Ivan Rasskazov - The Mysteries of the Shaman Stone

“Why the silence? I need to tell you something important,” Olga asked at the other end of the line, seemingly offended.

“Olenka, dear, I’ll come back soon,” I said and hung up in fear without understanding why. The big red disk of the sun was setting behind a hill, the night was getting closer. I was lying in chum, watching this miraculous sight through a half-opened curtain and falling asleep quietly.

“Sleeping already. Will we tie him with a rope?” Nikita asked Herman.

“He must be sleeping. The damn rope is of no help, you can’t deceive nature,” he answered. “Tomorrow, the shaman will come and decide what to do with him,” Herman gave up and, turning on his side, went to sleep. In my dream, I met my she-wolf again. While swimming with her in the river and chasing each other, I suddenly heard her thoughts again. She was grateful to me for the fact that we would have cubs soon, and they would grow as brave and strong as their father. Rejoiced at this news, I rushed to race with her like mad. Having regained consciousness from Nikita shaking me, I realized that it was already morning…

Having regained consciousness from Nikita shaking my shoulder, I realized that it was already morning.

“Get up, you sack rat, wash yourself and let’s have breakfast.” Upon leaving the chum, a picture of an early sunrise appeared before my eyes. It seemed that a magic crown of light and gray clouds, like a fluffy head surrounded a huge hill, under which our camp lay. “What a beautiful sight,” I thought and immediately heard the dogs barking, and a reindeer relay jumped out of nowhere into the clearing.

“Haigu, haigu!” shouted an elderly charioteer sitting inside. In his hands he held a long flexible stick, which he used to urge the deer, directing them in one direction or another.

“Here comes the shaman,” said German who came up to me. Hearing this, a feeling of inner anxiety began to wake up in me. Sensing a clear threat to my internal state, which I was already getting used to, coming from this person, I heard the thought of running away. Overpowering myself with a huge effort, I went up to the Shaman, who was surrounded by my comrades, explaining something to him hastily. As I approached, Herman switched to Tofalar language, and I did not understand what they were talking about anymore. The Shaman was piercing me with a gaze from under the thick gray eyebrows. Sucking on a pipe, he listened to Herman, nodding his head, sometimes inserting sparse words into the conversation. I only intuitively understood: the conversation was about me and my fate; unable to stand the man’s gaze, I stepped aside. Some time passed, and we were invited to eat. Having sat down in a circle near an impromptu table made of a mat covered with a white, apparently festive tablecloth, we began our meal consisting of boiled deer meat, fried hare, steamed tortillas, which replaced bread, and some kind of homemade jam as dessert. I don’t know what berries it was made from, but it was very tasty. After rummaging in his backpack, thrifty Nikita pulled out a bottle of good whiskey. After the second shot, we all cheered up, and even the old Shaman who, at first glance, seemed very severe, became more sympathetic to me. The alcohol relieved tension, and we began to communicate more confidently with each other, not hesitating to ask questions. Without much pussyfooting, Nikita shot out to the Shaman:

“Dear Sir, explain to me what is going on here? A stone heals birds and revives insects! My friend Alexander runs at night with wolves in the taiga.” The old man, sucking on his pipe, looked with interest at the agitated Nikita. Then he pulled the pipe out of his mouth and asked him, not answering the questions asked:

“And what is going on where you live in, in a big city?”

Nikita did not understand what the Shaman was driving at. The old man, keeping it quiet for another minute, answered:

“Nothing strange happens in our taiga, except for what has been living and thriving here for thousands of years, created by nature and spirits or, as you call it, God. We do not change anything, do not destroy and use what the Spirits gave us. On the contrary, you have destroyed everything spiritual in the place you live in, built your cities of stone and glass, invented flying birds, cars, completely changing your world. You have built churches where, as you say, the main spirit that you call God, lives. And sometimes you go there to pray for forgiveness, for your sins that are much more numerous than it could ever be possible to absolve. You call all of this a civilized way of living, thinking that it is what life is about! Yes! You could call that life, but it’s an imagined life that you invented. (You can also add about corrupt prosecutors and judges here). Now, we, the children of nature and spirits, live in these faraway places, guarding one of the last sanctuaries of our spirits. If it’s gone tomorrow, our whole world will collapse into the abyss and darkness, along with your money and the evil that this fetish produces.

Having said all this, the old man became silent. His words made us all think deeply. And I was once again convinced: I should stay here in the wild, leaving the worthless, bustling, as it seemed to me now, Moscow life, where, the last time I came to the countryside or visited surrounding nature, I could not find single a drop of inspiration and sensuality, something that is so essential for writing good prose. Only one soulless blockbuster about robots and other civilizations came out from under the pen. The complete absence of nature was to blame. The dachas were all alike: bombastic brick palaces with automatic gates and a minimum of trees. One day, having visited my friend on the riverbank in order to get some literary inspiration, I saw a shore, overbuilt with moorings for yachts and boats for kilometers. It did not even have a meter-wide gap for grass and trees, just solid concrete. The voice of the old man, who started talking again unexpectedly, brought me back out of my state of reflection:

“Alexander,” Shaman talked to me all of a sudden “You are between two rivers now. You are still in the middle. But with each day, your old, fake life is being replaced by the one that you’ve found by entering into the water, putting on your pass to this new life: the skin of the wolf you killed. Our legends say: if a man, knowing what awaits him, puts on the skin of a wolf on purpose while entering the water, he no longer has a chance to return to normal life. The hunter became a wolfman forever. Not everyone could pass such a test of dual life, many went crazy. There were times when hunters simply killed themselves. But this situation has two sides: becoming a wolfman, the hunter brought several times more catch, thereby saving his family from extinction in the taiga in bad years for fishing, consciously condemning himself to suffering in return for the lives of members of its clan saved from hunger! You have a chance, Alexander, as you made this rite without knowing it. Therefore, if you ask well the spirit of the wolf, he can let you go; you only need to want it really bad. Without your will, we won’t be able to do anything. And now I want to tell you one story which will let you understand another reason the Tofalar hunters wore the skin of a wolf, the leader of a pack. AI heard part of this story from my father, and our spirits told me what he could not see and hear, and what other people couldn’t tell me. My father, the head of a very large clan, consisting of five children and many relatives, was a very famous shaman and a successful hunter who always brought home a lot of catch. He would have lived on happily and in abundance, but one day he received some people clad in military uniform. One of them, apparently the eldest, dressed in a black leather jacket, introducing himself as an enlistment officer, asked my father to help him gather as many tofalar warriors as possible to send to the front, where there was a lack of soldiers. Nobody, except my father, could do this, as male tofas were scattered over a large territory in the taiga, and only a very skilled, respected hunter could gather all of them and could know where they could be found. Having agreed to meet with him at the same place in a month, my father disappeared in the taiga for a long time. Having returned three weeks later with a bunch of deer skins, he began to erect a few more chums for an increasing number of new hunters who came up every day from the taiga. Finally, as the day agreed between my father and a man in a leather jacket was getting closer, about forty men had gathered at the camp. The enlistment officer, whose name was Ivan Pavlovich, arrived and addressed them with a speech.