Kim Robinson - Shaman

Best stay out of that. So he crossed the Stone Bison and wandered the thick forests on the north-facing slopes on the other side of the Urdecha, looking for hellebore and nightshade and mint and mushrooms and truffles, and finding them under beds of ferns, or around the little springs that gurgled out of the holed cliffs on that broken shady wall of the gorge, often where the cliffs met the forest tilt sloping down to the floor of the gorge. Places that were always in the shade nurtured plants that grew nowhere else. Rocks in permanent shade were covered with mosses and lichens, and footed with ferns and sprawling nets of shrubs. Cool wet green smells were spiced by little flowers, and by the dry scent of thyme wafting in from sunnier air. Robins pecked around on the forest floor near him. They were known to be calm and wise birds, who would hang around people who didn’t bother them. Loon felt blessed by their presence. Out across the gorge, pine needles on the sunny side were flashing in the wind.

Loon walked painlessly, always testing the miracle, finding it again sound, then plopping onto his knees at a likely bed of ferns, and knocking around under it hunting for nightshade. From time to time he stood and looked down at the river sliding through its little gorge, and their camp across the river. It was nice how most of the best overhangs in this gorge were under walls on the north side, thus facing southward to the sun. The river had wanted people to be comfortable in its bed, and had arranged things accordingly. Over here on the shady side an overhang would be wasted, and a few were, being the wettest places of all. But they were good for certain shady plants.

He stood up, crushed the leaves and new buds of blossoms of mint under his nose, felt the scent cut into his head. Down there in camp, he could see Elga and Lucky sitting by the fire, Elga punching leather with a bone awl, Lucky playing with what looked like the little wooden owls Loon had carved for him.

It was hard to believe he wasn’t dreaming. But here he stood, upright and pain-free, in the cool of an ordinary morning. Really it was the things that had happened during his time away that were now dreams, even though they still seemed to threaten him. Real in their time, terrifying and hopeless in their time, they were now gone. They could not happen other than they had, they could not hurt him any more than they had. He did not have to fear them anymore. He had woken up from them, to this dream that was not a dream. Again he had stepped into the next world over from the one he had been in. All the worlds meet. Time to feel that and be happy.

Thorn, however, was not happy. Loon was at first surprised at this. But then he began to understand: Thorn would never be happy. It wasn’t his way. Maybe all old people were like that. But no, Windy had been as happy as anyone, till right near her end. It was just Thorn. Had he always been that way? Loon couldn’t remember.

One night they were sitting around the fire, eating salmon steaks and a seed mash Thunder had cooked on a hot rock. Thorn was standing, drinking from a ladle, and Loon was sitting by the fire, massaging his left foot and feeling the new hard little lumps in there, so solid and painless. He looked up because Thorn had started, and saw that Thorn was staring over Loon’s head, across the fire at something, his face a wooden mask of itself, flickering in the light. No one else was acting any differently, they chattered to each other about this or that: only Thorn had frozen. Suddenly Loon realized that Thorn was staring at Click’s ghost. That was what his mask of a face said.

Loon felt his stomach shrink and the hair on his forearms rise. He did not dare turn around and see the ghost himself, he was much too scared for that; Click could be there half-eaten, bleeding, red eyes ravenous for revenge, teeth all fangs. Not for anything could he turn and look.

Thorn remained transfixed. The moment hung suspended: people talked in the orange flicker. Loon became curious despite himself. He wanted to see without looking, know without seeing. Holding his breath, asshole painfully tight, he turned his head and looked down at the fire; then, eyes straining far to the right in their sockets, he glanced over the flames in the direction Thorn was staring.

It was Click all right. He was standing at the edge of the firelight, in the dark between two trees, so that the firelight flickered him in and out of existence. But most certainly it was Click. His pale face appeared frozen, his hair and beard and brows frosted, but his eyes were alive, and they were fixed on Thorn. His expression was reproachful. All the parts of him they had eaten appeared to still be there under his bearskin cloak.

Then his frozen gaze shifted from Thorn to Loon, and Loon quickly whipped his head back around, completely unnerved. His face was tingling. Thorn glanced down at Loon, then back at Click. It was clear from his expression that he was still seeing him. Loon hunched over, head down, helpless to do anything but peer fearfully up at Thorn.

Thorn took his flute from his belt, very slowly, and played a tune that reminded Loon of the one called Fools the Wolves. Then it took a turn, and he recognized it as a version of Click’s triple walking whistle, turned somehow into a lament. One two three, one two three. All the time he played this, Thorn stared across the fire at Click. Finally he finished, nodded, kissed the flute, put it away. Then he turned and walked off toward his bed.

After that, Click’s ghost starting hanging around camp. At night by the fire Loon often realized that Thorn was seeing Click there at the back of the firelight, like a hyena at the edge of a kill site. Thorn played his flute when it happened, but to Loon it didn’t look like that was enough. Maybe when they gave Click’s bones a proper burial, his spirit would be satisfied and go away. Loon put his hopes in that.

Thorn passed the days wearing a little scowl of endurance. More than ever he looked like a black snake. Sometimes Loon could distract him with a carved knot or antler, or an etching on a slate, or an animal painted on a slab of wood. Loon also told many of Thorn’s favorite stories, including the one about the man who married a swan woman and ruined his life, ending up a seagull. That one caused Thorn to smile a gloomy little smile when Loon finished.

—Well said, youth. That’s your story all right. And you’re getting better at telling it too. Much better than that time at the corroboree. There’s some real heart in your ending now. You know how it feels, eh? But don’t forget the part about the old man who helps him.

The summer month was nearing full moon. At some point it had been established that they were decided not to go to the eight eight this year. Lots of reasons were given all around, but the main one seemed to be Schist’s desire to avoid an immediate confrontation with the northers. He suggested they go as far as Cedar Salmon River, fish the salmon run, and spend the following fortnight hunting in the canyons west of the ice caps, forgoing the caribou steppe to go after horses and musk oxen and sheep and bears, and all the other creatures of the west. It had been such a stormy spring and summer, possibly the caribou wouldn’t be coming anyway. Storm years had been known to do that before.

Of course some of them thought this change was a mistake, and no one liked missing the eight eight, except perhaps for Loon. So it was another thing not going well for Schist. He was losing the ability to make the pack feel whole. Ibex was always berating Hawk and Moss for one thing or other, and Hawk did not hesitate to mouth back at Ibex, always eyeing Schist as he did so. Youth will have its way. Thorn, the oldest of them all, except for Heather, was supposed to be the one who could reconcile all disputes, being their shaman. But he remained distracted, and offered no opinion about the pack’s summer, but only played his flute for longer and longer parts of the day.