The Shaman and the Droll Page 21

  Like a handful of sharp pebbles, a few drops of water struck my face. The canoe running alongside. The paddler scrambling on to the raft, kneeling, staring at the old blind man. She opens her mouth, speaks, but I cannot make out her words. And far away I hear my own voice saying, “Here is your father.”

  The raft drifting down the lake, she takes the great dying head in her arms, kisses the bloody lips. She calls, and he replies through the mists.

  “Who calls me Father?”

  “Lutha, your daughter.”

  The Shaman raised a hand to the bone snow mask. Lutha undid the knot that held it at the back of his head. For the first time I saw his blind eyes. The long scars of the hot wires burned deep into his cheeks and brows. The masked skin around his eyes smooth, the rest of his face weatherworn as a stone crag, lined like the crackled glaze on Taur’s pots. For the first time I saw the hard lips curve in a smile.

  “Lutha?”

  “My mother named me Lutha when I was born, after you disappeared down the river.” That voice I had heard in a thousand dreams. She cradled her father. Talking, stroking, kissing his scars, his blind eyes. And, held in his daughter’s arms, his hands in hers, the Shaman choked. His chest heaved, face convulsed.

  “Lutha!” The bright blood ran from his mouth.

  For one moment, I thought we had both lost a father, then I remembered mine had died in the Narrower Ford, all those years ago. It was Lutha who had found her father, only to lose him.

  A shout woke me. The wind had dropped, the sail fallen flat. A current taking us back towards the cliffs. Arrows already dropping near, white quiffs marking their fall. Worse, the current was also dragging us towards the river.

  I got Nip and our gear into the canoe. Lashed the Shaman’s body to the mast.

  “Father!” She was still kneeling, kissing those blind eyes.

  “Lutha!” She flung herself across his body. This time I lifted her into the canoe, got myself in, paddled frantic. The raft rocked away, spinning, tilting down the river past the Island of Bones to the black hole which would swallow and carry the Shaman under Grave Mountain to the Land of the White Bear that Ate the Sun.

  The author

  Jack Lasenby was born in Waharoa, New Zealand in 1931. During the 1950s he was a deer-culler and possum trapper in the Urewera Country. He is a former school teacher, lecturer in English at the Wellington Teachers’ College, and editor of New Zealand’s School Journal.

  Jack Lasenby held the Sargeson Fellowship in 1991, the Writer’s Fellowship at the Victoria University of Wellington in 1993, and was the Writer in Residence at the Dunedin College of Education in 1995. He is the author of many novels for children and young adults, including award-winning books The Lake, The Conjuror, The Waterfall and The Battle of Pook Island. He has been the recipient of New Zealand’s most prestigious children’s fiction awards: the Esther Glen Medal, the Aim Children’s Book Award, and the NZ Post Children’s Book Award.

  The Shaman and the Droll is the third title in the Travellers series. The first, Because We Were the Travellers, received an Honour Award in the 1998 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards. Taur, the second, won the senior fiction category of the same awards in 1999. Jack Lasenby is presently working on a fourth volume.

  Also by Jack Lasenby

  Charlie the Cheeky Kea 1976

  Rewi the Red Deer 1976

  The Lake 1987

  The Mangrove Summer 1989

  Uncle Trev 1991

  Uncle Trev and the Great South Island Plan 1991

  Uncle Trev and the Treaty of Waitangi 1992

  The Conjuror 1992

  Harry Wakatipu 1993

  Dead Man’s Head 1994

  The Waterfall 1995

  The Battle of Pook Island 1996

  Because We Were The Travellers 1997

  Uncle Trev’s Teeth 1997

  Taur 1998

  The Lies of Harry Wakatipu (forthcoming 2000)

  Copyright

  I am grateful for the assistance of Creative N.Z. – the Arts Council of

  New Zealand. Their grant in 1998 made this novel possible.

  The first passage quoted on page 188 is from the novel

  Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

  The second passage quoted on page 188 is from the novel

  Kim by Rudyard Kipling.

  The two lines quoted on pages 194 and 200 are from the poem “Because the pleasure bird whistles” by Dylan Thomas.

  Published with the assistance of

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of Longacre Press and the author.

  Jack Lasenby asserts his moral right to be

  identified as the author of this work.

  © Jack Lasenby

  ISBN 9781775531234

  First published by Longacre Press 1999

  9 Dowling Street, Dunedin, New Zealand.

  Book design and map on pages 8-9 by Jenny Cooper

  Printed by Australian Print Group