The Shaman's Apprentice

by B. Muze

  She had asked this question often before, and the answer was always the same: “Listen for whatever there is to hear. If you listen for something specific, you may hear what you listen for, even if it’s not there.” Today, however, perhaps because her restlessness was so distracting, her master answered her differently.

  “We are reaching for the spirits we will try to call tomorrow.”

  “But what if they are too far away?” asked his servant.

  He frowned.

  “Nothing is too far away. If you listen well enough, you can even hear a fish swimming in the giant lake that is farther west than our people have ever gone.”

  For a while, this intrigued her, and she tried to listen for that. It didn’t seem to work. Her mind slipped off and started to wander again, but it was wandering in a listening way now, reaching all over the endless land she had seen, and bringing her back images of tall, steep mountains of stones formed by men in which many people lived and worked. And there were spirits who could be in many places at the same time, and great billowing spirits who could lift whole villages up into the air. She could hear strange music that was full of so many sounds thrown together that it seemed as if every song that ever existed was being sung at the same time. There were loud explosions and screams and laughter and the growls of strange beasts. There was too much to believe, but it was a game she could enjoy, and it kept her relatively still for the rest of the day.

  The next morning the shaman woke her up early again. This was the important day, the Trintoa. She knew in all ways what was expected of her, every step and chant, but still, she was nervous.

  She watched her master as he heated the konis. He looked ancient beyond words when he was so solemn. He let her have a taste, just a little drop on her finger. It was very bitter, and she did not like it at all. She felt sorry for him having to drink it, but he gulped it down with a look that was almost pleasure. Then they started, walking through the town together, chanting the first chant softly. People came to their windows and doors to watch them. The little girl wanted to smile and greet them, but her master would not like it. He had warned her that she must act like a shaman today, which to her meant being stern and proud and never smiling. It was very hard for her and took much effort.

  Yaku Shaman started for the men’s path, then remembering his servant this morning, climbed the woman’s path with her instead, their chants growing stronger as they reached the top.

  It was the first time in many months that the little girl had been to her hill and seen her tree. Now, at last, she felt as if she’d come home again and the joy of it overwhelmed her, erasing the last struggling shred of solemnity. Instantly forgotten were her master and his stern warnings and suddenly remembered was the baby in the tree. She could hear him calling, happy to see her again. She ran to her tree and threw her arms around its trunk in a loving embrace. She raised her voice and sang to the child, to greet him and let him know that she was happy to be back. She could hear him, deep inside, laughing with pleasure.

  The spirits came to her, surrounded her, danced and gamboled about her. She welcomed them all, happy in her heart. She knew some of them now, from her master’s description, and she sang for them too, as she sang for the child. She reached out her voice to share her song, like a loving gift, and she pleased the spirits greatly.

  The shaman changed to the last and final chant. Almost completely unaware, the little girl changed with him. This chant told the spirits how the people hoped they would be treated. It was an asking, but the child sang it as a giving, happy to please the spirits who wanted to help them by telling them how they could succeed. The spirits were ecstatic, and the shaman was well satisfied. He declared that it was going to be a very good year.

  When the children came to take their first names, Yaku Shaman’s servant was among them. He gave her the name the spirits had chosen for her — Jovai, meaning joyful sound or joyful song.

  Splitting Paths

  Chapter 10

  Torturing

  No formal ceremony was needed to make Jovai Yaku Shaman’s apprentice. Her parents and the shaman met before the elders that evening and made a simple, public announcement. The parents were given responsibility for Carken’s farm and stock with several apprentices and the promise that their other daughters’ wedding feasts would be subsidized by the village common funds as necessary.

  It was uncomfortable for the elders to welcome Takan as one of them. He was young for an elder and had done nothing outstanding on his own to earn him that position. Tapeten Winter Leader was particularly angry at the addition, but it was well within the shaman’s right to give that place to anyone he chose. Takan was a plain man of good sense with a special talent for humor and storytelling. He turned his agile mind to the task of winning acceptance from the elders, and it was not long before he was a favorite in the council, for the people and the elders alike. Takan paid particular deference to Tapeten Leader, and he quickly succeeded in the challenge to win the winter leader as his strongest supporter.

  For Jovai it seemed that little had changed. She was a person now. She could be addressed and talked about and praised and cursed and, if she had something worthy to say, she could demand to be listened to, but it didn’t feel any different. She had a new status with the shaman, that her people recognized better than she. They expected her to be proud, but she didn’t understand why. Her family, especially her mother, seemed ashamed of her. Her friends were more distant. There had been little time to play with them in the last year, but she had still considered them friends once the shaman had explained that she was not insane. Now they looked at her with a kind of awe, and she overheard some called her a freak, though no one said it to her face. There were several people who would make the sign to ward off evil whenever she passed and once she heard the murmured word “witch” that chilled her with fear, but nothing happened. Yaku Shaman treated her just the same. With him, nothing had changed.

  Many years went by. They were very good ones in which the crops grew abundantly, the livestock multiplied, the people were healthy and happy.

  Jovai’s skill as a shaman became much stronger as she grew older. She began to impress even Yaku. She memorized the chants and the histories exactly as he liked. When he wasn’t around, she told the histories her own way, however. She learned to listen deeply, which was not so much a listening with the ears but an opening of the spirit — a controlled wandering, and she learned how to wrap herself in silence, which allowed her not to be noticed.

  New and wondrous vistas opened up to her. There was more to hear than she believed she would ever understand — much more than she could identify. The collection of single, individual sounds, each sounded in different parts of a world much larger than she could imagine, came together in an ultimate pattern like one beautiful and perfect piece of music. The apprentice shaman learned to sing in harmony to that music.

  She learned to read and write. Writing, in their community, was used mostly for record and history keeping and few other than the shaman studied the skill. She learned the old language — both the spoken, which became as natural to her as her normal language, and the written version, which was a collection of limited but very powerful symbols, not really a language, but specifically for magic. She learned the design magic with rocks and stones, leaves and flowers — anything in an order, with a purpose, could be power. The feelings of the colors and the orders of designs pleased her mind.

  At the insistence of her master, she studied warfare like a boy. Many of the projectile weapons were light and easy to wield, except for the huge war spears which a strong arm could throw beyond sight. The heavier hand-to-hand weapons were more difficult for her little girl’s strength, but the boys would taunt her and tell her she couldn’t do it, so she had to prove them wrong. She became adequate but would be no great warrior in battle. She managed to stay astride a horse, but in the training combats, she struggled more to keep her mount safe than to hurt her enemy.

  A
t healing, her talents shone brightly, both for animals and for people, both for the body and the spirit. In only a few years, the people had learned to bring their sick to her instead of her master, for her touch was better. It was said by the charitable that when the real shaman’s apprentice should come, Jovai would make a fine healer.

  Her best skill was with the spirits, however. She never failed to please them, and they never failed to follow her. There were so many spirits trying to please her, especially after a Trintoa, that they were sometimes a nuisance. The shaman’s house would sparkle and glow even late into the night and once, for a week, they were followed constantly by gentle sounds that they finally realized were meant to be a singing.

  Jovai learned to be careful of what she said, for an ill-expressed wish would often come true. One summer she watched one of the village girls as she celebrated her adulthood in a beautifully woven, freshly dyed, long tunic, bound with silver flower-shaped pins.

  “You look so lovely today,” she told the girl. “I wish I could look as pretty as you.”

  That evening she found the girl’s tunic and pins waiting for her on her sleeping mat. She thought it was a generous gift, but when she wore the dress to thank the girl, she was met with angry accusations. The dress, it seemed, had been stolen. Theft was a rare and terrible crime in their community. It took all of Yaku Shaman’s influence to save Jovai from shame and punishment which could have been as harsh as banishment.

  The dead visited Jovai regularly as they passed through the village, and wanted to gossip late into the night, telling her all kinds of little things they thought those still living should know — about this farmer’s bofimer and that man’s child and what was wrong with Tisena’s bread recipe and how the people who were newly dead were doing. They, who no longer needed to sleep, sometimes forgot that the living did. Jovai always welcomed them until her master finally made her stop. He enjoyed his solitude too much to let every wandering spirit intrude.

  Yaku Shaman taught Jovai the great magic too: the ways to bend the wills of the spirits, the ways to fight them, as he had fought the wolf so long ago, the ways to raise spirits, and even to create a kind of spirit if necessary, and the way to go into the land of the dead and to return alive again. Much of this magic was dangerous magic and only for the most desperate of times. Everything had its price in the balance of things, and sometimes the price was very high. Jovai could not imagine any time so desperate that she would use the dangerous magic: the will-bending and the spirit creating and destroying. Even Yaku Shaman never had used most of it, nor had his master before him, but the knowledge was kept, just in case.

  There was much magic that only a shaman with a powerful “real” name could do. It was beyond Jovai’s ability until her adulthood came, and the spirits, if they willed, gave her a strong enough name. Until that time, she could only do the more limited healing magic and prayer magic on her own. This gentle magic contented Jovai, however, and she hoped, dearly, that her people would never need more from her.

  The years were good, but not without struggle. As the harvests brought her people ease and wealth, time for improving their building and crafting skills, it brought more and more raids. The Gicoks came frequently, year after year. Sometimes they took slaves as well as goods and livestock. Other times they left with almost nothing. One raid, when Jovai was barely eleven, her people finally managed to take one of the Gicok warriors prisoner.

  He was a youth, just become a man. Although he fought bravely and well, he was knocked unconscious and left for dead. The people of the valley discovered him, still alive, before he could revive and escape or kill himself. The shaman tended his wounds and healed the warrior. Then they kept him bound and guarded until the women of the valley decided what to do with him.

  They, who had lost fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, devised an array of tortures for the young Gicok. Jovai watched as they dragged the young man from the guarded house and bound him between two stakes in the center of the village. Several women with knives, others with pins and others with lit candles decorated his body with bleeding gashes and charred wounds. They were careful not to kill him quickly or let him bleed his consciousness away. They wanted him to suffer as long as possible. The others of the valley stood around and watched, cheering on the women. They made a holiday of it, drinking intoxicating liquid and eating holiday foods that the women had prepared for them. People laughed and joked, and a musician played on the pipe, while another sang a witty, bawdy song that was highly insulting to the parents of this Gicok warrior.

  The Gicok bore it well. He raised his voice in defiant song in his own language, which no one understood, and did not let it falter, even as the pain tried to choke his breath.

  Jovai was not so strong. She ran crying to Yaku Shaman.

  “Master! Master! They’re murdering him.”

  “Who?” he demanded.

  “The boy you saved. The Gicok.”

  The shaman shrugged, unconcerned.

  “You may enjoy it if you like. I will come as soon as I finish here.” He nodded to the roots he was cleaning.

  “You must come now!” she insisted. “You have to stop them.”

  “Stop them?” He turned his attention on the young girl curiously. “Why?”

  “They’re killing him!”

  He waited calmly for her to continue. She stared at him amazed, tears welling in her eyes.

  “Don’t you care?” she asked, astonished.

  “He is an enemy. We took him as he was trying to kill our people. It is right that he should die.”

  “But then why did you save his life?” Jovai cried.

  “So that our people could take their revenge.”

  “Do you know what they’re doing?” she demanded.

  “Something painful,” he answered, with the beginnings of a smile.

  Jovai described it to her master. He nodded approvingly. His acceptance horrified her.

  “You would not let them continue if you could see what they make him endure!” she cried, forgetting her place and her respect for her master in the black horror that was filling her.

  Her disrespect displeased him. He turned away, ignoring her angrily, and would not acknowledge her further.

  Jovai could not think to apologize. She could not think at all. She ran to her hill, to the safety of her tree and wept. Her tree embraced her and held her, rocking her soothingly in its branches. The wind played a lullaby through its leaves, but as it blew, it carried to her the sounds of the celebrating crowd and the tormented singer/warrior below. She tried to shut her ears, but the sounds would not be blocked.

  “I’ve lied to you,” she cried to the baby in the trunk. “I’ve told you only the beauty, but there is so much ugliness here it might be better not to be born.”

  “Everything has its place,” came an answering voice that did not touch her ears, only her mind. “There must be balance.”

  “But so much pain…” her tears choked her as she thought of the Gicok. He was younger than her people would have considered a man. It was probably his first battle. The women who tortured him in the name of their loved ones, did they consider the women who might love this boy? Was his mother waiting, hoping he would come home? If she knew what agony the people of the valley were causing her son, would her hatred ever be satisfied? At least their men had died quickly. No one deserved the treatment of this poor boy.

  She wept herself into a daze where her mind was still awake and alert, aware of the singer and the cruelty below, but her heart was blanketed with a protective calm of sorrow.

  “Please make them stop,” she prayed over and over to the spirits. They heard but did nothing. Even the little ones who served her most eagerly hung back from interfering. They hovered around her, concerned, but would not, or could not obey.

  “Is there nothing you can do?” she begged.

  There was no answer.

  The singer sang his death through the pain of her people’s torture. His
strength and courage awed Jovai, and she found new respect for the enemies she had always hated.

  Jovai fell into a light sleep and dreamed. She stood before the Gicok. He was mutilated almost beyond recognition. He was emasculated, his face and genitals particularly shredded, though no part of his body was undamaged. His eyes were torn from their sockets, but when she approached him, he turned his head to her and seemed to see. He sang still, in a language she could not understand, but the singing seemed to be outside of him, where her people were. She and this enemy were not with them but were instead in an emptiness, a darkness — just the two of them.

  “I am a warrior and brave,” she suddenly understood him to say.

  “You are,” she agreed. “You are braver than any man I’ve known.”

  “What do you want, witch?” he demanded. “Have you come to torture my spirit while they finish my body?”

  “I don’t want you to suffer,” she cried. “I want to help you, but I don’t know how.”

  “Your people do not hurt me. I let them take me, and I must pay for that dishonor. They only help me to do so. By the time I die, I will die a hero and climb the hero’s path.”

  “I will sing you Soul’s Ease,” she promised.

  “I do not need your prayers,” he answered.

  “I will sing it to honor you. When you meet my people in the spirit world, they will honor you too.”

  “Your people won’t go my way. They are not heroes.” His voice was filled with disdain.

  “You will find many,” she assured him, her words tinged with angry pride. “But then you will be comrades, not enemies.”

  The youth raised his head proudly.

  “I will not be the enemy of your people, only if you will not be the enemy of mine.”

  “This is an honor I offer you,” she tried to explain, frustrated that he did not understand. “I have no fear for my people from you.”

  “I will not accept honor from an enemy of my people.”