Kim Robinson - Shaman

Loon crawled on, feeling dully that he had a plan he could pursue till death. Onward.

Then a hoot seemed to come from somewhere:

—Loon! Loon!

He shouted as loud as he could:—I’m here! Help! HELP!

Part of the black turned gray. There grew a lightness there, and he turned to face it, to suck it into himself like a great draft of life itself. Yes, that was light, just as distinct as sunlight, even though it was merely a pale black among darker blacks. The cave walls in that direction were shadows in blackness, and the cave itself therefore loomed around him again, visible as black on black.

He shouted again. He didn’t recognize anything of what he saw, couldn’t tell whether the grayblack shapes were distant or close, a day’s walk or something he could reach out and touch; he tried touching what he saw, but nothing was touchable.

He sat there. The light seemed to dim, and in terror he cried out again,—Help! Help!

Once before he had called out in this same desperate way, when as a child he had plunged into the river and could not feel the bottom, and somehow had thrashed back up to the surface and shouted out HELP to anyone who might hear. Such a cry of fear! And that time his father had pulled him out.

The sounds in the cave began to say,—Loon! Loon!

Then the light grew, and suddenly he could make out the cave roof above him, folded and ribbed like a gut. He was going to be reborn out of Mother Earth’s kolby; this was what the birth passage looked like from inside. His tongue had felt folds in Elga like what he saw now looking up.

Then he heard that one of the voices was Elga’s. A prick of light stabbed him right in the eye; he threw up his hands to block it, crying out in shock and relief and joy as he clambered slowly to his feet. He stood there swaying unsteadily, staggering as he called out,—Elga! Elga! Elga!

The blazes of light came from torches. Their flames bobbed wildly, shadows flew all around him like flocks of giant birds, ah: he saw that the spirit ravens of this cave had been gathered over him, ready to pick his bones the moment he died. Now they flew blackly away, giving him back to the light. The torch flames were so bright and yellow he could see nothing else, it was as if fire alone approached him through the black air of the cave.

Then he saw the people carrying the flames. Elga and Heather and Hawk. Elga gave Hawk her torch to hold, and ran up and embraced him.

—You’re so cold! she exclaimed.

—I’m fine, he said, and felt his face grinning as he wept. Now his teeth were chattering.

They told him Moss was back up the cave a ways, holding a torch for them. And from Moss’s location they knew the way to the red chamber, and then the day chamber. Elga was wrapped around him, almost holding him up. He had been gone too long, they said, so they had come in. It had been four days.

—No, Loon said.

—Yes, Elga said.—Four days. So we came in.

—I’m glad you did, Loon said.—My lamps went out. I couldn’t get them relit. It’s been dark a long time.

—Where are we? she asked, looking around the part of the cave they were in. It had no animals on its walls, although in one area there seemed to be cross-hatchings that did not look like a cave bear’s, they were so squared off.

—I don’t know, Loon said.—I don’t think I’ve ever been in this part. I don’t recognize it. A quick violent shudder of cold and fear rattled him, and she held him closer.

—This is the way out. Toward Moss.

They had trailed a rope behind them from the last spot they could see Moss’s torch; it lay there on the cave floor like a snake. Now they rolled it back up as they returned, and soon saw a glow in the passage ahead. As they came through it, Loon saw that they were actually returning to his chamber, with his new painting there on the wall to their right. He had gone down a passageway deeper into the cave, but in a different direction than Thorn’s lion room. There was his painting right there, and he peered at it curiously, wondering what he had done.

The others were caught by it too, and stopped briefly to look. But Elga wanted them to leave as soon as possible.—We’ll come back with the whole pack, she said.—First let’s get you out of here.

Loon picked up the cave bear skull he had stumbled over in the blackness. Feeling it in his hand as he looked at it, he could see the blackness in how it had felt to him in the dark. Something had tried to eat him.

He put the skull on a block of stone that stood waist high in the middle of the room. He looked around at the chamber he had spent four days in, first painting, then in darkness. He could not tell which part had been longer. It had felt like four years, or four lives. When they came back in here, he would ask his pack to gather every cave bear skull they could find, and bring them in here to mark those four lost lives. Something had to say what had happened here.

Elga nudged him along. Past the owl on the rock, past the stone reed bed. Then there was Moss’s light beyond, at the far end of the big empty chamber. Moss shouted loudly, excited to learn they had found Loon alive. He ran down the room, torch blazing, and seized Loon up in a great hug, swinging him around in the air.—Good man! You made it!

—I did.

—But you’re so muddy!

—I crawled a lot, Loon admitted.

They stood there for a while chattering at him. He was shivering. There was a dim light in the far passageway that they all knew to be the light of day. That was a good light to see.

Suddenly Loon felt how tired he was. Now that they were almost out, he found he could hardly walk. He couldn’t feel his feet. Moss and Elga walked at his sides, held his elbows and helped him over the lumpy mud of the old bear beds. They stopped and let him gingerly stomp the ground, trying to restore some feeling to his feet. His left leg was achy. He did a little circle dance to loosen it up.

He found himself facing a wall that had a big smooth expanse, there between the two doors to the room of the bear beds. There was a red paint mark on this wall, and suddenly Loon said,—Wait, I see something. I need to do one more thing.

They all disliked hearing this, and said so, but Loon cut through them.

—I have to do one more thing!

He stared at each of them in turn, and they quieted and let him be. The world waited for them, after all, just a few score steps toward the light, around the last corner. Given that, they could not deny him.

Loon took the bag of earthblood powder from his sack, got out a bowl, asked Elga for water. He mixed up the powder and her water into a bowl of red paint, thickened by spit he had to ask the others to provide; he was too dry-mouthed to spit.

When the paint was ready, he went to the wall and put his right hand carefully in the paint, so that only his palm was wet with it. Then he pressed the wet hand against the wall, pulled it away: a red palm print, almost square.

He did that over and over. He crouched to work low at first, then stretched up as far as he could. He placed his handprints so that they made the rough shape of a bison. A new kind of stump drawing, one might say. The more he pressed his hand against the wall, the angrier he got. He didn’t know why, or at what. Somehow it had to do with Thorn, or with Thorn dying. We had a bad shaman, we had a good shaman; we had a shaman. And by this stump drawing of a bison, made with his own living hand in earth’s own blood, he would stick Thorn’s spirit to the wall. Let it reside forever in this cave that had almost killed Loon, while Loon would escape out into the world. Something to show what the bison man had been like, his greatness, his power. He pressed his hand into the paint and onto the wall: he wanted to show the sheer mass of him. His hand when he pressed went in the rock right to the elbow. All the worlds in this wall. He made the red marks until the paint was entirely gone. That was Thorn.