Soul Catcher

by Frank Herbert

  David thought: I am David-not-Hoquat.

  Was that another name? he wondered. Was it a halfway identity, David-not-quite-Hoquat? He recalled that his mother had called him Davey. His father had occasionally called him Son. Grandmother Morgenstern had called him David, though. Names were odd. How could he be Hoquat in his own mind?

  He thought: What’s Katsuk thinking?

  Was it possible Katsuk knew how to not-think?

  David raised himself on his elbows, pushed the chewed blade of grass from his mouth with his tongue, said: “Katsuk, what’re you thinking?”

  Without looking up from the river, Katsuk said: “I am thinking how to make a bow and arrow in the old way. Do not disturb my thinking.”

  The old way? What’s that?”

  “Be still.” David heard the edge of insanity in Katsuk’s voice, lapsed into sullen silence. Katsuk studied the river, a milky-green. He noted the shadows on a tumbling twig.

  An uprooted stump came twisting through the current which boiled under the vine maple shadow. The stump was an old one with dark-red-brown punk wood in the root end. It turned slowly, end over end, roots up like clutching hands, then falling over, sinking beneath the slick water, the cut end rising into the afternoon sunlight. Water drained from it and the whole cycle started once more as it passed.

  The stump made a sound in its turning—klug-slumk-hub-lub.

  Katsuk listened, wondering at the language of the stump. He felt the stump was talking to him, but it was no language he understood. What could it be saying? The cut end was gray with age. It was a hoquat scar. The stump did not seem to be talking about its own travail. It went down-stream, turning and talking.

  He felt the presence of the boy with disturbing intensity. That was flesh back there with all of its potential for good or evil ... for both at once. Goodevil. Was there such a word?

  Katsuk felt that he and the boy had fallen into a new relationship. Almost friendly. Was that Tskanay’s doing? He felt no jealousy. Charles Hobuhet might have been jealous, but not Katsuk. Tskanay had given the boy a moment of life. He had lived; now he must die.

  It was correct to feel friendship toward a victim. That subdued the enemy soul. But this new association went beyond such friendship.

  How did we get into this new relationship?

  It could change nothing, of course. The Innocent must ask for death and be killed.

  Katsuk felt sadness twist in his breast. There could be no stopping this thing. There had been no stopping it from the beginning. It had come out of the ice. Bee’s message had been cold. And Raven’s. It must end with the Innocent slain.

  The boy stood up, walked upstream off the grass, sat down with his back against the cathedral pillar of a rotten stump. He began searching for grubs in the rotten wood.

  Katsuk refused to look at him.

  Let Hoquat escape ... if Raven would permit it.

  The vine maple shadow lay black on the river. The water appeared calm on its surface, but Katsuk felt the wild power underneath. He felt himself being driven by such a power—Soul Catcher within. Soul Catcher moved like the water, deep and strong underneath.

  Katsuk found one of the blankets beside him, wiped his eyes.

  David cast an occasional sidelong glance at his captor. Why was Katsuk so changeable? The man hovered between friendliness and violence. One minute, he would explain a legend of his people. The next second, he could scream for silence. Katsuk had been very different since he had played the flute in the old mine shaft.

  For the moment, the boy felt a strange happiness. He watched the river, the waning sun. He was aware of movements and patterns. For a time, he dozed. Katsuk would catch a fish soon and they would eat. Or Katsuk would find another poacher’s cache, or make a bow and arrow and kill game. Katsuk had said he was thinking how to make a bow and arrow.

  David’s eyes snapped open. He felt no passage of time but knew he had slept. The sun had moved toward the horizon.

  A long sandbar protruded into the current downstream. The river turned there in a wide arc against a thick stand of hemlocks. A matchstick pile of silver and gray logs lay stranded on the sand. The sun, about two log-widths above the hemlocks, colored the tops of the stranded logs yellow-orange.

  The light and color reminded David of Carmel Valley and his home. He wondered what had brought that memory. He decided it was the heat waves dancing over the logs. This day had been so bone-cold when they had walked through the forest shadows, but the sun-warmed ground beneath him induced a comfortable drowsiness.

  As they had come down from the high country, the land had grown increasingly wild and rugged. The steeper mountainsides and narrower canyons had given way to a broad valley thick with trees. Just before coming to this place, they had crossed a long, narrow ledge covered with stunted fir, pine, and spruce. An ancient storm had twisted the trees together, some fallen and dead, some leaning and still alive.

  Katsuk continued to stare at the river.

  David sighed, feeling hunger pangs. He searched for more grubs in the stump. They were juicy and sweet.

  As he ate the grubs, he had a sudden vision of his mother delicately plucking hors d’oeuvres from a tray held by a maid. He imagined what his mother would say if she could see him now. She would be frantic and hysterical even when he told her about this. Her eyes would go wide. Gasps of shock would escape her. She would cry. David had no doubt these events would occur. Katsuk had promised: There would be no killing unless the victim asked for it.

  David felt no special worry. It was a time for storing up memories. A wonderful curiosity drove him. This would end in time and he would have a glorious adventure to tell. He would be a hero to his friends—kidnapped by a wild Indian! Katsuk was wild, of course ... and insane. But there were limits to his insanity.

  The light on the stranded logs had become like sunshine on autumn grass. David watched Katsuk and the hypnotic flow of the river. He came to the decision this might be one of the happiest days of his life: Nothing was demanded of him; he had been cold, now he was warm; he had been hungry and had eaten ... Soon, they would eat again.

  A long orange-brown deerfly landed on his left wrist. He slapped it reflexively, wiped the dead insect from his hand on a clump of grass.

  Katsuk began singing: low-voiced. It was a chant oddly in tune with the river and the golden sunlight. His voice rose and fell, full of clicks and coughing sounds.

  The thought in Katsuk’s mind was that he desperately needed a sign. He needed an omen to guide him from this place. Swaying, he chanted his prayer song, appealing to Bee and Raven, to Kwahoutze and Alkuntam. Soul Catcher stirred within him. Gusts of wind began to blow along the river—the wind that came before dark. Katsuk sensed a barrier, an obstruction to his prayer. Perhaps it was Hoquat blocking the way. Katsuk recalled Hoquat’s dream. That was a powerful dream. The boy could have a wish—any wish. When he was ready. There was a powerful spirit waiting in that boy.

  The wind chilled Katsuk’s cheek. A glacier filled the river source up there and the wind of evening blew down the valley toward the sea.

  Katsuk sensed that he had left pursuit far behind in the upper reaches of the Wilderness Area. Not even a helicopter crossed the sky here, although earlier there had been a jet soundlessly drawing its white plume high over the peak that dominated the eastern skyline.

  As he thought these things, Katsuk continued chanting. The memory of Hoquat’s dream troubled him. It lay festering in his awareness. It was a thing which might defy Soul Catcher. How could the boy have dreamed a powerful spirit? He was a hoquat! But that was a warning dream, a thing to spread disquiet around. And Hoquat appeared content. Had he wished the thing which would not be denied him?

  Movement on the river stirred Katsuk from his reverie. A long, smooth limb, pearl gray, and glistening, drifted on the current. Katsuk’s gaze followed the limb. It appeared to glide downstream independent of the current. It was headed with a sure inward direction toward the figure squat
ting beneath the vine maple. The limb pierced the vine maple’s shadow like an arrow penetrating its target. The shadow moved along the length of the limb. Katsuk felt shadow darkness penetrating the wood.

  He broke off his chant, breathed a long “Ahhhhhh.”

  The limb surged across a dark upswelling of current. It came directly at him. One end drove into the muddy embankment at Katsuk’s feet. He knelt, lifted the limb from the water with a feeling of reverence. He sensed something powerful struggling in the wood.

  Gently, he examined what the river had sent him. The wood felt smooth and vibrant beneath his fingers. Alive! Water dripped from it. One end had been burned, the other broken. The wood had not been long in the water. It was not soaked. Not a deformity or twisting of grain marked its smooth length—almost as long as he was tall. At its thickest end, it was larger than his clenched fist. The tapering was almost indiscernible, less than a finger’s width.

  How supple and alive it felt!

  Katsuk stood up, put one end on the ground, his hand in the center, and tried to flex it. He felt the wood fighting him. It quivered with hidden power. It was the wood of a god-bow!

  The feeling of reverence strong in him, Katsuk lifted Hoquat’s knife from its sheath to test the hardness of this wood. A large black bee darted across his line of vision—another, another.

  He hesitated, the knife griped tightly in his hand. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  Ahhhhh, that had been close!

  One touch of hoquat steel on this wood! Just one and the spirit power would leave it. His prayer had brought the wood of a god-bow and he had almost defiled it.

  Katsuk’s throat was dry from the nearness of that defilement. He returned the knife to its sheath, slipped the sheath from his waist, hurled the hated instrument into the river. Only when the blade had sunk beneath the current did he feel free from deadly peril.

  How close that had been!

  He glanced to where the boy sat, eyes closed, drowsing. The spirit had been strong in Hoquat, but not strong enough. That evil spirit with its subtle persuasions had almost tempted Katsuk into an act of defilement. Who knew where such an act could have led? It might even have given Hoquat the upper hand here. When two beings were bound together this way, captor and captive, the tie that bound them could be pulled in either direction.

  Katsuk grasped the limb in both hands, held it high over his head. How beautiful it was!

  He sang the song of dedication. He dedicated it to Bee. Bee had sent this omen wood.

  The whole course of what he must do came into his mind as he prayed. He must find obsidian and fashion a knife from it to work this omen wood into a bow. That was how it must be done: a bow fashioned in the ancient way, then an arrow tipped with the stone point from the ocean beach of his ancestors at Ozette. From ancient times to this time, it would all be connected.

  Katsuk lowered the limb, relaxed. He sensed his ancestors singing within him. This is how the Innocent must die!

  Carrying the omen wood reverently in his left hand, Katsuk went to where Hoquat lay asleep against the stump. The boy awoke when he felt Katsuk’s shadow, stared up at his captor, smiled.

  The smile heartened Katsuk. He returned it. Hoquat’s dream spirit had been subdued.

  The boy yawned, then: “What’re you going to do with the stick? Are you going to fish?”

  “This?” Katsuk lifted the limb. His whole arm throbbed with the power in the omen wood. “This was sent by my spirits. It will do a great thing.”

  ***

  From a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

  Sheriff Pallatt said he is concentrating his searchers in the virtually untracked Wilderness Area of the park (see map at right) and that he is instructing them to move with extreme caution. He said: “This is no ordinary kidnapping. This is a crime of revenge against the white race by an embittered young man who may be temporarily deranged. I am convinced Hobuhet knows what he is doing and is acting according to a plan. He’s still in those mountains with that boy.”

  ***

  Katsuk lay stretched face down on a shale ledge, staring along his own arm immersed to the elbow in clear, cold river water. The omen wood for the bow was beside him. His hand in the water appeared wavery and distorted against the mossy rock. He could feel the pulse at his elbow. Intense awareness of the world around him permeated his being.

  He saw two long gray logs high on the flood-scoured bar at the river bend across from him. Their shadows mingled in a staggering track across the bar, long, flat shadows in the low afternoon sun.

  A scuffling sound behind him told Katsuk the boy had moved. Katsuk glanced back. Hoquat squatted beneath a big-leaf maple juggling his day-counting pebbles. There were eight pebbles now: eight days. A limb above the boy was strung with fuzzy moss, dirty green and straggling. It dangled above the blond head like wool on a sheep’s belly. The boy was sucking on a grass stem.

  Katsuk turned away, concentrated once more on his hand in the water.

  The river was clear and deep here. He could see periwinkles on the bottom: irregular black marks against the varicolored rocks. For some time now, he had been observing the progress of a big fish as it worked its way along the mossy side of the ledge. It was a native whitefish—kull t’kope.

  Katsuk mouthed its name under his breath, praying to the fish spirit and the water spirit.

  Kull t’kope’s tail wriggled spasmodically as it concentrated on eating insects from the moss.

  Katsuk felt the presence of the fish and the river all through him. The river was called

  Sour Water in his own tongue. A strange name, he thought. The water was sweet to the taste, clean, and with a musty edge of snow in it.

  The chill water made his arm numb from the elbow down, but Katsuk remained motionless, waiting. He allowed his thoughts to contain only friendliness toward the fish. That was an old way, older than memory—from First Times. He had learned it as a boy from his Uncle Okhoots.

  The fish encountered the barrier presence of Katsuk’s arm, swam gently around it, nosed the moss beside it. Gently, slowly, Katsuk raised his hand. He stroked the fish along its belly. Motion set his hand tingling painfully and he felt the cold softness of the fish—stroking slowly, softly, gently ...

  It was slow work ... slow ... slow ...

  His opened fingers went under the flexing gills.

  Now!

  Grabbing and lifting in one motion, Katsuk leaped backward, hurled the fish over his shoulder, whirling to watch where it landed.

  It was a big fish, almost as long as a man’s arm, and it hit the boy full in the chest, sent him sprawling. Boy and fish went down in one big, writhing tangle on the riverbank—legs, arms, flopping tail.

  Katsuk was on them in a scrambling, bounding dash. He pinned the fish with both hands over the back of its head, thumb and fingers of one hand in its gills.

  The boy rolled away, sat up, demanding: “Did we get it? Did we get it?”

  Katsuk lifted the still struggling fish, broke its neck.

  The boy exhaled wordlessly, then: “Wow! It’s a big one!”

  Katsuk took the fish in one hand, helped the boy to his feet, leaving a smear of fish blood across the jacket.

  The boy stared at the dead fish, eyes wide and fixed. His arms, hands, and the front of his jacket presented a splotched mess of fish slime, scales, sand, mud, and leaves from the mad scramble on the riverbank.

  “You’re a mess,” Katsuk said. “Go splash that stuff off you while I clean the fish.”

  “Are we going to eat it right away?”

  Katsuk thought: Trust the hoquat to think only of his stomach and not of the spirit in what we have killed.

  He said: “We will eat at the proper time. Go clean yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  Katsuk retrieved his omen wood. He searched among the beach rocks until he found a large one with a slim, jagged edge. He went to the shallows, sawed the head off the fish, pulled away the gills. He reached
into the fish then, pulled the entrails out, cleaned the cavity in running water. A sharp stick through there and kull t’kope could be cooked over coals.

  As he worked, Katsuk mouthed the prayer to Fish, asking pardon that this thing must be done. He heard the boy splashing below him.

  The boy shouted: “Hey! This water’s cold.”

  “Then wash faster.”

  Katsuk picked up fish and omen wood, started back to the ledge. The boy scrambled across the rocks, trotted beside him. He was dripping, shivering, and there was an odd look on his face.

  “What are you thinking?” Katsuk asked.

  “Did you mean for that fish to hit me?”

  “No. I was just making sure we didn’t lose it.”

  The boy grinned. “Did I look funny?”

  Katsuk chuckled, felt oddly relieved. “You looked funny. I couldn’t tell which was fish and which was boy.”

  They came to the rim of the ledge where grass and moss began. Katsuk put the fish on moss, placed the omen wood gently beside it. He thought how it must have been for Hoquat—a big flash of silver as the fish tumbled through the air.

  What a shock!

  Katsuk began to chuckle.

  The boy closed his eyes, remembering. Katsuk had said he was fishing, but it had looked stupid: just waiting there ... waiting ... waiting ... Who could expect a fish to come from such inactivity? No pole, no line, no hook, no bait—just a hand in the water. Then: whap!

  Katsuk was laughing now.

  David opened his eyes. His stomach began to shake with laughter. He couldn’t suppress it. The cold, flopping surprise of that sudden fish!

  In a moment, boy and captor were facing each other, laughing like idiots. The noise brought a flock of gray jays, black-crowned camp robbers. They circled overhead, alighted in a stand of alders high up on the riverbank. Their querulous calls made a wild background for the laughter.