The Shaman and the Droll

by Jack Lasenby

  “So do Arku’s people.”

  “But they eat them at once. Feast on them. We save our food. We take care never to run short. It’s not our way.” Skarl shook his head, and I was glad Arku was not there to hear his contempt.

  I had saved food for winter at the Hawk Cliffs, for the animals and myself, made sure it didn’t run out. Was that a difference between hunters who moved all the time, and people who lived and worked in one place, I wondered. And when I had learned enough to ask myself that question, the Shaman said it was time for us to visit the White Bear People.

  Arku said we would travel over the sea ice, for the smooth running. That meant we had to work the sledge across smashed ice along the shore, lead the Shaman between the broken slabs, and carry out our gear. Once loaded, the sledge ran easily over the flat sea ice.

  We speared seals and ate well. Though we saw white bear tracks several times, Arku whipped his dogs and drove on. When I asked him why, he glanced at the Shaman. “Those last tracks were fresh,” I said.

  “These people think only they can hunt the white bear.” Arku said. “It is their god.”

  The White Bear People lived under a tall hill, at the edge of the great ice sea. And far in the distance, across the ice, the image of an island floated in the sky.

  At first I thought it was one of those false pictures, mirages, the sort of thing Taur and I had seen in the desert. But the White Bear People said the island was real. They did not know if other people lived there. Hunters had gone to explore the island, but they never returned.

  “Why lose your life trying to explore that place?” a man said to me. “We have everything we need here.”

  They found Arku’s ways strange, but their life was similar to that of the Seal People and the Cliff People. The White Bear People looked at Arku’s dress with astonishment. His sledge was different. The way he fixed his team to their harness was different. And it was not as good as theirs, a hunter told me.

  “Our clothes have to be warmer than Arku’s. Our sledges have to be stronger. Our dogs tougher. Here we live at the edge of the great sea. Salt water in summer. Ice in winter. There is nothing further south, nothing but the island. Arku’s people would perish here.” He said it with satisfaction.

  The Carny had been ahead of us. When I asked these people about the Droll, they changed the subject. Only once, an old woman said to me, “The Shaman should watch out for the Carny.” She would say nothing more.

  Before we left, a man returned from a sealing trip. His sledge had been smashed, pinched between two ice sheets, but he saved his dogs and gear. Catching fish through a hole in the ice, he froze them together in the shape of sledge runners, joined them with more fish laid across, like struts of wood. Let them freeze into place. He shaped the frozen fish runners with his knife, squirted water on them from his mouth, let it freeze, and built up a smooth surface. The day before he reached the village, the air turned warmer. That night the sledge thawed, and his dogs ate most of it. The man trudged home on foot.

  When he told his story, leaping, dancing it with shouts and laughs, I did not believe him. But Arku and the Shaman told me it was a common trick, making a sledge of fish. Arku said he had once made a sledge out of folded sealskins, freezing them into the shapes of runners. “There is always the danger of a warm spell. If it thaws, the dogs will eat it!” He laughed like the man who told the story of his fish sledge. And I wondered again at the way these people used laughter to hold back the harshness of their unforgiving world.

  On a night of feasting and dancing, I told the White Bear People of the Travellers, of the insane sun, of how we travelled by early morning and late afternoon. They knew about grass, but had never heard of donkeys, sheep, and goats. They saw them as some smaller kind of White Bear. When I hee-hawed like a donkey, a child wept, but the others laughed. I baa-ed like a sheep, maa-ed like a goat, and they were helpless. With soot from a lamp, I drew the animals on a sealskin. People pointed at the donkey’s ears and laughed till they cried. I had to tell my story once more. I had to point at the animals as I said their names, and I had to make their noises again and again. Especially the donkeys’ bray.

  The feast ended with a story from the Shaman. “There was a tribe who tired of the long winter,” he said. “As the nights got longer and darker, they thought, ‘If only we could keep the sun in the sky for ever, think of the work we could do! How warm it would be!’”

  The White Bear People sighed. Theirs was the darkest winter, the shortest summer.

  “Early one winter,” said the Shaman, “the people asked for a sun which never sank.

  “Their Shaman climbed the hill behind their village. As the days got shorter, he prayed. The people looked up and saw him there. The nights got longer and colder; they saw him there, still praying. As snow deepened on their roofs, they looked up at his figure still praying for them.

  “One day, although there was no wind, the air moved. A huge white owl filled their sky and landed on silent wings. The people called their dogs and climbed amongst the white owl’s feathers. They left their snow-houses, their sledges, their stone lamps.

  “‘We won’t need these things in the new land!” they cried. ‘Why doesn’t the white owl carry us away?’

  “But the white owl waited until their Shaman climbed down the hill and hid himself under its foot. North it flew without sound to the land where the sun never dies.

  “There they found fish, deer, rabbits, hares and other animals. But no seals. And no White Bear.

  “They made houses of trees and stones. Life was easy. But one day the people said to their Shaman, ‘We are tired of this sun that never goes down. Each day it gets hotter. It burns our flesh. We wish for the dark. For the snow and ice. We would like to taste seal liver again before we die. The fish here has no flavour. We want to eat White Bear meat again. Our young are forgetting how to hunt. Forgetting the old dances. The old stories. This morning my son asked, “Who is the White Bear?” We want to go home!’

  “So their Shaman climbed a mountain and prayed. In the heat of that sun, he prayed and prayed. And at last the White Bear padded huge over the curve of the world. The people hid in terror, but their Shaman told them, ‘The White Bear has missed her people. She wants them to come home.’

  “The White Bear crouched. They whistled their dogs and climbed amongst her fur. ‘Why doesn’t it start?’ cried the people, but the White Bear waited until the Shaman hid himself under its tongue. Then it turned and galloped south, and south, and south again.

  “Back home the people chewed ice and smiled. Their dogs rolled in the snow and barked. They dug for their sledges and spears and snow knives. But their snow-houses had disappeared. They had to build new ones. While they worked, the Bear turned into a huge white mountain. Down its gullies and spurs came ordinary white bears to hunt seals on the ice and to be hunted in their turn.

  “That evening, stone lamps burning in their new houses, the people ate fresh seal liver.

  “‘Our home is the best place!’ they all said. And ever since then, they have called themselves the People of the White Bear. When they hunt the White Bear, she gives herself to them. She brought them back from the land of the burning sun. She needed them, as they needed her.”

  The people around me nodded. “It is true,” an old woman said. “Our home is the best place in the world! Our Shaman the best Shaman. We are the People of the White Bear! When we are hungry, the White Bear gives her flesh to us. When we are naked she gives us her fur. And when we are old, she comes and takes us to herself.”

  “Ayee! Ayee!” Cries of agreement. And I knew by their faces that to be one of the People of the White Bear was to be fortunate indeed.

  But before we were allowed to sleep, I had to give one last hee-haw like a donkey. One last baa, one last maa. People wandered off to their own houses, disappearing into the dark: hee-haws, baa’s, and maa’s floating back through the night. And the laughter. Next morning we were on our way again.


  Chapter 27

  To be a Judge

  Arku directed us inland from the village of the White Bear People. One morning I brought the sledge down between humped rows of blue-shadowed hills, and saw a towering white wall ahead. Arku laughed at my expression as the wall turned into a white plain. The Shaman’s cave lay on the far side. Arku had saved us many days’ travelling.

  Evening of the next day I knelt in the cave, blew our bowl of moss to flame. Got a lamp going. Lit the fire. While Arku unloaded seal meat, I dumped dead ashes over a cliff. They spread a dark stain on a heap that nearly filled a gully. How many Shamans had lived in the cave, heaved ashes over the same cliff, I wondered.

  Long after Arku’s sledge dwindled to a dark spot upon the snowy plain the following morning, I heard a cry, “Ohei! Ohei!” And long after that spot disappeared, a howl: Chaka punishing one of the pack.

  Now I could return to the Library. Read more about the illnesses we had seen. I wanted to learn more, to defeat the Carny, to relieve the people of superstition. First though I had to drive out my own.

  For I was afraid of the Droll. Hadn’t Cheena’s tracks ended where they met that huge single footprint? What about the wounds on the Shaman’s body? He could not have done that to himself. I knew I would find the answers in books.

  I lit a lamp, stood at the entrance to the Droll’s tunnel. Jak sniffed, that was all. “Imagination!” I told myself. “Superstition!”

  “If there is no Droll,” I asked aloud, “why did the Shaman warn me against going in?” I took several steps into the tunnel to show I wasn’t superstitious. “…Six,” I whispered. I would take ten steps. “Seven. Eight.” The shadows stirred, and I ran for the entrance. Faint in the darkness, a loathsome chuckle – as if something knew my terror and mocked it.

  “You’re letting your imagination run away with you,” I told Jak. I felt for the letters cut into the wall of the Library tunnel. Holding the lamp high, I strode. Jak trotted ahead, looked back, and cocked his head as if he knew something. “Watch out,” I said, “or you’ll start hearing things.”

  I explored more stacks of shelves and books that seemed to go on for ever. On the floor, I left a couple of lamps burning to show me the way back. The shelves ended only to begin again through another door. Then I found stairs up to more floors. More rooms. More shelves. More books. In different languages. How could anyone read so much? Know so much?

  I remembered my father’s story of the old city of Orklun, north of the Whykatto. So many people writing books, storing them in the Library. Like the ashes that nearly filled the gully. One Shaman after another burning fires in the cave for hundreds of years.

  All those people, books, years – too much to understand. I ran back, blowing out the lamps. Grabbed up my sealskin bag, stuffed in some books. Trotted down the ramps and steps out of the Library, back along the tunnel. “I’m not afraid of the dark.” I said it over and over, looking back, holding my lamp high. “I’ll look after you, Jak.”

  We ran around the corner and into the firelight, the Shaman’s shadow across the roof. Nip, coming forward, wagging her tail.

  When he woke, the Shaman told me of how the white bears sometimes attacked the villages. “Perhaps,” he said, “they get the taste for human flesh. The Coal People have been attacked often, besieged by bears. But they pretend it never happened. They believe talking might bring the white bears back.”

  “But couldn’t they kill the bears? I know they’re not hunters, but…”

  “The bears attack in a pack, as if trained. The Coal Men have no dogs, and know nothing about hunting. What they can do is to make iron traps.”

  “Wouldn’t you think they’d keep dogs? And learn to hunt?”

  The Shaman gave his dry rustle. “People are not always reasonable.”

  “But –” It didn’t make sense to me.

  A few days later I heard Arku’s call. It seemed impossibly distant, but I now knew how sound carried across the plain. The Shaman came to the mouth of the cave, listened. “Something has happened in the Cliff People’s village. Get ready to leave at once.”

  Next day, Arku arrived, sledge loaded with meat. “There has been a terrible argument,” he said. “You remember Tuka?”

  I did. The ugly, powerful man who had fought all the time with another man, Lekka. Tuka’s wife had been one of those who died of starvation.

  “A few days ago,” said Arku, “Tuka and Lekka went sealing. When I got back, Tuka had already returned – alone.” He had said nothing, dragged out Lekka’s wife, Lella, and drove away with her and all Lekka’s belongings on his sledge.”

  “So Tuka had killed Lekka,” said the Shaman. “Lekka had a brother. Chatu?”

  “Yes. According to custom, Chatu must now avenge Lekka’s death. Since Tuka has run away, Chatu must kill his brother, Filar.”

  I remembered Filar – not much more than a boy. He could not stand up against a full-grown man like Chatu who was strong, whom people feared.

  “Filar has killed his first seal: he is a man. And Chatu is going to kill him. ‘That is the old rule,’ he says.”

  We left at once, travelled into the dark in silence. As we camped, I asked the Shaman what he could do.

  “I am thinking. Watch and learn, Ish. How to be a judge.”

  A few days later, he said, “Tomorrow when we arrive, listen carefully to the story of what happened. Next morning I will have to judge what will be done. Otherwise, Chatu will kill Filar and run away.”

  “And if Filar’s’s got a younger brother, he’ll grow up and kill Chatu’s brother?”

  “That is how a feud begins.”

  The Cliff People were delighted to see us. They expected the Shaman to find an answer for the problem they couldn’t solve themselves.

  We heard the story again and again. Somebody said it was the custom – when a man needed a wife – to kill somebody he didn’t like and take his woman. Others said such things might have been done in the past, but not today. Several spoke on behalf of Filar, a slight youth.

  Chatu, the dead Lekka’s brother, stood to one side in Arku’s house, saying nothing. Small eyes in his broad face closed. Mind made up. He would follow the custom.

  A young man acted out the murder. Lekka standing over a seal hole, waiting. Tuka coming across the ice, spear raised. Without looking up, Lekka shook his head to warn him not to scare the seal. And Tuka’s face contorted. He speared Lekka, stuffed his body through the hole and under the ice. Back to the village. Dragged Lekka’s wife, Lella, on to the sledge and away.

  The young man showed by his gestures that nobody dared stop Tuka. Most of the other men were still out sealing.

  The Shaman listened as I described the young man’s performance. Once or twice, people disagreed and added their version to the story. And the Shaman listened to them all.

  “It is the custom,” he said to me later. “Chatu must kill Tuka’s younger brother.”

  “But that means a feud: more and more deaths!”

  “Murder must be punished – that is why the custom came about. But now when the Cliff People need every man they have, the custom doesn’t fit.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Vanity,” said the Shaman.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Only Chatu can break with the custom. We have to help him find a way. By making him feel important.” There was that dry rustle again. Sometimes, I thought, the Shaman was like Old Hagar.

  “We have to appeal to Chatu’s vanity,” he said. “He has no wife?”

  “No.”

  “That will help.”

  I knew he wanted me to work things out for myself, but I woke next morning still not knowing the answer. The first person I saw was Filar, white-faced, drawn, hair and clothes dishevelled. I spoke, but he stared unhearing. He looked as if he had not slept, and he mumbled as if talking to somebody not present.

  Everyone met in Arku’s house. People edged away, and the space around Filar grew larger.


  Surrounded by supporters, Chatu sat opposite. Even in the soft lamplight, his moon-shaped face looked brutal. A couple of younger men laughed at whatever he said. Certain of himself, Chatu sat accepting their praise, stretching out his spear arm, flexing his fingers, looking with approval at the muscles swell in his forearm as he clenched his fist. Preening like a bird, I thought. Chatu was preening himself. And the space around Filar grew.

  There was a long silence. “Tuka lost his wife to the Great Hunger,” began the Shaman. “So he killed Lekka and took his wife. Now, Lekka’s brother must avenge the murder.

  “The custom is ancient. A good law made many years ago to stop murdering. It is an honourable thing for a man to avenge his brother’s murder. Chatu is prepared to act with honour, to kill Filar.”

  Chatu lifted his eyes and glared at Filar.

  “Before the Great Hunger there were many hunters,” said the Shaman. “Every house had its store of meat. Nobody went hungry. Now most of them lie on the cliffs above. The ones who starved when the seals did not return.

  “The Cliff People need every hunter they have got, but two more have gone. Lekka is dead, and Tuka has fled. If any more men are killed, children and the old will die because there are not enough hunters to feed everyone.”

  The Shaman’s snow mask seemed part of his face. His great nose slashed the air as he swung around. “It is honourable for Chatu to want to avenge his brother.”

  Chatu’s face tightened with a smile that he tried to hide by coughing. One of the young men leaned forward and touched his back.

  “It is even more honourable to not kill a man when you have the right. That shows great courage. Few men are strong enough for such courage.” The Shaman paused.

  “Filar has killed his first seal. He is a man. But his older brother killed another man, so Filar must die.

  “And how many of the Cliff People will die because there are not enough hunters?”

  Chatu sat upright. Frowned.