better. Just as he opened his mouth, she turned around and nearly ran into him.

“Oh," she gasped, her pale face looking up at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.” He had grabbed both her upper arms to prevent her from bouncing off his chest. She was such a small thing under his hands, he felt strangely protective of her.

“Not your fault, I should have announced myself," he smiled.

“Yes, you should have.” Her eyes narrowed and her usual cockiness covered the glimpse of vulnerability he had witnessed.

He tried again. “I saw you arguing with Diepger. I know he can be a total ass, so I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine," she replied quickly. Too quickly. Then she raised her head and looked right at him. “Did you see anything weird when you saw us? A pet, maybe? On his shoulder?”

So she had seen the monkey. Wow. But apparently she didn’t know what she’d seen.

“I saw something," he replied slowly. “What do you think it was?”

“There was a monkey on Diepger’s shoulder. It was hideous and aggressive. Do you think we should inform admin? Surely he can’t keep a dangerous animal in his office.”

Honi thought quickly. She had no idea what she’d seen. Maybe it would be better to let her believe it was just a pet. But why was she able to see it at all? He needed to find out. Only Native Americans could see spirit animals, and even among them, the gift was rare.

There was not a single person on the reservation who could do it, and most of the younger Mekui’te didn’t believe it was even possible. Honi had become the butt of jokes when he had come back from his vision quest and told everyone he met what his spirit animal looked like. He’d quickly learned not to talk about what he saw every day.

Honi found the girl’s eyes, and when he looked into their liquid brown depth, he found himself saying, “Hey, let’s have coffee and talk about it.”

There had been no monkey. The young man in front of her had humored her, and Adi was grateful for that. He seemed genuinely concerned and tried to make sure she was okay. Whatever. Her heart was still beating fast and her hands felt sweaty. She’d just wanted to get out of there and think about what had happened.

So when the very attractive young man (she might have been shocked, but she wasn’t blind, okay?) had asked her for coffee, she hadn’t hesitated.

“I’m sorry, I gotta go.” Her abruptness was rude, she knew that. It made life easier, kept distractions away so she could concentrate on what was important. Her studies. Her independence.

When she looked up, the slight smile had slipped off his face and left behind a mask of indifference. He’d stepped back and coldly said, “Sure, whatever.” Then he’d turned and walked away.

Adi watched him leave with an odd sense of disappointment. His silhouette, copper skin and long black hair, tied at the back of his head, reminded her of a young Keanu Reeves, except taller. Now that she thought of it, she was sure she’d seen him in class before. Usually dressed in T-shirts and tight jeans.

She half-regretted her outburst. He had looked at her like she mattered and had been angry on her behalf. Adi straightened her shoulders and sniffed. She didn’t need a protector_she was absolutely fine by herself. Then she remembered the fear that had shot through her like a hand grabbing her throat when that—that thing—had looked back at her and grinned.

She shook herself, pushing the revulsion down with all the other things she didn’t want to think about, then slowly made her way to the exit. The young man was gone, and again she felt a clench of regret in her stomach. When she opened the door, a chill in the air made her shiver. She looked around campus. Lectures were in full swing after lunch break, and there were very few students around.

A slight wind carried the promise of late snow, and she wished she’d brought a jacket after all. The temperature had dropped considerably, and Adi sped up to try to generate some body heat. She pulled her hoodie tighter against the creeping cold, and her shoulders rose as she clasped her arms around her. Jeez, one minute the sun shone and birds sang, the next Jack Frost made it very clear that he wasn’t done yet.

When Adi finally got to her building, she couldn’t feel her fingertips. Her nose started running in response to the welcoming warmth in her room. She was only glad that as a senior, she had been given a single. She really didn’t have the patience or inclination to share with another nosy person. And renting off-campus would have taken too much of a chunk of her monthly allowance.

She made a beeline to her electric teakettle. Her mom had always had one back in Germany, and when Adi’d had to leave home, she’d tracked one down. It had taken her quite a while to find a pretty one, all made of glass with blue backlighting. It hadn’t been cheap, but it was worth every dollar. And today of all days, she really appreciated having hot water in a mug and a teabag within a few minutes.

Adi leaned back in the only chair in her sparsely furnished room and warmed her blue-tinged fingers on the hot porcelain. Heaven. Sipping the black brew always calmed her down and helped her think.

First of all, Diepger. The guy was such an ass. Adi knew she was right. Her German was fluent, and what she didn’t know, she looked up. Maybe she was a little abrasive at times, and she couldn’t remember why she’d felt the need to poke at the TA the way she had. Still, his attitude was aggressive and threatening, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to stir up more trouble, but she might have to speak to the head of faculty. As if she didn’t have enough on her plate already.

And then the monkey or whatever that thing was. Adi’s brows rose as she recalled the terror she’d felt at that moment. It seemed out of character for her. She was a calm, rational person, usually. Well, she was now.

When she was a child, into her early teenage years, her psychiatrist had told her parents that what she saw every day were “imaginary friends”. Even as a child, she had known that couldn’t be right. They were supposed to be “friends”, but what she saw had frightened her. Friends didn’t frighten friends, she knew that. Eventually the diagnosis had moved on to more serious conditions, and the doctor had told her parents that she was suffering from “psychotic episodes”.

Adi had come home one day, distraught and frightened. She must have been thirteen. On a school trip to downtown Frankfurt, the class had arrived at Taunusanlage, one of the stations in the business district. There was a lot of drug and alcohol abuse in those days, and it wasn’t uncommon to see people passed out in the stations, where it was warm and sheltered.

The children had been forced to step over a man who lay right across the middle of the stairs to the street level. Just as Adi had straddled the junkie, his dirty hand had shot out and grabbed her ankle midstep. His long fingernails had dug into her skin. She’d muffled a scream with her fist and stared down at him.

She remembered his high-pitched giggle before he dropped back into a stupor. She could still smell the stench of unwashed body and something more sinister, like rotting onions. Her teacher pulled her away from him and made sure she was okay. But when she turned her head to give the guy one final glance, she saw a large cat peering out from underneath his jacket. It wasn’t a little domestic cat either. It looked like a skeletal, mangy puma. Its yellow eyes bore into hers and it hissed, showing broken teeth.

When Adi turned to her classmates and opened her mouth to warn them, she realized that no one else seemed alarmed in the slightest. So she kept her mouth shut. Fitting in was important even then. And when she looked again, there was no sign of a big cat, just an emaciated smelly junkie sleeping his life away.

It upset her deeply. She wasn’t sure what exactly—being grabbed by the addict, seeing the cat, not seeing the cat—whatever it was, it made her feel on edge. Pair that with teenage hormones and it was no wonder she was upset by the time she got home.

Her mom noticed of course, and after much probing and cajoling, Adi told her. She also mentioned the cat, and her mom’s reaction scared her even more. Her face showed a series of emotions, running from confused to upset to determined. The next day Adi met her second psychiatrist, Dr. Niederegger.

Dr. Niederegger was good. So good that Adi confessed seeing animals sitting and slouching on people all the time. When he asked her what kind of animals, she explained, “All kinds, even frogs and insects.”

He wanted to know if they talked to her, and she shook her head, her brown bob emphatically moving along with it. He kept scribbling furiously in a notebook, and the more she talked, the more he scribbled. Eventually her parents were asked into the bright, expensively furnished interrogation room, and Adi was asked to wait outside.

What followed was a script for tablets that made her feel drowsy and spaced out as well as many, many more meetings with Dr. Niederegger. He was a great listener and smiled at her encouragingly every time she hesitated. Adi didn’t mind speaking to him, but she learned not to talk about what she saw anymore. The drugs seemed to work, and eventually, she’d stopped seeing what others couldn’t. Mind over matter, she’d thought at the time. Until now.

She got up and dropped her mug into the sink with an impatient sigh. She had no time for this nonsense. She had done it once and she could do it again. If she ignored her hallucinations, they would go away, just as before. Exams were coming up next month and she needed to pull herself together. She was so close to finishing her third year with near-perfect grades. Seeing animals that weren’t there was not on her agenda! Then she thought of how concerned her mother had been and her chest clenched. That had been the last year before everything had changed.

Suddenly she had such a longing to connect with them, with her mom and dad, that she found herself on her knees, pulling a large box from underneath the bed. With shaking fingers, she pulled out a scrapbook she had created after the accident, full of memories. Her eyes blurred when she saw herself held in her parents’ arms, only a few hours old.

Her memories had begun to fade, but she knew just by looking at their faces that she had been loved, and that her parents had loved each other. Her hand fumbled for her medallion, as it did every time she felt overwhelmed. She whispered, “I miss you guys so, so much,” before turning over.

The next page showed her extended family at their wedding, except for her father’s mother, who hadn’t approved of the match. There was nothing she could do of course, given that Adi was on her way, but she’d made her new daughter-in-law’s life hell.

Sighing, she wiped her eyes and let go of her necklace. There was no point dwelling on the past and every reason to look towards the future. All she had to do was hit the books hard and pass her exams. No pressure then.