Kim Robinson - Shaman

—I know, Loon said, and was about to explain yet again how much flex there was in ash wood, and how the foot bars were to be seated in mammoth tusk sockets, when he saw that Thorn was staring white-eyed across the fire again. The hair on Loon’s arms prickled, and Badleg started humming inside his ankle. Slowly Thorn pulled his flute from his belt, and again breathed through it the low tune of his apology. He had recently begun adding to it some birdlike notes that sounded like Click’s roop roop. As he played this song he continued to look across the fire, eyes still round, pleading with Click’s ghost to understand, to forgive.

During this particular visitation Heather was sitting by the fire, using its light to see dried branches of various herbs, plucking off their leaves and seeds and making careful piles on little patches of qiviut cloth, made from the underfur of the musk ox. She continued to do this without indicating in any way that she saw what was happening to Thorn.

It was only when she and Loon were alone the next morning, by the purling and chuckling ford of Upper Creek, that she said to Loon,

—Is it Click that Thorn thinks he’s seeing?

Loon didn’t want to talk about it, but he could not help but nod, almost in the same way Click would have.

She stared at him as he looked at the ground.—What happened to Click? How did he die?

Again Loon didn’t want to speak, but the words came out of his mouth anyway, like rocks he was spitting.—We woke up one morning and he was dead.

He told Heather about how they then took his frozen body along to use as a sled, a sled that they ate as they went, because without it they would have died. He told her how Badleg had forced him first to ride on Click’s back for a day, then to sit on Click’s frozen body and be pulled by Elga, while Thorn found the way. How Click’s ghost might have moved into Badleg during that time, because Click’s legs were among the first parts of him they had eaten.

Heather listened in silence, only nodding occasionally to show Loon that she heard him and understood. She sniffed from time to time.

When he was done she heaved a sigh.

—You need to collect Click’s bones and give him a proper burial. The ravens have cleaned them by now.

—We know. But until then…

She shrugged.—It’s going to be a long winter. It may be he will never leave this, no matter how long he lives. You never know how he’ll respond to things. He’s a hard man to guess.

—That’s true, Loon said.

Come second month of winter, he had the best pair of snowshoes he could make. When he was satisfied with them, or had defeated his dissatisfactions as much as he was able, he made another pair just like it. He invited Thorn to take a walk with him, and one morning they strapped the two pairs on and went downstream, as was proper for a first walk in a new pair of snowshoes. Thorn swerved left and right like a cliff swallow, traversing down the slopes to the river, cutting up and over the knob leading to Next Loop Down, and glissading down the steep slope on its western side. When he came to the confluence of the river and Upper Creek, he stopped over the lead. Black water slid smoothly by just beyond his snowshoes. He threw back his parka hood, and his earless balding head looked like a big black snake rearing up from a rock to look around. Liplessly he smiled at Loon.—They’re good. If Schist can keep from messing things up at the eight eight, we should be fine.

—You can help him, Loon suggested.

Thorn gave him a sharp look, but did not disagree.

One sunset soon after that Loon was on the ridge between Lower and Upper Valleys, and up the ridge beside the ridge trail he saw Click coming down. He leaped back in fear, then looked closer and saw that it was a different old one, a real one and not a ghost. Then he was afraid in a different way, and as he hurried down the ridge trail toward camp he pondered whether it would have been worse or better if it had been Click’s ghost. Possibly better. He could feel Click’s back, carrying him through the night he couldn’t walk; he could see Click’s snowshoe tracks, veering away to improve on Thorn’s routes. A spasm of grief cause him to groan like a loon in the night.

Full winter, but the days getting longer; storms; sitting around the fire, making things and telling stories. Making love with Elga in the night when everyone else was asleep, doing it silently among the rest, feeling themselves melt together into one silently spurting and clutching beast with two backs, nearly motionless under their blankets, a way of doing it that made it strangely intense, a fusing of two into one, a secret love blossoming like a red prong out of the snow. The snow, the iced-over river. Black leads that they didn’t have to go anywhere near. Elga wedge-browed at something she didn’t like that Thunder or Bluejay had done, hard-eyed and silent as she thought what to do about it. Starry taking care of all the new kids. Lucky babbling, learning to talk a little, learning to walk. Making them laugh. Hawk with Ducky. Despite all the talk, the women had recently arranged several in-pack marriages. Apparently, they were told now, this was not unusual.

Eating what Schist pulled out of his holes, watching his face to see how they were doing.

Remembering the previous winter, and feeling luckier than Lucky.

In the spring when the snow had melted off the south-facing slopes, and black water was opening on the sunnier ponds, Thorn and Loon went back to the tree west of Northerly Valley where they had left Click’s body to the ravens. Thorn never said a word about why they were going there, and Loon didn’t either. There was no need to point out something so obvious: Click’s ghost led them every step of the way, slipping through the trees ahead, occasionally looking back at them as if to make sure they were following. Thorn resolutely ignored these sightings, and Loon felt a warm humming in Badleg that made him nervous, as if the pain would come back if he did not behave well. If it had not been for Thorn’s presence he most certainly would have turned tail and run back to camp like a rabbit, keeping his eyes on the ground the whole way.

They got to the tree, which Thorn located without a problem. There was Click’s exposed ribcage and skull, with the other bones scattered around, moved by the little scavengers of that spring. A number of his bones were obviously missing, but then again they had not given the complete body to the ravens anyway.

Silently Thorn and Loon gathered the bones. Almost all of them were picked clean. Thorn stacked them carefully against each other, like sticks of firewood arranged for easiest carrying. Loon carried the skull inside the ribcage, at Thorn’s request. Before putting the skull and jawbone in the ribcage, Loon touched the skull to Badleg, and whispered inside himself, Thank you Click. If you want to help me, stay in me here. If not, go to your place in the sky, and leave Thorn alone.

They carried the bones down to the narrow pond that was the highest one in the canyon they were in. On the deepest part of the shore, Thorn took Click’s skull and jawbone out of his ribcage. He sang the spirit-freeing song:

Loon looked at Click’s thick bony brow, his bulky forehead, his skull so long, his big worn chompers. His teeth still looked just as they had in life when they had been revealed from inside his lips in a fear grin, or a shy smile. Seeing that gave Loon another stab of grief, a hot rush in his eyes and throat. The skull was both Click and not Click. A body was just clothing; Click was his spirit, as was made clear by his ghost, still out there in the forest with them. Although now he was concealed, which was a great relief, even though they could feel that he was nearby.