Kim Robinson - Shaman

Some of them stayed in camp to finish setting up and to keep an eye on things. Everyone else went out to look around. Some went to the music circles, or visited clan fellows they always sought out. Some joined little maker’s circles, where they shared new tricks and told about their winters. The shamans got together to do their yearstick corroborations, sing songs, and tell stories. The eight eight was not a shaman thing, and the shamans obviously enjoyed that, and took the opportunity to get drunk and make fools of themselves. Traders went to a barter circle to offer things for trade and to look for things they might want, under one of the biggest upside-down tree trunks. Away from this barter tree people mostly gave each other things, or made regular annual exchanges of this for that. People from the Flint pack from the basin in the ice cap highlands called the Giants’ Knapsite simply gave away dressed blocks of clean hard flint, the brown gleam of these near-cubes flush with a very handsome dark red. In return the Flints would take whatever people gave them, nodding and smiling to indicate that these return gifts were not necessary but were appreciated, scoops of mash most of all. Good fellowship all around, love all around, human cleverness all around, celebration of their genius compared to the other animals all around; another year passed successfully, the kids mostly fine, no one starving quite. Have another scoop! Eight eight!

Thorn said to Loon,—Come by the corroboree and meet all the shamans as a young shaman. You’ll have to tell a story to them.

Loon shook his head at that.—I’m not ready to tell them a story.

—That’s too bad, you have to do it anyway. You’ve had your wander and it’s time.

—No, Loon said, and walked away as fast as he could. At the eight eight no shaman would want to be embarrassed by having to punish his apprentice, and so he felt like he could get away with it. The eight eight was like that.

Loon wandered from bonfire to bonfire. This was one of his favorite activities of the entire year: wandering at the eight eight. People dressed up, hair braided and top-knotted, faces painted or just red-cheeked with excitement. Just looking was such a feast for the eyes, he reeled as he walked and saw others doing the same, he tried to dance it and halfway succeeded. The young women were showing a lot of skin, and a lot of it was painted red but a lot of it was just bare brown skin, still summer slender but still knocking him back glance by glance.

He came on the area where they held most of the festival games, which was something else he enjoyed watching. Elders from the local packs set up the games for the boys and girls, from the simplest rock-throwing contests to the very popular throwing of javelins through hoops rolling down a slight hill. This last was a frequent camp game of every pack ever, and so now a great number of boys and girls were throwing light javelins through hoops that rolled and bounced down a gentle hill, and the air was loud with their yelling.

Just as popular were the contests in which men threw javelins with spear throwers. This was the basic young hunter’s game, and every boy had thrown twentytwentytwenties of throws to get used to the way a spear thrower lengthened one’s arm. This extra reach made for throws so strong that the javelins visibly bowed and flexed under the pressure of the sling. To see such a quivering flight lance into a distant musk ox hide stuffed with grass was a beautiful thing, and Loon cried out with the rest when throws flashed through the air and struck all the way through the targets, which were traditionally musk oxen, so much smaller than a mammoth, an easier target to sew but a harder one to hit. When one of these was transfixed from as far away as a javelin could be thrown, a roar went up and the thrower reared in a little dance.

Beyond the throwing meadow rose a steep hill used for hill races, a favorite with all the boys and girls who were swift-footed and strong. Every year the elders set the starting place somewhere new, and from there you could take any route you wanted to the top. The hill was riven by intersecting ravines, so a clever route was crucial to winning the race. Loon with his bad leg could not join this race, though as a boy he had enjoyed it and been good at it. Wistfully he turned his back on the hill and took off in the other direction.

Across the meadow, the bird’s eye view makers were shaping their patches of sandy ground to conform to the festival grounds and various areas around it. Loon didn’t know the lands outside their home or region well enough to appreciate these contests, which were usually dominated by travelers and shamans, or elders who had traveled for one reason or another.

On a south-facing sunny bank near the bird’s eyes, the shamans were having their corroboree, waving their yearsticks at each other and arguing loudly, as usual. Anytime you got more than two shamans together it was not going to be a shaman thing, so it quickly became a drunken mess. So here, by tradition, they tried to get the year straight before they got crooked, as people said.

A good number of the shamans at this eight eight were earless old snakeheads like Thorn, thus either apprentices to that same Pika who had taught Thorn, or to other shamans who had used the same memory strengthener. Heart sinking a little, Loon spotted Heather and a number of other women sitting among the old snakeheads; some of these women were shamans to their packs, others were herb women with an interest in the corroboration, or friends with the shaman women.

—Anyone can end up being a shaman! Thorn had once explained to Loon.—It comes on you and you have no choice! The question is, who can escape it? And the answer is, no one! Nor man nor woman, elder or child, human or animal. Becoming a shaman is a fate that can strike anyone. Even you.

Remembering that remark and Thorn’s scowl, regarding all the earless old crazies laughing and hitting at each other with their yearsticks, Loon turned and walked away. Such a bunch of rasty old men, he couldn’t stand it. Because of his wander, at some point during this festival he was supposed to join the shamans and receive their congratulations at having become an apprentice to Thorn, and he was then also supposed to recite one of the old stories, as Thorn had demanded. Maybe the swan wife, but he didn’t have a line of it in his head. Best to walk away before Thorn saw him.

So, he couldn’t run the hill race, couldn’t make a bird’s eye view, couldn’t talk numbers of moons per year, or recite a story. Best to go back to the throwing range and try a few throws with his new spear thrower. This one he had carved in the shape of a ibex’s head, and it had a great cast; he felt like he might be able to enter the throw at the longest distance and have a good chance of hitting the musk ox.

Or better yet, he could sit down with the drummers and drink some mash and beat on his drum with the others. That he could always do, it was thoughtless fun, and one of the best parts of the festival. Drink, smoke, drum, laugh right through a beautiful smoky sunset; then, when night fell, go to the bonfires and dance.

At the bonfires in the first dark, some men and women held a contest to see who could make the prettiest fire spectacle. Many circled around to see these players take up very long travois poles and tie little sachets of cloth or leather to the thin end of the pole, then hold their sachets out away from them, into the highest flames of a bonfire, at which point many of them turned their heads away; and all watching would wait, until the sachet caught fire and flared green or blue or purple, sometimes with a quick splash of fire, or a crack like a little touch of thunder. Since everyone spent every night looking into fires, the sight of something new and unexpected flashing out of a blaze was enough to make them laugh with surprise and delight, and when the whole crowd did that together and as one, it was exhilarating. All the firebangers saved their biggest ones for last and poled them into the fire together, and the quick sequence of bright loud colorful cracks was enough to hurt the ears and provoke a huge cheer.