The Shaman's Apprentice

by B. Muze

  They were on their way to the woman’s place — a special house in a special grove forbidden absolutely to any man or child. For women only — a place of beauty and mystery and magic deeper and subtler than anything the shaman knew — or so Misa was saying. She talked continuously as they walked.

  “The old one, she doesn’t come into the village anymore. I never saw her before I was a woman and Polisa, too, can’t remember her ever being outside the woman’s place. She is immensely holy and wise. She has a book — older than creation, or maybe a part of it. From the labor of creation to birth the first world, and on up to this very moment, then the next, everything that touches the spirits of women is written in it. Our names are all written there, as we come into ourselves. I will introduce you to her, and she will write your name – your true name – there, joined with all the women who have ever lived. She has a place for you, saved. In a way, I guess, she knows you already. She told me I should bring you if Polisa wouldn’t.”

  Misa glanced at her sister. She had not meant to tell her that Polisa had refused to do her mother’s duty by Jovai, but surely Jovai understood that already. She was relieved to see no sign from her sister of hurt or resentment. All that showed on Jovai’s face was nervousness and wonder. Then, suddenly, fear.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Misa.

  Jovai did not answer but looked behind her. Misa followed her gaze and saw a figure hurrying along the path, coming toward them. He was far away, but Misa knew by Jovai’s expression that it was the shaman.

  “Quickly,” she told her sister. “We are almost there. He can’t follow us there.”

  “He will…” Jovai gasped.

  “He can’t.” She pulled her sister onward. “The old one will keep him out.”

  “An old woman,” muttered Jovai ruefully, “against the great Yaku Shaman.”

  “Come on,” urged her sister. “It’s just over this hill.”

  The hill was not tall, but the climb was steep and slippery with snow, and the figure behind them steadily drew closer. Every-so-often Jovai would pause and stare at him, as someone transfixed.

  “He’s angry,” she warned her sister.

  “We must hurry…”

  But Jovai shook her head.

  “You go on,” she told Misa. “I’ll join you when I can.”

  “We go together,” insisted Misa. She took Jovai’s arm and pulled her along.

  At the top of the hill, the brown bear was waiting. He stood on his hind legs, impossibly tall, and clawed his fury into the air.

  “Go away, Shaman. This doesn’t concern you!” shouted Misa angrily. Jovai caught her breath at her sister’s bravery.

  The bear lunged at them, but Misa, her grip firm on Jovai, held her ground. With one great sweep of his paw, the bear sent both the women sprawling. His claws left bloody gashes along Misa’s back.

  Jovai screamed in horror. Misa screamed in pain. The brown bear shimmered into the shape of the Yaku Shaman and stood glaring at them both.

  “You may not take my apprentice!” he growled at Misa.

  “She is a woman now,” Misa answered him furiously.

  “She is a shaman!” he yelled.

  “I must go, Master,” Jovai told him, pulling herself back to her feet. As she said it she suddenly knew, absolutely, that it was right. It was the order of things.

  “Do you defy me?” he demanded of her, incredulously.

  “I will come back,” she told him, “and accept the life you want for me, but right now, for a little while, I must go.”

  “No!”

  The shaman grew taller, almost the bear again, and towered over her. Jovai pulled herself to her full height and looked up into the burning fury of his eyes.

  “Yes,” she told him again. “I must.”

  She looked past him, toward the little house nestled in the snow and tree-filled valley beside the hill on which they stood. There was smoke rising from the chimney flap that promised the warmth of a welcoming fire and a sense of peace and beauty all around the place. Suddenly, more than anything, she wanted to go there — to be welcomed wholly and completely as she knew she would be there, without any mingling of suspicion or fear. It seemed so close. Maybe if she ran…

  “You cannot get by me,” Yaku growled.

  “Will you destroy me to stop me?” she challenged.

  He stared down at her and drew all his anger into one terrible focus. She felt her skin tingle as with a rising storm. This was not the gentle magic of suggestion, but something much more violent. It was the “bad” magic — the will bender. Her stomach clenched in fear.

  “This is wrong, master!”

  “Sleep,” was all he said. One word in the old language. It was an evil thing to tamper with another so — a horrible abuse. Yet he had said it so softly, so lovingly, it made her want to curl herself in his arms forever in total trust.

  “No!” she pushed herself away. Her body trembled. Her thoughts were drifting and even though she forced her eyes open, it was hard to make them see. She stumbled past him.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her gently.

  “There,” she said, pointing toward the little house in the valley. “I must, Master. Please. I must.”

  “You must sleep.”

  He left her no way to fight him unless she dared strike to destroy him. They both knew she could not do that. Even if she had her shaman name, she could not have used it against her beloved master. He caught her in his arms again, and this time she could not resist.

  Misa watched her sister, her strange, gentle, beautiful sister, so close to being a woman, now turned back into a sleeping baby, her will crushed, her voice silenced. Grief welled up in her at the sight of it. “Are we all so weak, so fragile,” she wondered, “that one fool with only one word can so easily destroy us?”

  Yaku Shaman looked down at the sleeping girl in his arms. He stroked her hair tenderly and smiled.

  “You can’t keep her a child forever,” Misa told him, her voice soft to mask its grief. “You can only cripple the woman she is meant to be.”

  “She is not a woman, but a shaman. She will claim her adulthood this summer. That is the proper time for it. And she will take it like a shaman — not a woman. A shaman!”

  Misa bowed her head and wept for her lost little sister.

  Jovai awoke back in her bed, wrapped carefully in furs. Her master was tending the fire. He did not look at her, but he knew she was awake.

  She said nothing. She washed herself and dressed again in boy’s clothes and spoke no word more than was necessary. From then on she kept her eyes lowered and would raise them to no man or woman or even child. Only once or twice did her master catch her eyes. He saw no reproach in them, only sadness. Otherwise, she was as dutiful as ever.

  She took over Kotayu’s lessons more and more as other duties called the shaman away. People no longer came to Jovai, not even as a healer.

  “It’s a bad business,” they would say when they spoke of what had happened. The shaman’s actions troubled them, especially the women. They did not know what to make of this person who was no longer a little girl, but not a woman either — a nothing, a wrong person, a witch — good only for evil — a walking curse. They refused her services. They barred their doors against her. Some would not look at her or say a word in her hearing, except the child’s protection prayer. Even Misa avoided her. She sought another healer to tend the wounds the shaman had caused and would not take her tunic back.

  When the Trintoa came, Jovai would not sing it.

  “You must! Kotayu does not know it yet,” Yaku Shaman insisted, but she only shook her head.

  “You have brought us many good years,” he told her gently.

  She got up quickly and left the room. Some unnamable fear stopped Yaku from chasing her.

  When the Trintoa came, only Yaku Shaman, old and tired Yaku Shaman, walked the dawn.

  Chapter 19

  Name of Power

  During th
e spring the shaman spent more time with Jovai than with Kotayu, preparing her for her spiritual journey. It could be a dangerous thing, depending on the spirits, but it would be during this journey to the spirits themselves that Jovai would be given her shaman name. He knew she was worthy of a truly powerful name, perhaps one even more powerful than his own. But he had to be sure she was completely ready. Physically, mentally, spiritually, she had to be as strong as she could be. The spirits might choose to test her before giving her the name. The name itself might be one of such power its weight would fall heavily on her and stun her at a crucial moment when her wits were required to keep it secret. More than anything, he trained her how to carry her name with such secrecy that no one, not even Jovai, herself, would ever hear it uttered aloud after the spirits gave it to her. This was the most important thing, and the training had to be so deep that no trickery or evil magic could ever compel her to break it.

  “The name the spirits will give you is everything you are,” he repeated to her, over and over. “It is the very essence of you, and anyone with knowledge of it has absolute power over you. You cannot allow this. Every man is important, but a man with a shaman name is a channel of such tremendous power that his name can change the very shape of the world if he is not careful. Only those who are worthy of the responsibility are given such names, and to give it to someone else, to kill yourself, for, spiritually, that is what this means, and let someone, who has not been chosen, abuse your power, is the greatest evil you can do. It can mean the end of the world. It can mean the spirits abandoning us forever. It can mean something even worse than we can imagine. No one who has not been given a shaman name can possibly use such power rightly, no matter how well-intentioned such a person might be. And no one who has a shaman name can ever be forgiven for betraying it. To give up your name is to lose yourself, completely and forever. And whatever space in anyone’s heart ever held love for you will be filled with pain until it shrinks into complete oblivion.”

  He tested her, by making up a secret name for her to guard, then bending his efforts to tricking it from her. He also had her choose a secret item that only she knew and tried to trick her into revealing what it was she had chosen. He could not get her to betray her secrets even when he declared the test finished.

  He also tested her again on everything he had ever taught her. In all the tests she did well. Yaku was very proud of the shaman he had trained.

  The people objected. Why did he spend so much time with her, now that he had a real apprentice? He told them:

  “We have great reason to rejoice. Jovai is adult now. This summer she will be given her name and, if the spirits will it, I will mark her myself as a shaman. Our people will be rich with her.”

  “Our people will be well with her,” was the ritual statement. He was saying more, bragging of her great power. The people were furious. They did not want a woman shaman, especially a cursed woman. And they had Kotayu. It was a dangerous thing to have two shamen in a village when one was not the master. The spirits could easily be split and the village could become a chaotic battle ground between them.

  They would let Jovai serve her master if he insisted. They would even let her help train Kotayu if Yaku Shaman died, but once Kotayu was shaman, Jovai had to disappear. She could not even be a healer or a wife, not now that she was a cursed woman.

  “You are lucky,” Yaku Shaman told his people, “that your shaman is wiser than you.” That was all he would say.

  “Is it wise,” Jovai asked him privately, “to make me a shaman when no one else will accept me as such?”

  “I did not make you a shaman,” her master told her. “That was the spirits. I trained you because you needed to be trained for the spirits’ sake, for the people’s sake, and for your own sake. You are a shaman. You will always be a shaman.”

  “Even if I had gotten married and had children?” she asked, but it was a foolish question. No man of her people would ever touch her. If she bore any children now, they would be killed or taken from her, for she was not a woman in the eyes of her people.

  “Even so,” the shaman replied. “It is much harder then to serve, and there may come a time when you will have to make a choice — your children’s well-being or all your people’s, the spirits’ needs or your family’s. The spirits can test you like that, and they can be very angry and dangerous if you disappoint them. It is much wiser for a shaman to keep that part of life away from him. If you let someone get too close, too distracting, the spirits can solve that problem in ways that could be very painful for everyone.”

  There was sadness in his expression that spoke of bitter memories. Jovai averted her eyes as he paused, lost for a moment in his own dark thoughts. She did not want to intrude.

  “You will be a shaman, because you are a shaman,” her master said at last. “I will send you to your naming and mark you so that the people will have to accept and honor you. You deserve that much.”

  The traders returned in the middle of spring. There were more of them this time, twelve or more. They did not initiate a meeting with the shaman’s people but wandered through the mountains and hills which surrounded the village’s valley.

  “They are looking for the silver,” Jovai guessed.

  Her people rode forth in a large and well-armed group to meet them. They found that the strangers were not the same as had come before. Even the Gicok guide was different.

  “Where is Bawlner?” asked Jovai.

  The strange men glanced between themselves.

  “He is dead,” they answered. “He and his crew died shortly after they returned.”

  Jovai told her people. They saw it as a bad omen.

  “Bawlner said there was a boy he had trained to speak our language. Is that you?” asked the long-haired man with black skin and a golden mustache who spoke for the new strangers.

  Jovai nodded.

  “I am called Aitouku.”

  “We’d be interested in having you come with us, back to our city. Our emperor is curious about your people. Your leader is invited too, of course. You can be the interpreter.”

  When she told her people this, Yaku Shaman frowned most ferociously.

  “We could learn much from such a visit,” commented Tapeten Winter Leader.

  “She is my apprentice. I do not allow,” said Yaku.

  “It could be dangerous,” warned Takan Elder. “Once they have you, Tapeten Leader, they might not want to let you return to us.”

  “Perhaps another could go,” suggested Jovai. “There are now several in the village who speak well enough.”

  “But none so well as you,” replied Jatoyen Elder with a sly grin.

  “My master has spoken,” Jovai dutifully replied.

  The strangers watched the exchange carefully. Jovai did not enjoy the intensity of their gaze. These men still seemed friendly, but not as foolishly relaxed as the strangers before had been. She declined their offer for herself and told them her leaders would think on it.

  The strangers claimed to be passing through toward other parts of the world. They said they would be back in the Fall to discuss trade when they had better horses and more things of interest.

  The next day the traders made a grand show of leaving, but the shaman and his older apprentice knew that a few of their number stayed behind. They kept their distance, roaming the hills and mountains around their village, rather than attempting any direct contact with Jovai’s people through her.

  “Three or four are no threat,” decided the council. “They are still friendly. As long as they don’t come into the village, we will leave them alone.”

  Summer came with no intrusion from the strangers. Jovai prepared for her shaman’s journey. She fasted and reached her mind toward the spirits, to let them know she was coming. She stressed her body, stretching every muscle, and pushing its energy to the limit with focused determination, to make sure it was sound and strong. She sat for days in strict discipline, listening. When the time arrived, she was
ready.

  Her master mixed the konis. He made it very strong — a stronger dose than she had ever had before or probably would ever have again. It was only one part “body” to four parts “mind.” Yaku Shaman was extremely careful. The dose, if wrong, could kill Jovai or push her mind beyond its limits, past any point from which it could heal. If it were not strong enough it might not let her reach as far as she needed. He had to mix it well, using all the knowledge of her he had. He put it in a flask, to be sipped, not gulped. Then they started out together.

  One sip. They walked through the village, calling to the village spirits, introducing her as the shaman-to-be-tried, encouraging their response, be it welcome or challenge. The village and house spirits watched with their families. The people were not happy, but many of the spirits bowed to Jovai as she passed.

  Two sips. At the eastern hill, the place of beginnings. She bowed before the sacred tree and sang to the child within. She listened and heard the child singing back. The trunk of the old tree shifted before Jovai’s eyes into the double face, the Mother/Father. It smiled at her and nodded, the branches waving in the wind. Yaku Shaman watched in wonder. He sensed the presence of the greatest of all gods and fear filled his heart. Such an honor for a human, it was almost too much. Things beyond his understanding were being connected to this girl. Jovai sang for the Mother/Father. She loved the great god and all its creation. She loved the child. She felt no fear, only happiness.

  Three sips. To the western river, the place of wisdom and of power, they walked. Her master helped her drink the cool, sweet water that washed away the bitter taste of konis. He helped her bathe in the free-flowing waters. They filled a second flask for her, to hang on her belt beside the first. The spirits came splashing upon the bank, sparkling in the late afternoon sun. They talked to her with joyous babble, laughing as the dizziness shook her. The konis was very strong.