Kim Robinson - Shaman

—I’ll remember, Thorn said, putting the bag in an inner pocket of his coat.

Together they headed out of camp upstream, toward Quick Pass and Hill In the Middle. Heather led the way at speed. Where Lower’s Upper widened and its creek split to go both ways around Hill In the Middle, she stopped at a little cedar grove and whistled a rising note that ended with a triple peep-peep-peep, like a little bird.

After a time a similar whistle floated down on them from the hill. Out of the forest stepped the old one that Heather and Loon had helped when he was hurt. Thorn had visited briefly during the old one’s recuperation in Heather’s care; he had played a little exorcism tune, while pulling from the old one’s throat a mass of spit the size of a toad. So now the old one recognized him, and though it was clear he was surprised, he did not look particularly alarmed. Thorn bobbed his head in the way the old ones had, and made the little roop roop sound that the old ones used when they were trying to locate each other in the forest, sounding just like loons locating their companions when they came up from an underwater swim.

Click repeated the sound.

—A loon to find a loon, Thorn said to Heather, who ignored him and spoke in a slow voice to Click. Click cocked his head to the side and seemed to understand her, though for the most part she used the pack’s ordinary words for things.

The old one’s face was hairy. His beard, hair, and thick eyebrows all tangled together to a mat like the winter shag of a bear. The skin of his cheeks and forehead and nose was as pale as a mushroom; his nose was big and beaky. His irises were dark brown, the whites of his eyes bloodshot. He stared with a fixity that reminded Thorn of old Pika. Around his neck hung a leather thong with three lion fangs tied to it. He was not quite as tall as Thorn; burly in the chest, short-legged, with a slight limp. His head was long, front to back; it was to a person’s head as a cave bear’s was to a forest bear’s. Under his smoky smell there was a musk like a muskrat’s. He carried a spear, and had a big hide bundle slung over his left shoulder. He wore marten and fox furs, and bearhide boots, and looked thoroughly capable, indeed almost like any other woodsman. And there were woodsmen out there who had forgotten how to talk. Still, this one was stranger than a woodsman. The old ones were old.

Now to Heather he made a little honk of assent, onk, onk, clearly a kind of yes, with a fixed look on his face that suggested he was not really sure what he was assenting to, but would find out in good time. Good-natured, perhaps; and yet one didn’t want to run into more than one of them when out alone. Somewhat like bears in that respect too. Bears were said to have been people in the old time, before Raven stuck their coats to them by mistake. Maybe the old ones were bears that hadn’t gotten the coats.

Heather spoke a mix of old one and human.—Thorn good, oop oop, go look for Loon. Then a series of clicks.

Click nodded.—Onk, he began, and then clicked away for a while.

Heather replied with more clicking sounds.

She turned to Thorn.—He’ll go with you and help. He knows you’re going north to the ice, to save Loon and the girl.

She clicked at Click, who smiled fearfully, Thorn felt, and then nodded once more.—Tank oo, he said, something he had learned when they healed him.

—No, thank you, Thorn said, and then, to Heather:—How do I say go?

—Hoosh, she said, with an outward flick of the hand.

Thorn nodded and tried it. He looked Click in the eye.—Hoosh, he said, and waved to the north, over the Hill In the Middle. Then the pack’s word for it: skai. Possibly in this way he could teach the old one some more of the pack’s tongue.—Skai, hoosh, skai.

—Onk, Click said again. Then:—Food. With a wave up Hill In the Middle.

Thorn nodded.—Good idea. Go get food.

Click looked for reassurance at Heather, who clicked to him. He slipped away into the trees.

Thorn and Heather stood there waiting for his return.

Finally Click reappeared through the trees, the bundle over his shoulder bigger than before.

Suddenly Heather clutched Thorn’s arm.—You’d better come back. We need you.

—I know. I’ll come back.

—As soon as you can.

—It’ll be two months or not at all.

They shared a glance, and Heather let go of his arm.

—Hoosh, she said to Click.—Skai. Go with Thorn, do what he says.

The two men traveled fast. It was the fourth month, and the days were now longer than the nights, and getting longer fast. Suncups dimpled the snow on south-facing slopes. In the mornings the snow was so hard that they could almost run on it, and on the north-facing slopes they could slide down on their boot bottoms.

Around the black leads of open water in the river surfaces, it was obvious that many creatures had passed by. Every track on the snow had melted out to three times its original size, so that it looked like they passed through a country of giant animals.

The first part of their trip simply repeated their caribou trek, so Thorn walked and slid as hard as he could all day long, and on the nights around the full moon, continued on till midnight. The snow-blanketed hills glowed in the moonlight such that one could see almost as if by day, though moonlight drained the colors away. But one did not need color to walk. Several times during their night hikes they saw big cats, and when they were trailed one night by a big cat with tufted ears, Thorn shouted at it once to let it know it was being watched. The old one’s presence seemed to keep the cat and indeed all animals at a greater distance than they would have kept from Thorn by himself. It might just have been that there were two of them.

Thorn watched Click when he took the lead, watched the way he hiked and how he looked around. Click crossed ground fast, and yet did not appear to be pushing himself very hard. His feet never stumbled, and his boots looked as good as anyone’s, their sinew stitching covered with some kind of gum. He hummed a little to himself as he walked, and made little clicking noises, so that he sounded somewhat like a cicada or grasshopper.

When Thorn made a little fire after they stopped, at the coldest part of the night, Click sat close by it, arms out to gather in its warmth, and always mewing and clucking. He had things to say to himself. Thorn sat looking at the flames, listening. From time to time the old one would make a quick double click to get Thorn’s attention, then point to things and make the same sound. Thorn would say the name of the thing, and Click would open his mouth and twist his lips, tilt his head, as if on the edge of repeating the word; and yet in the end would not.—Roop, he would say instead. It was almost precisely the loon’s little hello on surfacing in a bay, alerting companions. Thorn could only shake his head in reply, and either repeat the word requested, or say roop himself, or remain silently watching the fire. Thorn spoke, the old one spoke, but they did not share a language. One night Thorn played his flute, and the old one whistled the tunes after him, and then continued as Thorn began again, but offset, and so making a round. That was the best conversation they had.

Click always fell asleep while their fire was still burning, so Thorn would dry anything of his own that might have gotten wet during the day’s walk, then look into the fire until gray films fluttered over the orange glow of remaining embers, and then lie back in his furs and watch the stars wheel the rest of the way to morning. When he got sleepy he would play a little night song on his flute, and when this roused Click, Thorn would mime keeping an eye out, and Click would click twice, and Thorn would fall asleep almost between the first click and the second, and wake only when the sun cracked the eastern horizon.