Him Standing

by Richard Wagamese

  “The master,” he whispered.

  I put the mask in his hands. It was apparent that he had never seen the face of Him Standing and had no idea how the mask was supposed to look in the end. He stood with his head bent, and I thought I heard him sigh. He rubbed the symbols on the inside of the mask with the fingertips of one hand.

  “The doorway,” he said. “The words to open the doorway. When I put the mask to my face, they will be given to me.”

  “It’s what the dreams told me,” I said. “I put them there exactly as they came to me from the dream world.”

  “This is what my associates and I have wanted for a very long time,” he said. “They will be pleased when I return with the master.”

  “With the mask, you mean?”

  Knight raised his head and stared at me. There was a question in his eyes.

  “I mean that when I put the mask to my face and open the doorway, the master will emerge,” he said. “It is what is foretold.”

  “Maybe in your circles,” I said. “In my circles, in my dreams, in my art, I was told to make this.”

  I went down on one knee and rustled about in the canvas sack. I looked up at Knight. He was watching intently. I slowly stood up, my back toward him. When I turned to face him, he was stunned by the second mask I wore on my face.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  There was a sudden roll of thunder. The sky was clear, but I heard the thunder clearly. Knight glared at me. Behind him, the trees and bushes were swaying. But there was no wind. I smelled something foul in the air.

  “You dare to play games with me, Lucas? I have the mask that opens the doorway,” Knight said. He took a few steps toward me, the mask held up to his face. “In a few moments, none of this will matter at all.”

  I rubbed the face of the mask I was wearing. It was a man’s face. It was an old face. It was a face built of angles and juts and shadows. It was a face with eyes that squinted behind deep creases and lines. It was the face of a man who had known things—secrets, spells, charms, songs and prayers. It was the face of a shaman.

  “You’re not the only one with a mask of power, Knight,” I said.

  “Really?” he sneered. “Do you think you have what it takes to go against me? You know nothing.”

  “I know that you don’t have enough juice to get Him Standing through the doorway on your own. If you did, you wouldn’t have needed me.”

  “I told you. People like you are a dime a dozen. I would have found someone else who knows how to do a trick with a knife.” He eased the mask to the side and smiled at me.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But no one who could have gotten the symbols you need. I did that.”

  “The symbols, yes. I confess that surprised me. But what surprised me more is the voice that came from you that day. It was clearly the master’s voice.”

  Sally stepped out from behind the bushes. Her hands were behind her back, and she stood straight while the same energy that made the trees sway whipped her hair around.

  “He’s never heard the voice, Lucas,” she said.

  Knight spun around quickly. “Who is this? Another one of your little secrets, Lucas?”

  Sally sidestepped carefully around him. Knight turned slowly, following her with his eyes. When Sally stood next to me, she took what she held behind her back and handed it to me. When Knight saw the large turtle-shell rattle, he screamed with anger. A sudden crash of lightning from the sky turned everything blue-white. When I took the rattle and turned to Knight, he was floating inches off the ground.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he said to Sally. “But you are small and weak like him. Nothing you bring has the power to stop what I have put into motion.”

  Sally looked at him squarely. She didn’t waver. She gazed at Knight, and I was proud of her courage.

  “Raise the rattle,” I heard her say.

  I lifted the rattle up above my head. I felt my feet leave the ground. Knight and I now both hovered above the clearing in the trees. He laughed. Then he spun in a slow circle. It was my turn to laugh.

  “I’ve seen that before, Gareth. It doesn’t rattle me.” I grinned at the bad pun.

  “Maybe this will then,” he said. He held both hands out toward me. Lightning bolts shrieked toward me.

  I held the rattle out, and both bolts bounced off it and into the sky. Then I felt the taut strength of invisible hands at my throat. They squeezed. They were crushing. I began to feel the dark edge of unconsciousness. But there was something else. There was the face of the man I’d carved into the mask. He emerged from the darkness. His face hung suspended against nothingness.

  “Move the rattle in a circle,” he said calmly. “Shake it lightly in as wide a circle as you can.”

  My hands were weak, but I did as he said. As I made the circle in the air, I smelled the burn of lightning, and my feet touched down on the ground again. The grip on my throat was gone.

  “Speak the words,” the shaman said.

  I began to say the words behind the symbols carved into the mask Knight wore. It was hard. I had never spoken the language. But I had heard them in the dreams while I carved the symbols, and I remembered the sound of them. I spoke slowly at first, unsure of myself, and Knight simply stared, his eyes wide with shock.

  When I started to speak with more confidence, his expression turned to panic.

  “What are you doing? How did you learn this spell?” he yelled. There was a sudden wind whipping around him.

  “Dreams,” I said, breaking off from the stream of words. I shook the rattle at him. “They are Otter Tail’s words, and this is Otter Tail’s face I wear.”

  “No!” he screamed.

  He began tugging at the edge of his mask, but it wouldn’t budge. He ran about in a circle, pulling at the mask with both hands. He collapsed onto the ground. He rolled about frantically. There was a cloud of dust around him as he wrestled with the painted mask latched to his face. He was screaming in fear.

  I shook the rattle in a circle and kept on reciting the words. The wind spun into a tight circle. Knight was lifted off the ground.

  Amy and Sally walked slowly toward me. We all watched Knight continue to struggle to get the mask off his face. They stood behind me as I continued speaking the ancient words. The wind grew wilder. Yet it blew only around him. Where we stood, it was calm and cool.

  Finally he tired. He hung in the air, limp and wasted.

  “How?” he croaked. “How is this possible?”

  “You said it yourself, Gareth,” I said. “I have the gift to open the doorway.”

  “But I wear the mask,” he sputtered.

  “You wear a mask. There are two faces to everything,” I said. “All things must be in balance. This mask that I wear is the opposite of yours. When something comes out of the dream world, something must go back into it.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Your wish was to be one with your master. Well, now you can be.” I shook the rattle in a wider, faster circle, and he spun in the air. I shook it faster and he spun faster. When his spinning matched the speed of the wind around him, he vanished like Him Standing had vanished long ago.

  The wind died down. I collapsed. I could barely breathe.

  I felt Sally removing the mask from my face. The air revived me. I opened my eyes, and Amy was kneeling at my side.

  “Lucas,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me about Otter Tail when you told me your grandfather taught you how to fight this?”

  “I couldn’t risk Knight getting to you. I told you as much as I could and still keep you safe.”

  “You spoke the language.”

  “He gave it to me in the dreams.”

  “Him Standing never knew what you were doing?”

  “It wasn’t his dream,�
� I said. “No one owns the dream world, Amy. No one owns dreams. They’re for everybody. That’s another thing my grandfather gave me.”

  “So Otter Tail was there all the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Waiting for you?”

  “For someone,” I said. “Knight said it best. I’m not the only one who knows how to do a trick with a knife.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  After Knight went to the dream world, my life settled down. I finally moved in with Amy, and I found an agent to help sell my work. I didn’t need people as models anymore. I had dreams. But they were different now. They were filled with light. I was able to carve amazing things that shone like legends, and the wood seemed to take on a life of its own. My work was stunning and sold well. I had the money I used to dream about.

  “You know, it’s funny,” I said to Amy one day.

  “What’s funny?” she asked.

  “Well, all the stuff a guy dreams about—money, cars, big shiny things?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They feel better as dreams.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I laughed.

  “I guess I mean that now that I have some of that dream stuff, it doesn’t matter as much as the other stuff I’ve found.”

  “What kind of other stuff?”

  “All I have to do is look around me. I live in a great place all filled with light with a beautiful woman who loves me. I have a great career doing something I’m good at and that I love doing. I have friends. I have enough to eat. I can come and go as I please. And I still have dreams.”

  She smiled and took my hand.

  “And these dreams you have now? What are they about?”

  “Everything,” I said. “Everything I ever imagined and everything I never imagined. It’s what I carve now. What I imagine.”

  “The stuff of dreams,” she said.

  Now and then, my grandfather came to visit when I dreamed. We’d sit somewhere where the wind blew warm, and he would talk to me. He’d tell me all the things that he never got around to telling me when he was with me. He filled me up with legends and stories and teachings. When I awoke from those dreams, I felt very quiet inside. I felt humble. I never dreamed of darkness again.

  I still took my tools and went to the boardwalk. I still hung out there a lot. But I found kids who wanted to learn how to carve, and I taught them for free. We sat in the sun with tourists standing around us, and I showed them how to bring wood to life. I gave them the gift my grandfather gave to me.

  And sometimes, when those afternoons were over, I would go and stand at the end of the boardwalk and look out over the lake. I would stare at that point where water disappears into sky. I would marvel at how they flowed into each other. I would wonder how we sometimes miss seeing such a magical thing. Sometimes when I did that, I would see my grandfather’s face or Otter Tail’s in that space where everything came together. I knew that I could never ever be alone again.

  Sally gave me the turtle-shell rattle. I gave her the mask. What she did with it we never knew, but she told us it was in a safe and honorable place. We trusted her. She became a good friend.

  “You’re a shaman, aren’t you?” I asked her a month or so after Knight had gone to the dream world.

  “Some people use that word,” she said. “But it’s not one we use to refer to ourselves.”

  “There are more of you?” Amy asked.

  She smiled. “There are always people who seek to help others find their way.”

  “That’s what a shaman does?” I asked. “What about the magic?”

  “That is the magic,” she said.

  I believed her.

  Richard Wagamese is one of Canada’s foremost Native authors and journalists. In a career spanning thirty years, he has worked in newspapers, radio, television and publishing, and has won numerous awards for his work. Awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Thompson Rivers University in 2010, he lives outside Kamloops, British Columbia, with his wife and Molly the Story Dog.