by B. Muze
Yaku nodded.
“She would not leave my side. She got in everyone’s way and made Polisa furious. But when Polisa would spank her and throw her out, she’d sneak back in and stay by me. She’d make up stories to amuse me, sing to me, and have pretend conversations with invisible people who all told me I was going to get well soon. She held me when I slept, got me water when I needed, and made me feel that she loved me very much. I hadn’t really noticed her before that, she was just another baby, but my other sisters didn’t do that. They were wiser, not to risk getting sick themselves, not to get in the way of those who could truly heal me. She is not wise, but that she can learn when she is old enough.”
The shaman stayed silent, waiting, until Misa bowed her head, indicating she was done speaking.
“Why do you tell me all this?” he then asked.
Misa blushed, embarrassed.
“I just thought you should know,” she finally answered.
Yaku Shaman nodded, with an air of solemnity, but Misa had the impression he was laughing at her in his heart.
“Thank you.”
His tone dismissed her. Misa stifled a sigh as she left.
The little girl watched hopefully as the shaman approached his house. Perhaps he would tell her to go home now. He stopped before the doorway and stared thoughtfully at her, his face only slightly less stern than usual. She waited eagerly for the dismissal.
“Have you finished your breakfast?” he asked.
She nodded, holding her breath.
“Then come with me to the eastern hill.”
Her heart sank. Yaku noticed her disappointment with surprise.
“Don’t you like the eastern hill?” he asked as they walked.
The little girl nodded that she did, but still her face looked sad.
“Then why are you unhappy to go?”
She shrugged. It seemed to her that all Misa’s talk had accomplished was filling the holy man with it so that he too could argue her out of her feelings and make her think she was wrong.
“I give you permission to speak to me freely when we are alone,” said her master.
The child looked up at the old man surprised. Why would he want her to speak? What could a non-person possibly have to say — especially to a holy man who knew everything?
He watched her, waiting. When she did not speak, he did.
“You are with me so that I may teach you and I will need to know how much you know, what you are thinking, so that I can know what you need to learn.”
She took the information in silently.
“What are you thinking now?” he asked.
“Questions,” she answered.
“What questions?”
She glanced at Yaku, warily.
“Speak,” he commanded.
“What do you want to teach me and why? Why have you made me different from the others? Why do you keep me with you and do not let me go home? Why are you always angry with me? What have I done so bad?”
Yaku frowned. The child’s courage withered. She knew he would not like her questions!
“I am not always angry with you,” he said, clearly annoyed. “You have not done anything too bad so far. You stay with me because I’m your master. I can teach you better when you’re with me.”
“Then you are not punishing me?”
He scowled at her.
“I am not punishing you.”
She watched him, wanting him to answer the rest of her questions.
He waited until they were on top of the hill then he sat down, away from the tree, as he had done the day before, and nodded for her to do the same.
“I teach you of the spirits,” he said when she was settled, “because they have made it clear that they want you to know. It is not by my choice. They like you. You can make them do good things for our people when you know how.”
That bothered her. She did not feel that she wanted to make anyone do anything.
Yaku watched the child frustrated. Her responses were not what he had hoped. She should be excited, proud. That was how he had felt. He would have understood if she had been scared, that too was natural, but she didn’t seem to be. She sat before him, fidgeting with the grass at her feet, her eyes lowered, looking almost as if she were…could she be angry? But why would she be angry?
“Do you understand what I have told you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“What do you think?” he demanded.
“I want to go home.”
“You can’t,” he told her. “You must stay with me and learn.”
“If I learn will you let me go home?”
Her child’s face rose hopefully toward his, and he was strained to rein his anger. She did not understand. Why could he not make her understand?
“What have I just told you?” he quizzed her.
“That you are not punishing me, but you will not let me go home, and you keep me with you so everyone thinks I am sick or crazy because the spirits like me, even if you do not, and they want you to teach me how to make them do things against their will.”
He shook his head and went over it again slowly.
“No one thinks you’re sick or insane.”
“My friends do.”
“Your friends aren’t even people yet.”
“Some are. And they’re the only friends I have, except for my sisters and you won’t let me go home.”
“I will tell them you are not insane. I will tell them you are better than they are…”
“Oh no,” she interrupted, then she cringed in fright for she had interrupted an adult — a holy man even. Yaku stared at her until he was sure her silence would last.
“I will have them honor you. That should make you happy.”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not better. Because I don’t want to be better. It won’t make them happy to think that I’m better.”
“Then I will not tell them that you are better, but I will tell them you are not insane. Will that please you?”
She nodded.
“Now, part of what I will teach you is how to make spirits do things against their will, but this is very bad magic, and we only do it against very bad spirits. If you are lucky, you will never have to do it. Many spirits want to please us. What I will teach you is how to guide them in ways that they will please us. Other spirits, the greater ones, the ones we call gods, want to be pleased, and if you make them happy they will reward you and our people. I will teach you how to make them happy. Some spirits want to hurt, and I will teach you how to turn them away to hurt things that do not hurt us. In this way, a shaman is a friend to all the spirits and makes them all happy, and he is a friend to his people and makes them happy. The spirits like you. This is what they want you to learn.”
“If I learn, can I go home?” she asked again.
“It will take you many years,” he warned. “By the time you learn, you will be too old to go home.”
“But if I learn very quickly?”
“You learn as quickly as you can,” he said, “and when you know all, then we will see.”
She grinned, accepting his words as a promise.
Chapter 5
The Dying
Yaku discovered that the child was not as stupid as he had first thought. He realized that she would not learn the chants unless she understood them, so he started her on the old language, which had taken him many years of hard struggle to master. She loved it. The words came easily to her and stayed. The syntax and conjugations were more difficult, but it was not long before she and her master could sustain a reasonable dialogue. The chants followed as a matter of course, for she loved to sing. Yaku soon realized that it was not teaching her to sing the chants, but teaching her when not to sing them that was the challenge, for she would sing them night and day, even during bathing or eating times which was sacrilegious and possibly offensive to the spirits.
“This chant is to be sung on
the morning of the Trintoa only. You may sing it with me here because you need to learn it, but you must not sing it all the time and everywhere, and never to the spirits except on the Trintoa morning.”
“But you said it was to please the spirits. Isn’t it good to always please them?”
“Spirits are pleased by an order of things. Things done within the order are good, but things done outside the order, like singing the Trintoa when it is not the Trintoa, that is bad. It can make them angry.”
The concept was hard for the little girl to understand. It was a riddle for her mind: when is something that pleases unpleasant? She searched in every little thing that pleased her to try to find when it would not and found food when you’re full, a blanket when you’re hot, a pretty fire that burns your skin, and frost that kills the budding tree.
Late frosts plagued the spring, then rains flooded the fields, drowning the crops. Two good mares and a poor man’s bofimer died in labor, taking their babies with them. On one farm, the goytew females pecked their males to death. No one would give or even trade the farmer another, for fear of angering the spirits, and his goytews stopped laying. Rats were the only animals that bred well. They infested the town and storeroom caves, fouling much of the abundant stocks the village had saved. Sickness spread through the very old and very young, and the shaman spent more time as a healer than as a teacher. Even so, he kept his apprentice with him, urging her to watch and learn so that she too might one day heal.
He saw the heart her sister had described. Fear of sickness did not trouble her. The stench of illness, of vomit, sweat, and urine, did not keep her away. This child, whose attention flitted like a butterfly, never staying long anywhere, would sit for hours by the sick and dying, comforting them as best she could. It was difficult to pull her away, but there were too many who needed him for them to stay with any one long enough to satisfy her. It was as if each patient were all the world to her. She even came close once to defying him openly.
“Rirylia” she called softly as she bathed the little girl’s head. Her friend was dying. The spirits insisted, and nothing the shaman had done could change their decision. At last, he had called her ancestors to guide her. It was time to see to others who might still be saved.
“Come,” ordered Yaku Shaman.
His servant softly shook her head, never taking her eyes off her friend. Yaku glanced around, fearful that her defiance might have been noticed, but the family was lost in sorrow now, unaware of the little non-person.
“Come,” he repeated again in the old language, his rising anger giving the gentle sounds an unaccustomed edge. “There are others who need us.”
“She’s afraid,” the child answered in the language her master had chosen.
“Her ancestors are called. They will be here soon.”
“She doesn’t know any of them. Everyone she knows is still alive, and she’s afraid to leave them.” She took her friend’s hand and held it firmly. “I will stay,” she announced.
“There is nothing you can do,” he told her angrily.
“I can stay,” she answered.
Yaku knew that he should not bend to his servant’s will. He was the master, not she. He could drag her from the room and hope she would have enough sense to leave the family in peace, but he did not really need her. She had watched him enough for the day and, if fewer had been ill, he would have stayed to give Rirylia’s spirit to her ancestors himself. It was what a good shaman did when he could. Since he could not, perhaps it was right if she stayed.
“I am leaving my servant,” he told the mother. “Let her sit with Rirylia. It will help her.”
The mother nodded.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice thick with grief.
That evening, the shaman’s servant was spoken of by her people, although she still had no name by which to be called. It was said she had spoken in the old language, the spirit’s tongue, to her master. It was said she had sung a soul’s ease to Rirylia. It was said that she had seen the ancestors as they arrived and described them accurately to the grieving family, even the father’s parents who had passed on many years before she had been born, and she had helped Rirylia to feel how they loved her and welcomed her. It was said that she had promised the family that Rirylia would be happy now as if she had really known it to be true. It was said that she had acted like a shaman, and the people wondered even more what Yaku Shaman’s plans for her were.
The sicknesses passed, and the stronger survived. Even Polisa’s old mother survived it. She never caught the illness, but she was growing thinner and, day by day, more of her strength slipped away. Her son refused to call the shaman or the healing women for her while others were so much sicker, so her daughter nursed her with traditional herbal remedies. They did not help. When the village sickness had passed, the son finally relented and sought the shaman out himself.
He found him in the southern wood where he was giving lessons to his servant these days. The sight of his niece brought back the memory of what she had told him last winter. She had prophesied his mother’s death. It chilled him. His niece was happy to see him. He barely greeted her, his manner cold, and when he asked the shaman to come, he asked him to leave his servant behind.
The shaman spent many days with the grandmother. Her son and daughter would not let him take her to his home, so he nursed her in her own until it became clear to him that she would die before winter. He had done all he could. He told her children to prepare and to call him toward the end.
One long summer’s afternoon the shaman’s servant found him as he was bathing.
“My grandfather is coming,” she yelled to him, “did you call?”
At first, he thought of her living grandfather, but the worry on her face didn’t fit.
“No,” he answered.
She ran ahead to her grandmother’s house. The shaman quickly dressed and followed.
“Go back and get your master,” her mother was telling her, barring the girl’s entrance to the house.
“I am here,” said the shaman, entering. He had seen Polisa’s father walking from the northern plains toward the house. He knew the time was short.
The shaman’s servant sat on the ground outside and waited. She greeted her grandfather when he arrived.
“Why aren’t you inside with your grandmother?” he asked, surprised.
“They won’t let me,” she answered.
“Did you do something bad?”
She shrugged, angry and hurt.
“I told them.”
Her grandfather nodded and sat down next to her to wait.
“Rirylia sends her thanks by me,” he told her.
“How is she?”
“Very well. She says she is sorry she called you a non-person. She says you helped her very much. There are others who have been saying the same. You are making me very proud.”
He smiled. His granddaughter smiled back. She liked her handsome grandfather who had earned his reputation as a superb craftsman in metals — a spiritual calling of great honor. His praise warmed her.
They heard the shaman’s call.
“Time to go in now,” announced her grandfather, rising.
“Should I go in too?” she asked.
“Not if your mother won’t let you. I’ll bring Lila out this way so you can say goodbye.”
Her grandfather went in. Others were arriving too, she saw, all from the north where the doorway to their plains was. Most she had never seen before, but their faces were reflected by her mother, her uncle, her cousins and her sisters. They were all of them young, handsome and strong, a family to be proud of. She was glad for her grandmother to have so many come to escort her. They nodded to the child as they went into the house. It quickly filled up, and many had to stand outside. All around her she felt their love.
Her grandfather came out with a woman on his arm, young and beautiful with long golden hair, smooth golden skin, and shining brown eyes. The child almost didn’t recognize her.<
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“Say goodbye now,” her grandfather instructed.
The child looked up at the smiling woman.
“Goodbye, grandmother,” she said. “I will miss you. I hope you will be happy.”
“I’ll be fine,” she promised. “And you be good. You serve your master well and bring our family honor.”
The child promised she would and watched as her grandmother joyously greeted her brothers and sisters and parents and friends. It seemed they all had so much to catch up on as they wandered off toward the northern plains.
Inside the little house, she could hear her mother and sisters and cousins weeping. She wanted to go in to comfort them, but her master stopped her as he came out.
“It’s time to leave the family alone,” he said quietly.
“But they are my family,” said the little girl.
Yaku Shaman looked at her surprised. It seemed almost as if he had forgotten.
“You will help them more by leaving them alone,” he told her. He took her by the hand, still dwarfed in his own, but by now it seemed to fit better, and led her away.
Battles of the Bear
Chapter 6
Attack of the Gicoks
The height of summer came with a blazing heat which burned the fragile leaves and fruit of many of the crops. Drought parched the earth. The yield was very small, and it was obvious to everyone that they’d be living off the hunt this winter in the south country. The Summer Festival was a modest one. Thanks were given to the spirits through plays, but were not as lavish or heartfelt as last year’s had been. Two of their young warriors broke legs, and one broke an arm during the various competitions. Seven children passed into adulthood with proper ceremony and proud parents watching. Two boys would try again next year, for the spirits had not judged them ready. It was not a shame, but it was not an honor either. Several young men had elected to leave the village for the lonely and dangerous hunter/trapper life. Their hopes were high, but the parting was sad, for very few of the men who left on such adventures ever returned to enjoy the lavish honors awarded successful heroes.