Kim Robinson: Shaman

He sloshed upstream to give a quick look to his camp. His fire was still burning well. He got out of the creek and walked downstream and stepped into his fish pen. He stalked one fish, he thought the one that had rushed him, moving into a position where he could reach down with both hands, very slowly, until they were next to the fish, which was trying to hide by staying still. With a single scoop outward he splashed water and fish together up onto the bank, where the fish flopped till it died. He stifled his shout, to keep from scaring the other fish, and moved slowly to the next one, tucked under the bank. He stuck his hands down very slowly, scooped again, and the second fish flew up in its mass of water and thrashed out its life.

The last one darted about and evaded several of his scoops, but then he caught it, and it too died on the bank flopping this way and that. After that he had three nice trout, each well over a hand long. He sang the fisherman’s thanks, got out of the creek and put his clothes back on, then carried the fish to the fire.

Old alder sticks broken with a twist eventually yielded an edged point sufficient to cut the fish and gut them. Then he stuck them on longer pine branches and held them over the fire until they were cooked and sizzling at their edges. They tasted great, unseasoned but trouty. He would pluck sprigs of rosemary and mint to add to later meals. As he ate, it occurred to him that he should have opened the upper dam of his fish pen before leaving it.

But that would be something for tomorrow. With his stomach full and his body dressed, sitting there by the warm fire, he was suddenly sleepy.

In another short tour of his grove he gathered more spruce branches for bedding and blanket. He made the bed right next to the fire, and when the softly needled branches were piled to his satisfaction, he went to the creek’s bank and gathered wads of moss and took them back to dry them by the fire. While they dried he gathered more firewood for the night, then laid the dried mosses on the branches of his bed. He lay down on the padded bed and pulled spruce branches thick with needles over him, still wearing his bark clothing. He would keep the fire high. It would be a very comfortable night. It was still twilight, but he lay there anyway next to his pile of firewood and watched the flames, feeling happy. Only his second night, and he was fed and clothed, and in a bed by a fire! Now that would be a story to tell.

He lay there, comfortable and warm. The moon was on its second night, nicely thicker than the curved line of a first night. A fortnight goes fast, as they said. Soon the crescent set, and the night went full dark, stars pricking the black above a few remaining clouds. The undersides of the trees above him flickered together in their firelight dance. Second day of the fourth month, a wet chill in the air outside the bubble of fire warmth. Sleep took him away.

Around midnight wolf cries from a distant ridge woke him, and he threw a few branches on the bed of embers, pulsing redly under fluttering white ash. Splash of sparks; watch a branch blacken, watch it catch fire, that sudden yellow pop into the world, that hypnotic transparent dance, and he was out again.

Later he dreamed of running up a crease under a ridge to catch a glimpse of three ibex, seen as they were topping the rise. He came on the animals right there before him, all three facing him foursquare and at ease, their neat curved horns poking the sky. Rockdancers; his mother’s favorite animal; and suddenly she was there beside him, and his father too. They were looking at the rockdancers in the time of the caribou on the steppe, when the low rumble of caribou hooves sounded like distant thunder. His mother was raven clan and his father eagle, but they both clearly loved the ibex; this was what Loon remembered from that moment. He knew that being with his parents was unusual, and this knowledge woke him.

The stars had circled, it wasn’t far from dawn. He tried to dive back into the dream, failed; tried then to grasp what memory of it he could, before he was exiled from it for good. All of it stood before him at once; then he tracked it from faintest moment to boldest moment; then from beginning to end. Some dreams want to be remembered, but others don’t and have to be chased down. This was one of those.

So, his mother and father had visited. That had not happened for a while. He tried to see in his eye what they looked like, or understand how in the dream he knew so well who they were, even though they were just standing there beside him, not saying anything he could precisely recall. Sometimes he recalled dream conversations, other times not. This time he had known their feelings without them having to talk. They had been filled with benevolence and concern for him, and with love for the rockdancers. Loon whimpered at their absence from the living. What was it like to be in the spirit world only, how did they live there, why couldn’t they cross back? Why had they died, why did things die? The mystery of it all swept through him, and he felt tiny, pierced by a vastness. If it weren’t for the fire his desolation would have been complete. With the fire there beside him he could look at these matters, allow himself to feel the hurt in them, the vastness.

Right after dawn it clouded up again, but the cloud layer was thin and had no rain in it. The wind blew in fitful gusts, tearing away flakes of ash from his bed of embers. His tuck was mostly protected still, and although the side of him away from the fire was chilly, it was easy to turn and feel the radiance singe his cold skin. This was the second day of his wander; but now, despite his comfort, he felt sad and alone. He sighed. This was his initiation as a shaman, after all. He was walking into a new world, a new kind of existence; it was not meant to be merely time spent alone. This was what his parents had come to tell him: he had to face something, learn something, accomplish something. Change into something else: a sorcerer, a man in the world. Of course his parents were dead.

He went down and drank from the creek, foraged for more firewood, hefted and carried back a big chunk of old log that would help keep the fire going, becoming first its roof and then part of the ember bed.

Then it was time to find more food. He walked over to the meadow, looking for prints or scat or other sign, maybe a place for a snare. Snares were best when made of hide thongs. Bark ropes were not often strong enough. On the way past the meadow outlet, he removed the upper dam on the creek, checked and saw there were no fish in last meander to scare, so he continued across the meadow, avoiding the old snow. There were watering spots on the banksides there, with many animals’ prints, but they tended to be open places, and a snare would be hard to hide. He needed a tight passage between bushes, so that an animal scared away from water would perhaps rush through the passage without looking. Eventually he found such a place. The material of the snare itself remained a problem. He went to an alder with his choprock and cut a number of switches, flexible and strong and long, and split their ends and braided them together in a triple weave. These tied low above the ground could serve as a snag that might trip a young deer or goat. It was the best he could do that morning, so he laboriously set up the snare between the two bushes. If it even tripped a small beast while he was watching, that would give him time to leap on it. He would have to lie in wait and be there when it happened, or whoever got caught in it would thrash its way free. He would return at sundown, then, and hope to scare a drinking deer into a dash.

When the snare was as good as he could make it, he walked back toward the fire looking for good throwing rocks. Even a snow hare or a grouse would be very welcome. When he had two good rocks, he foraged up the sunrise slope of the valley, looking for more of the previous year’s berries on the ground. He saw some mistletoe up in a bare-branched tree and considered climbing to it and chewing its white berries; this would make a sticky stuff that could be stranded between branches to catch small birds sticking to it. But there were no small birds yet. He came on a blackberry bramble, and while eating some old dead berries also swallowed some little white mushrooms he knew to be safe. Then he hurried back to see how the fire was going.