Soul Catcher

by Frank Herbert

  “No! We cannot go that way. People come.” Katsuk peered at the spruce copse from which David had emerged. “There is a place ... in here.”

  “I’ve just come that way,” David said. “There’s no—”

  “There is a place,” Katsuk said. “Come.”

  Walking with that odd, stiff-legged stride, Katsuk stepped past the boy, moved into the trees. David followed, feeling that he had moved into Katsuk’s delirium.

  Again, Katsuk coughed, deep and racking.

  At the logjam where David had rested, Katsuk paused. He studied the water hurtling against the logs: dark, blue-gray river crossed by smoky driftwood. Yes, this was the place.

  He stepped up onto the jam, crossed the river, jumping from log to log. David followed.

  On the far shore, David saw what he had missed earlier: an abandoned park shelter, part of its roof caved in. The logs and shakes were mottled with moss and lichen. Katsuk entered the shelter. David heard him digging in there.

  David hesitated on the riverbank, looked downstream.

  People coming? Kasuk had said it.

  The air was cold. He felt an added chill of madness. Katsuk is sick. I could run back to the meadow. But he might catch me, or shoot me with that arrow.

  The sky was dark over the trees downstream. Rain walked on a black line up the river, that hard sky behind it, clouds crouched over the sunset, the wind floating the leaves, whipping night before it.

  Katsuk called from the shelter. “Hurry up. It is going to rain.”

  Again, Katsuk coughed.

  David entered the shelter, smelling raw earth, the damp fungus odors of rot.

  Katsuk had a hole dug in one corner. He pulled a small metal drum from it. The lid popped with a rusty creaking.

  Katsuk extracted two blankets and a small, tightly wrapped package.

  “Fire tinder,” Katsuk said, tossing the package to the boy.

  Katsuk turned, moved toward the shelter’s entrance. David saw that the man was almost staggering.

  “You thought to kill me with Cedar sickness,” Katsuk said. “I will yet do what I must do. Raven will give me the power.”

  ***

  Chief Park Ranger William Redek:

  It’s cold in there for this time of year, been more snow and rain than usual. Snow line’s lower than I can remember for years. I hear Indian fakirs have a trick for keeping warm without lots of clothes or fire, but this Hobuhet is a different kind of Indian. Doubt if he knows that trick. If he and that boy are in there, they have to be in shelter of some kind, and with fire. That, or they’re dead. You lose enough body heat and that country kills you.

  ***

  Katsuk lay on moss between two logs, his mind howling in a fevered nightmare. There was a wood path, an arrow. The arrow must balance just right. He had found the wood for the arrow in the avalanche scar of a tall cedar. It had been a trick, all a trick. He held the arrow and the arrow held him. He led a cortege up the wood path from the most ancient times to the present. His mind was drunk with all the lives it held.

  A spirit shouted in his mind: “The earth does not know who owns it!”

  Katsuk groaned.

  Delirium moved his feet on the wood path. He sang the names of his dead, but each new name brought a change in the nightmare. When he sang Janiktaht’s name, he saw Hoquat running, hair flying like a wind-whipped bush.

  Another name: Okhoots.

  He was in a field embroidered with yellow flowers, a bubbling spring beside the field. He drank at the spring, but the water failed to slake the dry burning of his throat.

  Another name: Grandfather Hobuhet.

  He was confronted by wave tops blown white in a gale, a sorrel weaving in green water. A dead whale rose out of the water, said: “You dare disturb me!”

  Another name: Tskuldik.

  Father ... father ... father!

  He called a nameless name in a canyon, was back on the nightmare trail of his ordeal. He heard the woods” dirge, felt wet bracken at his waist. He was marching upcountry from the hoquat places. There was a dirty yellow logging rig parked beside the road, heavy green of second-growth fir behind it. Side roads poked out into the tree wall. Dead snags thrust up through the green.

  There was an alder bottom, a stump ranch glimpsed through the bleached-white maze of trunks. He saw platform notches on old stumps, ragged bark dangling. There was a corrugated culvert with arsenic-yellow skunk cabbages on one side of a rutted road, water trickling out the other side. He saw the open scar of a logged-off hillside, a sign: WARNING: UNDERGROUND POWER AND TELEPHONE CABLES.

  As he read the sign, Katsuk felt his mind plunge into a cold river. He saw moss-covered boughs vibrating in the water. He became one of the boughs.

  He thought: I have become a water spirit.

  In his delirium, he screamed for Raven to save him. Raven swam by him under the water, became a fish, kull t’kope!

  Katsuk awoke, trembling with terror. Cramps contorted his body. He felt weak, drained. Dawnlight glared gray through the shelter’s open entrance. Sweat bathed him. He shivered with chill. Blankets had been tucked around him, but he had thrown them off in his nightmare thrashing.

  Painfully, his knees trembling with Cedar sickness, he managed to stand, forced himself to the entrance. He leaned against a log upright, shivered, half conscious of some ultimate necessity which he could not name.

  Where was Hoquat?

  A piece of wood broke with a clear snapping off to his right. The boy came around the shelter there, his arms loaded with firewood. He dumped the wood beside the gray ashes of the fire pit.

  Katsuk stared at the boy, at the fire pit, trying to put the two together in his thoughts.

  David saw the weakness in Katsuk, said: “I found a can of beans in that little barrel and heated them. I left most of them for you.”

  He used a split length of green wood to lift the can from the ashes and place it at Katsuk’s feet. A flat piece of wood for a spoon protruded from the can.

  Katsuk squatted, ate greedily, hungry for the warmth more than for the food. The beans tasted of ashes. They burned his tongue, but he gulped them, felt heat radiate from his stomach.

  The boy, working to restore the fire, said: “You had a nightmare. You yelled and tossed around all night. I kept the fire going most of the night.”

  Flame began to climb through the wood the boy had placed in the coals beneath the ashes.

  Katsuk nodded dumbly. He heard water dashing on stones only a few steps from the shelter but could not find the strength to go to it. A burning dryness filled his throat.

  “Wa-ter,” he croaked.

  The boy stood up from the fire, took the empty bean can to the river.

  The way the leaf-broken sunlight dappled the boy’s hair made Katsuk think of a lion he had seen in a zoo: a lion draped in sunlight and shadows. The memory caged him. He thought: Does Hoquat have a new spirit? Is it Lion? I do not know that spirit.

  David returned from the river with the can slopping icy water. He saw the glazed look in Katsuk’s eyes. Katsuk clutched the can with both hands, drained it, said: “More.”

  The boy brought another can of water. Katsuk drank it.

  A distant engine sound came into the valley, rising above the noise of the river. It grew louder: a plane flying low over the ridge above them. The sound went away up-country.

  David stood, stared through the trees, hoping for a glimpse of the aircraft. He failed to see it.

  Katsuk ignored the sound. He seemed to have lapsed back into his dream-sleep, squatting in the shelter’s doorway, occasionally shuddering.

  David put more wood on the fire, piled rocks around the flames to heat them. He said: “It’s going to rain again.”

  Katsuk stared through slitted eyes at the boy. He thought: The victim is here, but he must desire my arrow. The Innocent must ask for death.

  Low-voiced in the ancient tongue, Katsuk began chanting:

  “Your body will accept the c
onsecrated arrow. Pride will fill your soul at the touch of my sharp and biting point. Your soul will turn toward the sun and people will say to one another: “How proudly he died!” Ravens will alight beside your body, but they will not touch your flesh. Your pride will send you outward from your body. You will become a great bird and fly from one end of the world to the other. This is how you will accept the arrow.”

  David listened until the low chanting stopped, said: “There are more beans in that barrel. Do you want some?”

  “Why do you not run away?” Katsuk asked. “You have given me the Cedar sickness. I could not stop you.”

  The boy shrugged, said: “You’re sick.”

  Katsuk felt at his waist for the obsidian knife. It was gone! He stared around him, wild-eyed. His pouch with the consecrated down to place on the sacrificed body—that, too, was gone. Katsuk lurched to his feet, clutching at the boy, fell heavily beside the fire pit.

  David jumped up, then hurried to kneel beside Katsuk.

  “Knife,” Katsuk whispered.

  “Your knife? I was afraid you’d cut yourself tossing around on it. I hung the knife and your pouch in the corner back there where you put the bow and arrow.” He gestured into the shelter.

  Katsuk tried to turn his head, but his neck ached.

  David put an arm under Katsuk’s shoulders, said: “You should be in the bed. I’m heating rocks. Come on.” He helped Katsuk back to the moss between the logs, pulled the blankets over him.

  Katsuk allowed himself to be tucked into the blankets, asked: “Why do you help me? It was you who put the sickness on me.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “It is not! I know you did it. I saw you in my dream. You put it into these blankets.”

  “Those are your blankets! You took them out of that barrel!”

  “You could have changed the blankets. You hoquat have used sickness blankets on us before. You gave us the smallpox with your blankets. You killed us with hoquat sickness. Why do you do this to me?”

  “Do you want more beans or don’t you?”

  “Hoquat, I have had my death dream. I have dreamed the way it will be.”

  “That’s crazy talk.”

  “No! I have dreamed it. I will go into the sea and become a fish. You hoquat will catch me.”

  The boy shook his head, went back to the fire. He put more wood on it, felt the outsides of the rocks around the flames.

  It grew suddenly dark under the trees and began to rain. Cold wind blew up the river canyon. It drove big wet droplets before it, drummed rain into the trees and onto the mossy roof of the shelter. Water ran from the eaves and blew in across the fire. It hissed on the rocks.

  Katsuk felt a nightmare take him. He tried to scream but could make no sound. Water Baby has me! he thought. How did it learn my name?

  After what seemed only a few seconds, Katsuk awoke to find warm stones piled on the blankets around his feet. A smell of scorched wool drifted on the damp air. Rain still fell from a dark sky.

  The boy came then, replaced a stone on the blankets. He used a bent green limb of alder to handle the stone. Katsuk felt the warmth.

  “You’ve been asleep all day,” the boy said. “Are you hungry? I heated more beans.”

  Katsuk’s head felt light. His throat was a dry patch of sand. He could only nod and croak.

  The boy brought him a can of water. Katsuk drank it greedily, then permitted himself to be fed. He opened his mouth like a bird for each bite.

  “More water?”

  “Yes.” The boy brought it. Katsuk drank, fell back. “More?”

  “No.”

  Katsuk felt himself returning to the middle of his own being, but it was all wrong. It was himself where he had come into this primitive world, but pieces had been snipped way, the lines changed. If he could see his own face in a mirror, he knew it would be unfamiliar. He might reject that face. The eyes would be those of a stranger. He longed for restful sleep but felt nightmares lurking. The spirits waited with their willy-nilly purpose, unreasonable and demanding. He tipped his head back, stretching his neck. His mind rang like a bell.

  He thought: I am being overwhelmed by the spirits!

  The boy came with a can of water. Katsuk lifted his head to drink. Part of the water spilled down his chin. He lay back. The drink weighed on him, made his body torpid.

  Katsuk thought: He has poisoned me!

  The rain beat on the roof over him, a drum sound, whispering at first, then louder. He thought he heard a flute with the drum: pitiful music but marvellous. His life danced on the flute song, a summer moth, about to die.

  I have become the soul of this place, he thought. Why has Soul Catcher brought me here?

  He awoke in darkness. The silence was resonant, the silence after a drum. The rain has stopped. Faint, unrhythmic drips came from the eaves. The fire had burned low. A shadow near the fire revealed itself as the boy asleep curled up beside the warm rocks. As Katsuk stirred, the boy sat up, stared into the shelter’s darkness.

  “Katsuk?”

  “I am here.”

  “How do you feel?”

  Katsuk felt the clarity in his head. Cedar sickness had left him. He sensed his weakness, but the dry juice of his fear had been squeezed into oblivion.

  “The sickness has gone from me,” Katsuk said. “Are you thirsty?”

  “Yes.” The boy brought a can of water. Katsuk drank it, his hand steady. “More?”

  “No.”

  Katsuk sensed the multiplicity of his universe, knew the spirits remained within him. He said: “You drove the sickness from my body, Hoquat. Why?”

  “I couldn’t just leave you. You were sick.”

  “I was sick, yes.”

  “May I come in there now and sleep under the blankets?”

  “You are cold?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is warm here.” Katsuk opened the blankets.

  The boy scrambled over the logs that contained the moss bed, crawled under the blankets. Katsuk felt the thin body trembling.

  Presently, Katsuk said: “Nothing has changed, Hoquat.”

  “What?”

  “I still must create a holy obscenity.”

  “Go to sleep, Katsuk.” The boy sounded exhausted.

  “We have been gone thirteen nights,” Katsuk said.

  The boy made no response. His trembling had stilled. Soft, even breathing betrayed sleep.

  Katsuk thought: Nothing has changed. I must produce for this world a nightmare they will dream while awake.

  ***

  Sheriff Pallatt:

  They only give me thirty-five men and one helicopter to cover the whole goddamned Wilderness Area. It’s a goddamned mess. My feet hurt. Look how swollen they are! But I’m gonna find that pair. They’re in there and I’m gonna find ‘em.

  ***

  David opened his eyes into white darkness, a collision of sight. It was several heartbeats before he realised he was staring at the moon, another arc of it eaten away by Beaver. It was cold. A moon river glowed through the trees outside the shelter. The river whispered to him, reminding him of rain and silence. A mountain slowly revealed itself through the trees. It had been there all along, but now it showed itself to him: moon-drenched, awash with snow. A star mantle wound through the sky beyond the mountain.

  With sudden shock, David realised Katsuk was not beside him. “Katsuk?” he ventured, voice low. No answer. Katsuk had added more wood to the fire. Coals glowed brightly in the fire pit.

  David pulled the blankets more tightly around himself. Smoke from the fire pit blurred the moon’s pale witchery. The sky was full of stars! He recalled Katsuk saying the stars were holes in a black deerhide. Crazy Katsuk! Where was he?

  Katsuk had prayed: Net of stars, Deer and Bear in the sky—I take care for thee!

  “The moon is the eye of Kwahoutze!”

  Again, David called: “Katsuk?”

  But there was no answer to the call—only the wind in the tr
ees, the voices of the river.

  David peered into the darkness, searching. Where was Katsuk?

  In the remembered green of the night, a shadow moved. Katsuk stood beside the fire pit, flung there by his own movement.

  “I am here, Hoquat.”

  Katsuk stared into the shelter’s blackness, seeing the boy there and not seeing him. It was as though he stared at the boy’s dream and the spirit talking:

  “You are not yet ready. When you are ready, I will come for you. Pray then, and a wish will be granted you.”

  Those were the spirit’s words.

  David asked: “Where have you been?” He said it accusingly, aware of a change in Katsuk’s manner, but unable to identify that change.

  Katsuk heard the question like a voice calling within his skull and wondered: Should I tell him where I’ve been? Is that what the spirit demands of me now?

  The question disturbed Katsuk, setting up currents within him that left his mind in turmoil. He recalled how Raven had awakened him in the night, speaking from a dream that bridged the two worlds. Raven had ordered him to go downstream to the big meadow, warning him of danger there. Searchers were camped there now, a big party of them with tents and rifles and radios.

  Katsuk recalled his stalking approach to the camp. He had crawled through the tall grass to within a few yards of the searchers, close enough to hear the men awakening in the dark and preparing for their day of hunting for human quarry. Their mouths full of sleep, the men had talked. Their words had revealed much. The smoke from the fire in the abandoned shelter on Sam’s River had been seen by an aircraft searcher just before dark last night. Could Hoquat be blamed for building up that fire? Had it been a breach of innocence? Katsuk thought not. The boy had been concerned with his captor’s illness and with the need for warmth.

  With that fire as their goal, though, the men from the meadow would be here soon. Even now, they could be in the hills around the shelter, waiting for dawn before moving.

  “Where were you?” the boy pressed.

  “I’ve been walking in my forest.”

  David sensed the evasion in the answer, asked: “Will it be dawn soon?”