The Shaman and the Droll Read online

  A brutish shriek wove itself through the Shaman’s voice. Entreating, bullying, rising to scream down his incomprehensible words. Now, by its tone, begging.

  “Don’t trust it!” I shouted, but the Shaman’s chant continued unshaken. The shrieking counterpoint shifted shape and tone, and all in blackness. Following the denunciatory voice and that other which now sobbed, complained, and whined, I floundered after. How long, I do not know. And heard somewhere far away the toll of a heavy bell.

  When darkness pressed against my face, an invisible wall of black fur, when I could no longer breathe for its fetid thickness, a storm exploded. Toothed with sleet, a buffet of wind flattened, tumbled me over and over. I skidded across ice, slammed up against the wall of a house, Jak and Nip thumping into me. Something else rolled and struck. I crouched against the storm’s fist, felt and found the Shaman unconscious. Knew him by the blade of his nose, the snow mask.

  I hooked my fingers in the neck of his tunic and dragged. Jak got his teeth into the bearskin hood and pulled. Nip yelped in the outer doorway of Arku’s house. We dragged the Shaman through. Then I could not get the door to close. And suddenly Arku was there with Kelu, shovelling, clearing snow, heaving the door to, our three backs to it. Had it faced the wind, we could never have got it closed.

  A huge hand hammered the roof. Heads hidden, the Cliff People cringed, a single animal of scrabbling legs and arms. Shrieking.

  I picked snow out of the Shaman’s mouth, nostrils, ears, did not dare lift the mask. He was cold, rigid. As if all breath was pressed out of his body. Something had clawed one side of his face. I stripped off the torn bearskin. His flesh was bruised, scratched all over.

  A creak. Both inner and outer doors swung open. The storm had gone. A great silence. And I heard the terrible bray again, the stamp of a single foot outside, the drag and suck I had heard before.

  A woman’s voice – Cheena’s – said, “The Droll has come for her gift!” And she ran towards the door.

  Only the Shaman could stop the Droll, but he lay as if dead. I ran to stop Cheena.

  “No, Ish!” said a voice. Something split inside my head. Light flashed white. Blinding…

  I opened my eyes, and pain cracked across them like a whip. I closed them again, turned from the light. Agony rolled with the movement. I could hear Arku’s voice. Could not understand what he was saying. And I must have slept.

  I woke, pain a dull tug at the edges of my mind. I could see, when I opened my eyes. Something bearded. Whiskers. Jak’s face looking into mine, close up. And Nip’s. Then the Shaman’s voice.

  “Awake?”

  “I think so.”

  “Drink this and lie still. Arku hit you on the head to stop you going after Cheena. She gave herself to the Droll, as her gift. Don’t try to say anything. Everything is safe again.”

  When I woke again, my head still ached. I had to squint to see things properly. We were in a smaller house. Just the two of us. Nip and Jak. The Shaman held a bowl to my lips. I tasted something sharp, and slept.

  I was clear-headed when I woke again. The warmth from an oil lamp kept in by the thick turf walls and roof, the layer of snow outside that again. The Shaman sat bare to the waist, ointments daubed on the scratches and cuts that covered him, snow mask staring into the dark. I moved, and Jak and Nip padded across, but the Shaman did not stir.

  I must find what had happened to Cheena. I moved slow and deliberate, thinking out each step first. Outside, my piss was a greenish colour, and there was something green in the snow when I spat. The drink the Shaman had given me.

  The Cliff People were still inside their houses. In front of Arku’s door was a tangle of tracks. One set of footrprints led away, Cheena’s. I followed them over a rise. And there Cheena’s tracks were joined by a line of huge single footprints and a broad smear across the snow, the tracks of the Droll, her dragging belly. Cheena’s footprints vanished there. The Droll had taken her gift.

  Back inside our small house, the Shaman stood, emerged from his trance. He knew where I had been, told me it was hopeless. “Cheena thought her life was useless because she could not marry and have children. So she gave herself to the Droll.

  “I can fight the Droll only with the people’s help. If they want to believe in their own superstition, there is little I can do.”

  “I tried to follow you.”

  “We were not enough on our own. There is no such thing as the Droll, Ish, only what people choose to believe.”

  “But the scratches on your face, your body?”

  The Shaman touched his cheeks. “Perhaps I fell against something in the storm.”

  “What about the tracks?”

  “What tracks?”

  “Cheena’s. And the Droll’s!”

  The Shaman led outside. No sign of Cheena’s, nor the huge single footprints I had seen before. Only my tracks and Jak’s, going out, pausing, and returning.

  “It was all inside your own head. You imagined the Droll because you wanted to believe in her.”

  “What about Cheena?”

  “Cheena walked into the storm thinking she was saving her people. She died bravely, but for no good reason. Her body will sink under the new snow and never be seen again. And the Cliff People will believe for ever that Cheena gave herself to the Droll, her gift.”

  Standing in the snow glare, remembering to put on my mask, I believed the Shaman. I wanted to forget the sounds outside the house, the panic of the Cliff People. My own fear.

  “I sometimes wonder,” said the Shaman.

  “Yes?”

  “I sometimes wonder if people need their Droll.”

  I stared surprised. “It’s just superstition. You said!” I could hear astonishment in my own voice.

  “But do people need superstitions? I am getting old, beginning to ask questions that are unhelpful. People want a younger Shaman, one who will drive away the Droll. The Shaman must not believe in superstition. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  The Shaman sighed and led me back inside. “People like to panic, Ish. If there are several, they encourage each other to shriek all the louder. You have seen the sledge dogs working as a pack. So long as they have a leader, they will run all day. If the leader is weak, they fight. Or panic. The Cliff People know I am getting old, less sure of what I believe. And the Carny has done his clever best to make them doubt me.

  “He will go ahead of us to the Coal People and the Bear People to the south. Spreading fear with his Clock. The Carny is evil. But because he is, it makes it easier for the Shaman to do good.”

  I was silent.

  “I know it is difficult to understand.” The Shaman was stripping off his clothes so I could dress the wounds that covered his body. “But once you become the Shaman, you will wonder why it was you were ever confused.”

  I did not know if I still wanted to become the Shaman.

  “You once said your father, Hawk, was the leader of the Travellers…”

  “Yes?”

  “He would have understood that leaders are not better than other people. They just carry more responsibility. Which lets the other people behave irresponsibly, sometimes. Lets them have their superstitions, even enjoy them. Without their leader, they would be lost. But there is always another side to things, Ish: without followers, the leader would be lost.”

  “I think I understand.” Squint-face, his Salt Men seemed lost without him. They depended upon him. And without them he could never have killed Tara and the Metal People, pursued Taur and me.

  I had known the terror of being left behind, cast out by my own people. Much of my life I had spent on my own or with only one other person – Hagar, Taur. For a while I had dreamt of having a family with Tara. And I remembered the times Taur and I had dreamed and talked of becoming Gardeners, Farmers, with a family.

  “Perhaps I don’t know enough to become the Shaman.”

  “You can read and write. You are becoming a healer. You are
learning leadership. When you become the Shaman, you will find confidence and strength – as if you had grown extra muscles, extra brains. You will think clearer, see your way through problems. You will become the Judge. People will admire your wisdom. They want strong leaders. Wise judges.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “It is the way things are.”

  As I spread salves on the wounds on the Shaman’s back, part of my mind was seeing Cheena’s and the Droll’s tracks. Had I imagined them, seen them only because I wanted to?

  My arms ached as I dropped the bearskin tunic over his head. I helped the Shaman lie himself down. Heaviness spread up my arms and through my body. Was I just like all the others? Did I want to believe in the Droll? I lay down my heavy head and slept.

  Chapter 26

  “Ours is Best!”

  The Cliff People did not blame the Shaman for Cheena’s death, but their confidence was shaken. Behind the village, the children picked up and played a game they called “Shamans and Drolls.”. In Arku’s house an old man looked around, put his hand over his mouth, and whispered to another, “It was the Carny summoned the Droll – ”

  “What do you mean?” But he saw I was angry and would say no more, and the other men muttered. When we loaded the sledge, everyone watched us in silence.

  The Shaman took his place. Arku’s long whip scored the bitter air. The usual mad scramble from the dogs. Not a single hand raised in farewell. I looked to my steering.

  Three days’ travel, and we crossed fresh bear tracks. Let go, the dogs bailed almost at once. Arku and I found the bear reared against a snow hummock, like the one in the Shaman’s story.

  As it turned on a dog leaping and barking in its face, two others snapped at its testicles. The bear coughed and backed its rump hard into the snow. The dogs danced just out of reach. When it charged them with frightening speed, claws whistling, others leapt in from behind, tearing, savaging until the bear backed into the hummock again.

  Two dogs dropped in the snow, panting, catching their breath. Others took over the attack. Each time the bear lunged forward, it was forced to shelter again. Jaws slavering, it raged.

  The dogs took more risks. Hair flew, a coat raked by the tips of the flying claws. The dog arched, changed direction in midair, tumbled asprawl, and leapt back, barking.

  The bear sat on its bloody rump, head lurching, swinging nailed paws. It grunted. The dogs sprang with new life as Arku moved: in, thrust, out. Leaving the spear deep in the bear’s side. It snapped at the protruding handle. Blood ran from its jaws. It moaned like a man in pain. For a moment, I saw the Shaman surrounded by people snarling, the Carny sooling them on.

  Flying about the bear, winding it in a net of confusion, yammering, leaping closer, the dogs frenzied. The bear staggered, went down on its side. Clamour of snarls, chop of teeth. It heaved up, shedding dogs, turning to claw them, missing, and Arku stepped from the other side, ran in another spear, and was back behind the dogs again.

  The bear swung feeble paws, sank under the pack, and Arku was in there, pulling out his spear. A gush of blood followed it. The bear quivered. Faded. Shrunken against the churned red snow. Tugged this way and that.

  And suddenly I knew, despite the Shaman’s remoteness, his silences, I wanted to be like him. I had grown to love his ideas. His way of questioning everything. His harsh sense of truth.

  We were on our way again, Arku grinning, large square teeth shining. He nodded at the bearskin, the meat on the sledge. “A fine gift for the Coal People.”

  We came in sight of their village next evening. Turf and stone houses, heavily-built. Chimneys with black smoke leaning across the white land.

  The Coal People wore light leather tunics and trousers. The women had bracelets up their arms, necklaces of polished metal, rings through their ears. The men’s faces were pitted by black spots, tiny burns from their work at the forge.

  The fresh meat and the bearskin were welcomed. Perhaps they eased our arrival because the Carny had been before us. Some people peeped from behind doors and hid when I looked their way. I was not surprised when Arku whispered they had heard the story of Cheena and the Droll’s Gift.

  By now I was used to the healing as soon as we arrived at a village. The Shaman stood by while I treated the usual illnesses. And the accidents from the forges: burns, smashed fingers, thumbs. One man was carried in with a bad-smelling foot, injured when a coal trolley like the one in the Shaman’s cave, had run over it.

  “Rotting flesh, that smell,” said the Shaman. “You know what you must do?”

  I had read about the rotting disease, knew the badness in the flesh would spread and kill the man quickly. “The foot must be cut off.”

  “Yes.” The Shaman described the operation, step by step, and I realised he had guided others through it before.

  Three strong men held the sufferer down. At each stage I described what I was doing, and the Shaman nodded and approved. The shrieks haunted me afterwards, but the Shaman said, “You must learn to ignore them, so you can help the sick. That is part of being a healer.”

  A child died in the Coal People’s village while I was trying to ease the cough that kept shaking her small body. So thin her ribs shone white through the flesh. “She has the wasting disease,” the Shaman said. “What used to be called the White Death.”

  I mixed powders with warm water to ease her breathing, give her some rest from the racking cough. Her eyes were huge, her illness too advanced. I wanted to help, at least to ease her. I simmered the green leaves, made her a soup rich with seal’s blood. I sat with her, told her stories, sang to her. At least I had relieved the pain of the constant coughing. At least I had comforted her, I thought. Now, I might start to cure the disease itself.

  As I gave her a spoonful of soup, one day, she convulsed on her bed of furs, coughed, and blood exploded from her mouth. A gush. She was frantic. I knew I must calm her terror, was holding her, reassuring her, when the Shaman appeared and stood listening. I listened, too, heard an evil chuckle faint upon the air, and knew we had lost the child, even before her grasp loosened and she lolled in my arms.

  I stood outside and cried. Again, that chuckle. Inside I bundled up the girl’s clothes, the bedding, blood-stained furs.

  It was important, I told her parents, to burn everything. That the disease which killed her was in the blood. A tiny animal, so small as to be invisible, that fed upon the lungs of its victims and could only be fought with cleanliness, good food, and air. I had read about the disease, looked at the pictures in the book from the Library, talked about it with the Shaman. But how could I convince people about something they could not see?

  Her father carried the girl, wrapped in the bearskin we had brought, and buried her on a hill. Laid a bone doll between her hands. Rolled boulders over her grave against the wild animals. “You had her blood all over you,” he said. “Why don’t you get the disease?”

  I had to say I did not understand. That surviving has much to do with the will to live. But his question set my mind working. Why should the girl have caught the disease? Why did it not attack and kill me? The more I saw and thought of healing, the fewer of those questions I could answer. If there was an answer, I knew it lay in the Shaman’s arts of reason, not in the Carny’s superstitions.

  “You did your best, and we are grateful,” said the dead girl’s father. “You eased her death. But the Droll was too strong for you.” And I knew the Carny had done his evil work well.

  After the burial, I had time to look around the forges. It seemed magic, at first, but I soon learned these people looked on metal like wood, as something to be shaped. That could be cut, sawn, bent, hammered together, split, put into new shapes. It could be made weaker and stronger. It had great advantages over wood.

  “Only a smith can make the spear,” a burly man said to me, stepping back from his forge, long-handled tongs gripping a glowing spearhead. “You can always get someone else to spear the bear for you.” He laughe
d and thrust the spearhead back into the forge, working the leather bellows.

  He told me about different heats, how to judge them by their colours. They all looked red to me, but I learned there were many different shades, from a red which seemed close to white, down to a dull, deep shade, almost black. I watched him plunging hot metal into water, tempering it. Heating and bending a length of steel back on itself and welding it together with hammer blows to make it many times stronger. The smith explained he could make steel springy as well as hard enough to hold an edge. I saw into the beginnings of a complicated world of wonder.

  Above each forge there was a little statue of a short, strong man with a heavy hammer in his hands. Each day before they began their work, the metal workers bowed to their little statue, and touched their heads. “Thug!” they said. “Coal burner! Iron bender! Guide our hammers!” And they sprinkled themselves and their hammers with water.

  When I asked what the prayer did, and why they sprinkled themselves, nobody could tell me. “We do it because we’d be fools if we didn’t,” said Skarl, their leader, and he laughed.

  Though it was late in the winter, the Coal People still had plenty of meat in storage swapped by the hunting tribes for tools and weapons. “We always keep enough meat stored even for bad seasons,” said Skarl. “Had we known Arku’s people were starving, we could have fed them.”

  “What if you did run out?”

  “We never run out. There is a story that once the white bears besieged our village, and people starved. But nobody here can remember it.” Skarl laughed, teeth shining through his black beard. His arms bulged with muscles from his hammering at the forge. I could see he thought the hunting people were stupid for letting themselves starve.

  Skarl laughed again. “In summer, we gather berries and leaves. We save them for winter. They make a change from the meat. We catch fish from the rivers, collect eggs, and freeze them.”