Kim Robinson - Shaman

—Really? Loon and Elga said together. They looked at each other, sharing their surprise.

—Tomorrow or the day after, if we’re slow tomorrow. But it doesn’t matter. We’re going to make it. Thank you Click, thank you Click, thank you thank you thank you.

The next day they woke and drank water, sat by the fire warming up, went out to perform their ablutions. Stood stiffly and shuffled off again. As that day wore on, and they came to what Thorn said was a tributary of West of Northerly Creek, Elga tied her snowshoes on and led the way down a valley of softening suncups, stomping down a path for Loon to follow; and Thorn too followed. Now, at the very end, Thorn was finally slowing down, taking each step as if it were a complete effort, as if he were utterly tapped out, with no second wind or third wind, or any wind at all; just one step at a time, each a full effort. So he was like Loon in that regard, and Loon wondered if Thorn had hurt himself, or had just run out of wind. He only shook his head when Loon asked about it, and stepped on in the same gait.

—Remember! Loon said, mimicking Thorn’s teaching voice,—in a journey of twentytwenty days you can still trip on the last step!

Thorn just shook his head. He was too tired to object. But he had always said that a little irritation could jolt one’s spirit in a good way. So Loon kept it up. How often he had heard this one.—Oh, yes, he repeated in Thorn’s tones,—in a journey of twentytwenty years, you can still fuck up on the very last step! So don’t! He almost laughed, he had heard this one so often.

The first feature of the landscape that Loon recognized on his own was the giant boulder that lay in the middle of West of Northerly Creek, straddling most of the streambed. He stared at it, feeling stunned. A little seed of relief was sprouting in him, right behind his belly button. He had often visited this boulder with Hawk and Moss, when wandering up this canyon; the charcoal drawing he had made of a cave bear was still there, on the big white side of the rock that fell straight into the water. He had had to climb the boulder from the other side, then hang down from its top and draw while hanging upside down. Hawk and Moss had laughed themselves silly. But there the bear shambled with its sloping forehead, eyeing any viewers on the bank as if considering whether to attack them. Excellent work for someone hanging upside down, and Loon found he was weeping to see it, not for the drawing, or even for home, but just at the idea that he could soon stop walking on Badleg. Only a certain finite number of steps now. They were less than a half day from home.

Although it took them longer than that. Still, in the last good light, late that afternoon, when everything was lit yellow from the side, the sky overhead darkening, the world big with the approach of night, they stumbled up after their long shadows to West Pass and looked down on the headwall meadow. It was empty. But then around a tree strolled Heather.

She stopped short as she saw them. For a moment she was frozen with surprise. Then she turned her head over her shoulder, and said,—Child, your parents are here. Even the unspeakable one is here.

Then she sat down abruptly on a log and stared at them as they approached.—I thought you were gone, she exclaimed, and put her face in her hands.

Their child stared curiously at Elga, who dropped her poles and caught him up, then lifted him into the air. He stared down at her, suspended between fright and some huge surprise. Loon joined them, and the two of them held the child between them as he began to sob and struggle to get away.

Heather wiped her face and watched this from her log.—You are one lucky boy, she said to the child.

She stood up and hugged Elga and then Loon, and then even Thorn.

—What about Click? she asked.

Thorn shook his head.—He died. I’ll tell you about it later.

Heather regarded him. Finally she said,—You’re uglier than ever, I see.

—You stole my beauty long ago, Thorn replied, turning away from her.—Here, take our sacks. Take Loon’s sack. His leg is bad again.

—He can thank his shaman’s wander for that.

—Woman! Thorn said.—Shut up. Please. Shut up now, and help us get down to camp. We’re tired.

The Wolves’ camp under its little abri, overlooking Loop Meadow, Loop Hill, the Stone Bison, the river in its gorge. Midsummer sunset slanting in from the gorge to the west, cutting through the smoke from their fire. Home home home home home.

Heather walked them in, carrying all their things, and by the time they limped down the last part of the river path into camp it was after sunset, early dusk, and the firelight caught every face, they were all masks of themselves, expressing joy at the travelers’ unexpected return: Hawk and Moss shouting in his face, seizing him up in fierce hugs, everyone reaching in to touch them all, to be sure they were real, it was such a surprise. Even Sage gave him a kiss. It reminded Loon of the night he had come in from his wander, but this time launched above the sky, to a dream place more real than real. Or else this time it was the real real, as undeniable as pain, flush in his face.

They stayed up for a time talking and sipping duck soup, until exhaustion felled the travelers and they were carried to bed. All night in his dream, all Loon saw was the firelit faces, laughing, masklike. His pack.

Next morning he woke late and staggered like a wooden man to the east end of camp. The Stone Bison still arched over the river, morning light filled the gorge, the camp basked in the sun, the air was full of summer smells and the cluck of the river, the twitter of the birds. Every tree was a beehive. The sky was blue, and it seemed impossible they had been freezing in the wind and snow just a few days before. The sixth month could be like that. And home stayed home whether you were there or not. Loon kept looking around, he sat down and touched the ground, tasted some dust. It was hard to believe. The feeling in him was like some spring bud that he could look at and know it would grow into something big.

Folded back into the life of their pack, Loon and Elga and Thorn rested and ate, then rested some more. Their child clung to Elga, and would not let her out of his sight. In the evenings he sat between Elga and Loon, or on one of their laps, a little fist clutching each of them by their clothing. Seeing it Heather would shake her head and say,—You are a lucky boy. I thought you were an orphan.

Everyone wanted to hear Thorn tell stories around the fire again, and he did, croaking away as he stared into the fire, or up at the stars. Sometimes after he told one, someone would ask for the story of his rescue of Loon and Elga. But Thorn would shake his head.

—I can’t tell it yet. It’s not ready to tell.

People knew that the old one had died during the rescue, of course, and so they left Thorn alone, to tell it in his own time. Aside from that, he seemed willing to tell any of the old stories, starting with how wolverine pulled summer out of winter, which now as he told it seemed to resemble what he had just accomplished, in pulling Loon and Elga out of the icy north and bringing them back to their sunny abri, so that he told it with palpable satisfaction.

Indeed every story he told he seemed to be enjoying more than before. Then in the mornings he would sit by Loon and require Loon to tell the stories on his own, nodding and teaching him hooks to remember it. These lessons were not like they had been before, when Thorn’s words had gone in one flicked ear and out the other. Now Loon watched Thorn’s face as the old shaman talked, and found he could hold more in mind afterward, and repeat the story in much the same way, sometimes by seeing a memory of Thorn saying it, with all his little squints and scowls and crooked little smiles, and most of all, tones of voice. They had to be remembered as songs with tunes, that was the trick. And Loon carved some sticks with sequences of Thorn’s tells too, to help him later.