Kim Robinson - Shaman

After that it was drinking, drumming, and dancing. Loon wandered over to a bonfire circled by dancers. Because of Badleg, as he had started naming it during the trek north, he first sat with the drummers and put his little wood and hide drum between his knees and drummed. The farther people traveled to get to the eight eight, the smaller the drums they brought. These little drums took the fastest parts, and Loon quickly got into the groove of the fives, and then switched between the fives, fours, and threes, as the spirit of the piece moved them all around to different emphases. These drum sessions were led by no one and yet could make quite sudden shifts in pace and flow, like flocking birds in the sky. Those moments were really something to be part of, to feel so clearly that there was a group spirit that could seize them all and take them off in a new direction. Time after time it happened. That it could be so easy was astonishing to feel, right there in hands and ear and body. And they drummed this astonishment too! And so it would go, all night long.

Sometime before midnight Loon came out of his drumming trance and could see everything from all the way around. It was like the way owls must see, with the distance to everything much more exact than usual. And so much more than usual was dancing before him: the flames in the fire, the sparks and smoke pouring up, the dancing people dressed like birds. The scene flowed in bumps tied to his pulse, a palpable bump moving one fire-flick moment to the next. Mother Owl was inside him, it seemed, and he watched the dance flicker in a way he had never watched before, not just at this eight eight, but in his whole life.

There were young women dancing, of course, wearing their furs and feathers, their necklaces and bracelets and anklets, all bouncing up and down barefoot in time to the drums, across the flicker of the firelight, snapping hand clacks and weaving circles with each other as they circled the fire. Red and white body paint had been applied to their skin in dots or snakes or weaves, and their birdskin hats or cloaks usually came from the most beautiful parts of birds, such as the heads of mallards or the chests of flickers, many such sewn together so that the cloak or headdress was much bigger than any actual bird’s. There before him spun a cloak of flicker chests, rising over breasts painted white with red nipples. The sight flickered like a flicker. Another dancer wore a cloak of loons’ backs and necks, and that dense superb weave of black and white was so striking and beautiful that Loon could not look elsewhere.

The young woman wearing it was someone he had never seen before. She was tall and heavy-boned; the elg would be her animal, and her dancing was correspondingly slow and simple. Slimmer faster women were dancing circles around her, she was ungainly in that company, and this was precisely what snagged Loon’s eye and quickly became her most beautiful feature, the thing that arrested him and compelled him to watch. She knew what she could do, and did it. She was enjoying the dance. She was big and slow, but had excellent proportions, long legs, strong rump, nice tits, broad shoulders. Hair the color of the flints from the Giants’ Knapsite, gleams of firelight glancing off it. Thick triple-braid of it down her back, tied with a strip of loon neck feathers at the tip: her friends had done well by her hair. She clumped around and slapped at people freely as they passed her. She had a carefree smile, unselfconscious and relaxed. She had no cares at that moment, she was herself and wanted nothing. So it seemed looking at her.

Loon hung his drum on its loop on the back of his coat and stood up. It was time to dance.

He joined in next to her. Even favoring Badleg a little he could dance rings around her, and he did.

—Hi there, he said to her,—my name is Loon, so I like your cloak. Who are you?

—I’m Elga, she said.

—Ah good, he said.—That’s good.

—It is good, she said, drawing herself up with elgish dignity and taking a neat little turn.—And Loon, is Loon good too?

Though no human could really imitate a loon’s arching of its wings to the sun, Loon put his arms out and stretched, stretched, stretched, and Elga laughed to see it. It was actually quite a fun dance style, and fit the firelight’s blink-blink-blink, so Loon kept it up for a while, thinking about how birds courted, the cranes, the doves, yes even the loons, such a display! He relaxed to get it to a more human style as he circled around her. She rotated inside his circles with a dreamy smile, like an elg chewing on a sunny day. She was taller than Loon, and heavier too. Her loon cloak was gorgeous, and yet the body it was draped over, the shoulders, collarbones, breasts, ribs, belly and hips, arms, back, legs, all of them were much more gorgeous even than a loon’s back. With his owl sight he could see that her face was a perfect image of her self, just as it was with all the people in his pack. People’s faces were three-liners of their nature, that was all there was to it; somehow their essential natures got stamped on the front of their heads, as if it was a game Raven played when he put them all in their mothers to be born. Their natures were there for all to see. And now Loon was seeing with owl sight, and here dancing before him was a woman calm, straightforward, maybe a little dreamy and withdrawn, all right there to be seen in her eyes and the set of her mouth, and the whole shape of her face, oval and big-eyed. A little mouth, lips thick and rounded when in repose or suppressing a smile, but now she was smiling, so he only caught glimpses of her mouth at rest, as she thought over a dance move or looked out at the night thinking about something. Her teeth when she smiled were neat and small, more otter than elg, which was nice too. No, she was herself; he loved the way she looked, loved her slow neat dancing inside his circles. And she seemed content to stay there, she danced to face him and circled the fire at a speed that accommodated his looning around.

—Where do you come from? he asked.

—From north of here, she said, and saying this caused a little frown to crease her brow, and he saw better than ever the little flower her lips made when she was thinking.

—North? Loon said.—Are you an ice person?

—No, she said, but looked away as if this weren’t the whole story, and added—Not anymore. My pack winters to the sunrise, but we take our caribou north of here, caribou and saiga. What about you?

—We take our caribou two rivers to sunset, and winter down south of the ice caps.

—What’s your clan?

—Raven, Loon said proudly.—And you?

—Eagle, said Elga, looking pleased; it was best if couples were from different clans. Seeing her expression, Loon danced in and pecked her on the cheek with a kiss.

—Well met, eagle woman, he declared, smiling, and when he saw the pleased look still there in her eyes, he smiled for real, he could feel the difference in his face.

—Let’s dance, she said, as if they weren’t already, and raised her hands over her head and shimmied. She was more graceful than an elg, and her loon cloak bounced and flickered in the firelight, and Loon with his owl vision danced with her with his gaze cast down, watching her legs and hips and hands, keeping his gaze from hers as she kept hers from his, except for a moment now and then, when a move made them laugh or they bumped together hard. Right now they couldn’t look at each other, but once in a while they would both look up and their eyes would meet. Are you here too? their gazes asked, and then answered, Yes, I am here. We are here, together in a bubble of our own, which has all of a sudden popped out of nowhere around us. Isn’t it exciting? Yes it is! And then they would look down and dance, almost as if abashed, or a little shocked, needing a little time to take it in.