Kim Robinson - Shaman

He sat there in the snow, gasping for breath, burning with scrapes and cold, sweat pouring down his face. Above him on the slope he could see the mark of his slide, a sloppy trough running straight down to him. Cold and hot, sweaty and trembling, he pushed himself to his feet, using Thirdleg as a support. When he was standing he could see that a gentle traverse would lead him above the boulders to where he could meet up with Thorn and Click and Elga. Elga was calling his name; it came to him that she had been calling him for some time. He waved Thirdleg at them briefly, slowly stomped his way over to them. It was easier than traversing down the slope had been, but Badleg hurt almost too much for him to step on it at all.

When he met them, at the bottom of the slope among the trees at the top of the canyon floor, he collapsed and could not immediately go on.

Thorn stared at Loon as he helped get his snowshoes off his feet. When they had done that he said,—Rest it for a while, but then we have to go.

While Loon rested, Thorn wandered around in the grove filling the head of the canyon, looking among the humps of snow for a spring. As in a lot of kolby canyons, there was indeed a spring near the headwall, although at this time of year the black crease of open water lay at the bottom of a hole in the snow. Thorn had to use all their walking poles to support himself as he knelt, then sprawled, then reached down with his dovekie bag to scoop up some water. When he had a full bag he heaved himself up with a little prayer, uttered like a curse:—Let me up Mother Earth!

He shared the water with Loon and the others. Elga sat on her fur patch, which she had draped over a fallen log. She drank as deeply as Loon did. He was glad to see that she looked much the same as she had in the northern camp, except her eyes were more bloodshot. Now she had her sack on the front of her snowshoes and was rooting through it for a few small handfuls of nuts. She offered some to Loon, but he had to shake his head; he felt sick to his stomach, and could not have forced anything down.—Later, he promised.

Click was sitting on a snowy log and chomping steadily at a length of dried meat, taking it in chunk by chunk until all of it was gone. He drank a few swallows from Thorn’s bag and gave it back.—Tank oo, he said absently, the way Heather would have. He did not appear to be entirely there with them.

Thorn was completely there, his sunburned red eyes fixed on Loon.—Are you ready? Can you go?

—Let’s see, Loon said, and surged to his feet. He swayed and caught himself on Thirdleg.

—You need two good poles, Thorn said.—Wait there. He took another tour of the copse of trees, returned with a stout branch well over waist high, with a bend at the top end that could be clasped in the hand.—A good walking stick. Put both points down for your left foot, and push up over it. I had to hike for a week with a broken leg, once when I was your age, and after I got used to pushing down on the sticks, it went pretty well.

Loon tried it.—All right, he said. He waited until the others had started, and then followed Elga close.

But it wasn’t all right. With the poles he could take a lot of pressure off his left leg, it was true. But they were moving down this new canyon, and there was a lot of back-and-forthing to be done to get between knots of trees, where sometimes they had to slide down little drops in the snow. The other three glissaded down these, and Loon tried to follow them with one-footed glissades, and succeeded sometimes, but more often fell. And getting back on his feet hurt Badleg no matter what he did. He was panting and sweating with the pain of it.

Elga waited for him, and they fell behind the other two. Sun slanted through the pines and birches into their faces; it was a real relief whenever they were in their shade. The smells of the trees cut into Loon’s head, so familiar they almost made him cry. The old snow under the trees was mottled with pine needles and tree dust, and in the shadows it was icing up again. It seemed unfair of the snow to go from too soft to too hard with no good time in between. In some canyons like this, or in this one in another season, the walking would have been straightforward, but on this afternoon the canyon floor was becoming a matter of little ice slides dropping between trees. Loon began to sit on his bottom and slide down the steep sections, getting himself wet and cold in the process. If only the canyon had been flat, if only it had been free of icy snow… But really there was no kind of terrain that would have been easy for him on that day.

So he struggled on as the sunlight slanted through the trees. The others stopped and waited for him in whatever lanes of sunlight they could find, stomping their snowshoes to warm themselves. Of course in the snow they were still leaving tracks, slight though they might be. Presumably when this canyon dropped into the valley running south, Thorn would have them run for a while, then look for a snow-free slope they could climb over into another valley. Loon welcomed the idea of climbing again, as a way to keep Badleg from any more downward shocks. Although every up leads to a down. And it would be more work to go uphill, and he wasn’t sure he had that in him. It would take the coming of his third wind, that was certain.

Go and rest, go and rest. In the forest dusk the others waited for him, chilling in shadows. When he reached them he stood leaning his chest and elbows over his poles. He huffed and puffed as they rested and talked it over.

—We’ve got to keep going, Thorn said. His voice had the flinty sound it took on whenever he was thirsty, or angry, or making a shaman’s command.—We’re passing snow-free routes up to the ridges, so if they come down here at all, they won’t know whether we’ve stayed in this canyon or not. If we use tonight to get over into another canyon, we’ll lose them.

A wind gusted through the trees around them, and Thorn looked up. The tallest pines were swaying. All their tops pointed permanently east, and indeed this was another west wind, pushing at them yet again.

—Could be a storm, Thorn said, sounding surprised.—That would be good. We could use something good right now. And he tilted back his head and barked a muffled little fox bark.

They hiked on as the light leaked out of the land. They made Loon go first, so he could set the pace and they wouldn’t lose him.

He put his mind to seeing the best way downcanyon. He could do this as well as any of them. In all canyons there was a ramp of easiest travel, inlaid into the jumble of rocks and trees in ways that could be hard to find. The best way might zigzag from sidewall to sidewall, or run as straight as a crack. Sometimes it was overgrown by trees or brush, especially if it was an alder canyon; still it would reveal itself to the eye if one took the trouble to look for it. So Loon took the trouble, and the way came clear. He stumped along, his weight on his sticks as much as possible.

Finally the day’s light was gone. It was dark in the shadows of the trees. The lopsided moon was gazing down, however, so as Loon’s eyes adjusted to its light, he was able to proceed almost as before. Peering down; shuffling over bushes emerging from melting snow; getting to another turn; finding the ramp of fewest drops; feeling, under the pain Badleg was throwing up with every step, the pleasure of finding the right way.

But then the snow under his left snowshoe gave under him, a bad step-through that jarred him when he bottomed on a rock, and he cried out at the pain of it. The others rushed forward and helped him out of the hole, Elga reaching down and flexing his snowshoe sideways to get it up through the snowshoe-shaped gap in the surface crust. As it came through this hole, Badleg twisted in a way that sent a jolt of hot agony up through Loon’s nuts and asshole and guts. He cried out before he knew he was going to, then thrust his face into a snowbank and groaned again.