The Shaman and the Droll

by Jack Lasenby

  That must be how we draw things from memory. I looked at the Bear Man’s shadow on the wall behind him. He had thought a lot about it but could not see what he tried to draw. Only the pictures in his mind. I wondered what they looked like. Had he been blind always? No, because he’d talked about seeing things years ago. Like the man’s cut leg.

  I felt a cold nose touch the back of my hand. Realised Jak was standing beside me.

  “Oh, Jak!” I dropped to my knees. “I’ll get you something to eat. Is that what you want?” And even as I ran for some meat, I knew the Bear Man was listening to our movements, seeing us in his mind. I knew he envied me Jak’s company. Because I had learned the Bear Man didn’t just want to know how to draw.

  Jak chewed steadily, not his usual wolfing. Head on one side. As if he found it a bit tough. I cut the meat smaller, and he got the bits down. Then, as I watched, he was tired. Weaving, swaying. As sudden as that. I carried him beside the fire, and he let himself go, spread out as I lay him down, and slept again. But he was going to get well.

  “That must be hard to draw.” I looked up. “Somebody bending over, putting down a heavy weight, not wanting to drop it,” the Bear Man said. “The bend of their body. The feeling of the weight. Being careful not to hurt whatever it is.”

  For a moment I thought he was not blind after all. Then I realised he had listened to all the sounds as I picked up Jak, carried him, bent down. The little noises of Jak’s fur, my clothes rubbing. Our breathing. He heard them all and made up the picture in his mind.

  “You’d need to look hard and quick to fix the memory, so you could draw it.” Again the things he said were making me think about what I’d always just done.

  “I can see it’s tricky,” said the Bear Man. “Like drawing things that look as if they’re sitting on the ground instead of floating in the air. I’ve often thought about that. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Sometimes I still draw things that float, that won’t sit on the ground. I’ve seen old drawings in caves like that. Sometimes they sit there, solid. I can do it most of the time now.”

  “My drawing of the bear and the dogs, did they stand on the snow.”

  “No.” Because he was being honest, I was honest, too. “They’re a bit jumbled, one on top of the other.”

  There was a long silence. I stared at the red shapes of the coals and asked the Bear Man, “How big is the South Land?”

  He stretched. “How big is the South Land?”

  “I mean,” I said, “we came to the end of the North Land. It finished in the sea. Does the South Land finish like that?”

  “The People of the White Bear talk about how it ends in ice on the sea. Beyond their village, there is an island. South of that, they say, the sea ice goes on for ever. How big is the South Land?” he said again. “It’s like asking how big is the world?”

  He stood, his back to the great fire of coal. “How big is the world?” I heard the change in his voice. “Away to the north of the world,” he said, “before the sun went mad, there were two brothers who married two sisters. The brothers were great hunters. Each day they brought home the seals they killed. Each night their wives fed them and mended and dried their clothes.

  “They cured the skins and made new clothes. They sewed new boots and mittens. And, as they talked, while the brothers hunted, they played a game of questions.

  “‘How big is the world?’ one asked her sister.

  “‘What questions you ask! I don’t know how big the world is! But I’ll tell you what – tonight, I’ll ask my husband.’ She nodded at her sister and laughed.

  “That night she asked her husband, ‘How big is the world?’

  “‘My brother asked me the same question today!’ he exclaimed. ‘As far as we have hunted, there is still more ice and snow ahead. In summer, no matter how far we paddle our canoes, there is still sea before us.’

  “All four of them laughed. It was a silly question. They ate their food and crawled beneath their furs to sleep, still laughing.

  “Next night, the brothers came home to find their wives still asking, ‘How big is the world?’ The brothers laughed. ‘We kept asking each other the same silly question,’ they said.

  “Again they all went to bed laughing. But next morning they got up, and one of the brothers said, ‘We’ll go this way. You go that way.’

  “‘And when we meet again,’ said his brother, ‘we’ll know how big the world is!’

  “One pair drove their sledge this way, the others that way. Just once they each turned and looked at the others growing smaller. They waved and went out of sight around the curve of the world.

  “When the wind blew too hard, when the snow was too thick for the dogs to breathe, they stopped. They built snowhouses. The storm blew over, and they went on.

  “Summer came. The snow disappeared, the ice melted. They tied together frameworks of willow branches, covered them with skins, and sailed on. When winter came and the sea froze they lashed their sledges together, tied the dogs in their traces, and drove on.

  “Both the sisters had babies. And they travelled on. They had more children. The years went by. They travelled on and met other people. Their children grew up and took wives and husbands and they travelled on. All together.

  “Many years later, a crowd came over a snowfield, hundreds of people, all travelling together. The ones near the front called out, and others ran up from behind and stared, pointing. For coming in the opposite direction was another huge crowd.

  “In front of each crowd was a sledge so old its runners had been worn out and replaced many times.

  “On top of each sledge were two little old people. A woman and a man. Shrunken with age. Their fur clothes were old-fashioned. The women’s long boots had embroidered tops, below the fringe of white bear’s hair. And the necks of their tunics were stitched with the same patterns, red and blue. The horn drinking cups tied at their waists had been dipped in so many rivers, they were worn down level with the handles. They could hold only a mouthful of water.

  “The two crowds came together. The old men and women were helped down off the sledges by their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The two brothers leaned their heads against each other. The two sisters stroked each other’s faces.”

  The Bear Man tottered forward a couple of steps, lifted his arms, and drew a face on the air with his fingertips, stroking, touching it, the lines and marks. His own hands became the hands of somebody small and old, tracing the outline of his face, feeling the mask, running down the deep lines, touching the cracked skin of his forehead and cheeks and chin.

  “They felt the lines of a thousand storms, many winters, summers. And one sister said, ‘So that’s how big the world is!’”

  The Bear Man dropped his hands, slumped on his bench by the fire.

  Chapter 15

  The Pleasure Gardens of Amity

  Morning, the Bear Man still slumped on his bench. Outside the storm paused, drew black curtains aside through which I looked and saw snow-moulded hills like rows of blue and white tents. I carried the ashes out on the shovel, flung them tainting the snow down a gully.

  Nip galloped. Jak tried to cock his leg. The black curtains closed, undulated shrieking towards us. I ran with a last load of ashes. They lifted off the broad shovel: hiss-spin-gone! As the first darts of sleet struck, I flung the shovel inside, got Jak in, the door barred.

  Nip and I explored deeper into the cave that morning. Past the walls where I had drawn, around the corner into blackness. I stood half in the light, looked at the image at the other end of the cave: Jak, the Bear Man, the jewelled fire. A step further, darkness a chasm. I took two paces into it and called, “Nip!” My voice returned misshapen. Vague mumbles, far cries, bellows. Rising, falling.

  “Just echoes!” I called and listened. They came again like old sounds awakened. A chuckle, and a terrible voice drew close, muttered, and retreated. Silence waited in the darkness like a half-closed door. I ran
for a lamp.

  Nip scampered into its light, excited. Turned and ran back out of sight. Around the corner, walls disappeared ahead, the same curved walls, but entries to different tunnels. I entered the one on my left. It seemed to branch again. My head spun. Nip came tumbling out of the dark, yapping, and I fled after her. Afraid. Her scrap of bark echoed and re-echoed behind. A wild bellow rolled past and returned like a wave lapping up my legs, up to my waist, dragging, holding me back. My feet would not lift. Luckily Nip kept running in the right direction, and I ran after. The boom and threat of pursuit dwindled, slowed, and vanished.

  “I wasn’t scared!” I panted. Looking over my shoulder.

  Nip rubbed against the Bear Man’s feet, and he reached down and rubbed her ear. He did not ask where we had been. And I did not tell him of the terrible voice.

  Instead I asked him about the bears. “There are none in the North Land,” I said. “We saw what might have been a grey bear near the lake. Then a brown bear eating konny berries near the river. Where did they come from?”

  The Bear Man stirred as if rising from sleep. “Long, long ago,” he said, “when the South Land was filled with too many people, before the sun went mad, there was a rich queen named Amity who wanted to be more powerful than Death himself. Since she was the strongest in the land, she was able to murder unpunished. She bought young boys and girls for sex, and killed them afterwards. She ordered battles between her own armies. When she tired of watching her soldiers slay each other, she dammed a river to flood the plain in front of her palace. Her ships sank and her sailors killed each other on the inland sea – to show her how strong she was.”

  “But Queen Amity was afraid of Death. With her own hands, she buried fourteen of her boy lovers alive. She hoped the dark god of the underworld would mistake them for her, let her live for ever. Amity was so powerful, she was mad, of course.”

  I thought of Squint-face, the powerful leader of the Salt Men. Had he been mad as well?

  As if understanding what I was thinking, the Bear Man nodded. “Power maddens us,” he said.

  “Queen Amity built pleasure gardens. Her favourite she called Dream, the Garden of Dream. Guards with flaming swords stood at the gates to keep out Death.

  “In those pleasure gardens the queen ordered the rarest plants to be grown. Strange plants brought from other countries.”

  “Other countries?”

  “There are other lands in the world,” said the Bear Man. “Once you can read, you will learn about them.”

  “Read?”

  “Strange ferns and flowers and trees grew. Queen Amity ordered cages of wire built over the pleasure gardens – so high the wires were out of sight. The birds she brought from other countries flew free under the invisible netting. Strange animals ran wild in the Garden of Dream. The savage ones she fed with anyone who disobeyed her.”

  “Why did people let her do it?”

  “The powerful always find people to do their evil for them. When you can read, you will learn there are many such.”

  “Read?” I asked again.

  “Queen Amity made a law saying no woman was to be as beautiful as herself. Now, in her court there was a woman of great loveliness. When somebody said she was the most beautiful in the land, the queen ordered her mutilated.”

  “Mutilated?”

  “Sliced off her nose, lips, and ears. Cut off her breasts. Tore out her tongue.”

  I shuddered and remembered how Squint-face had torn out Taur’s tongue, castrated him.

  “Queen Amity forebade any woman to be younger than her. Killing the young and beautiful, she yet grew old because she had no power over Time. Death, more powerful than the most powerful of queens, ate Amity!

  “Her empire fell to pieces. Her pleasure gardens decayed. The rare plants withered; birds escaped through the wire roofs; wild animals broke out and died. The strange and beautiful flowers and trees died beneath sand, snow, ice. According to an old story told by the People of the Lake, one corner of the Garden of Dream still stands.

  “Their story says the sun went mad and burnt the Western Coast to desert. The bears smashed their way out of the Garden of Dream. Some reached the mountains and stopped there in the high pass, to keep guard. The others kept on to Lake Ka.”

  A long silence. I was afraid the Bear Man would stop. He shook his head. “I have read that there used to be many different bears in the world. The savage white bears, Queen Amity brought to her Garden of Dream from an icy land at the top of the world.

  “The black and brown and grey bears stayed by the lake. With iron claws a huge white bear dug a tunnel through the mountains. That is how the white bears came to this country. So the story says.

  “They found abundance of seals and fish here. They hunt humans. The people of this land say the white bears are the servants of the Droll.

  “Nobody has seen the Droll and lived but, whenever a child disappears, they say there is always a line of single footprints left in the snow. The Droll has one huge foot growing from her belly which drags on the ground, heavy with the bones of those she eats.”

  I looked over my shoulder. “Is she like that queen, Amity?”

  The Bear Man turned towards the flames. “Some stories say they are sisters, Amity and the Droll. Others say after Death ate Amity, he sent her back to earth as the Droll.”

  A cold trickle ran down my back. I wanted him to stop talking of the Droll. “That’s just a story,” I said half to myself and changed the subject. “Where do all the tunnels go?” I asked.

  “The Seal People know one of the tunnels, the first one. That is where they find my coal. They are terrified of the others, because they say the Droll lives there. No one can escape the Droll, not if she smells you. That is what the Seal People say.”

  “Have they no hope?”

  “Without hope people die,” said the Bear Man. “So long as they have me, they know they are safe against the Droll.”

  “How do you give them hope?”

  “I cure their illnesses.” The Bear Man stood and looked up so the firelight reached only the lower part of his face. The masked, blind eyes were in darkness. “They call me their Shaman!” And he fell silent. It was as if he had come alive to tell the story of Queen Amity and her pleasure gardens, as if storytelling gave him strength. Now, the story finished, he slumped again.

  “Shaman?” I said it several times under my breath. I went to the back of the cave, said the name into the darkness: “Shaman!” And the voice I had awakened amongst the tunnels wailed and was silent.

  Later that same day the Shaman took down a sledge from the roof, much bigger than the one I’d used for bringing Jak to the cave. The wooden runners curved up at the front. The struts were lashed across with what looked like sealskin. The Shaman took his knife and cut through the lashings. Every one.

  I helped him clear the the old, cut lashings, throw them on the fire. I copied him as he took new strips of leather and wound them around the joints of the sledge, wetting them, leaning back with his feet against the runners, using his weight to draw the lashings tight. His fingers worked nimbly as if they could see. When I tried lashing without looking, mine stumbled.

  By the time we finished I had learned several new knots and ways of finishing off lashings. I had to watch, learn quickly, try out his ways of doing things. I now realised how patient Hagar had been, how good-tempered Taur. Hagar teased, Taur laughed, but I learned from them so easily!

  The Shaman would never repeat anything so I could copy him. Often I didn’t even notice he was doing something until too late, and my chance had gone. I became good at undoing his work, seeing how it was done, and putting it together again. When we made harnesses for ourselves, for dragging the sledge, I copied him and cut out the leather straps from a skin, just as he was doing. But I couldn’t see how he got his harness to fit over his shoulders. He did it without measuring, without holding the leather straps up against himself, and it fitted him perfectly.

  La
ter, as he slept, I looked and saw how he had fitted the straps lower, the ones around his waist and chest.

  I unpicked my stitching and followed his pattern until my own harness fitted well. I smiled to myself, wondering why the Shaman couldn’t tell me things. How had he learned? Who taught him?

  Later I realised he wasn’t just teaching me knots, stitches, and lashings: he was teaching me to learn by watching; he was teaching me how to think! And I found myself watching and thinking because I wanted to know everything the Shaman knew. That secret thing the Shaman called reading and writing, I had no idea what it was, but I was going to watch him and learn how to do it, too.

  When I couldn’t stand his aloofness any longer, I went around the dark corner where the cave ended and the tunnels began. There were three. I stood there, and shouted: “I am going to learn to read!” Far away down the right-hand tunnel, something woke and listened. Nip cringed, tail between her legs, ears back as its terrifying voice muttered and replied.

  “I am going to learn to write, too!” I shouted. Echoes shook, swallowing my words. Far off, something vast stirred in the dark and began feeling its way to find and silence me. I stood as long as I could then ran after Nip, back to where the Shaman’s blind mask stared into the flames.

  Chapter 16

  The Sound of Bells

  Exercising Jak, I led him to where the tunnels branched. He took a couple of stiff-legged steps into the third tunnel and growled. A long, low growl came muttering back. Jak pricked one ear, and sniffed.

  I smelled it, too. A waft of dampness, decay. And, so far away I wondered if I was imagining it, I heard something crawling out of water, like the slur of wet leather dragging over rocks. Invisible, a warm cushion of reeking air pressed against my face. Jak staggered in that stench. We backed away from the tunnel, watching its mouth in the light of the lamp till we got around the corner and into sight of the fire.