Shaman

  Next day he said to Moss,—If I work fast, Thorn’s spirit will still be around to help me paint. So I have to do it before the ravens are done with him.

  Moss nodded.—Heather will help gather your supplies, and we’ll hold things together out here while you’re inside.

  —Good man. He held Moss with his gaze.—It’s our turn now.

  —I know, Moss said.

  They helped Heather pack a backsack with the painting gear and several bags of fat for the oil lamps, also some food and a water bag. Hawk and Moss walked with him up to the cliff and its narrow ramp to the cave entry. Pika’s Cave, the biggest and most beautiful of them all, right over Loop Valley. The shaman’s entry to Mother Earth, the kolby of the world.

  At the entry they stopped and hefted the full sack onto his back. Moss took an ember from his belt and puffed up a flame at the end of a wick, then got it arranged in a fat lamp, then lit the wick in another lamp. In the light of the afternoon it was difficult to see the lamp flames, hard to imagine they would be enough in the world below.

  He sat and smoked Thorn’s pipe with Hawk and Moss, both of whom sucked down their burns eagerly. They continued to smoke while Loon ate some of Thorn’s dried mushrooms and artemisia, then sang the cave hello.

  Hawk and Moss were looking worried; they had only been in the cave’s deepest depths twice, when they were kids trying to break the rules, and the second time they had almost gotten lost. They didn’t think it was safe to be going in alone like this, and though they were forced by circumstances to do dangerous things all the time, maybe that made them even less inclined to take on any unnecessary dangerous things, and in cold blood.

  But that was what shamans did. So they sat to each side of him and pressed into him shoulder to shoulder as he sang the cave hello, and they sang too when they knew the words. There was quite a bit of wonder on their faces as he hugged them good-bye and took off, into the big dark kolbos of the passage at the back of the day chamber of the cave, down into the dark.

  As he walked into the passage it was broad at first and lit by daylight. Then came the turn into the dark, followed by a narrow passage. As he shuffled past that turn the shadows got blacker, and his lamps shed more and more light, until they were all he was seeing by, the two flames brilliant in his hands. As he walked the lit walls and black shadows shifted with him, flickering with the same flicker as the lamp flames, so that it was clear they all made one thing.

  He stopped for a while to let his eyes adjust, as Thorn had taught him, and then continued forward with the short steps that were best in the cave, to be sure the floor had no unseen blocks or drops. It would be very bad to fall and knock out his lamps. Thorn had tried to teach him to spark a fire in the dark, using the sparks themselves to see the duff well enough to light it, and touch the wick to the burning duff, and breathe the wick back to flame; but it had proved to be very hard. Now Loon carried a live ember inside a burl in his belt, which would make it much easier to relight the lamps if he needed to. But it would be so much better not to need to. Better to treat the lamps as little sparks of his own spirit, so precious that he could be said to be carrying his life in his hands.

  So it was a long slow walk to the far end of the pale-walled cave, through the various big chambers and the narrow passageways connecting them. Down here it was the cave’s own air, always the same, cool but bracing, in wintertime warmer than the air outside. No sound from the cave mouth reached this far. The body of the earth lay over him completely. It was almost entirely silent, but that allowed him to hear little creaks and gurgles, always coming from the shadows outside the space jiggling in the light, and often seeming to rise from below. There was a musty smell, a cave bear smell, mixed with mud. A faint charcoal whiff. Big groups when they came back this far brought brush pine torches, and the pine’s sappy blaze made the walls dance and leap. But that was light for seeing, not for painting.

  Now the two lamp lights were pale and steady. They quivered in time with his steps. He was by himself, no one else here. Thorn’s spirit did not seem to be present, nor Click’s. If anything he felt the presence of Pika, whom he had never met. The madman who had started painting in this cave, the notorious bison man.

  But even Pika was now absent. Loon could feel it: he was alone in there. Just him. He could recall quite a few times in his life when simply being alone like this in the dark would have been enough to terrify him. Often when alone, at night, he had sensed something out there, something unseen, maybe even invisible, that was at that moment tracking him with senses he did not have, following him by way of signs he could not hide, like his smell. More than once that apprehension had overwhelmed him with terror and caused him to run panicked like a rabbit through the moonlight for camp. Stricken with terror, bolting with terror, and all from being alone in the dark, when a feeling came over him!

  Now all that was completely gone. He was empty. Being alone meant nothing to him. This was his place. He had been here before, he remembered it perfectly. It was just as before. Slowly he shuffled past the place where the roof of the cave had fallen down and now stood on the floor, a big mass of white and orange rock, which sparkled in the lamplight as he moved. Onward, past the big cats on the wall to the left. Then a left turn and on to the stone reeds that covered the floor here, so strange and beautiful. The stone reeds on the floor stood below stone reeds hanging from the roof, dripping; a few dripped even now. They were like the sand drip towers kids made on the riverbank. How many drips, with water so clear? How many years? Since the old time, the time when all the animals were people, and they walked in a dream together. Since the world was born out of its first egg.

  He followed the path always taken through the reeds, doing his best to step in the same footprints. That was how it was done in here. And it was true that the floor of the cave was often coated with a slight mud that squished between the toes, and in places gave way to about the depth of one’s foot. Stepping in old steps helped with that, although at the end of almost every spring the cave floor flooded, leaving a layer of new mud in their steps. Walking in the cave had its own sound because of this, a little squick, squick, squick that often echoed.

  Go slowly. Move to the cave’s speed. It burbled, it pulsed, it breathed, but all very slowly, so slowly one could only dance in time with it, as with a slow bass thump, hitting five or nine to its one. Breathe deep the black shadows. The darkness behind him was darker than the darkness before him. Someone had fingered an owl on the far face of the fallen roof pile; it watched you with its big eyes as you passed it. Follow the trail around the corner.

  There hung the pendant of rock from the roof, the stone bull’s pizzle, with its painting of the bison man about to mount the human woman, her legs and kolby drawn there under him, the biggest blackest kolby ever, like a little triangular door to another cave. Pika’s work. The whole story of the bison man and his woman, right there on a pizzle like the one that had done the deed.

  This room was where Loon intended to paint. To the left of the pizzle there was a section of curving wall that extended far higher than he could reach. Inspected from arm’s length, it proved to be a somewhat uneven surface, bossed and spalled with bulges and cavities, and some small cracks; but on the whole it was a clean curve of stone, with lots of flat smooth surface.

  He put down the lamps, took off his sack, unpacked it, picked out the caribou shinbone from the other things. He made one scrape with the shinbone at just above head height, revealing a lighter rock under the brown skin: the bare flesh of Mother Earth, very bright compared to the shadows in the corners around him.

  This was the wall Thorn had said he was going to paint. For the first time Loon felt a little touch of Thorn behind his ear, and he heard the remembered sound of Thorn’s voice, saying just his ordinary things. Come here, boy. The particular timbre of Thorn’s voice suddenly pierced him, so buzzy and nasal compared to the clear tones he made when he played his flute. There was no other voice like it. Although it was tr
ue that no two voices were the same, so that meant nothing. But he would never hear that voice again. He would have to hold on to it.

  Loon said to the cave,—Hello, Thorn. Before I start, I want to go look at your painting of the lions on the hunt. Come with me if you like.

  He picked up one lamp and stepped down the twisted passage to the end chamber. Now that Thorn was dead, he would have to follow Loon around if he wanted to talk to him. So Loon was free to go where he wanted. Loon could feel that as he walked, could feel how it would irritate Thorn.

  Now he stood in the farthest end of the cave, in front of the great lion chase he had watched Thorn paint so long ago. He saw again: it was by far the greatest painting in the cave, maybe the world. Maybe it would always be the greatest painting. The hungry look in the lions’ eyes, the sharp wariness of the bison peering over their shoulders at the great cats; the way the animals moved when you moved the lamp next to the wall; the massed groups, hunters and hunted, both flowing across the wall from right to left, moving even as they were still, moving as you breathed, the lions diving in, the bison bursting out. All these aspects together made this wall more alive than any painting Loon had ever seen or imagined.

  He sat there and looked at it, and remembered what he could of Thorn on the night he had painted it. The old man had been very calm and relaxed, almost friendly. No, friendly. He had smoked his pipe and played his flute. He had stopped to eat or take sips of water. He had put his head to the hole in the corner of the floor that breathed and sometimes gurgled, listening for what the cave could tell him. It had taken a long time to paint that wall, but he had never hurried.

  The lions moved in place, and yet stayed where they were. The cave breathed in time with Loon’s breaths. Deep below him it sounded like someone was talking. He saw that he wanted to do it like Thorn had done it. He would do what Thorn had done, every mood and move, make it happen again. That was what he would do; and that was what he would teach some boy to do. If you did it right, on it would go.

  Loon put the lamp down, sat on his fur patch, took out Thorn’s pipe. Used the lamp flame to light a splinter, squinted and lit the leaf in the pipe’s bowl, breathed in some smoke, held it in his lungs. Exhaled.

  The cave exhaled with him. He drank from his water bag. When he was finished looking at Thorn’s lions, he got up, taking some care to be sure of his balance. A little dance in place. He picked up the lamp, walked back to the other lamp, in the big chamber with his empty wall. He set the second lamp down, had a look around. The bison man still humped the human woman, and he approached it to have a look at how it had been drawn. The black triangle of the woman’s baginaren had been very carefully cleft at the bottom by a scratched white line. The door to the next world, clear as a cut on a finger. He had a burin in his pack to use as just such a line scraper. He had charcoal stumps, a bag of charcoal powder, a bowl for mixing, chamois leather patches, some brushes. Two bags of water. The wall scraper shinbone. He had to finish the scraping.

  He moved the lamps around until the light on the wall was the way he wanted it. The two together set up crossed shadows, and he wished that he had a third lamp, or even more. Ah yes, he did; in the sack. He found the lamp stone with its indentation, set it up, filled the dip with lamp fat, placed one of the wicks in it, used another splinter to move flame to it. He sat by the lamp a while to make sure it was burning well. It flickered, then burned steadily, the flame still except right there at the wick it enfolded, where it crinkled off the black into existence.

  The cave was murmuring a low song. There was a river running under the cave. Its sound seemed to indicate that its water moved slower than water on the surface of the earth.

  He took up the shinbone in his right hand and finished scraping the wall clean of its brown nobbling. He saw that a cave bear had reached up and clawed the wall, as if trying to get through to something. The claw scratches were white, and under Loon’s scraping the wall was almost tusk white. Like old yellowed tusk, or the belly of an ibex. Above the scraped section was an arch of stone, and the wall above that was reddish brown.

  On the far left of his wall, around a slight curve that way, there was a low hole in the wall. The floor was wetter under the hole.

  He took up a charcoal stump, and on the left side of the cleared section drew the backs of a rising line of bulls. That gave him his left border.

  He stepped to the lower part of his cleared area and drew the two rhinos he had seen fighting by the creek. He wanted to show the way they had slapped their horns together, in those big horny thwacks that rang across the meadow. It must hurt when horn caught flesh. Both of the rhinos had been bleeding. He drew the lines of their horns right through each other: it was the only way to show it. Round curve of their low rumps, so massive and strong. They were so much faster than they looked. He could suggest that speed if the curves were right. And all the force of the fight was there in their faces and horns. He took his time, smudged with a leather cloth inside the lines of head and horn, to make them blacker. The one on the right had its right foreleg set, and was thrusting up and through the one on the left, catching it in the side of the head. Curve of the muscle swinging from the force of the blow. Scrape with a burin inside the right one’s mouth, open as it grunted. The one on the left had been rocked back by the blow, rounded up by it. Draw the forefeet rounded, show them almost hanging in air. Curves in the rock were shaped nicely to show the weight of the beast thrown back. Dot the eye just over the horn, looking shocked. Give him two front horns; this was a Thorn trick, to show movement. Knocked back by the blow, back into the cave wall itself.

  When the rhinos were done he sat down for a while. He had a longer charcoal branch than usual, and as he sat there, he reached out and drew a little bison with it, a three-liner at first, but then he kept pointing the stick into the mass of winter hair between its horns. Just something to do while he rested and looked at the wall above. It was a great wall. It was breathing in and out with his breath, coming closer and then moving away.

  The stumping was making things look good and black, so he added another bull to the stack of them on the left side of his wall, blacked it in completely. A little scraping with the burin could remove just enough of the blackened face to suggest an eye. Black eye of a black bull, and yet visible. Under the muzzle of this black beast he drew a horse with a big head, small body. That looked good, black stumped down its chest, legs just lined.

  That left the biggest scraped space, to the right of the bulls and above the fighting rhinos. It was a good space, and he sat down next to his sack to look at it for a while.

  He refilled his lamps with fat. He drank some water. He inspected his hands; his palms and fingers were black with charcoal. He held the right hand up before him, turned it palm side then backside. Bent little finger. It pulsed blackly, seemed to go away and come back. This living hand. He held it up against the wall, as if to blow an outline. From this distance it covered the space he had left to draw on.

  He closed his eyes, watched colors flow and spark there on the inside of his eyelids. He saw that horse at sunset, rearing on the ridge across the valley. He recalled the way it had felt, there at the end of his wander when he was scraped raw, when the horse had seen him and then reared, and suddenly in the sunset light it had become clear that everything meant something he could not catch, something so big that it couldn’t be said, couldn’t be felt. Something big that they were all caught up in together. It had taken his breath away then, and it did again as he remembered it.

  Make that horse. Stump it until it was the black inside black. Show the rearing up, that moment when the sight of it had transfixed Loon, standing there the next ridge over.

  He stood and started painting again. Start from the top and work down. Make a sequence of heads that would show that rearing in the sunset, like what Thorn had done with the lions, but different. He used his hand to measure; there was room for four heads.

  He started to draw the top head. First the for
ehead, as in a three-liner. Down the long nose to the nostril and the little curve of the mouth. Then pause. The second head would need to fill the space below. He took the stick and pressed hard against the wall, stumping the charcoal off as thickly as he could, carefully up down, up down. The curve of the rearing mane, pressing lighter as he drew the back behind the mane. Good. Then the eye, looking across the valley at Loon. Not a friendly look. He stumped and smudged black all over the inside of the line, darking the forehead, the cheek.

  He took up the burin then and scraped a little around the eye to make a white surround for it. He saw that he could scrape around the head too, whitening the wall to make the head stand out even more than it already did.

  Slowly, carefully, he scraped tiny bits of rock away from the wall. It had to be a perfect line, making a perfect contrast of white and black. The head would seem to emerge from the wall, because indeed it did.

  He went on scraping for so long that one of the lamps went out. He staggered back in the newly shaped shadows, and in his haste almost knocked one of the two remaining lit lamps over; lunging to right it, he also almost stepped on the third lamp. He could have knocked them all out right then and there.

  He sat down for a while, frightened by his own clumsiness. The cave was rumbling a warning. He wished Thorn were there to talk to, and suddenly he realized that would never happen again. No more Thorn. It was impossible to believe. Not to have that face, that voice, those irritated and irritating thoughts. No one to talk to, as Heather had said. Dropped into the lonely world of the shaman, deep into dreams and visions, always alone, even when in the pack. He had wanted his wander to go on forever, and now it would.

  I picked him up then. I carried him to the wall, I raised his hand, I drew the mane of the next horse.

  Then, looking at it more closely, I realized that I had started the second horse too high, too close to the first one. Four heads as close as these two would be too close, leaving a gap at the bottom that would look bad. I had made a mistake. I didn’t know how to fix it. In the depths of the cave, trying to help Loon past his bad moment, I had made a mistake. Startled, dismayed, not knowing what to do, I sank back into him and left him to it.