by Bjorn Kurten
“Yet we must strike him down,” said Baywillow.
“I know, but the only way we can do it is with the help of something greater and more powerful than ourselves.”
Later still, Baywillow and Tiger stood on a hill. The setting sun and the edge of the distant forest were mirrored in the water. A buzzard flew overhead, mewing piteously; Baywillow looked up with a fleeting smile. To the west was Sunwood, high and dark; to the south, the little stream and the valley with the War Camp. Baywillow pointed to a higher hill in the east. “Up there is a place where Shelk sometimes goes to be alone. No one else is allowed there, except Fox.”
Tiger hardly heard him. Once more the picture of the islands in the sea rose to his inner eye. Then it changed into the meltwater pools in the forest. Unconsciously he dug a furrow in the ground with his heel. The cataract growled in the distance, and he heard a note of eagerness in its voice, as if it had something to tell him. The scenery seemed to darken, and he felt the presence of the giant spirit who rose out of Trout Lake. The image of Miss Swallow came to him, with her eyebrows arched over green eyes. Again she raised her hands to her red hair, and he heard her voice. What was it she was saying? How she had felt about the Blacks, and how her emotions had changed when she met Tiger?
All these visions faded, and again Tiger was standing at Baywillow’s side, conscious of his brother’s searching glance.
“You have a plan, Tiger?” said Baywillow. Tiger shook his head in bewilderment.
“It is as if the spirit of the lake wants to tell me something,” he said. “Yet I don’t know what it is.”
Tiger slept badly that night, alone in his new house. Tern was in the forest camp. Many times he woke from a strangely foreboding dream, feeling that he was close to a revelation. Somewhere in the vicinity, the Powers were active, but they were keeping their secret. In the morning, he went to work, chilled and thoughtful.
The Sun Pillar was a pine-trunk, the height of two men, stripped of its bark. Tiger walked around it, searching the white wood for patterns, leading lines, knots, and other things that might reveal to him what the Powers wanted him to do. Somewhere in the wood there were already the images that it was his task to call forth and make visible, with his engraving tool, with ochre, charcoal, and woad. He made a scaffold to climb up and scrutinize the upper part of the bole. Yes, it was speaking to him; here—here—and here! He caught a glimpse of an eye, a line that might be the hump of a mammoth, the arc of a horn. The wood was alive. He saw it and felt it. Now the Powers were on his side. He stood three fathoms from the pillar and walked around it several times. Already he saw it fill up with pictures.
Shelk stood at his door, tense and expectant. He kept still, so as not to disturb the artist.
There was the mammoth. Tiger studied the invisible picture from various angles. Yes, it was there. With complete assurance he seized his engraving tool and went up to the pillar. Silent and impressed, Shelk looked on as the young artist started his work.
The Powers were on his side! The days passed, and the Sun Pillar became covered with animal shapes. The inspiration never left him.
The southern face of the pillar was the place for the cattle of the Sun. At the base was the mammoth, tall and humped, a fusion of bold, interlacing curves; the tusks, the trunk, the lines of head and back, all massive and black, a vision of unbridled strength. This was the foundation of the composition, as if the great animal were carrying the pillar on its back.
Above the mammoth the caribou emerged, drawn with affecting mildness. The angular antlers, branching beautifully, spoke of the animal’s fragility and vulnerability. In its eye there was an appeal, but the body revealed a tough will to live, to endure long migrations, snow and ice. Behind the caribou, an approaching herd was suggested, a forest of antlers on the march; you could almost hear the cracking of the hoofs.
The place for the shelk remained empty. Instead, Tiger worked on the other animals, which were grouped around the central figures in an intricate composition. Though they were smaller, all of them were as alive and expressive. The carnivores were there too, but not big enough to threaten the cattle of the Sun.
On the northern face was the bison, black and russet, a second center of power in the hierarchy. Its body pattern signaled far and wide across the plains: Here am I, the steppe wisent! Its weight was concentrated in the withers; the hindquarters were slim, almost delicate. The black double mane on neck and back; the long horns, their points deflected backward.
There were two horses, each with raised head, hanging belly, and straggling mane. Ears cocked: Where is the enemy? A play of muscles under the skin, the moment before exploding into a gallop.
The great bear with its rolling gait, heavy and ungainly, yet a great striding shape still, with toe-in feet and long black claws, clicking against the rocks. A wolf seemed to threaten the mammoth—vain hopes! Grey and angry, with a long muzzle and greedy eyes, but its tail crept down between its legs.
The figure on the base of the northern face was the woolly rhinoceros, alone and unconcerned, its head hanging almost to the ground, and its long horn pointing forward. Here I go and nothing scares me; step aside, please, I don’t see you, I don’t hear you; my world is mine and I am alone in it.
Hyenas, two; one hyena is nothing, but two are a pack, ready for anything. They smiled at each other; you could hear their twittering laughter. The lynx with its round face, pennants on its ears, legs like pillars, big soft paws, and its tail-stump raised: the spirit of the tree.
The Powers were on Tiger’s side. He did not know how and when they had answered his questions, but one morning he woke at Tern’s side, and everything was clear to him, everything that he had searched for; everything the Powers wanted to tell him through his visions and through Miss Swallow’s voice. When he told his plan to Baywillow, and when Baywillow passed it on to Veyde, it was out of Tiger’s hands. There was nothing he could do himself; Sunwood was out of bounds to him.
So he continued to bring forth the pictures that were already visible to him on the flanks of the pillar. The glutton, the seal, the polar bear, and the salmon found their places. A knothole became the eye of a squirrel; the line from a glancing axe, the plume of its tail. Here the elk waded as if in a tarn, long-legged, its muzzle hanging. A butterfly fluttered; it was the mourning-cloak. A grasshopper chirped its monotonous song. Even the wasp had found its place.
Then birds invaded the picture, connecting its many parts in a rhythmic whole. There was the eagle with its commanding eyes, the horned owl in rocklike stillness, swifts and terns, their wings clipping.
Still the place of the shelk was empty, and time was running out. A moon and a half had passed. Now it was in its last quarter and the shadow of the Sun Pillar almost reached the door of Shelk’s house. Tiger could see where the shelk was in the wood, and he knew it wanted to come alive. It frightened him, but there was nothing he could do. He fought against it, and tried starting anew, but the lines in the wood, the lines his own eye recognized, were too strong. At last the shelk was there, as magnificent and proud as the one he had drawn after his adventure with the black tigers. This was its twin in majesty, but it also had the same mark of death upon it.
Shelk saw it. He had followed Tiger’s work with thrilled admiration. Faced with the new picture, he stood motionless, staring with a wooden expression. Then he passed his hand over his eyes and sighed.
“Yes, we’re all mortal, Wildcat. Is that what you wanted to tell me? You are right.”
Tiger came down from his scaffold, stood beside Shelk, and studied the picture. “My hand isn’t as sure as it used to be,” he said.
“To me it seems surer than ever. But I seem to miss some animals. Where is the black tiger?”
“I can only draw the animals I’ve seen,” said Tiger returning to his jungle of lies. For him, the tiger was there already. He saw it clearly in the empty space beside the shelk, and he knew that it alone would be the consummation. It was the finishing link
. With it the whole picture would spring to life. The tension built up by the other animals would culminate and be discharged through the shelk and the tiger. Yet here Tiger had to betray his inspiration. Shelk must never see that picture.
“I understand,” said Shelk. “The musk ox, the lion—I have seen them and you not.”
“That is so, Master.”
In the empty place of the tiger, he drew a wildcat. It was ugly. The face, with its low-lying ears, seemed to sneer, and the animal appeared to be sneaking off, stiff-legged, as if ashamed.
“You’re not as good at the animal for which you are named, Wildcat,” Shelk observed.
“I’ve always had trouble with it,” Tiger improvised. “I’ve been wondering why. It’s in the wrong place: too close to the shelk and to the Sun.”
“But you are in your rightful place there,” said Shelk warmly. “You are the greatest artist in the land, and it was indeed a lucky day that brought you here. The Sun Pillar is finished now, and even more noble than the one I remember. Tomorrow is the day of the Sun celebration; tomorrow we’ll pay you the homage you deserve.”
Tiger nodded dully. He had finished his work, but he had played it false at the end, and he could not look at it without meeting the leering eye of the wildcat in the place where he knew the deadly tiger was rising in a furious assault against the shelk.
Slowly Tiger walked to his house. He knew that his work had been easy, a pleasure compared with Veyde’s. While he had been working in the sunshine, in compact with the Powers and encouraged by the Master, she had been toiling in twilight and darkness, constantly afraid of detection. However much Baywillow had tried to spare her and her friends, they had been forced to do their regular work as well. All had gone well so far, but how long could they trust their luck?
THE SPIRIT OF CARIBOU LAKE
Da sprach sie schnell: Sei bald bereit,
ich wasche dir dein Totenkleid!
—Heine, Buch der Lieder
The good wine comes before the poor. Thus the Midsummer Feast started with the broaching of the black wine of the autumn, with its deep bilberry and whortleberry tint. Later it would be succeeded by the raw-sap wine of the spring. Tiger drank little, for he was waiting to see Veyde and Marten, who would arrive when everyone’s eyes were fixed on the setting sun. With amazement and secret derision, he watched the peculiar rites performed by the Men of the Eagle Feather, rites drawn from various parts of the land.
Here were warriors, smeared beyond recognition with blood and filth, stinking to heaven; they came in fours, carrying their leaders on their backs. A knowledgeable man at Tiger’s side told him that they came from the Land of Flints, where the horse and its Guardian were highly honored, and that the men were eight-footed horses, carrying their chiefs to the grave. In the Land of Flints, he said, men spoke of a chief who vaulted onto the back of a horse and rode away into the forest; but sensible people did not believe in such tales.
Presently, the men threw themselves into the lake and returned cleansed. In this way, the man continued, they believe that they wash off their ill deeds and escape their fates; they think they can cheat death. He smiled at their superstition.
But later Tiger saw the same man and several others climbing the Sun Pillar and laying their hands on the red globe. They uttered cries of blissful pain and said that their hands were badly burned.
Tiger thought this silly and childish. The artful animal dances did arouse his admiration, though. Many of Shelk’s people came to him to praise his work on the pillar. Diver, clean and proper after his dip in the lake, was as proud as he would have been if he had painted the pictures himself. “You are an honor to the company,” he said. Tiger flinched, feeling the scornful look of the wildcat in his back.
Later, with Hind, he walked down to the valley.
“I have wanted to talk to you, Wildcat, ever since you came here,” she said. “Now, while everybody is busy, I have a chance. Why did you come here, Wildcat? I know who you are. You’re the one they hate and fear more than anybody else. Yet you dare to come here. You must be a great chief with invisible powers. Did you come to strike down the Master?”
“What does Shelk mean to you, Hind?”
“What he means to me doesn’t matter. What I mean to him can be said in one word: nothing. Nothing, Wildcat, as you call yourself now.” She stopped and looked down. “I was meant for other things. I was meant to be the woman of a chief, a chief called Tiger. Instead I became the Master’s woman—for today. Tomorrow I’ll be nothing at all.
“To him I’m just a woman who might possibly give him what he wants—a son. I’m on trial, and it isn’t going to work. He pours his seed into me, but it doesn’t take root. He doesn’t even know that it’s me. His eyes are closed, and he remembers another woman. I’m nothing to him. Soon he will send me away just as he’s sent the others away. And what’s going to happen to me then? I who was to have been the woman of a chief? What’s going to happen, Wildcat? Soon I’ll be nothing to the others either. I’ll go from one warrior to the next; I’ll be worthless. They’ll take their pleasure from me and then kick me out the moment they get tired of me. That’s what will happen to me, who was meant to be Tiger’s bride.”
“All isn’t lost yet, Hind.”
“Oh yes, to me it is. I hid myself among the other women in Sunwood. The Overseers wanted me, but every day I waited for Tiger to come. Now he is here, and it’s too late. The Master took me for his woman, and he changed me from a chief’s bride into nothing.”
“In a moon or two, Hind, you’ll remember this only as a bad dream. I promise you.”
“What can you do, Tiger?”
“I cannot tell you now, but I’ll get you back to your father.”
Hind lifted his hand to her lips. “That’s all I ask.”
Later, when the disk of the Sun touched the edge of the forest, Tiger was united with Veyde and Marten. The boy, who had not seen his father for so long, cried out when the bearded stranger took him in his arms. The red rims of Veyde’s eyes told of hard work and little sleep, but she shrugged and laughed: “No matter! We will soon be free. Two, three days! But oh, Tiger, old Mister Silverbirch is not well.”
The old man smiled happily, but he did look haggard and weak. “Dear Mister Silverbirch,” said Tiger, embracing him, “are you ill?”
Mister Silverbirch denied this emphatically. He was having trouble with his food, however. He had only one or two teeth left, and the caribou meat was too tough for him. Sometimes Baywillow was able to get some fish for him. The rest of the time, his friends kept him alive by mouth-feeding, but this was hard on his stomach.
Just then Baywillow came along carrying a heavy load. That day, a gigantic beluga sturgeon had been caught in the Great River. It was the length of three men, and six men had been needed to pull it out of the water. Now it was part of the feast. Silverbirch sat down, smacked his lips, and began to munch caviar and sturgeon meat.
“The spirit of the lake is waiting for her liberation,” said Veyde. “Let us know when it should be.”
“Baywillow will give you the sign,” said Tiger.
The sun set. The time for the poorer wine had arrived. Tern came to Tiger with a skin, but when she saw him with a Troll bitch and a small bastard child, she stopped. She stared incredulously, then ran away in a pet.
Suddenly there was a great commotion near the Sun Pillar. One of Shelk’s warriors, reeling and bleeding, was brought to the Master, supported by a sentry.
“Wolf! Wolf and his gang!” he gasped.
Before the short night was over, Shelk went out with Diver’s Company. Thus the feast ended. The next day dawned under cloudy skies, and soon the rain beat down.
Several days passed in sullen suspense. Tiger could hear Viper’s angry commands down by the War Camp. Viper had tried to catch Wolf many times, but always in vain. This time he was not entrusted with the task.
In Sunwood the caribou were dying on their feet.
Sick pe
ople gathered around Shelk’s house. The lower shamans did their best, but only the Master could heal, and he was gone.
Tern had vanished, and among the warriors frightening rumors were told about the artist, who kept to his house.
“We’re ready, Tiger,” said Baywillow, but Tiger could only say, “Wait! We must wait for Shelk.”
But Shelk was far away. He was standing with Diver’s Company at the edge of the forest near a low, round granite hill, which had been polished by ice. The rain had stopped and the air was heavy with the fragrance of summer flowers. Three prisoners were led to him, their hands bound, ropes around their necks: Wolf, overcome at last, with two of his men.
“You’ve won, Shelk,” said Wolf. “Make it fast, now.”
The man at his side laughed. “Yes, Shelk. Hoist us into the heaven of the Trolls.”
“Don’t listen to him,” murmured the third. “He’s always in a hurry.”
Shelk looked at them long and hard, and they were silent. Then he turned and walked slowly up the hill. His struggle was finished, the last enemy beaten. Now, nothing could threaten the power of the Sun, and his own power would be undisputed. There was a new warmth in his body. Everything would be all right. Perhaps at last his most ardent wish would also be fulfilled.
Shelk looked down at the rock, and it was full of pictures. In a great bound the black tiger rose toward the shelk!
Then Shelk knew. He cried out in pain and horror, as if the fangs of the tiger were already in his breast.
With Diver’s Company and their prisoners, Shelk returned by forced marches to Caribou Lake. It took him two days and two nights, and the men were ready to drop dead when they finally arrived. They had marched through scented summer woods, with myriad singing birds, but Shelk had relived the darkest hours of his life: the time he spent in Skua’s noose, the sacrifice of his finger, and above all, the day when Black Cloud left him. Just before, their happiness had been complete: her belly had grown big, and they were sure she was with child. Then the swelling went down, and Black Cloud lost all hope. Now, once more, Shelk had been betrayed by someone who had been close to him.