Kim Robinson - Shaman

She snorted.—I don’t know anything. Just as you have always told me.

—Well, it’s true, isn’t it?

—Yes. So, here. She gave him a bag.—It will dull the pain. And smoke your pipe.

—But if it’s my lung?

—A little smoke won’t matter.

Thorn gulped, then glowered at her; he didn’t like what she was suggesting, he didn’t want her telling him that. His lip curled in an ugly little snarl, and she stared back at him flint-eyed. Loon saw that the two of them were not going to be getting along any better now that Thorn was sick.

After that Thorn ignored Heather and everyone else, and got on with his days as usual, often going out to scavenge firewood, or gather shaman herbs and mushrooms. He started the day by smoking his pipe. Around the fire he watched Elga and Lucky and the baby. By the way his eyes stayed fixed on things and did not look around, Loon concluded that he was seeing Click follow him around through the course of his day. After this went on for a while, something in the way Thorn wouldn’t look to his right revealed both that Click’s ghost was sitting there beside him, and that he did not mind it as much as he had before. He forbore to look that way not because he was afraid, but as a kind of courtesy.

He started calling their new baby the finch, because she was alert and her movements were fast and jerky. He would sit around and watch the baby and Lucky while Elga and Loon went off to do things. And when the suncupped snow left the earth, he went off on his scavenging forays in a better mood.—Things happen, he said to Loon once when they were standing by the river watching it purl through a sunset.—There’s not a thing you can do about it.

Then one morning putting wood on the fire he crouched to the ground with a muffled cry, curled around his right side. He crawled to Heather’s nest, refusing help from Loon and groaning from time to time. Loon could only walk beside him, shocked and frightened.

When Thorn got to Heather’s he stared up at her.—It hurts, he hissed.

—Lie down, Heather said. She helped him onto her bed.—Get yourself comfortable.

—I can’t get comfortable!

—As comfortable as you can.

She was digging around in her bags. She gave him some of a root to chew, and rubbed some mistletoe berry paste into his gums. She sent Loon to get Thorn’s pipe and shaman herbs. When Loon came back with them, she dug through Thorn’s stuff as if it were hers, and had him eat some of his own dried mushrooms.

—Now’s the time to be a shaman if ever you’re going to be, she said.

Thorn did not reply. He smoked his pipe when Heather loaded and lit it for him with a splinter brought from the fire.—Why this sudden thing? he asked her when he had exhaled a long plume.

—It cracked a rib.

He stayed on her bed that night. They brought him seedcakes and bits of cooked meat, but he shook his head at them and wouldn’t open his mouth even to speak, until the food was taken away. After these attempts to feed him he would sip water from a ladle, and look at Heather.

—Why should I? he said to her.

Heather didn’t answer. She arranged for his furs to be brought over to her bed, and put them against a log so that Thorn could sit up. She knew before he said it that this would be a less painful position for him. She set a bucket of water by his side, with a ladle in it, and sat beside him when he tossed and turned.

—I could try to drain it, she said to him after inspecting his right side.

—Could you? Thorn’s red-rimmed eyes gleamed with sudden hope.

—We can always try. It might hurt to puncture it.

—It can’t hurt more than it does.

She sniffed at that, but the next morning she took him down to the riverside with Loon. She had him lie down on his left side, on the leather side of a big bearskin, right on the bank where he could put his feet and hands in the cold water of a long black lead.

—Chill yourself as much as you can, she instructed him.

He put his feet and hands in the black water. Heather washed the skin over the bump under the bottom of his ribcage, and then with one swift motion stuck him there with an awl. He hissed and trembled in the effort to stay still. She pulled out the awl, wiped the blood away with a leather patch, and stuck a long elderberry tube, like her blowdart tube but longer and narrower, into the wound she had made. Thorn was sucking air in through his teeth. Heather instructed him to move onto his belly so that the tube was pointed slightly down from the wound. He shifted and rolled onto his chest and belly, pulling his feet and hands out of the water. Blood began to run from the tube. Heather said to him,—Stick your head in the water and keep it in there as long as you can hold your breath.

He took a breath, held it, and ducked his head into the water. Heather crouched down over him and sucked hard on the end of the tube. She spat out a mouthful of Thorn’s blood, then sucked again and spat out some whitish pus, not much of it. Thorn yanked his head out of the river and blew a quick few breaths and ducked in again. Heather sucked again on the tube, cheeks folding far into her toothless face. She spat out a little bit more pus, but not much was coming. She tapped the tube in a bit farther, which caused bubbles to burst the surface of water around Thorn’s head. He hauled himself out yelping.

—Once more! Heather said sharply.—It’s working now.

He ducked his head under again and she tried several more hard sucks, but got very little out.

Finally he pulled out of the water, gasping, and she pulled the tube from his side and pressed some dried moss against the puncture wound. Thorn crawled up the bank and sat, then dried his head with a clean leather patch. Heather washed her mouth out several times with river water.

—Any luck? Thorn asked.

—Not much, she said, looking downstream.—It’s not like pus. It’s more solid.

—Could you cut it out?

She looked at him, eyes round.—It’s inside your ribs.

Thorn stared at her for a long time.—Fuck, he said. For a little while he breathed hard, looking down the river. Heather put her hand to his knee, and he looked back at her. For a long time they looked at each other.

—All right, Thorn said.

After that he stayed in Heather’s bed.

Most of the pack’s people stayed away from camp more than they might have otherwise. Loon passed his days with Elga and the kids, down by the river. Some days he went to see Thorn in the afternoons when Heather was out gathering. But Thorn did not want to talk.

One day Hawk and Moss were going out on a hunt, and Loon decided to go with them.

It was a cool morning, and his two friends fell into their hunting lope almost as soon as they got out of camp. Loon found he had no problem keeping up with them; he could run on his left leg in a way he hadn’t since his wander, poling over that foot as if he were still wearing his wooden boot, in some kind of leaping limp. In most ways he felt stronger and faster than he ever had, and the stiff leg was like a stout walking pole, powerfully deployed. He crashed through brakes and danced over talus and scree with a speed he had never felt in him before, and when he saw how it was he took the lead from his friends and ran off with it.

He saw as he passed them how he was the third friend to them, the walking pole for their two legs. But they knew him well, and he knew them. They were grinning now to watch him fly, surprised but pleased to be huffing to keep up with him; they followed him gladly over Quick Pass and down into the meadow in Lower’s Upper. On the last slope they shushed each other and began to run silently, which took the utmost finesse in one’s footwork, also a complete control of one’s breathing, which had to be open-mouthed and silent. After a bit of silent running it was as if their bodies were catching fire.