Kim Robinson - Shaman

He moved the lamps around until the light on the wall was the way he wanted it. The two together set up crossed shadows, and he wished that he had a third lamp, or even more. Ah yes, he did; in the sack. He found the lamp stone with its indentation, set it up, filled the dip with lamp fat, placed one of the wicks in it, used another splinter to move flame to it. He sat by the lamp a while to make sure it was burning well. It flickered, then burned steadily, the flame still except right there at the wick it enfolded, where it crinkled off the black into existence.

The cave was murmuring a low song. There was a river running under the cave. Its sound seemed to indicate that its water moved slower than water on the surface of the earth.

He took up the shinbone in his right hand and finished scraping the wall clean of its brown nobbling. He saw that a cave bear had reached up and clawed the wall, as if trying to get through to something. The claw scratches were white, and under Loon’s scraping the wall was almost tusk white. Like old yellowed tusk, or the belly of an ibex. Above the scraped section was an arch of stone, and the wall above that was reddish brown.

On the far left of his wall, around a slight curve that way, there was a low hole in the wall. The floor was wetter under the hole.

He took up a charcoal stump, and on the left side of the cleared section drew the backs of a rising line of bulls. That gave him his left border.

He stepped to the lower part of his cleared area and drew the two rhinos he had seen fighting by the creek. He wanted to show the way they had slapped their horns together, in those big horny thwacks that rang across the meadow. It must hurt when horn caught flesh. Both of the rhinos had been bleeding. He drew the lines of their horns right through each other: it was the only way to show it. Round curve of their low rumps, so massive and strong. They were so much faster than they looked. He could suggest that speed if the curves were right. And all the force of the fight was there in their faces and horns. He took his time, smudged with a leather cloth inside the lines of head and horn, to make them blacker. The one on the right had its right foreleg set, and was thrusting up and through the one on the left, catching it in the side of the head. Curve of the muscle swinging from the force of the blow. Scrape with a burin inside the right one’s mouth, open as it grunted. The one on the left had been rocked back by the blow, rounded up by it. Draw the forefeet rounded, show them almost hanging in air. Curves in the rock were shaped nicely to show the weight of the beast thrown back. Dot the eye just over the horn, looking shocked. Give him two front horns; this was a Thorn trick, to show movement. Knocked back by the blow, back into the cave wall itself.

When the rhinos were done he sat down for a while. He had a longer charcoal branch than usual, and as he sat there, he reached out and drew a little bison with it, a three-liner at first, but then he kept pointing the stick into the mass of winter hair between its horns. Just something to do while he rested and looked at the wall above. It was a great wall. It was breathing in and out with his breath, coming closer and then moving away.

The stumping was making things look good and black, so he added another bull to the stack of them on the left side of his wall, blacked it in completely. A little scraping with the burin could remove just enough of the blackened face to suggest an eye. Black eye of a black bull, and yet visible. Under the muzzle of this black beast he drew a horse with a big head, small body. That looked good, black stumped down its chest, legs just lined.

That left the biggest scraped space, to the right of the bulls and above the fighting rhinos. It was a good space, and he sat down next to his sack to look at it for a while.

He refilled his lamps with fat. He drank some water. He inspected his hands; his palms and fingers were black with charcoal. He held the right hand up before him, turned it palm side then backside. Bent little finger. It pulsed blackly, seemed to go away and come back. This living hand. He held it up against the wall, as if to blow an outline. From this distance it covered the space he had left to draw on.

He closed his eyes, watched colors flow and spark there on the inside of his eyelids. He saw that horse at sunset, rearing on the ridge across the valley. He recalled the way it had felt, there at the end of his wander when he was scraped raw, when the horse had seen him and then reared, and suddenly in the sunset light it had become clear that everything meant something he could not catch, something so big that it couldn’t be said, couldn’t be felt. Something big that they were all caught up in together. It had taken his breath away then, and it did again as he remembered it.

Make that horse. Stump it until it was the black inside black. Show the rearing up, that moment when the sight of it had transfixed Loon, standing there the next ridge over.

He stood and started painting again. Start from the top and work down. Make a sequence of heads that would show that rearing in the sunset, like what Thorn had done with the lions, but different. He used his hand to measure; there was room for four heads.

He started to draw the top head. First the forehead, as in a three-liner. Down the long nose to the nostril and the little curve of the mouth. Then pause. The second head would need to fill the space below. He took the stick and pressed hard against the wall, stumping the charcoal off as thickly as he could, carefully up down, up down. The curve of the rearing mane, pressing lighter as he drew the back behind the mane. Good. Then the eye, looking across the valley at Loon. Not a friendly look. He stumped and smudged black all over the inside of the line, darking the forehead, the cheek.

He took up the burin then and scraped a little around the eye to make a white surround for it. He saw that he could scrape around the head too, whitening the wall to make the head stand out even more than it already did.

Slowly, carefully, he scraped tiny bits of rock away from the wall. It had to be a perfect line, making a perfect contrast of white and black. The head would seem to emerge from the wall, because indeed it did.

He went on scraping for so long that one of the lamps went out. He staggered back in the newly shaped shadows, and in his haste almost knocked one of the two remaining lit lamps over; lunging to right it, he also almost stepped on the third lamp. He could have knocked them all out right then and there.

He sat down for a while, frightened by his own clumsiness. The cave was rumbling a warning. He wished Thorn were there to talk to, and suddenly he realized that would never happen again. No more Thorn. It was impossible to believe. Not to have that face, that voice, those irritated and irritating thoughts. No one to talk to, as Heather had said. Dropped into the lonely world of the shaman, deep into dreams and visions, always alone, even when in the pack. He had wanted his wander to go on forever, and now it would.

I picked him up then. I carried him to the wall, I raised his hand, I drew the mane of the next horse.

Then, looking at it more closely, I realized that I had started the second horse too high, too close to the first one. Four heads as close as these two would be too close, leaving a gap at the bottom that would look bad. I had made a mistake. I didn’t know how to fix it. In the depths of the cave, trying to help Loon past his bad moment, I had made a mistake. Startled, dismayed, not knowing what to do, I sank back into him and left him to it.

Loon stepped back and stared. He had drawn the mane of the second horse without thinking, and now he was appalled to see that it was too high. Thinking about Thorn had distracted him, and he had painted without looking. A huge mistake!