Kim Robinson - Shaman

Not so this dirt under him now, so friable and full of roots and dead leaves. Suddenly he felt hungry, not as a pinch in the gut but as a general weakness, and he wondered if there was any sustenance in this dirt or these dead leaves. Surely the leaves would give him something. Normally it was not thought to be so, but they did eat certain succulent leaves, and all manner of roots and tubers and shoots and flowers and fruits, so surely these dead leaves had something good in them, or anyway would fill his belly. Although when he tried to eat them, he found his belly did not seem to want filling. No, there was nothing to eat here. He needed to shift his burning skin heat down into his feet without food to help him. Best now to stand and chant the hot song, and think about Sage and her big new tits, down by the riverside swinging together as she leaned over washing, like a ewe’s udder magically doubled. Big dark udders hanging down, sloshing side to side, banging together as Sage washed clothes, her ribs as big as any man’s, her back hard and muscled in a way that made her hanging tits more than ever like bags of milk a-swing under her. Oh yes; he was warming up at the thought of her, the heat moving around in him, rising even into his chilled spurt, which warmed as it antlered. He clasped it and squeezed till it felt like a flesh stick, hard as a stick, almost, oh but his hands were so cold, it was only the sight of Sage’s naked body there moving in his eye that could keep him hard, and thus help him overcome the cold. Dance a sex song, mix the hot song he had been chanting with a sex song, seeing how she would look if they were joined in sex, or so it seemed; Loon had never done it with her, or any girl. Both Thorn and Heather made it clear to him, as did all the women in the pack, that it was better to mate with girls from other packs. So the summer festivals were good for that. Your pack was too close, the girls in it like sisters. Except they weren’t, especially if they were from other clans. Loon had been his parents’ only child, and he was a raven, like his mother had been. The girls in the pack included eagles and salmon, and had been only girls to him, and he only a boy to them. Now they were young women and he a young man. They bled and were painted red at their moon time, they had perfect tits and asses and legs and furry soft kolbies, everything really: they were perfect and beautiful. Actually only Sage was perfect in all possible ways, something that everyone saw and remarked on, but in the end they all looked good, and Loon loved them. And Sage was an eagle. To be a shaman was to have a distance from women, but also a closeness; he would be involved with the life of their bodies in ways he wouldn’t as a normal man of the pack, a hunter married to one woman. But not to have a wife! Well, that remained to be seen. Loon danced holding his hard spurt, thinking of Sage naked, and decided then and there that he would not be that kind of shaman. He collapsed to his knees and fucked the dirt, spurted calling out at the sensation of coming, the bolts of pure pleasure streaming out of him onto the ground, and when he was done, still holding himself and pulsing, he scooped up the spurtmilk with some leaves and ate all of it. He would feed himself. It was like a mushroom soup, congealed although still warm with his warmth.

Ah, the slow pulsing of afterglow. He staggered around in a bliss. Vomiting, spurting, they were all part of it. To feel so good in his body; he should have been spurting in Mother Earth as often as he could manage it. Well, maybe he had been; maybe this was the first time in the whole fortnight he had had the time and warmth and strength and spirit. Of course; or else he would have. Afterglow buzzing down his legs from his spurt, up his belly from his spurt, then out his arms to his fingers. A subtle but distinct flow of goodness, there to do battle with all the nicks and scrapes, with Spit and Crouch, and all the days of throbbing cold feet. Well, down at the very ends of his legs it was hard to penetrate with the goodness. Too cold down there. Best to hop again, dance and chant again, say good-bye to Sage for a while and focus his attention on the moment. The sun was high, it was midmorning and the air was warming up. Time to be out and about.

He rolled up his cape and tied it around his waist, retied his belt and skirt, and headed down the plateau’s edge toward the top of his home valley. Upper Valley dropped to the river, past Cave Hill onto Loop Meadow, the filled dry river course that ran around Loop Hill and the Stone Bison, which straddled the river. He was not a great distance away from home, it would be only a day’s walk on the ridge trail between Upper and Lower Valleys. Going down the valley cleft itself it would take much longer, but it would be good to avoid the ridge trail, he judged, to reduce the chances of running into anyone. As he walked he found he had decided to stay just under the ridge trail, on the Upper Valley side.

He limped down the easiest traverse as it presented itself. There were faint trails traversing the slope where animals had chosen, like he had, to make their way without risking a ridge trail encounter, also without descending into the alder thickets filling the valley floor. Up here he could often see over the west ridge of Upper Valley to the distant horizon, a white haze obscuring the ice caps, which were sometimes visible. Many of the hilltops around Upper Valley were white knobs and protuberances, so that the land looked like an immense boneyard. Now it was breathing a little under him, undulating like the back of a living thing. He had to slow down to keep his balance, using Prong more than ever.

He began to feel exhilarated. His afterglow had turned into a benign tingling all through him. It emanated from his stomach and gut. He found he could walk without actually putting his weight down, which caused Crouch to sigh contentedly. Anywhere he looked sprang right to him and resolved as if he were close to it, which was part of what was making him sway as he walked; it was hard to keep his balance when things kept jumping at him. The blue of the sky throbbed with different blues, each more blue than the next. The clouds in the blue were scalloped and articulated like driftwood, and crawled around in themselves like otters at play. He could see everything at once. His spirit kept tugging at the top of his head, lifting him so that he had to concentrate to keep his balance. The problem made him laugh. The world was so great, so beautiful. Something like a lion: it would kill you if it could, but in the meantime it was so very, very beautiful. He would have cried at how beautiful it was, but he was laughing too much, he was too happy at being there walking in it. All right, this was what he had not known: Thorn poisoned himself to get to this feeling. Once you got to it, you saw the puking was worth it, oh yes no doubt about it: well worth it. You would die for this feeling. He reeled a little, trying to turn and take it all in at once, but then Crouch complained, and he went back to traipsing along, as in a slow dance, winding along the narrow ledges that allowed him to walk just a few body lengths below the ridge trail.

Then he heard a noise on the ridge, and he dropped under a fallen log and froze before he had time to think a single thing. Musky smoke smell: the old ones.

Terror ripped through him, and he snuggled farther under the log, trying to shrink to the size of a mushroom cap. They would stick their mammoth spears through him and he would die in a squeal of horrible agony, like a rabbit. His feet went ice cold again at the idea, and the leaf mat under the log disintegrated into whorls of blotchy color, like pebbles seen at the bottom of a swift stream, everything breaking up and bouncing in his eyes.

The sounds above him moved downridge, in the direction he had been going. He heard the old ones croaking to each other in their raven voices. Over any distance they whistled to talk. These two were moving down the ridge trail pretty quickly. If he tracked them he would know where they were, and then when night came he could move away from where they were. As long as there weren’t any others, he would then be safe. It seemed like a good plan.