The Shaman and the Droll

by Jack Lasenby

  “Thank you, Ish. I… ” Taka’s words faded unfinished. While we scrubbed our hands, he slept again.

  Now, he woke refreshed, beaming. A woman knelt over him, two children with her. She laid her face beside his. The Shaman nodded, and I showed her the strapped ribs, splinted leg, bandaged wounds.

  “The fever has gone,” I said.

  The woman smiled and touched my hand. “Cheka,” she spoke her name. “I am grateful, Ish.”

  “Welcome,” the Shaman’s great voice echoed in the cave. “Welcome.”

  “Ah!” said the Seal People. The hot smell of their bodies and furs thickened the air. I stood beside the Shaman.

  “This is Ish who was sent to learn all my arts. Everything I know I will teach Ish so through him the Shaman will live.”

  “The Shaman will live!”

  Bright-eyed babies. Red-cheeked children. Young women, some beautiful. Old faces, folded and lined. As they pressed their right palms against mine, they said their names, and I wondered if they knew I had seen their round faces on the Guardians. Some looked nervous, glanced down. Others stared at me, curious. One or two seemed threatening. I wondered how I looked to them, tried to smile.

  Cheka’s smile was real, spread over her round face as she pushed forward her children. “Takaiti,” said the boy, “Chekaiti,” the girl. They touched my hand, and Chekaiti giggled and bobbed so the firelight gleamed on blue beads in her black hair.

  Seated, they filled the cave, the light throwing up their shadows against the walls. The children pointed at Nip and chattered. They would have liked to play with her, but the Shaman shook his head. I wondered at his power, the awe of the Seal People.

  Two men helped us swing down the first pot of meat. With long forks, the Shaman and I lifted out the joints, cut them in big chunks, and passed them around. Even the smallest children drew knives from their belts. I watched a round little boy take a great bite of meat, slice it off close to his lips, and pass the chunk on. He gobbled fast, stuffing in lumps of fat. Beaming. Another piece came his way, and he was already putting his knife and teeth to it before he had finished swallowing the last. He laughed, eyes almost disappearing, and I laughed back at such delight and fished him out a hunk of fatty meat as big as his head.

  Later the Shaman told me, “Meat alone is no use. The fat burns the meat, keeps the Seal People warm. Without fat they would starve and freeze. The same with the dogs. They cannot live on the fish alone, not unless it is very oily.”

  As the first pot was emptied, the Shaman and I carried in more meat and frozen fish. The liquor in which the meat had cooked, people dipped out and drank. The pot refilled. The fire rebuilt. Bones flung out for the sledge dogs. Another pot being emptied. When they tired, the Seal People rolled over where they sat and slept on furs.

  Three days and nights the feasting went on until the store chamber I had thought so full was emptied. Enough to feed a village all winter? The Seal People had devoured it in one enormous feast! The last morning somebody stirred. Chattering, a laugh here, a belch there, a guffaw as, farting cheerfully, they woke and went back to their snow houses. Kala went with them, led by his two children and accompanied by a woman. I washed my hands and checked the sick man, Taka.

  We visited each house in turn. The Shaman examined the children, and I helped him. Once he told me to look over a sick girl. I could see nothing wrong but tried feeling her skinny chest and back as he had done, running my fingertips over her flesh, finding a hardness in her stomach. I put my nose to her skin and thought it smelled sour. I closed my eyes, put my ear to her chest and listened, heard her heart beat. I listened to her stomach, listened with my eyes closed, and heard something, not the ordinary gurgles. An odd sound, I said.

  The Shaman’s face was turned towards me as if he watched. “Good,” he murmured. I had done something right, I thought. He felt and listened to the girl’s little belly himself, smelled her skin.

  “There is a rash on the skin there,” he said. “You cannot see it, but you can feel it with your fingertips. Her skin smells sour. You noticed that. She is too hot, her breath foul. Something wrong in her belly, that hardness.

  “The square pot on the shelf second from the bottom. Take three seeds from it. Crush and steep them in hot water, and let her drink it. Tomorrow the same. The day after we will look at her again.”

  I remember that little girl, not because we made her better, but because I had learned from the Shaman the importance of touch and smell in discovering illness. I had even learned the importance of closing my eyes and listening, smelling with my eyes closed. I wanted to learn everything the Shaman had to teach me.

  Each night we spent squashed in another snow house, eating huge feasts of more meat – seal, bear, and whale – boiled over lamps of seal oil, like the ones I had found in the cave. All brought on their sledges by the Seal People. Old whale skin with the blubber still attached was offered as a delicacy. It was chewy and tasted like cheese gone mouldy. At first I could not eat it, but kept trying, nibbling a bit now and then. It became my favourite.

  In between feasting and sleeping, we finished examining all the people, dressing wounds and sores, cleaning eyes. With a two-handled tool, something like the little shears the Metal People made for Hagar to cut wool, the Shaman pulled out a rotten tooth. “Pliers,” he said the tool was called. The jaws of it fastened on the tooth. He levered, pulled, and the tooth rose from the gum. The man whose tooth it was spat blood and pus and laughed.

  “These people don’t feel much pain,” the Shaman said later. “They cannot afford to, so they ignore it.

  “That tooth was broken and went rotten. It would have come out anyway, but you avoid pulling teeth, if you can. With no teeth, these people must die.”

  He showed me how to treat sores with different salves, told me what they were made of. He described the plants whose leaves and seeds he dried and ground to make powders for treating rashes. He inspected the women who were pregnant, asked questions, felt their rounded bellies. Put his ear to them and laughed. “A healthy child!” he said each time, and the women laughed.

  The little girl with the hardness in her belly was trying to play with the other children when next we looked at her. She ran after them, but they were too fast. She caught up, but they ran on again, after a ball they were throwing. They ran back, and the little girl joined them. Then she was left behind again. The Shaman gave her mother a tiny leather bag with the seeds inside it, taught her how to crush and steep them. “They will relieve the pain,” he said. “Next time I come to your village, I will look at her again.”

  “Is she going to get better?” asked the mother.

  I watched the Shaman thinking, choosing his words. Without saying the girl would die, he warned the mother to prepare herself. “What you can do is to relieve the pain. Above all, you will comfort her. And we will be there to help you.”

  For a moment, I thought the woman would cry. There was just the slightest movement of her chin, as if it wobbled. A slackening of the mouth. Then a strength came into her face. “And if the seeds do not relieve the pain?”

  “Then instead of three, give her four, and then five, and then six. But send for me, and I will come to help.”

  I wondered how he had done it. The woman knew her child was going to die, I could see that. But she had been made strong enough to support it. This as well was the healer’s work.

  “By this time next year,” the Shaman said later, “the child will die. But her mother will comfort her, and we will comfort the mother.” And he directed me to another covered pot, this one on a shelf of its own. So high, I had to stand on a stool.

  “When the other seeds no longer stop the pain. When there is nothing else we can do.” He stared into the darkness. “That will be the time for the Dark Seeds, Ish.”

  I undid the cord that held the cover on the pot. Inside was a soft leather bag. I undid its drawstring. Saw dark seeds and leaves, dried and broken. I sniffed their dry earthen smell an
d felt dizzy. Where had I seen them before?

  “Close the bag tight, Ish. Cover the pot. Put them back. They are to be used only when all else fails.”

  “I have seen them before,” I said, remembering Old Hagar’s death. “The Travellers called them the Dark Shrub.”

  “Then you know their power,” said the Shaman. “When the time comes to use the Dark Seeds, I am the one who will give them to the child. So no blame falls upon the mother, so she feels no guilt. The responsibility is too much for most people. That is why I am their Shaman.”

  Responsibility, I thought. I busied myself, getting to know which pot of salve to fetch, which herbs to mix and heat with water, which seeds to grind. I was learning the words that help. Sometimes people got better just because they believed in the Shaman. Often he did little more than lay his hands upon a sore back, an aching leg, and the sufferer felt better. One day as I watched him bandage a strained arm with a sealskin strip, saw the deft way he took the turns around the arm and fastened the ends, I wondered if his blindness gave him a power the sighted do not possess. If only I could learn his skill!

  I wanted to learn healing, to take on responsibility. I could never learn all the Shaman’s wisdom. But my long travelling now made sense: it had brought me here to help.

  There was so much to learn. I saw a woman was looking after Kala’s two children and mentioned it to the Shaman. “The children must be cared for,” he said. “They miss their mother, of course, but each day is new to them. Soon, her name, Heta, will never be spoken again.

  “On the way back to their village, Kala will go alone to the snow house in which he left his wife. He will chop a hole in the top so her spirit can escape. But nobody will ever open the slab of snow he put across the door. The house and Heta’s body will disappear under the snow and ice. Let the dead bury their dead. The living must get on with their lives.

  “It is almost time for the seals to return. They will climb out of the sea and lie on the ice beside their breathing holes. The men will spear them. They will feast, sing, dance. The young will marry. And Kala will take a new wife.

  “Some years the seals do not return in time. The Seal People will eat their last stores then sit and wait. Their bodies will rot, their teeth will loosen and fall out because they need something that is in the fresh meat and bellies of the seal.

  “Think of this, Ish, and wonder. Above one village, birds nest on the cliffs. Their droppings make rich the soil below. And green-leaved plants grow under the snow as the weather warms. Something in the green leaves would stop the people’s bodies rotting, their teeth from falling out. But they will not gather and eat them.”

  “They must be mad!”

  “Just people. We are like that, too, Ish. Our ways are different. That is all.”

  His words stopped me cold. Life was too hard to take unnecessary risks. Food too precious to waste. It must be saved and stored. That was what Travellers always did. I said so to myself. But the Shaman shook his head as if he knew I disagreed. I wondered was he telling the truth? Then I saw Old Hagar shaking her head, warning me against taking some risk. And I heard myself grumbling, saying I was going to do something, no matter what she thought.

  But the Seal People: wasn’t their life too dangerous for them to risk anything? When Taur and I risked our lives climbing down the cliff on Marn Island, crossing the strait to the South Land, that was because the risk of doing nothing was even more dangerous.

  Nobody would take stupid risks. Perhaps the Shaman was making it up, what he’d said about these people starving. I whistled Jak and Nip, stood outside the cave and looked at the children sliding. Who would risk their lives?

  Chapter 18

  The Wolf-Wife

  One night, after yet another feast, the Shaman told a story.

  “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a woman who was chased by two men. At the rage in their voices, she guessed what they wanted.

  “Terrified, she ran and blew upon a crack in the ice. It opened. She dropped inside. Blew, and the crack closed again. The ice shook as the monsters stamped above. She looked up through the ice, saw them searching. They bellowed, and the woman saw their teeth were red with blood. When they spat, the ice turned red above her. The woman closed her eyes so they would not look down.

  “They tramped off, but the woman waited until she was starving. She blew on the ice, and it opened. She climbed out and saw a seal. Hungry, she crawled across the ice, holding her white sleeve across her face like a white bear hiding its black nose. But it was no seal. The monsters had killed a hunter, had eaten the flesh off his back, as a white bear eats the blubber off the back of a seal. The woman tried to push the body down through a hole, so it would sink. But, because it was frozen, it bobbed and floated on the water.

  “Just then she heard terrible roars. The two cannibals were running towards her, red mouths wide open.

  “The woman screamed and fled, but the cannibals were close. She ran so fast her feet began to leave the ground, but the cannibals were still catching up. She ran so fast her hair began to smoke behind her.

  “‘We are going to catch and eat you!’ the cannibals shouted.

  “She ran so fast her fingers trailed smoke. The tips of her fingernails flamed. Her feet touched ground only every tenth step, then every twentieth step. She ran so fast, the cannibals gave up. But the woman was now unable to stop. She ran through the air over the top of a mountain, over the sea. She ran so fast she tore a hole in the sky, light poured through, and the woman disappeared. The star we call Heta is the hole she left in the sky.”

  A sigh rose from the Seal People. They sat, mouths open, gazing at the Shaman. So that is what happened to Heta! Her spirit had become a star. As they stirred, I could feel people’s relief. Heta’s two children sat beside their father, Kala, heads shoved into his side. The woman who had fed them earlier leaned forward, put her arms around the three of them, and the Shaman continued his story.

  “When the woman slowed and stopped running, she found herself in a strange country. She looked down and saw she was no longer a woman. She had turned into a man. Her clothes, her boots were a man’s.

  “The man built a snow-house. He hunted. He carved a stone lamp, sewed clothes, and cooked meat. There was never enough time for everything that had to be done. His clothes were clumsily sewn, the meat badly cooked. ‘If only I had a wife,’ the man thought to himself. ‘She would cure the skins, sew clothes for me, boil the meat. I wish I had a wife.’

  “One night, as he chopped up some meat, he saw a white wolf watching. Next morning, it had eaten the scraps. That night the white wolf was there again. ‘Here,’ he said and threw it a piece of meat. Next night, the man tossed it a bone with lots of meat and fat. Each night, he fed the white wolf. It was something to talk to, he said to himself.

  “One day he came home early, and saw his spare boots turned upside down to dry. He didn’t remember doing that. He fed the white wolf and told it he was lonely. Next day, he came home, and threw the wolf some bones and some of the best meat and fat. Inside the snow-house he found a pot of delicious meat boiling over the stone lamp.

  “Over the next few days, somebody made him new boots, clothes. The stitches so fine, he could not see them. They fitted well. Each night he found the house warm, food cooking over the lamp.

  “One morning he went out hunting as usual, but doubled back and spied from the top of a hill. A white wolf trotted inside his house. A beautiful woman came out. She shook his furs and hung them to air. She swept out the rubbish. All day the man lay on top of the hill, watching. About the time he usually came home, the white wolf trotted out of the house and away.

  “Again next morning, the man pretended to tramp off but climbed the hill and watched until he saw the white wolf enter the snow-house. He climbed down and blocked the door. ‘I know you are inside,’ he said. ‘I will let you out when you promise to be my wife.’

  “Three days the man stood at the door so she could no
t escape. At last a soft voice said, ‘I will be your wife, but you must never tell anyone about me. And you must never let anyone see me.’

  “‘Of course I promise!’

  “Years passed. The man was so happy he thought his wife was happy, too. Then one day he met another man hunting seals. The stranger boasted about his wife. ‘Her stitches are so fine!’ he said. ‘She never lets the lamp smoke. And her food! I am the luckiest man in the world…’ The stranger boasted and boasted. ‘Why don’t you have a wife?’ he asked.

  “‘Of course I have a wife!’ the first hunter said. He boasted of his wife’s beauty, of her cooking, and sewing. He hid the stranger on top of the hill where he could see, and called his wife outside.

  “As his beautiful wife came out, there was a cry of envy from the man on top of the hill. The woman heard it and saw the stranger staring. She looked at her husband and wept for he had broken both his promises. She turned into a white wolf which howled, ‘Ooo-oh!’ and ran away. Only the rank stink of wolf was left inside the snow-house. The man’s clothes were the old ones he had always worn. He had to cook his own food, cure and sew his own skins again.

  “He left his cold, empty house and followed the wolf tracks for many days until at last they began to change. The paw marks on the left side began to turn into human toe prints. Slowly they turned into the prints of a woman’s left foot. Now the same thing was happening with the paw marks on the right side. One day the wolf tracks changed entirely into a woman’s footprints that he followed till they finished before a wall of clear ice. The man looked through the ice and saw his beautiful wife.

  “She looked back, shook her head, and turned into the white wolf again. The man struck the cliff but it would not break. All he could see through the wall of clear ice were a few paw marks disappearing across the snow. He never saw his wolf-wife again.”