The Shaman and the Droll

by Jack Lasenby

  We must trust everyone and no one.

  In the harsh land of the Great White Bear, Ish the Traveller finds a rescuer and companion – the Bear Man. Through their friendship Ish discovers the Bear Man is a servant of the village people; their wise one, their healer, their Shaman.

  In this timeless, universal story Ish gains wisdom and a place. He learns the profound power of knowledge, the terrifying force of superstition, and witnesses first hand the mysteries of the human spirit. But in this land of blinding light there lurks a dark, menacing presence threatening all who may offend her.

  Here is the third title in the award-winning Travellers series by master story-teller Jack Lasenby. Because We Were the Travellers is the first, and Taur, winner of the 1999 NZ Post Children’s Book Award, is the second. Larger than life, The Shaman and the Droll is an extraordinary tale.

  THE AUTHOR

  Jack Lasenby is one of New Zealand’s foremost writers. His novels for children and teenagers have won several major awards, including the Esther Glen Medal, the AIM and NZ Post Children’s Book Awards. He is well known for the delightful Uncle Trev and Harry Wakatipu stories as well as his popular Seddon Street Gang series.

  The Shaman

  and the Droll

  Jack Lasenby

  Everyone sees a Shaman die and a Shaman given wisdom. Arku

  Contents

  Title Page

  Maps

  Dedication

  I Grave Mountain

  II “Got Him!”

  III “Why Do You Cry, Boy?”

  IV What Is a Salt Man?

  V The Island that Sank

  VI A String of Meat

  VII Under the Mountain

  VIII Nothing To Be Afraid Of

  IX Strange Shelter

  X “You Took Your Time.”

  XI The House of Meat

  XII One Lap of Water

  XIII The Bear Man’s Secret

  XIV How Big is the World?

  XV The Pleasure Gardens of Amity

  XVI The Sound of Bells

  XVII Risk and Responsibility

  XVIII The Wolf-Wife

  XIX The Taste of Coal-Dust

  XX The Library

  XXI Sledging With Arku

  XXII Starvation and Laughter

  XXIII The Carny

  XXIV The Clock

  XXV The Droll’s Gift

  XXVI “Ours is Best!”

  XXVII To be a Judge

  XXVIII “We Must Trust Everyone and No One.”

  XXIX “I Told You So!”

  XXX After the Hot Wires

  XXXI “There Must Be a Sacrifice.”

  XXXII The Droll’s Tunnel

  XXXIII The Sacrifice

  XXXIV Under Grave Mountain

  The author

  Also by Jack Lasenby

  Copyright

  A Note

  The Shaman and the Droll is the third book about Ish the Traveller.

  In the beginning, Ish is driven out by his nomadic group, the Travellers. He survives the desert of the Whykatto and the malignant sun with the help of another outcast. Old Hagar teaches him her stories, the skills for survival, and dies. Ish falls in love with Tara, of the Metal People. She is killed. Ish escapes, hunted by her killers, the Salt Men.

  He and a new friend, Taur the Bull Man, flee down the North Land, and cross to the South Land. Still hunted down the Western Coast, they are almost betrayed, but escape into the mountains. Amongst the peaks, Taur gives his own life to save Ish.

  Ish and his dog, Jak, cross the mountain pass and look down on a blue plain, a hidden land of promise. Descending, they find the plain is a long lake, and they begin their search for people and a place to live.

  For E.R.R.

  Chapter 1

  Grave Mountain

  East beyond the foot of the lake loomed a vast, snow-speckled mound of a mountain, its long crest licked white. Above it an unmoving wall of black cloud reared up the sky. Somewhere along the mountain’s rounded back, a grey haze lifted. “Salt Men?” I shuddered. Jak snarled.

  “It’s not one of their signals.” Jak looked guilty, as if he’d suggested it himself. “It’s a volcano. That mountain in the shape of a grave.”

  Jak barked and leapt down the beach, wanting to start at once.

  “You’ll have to wait till I finish the raft.” I snubbed the flax rope around the log again, pulled it tight. “We could do with an axe. A notch would stop it slipping.”

  We shoved off that evening. I took a couple of roasted ducks wrapped in green leaves. There were trout in the lake. I had woven a sail of flax, but the south wind would blow us across the lake, against the cliffs that side.

  “This’ll take longer, but we’ll get there.”

  Water bulged over the front of the raft, spilt between the logs. Jak lifted his feet, looked at me. I tried to grin. Another shove on the pole. Edging from bay to bay along the shallow southern side. Sliding past branches growing into their still reflections. A stream tumbled over itself, steaming, bubbling into the lake. A flood-dumped boulder like a giant waist-deep in a shingle-fan.

  “What do you smell?”

  Jak’s ears pricked, swivelled toward the beach. We ran the raft ashore, crawled through scrub. On a clearing a torrent of wild dogs dragged down a staggered deer. Among the pack was a red-coated bitch in milk. I dropped a hand on Jak’s neck, wriggled backwards.

  With a rock, we anchored out in the bay. The wind carried our scent away north. Later, Jak whined. Up the hill, something red trotted across an open patch and under a grey outcrop. We were still watching, two mornings later, when the cries of the pack rang again. Something red ran from the outcrop to be in at the kill.

  “Come on!” Jak squirmed silent but desperate to bark. The pups were almost weaned. I grabbed up the most promising, stuffed it into my pack, yelping, biting, scrabbling.

  I called this little bitch Nip. As she growled at a deer shank, I told her, “You have a famous name.” She soon learned it. And she learned about water, too. Being a pup she also forgot and, despite Jak’s quickness, had to be pulled back on board. After several days, we landed the raft often so she could romp the beaches.

  “There must be goats and sheep here, with all the grass on the clearings. “Nip can help you catch some young ones,” I promised Jak. “We’ll soon tame them.”

  Jak put up with Nip’s puppy attacks on his tail, her needle teeth. She grew fat, galloping roly-poly when we landed, dropping exhausted, sleeping as we coasted down the lake. I had seen Jak wonder in his dog’s way where was Jess, his sister, after the Salt Men killed her. It was good for us both to have Nip.

  All my life the sun had been a murderer that killed people and made deserts. It was not always an enemy, according to the stories Old Hagar used to tell. And in this central country behind the mountains of the South Land, its demon fire was tamed by a veil of cloud above the peaks. This was an amiable sun that let us travel through the midday hours. My skin did not grill. Jak’s nose and ears did not char. I forgot my flax hat.

  We got used to the haze of smoke along the top of Grave Mountain. One morning there was more, this time below the mountain, at the foot of the lake. It flattened and spread blue as if from cooking fires. We poled from behind one headland to another, until at last I saw dots moving on a green island. Jak sniffed the air.

  “People!” I whispered. Nip yapped. “Shut up!” Jak bunted her over. She squealed and ran behind my pack, peeping, wagging her tail. Learning, I supposed. How serious she looked, cocking her head, forehead furrowed, beginning to understand we were on our guard.

  Looking ahead, fearful yet curious about whoever it was at the foot of the lake, I laughed. A strange sound. I tried it a
gain. Jak and Nip stared. “If there are people, it might be best if they see we aren’t trying to hide.” I let the raft drift on to the open lake.

  Jak answered with a friendly growl. Nip a yap. Other than me she’d never seen people.

  “I’ll tell them our names: Ish, Jak, and Nip. That we’re the Travellers.” I paddled to where I could touch bottom again with the pole.

  “I want to talk to people. I am Ish, the Traveller, but I’m lonely.” My face in the water stared back, haggard. Was I real or some hollow form of the image there? Without heart, blood, feeling. For I could not understand how my friend, Taur the Bull Man, had died and left us. When I looked up, the black wall of cloud above the grave-shaped mountain had not moved. Hiding the foot of the lake, the blue smoke lay low.

  Chapter 2

  “Got Him!”

  “Children!” On a grassy island: running, chasing, sitting, throwing and hitting a ball with a stick. Jak’s tail thumped. Nip dived and fastened her teeth. Jak growled and snapped so she yelped and scurried behind my pack.

  A breeze pleated the lake. Fascinated by the children, I let the raft drift. The wind carried us out where we were seen. High-pitched shrieks from the island.

  Something metal being struck, ringing, ringing. The children tumbled screaming into a craft and paddled towards the blue smoke which lifted and revealed another island. Thatched roofs peeping over a palisade. A stone tower. Smoke swirling.

  I paddled towards the village, but the raft veered this way and that. The children scrambled ashore. Another noise drowned their screams and the metallic ringing: Tock! Tock! Tock! Drumming.

  I lay down the pole. Held up both hands. Smiled. The noise grew even louder. Through the smoke I could see the villagers rattling spears against the palisade. I took up the pole to paddle closer, and a spear hissed into the water. Arrows sprinkled closer. A painful hiccup came from my throat.

  I felt for the bottom, poled around the southern end of the island village, smiling, waving, but the drumming rolled across the water. More arrows tossed white splashes. Holding up my hands to show we came in peace, I let the raft drift between island and shore. The hubbub increased. There must have been a hundred. More people than I had ever seen. Howling fear at three of us!

  “It’s a Salt Man!”

  “I am not a Salt Man!”

  “Hear him?”

  “The Salt Men are my enemies.”

  “He says he’s a Salt Man!”

  I should have laughed, but felt hurt. “I am not a Salt Man!” Again I lifted both hands in the air.

  “Oh! Oh! The Salt Man is going to kill us!”

  A current carried the raft down the channel. I paddled into slack water at the bottom of the island and up its outer side. “Help us!”

  “Listen to him bellow.”

  “He’s threatening us.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “Please help!” I heard the pain in my own voice.

  “Look how angry he is.”

  “See how he shakes his spear.”

  “It’s not a spear.” I waved the pole to show what it was.

  They screamed even louder. “The Salt Man is angry!”

  Despairing I lifted my eyes to the column of stone at the centre of the island. It reminded me of the Guardians in the mountain pass. Stone figures with holes through their heads

  “These people have got stone heads, too,” I told Jak and Nip. I paddled out of reach of their arrows.

  Rounding the top of the island again, the raft blew down the channel a second time. I gulped tears, but was determined I wouldn’t cry. Suddenly the villagers crowded through a gap in the palisade, beckoning, calling. Girls at the front, voices crying welcome. I gaped. Their breasts bare, the girls swayed and danced together, raising and lowering handfuls of green leaves. Sweet voices, naked breasts: I could hear and see nothing else.

  Shouting, waving to show I came in peace, the raft moving fast now with the pull of the current, I shoved hard. There was no bottom. The pole went under. I followed it and fell in.

  Spluttering to the surface. A clattering howl. Drumming their spears again, shrieking laughter. Jak leapt in, seized the pole. I swam for the raft which seemed to draw itself away. Kicking hard. Caught up. Reached out, touched – just. My fingernails drove into the sodden wood. I hung, getting my breath. Jak still struggling to rescue the pole.

  I swam after with the long rope. Seized Jak and the pole with one hand. Pulled toward the raft with the other. Got my breath and scrambled aboard. Jak splashed and pawed. I dragged him on. Then the pole. Nip licked us, whimpered.

  Mockery of laughter from the island, and a single voice clear and cold: “Got him!”

  I had fallen for their ruse. The island behind us now, we drifted fast. Paddling with the pole useless. Behind us came cheering and the wooden clatter again as the entrance to a river, the lake’s outlet, took us down its maw. Somewhere the roar of smashing water. The raft spun.

  Sweating, grunting, I managed to reach the bottom, get the raft at an angle to the current, shove towards the bank. Those people had encouraged me into danger. Putting the bare-breasted girls to the front to beckon and sing me into trouble. They knew the river’s secret grip.

  “Think of what you’re doing!” We were almost there when a current curled invisible off a submerged bank. A huge underwater fist, it punched the pole aside, sheered the raft back into mid-stream.

  Ahead were cliffs, a gorge, smashing waves. The only hope a white-stoned island above the rapids. Jak and I might swim to it, but Nip would go down the gorge with the raft.

  Ridiculous to survive the chasm in the mountains where Taur and Jess lay dead, only to die here. “Come on, Jak!” I swung up Nip to stuff her down the front of my tunic, and a voice said, “Give me the pup, idiot!”

  Still bending forward, I looked up into the eyes of a girl in a canoe. A paddle across her knees. Even then I noticed their rounded smoothness, silky brown.

  “Haven’t you learned your lesson? Give me the pup! Now your gear. Quick! Now the animal.”

  The river bellowed.

  “Jak!” I pointed, and he leapt.

  “Sit!”

  “One foot in the middle. Keep your behind down, clumsy!” She grabbed her paddle. The raft heaved away. So close to the rapids, we could still get dragged under.

  There was a spare paddle. We fought out of the river’s grasp. It weakened, clutched, weakened again. As we drove through the rip at the entry, I glanced back, saw the raft toss and disappear between cliffs of white water. “Paddle!” shouted the girl, then we were around the point, in a calm.

  “Thank you! You saved us!” The girl just paddled on toward the village on the island. People ran and clustered behind the palisade, pointing, grabbing children, disappearing. More shrieking. Then they were coming out of hiding. The air filling with voices. So many faces looking down at us, my skin felt raked by eyes. Jak leaned against my legs and shivered. A squeak from Nip, a nudge.

  “Let me see!”

  “Who is he?”

  “Trust Lutha!”

  “What’s Lutha done now? Let me see!”

  “Lutha saved the Salt Man!”

  “Why?”

  “He’s thin!”

  “Why did Lutha save the Salt Man?”

  “The big dog – he’s thin, too!”

  “Why do they look so thin?”

  “Look at his tunic!”

  “That’s what you call cloth.”

  “I’ve never seen cloth…”

  “Let me see!”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “Look! Look! Look at the little pup!”

  “Let me see!”

  “Lutha’s got two dogs!”

  “Why can’t we have a pup?”

  “What have you got there, Lutha?”

  “Why did you save the Salt Man, Lutha?”

  My tunic and pack were woven, voices kept saying. These people wore deerskin tunics, clumsy, heavy
.

  There was an odour upon the air, herbal, sickly. Many of these people, adults and children alike, had leaves rolled round like short sticks in their mouths. Burning sticks. They took them from between their lips and blew out smoke.

  Nip disappeared among yelling children. People crowded so Jak pressed against me, snarling, ears back. Some of them carried spears. Others bows and arrows at the ready. These were the people who had been afraid of us: one man, a dog, and a pup. They had hoped to see us drown. Now they were curious. They put the rolled leaves to their mouths, sucked so the ends glowed, and blew out smoke. Its sweet smell made me feel sick.

  “We used to have dogs,” said an old voice, “until they died of the sun disease. Their noses and ears burned and turned into sores.”

  “That was before we moved to the lake,” another old voice said. “I remember my mother saying.”

  “My thanks,” I said again to the girl, Lutha. She was stowing the paddles.

  “What was the idea? You could have drowned the dogs!” She didn’t straighten up nor turn and look at me.

  There was a roar of laughter. “That Lutha! She’s fixing him!”

  “She saved him. Now she’s telling him off.”

  “If you don’t know how to look after a raft, you should keep off the lake.” The girl spat the words over her shoulder.

  She climbed out. Something moved under my feet so I felt dizzy. The canoe rose and fell as if the island itself had stirred. Over everything hung that smell, sweet yet rank. When I looked about for her, the girl had disappeared. And I realised all the grown-ups were women. Not one man.

  Chapter 3

  “Why Do You Cry, Boy?”

  Older women brandishing spears, arrows nocked on bowstrings. Eyes, sharp with hate, watched me for a false move. As ready for violence as our old enemies, Squint-face and his Salt Men. Why had Lutha risked her life rescuing me? To hand me over to these maniacs? No use telling their stone faces I came in peace.