The Sorcerer

by Anne Eliot Crompton

  But wait! What was this? The biggest vertebra, red, with black specks—the one to go in the middle—was broken. The small hands held it up and turned it around, and Bright saw how hopelessly destroyed it was. Some heavy boot had trampled and crushed it. She began to cry. For the first time in many years Bright felt tears welling into her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. Her vision of the necklace was blurred.

  “What’s the matter, Bright?” A voice spoke in her ear. She did not need to look because she knew the voice. Her father was standing over her, bent and crooked. His gentle smile showed all his broken teeth.

  “Let me see,” he urged, and she held up her little hands and showed him in one hand the necklace, in the other the smashed bone.

  “Hmmm,” she heard him mumbling to himself. “Where did you get it?”

  “My sister,” she heard herself say.

  “But your sister hasn’t been born.”

  Bright turned her head and looked up at her father bent crookedly beside her shoulder. Yellow hair streaked with gray stuck stiffly out from his head. His teeth gleamed in a smile which resembled a savage snarl. His keen blue eyes held her gaze steady. Once having looked into his eyes she could not look away.

  “Never mind,” he said, “give it to me. Give it to me.” He held out a gnarled hand for the necklace. Just then Bright heard a miserable, whining noise and her father faded away into daylight.

  The whining was persistent and there was a crawling motion in her cloak. Her baby. Wide awake now, Bright lifted it out of its dark nest and turned its wizened face to the light. “Day,” she murmured to it, “see, it’s day!”

  At any moment the baby would break into its sick screaming. She had better take it away from the camp before it disturbed the sleepers. Squinting into the morning, Bright heaved herself up and carried the whimpering baby away. She noticed the dying fire as she went, and the stiffly crumpled bundle that was Lefthand. She shook her head and mumbled.

  Later in the morning she returned with an unconscious baby and an armload of wood. Squatting, she fed her fire stick by stick until the flames leaped up to greet the sun. The men would not stir till noon. She would have time to peg out a slippery new skin and scrape it and talk to herself. But first she went and stood over Lefthand.

  She bent down and examined his deeply flushed face and listened to his harsh breathing. Her mild, good-natured expression turned sorrowfully hard.

  2

  Embers glowed through gray, slow-rolling mist. Over the embers hovered a thick stooping figure. It squatted and reached for twigs. Clothed in pain, Lefthand squinted and with a great effort he murmured. The figure straightened and turned toward him, letting the twigs fall. It came to him, extending kind hands, and it was Bright.

  She laid a rough, fire-hot hand on his cheek, then on his forehead She went away out of his small world and came back with a handful of damp moss. This she patted onto his forehead and over his eyes, and in the dark he felt the icy relief of snow being heaped on the moss.

  Much later he opened his aching eyes on the gray mist and saw Bright sitting near him, bent over, intent. Silently wrapped in his own pain, he watched for some time the still, tiny form in her lap. Oblivious to Lefthand and his needs she breathed warmth onto the baby, tenderly stroked it, laid a hand on its palm-sized chest, and listened at its mouth. At last she wrapped it tightly in its hare skin, rose heavily, and carried it away.

  Lefthand stifled a moan of fury. He needed that hare skin to warm his numb feet. Bright had used it to warm the dead.

  As the pain and fever gradually subsided and the gray mist rolled farther back, Lefthand came to hate Bright. He hated her carefully gentle touch and the soft look she bent upon him, the same she had given her useless infant. As she had cared for that baby, shielding it from the men’s indifference, so she now cared for him. Sometimes Lefthand saw a dim masculine form, obscure in mist, looking at him over Bright’s shoulder. It would stand tall, not bothering to lean toward him. It would look at him in silence and move away.

  Once a silent observer leaned over to see him closer. Then it stepped up and crouched beside him. It reached out a hand and lightly touched his shoulder.

  “Aaaarch!” Lefthand snarled, as pain leaped along his nerves.

  Hastily the hand lifted off but the face was still there. Onedeer’s blue eyes looked hopefully into his.

  Onedeer spoke quickly, softly. “Get up,” he said, “you must try to get up, Lefthand. We can’t stay here much longer.”

  Bright pushed Onedeer aside. Her large hand came down like night over Lefthand’s eyes. He heard her angry grunt.

  Faintly, from a distance he heard Onedeer’s helpless question and saw Bright turn away.

  Swimming halfheartedly in his lake of pain, Lefthand dreamed of hunting. He was crawling through high grass toward a sound of chomping. Just ahead he saw a tail swish among the grasses; he was after a pony. Softly now, softly, he grasped his spear and began to rise. Pain struck like lightning.

  Wakened by the pain, which was real, he lay hopeless. He did not know why Bright insisted on cleaning him up as best she could and feeding him. She brought him burned and pre-chewed meat which he washed down with handfuls of snow. Why could she not leave him to sink into his private world of pain, and through it to snowy silence?

  Silence was unnatural to Bright. When she saw Lefthand awake, she talked. When he wanted nothing but to listen to a moaning wind or the howl of a distant wolf, words tumbled into his ears.

  “This skin is soft enough to make Jay a new jacket. Feel it, Lefthand! The deer must not have been a year old. Feel the fuzz! Now, what does Jay need more, a jacket or a pair of mittens?”

  Lefthand could have told her that he himself needed an entire new outfit. His clothes, stuck to his wounds with his own dried blood, stank. But he would not ask her for anything and tempt that hateful soft look to come into her face. Worse still, he was afraid. He did not like to imagine his wounds uncovered.

  She would sometimes laugh suddenly, breaking blessed silence, and tell him a story. “Did I ever tell you about the time I made a snow boar?”

  Lefthand opened his eyes and squinted at her, half interested. Encouraged, she went on. “I was a little girl then, you know, and nobody ever told me that there was magic in pretend things. It was just a game. Well, I made a beautiful boar out of snow. He stood as high as this, believe it or not, and he had icicle tusks. And just as I was finishing him, putting on the tail like this”—pat pat pat—“I heard an awful noise—Rrrraugh!—and I looked around.” Bright swung toward him, surprisingly agile. “And what do you think I saw, Lefthand?”

  Lefthand forced himself to speak. It still hurt to make a voice. “A boar?”

  “Yes, that’s right. He was coming at me out of a thicket like this.” Bright lowered her head and snarled, baring her yellow teeth. Wickedness gleamed in her eyes as she stormed clumsily around the fire. Lefthand smiled.

  “Who killed him?” he asked.

  Bright stopped being the boar. She stood looking at Lefthand as though waking from a dream. “Who killed him? Why … nobody. There was nobody around who could. You know my father couldn’t kill a boar!”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “I jumped up in the nearest oak, that’s what I did. And the boar rooted and roared around for a while, and then he … went off.” Bright laughed gently, remembering. “And the first thing I did when I came down from the tree, I knocked down that snow boar!”

  Lefthand sighed. He wished she would let him sleep. All her stories were pointless.

  Another time she said, “When we get there, I will take you to my father.”

  In Lefthand’s misty mind an image formed, firmed, brightened. A tall figure stamped and swayed in strong sunlight. About its legs hung a spirit robe of heavy fur. Antlers like trees rose from its brow and giant claws flopped and flipped from its fingers.

  “The Bear!” he cried. He tried to rise but pain gripped his belly.

 
Bright pushed him gently down.

  “Yes,” she said. “My father is sometimes like a bear. That is why he can cure you.” Lefthand looked away from her. Despair must be plain on his face and he did not want her to see it. She added encouragingly, “But most of the time, he is like a squirrel.”

  The memory of the Bear led into another. Lefthand was young like Jay. He was standing trembling in a strange place full of terrifying noise. Other children ran about, shouting and leaping, like quick shadows against a brilliant sky. One of them came swooping toward him, arms outstretched like a fluttering bird. Very clearly he saw a small, brown face close to his own. A little girl stood before him, hopefully friendly, ready to smile.

  “Snowbird,” he said, dreamily.

  “Oh yes,” said Bright, “my sister.”

  The next day Lefthand sat up. Bright and Jay helped him, pushing at his elbows, pulling at his shoulders till he was sitting against a fir trunk, his knees folded to his chest, holding in the pain. He sat there groggily for a while, supporting himself with both hands flat on the ground. When he opened his eyes he saw Onedeer sitting across the fire.

  Onedeer had changed. For a moment Lefthand was not sure it was he. It was a young man, not a child, sitting there and working at something on his knees. His face was earnest, his hands large and skillful. Lefthand saw a new softness on his lip and chin—the first hint of a blond beard.

  Onedeer smiled at Lefthand. With both hands he raised the thing he was doing so Lefthand could see it above the cloud of smoke between them.

  It was a reindeer mask. Onedeer had hollowed out the head of his buck. The eyes were ragged holes and the mouth drooped, lopsided, beneath the heavy antlers. Gravely Onedeer lowered the mask over his own head and tilted his head back and sideways to look through the eye holes at Lefthand.

  Lefthand tried to smile but he felt a cold, lonely sorrow. He felt as though Onedeer had walked away from him over a hilltop and for several nights he dreamed of the deer mask mockingly tilting its antlers.

  Onedeer came to Lefthand once more because Bright had called him. Lefthand watched them confer with vigorous gestures. Bright wanted to do something and Onedeer was certain it could not be done. He pointed at Lefthand, pressed his own chest with both hands and contorted his face into a mask of anguish.

  Onedeer was fast becoming a man, a hunter, who lived only by signs and facts. But Bright lived by faith. Her faith won. Onedeer shrugged and gave in. He came over to Lefthand, smiled an impersonal greeting, and seized him by the shoulders. At the same moment Bright grabbed his feet. Lefthand snatched a breath and held it and did not scream. Onedeer and Bright worked fast and roughly, and Lefthand was sure he was dying. They rolled him over, face to snow, face to sky, face to a strange surface.

  Gasping, he recognized it. He was lying on the baggage sled. Boots stood around him: Bright’s, worn almost past usefulness, Onedeer’s, soft and new, and a small new pair.

  “Lefthand!” Jay squeaked above him, “Lefthand, you’re coming with us!”

  Lefthand moaned a half-conscious answer. At the same time the sled jerked into motion. Crumpled on top of Bright’s skins and tools and three reindeer masks, Lefthand drifted into a stupor.

  An agonizing jolt woke him. The baggage sled had hit a jutting tree root. Even as Lefthand gasped and his eyes flew open, the sled swerved and hit another. He clutched the birch frame to steady himself.

  Under his nose jerked a snowy landscape. Face to snow he saw the world as mice see it. Roots loomed large. Footprints were valleys. Dead grass and bushes reared like trees.

  They were moving steadily uphill. Lefthand was dreamily aware that they had been climbing for some time. It would hurt to try to look in front, and if he did, he would see only Bright’s broad back bowed to his weight, and her boots patiently denting the snow.

  He heard a thudding behind them. Carefully, Lefthand peered over the rim of the sled and saw Jaybird was pounding up the slope, jumping from root to root and by dint of giant strides setting his feet in Bright’s tracks. In one mittened hand he waved something dark and fuzzy. He was almost up to the sled before Lefthand saw it was a ptarmigan, held by the feet. The open beak still dripped blood, spattering the snow.

  “I got it!” Jay shrilled, catching hold of the sled to steady himself.

  Bright growled at the extra weight. Lefthand winced at the jerk of the sled. Jay dumped his ptarmigan abruptly onto Lefthand’s back and ran forward, squealing, “I got us a bird!”

  Very gently, Lefthand tried to squirm around and dislodge the corpse. He was still carefully wiggling when a squeak sounded ahead. “Oooeee!”

  They stopped moving. The sled stood on level ground. Looking around, Lefthand saw five pairs of boots standing about him. The twins had joined them. Everyone was there, together, looking ahead.

  Lefthand felt a strange thrill, a beat in his blood. Slowly he realized that it came through his ears. He was hearing the earth’s heartbeat and it spoke to him. From deep inside he felt a response, an unwilling answer.

  Till this moment Lefthand had felt himself dead. Now he knew he was alive, that there was something to want, something to reach for. In a little while he would remember what it was.

  Weakly he gripped the birch rim of the sled under his chin. His hands, white-knuckled and shaking, could still grasp. Then he began to rise to his knees. The hurt was there, screaming inside him, but Lefthand did not listen to it. The great outside heartbeat sounded louder in his ears.

  Now he was on hands and knees, weakly wavering. He might have crumpled but strong hands slipped under his waist. They hurt, but they supported him and slowly Lefthand crept up the strong tree that was Bright. Standing, the rhythmic thunder booming through him, he pushed away from her and turned around.

  Directly before him earth fell away. Sky spread forward.

  3

  Lefthand looked down through intense brightness and saw a wide valley stretched below. Through its center coiled a river white with ice. On either side flat snowfields reached to the bases of mountains. Across the valley, the mountains reared, brown and green, cave-pitted, white with snow and gray with sheer cliffs.

  Brown patches broke the snowfields. One was a herd of animals. As he watched it moved, weaving slowly about itself. The brown patches close beneath him were tents, a hundred or more which stood and leaned in a wide arc crowded together like a herd of bison. From there came the throbbing, the heartbeat.

  Encircled by the arc of tents and smoky fires a huge, fantastic herd cavorted. He could clearly see the tossing horns and swishing tails of black, brown, and red creatures who stamped and jumped to the drumbeat.

  Around the herd, among the fires, moved vigorous human forms. Children raced and leaped over fires and wrestled in the snow beyond. Women stooped over meat racks, turning strips of meat in the smoke. Some, looking like piles of walking brush, carried wood to the fires. Others stood about in eager groups. Faint through the drum thunder could be heard the roar of countless voices.

  Lefthand looked down into the smoky melee and felt his brain open inside his head and spill a vision. This thing that sometimes happened to him, the strange dark thing that he had never talked about, even to Onedeer, had happened again. The bright scene darkened as though a cloud had suddenly crossed the sun. Below him Lefthand saw, not a crowd of happy people, but a deadly pack. The world’s most ferocious and dangerous creatures were gathered together under the cliff in riotous glee. Every man dancing under his horned mask in the magic circle was a successful killer of large animals, creatures five and ten times his own weight. Without claws or horns or biting fangs, he killed constantly, using his brain to devise weapons and his clever hands to make them. He brought down galloping ponies, for he could send his spear flying faster than he could run, as quick as his thought. Every man in that pounding dance was a terror, a threat to the rest of existence. The drum said so, the postures of the dancers said so.

  Lefthand had always known this and had taken pride in
it. Now he saw the threat in a new light, from a revealing height. He saw that these predators might be dangerous even to each other.

  Lefthand had never seen one human actively, deliberately, injure another. He had never heard of such a thing, but he saw in this flash of evil vision that it could happen, it could happen very easily. For the dancers were hunters—killers.

  He felt fear rising like sickness in his throat and he choked it down. He shook his head violently, shaking out the vision. Now he saw bright sunlight, a group of sociable people delighting in each other’s company, a magic dance intended to bring reindeer into the valley—reindeer who could already be seen on the horizon.

  Beside Lefthand, Jay let out his breath in a long, unbelieving sigh and said, “Are we going down there?”

  “Yes. That is the Meeting Valley.”

  “How do we get down?”

  “There’s a path down the cliff.”

  “Lefthand! How will you get down?”

  “I will have to walk. You must help me.” He would walk like a human into that company, even if it killed him. He turned to the others.

  Onedeer and the twins were crouched in a huddle. They were digging into their dangling pouches. Their hands came out coated red, as if with blood. Wiping their fingers across their faces they left shiny red lines around their eyes and down their cheeks. They looked at each other and chuckled approval. Their mouths loosened and smiled and their eyes widened.

  “That’s paint,” Lefthand told Jay. “It’s red earth and fat. Men put it on when they meet people.”

  Jay at once began squeaking, “Me too, me too!” Lefthand hushed him. “Only men,” he said bitterly.

  Onedeer stood up. The paint glowed grittily on his cheeks. He went to the baggage sled and lifted the three reindeer masks. The men eased the antlered skins onto their heads and Onedeer solemnly put on his buck’s head. He looked once at Lefthand through the paint and mask. Then he looked away.