The Shaman and the Droll

by Jack Lasenby

  The Shaman sat and drew the skin over his head so he looked like a great white bear. There was silence in the snow-house. The Shaman had put Heta’s memory to rest for her children and the Seal People, healed the hurt in their minds. And I wondered if I could ever become such a storyteller. More than just a healer of bodies.

  In the silence, Kala himself took up a narrow strip of bone, bent it around till its ends met, tied them together, and lashed a thin piece of bleached skin across its circle. He took a stick and struck the edge of the bone, so the skin shivered and rang.

  “Hei-la-la!” Kala cried, and the people replied with the same sound. “Hei-la-la!” He struck the drum and cried, “Ahee-la-la!” The sounds made no sense to me as he danced and sang, but I saw his steps were the steps of a white bear. Then he was a hunter. A moment later he was a dog, a pack of dogs surrounding the bear. The beating of the drum, the dancing, the sounds of the hunter and the sounds we sang back to him, it all began to echo in my head until I was lost in the hunt, until I was the man, the dogs, the bear myself.

  A girl beside me swayed and sang with the drum beat. She glanced at me, black eyes bright. Her teeth flashed. And she moved in time with the song again. For a moment I thought she was Lutha. I kept looking at her, but she would only glance – black eyes under long black hair – smile, and sway again.

  Somewhere in my mind was the white bear I had killed with Jak and the wooden spear. And somewhere I heard the Shaman’s voice telling the story of the man who hunted the bear. I remember swaying with the rage of the bear, with his terror. I remember the look he gave me. But I do not remember when I must have stood and taken the drum from the singer myself and danced the death of the white bear. I danced for Lutha: how I speared the bear, skinned and gutted it. How I stitched the rip in Jak’s side, slept rolled in the bear’s skin, how Jak and Nip slept inside its warm mound of flesh. I danced and sang my waking, finding them frozen in, the Shaman’s rescue of us, even my trips dragging the bear meat to the cave.

  I came to myself at that moment. Found myself dancing, beating the drum with the stick, the Seal People laughing, singing and dancing with me, and then I must have fallen exhausted, and somebody else was beating the drum, another story beginning, another dance, the Seal People echoing, answering the new singer.

  We all became seals, dancing like seals swimming, snuffling like seals breathing at their holes. I learned the seal songs that night, the secret words men whisper to call them back each year. I heard the women’s songs of welcome that are sung to greet the seals’ bodies as they are brought home on the sledges.

  I woke next morning naked under furs in the great snow house, filled with happiness. The roof of snow blocks curved above in shadows. Slowly, the night before came back. The feasting, stories, singing. I remembered dancing and drumming myself. And the girl who reminded me of Lutha. Her eyes laughing, glancing, looking away.

  I turned my head. The girl herself lay beside me, head on my shoulder. She half-opened her eyes, smiled, muttered something slurred by sleep. She raised one hand and touched my mouth. Her hand fell, and she slept again. Suddenly my arm was stiff. Taking great care, I slipped it from around her, lowered her head on to a rolled fur. She sighed, turned over, the long curve of her back beautiful. I pulled the fur over her shoulder, dressed myself, and crawled outside. A cold wind made me stagger as I sheltered behind the house, pissed in the snow. I thought of the girl. Had she really looked like Lutha?

  When I turned and tried to find the entry tunnel, it had disappeared. I felt my way around the snow-house in the other direction, but found only my own tracks. There was the yellow stain, already disappearing under fresh snow. I wallowed through the drifts around the house, several times, but there was no entry. The dogs would be buried under the fresh snow, of course. That was why they weren’t leaping and barking. But where were the sledges and spears? The gear thrown up on the roof? I was confused – and freezing.

  “Get up to the cave!” I staggered up the slope, mind filled with pictures of Lutha. Was it her? Had we made love last night?

  Beside the fire in the cave, Nip and Jak raised their heads. I remember saying something to them, then I must have fallen into my bunk and slept again.

  Nip’s cold nose shoved into my face. I woke, remembered the girl with Lutha’s face! I leapt out, dragging on my furs. The Shaman sat by the fire, silent. Outside the cave there was only flat snow stretching all the way to the blue and white humped rows of hills.

  Far out on the white plain I thought I saw a black dot. Several. Perhaps just spots in front of my eyes. I ran inside for my snow mask, looked again, but the dots had gone – if they had ever been. Against that vast landscape nothing moved. I closed my eyes and listened. Far off and away at the very edge of sound, I thought I heard the shake and rustle of bells. Faint as a wolf’s feet leaving tracks on snow.

  Chapter 19

  The Taste of Coal-Dust

  I ran for the shovel. New snow fountained up as I flung it from where the white domes had stood.

  “They were here, weren’t they?” Nip danced, wanting to play. Jak turned from my look as if embarrassed.

  “It was Lutha! She was here all right. You know it was her!”

  So much snow must have fallen last night, the houses were buried. But the shovel soon clinked against old snow, hard as stone. I ran and dug again, here, there, Jak and Nip following, whining.

  No sign anyone had ever lived in snow houses on the terrace below the cave. I looked around for marks of sledges, dogs, people. The only tracks were Jak’s, Nip’s, mine.

  Inside the cave, the Shaman brooded. Around the walls everything hung or stood in its place. The store chamber was filled with frozen meat and fish. But we had emptied it with feasting… After that we had eaten each day in the snow-houses of the Seal People. If they had any food left, they must have put it all in here, so the Shaman and I would have plenty.

  What would they live on, until they got back to the coast and the seals returned? And their dogs which had to drag the sledges – what would they eat?

  I could not have imagined the woman, Heta. Taka, whose leg we had set. His wife Cheka. Little Chekaiti, who could never keep still. Red cheeks shining, blue beads bobbing in her hair as she danced. Her brother, Takaiti, with his serious face. I had not invented them. The feast in the cave. The nights in the snow houses, dancing, singing. The Shaman’s story of the wolf-wife. The girl I had woken beside. Perhaps she was not Lutha, but I had not imagined her. Or had I?

  “Where are they? Were they ever here?” Light from the fire played over the Shaman’s face, threw his shadow across the roof. Then further along the wall, I saw bundles heaped. Wrapped in sealskins. And lying on top, a full set of furs, trousers and tunic of white bearskin. The tunic fitted me. The headskin fell forward over my face like a mask; my eyes looked through the slits of the dead bear’s eyes. I lifted my hands like claws and growled. Jak snarled and backed away. Nip set her teeth in my leggings, tugged, and barked until I took off the heavy tunic.

  “So, I didn’t imagine them! Nor her…”

  The other bundles contained dried plants and seeds. And, underneath the bundles, new spears, tools, a shovel, and several cooking pots.

  Last time I had seen it, our fires had burned almost the last of the coal heap. Now I found a huge heap of coal, many times bigger than when I first arrived. Black dust, footprints led around the corner. I took a lamp and one of the new spears, followed the black coal-dust into the left-hand tunnel. It was just another tunnel, arched and rounded like the main tunnel to the cave. It only occurred to me then, that they must have been built by men.

  Holding up the lamp, spear ready, I stepped forward and tripped. The spear clattered. The lamp dropped. I heard the gutter of its flame. Darkness. I would have been afraid, but for Jak and Nip nuzzling my face and hands.

  “Keep calm!” I had fallen facing into this tunnel. If I turned around and took several steps, I should be back in the main tunnel. Reach to
the right, touch the wall, and walk around the corner to the cave. I turned, took several steps, reached out to the right, and my hand touched nothing.

  “Just a bit further than you thought.” My voice sounded very loud. I shuffled sideways, my hand still finding nothing. I waved it around. Nothing. “Come on,” I said to the dogs. “Where is it?” And I stepped forward hard into a wall.

  That should have been space, the tunnel itself. What if the cave had disappeared like the Seal People and their houses? What if I had imagined the Shaman, the cave, and everything that had happened? What if I was lost under the mountain, in a black tangle of tunnels? I spun, went to run through the dark, and tripped over Nip. I sprawled there, rubbing my knee, rocking with pain.

  “Jak?” His head pushed against my hand. “Good boy! Nip?” She gave a little whine, scuttled somewhere in the dark, and Jak led me after the sound of her nails clicking on the rock floor. I crawled, sweeping my hands to right, then left, feeling for the wall. And in the blackness behind something moved after us, sniffing the air, moaning.

  A dullness lighter than the intense darkness. I urge Jak on, crawl after him. Hear Nip’s trot speed up. The moan behind us closer now. A light! In the distance a tiny picture: the fire, the Shaman sitting, unmoved. I run and sit on my bench opposite, stare into the flames.

  “You’re not going to be scared by something you imagined,” I tell myself.

  The Shaman had not moved when I gathered up three of the stone lamps from their shelf, lit one, and returned to the tunnel mouths. One of the lamps, I left there, alight. I lit another and carried it inside the tunnel on the left, the one with the black coal-dust and tracks of many feet.

  Inside lay the lamp I had dropped. My spear. And I saw what had tripped me. Along the floor of the tunnel lay two shining metal strips a long stride apart. I knelt and tapped them with my knife. Light winked along them as I moved the lamp. Metal spikes fastened them down.

  My eyes follow the shining strips into the shadows where a black monster crouches! My heart stops. I raise the lamp in my left hand. The monster leaps. I swing up the spear in my other hand. Jak growls at my side. He knows I am afraid. Snarling. Hackles up. Nip yelps. And nothing happens.

  The light picked out its shape. A black box bigger than a white bear. Its shadow had moved as I lifted the lamp, that was all. The inside heaped with empty sealskin sacks. A shovel. I laughed. I had not known I was so afraid. I leaned back against the box, laughed, and the box moved away. I screamed.

  It stopped. I walked around it, lamp held out, spear ready. And I saw the box stood on four round things which in their turn stood on the metal strips. I shoved, the round things turned, and the box moved away from me again. There was a whisper of something rubbing.

  My head spun, as if I was dizzy. I remembered the round, metal disc Tara gave me with a picture of Dragon on one side, herself on the other. I used to take the disc off its chain, stand it on its edge and roll it, until Hagar said I would lose it. The round things the box stood on were like Tara’s disc, only much bigger, and they rolled along the metal strips. When I felt them, I found a raised lip that stopped them coming off.

  Then I remembered Taur telling me of things that used to roll along roads, “Graur!” he had shouted. “Graur!” And I worked it out that he meant “road”.

  Roads, Taur explained, were the ways of the People of the Walls. They lived before the sun went mad, burnt and destroyed the city of Orklun and began turning the Whykatto into desert. Taur’s people had told him stories of how the People of the Walls travelled on their roads, not walking but rolling along them in boxes. Taur showed it with his hands, turning them round and round, but I scoffed, shook my head. Taur grinned and shook his, too. Perhaps it was a story, he said, one somebody made up for the long winter nights.

  Now I wondered if the story was true. Here was a box that moved on round things. Just what Taur had tried to describe.

  “Look!” I shoved the box and it moved easily. I went to the other end and pushed it back to where it stopped against a stone block. Nip sniffed at the round things, and Jak raised his leg and piddled against one.

  “You must be feeling better!” I told him.

  High on the wall of the tunnel was a lamp in a niche. I lit it from my own, walked on and found another and another. As I lit them, the blubber melted and filled the hollow in the stone. By the look of the wicks, they had been used in the last few days.

  Deeper and deeper I went, lighting the lamps. And the bright metal strips ran along the floor of the tunnel, the same distance apart but seeming to join into one shining band as they disappeared ahead into the darkness, separating as they came towards me, and coming closer together in the distance when I turned and looked back the other way. But I knew the strips didn’t join. I had just walked between them. Then I remembered the way the marks of sledge runners seemed to join in the distance.

  The glass mirrors, walls, and ceilings of Sodomah’s house in the Garden of Dene! At first I had thought there was someone the other side of the glass wall, in another room, but it turned out to be my reflection. The idea of the strips of shiny metal joining in the distance was like that. It was how things looked, not how they were. I thought of the wolf-wife, of how she disappeared behind the wall of clear ice, changed into a wolf, and vanished.

  Back past the lamps burning in their niches, I walked and climbed into the box itself. Jak and Nip leapt in as I leaned over and shoved with my spear. The discs underneath turned, rolled on the shining strips, and we slid past the lamps. I pushed harder. The discs rumbled beneath as we went faster. Suddenly we shot beyond the last lamp into the dark. Jak and Nip howled. And so did I.

  I dragged the spear on the tunnel floor, hoping it might slow us. It struck something, twisted out my hands, and was gone. I hung on to Jak and Nip, and thought it was like our terrifying journey on the raft. At least we had the lamp this time.

  And then I could hear and feel we were slowing. Our shadows were going slower. The rumble slowed. I saw an unlit lamp in a niche. Another. And another. And the box stopped. Jak and Nip scrambled, but I shoved them out of the way and was first over the side.

  I held up the lamp. Walls and roofs of black rock. Shovels, iron bars, tools with wooden handles and curved spikes. I lifted one, struck the gleaming black face, and a piece of coal dislodged and shattered at my feet.

  I tried filling a sack. It was heavy. The lumps of coal dug into my back. I turned and dropped it on the floor of the box. A last look around. A thousand Shamans could burn their fires in the cave: they would make little difference to these huge walls.

  Rumbling back through the dark in the box. Laughing. Yelling and barking to start the echoes. Coming back to a spot of light. The first lamp. The others. One by one. The discs slowing and stopping.

  I took up the sack of coal, the way the Seal People must have done, and a cold finger stroked the back of my neck. I dropped the sack and looked around at the three tunnel mouths. I wanted to shout down the third tunnel, the one on the right. Carefully, I heaved up the sack again and staggered to the great heap at the back of the cave. Perhaps it was the noise I made dumping it. I saw the Shaman beside me.

  “So you found the trolley?”

  “Trolley?”

  “The trolley. On wheels. That run on the rails.”

  “Is that what you call them?”

  “Keep away from the other tunnels.”

  I hardly heard him. “The Seal People brought all that coal for us. They’ve filled the storeroom with meat and fish. Yet they can’t have anything left for themselves. How are they going to get back to where they came from?”

  But he had gone into his silence again. My light tunic, my skin, my hands were all covered in coal-dust. Jak and Nip shook themselves. I heated water and washed, but it was several days before I could eat without tasting coal-dust in my food.

  Chapter 20

  The Library

  Among the bundles left behind were rolls of white sealskin.<
br />
  “The Seal People soak them in fresh water, scrape off the fur, peg them out,” the Shaman said. “The frost bleaches them.”

  He was feeling among the bundles. “Here it is!” He shook out the drawstring at the neck of a bag, felt inside and looked pleased. “Now you can begin learning the letters.”

  “Letters?”

  “The alphabet. So you can read.”

  “Alphabet?”

  He pinned one of the sealskins over the table. From the bag, he took a charcoal stick. As if he could see, he drew a row of black marks from left to right on the white sealskin.

  “I’ve seen those marks before!” I said. “On the wall of the tunnel, where you drew the dog attacking the bear.”

  He nodded. “I wrote them there.”

  “And I’ve seen them on the wall of a rock shelter as we came up the Western Coast. And on a couple of metal discs a girl gave me.”

  “Writing. Had you known how to read, you would know what it meant.” The Shaman moved his hand to the left and drew another line of marks across the sealskin. “The letters of the alphabet,” he said. “They stand for sounds.” He named each one as he made them again: “A, B, C…

  “A word is made up of letters. J,” he said and made a mark. “A,” he said and made the mark for that letter beside the J. “K!” He drew it after the A. “J–A–K,” he said, “JAK! That’s Jak’s name written down. J–A–K. Jak!”

  “Jak!” I said.

  “Copy it. Make the sounds of the letters as you write them. J–A–K.”

  “J–A–K,” I said and wrote them. “Jak!” My letters didn’t look very like the Shaman’s.

  “That’s it. You’ve written his name. And you’ve read it aloud. Jak!”