by Jack Lasenby
I found myself discussing books I was reading. I passed on to Arku everything the Shaman had taught me. As well as much of what I had learned in the Library.
Part of me hung back from becoming too friendly. I enjoyed Arku’s company, but kept much of my past a secret from him. I told him about the Travellers, my father and sister, Old Hagar, but I told him nothing about Tara and Taur. Despite my reluctance our friendship grew.
I began teaching Arku to read and write and was annoyed at the ease with which he learned. He would repeat things after me, saying them aloud in his thick voice that sounded as if his tongue was too big for his mouth. Although I knew the reason for that, I got irritable.
“Always remember to feel a sick person’s skin, and to smell it. Just looking isn’t enough,” I told him.
“Just looking isn’t enough,” Arku repeated.
“Do you have to say everything over again?”
“It helps me remember,” he smiled.
“Sorry,” I told him. I learned things by copying them down. Repeating them aloud was just another way, I knew.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I’m a bit scratchy.” Arku grinned. He understood. “Anyway, your nose and your touch can tell you things your eyes can’t.” Arku nodded, and I could see he was repeating my words silently, trying not to let me hear.
“Say them aloud if you have to!” I snapped.
“How did the Shaman teach you?”
“He did things, and I learned to copy him.”
“Did he tell you things?”
“I had to watch him. Often I missed seeing something and had to watch until he did it again.”
“We’re all different,” Arku laughed, “and the same.”
I laughed, too. Strange, I thought to myself, that both Taur and Arku should have trouble with their tongues. Both were good-natured, laughed when things went wrong. Both thought my crankiness funny.
Once Arku was able to read and write well enough, I took him to the Library, and the Shaman found us there. I was sure he would disapprove.
“No,” he said. “You will learn much better by having to explain things to Arku. Teaching it is one of the best ways of learning something.”
He was right: I found out much more about things I thought I already knew. Explaining the wasting disease to Arku, the “White Death” that killed the little girl at the Coal People’s village, gave me a better idea of how we might prevent it. Arku asked such difficult questions, answering them made things clearer.
I knew more to begin with, but Arku soon caught up. Being older might have helped him. We enjoyed testing each other, setting lists of questions. We tried to beat each other at remembering how to treat different illnesses. We asked the Shaman to set us problems to judge.
I was now using the Shaman’s sledge as my own. People in the villages had given me enough dogs for a team. Besides, the Shaman liked to keep both Jak and Nip while Arku and I were travelling. Arku taught me about looking after a team, travelling on the snow and ice, surviving in the world of the white bear that ate the sun.
We worked together healing people. I judged cases where they were simple enough, but still we returned to the cave and brought down the Shaman himself when it was a difficult matter.
Whatever Arku had, it was always the best. His dogs, sledge, spear, igloo, seals. Whatever he did – the track he followed, the decision he took, the bear he hunted – it was always the best. It annoyed me until I got angry with myself for being so mean-spirited. I thought of Taur.
Taur had been generous with everything he had, generous in accepting me. I didn’t have that quality. Beside Taur, I saw myself as rigid, tight, and mean. But even recognising that still didn’t make me like it when Arku told me his fur clothes were better than mine. That his sledge was faster. That his snow-houses were better-built than mine. I pulled a face at myself, but still got annoyed.
If I asked for anything of Arku’s, he would give it to me. He liked me to use his gear. He just had to say it was the best. Despite myself, Arku was becoming my close friend, but I got so angry with him – and couldn’t see how to control my feelings.
“Why does everything you own have to be the best?” I asked. “It drives me mad when you say that!”
“Because it is the best!” Arku grinned. “Isn’t it?”
“Grrr!” I snarled, but that just made him laugh. He cracked his whip which was better than mine over his dogs which were better than mine and drove off his sledge which was better than mine.
“What’s more – ” Arku yelled as I whipped up my team, “my dogs are faster than yours!” We were racing down the snowy slope above the Cliff People’s village towards the narrow track at the bottom. I caught up. My dogs clamoured and shoved past Arku’s. My lead dog, Pikka, snapped at Chaka’s hindquarters. Chaka hesitated a moment, lost his stride, and his team slowed. I clung on as we skidded down an icy slope, Pikka raising his head and howling triumph.
Where the track narrowed, we careered, still skidding. Down in the village people waved and shouted. I half-turned and yelled, “Whose dogs are best now?” and my sledge capsized.
Arku skidded his sledge as he raced past. His runners threw a fine spray of ice down the gully where I lay laughing, helpless in a tangle of traces and dogs.
“Mine are best!” Arku bellowed. “I told you so!” and he was gone with a shout of laughter, a crack of his whip, a last bark from Chaka. Pikka looked at me struggling to my feet. He looked away again. Disgusted.
Chapter 30
After the Hot Wires
In the Library one day I came across a story about a boy brought up by priests. They taught him to read and write. They taught him to be a healer. They made him memorise the history, the stories of his people. And when there was nothing else they could teach him, the priests hailed him as their shaman-god. And blinded him.
It was as if a great white bear lurched through the Library, freezing the air. Although the lamp was not smoking, I trimmed the wick, said something to Jak about how we must get back to the cave. I remember the smell of that book, faint and dry. The edges of the pages uneven, torn rather than cut. Gold letters stamped on the dull-red leather cover spelled the title: The Getting of Wisdom.
I reread the story. This time noticing how the priests made sure the boy knew everything they could teach him. And I read again how the high-priest – the Carnival – held hot wires to his eyes and blinded him. “To give you wisdom,” said the Carnival.
“To give you wisdom,” I gasped. “The Carnival!”
Into a corner I crawled, and my stomach heaved. I remember my vomit, its stink on the dry air. All I could think of were two lines of poetry the Shaman once quoted. Spitting the sour taste, I groped from floor to floor, room to room, and found that book, the page, the poem. The rest of it still made no sense, but the first two lines now had a meaning:
Because the pleasure bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Had the Shaman quoted those lines to warn me?
The next story in The Getting of Wisdom was about a god who gave one of his eyes for a drink from the well of knowledge. Other stories told of places and times where men believed blindness was a way to wisdom. There was a play in which a man had his eyes torn out – and grew wise. There was a poem about the acceptance of blindness. There was a terrible story about a blind man who – grown wise – pulled down a building, crushing his enemies – and himself.
That story made me think of Taur, how Squint-face cut out his tongue, castrated him. But to blind a man… to make him wise?
Back in the cave, the Shaman said, “You’ve been in the Library a long time.”
He turned up his face as if listening to a voice in the roof as I told him of a myth I had read, about a god who hung from a tree nine days before saving himself with words of magic. I looked at the Shaman and wondered was he hiding something from me? Did he know I had read the story of the blinding of a shaman-god?
That night I woke from a dream of blindness. Gasping, breathless, I scrambled outside. Gulped, swallowed at the cold air. Was I seeing the snow at my feet, I wondered, or merely remembering what it looked like? Before the chill air could calm me, my panic worsened. I looked at my hand but wondered if I was just seeing a blind man’s memory of a hand. Jak’s head rubbed against my leg. I squatted and watched my fingers scratch his ears.
Back inside the cave, the Shaman sat in the glow from the ash-covered fire. Had I called out in my sleep? Did he know what I had dreamt? “You’re being stupid,” I told myself. The Shaman was just in one of his trances. He might sit all day and night. Remote, undemonstrative he might be, but he would never let me be hurt! I had never known him cruel. And he loved Jak and Nip. But was he teaching me all he knew so I could be blinded and given wisdom?
I felt relief when, a few days later, Arku arrived. Trouble in the Coal People’s village. Somebody killed by a bear. I wondered why Arku had not hunted it himself, then remembered what the Shaman had said. That the Coal People were sometimes attacked by whole packs of bears. When I asked Arku about them he didn’t understand. He seemed evasive. I wondered if he didn’t want to talk about it in front of the Shaman who announced he would go with us.
We drove the sledges direct through the hills. I knew the tracks well now but, when I said that, Arku laughed. “You don’t need to know that. I’m here to guide the Shaman.”
Did he mean I was already becoming the Shaman in the eyes of the villagers? That they would blind me so I would need a guide? We had worked, hunted, travelled so many journeys together. I had been with Arku that first time, when we found his wife and child dead. He would never have anything to do with blinding me!
At the Coal People’s village a child had been injured by a white bear which smashed the wall of a house, thrust its clawed arm through the gap. The flesh had been carved off the girl’s upper arm as if with a knife. We healed the wound, and I taught the girl’s parents some exercises to strengthen her arm and shoulder by developing other muscles. The Shaman sat by, nodding.
Arku and I scoured the surrounding countryside with our dogs but saw nothing of the white bears. One morning we were in the forge, watching smiths working metal, striking it with heavy hammers, heating, hammering it again. I still admired the way they could take a block of iron and shaped it into anything they wished. And the smiths liked showing their skill.
“Help!” A scream trumpeting above the hammers.
Two white bears had seized another child, carried it off. We loosed the dogs, but a storm rolled up from the coast. The tracks disappeared, and the dogs lost interest. They skulked and huddled beside us, tails down. Ears back. Showing the whites of their eyes. Aware of something following us, just out of sight in the black storm, I clutched my heavy spear, was pleased when we heard a hammer ringing and followed it to safety.
Next morning, a house gaped. Wall battered down. Roof torn off. A man and his wife missing. And one child. Two other children alive but speechless. An old woman rocking to and fro, to and fro, mad with terror. The ripped body of her old husband a red mash on the snow. We followed the tracks but, again, lost the scent in a sudden storm.
The Coal People spent the day strengthening the walls and roof of one big house. By evening, when we returned, they were all inside with their supplies. Arku thumped on the barred door and demanded the great iron traps they made for trading with the other villages.
I thought of what one of the Coal Men had said on my first visit: how the man who made the spear could always get somebody else to do his hunting. These men had not thought of using the traps, wanted nothing to do with setting them.
Each trap had a great bent strap of steel for a spring, and toothed jaws that would take a man above the knees. Arku and I had to lever them apart with iron bars. A latch locked the jaws wide-open. Anything standing on the plate in the middle released the latch and triggered the jaws. A chain from each trap ended in a heavy iron ball.
We fed and shut all the village dogs in a couple of houses. Our pack we tethered inside another. Then Arku and I set agape five of the terrible machines. The Coal People moaned inside their fortified house when Arku shouted they must not come outside.
We waited with our dogs and the Shaman, blew out the lamp so our eyes became used to the dark. Much later the dogs grew restive, and we heard a clamour. Coughing, snarling, grunting; chains clashing and ringing; in the half-dark, two huge shapes wrestled and fought in traps. A third trap held the claws and part of a paw torn off a bear. We threw lumps of ice to spring the other two traps, speared the trapped bears, and let loose our pack.
A hubbub of howls. The dogs bailed at once. We slipped in, one each side. Too busy watching the dogs, the bear did not see us until it felt our iron cold in its hot heart. We tried to follow the tracks of the fourth bear, the one with a crippled paw, but snow fell, and the dogs lost its scent.
The Coal People exclaimed at the size of the skins. With open hands, they smacked the huge haunches and hunks of meat. I had wondered if they would not eat it, but they spoke immediately of a feast.
The next night we trapped another bear and saw the tracks of several others before snow covered them again. The Shaman listened to our description and said, “These are not ordinary bears. They are under some control.” He would say nothing more.
Arku said he had never seen white bears in a group before, except for twin cubs with their mothers. “I have heard,” he told me, “of marauding packs of bears. But those are just stories.”
“This isn’t just a story.” I said, but Arku would say nothing more.
We killed two more bears with the dogs. A few days went by without any more sign, and we sprang the five traps, stacked them against our wall. The Coal People moved back into their houses. The forges were relit, coal smoke pungent on the air. People were moving between the houses, children scampering at play, when a sledge arrived, the Carny riding, the Child running alongside.
The Carny pulled himself up, leaned on the Child’s shoulder, and stumbled as he put down his left foot. He hopped and limped inside. I felt uneasy and said so to Arku.
“Don’t let him worry you, Ish.”
“The bear that got away,” I said. “It’s left foot was damaged in the trap.”
“Who’s being superstitious now?” Arku grinned. “Next thing you’ll be saying the Carny can turn himself into a white bear.”
Even I had to laugh at that.
When the Carny was leaving, hobbling towards his sledge, I offered a joint of bear meat, a left hindquarter with the foot intact.
“Take this with you,” I said to the Carny. “We have so much meat.” His ingratiating smile faded. His loose lips drew taut, eyes puckered, glittering. “There’s another bear, one with a crippled foot,” I said. “When we kill it, we will feed it to our dogs.”
The Carny’s left foot gave way beneath him so he fell upon his sledge. He grunted something at the Child. The ice crackled as their runners broke out, the Carny staring back at me, malevolent.
That night something woke me. I took my spear outside, turned right from the door, and walked to a spot from which I could check the village. Everything peaceful in the half-light. As I moved to see a house at the back, I thought that knowing how to make weapons was no good if you didn’t know how to use them. The Coal People reminded me of Tara’s Metal People by the hot pools. They had hidden from us, traded by taking our woven goods from the Swapping Ground, leaving their metal tools and weapons in return. But hiding, being peaceful had not saved them from massacre by the Salt Men.
We must teach the Coal People to defend themselves against the bears. How stupid, to make the huge, violent traps, and not know how to use them!
I glanced across at the traps leaning harmless, springs released, toothed jaws closed, against the wall. One, two, three, four, I counted – and Arku came out. He must have woken and seen my bed empty. He saw me, took a couple of steps. And suddenly I knew
what was hidden under the snow between us.
“Stop!” I flung my spear just in front of his feet so Arku jumped back. The snow exploded. Slam–Clang! The jaws of the fifth trap leapt, their iron teeth smashed the spear’s thick wooden shaft. Arku sat, shaking. One step more, both thighs would have been crushed.
He retched. “Who set the trap?” And somewhere in the dark, I heard a faint chuckle.
We dragged the trap and its iron ball back beside the others. Even with the help of the Child, the Carny could not have levered open the iron jaws and set the latch. Only somebody with the strength of a bear could manage it on his own.
Despite the noise, nobody came out to see what was happening. I thought again the Coal People must learn to defend themselves.
I told the Shaman what had happened, said nothing about the Carny, but the three of us knew who had set the trap.
Arku changed after that. Kept to himself. Didn’t say much to me. As if something inside him had been shocked. Supposing he had walked into the trap – even if he had lived, there was no place in his village for a cripple who could not hunt. A useless mouth that would have to be fed. Perhaps Arku thought about that. We stayed a few more days at the Coal People’s village. I hunted alone, going further each day. But there was not a sign, not even the track of a crippled paw.
One evening, Arku waited for me outside the village. “Ish,” he said, “tomorrow we go back to the cave. I must tell you something before I leave you there, return to my village.”
“Tell me now.”
But whatever he had to say would not come easily. He chewed his lip, kept going to say something and stopping. I knew Arku well enough to leave him alone. He would think things out in his own time.
We were back at the Shaman’s cave, putting the dogs in their traces for his trip home, when Arku spoke. “You have learned much from the Shaman, Ish. Some day you are going to become the Shaman yourself. Not just a healer, but the Judge, too. My people say you will be a great Shaman.”