The Sorcerer

by Anne Eliot Crompton

  “Eeeeeeya! Eeeeeeya!” yelled Jay. Waving his arms and jumping like a hare, he ran for his small spear under the meat rack.

  Onedeer cast Lefthand an angry look. He would have liked to hop over the junipers and leave the cub sniffing. But he went for his spear and picked up the tools that were almost buried in snow, piling them against an oak trunk.

  “Let’s go!” Lefthand gestured.

  Bent over her baby, Bright never looked up.

  3

  Falling snow whispered to the stunted firs. Faster it fell, the flakes bigger. Like balls of seed down, they tumbled across the gray skyline, vanished against the white landscape, and reappeared momentarily on cheek and mitten.

  Jaybird had never before ventured so far from camp without a grown-up. If she had realized their departure, Bright would not have let them go. While nursing her sick baby, she forgot the world outside her arms. She had forgotten Jay. Lefthand knew she had forgotten them all.

  He saw in his mind a picture of her sitting by the fire, crooning hopelessly to the baby. It waved clenched hands and wailed hopelessly at her. Lefthand shuddered. He set his face firmly away from camp and broke into a trot.

  He jogged like a young reindeer through the scrub forest. Behind him Jay, breathtakingly happy to be on this adventure. He was so happy, he was silent.

  Jay had more energy than the two older boys together. This was because he got more than his share of whatever meat there was. Bright divided hers with him in uneven hunks, the fatter hunk for Jay. Sometimes Provider saved him a specially good tidbit. And even Lefthand found, of late, that he could not hold on to two handfuls of meat while Jay stood and looked at him, the brown eyes suddenly huge in an elongated, pale face. He would chaw on one handful as long as he could, pretending he did not have the other. But somehow it hurt inside, and sooner or later he would see his own hand go out to Jay, with the meat in it.

  So now while Lefthand trotted to get away from the sorrowful camp, Jay trotted for the sheer joy of it, bouncing on his strong short legs, feeling the snow soft and springy under his boots. Only Onedeer, bringing up the rear, glanced around with a hunter’s eye. Only he watched for tracks, holes, and rotted trees where small animals might hide.

  His eye snatched at a tremble of motion. He stopped abruptly.

  A large squirrel loped from birch to oak. He held a frozen crab apple just barely gripped in his teeth. He waved along, arching first his body, then his long fuzzy tail. Now he was hidden behind the oak.

  Onedeer waited. His eye traveled up the heavy gray trunk to the first crotch, higher than his head. A twitch, a jerk—the squirrel was there.

  Onedeer whispered, “Lefthand!”

  In mid-stride, Lefthand stopped. Jay bumped into him, squealed and at his signal fell silent.

  A moment they stood together. Lefthand listened to the whisper of the snow. He looked into his brother’s eyes, turned up confidently to his, and knew how it would feel to be grown up.

  Then he pushed Jay aside and stole back along the track. He found Onedeer standing quietly, pointing with his chin. Then Lefthand and Jay saw the jerky squirrel motions in the oak crotch. The prey would be hidden in a moment. Nearby there would be a hole down which he could vanish as they watched.

  Together Lefthand and Onedeer ran forward and cast their spears.

  Perhaps the squirrel, like the boys, was starving. Perhaps his brain was dull. He sat a second longer, gulping his frozen apple though the spears arced close past him, one above, one below.

  Looking around for another possible weapon, Lefthand saw Jay poised to throw. He had dropped his spear. In his fist he held a stone. The stone was as big for Jay’s hand as the apple was big for the squirrel’s mouth. His mitten could barely cup it. His arm could never hurl it.

  “No,” said Lefthand, and reached for the stone. Jay drew back his arm. The stone slanted darkly into the gray sky.

  Clunk. Scrabble. The squirrel fell. Still clutching his apple he turned a somersault in air, tail over head, head over tail, and landed unhurt in the soft snow. But three hungry boys waited for him with spears and stone. Battered from three sides, the squirrel went limp. Stone-bashed behind the ears, it squeaked and leaped once more into the air. It fell limp again and Lefthand stoned it repeatedly on the forehead till the eyes bulged out and blood ran from the open mouth. Then Lefthand straightened, panting.

  “It’s yours,” he said to Jay. “You gut it.”

  The men always gutted their kills on the spot before bringing them home to the fire, but Jay did not know how.

  “Show you,” said Lefthand.

  He stamped firmly on the tail and stretched out the squirrel. With his bone blade he punched a hole under the tail and slowly worked the point up the belly. Onedeer bent to help him, pulling the valuable skin away from the incision. Now between the opening lips of skin they saw the dark red liver. Steam arose, and a stench. Suddenly the boys felt the hunger that before had been a weak sadness. They felt it as pain in their bellies and nausea in their throats.

  Lefthand bit off his mittens. He hooked his fingers into the cavity, grasped the warm bulbs of the still bubbling innards, drew them out and threw them on the snow.

  Like hawks diving from the sky, the three boys fell upon the feast.

  4

  Warmth and appetite flooded Lefthand’s body. Again he trotted through the scrub, again Jay came behind, the stiff squirrel impaled upon his spear. His cheeks were red with blood, and with the excitement of success. Watchful Onedeer brought up the rear.

  Lefthand stopped suddenly. Before him a huge paw print was pressed into the snow. He crouched and fitted his own hand into the track. Blunt behind, clawed in front, it could have contained three boys’ hands. Even as he squatted, measuring the print, snow fell on his hand and he saw that the track was half filled in.

  “We can’t follow that!” Onedeer muttered. He stooped over Lefthand. His gaze darted from thicket to tree, awed and cautious.

  Jay jabbered softly, “What it is? What is it?”

  Lefthand had never seen this track before but he knew as well as Onedeer what it was. He had seen his father draw it in mud, in sand and snow.

  “It is the spirit,” he told Jay, “the spirit who is our friend.” And to Onedeer he said, “We can follow him. He must want us to follow him!”

  Lefthand decided, and sprang up. His color was high with triumphant excitement. He pointed his chin along the track that wandered on through the scrub, rapidly vanishing in falling snow.

  “He will help us if we follow him—quick!” Not waiting for arguments, he strode off along the spirit track, taking two long steps between each paw mark.

  For the first time in his life, Lefthand was elated. He felt like Jay looked, hot and happy. In camp the meat rack stood empty. The last pony herd had rumbled away to the south, the reindeer had not yet come from the north. Now came the spirit, his track in the snow like a rainbow in the sky and he, Lefthand Useless, was the one to find it! Onedeer would never have dared by himself without Lefthand’s example. Onedeer’s hand was surer than his, Onedeer’s eyes were keener. But Lefthand suspected that his own mind was the sharper of the two. Now he could prove it!

  The track was clearer now and Lefthand saw that the claw marks alone were as long as his hand. He slowed, peering ahead into the whirling whiteness. He heard the soft, constrained breathing of the others at his back. He stopped. Vague through the dizzy mist he had seen a vast hulk of darkness. Twenty paces ahead it lumbered along. Swaying and waddling, it swung its great head low.

  Lefthand opened his hand behind his back and heard Jay gulp down the question in his throat. The three stood still as rocks until the spirit had slowly vanished. Even then they waited, listening to the hiss of falling snow and to the warning of a distant magpie.

  Then they moved forward, shadow-silent, each placing his feet in the other’s footprints, breathing lightly and slowly as they followed the vanishing track.

  5

  Dark
fell like sleep over the land. Only the snowflakes shone and shimmered as they sank out of the dark into the glowing coals.

  Hunched before the fire, Bright sat like a snow-crowned hillock. Her world had shrunk to the circumference of red light, a tiny point in a cold black universe. What might be going on out there in the dark did not concern Bright.

  When she felt a very slight tremor in the earth she recognized the steady rhythm of the men’s tread. She raised her head and watched them loom out of the darkness and stand before her in the ruddy light.

  The two faces which silently greeted her were identical. Provider and Bisonhorn were twins. Their eyes were the brown of Lefthand’s eyes, but they were not anxious or brooding. They were calm impassive eyes set close together above craggy noses and gray-speckled beards. Each twin held a white hare gripped like a club in his hand.

  Murmuring happily, Bright wrapped her unconscious baby away from their cold gaze, and stowed it again in her cloak. She asked no questions, but rose eagerly to skin the hares, spit them on sticks, and thrust them into the coals. The innards were gone—the men’s color told where—but here was a bite of meat for everyone and two skins. Light like youth came into her face as she worked.

  The men sat down by the fire. They yawned, pushed off their boots, and stretched their toes to the warmth. They had hunted far and all day for those two hares which had bounded up before them just at dusk. Two little hares might not seem much reward for a cold day’s tramp, but the men were satisfied. This bite would keep them till they found the south-moving herd they expected.

  This was the time of year when most creatures turned south. There was a river valley toward which men drifted as the summer sun faded. Now that snow flew, the drift would become a rush, a stampede. From all the northern hills would come the teetering tents, raised each day closer to the valley.

  Several winters had passed and Jay had grown from a toddler to a lanky child while the twins hunted too far west to attempt the journey. This winter they hoped to arrive at the river valley on time. Nothing had been said about this hope. It did not ruffle the frozen waters of their minds. But it was there, swimming below the surface, and it kept their faces turned southeast day after day with few stops or detours.

  Tomorrow they would move south again, maybe find a bigger quarry during the day’s march. Supper tonight, dinner tomorrow. So let the fire whistle, the blackening meat sizzle and curl. The men wiggled their toes and their noses, inhaling delight.

  Gradually they noticed the stillness of the camp: the silent tents, untrodden snow. Provider asked, “Where are the boys?”

  “Hunting.”

  Silence. The twins thought, but no trace of thought appeared on their faces. Because they were inarticulate they thought in pictures, much as did the animals they hunted. In the twins’ minds the pictures were practically identical. They each saw three boys trotting tiredly through a snowstorm. The boys were empty-handed. They had dropped their spears far back on the trail and forgotten them. Too weary to press on, they stood huddled together. Hares sprang up around them, birds fluttered about their heads, mice darted between their feet, but the boys were too slow to catch any of these morsels. Now they were jabbering together, pointing north, south, southeast. They were obviously lost.

  At this point the pictures differed. Bisonhorn saw his son Onedeer leap on a scuttling rat and catch it! Onedeer had caught a hare bare-handed. He had killed a small deer last summer, jumping at it from ambush with a stone ax in his hand. Bisonhorn grinned to himself. With Onedeer along, the boys would not starve.

  Provider’s mental picture was less hopeful. He saw the three boys sitting in the snow—the final stupidity—with his promising little son cuddled between the two louts. Inwardly he groaned. Lefthand could sit there and freeze; Provider did not care about him. Since he had learned to walk, Lefthand had done nothing right.

  One ability Lefthand did have. In his left hand he had magic that sometimes worked powerfully. Other times it failed. Provider had little patience for magical experiments—he needed results. If Lefthand got himself lost, Provider would not bother to chase after him.

  Jay was another matter! Provider had no intention of losing him. He saw himself tramping the country in the first morning light, calling and searching. There would be no trail. Provider sighed.

  Bright turned the spits. The smell of roasting meat was now rich and hot and the men leaned toward it, breathing in the aroma of life. Bright lifted her head and shook away the melting snow. She smiled.

  The men watched her cracked, worn face soften, and then they heard what she heard.

  Out in the dark a voice was talking. Whining, boasting, it came steadily nearer. Inside Bright’s cloak the baby also heard the voice and began feebly crying.

  Out of the dark came Lefthand, striding manfully. His eyes snapped, his cheeks were red. Jay stumbled after him and went straight to Bright as a hunter goes to his fire. On his half-size spear hung a small stiff shape covered with blood and snow.

  “I killed it!” he boasted, and flung it at Bright, “before we saw the spirit! That spirit led us so far, I thought we were lost!”

  A faint light, almost like interest, came over the twins’ stolid faces.

  “What spirit?” Bisonhorn asked Onedeer, as he came last to the fire.

  But honest Onedeer looked at Lefthand. It was his story!

  Lefthand raised his arms, commanding attention. He stood straight and quiet, looking around at them all until he was sure they were watching. In the shifting firelight he looked tall and earnest—grown up.

  Hunching his shoulders, Lefthand rested his hands on his knees. He held his head low, swinging it from side to side, and circled the fire. The men murmured as they understood. Bright pressed Jay against her but he wriggled free and jumped into the act.

  Jay gripped his spear, looked excitedly around, and followed exactly in Lefthand’s tracks. Around the fire went spirit and following hunter.

  Lefthand stopped. Jay stopped. Lefthand stood straight, pranced a step, and spread his fingers above his forehead. Quickly he and Jay trotted around the fire again, heads high, fingers branched, snuffling and snorting.

  Now the men were on their feet, excitement shining in their eyes.

  “Did you get one?”

  “Where is it?”

  “How far?”

  Proudly Lefthand faced them. He waited till the babble died, then spoke softly into the listening silence.

  “The spirit showed us the herd and we will show you. We can catch up with it tomorrow.”

  TWO

  THE MOON

  1

  Moonlight shone on snow, shone on the outline Lefthand drew in the snow. He sat on his heels, bent over nose to snow. Clenching his teeth on his tongue in concentration, he drew with a bone blade one shaky line after another.

  With slow care he drew a forehead sloping to an open mouth. Bare to the icy night, his mittenless hand rose in air and traced back up the forehead to draw a leaf-shaped ear, a round eye. In the glorious haze through which he saw the drawing this eye appeared startled, terror-sparked.

  With two quick parallel lines he indicated the body. Two straight lines, one at each end, were the legs. And a sudden quirk made a tail.

  Lefthand crouched over the drawing and considered. Even in his state of trembling exaltation he could see that something was wrong. It was not an animal there, it was a collection of lines. There was little magic in it. Maybe if he tried harder he could strengthen the magic which, hunger told him, could not be too strong.

  The head was good, the ear, the frightened eye, but the body was too straight. With a curving line he deepened the belly, then added a hump to the back, just before the tail.

  Now he saw. It was the legs! Those two straight lines—with an impatient stroke he wiped them out. “Not so fast,” he muttered to himself, sweating as he drew, “think about it … front legs bend forward, like this … hind legs back … the heel sticks out so …” He raised his h
and and sat back. Magic rose from the drawing like a spring from the ground.

  The deer drawn in the moonlit snow was young. His slender neck, the delicate lines of his legs and, of course, the lack of antlers showed that he was only a fawn. Beautiful he was and very lifelike, but there was barely enough meat on him to feed a fox.

  The artist’s all-powerful hand hung poised over the fawn, ready to wipe him out of existence. But Lefthand hesitated. He saw that it was not necessary to destroy the fawn. He could make him grow.

  Experimentally he thickened the neck and shoulder. Good. He added a mane and a bulge of muscle to the hind leg. Good. Nervously fingering his bone blade, he bowed solemnly to the final touch—the antlers.

  Two forked sticks were attached to the head. Mumbling under his breath, Lefthand hastily swatted them away. He shut his eyes, trying to visualize antlers. The mental image swam and blended; he could not get a clear look. He was too conscious of the moon moving up the sky, and the impatient sighs of those around him.

  He opened his eyes and there on the snow, a step from his nose, stood antler shadows! There was the image in clear black and white. Into his eyes flowed the antler shape, powerfully it streamed from eye to hand, from hand to snow. There galloped a finished reindeer, legs flexed, eye alert, strongly crowned.

  Lefthand sank back on his heels and looked at it. His heart expanded. He felt it stretching inside him to fill his chest. Its beat thundered in his ears and he breathed hard in the grip of joy.

  It was the same feeling he had when he made a spearhead, carefully chipping the bone, holding his breath as he shaped the tip. The moment came when the spearhead was finished, when he could hold it in his hand, heft it, know that it was really a part of himself, yet outside himself, a bit of Lefthand firmly imposed on the outside vastness. The best moment came when Provider lifted the spearhead, weighed it in his hand, and nodded satisfaction. If it pleased Provider—if it pleased anyone, even Onedeer—it was real. It was born like a baby, out of dream into reality.