The Shaman and the Droll

by Jack Lasenby

  “Thank you, Lutha.”

  “Goodbye, Traveller!” Her hand, her lips touched mine. She hugged me, said another word: “Ish!” and I was sure she said something else. It sounded like, “Boy!” A chuckle, and her canoe disappeared into the dark and rush of the river.

  In the little light of the stars, the Island of Bones shone. Large white rocks, smooth as if polished. Like great skulls. I felt what Lutha had torn from her tunic. A braided cord. Very strong. I tied one end around Nip’s neck, a knot Hagar had taught me, that wouldn’t slip and strangle. The other end to my belt.

  I waded deep, Jak behind, Nip yelping, paddling with frantic paws, head high.

  “Come on!” I threw myself into the surly river. Nip’s cord tugged my belt. Jak was already swimming.

  Chapter 5

  The Island that Sank

  The warrior-women of the Floating Village didn’t know much about rivers. It was hopeless fighting against this one, but Jak and I had crossed worse. I turned, as I knew he would, took the current on my side, used it to shoot me towards the far bank.

  Nip squeaked and swallowed water.

  “Hold your breath!” It sounded stupid, but there was nothing I could do till we got ashore. A darkness more solid than the bank heaved above as I kicked with both feet, lunged forward, and my head smashed in lights and pain.

  I woke to feel something warm and soft stroking my face. “Lutha?” I murmured and opened my eyes. Spraddled astride me, Jak dragged at my tunic, dropping my head on a rock clear of the water, licking my face again.

  Despite my painful skull, I grinned. That girl would have been angry to know what I had thought. I got one arm around Jak’s shoulder, pulled myself on to hands and knees. Nip vomited water as I lifted her. She gulped, brought up more, whined querulous.

  “Shh!” She was quiet. I was grateful she had learned that much already.

  “Good dog, Jak,” I whispered, head throbbing. “Watch out for Salt Men.”

  There was a low-shrugged shadow above. Dizzy, ears ringing, I concentrated. Put together the meaning of that shadow: trees growing about a clearing, and a rock outcrop above. I picked up Nip, wobbled after Jak to the brow of the outcrop, and slumped behind a wall of stone.

  The sickness in my stomach went. Nip vomited more water and cried.

  “Next time you’ll know not to swallow half the river. Keep your mouth closed.” She burrowed shivering into my side.

  Somewhere off in that direction was the Island of Bones. Downstream the rapids where I had last seen our raft smashing. A small wind moved off the clearing. Jak would scent any one from that direction. The stone was still warm from the day’s sun. Exhausted, head sore, I slept.

  Jak’s shaking woke me. A growl rumbling low. I laid my hand on him. Nip watched and copied his silence. I rested my other hand on her.

  A voice in the dark below: “We cross here.”

  “Can’t we find somewhere better? What about further down?”

  “I thought I told you. Below the rapids it’s even faster. Then it goes under the mountain. We cross here.”

  The men must be standing on the clearing below us. Reflecting off the stone face, their words carried clear.

  “Why don’t we go further up the lake, make a raft and come down on them at night?”

  “Why don’t you clean out your lug-holes? We cross here, make a raft on the beach, and attack the island.”

  “Mump’s right,” said a third voice. “Let’s get going.”

  “Even if we catch some women, how are we going to bring them back?”

  “I told you before. In their own canoes.”

  “Mump’s right.”

  Jak shivered against my hand. I pressed him down.

  “Yes, but how are we going to cross here?”

  “Trust Mump,” said the third voice.

  “Swim it! We did it before. And got off with three that time.”

  “And they caught Turak. Flayed him alive. His brother saw them.”

  They must be Salt Men about to attack the Floating Village, but what could I do to stop them? Besides, those women tried to kill me.

  I remembered Lutha saying the river would rise next morning, and I would be swept away, drowned with the dogs. We owed her our lives.

  “Shin up and have a look from on top,” said Mump’s voice. I took the knife from around my neck. I did not want to kill them, but I would – to save my own life, Jak’s, Nip’s. To give in is to invite destruction: I had learned that. Hard against the stone wall, I flattened, lips snarled back, knife ready.

  “Too dark to see anything.”

  Mump grunted. “We’ll get out to the little island first. Rest there, then swim to the other side.”

  “What island?” asked the doubting voice.

  “How many times do I have to tell you? There’s an island straight out from here. When the light comes up, we cross the other half of the river. It’s wider, but we’ll be able to see what we’re doing. We managed it last time; we’ll do it again. Come on.”

  “I want to see if I can spot the island from up here.”

  I waited, knife ready to slash out the doubting man’s throat and take on the next one.

  “How would you like my spear through your guts?” Mump had had enough. “If you want to run this party, say so now, and we’ll have it out. Or shut up.”

  The doubter mumbled something. By his voice, he was too weak to challenge Mump. I waited, listened. A splash. Another. Several.

  They were swimming. Once I heard a voice calling for help. Mump had made sure the doubter didn’t reach the island.

  “How did Lutha rescue us from the raft?” I asked Jak and Nip. “She could have been carried down the river under the mountain. And she took the same risk again last night.” The light strengthened. There was movement on the island which we could see clearly now. I counted about ten Salt Men.

  “We’ve got to warn Lutha.”

  The Salt Men would wait for dark to build a raft and attack the Floating Village. There’d be time for us to cross and warn the sentries.

  The Salt Men were not moving yet. “Why are they waiting?”

  Jak’s ears pricked. The river now made a different sound, a hollow thunder. It ran faster but smooth, a glassy threat. Below us, the rock I’d run my head upon had vanished.

  “Nonsense!” I told Jak and Nip. “How could anyone make a river rise?”

  In the dawn-light on the far bank a frieze of figures stood, each armed with spear or bow. The warriors of the Floating Village, come to see us drowned. Too far to hear their voices. They pranced, I could see that.

  For above the thundering pour of the river came the shrieks of the Salt Men fighting on the Island of Bones. One by one the white boulders submerged. One by one the figures on the island were plucked away. Two struggled. One fell. I wondered if the last was called Mump. The island sank, and he disappeared.

  For a horrid moment, I thought some magic had made the island vanish. I shook my head. Perhaps I was still suffering from last night’s knock.

  On the far bank, the women shook their weapons. I imagined I heard a fiend’s cry, but they were too far away. They vanished, confirmed in their idea I was a Salt Man. I turned away, stopped, and swung back. On the far bank stood a single figure. I stood and waved, yelled, and Jak barked.

  Lutha must think she had been wrong to give me a chance. That I was a Salt Man after all. I leapt on the very top of the outcrop and waved. Jak and Nip beside me. A pause. She waved! Did she understand it was us? That I was not a Salt Man after all? I dropped against the stone as another figure appeared across the river, and another. Two women returning to fetch Lutha. Looking across to see where she was waving. As long as we didn’t move, they could not make us out.

  They disappeared at last. “At least Lutha knows we weren’t with the Salt Men,” I said.

  We needed a spear. Bow. Arrows. Find some straight-growing saplings. Goats or sheep: I could make a pack from their skins, but it would
be best to weave one from their wool and hair. A bow-drill for fire. A cooking pot of clay. The first thing, though, was to find food. The Salt Men would have scared away any animals.

  I backtracked them: turned-over stones and twigs, disturbed leaves and grass, even footprints: their careless record. They had come down the valley from the north. West lay the mountains surrounding the lake. I looked east, at Grave Mountain. The drift of smoke leaned from its summit. The black cloud immense above it, a wall that cut off the sky.

  “It’s just a volcano! We’ll see what’s further down the river.” Mump, the Salt Man, had talked of how it disappeared down a hole. I had to see this for myself, so we headed downstream, looking about for anything to eat.

  Chapter 6

  A String of Meat

  Jak found a warren and soon caught enough rabbits to feed us all. I watched and thought of a small boy killing a rabbit with a stone from his sling in the hills west of the Whykatto, far to the north.

  The dogs ate their rabbits raw. I wanted mine cooked. Taur’s flint and steel lighting set was in my pack on the Floating Village.

  While the dogs growled over their meat, I unbraided enough of Lutha’s cord to give me three lengths of fine string. Two would make snares to strangle rabbits while we slept. Like that small boy years before, I made a fire drill with the third. A short switch bent like a bow. The string looped around a drill of iron-hard scrub wood. A hollowed piece of stone to sit on top of the drill and press its sharp end on to a piece of dry wood. I knelt, pressed, drew the bow back and forth. The drill spun. A collar of dust built around its tip. I held my breath.

  Faster I work the bow. A curling drift of haze, less a drift than an idea. The tip of the drill glows. A fine red spreads into the cone of dust and tinder. A tendril, blue, screwing up. A twist, a perfect coil of smoke. The gentlest puff: the dwarf pile alight. Gulp fresh air, drop the bow, feed the lick of flame a few tiny shavings, splinters. Bigger bits. A leaping fire. The rabbit spitted on a stake.

  It takes little time to grill a rabbit. I ate greedy, sucked the bones. Jak and Nip growled over another carcass while I rigged the snares. I did not want their scent near the sets.

  Three days we continued down the river. Rabbits, hares, deer tracks, signs of goats – pellets, tracks, wisps of hair on scrub. I made a heavy spear with a fire-hardened tip, chose a springy sapling for a bow. Spent one whole day making five arrows with stone tips polished sharp.

  Grave Mountain heaved its bulk to stop us. North, high on its face, something moved. A waterfall. But no stream descended the mountain wall below it. The moving curtain of white water seemed to vanish back into solid rock.

  Even more astonishing, the river piled against the foot of the mountain and vanished. I climbed the smooth bluff, but saw only a fold in the cliff where a few shrubs perched and branched above the river’s curve and disappearance.

  I did see goats! Meat, skins, hair for weaving. Kids for taming. They would travel with us while we explored the country east beyond Grave Mountain.

  I ate green leaves from a plant I recognised, roots, and bulbs. Summer coming towards its end, the berries were ripening on konny trees in a dark gully. I managed to spear one of the great silver fish. Under a tilt of rock I built up a wall of stones. A fern bed. A rough table of branches. A driftwood block for a stool. But I knew we could not settle here. “We are Travellers,” I reminded Jak and Nip. “Besides, those are Salt Men’s old smoke stains.” I nodded at the back wall of the cave.

  Across the river, richer grass sprang between groves of trees. Deer grazed and lay out in the open through the middle of the day, a sure sign they were not hunted.

  “We’ll get across somehow. Make a tent of deer skins. A new tunic. Cloak. I’d like a feed of deer meat. They’ll be fat – autumn and all that grass. Maybe we’ll find an easy way across Grave Mountain.” I thought for a moment. “That’s stupid, calling it that. It only makes you more scared of it.” Jak and Nip stared. “I’m growling at myself, not you.”

  Busy thinking of how to cross the river, I began to forget my need for other people. Every now and again, though, I would remember the dead. Then I would think of Lutha and be thankful. We owed her much, I told Jak and Nip.

  “Some day we’ll go back to the Floating Village. With presents of woven cloth and food and pots. I can make them. Put the presents on a little raft and anchor it near the island. We won’t get caught by the current this time. Paddle away and let the women collect it. They’ll learn we’re friendly.”

  Nip’s coat grew deep brown – almost red. One sharp morning she sniffed along a rabbit scent on her own. Jak’s lop-sided face, black and white, seemed to grin. “Old scent?” I asked him. If it was fresh, he’d be wanting to follow it, too, and I’d have to call him back because we were going to gather konny berries. I went to whistle Nip, but my lips wouldn’t purse because I was still grinning, and just then Jak growled.

  I followed his eyes. Nip was casting about on her old rabbit scent and, watching her, fascinated, a huge figure rose from its haunches till it towered like the statue, Hekkat. Great head, stub ears, hairy coat of a darker brown than Nip’s. She trotted towards its feet. For a moment I saw Jak, again, trotting up to the huge feet of one of the Guardians and pissing on them.

  “Nip!”

  The bear let go of a konny branch so berries flew. Its body heaved as if the skin stayed still and only the muscles inside it shifted. A half-bark, half-grunt, and it poured itself uphill, great haunches surging, thrusting it up between the konny trees. Frightening speed.

  Crash! Branches smashed. The bear gone. A rank smell on the air. Nip yelping, peering out from behind Jak and me. Terrified. As I was, too. If it came for me, I could not escape it. And if it could go uphill so fast, what about downhill?

  My wooden spear, arrows – splinters against that huge body. I thought of the bright, considering eye turned at my whistle. The “whoof” as it took off. The iron hooks that let go the branch.

  “We’re not picking berries here. It can have them all.”

  After that I looked for bear sign wherever we went, tracks, large droppings of dung, wisps of hair on branches and rocks. Scratching on trunks. Those powerful arms and legs could knock down our stone shelter. Why hadn’t I asked Lutha if bears could climb trees? Frightened at the thought, I picked up a piece of charcoal and drew a head on the stone wall, between a man’s and a dog’s, eyes glinting, intelligent.

  Out hunting, I saw other signs of people. A goat skeleton, an arrowhead wedged in a shoulder-blade. A dried-up carcass jammed in the crotch of a tree. People had been here, would be again. We must cross the river, but how? I knew we could make it back to the Island of Bones, but the channel from there to the other side was much wider. Jak would be all right, but Nip couldn’t swim that far. And I didn’t want to have to make a new spear, bow and arrows. There must be bears on that side as well.

  In the back of my mind was the picture of the river engulfing the Salt Men on the Island of Bones. I drove stakes into the river to measure its rise and fall. It did go up and down, little changes, but none like the hoist of water that drowned the Salt Men.

  “Tomorrow we’ll start hunting for goats,” I told Jak and Nip.

  It was several days before I saw them anywhere but on the bluffs. They could outclimb me long before I got close enough to use my bow. Even if I shot one, it would probably fall into the river.

  Avoiding the konny gullies, we followed Jak up a baresided valley to a little peak. I soon spotted goats, plenty of them.

  “I’ll climb around the back of that face, and you can disturb them,” I told Jak. “They’ll take to the rock. And I’ll be waiting above. Tonight we’ll eat goat meat!”

  As if he understood my words, ever so slowly Jak moved the goats up on to the rocky face where they stood and looked down – insolent – at the dogs toiling below. By then I was in position. I picked out three young goats in good condition. The first – an arrow through its chest – slid and t
umbled. The other two died on the rocky face itself. I bled and gutted them, leaving the skins on to protect the meat as I brought it down. The skin was ruined on the one that fell. And because it had not been bled, the meat was bruised, not worth eating.

  The dogs were pleased to have a change. I roasted a leg in front of the fire that night, stabbing holes and poking in strips of fat to keep it from drying out. The rest of the meat, I sliced and threaded on a string of flax to dry. I put away the wooden needle, slung the long string of meat up on a branch. As it swung from my hand, I saw how we could cross the river!

  Chapter 7

  Under the Mountain

  The string of meat slices swung up from my hand and caught on the stub of a broken branch. I flicked it off and swung it again. And each time saw how we might cross the river!

  There was plenty of scrub and trees, but we had no axe. If there had been any logs, the flood had swept them away. Wondering how we might build a raft, I skinned a rabbit. For some reason I remembered how Taur did it, making only two cuts. Sleeve-skinning, he called it. He once stuck in a hollow straw, sewed the cuts tight, and blew up the skin. Squirting out the air with a dreadful squeak he chased Jak and Jess. Barking, shouting, snapping, all three.

  I took some bits of rabbitskin, and made a ball of them, sewing them inside a larger piece, Nip chased and rolled and snapped at it. Her needle teeth tore it open, and the ball fell to bits. A strip of rabbitskin dangling from her jaws, Nip looked at me. “I’ll make you another,” I laughed, and had my second idea.

  That evening, I split some goat bones. Most of the time, they broke in the wrong places, but there were several fine, long splinters. I had to wait for daylight before I could finish drilling eyes in three of them.

  I also split some hard scrub wood and made needles of the slivers. Eyes were even harder to make in the wood, and I succeeded only with two. Beside the great, rough needle I had used for sewing Nip’s ball, they were fine and sharp.