Shaman: A Novel of the Paleolithic Era

Chapter 63

Everyone in the pack took something of Thorn’s to remember him by, but all the things that had come to him from Pika were given to Loon, meaning his flute and pipe, and fire kit, and painting kit, and the bison-headed cloak.

Loon played the flute when they put Thorn’s body on the raven platform on top of Loop Hill. It seemed to him that the flute made the music, he only had to breathe through it and listen with the rest to whatever came out. That was quite a discovery. While he played he saw everyone’s faces, and he was surprised to see how distraught the other members of the pack were. He had not realized what Thorn had meant to them; he had been too close to see. He himself felt nothing.

When they were done laying his body out on the platform, Loon stopped playing the flute and said,

That night by the fire, Loon stood before all the rest of them wearing Thorn’s bison head, and told them the story of the swan wife. Young man marries swan woman, goes to live with the swans, it doesn’t work out, he ends up a seagull. One of Thorn’s favorites, and all of them had heard him tell it many times. And then Loon and Elga and Thorn had lived it.

In the same way as the flute’s tunes, the words just spilled out of him. Suddenly he knew to stop knowing it. It would come breath by breath, in an even in and out, and he only had to breathe out the part of the story that fit that breath. He added a couple of skipbacks to pick up dropped points that occurred to him, he foretold a few parts; that was just part of the game. Although this time he was telling the story as simply as he could.

All that day Heather stood at the edges of the group, facing away from the rest of them, not saying a word. When he was done with the story Loon helped her back to her bed, and she seemed light to him, and ancient.

She sat on her bed. Loon looked down at her and saw her desolation, which from his curious new distance, his bird’s eye view of everything, which was maybe the shaman’s view, surprised him a little. She and Thorn had always fought so.—I’m sorry, he said.

She did not look at him.—I don’t know who I’ll talk with now, she said.

He could not fall asleep that night, and under the waning moon he realized that he wanted to go in the cave by himself, to paint something new. In the autumn it would have been Thorn’s turn to go in, and Loon knew Thorn had had big plans, though as usual he had not said much about them. But Loon didn’t want to wait that long. He wanted to go in now.

Next day he said to Moss,—If I work fast, Thorn’s spirit will still be around to help me paint. So I have to do it before the ravens are done with him.

Moss nodded.—Heather will help gather your supplies, and we’ll hold things together out here while you’re inside.

—Good man. He held Moss with his gaze.—It’s our turn now.

—I know, Moss said.

Chapter 64

They helped Heather pack a backsack with the painting gear and several bags of fat for the oil lamps, also some food and a water bag. Hawk and Moss walked with him up to the cliff and its narrow ramp to the cave entry. Pika’s Cave, the biggest and most beautiful of them all, right over Loop Valley. The shaman’s entry to Mother Earth, the kolby of the world.

At the entry they stopped and hefted the full sack onto his back. Moss took an ember from his belt and puffed up a flame at the end of a wick, then got it arranged in a fat lamp, then lit the wick in another lamp. In the light of the afternoon it was difficult to see the lamp flames, hard to imagine they would be enough in the world below.

He sat and smoked Thorn’s pipe with Hawk and Moss, both of whom sucked down their burns eagerly. They continued to smoke while Loon ate some of Thorn’s dried mushrooms and artemisia, then sang the cave hello.

Hawk and Moss were looking worried; they had only been in the cave’s deepest depths twice, when they were kids trying to break the rules, and the second time they had almost gotten lost. They didn’t think it was safe to be going in alone like this, and though they were forced by circumstances to do dangerous things all the time, maybe that made them even less inclined to take on any unnecessary dangerous things, and in cold blood.

But that was what shamans did. So they sat to each side of him and pressed into him shoulder to shoulder as he sang the cave hello, and they sang too when they knew the words. There was quite a bit of wonder on their faces as he hugged them good-bye and took off, into the big dark kolbos of the passage at the back of the day chamber of the cave, down into the dark.

Chapter 65

As he walked into the passage it was broad at first and lit by daylight. Then came the turn into the dark, followed by a narrow passage. As he shuffled past that turn the shadows got blacker, and his lamps shed more and more light, until they were all he was seeing by, the two flames brilliant in his hands. As he walked the lit walls and black shadows shifted with him, flickering with the same flicker as the lamp flames, so that it was clear they all made one thing.

He stopped for a while to let his eyes adjust, as Thorn had taught him, and then continued forward with the short steps that were best in the cave, to be sure the floor had no unseen blocks or drops. It would be very bad to fall and knock out his lamps. Thorn had tried to teach him to spark a fire in the dark, using the sparks themselves to see the duff well enough to light it, and touch the wick to the burning duff, and breathe the wick back to flame; but it had proved to be very hard. Now Loon carried a live ember inside a burl in his belt, which would make it much easier to relight the lamps if he needed to. But it would be so much better not to need to. Better to treat the lamps as little sparks of his own spirit, so precious that he could be said to be carrying his life in his hands.

So it was a long slow walk to the far end of the pale-walled cave, through the various big chambers and the narrow passageways connecting them. Down here it was the cave’s own air, always the same, cool but bracing, in wintertime warmer than the air outside. No sound from the cave mouth reached this far. The body of the earth lay over him completely. It was almost entirely silent, but that allowed him to hear little creaks and gurgles, always coming from the shadows outside the space jiggling in the light, and often seeming to rise from below. There was a musty smell, a cave bear smell, mixed with mud. A faint charcoal whiff. Big groups when they came back this far brought brush pine torches, and the pine’s sappy blaze made the walls dance and leap. But that was light for seeing, not for painting.

Now the two lamp lights were pale and steady. They quivered in time with his steps. He was by himself, no one else here. Thorn’s spirit did not seem to be present, nor Click’s. If anything he felt the presence of Pika, whom he had never met. The madman who had started painting in this cave, the notorious bison man.

But even Pika was now absent. Loon could feel it: he was alone in there. Just him. He could recall quite a few times in his life when simply being alone like this in the dark would have been enough to terrify him. Often when alone, at night, he had sensed something out there, something unseen, maybe even invisible, that was at that moment tracking him with senses he did not have, following him by way of signs he could not hide, like his smell. More than once that apprehension had overwhelmed him with terror and caused him to run panicked like a rabbit through the moonlight for camp. Stricken with terror, bolting with terror, and all from being alone in the dark, when a feeling came over him!

Now all that was completely gone. He was empty. Being alone meant nothing to him. This was his place. He had been here before, he remembered it perfectly. It was just as before. Slowly he shuffled past the place where the roof of the cave had fallen down and now stood on the floor, a big mass of white and orange rock, which sparkled in the lamplight as he moved. Onward, past the big cats on the wall to the left. Then a left turn and on to the stone reeds that covered the floor here, so strange and beautiful. The stone reeds on the floor stood below stone reeds hanging from the roof, dripping; a few dripped even now. They were like the sand drip towers kids made on the riverbank. How many drips, with water so clear? How many years? Since the old time, the time when all the animals were people, and they walked in a dream together. Since the world was born out of its first egg.

He followed the path always taken through the reeds, doing his best to step in the same footprints. That was how it was done in here. And it was true that the floor of the cave was often coated with a slight mud that squished between the toes, and in places gave way to about the depth of one’s foot. Stepping in old steps helped with that, although at the end of almost every spring the cave floor flooded, leaving a layer of new mud in their steps. Walking in the cave had its own sound because of this, a little squick, squick, squick that often echoed.

Go slowly. Move to the cave’s speed. It burbled, it pulsed, it breathed, but all very slowly, so slowly one could only dance in time with it, as with a slow bass thump, hitting five or nine to its one. Breathe deep the black shadows. The darkness behind him was darker than the darkness before him. Someone had fingered an owl on the far face of the fallen roof pile; it watched you with its big eyes as you passed it. Follow the trail around the corner.

There hung the pendant of rock from the roof, the stone bull’s pizzle, with its painting of the bison man about to mount the human woman, her legs and kolby drawn there under him, the biggest blackest kolby ever, like a little triangular door to another cave. Pika’s work. The whole story of the bison man and his woman, right there on a pizzle like the one that had done the deed.

This room was where Loon intended to paint. To the left of the pizzle there was a section of curving wall that extended far higher than he could reach. Inspected from arm’s length, it proved to be a somewhat uneven surface, bossed and spalled with bulges and cavities, and some small cracks; but on the whole it was a clean curve of stone, with lots of flat smooth surface.

He put down the lamps, took off his sack, unpacked it, picked out the caribou shinbone from the other things. He made one scrape with the shinbone at just above head height, revealing a lighter rock under the brown skin: the bare flesh of Mother Earth, very bright compared to the shadows in the corners around him.

This was the wall Thorn had said he was going to paint. For the first time Loon felt a little touch of Thorn behind his ear, and he heard the remembered sound of Thorn’s voice, saying just his ordinary things. Come here, boy. The particular timbre of Thorn’s voice suddenly pierced him, so buzzy and nasal compared to the clear tones he made when he played his flute. There was no other voice like it. Although it was true that no two voices were the same, so that meant nothing. But he would never hear that voice again. He would have to hold on to it.

Loon said to the cave,—Hello, Thorn. Before I start, I want to go look at your painting of the lions on the hunt. Come with me if you like.

He picked up one lamp and stepped down the twisted passage to the end chamber. Now that Thorn was dead, he would have to follow Loon around if he wanted to talk to him. So Loon was free to go where he wanted. Loon could feel that as he walked, could feel how it would irritate Thorn.

Now he stood in the farthest end of the cave, in front of the great lion chase he had watched Thorn paint so long ago. He saw again: it was by far the greatest painting in the cave, maybe the world. Maybe it would always be the greatest painting. The hungry look in the lions’ eyes, the sharp wariness of the bison peering over their shoulders at the great cats; the way the animals moved when you moved the lamp next to the wall; the massed groups, hunters and hunted, both flowing across the wall from right to left, moving even as they were still, moving as you breathed, the lions diving in, the bison bursting out. All these aspects together made this wall more alive than any painting Loon had ever seen or imagined.

He sat there and looked at it, and remembered what he could of Thorn on the night he had painted it. The old man had been very calm and relaxed, almost friendly. No, friendly. He had smoked his pipe and played his flute. He had stopped to eat or take sips of water. He had put his head to the hole in the corner of the floor that breathed and sometimes gurgled, listening for what the cave could tell him. It had taken a long time to paint that wall, but he had never hurried.

The lions moved in place, and yet stayed where they were. The cave breathed in time with Loon’s breaths. Deep below him it sounded like someone was talking. He saw that he wanted to do it like Thorn had done it. He would do what Thorn had done, every mood and move, make it happen again. That was what he would do; and that was what he would teach some boy to do. If you did it right, on it would go.

Loon put the lamp down, sat on his fur patch, took out Thorn’s pipe. Used the lamp flame to light a splinter, squinted and lit the leaf in the pipe’s bowl, breathed in some smoke, held it in his lungs. Exhaled.

The cave exhaled with him. He drank from his water bag. When he was finished looking at Thorn’s lions, he got up, taking some care to be sure of his balance. A little dance in place. He picked up the lamp, walked back to the other lamp, in the big chamber with his empty wall. He set the second lamp down, had a look around. The bison man still humped the human woman, and he approached it to have a look at how it had been drawn. The black triangle of the woman’s baginaren had been very carefully cleft at the bottom by a scratched white line. The door to the next world, clear as a cut on a finger. He had a burin in his pack to use as just such a line scraper. He had charcoal stumps, a bag of charcoal powder, a bowl for mixing, chamois leather patches, some brushes. Two bags of water. The wall scraper shinbone. He had to finish the scraping.

He moved the lamps around until the light on the wall was the way he wanted it. The two together set up crossed shadows, and he wished that he had a third lamp, or even more. Ah yes, he did; in the sack. He found the lamp stone with its indentation, set it up, filled the dip with lamp fat, placed one of the wicks in it, used another splinter to move flame to it. He sat by the lamp a while to make sure it was burning well. It flickered, then burned steadily, the flame still except right there at the wick it enfolded, where it crinkled off the black into existence.

The cave was murmuring a low song. There was a river running under the cave. Its sound seemed to indicate that its water moved slower than water on the surface of the earth.

He took up the shinbone in his right hand and finished scraping the wall clean of its brown nobbling. He saw that a cave bear had reached up and clawed the wall, as if trying to get through to something. The claw scratches were white, and under Loon’s scraping the wall was almost tusk white. Like old yellowed tusk, or the belly of an ibex. Above the scraped section was an arch of stone, and the wall above that was reddish brown.

On the far left of his wall, around a slight curve that way, there was a low hole in the wall. The floor was wetter under the hole.

He took up a charcoal stump, and on the left side of the cleared section drew the backs of a rising line of bulls. That gave him his left border.

He stepped to the lower part of his cleared area and drew the two rhinos he had seen fighting by the creek. He wanted to show the way they had slapped their horns together, in those big horny thwacks that rang across the meadow. It must hurt when horn caught flesh. Both of the rhinos had been bleeding. He drew the lines of their horns right through each other: it was the only way to show it. Round curve of their low rumps, so massive and strong. They were so much faster than they looked. He could suggest that speed if the curves were right. And all the force of the fight was there in their faces and horns. He took his time, smudged with a leather cloth inside the lines of head and horn, to make them blacker. The one on the right had its right foreleg set, and was thrusting up and through the one on the left, catching it in the side of the head. Curve of the muscle swinging from the force of the blow. Scrape with a burin inside the right one’s mouth, open as it grunted. The one on the left had been rocked back by the blow, rounded up by it. Draw the forefeet rounded, show them almost hanging in air. Curves in the rock were shaped nicely to show the weight of the beast thrown back. Dot the eye just over the horn, looking shocked. Give him two front horns; this was a Thorn trick, to show movement. Knocked back by the blow, back into the cave wall itself.

When the rhinos were done he sat down for a while. He had a longer charcoal branch than usual, and as he sat there, he reached out and drew a little bison with it, a three-liner at first, but then he kept pointing the stick into the mass of winter hair between its horns. Just something to do while he rested and looked at the wall above. It was a great wall. It was breathing in and out with his breath, coming closer and then moving away.

The stumping was making things look good and black, so he added another bull to the stack of them on the left side of his wall, blacked it in completely. A little scraping with the burin could remove just enough of the blackened face to suggest an eye. Black eye of a black bull, and yet visible. Under the muzzle of this black beast he drew a horse with a big head, small body. That looked good, black stumped down its chest, legs just lined.

That left the biggest scraped space, to the right of the bulls and above the fighting rhinos. It was a good space, and he sat down next to his sack to look at it for a while.

He refilled his lamps with fat. He drank some water. He inspected his hands; his palms and fingers were black with charcoal. He held the right hand up before him, turned it palm side then backside. Bent little finger. It pulsed blackly, seemed to go away and come back. This living hand. He held it up against the wall, as if to blow an outline. From this distance it covered the space he had left to draw on.

He closed his eyes, watched colors flow and spark there on the inside of his eyelids. He saw that horse at sunset, rearing on the ridge across the valley. He recalled the way it had felt, there at the end of his wander when he was scraped raw, when the horse had seen him and then reared, and suddenly in the sunset light it had become clear that everything meant something he could not catch, something so big that it couldn’t be said, couldn’t be felt. Something big that they were all caught up in together. It had taken his breath away then, and it did again as he remembered it.

Make that horse. Stump it until it was the black inside black. Show the rearing up, that moment when the sight of it had transfixed Loon, standing there the next ridge over.

He stood and started painting again. Start from the top and work down. Make a sequence of heads that would show that rearing in the sunset, like what Thorn had done with the lions, but different. He used his hand to measure; there was room for four heads.

He started to draw the top head. First the forehead, as in a three-liner. Down the long nose to the nostril and the little curve of the mouth. Then pause. The second head would need to fill the space below. He took the stick and pressed hard against the wall, stumping the charcoal off as thickly as he could, carefully up down, up down. The curve of the rearing mane, pressing lighter as he drew the back behind the mane. Good. Then the eye, looking across the valley at Loon. Not a friendly look. He stumped and smudged black all over the inside of the line, darking the forehead, the cheek.

He took up the burin then and scraped a little around the eye to make a white surround for it. He saw that he could scrape around the head too, whitening the wall to make the head stand out even more than it already did.

Slowly, carefully, he scraped tiny bits of rock away from the wall. It had to be a perfect line, making a perfect contrast of white and black. The head would seem to emerge from the wall, because indeed it did.

He went on scraping for so long that one of the lamps went out. He staggered back in the newly shaped shadows, and in his haste almost knocked one of the two remaining lit lamps over; lunging to right it, he also almost stepped on the third lamp. He could have knocked them all out right then and there.

He sat down for a while, frightened by his own clumsiness. The cave was rumbling a warning. He wished Thorn were there to talk to, and suddenly he realized that would never happen again. No more Thorn. It was impossible to believe. Not to have that face, that voice, those irritated and irritating thoughts. No one to talk to, as Heather had said. Dropped into the lonely world of the shaman, deep into dreams and visions, always alone, even when in the pack. He had wanted his wander to go on forever, and now it would.

I picked him up then. I carried him to the wall, I raised his hand, I drew the mane of the next horse.

Then, looking at it more closely, I realized that I had started the second horse too high, too close to the first one. Four heads as close as these two would be too close, leaving a gap at the bottom that would look bad. I had made a mistake. I didn’t know how to fix it. In the depths of the cave, trying to help Loon past his bad moment, I had made a mistake. Startled, dismayed, not knowing what to do, I sank back into him and left him to it.

Loon stepped back and stared. He had drawn the mane of the second horse without thinking, and now he was appalled to see that it was too high. Thinking about Thorn had distracted him, and he had painted without looking. A huge mistake!

And no way to fix it. If he continued with this new head in this position, the four heads would be too close together: but the space wasn’t big enough for five heads.

Startled still, sick with frustration, he stepped back again, careful this time not to go near the lamps. He sat down next to his sack and looked at the wall and thought it over. He recalled Thorn’s bison in the farther chamber; one of them had seven legs to show it was running. He saw again against his eyelids the black horse on the ridge, rearing and throwing his head toward the sun. The way the light had caught on his stiff short black mane. The way black horses seemed to jump out of a landscape into the eye.

He stood again and went and touched the wall under the mane. He could leave that mane detached and on its own, and place the second head a bit farther down. It might look like there was an extra horse in between the two, as often happened when one looked across a herd. Or it might suggest the horse’s rearing, like the seven legs of Thorn’s bison. The world seen by lightning flash, as Loon often saw it, storm or not. Moments of being one after the next, snapping in the eye once and then forever.

The wall was cold under his fingertips. His feet were cold, and he flexed up and down on his toes and heels, trying to warm them. The wall pulsed out toward him, then sucked back away from him, trying to pull him off balance, cause him to fall into it and be captured. There were smaller horses in the valleys to the west, their women had no manes. He saw he could make a little joke; the four heads of the rearing horse would also be from four different horses. And the detached mane could also be smudged in a way that made it look like the top horse’s cheek, while remaining the mane of the horse under it. Then a maneless horse, with little ears on top: a colt, or almost. So in a single toss of the head the horse would age through its whole life, or rather become all the black horses Loon had ever seen. Well, the story it told was not his problem. He just needed to draw them, and after that they would tell their own story. He wouldn’t be sure what he would get until he drew it.

The curves of the wall under his fingers showed him that the second head was looking less into the wall than the top one had been. Part of the toss of the head. Rearing away, defiant. The back line of the blackest bull, to the left of the horses, was a faint line between the two horses’ faces, making a triangle. He took up the burin and scraped that triangle a little whiter, working as carefully as he could in the corners where the lines met. The rock-on-rock scrape rasped into the black shadows of the cave. A big black nostril. The sound of the stick against the wall was so much woodier than the burin.

Loon stood back to see how the second head looked. It seemed to be sniffing the drawing of a little old rhino, standing on end. His third horse would be sniffing this same rhino’s rear. That would not make the horse happy, it would keep its mouth and nostrils shut to avoid the smell of that rhino’s rear. Horses and rhinos definitely did not like each other. Really no animal was happy to be around a rhino. Only mammoths would even come near one. Mammoths did not care who they approached, although they did take care around rhinos. It was a standoff between them when they both wanted the same water. Once Loon had seen a rhino and mammoth stand watching each other across a creek for an entire fist of the day without moving, each not quite looking at the other, both seeing who would wait the longest. Loon had left before they decided it.

He made the third head a woman horse, with a very short mane, neat and demure. Coloration a lighter black, achieved by a close mottle of wall and charcoal, requiring a very light touch with the end of the branch, and some finger smudging, very light. The wall here was slightly chipped, which made it perfect for this effect; black on the high points, dimples white. Each horse was going to be a slightly different black.

The fourth head, at the bottom, he decided would be the blackest black of all, something to really draw the eye, to start the viewer at the beginning of the tossing of the head. One would look first at this bossy mass of black, then the eye would move up with the motion of the rearing. The heads would move and lie still both at once. The Thorn touch, yes, of course; Thorn would have liked this painting. So, one of the smaller kinds of horse to start things. A young stallion, black as the cave when the lamps went out, and whinnying. This noisy black creature would be the start of it all: a horse startled, his eye round, scraped white around it, a white tear streak under the eye, also scraped. Mouth open as it whinnied in protest at being seen, then reared and wheeled away, as it had done on the ridge, in that moment when some part of Loon had been born, his wander’s great moment, when he had realized the world was stuffed with a meaning he couldn’t express. Right here he would express what could not be expressed, for all to see.

He filled in the black. He scraped with the charcoal stick, fingered the soot into the rock. His fingers were pure black now too, and as he rubbed the charcoal in, there were times when he felt and saw his fingers go right into the rock, right into the horse’s body. Bristles of the mane as stiff as lion whiskers, bunched and upright. Black the whole head, all except a little stretch where neck met chest, just to round the figure, give it the curve that the wall itself gave the horse, a little curve of a bump so that the horse’s left leg stood out from the wall. This would be a great touch when he brought the pack in to see it, and moved the lamp to make shadows on the wall dance. He couldn’t both move the lamp next to the wall and see its effect from the center of the cave, but he could tell it would be good, a real movement. And above it the horse would toss its head.

Now his hands plunged deep into the stone of the wall. He had to move them around slowly, as if in thick mud, to keep from breaking off his fingers. The wall was cold, his fingers were cold.

When he was done with that blacking, the blackest blacking he had ever done, it took him a while to pull his hands out of the wall. When he did, he stepped back to his sack to look at the wall.

It was good. The free-standing mane between the top two heads was still strange, but there was nothing he could do about it. It worked as the cheek of the top horse, or the top of a horse seen between the upper two, or the mane of the second horse, rising before its head did, leading the head. All of those, sure. Part of the movement. And the black of it was good. Loon loved the black of the lowest horse, whose whinny seemed to echo in the dark reaches of the cave, the black spaces that the lamps did not light.

He went back to the wall with the burin, and began to scrape the area around the lowest head, to make its outline that much sharper. The mouth inside the whinny had to be as white as the woman’s kolby, there under the bison man looking across the chamber at him. Scrape it clean. Get it just right. The stone had such a texture here, granular but smooth; he could scrape it very clean, get a smooth white surface to delineate the black mass of the horse. Ah, watch out, a scrape too far down—pick up the charcoal stick, wet the finger, cover the scrape mark. The lower line of the jaw had just the jowl of that horse on the ridge, two little indentations marking it.

There was a burbling moan from below, and then a gust of wind, and all his lamps went out at once, leaving him in pure blackness, a black as black as if the lowest horse head had spilled out and poured over him and filled the whole cave.

Chapter 66

This was bad. The blackness was absolute. He could make colors appear in his eyes by squeezing them shut, but there was no point to that. He had no sight. The world was black.

The cave moaned again. It chuckled at his capture. How did the cave bears guide themselves in here? How could they see in this?

They didn’t. They smelled their way. And the chamber that contained their hibernation nests was much closer to the cave mouth. They just bumbled blindly in and smelled their way to the place where they always slept, and slept again, and woke and sniffed their way out.

For a moment he lost his line of thought, and a panic of sheer terror washed through him in a flood that left him hot and gasping.—No, he groaned, and heard a little ringing that might have been an echo or a response.

He stepped around carefully, trying to keep his face toward the wall, to keep a sense of where he was. Facing the wall, the way out was to his left. He got down on his knees and crawled, sweeping with his hand ahead of him to feel for the extinguished lamps, for his sack—for anything that might be his, and thus help him.

But when his hand hit one of the lamps, it was no good; the wick was cold, the lamp’s little depression was out of fat oil. Possibly he had gotten so caught up in the four horses’ heads that all the lamps had burned their fat and gone out together. Maybe there had been no gust of wind at all, no laugh from the thing under the floor. Although it was laughing now. Anyway it didn’t matter. He had to find his sack.

Finally a sweep of his hand ran into it. Knowing its location allowed him to find his second lamp, and then the third. They were all out of fat, or so close that their wicks had gone out. He brought them back to his sack, missing it for a while and briefly panicking; but there it was at last, so that the terror of the dark subsided in him.

He sat on his fur patch and dug into his sack, feeling for the bag of fat grease. He found it, and that was good. In that bag was light and sight. Then he reached in the fold of his belt, and found the burl with the ember inside it, and when he felt the burl he took it up with desperate care, untied the cedar cap with trembling hands, and poked in gently with his finger, hoping to be burned: but it wasn’t even warm. Just ashes. He had stayed too long.

He sat back and whimpered with fear. There in his sack were his bags of food, and the rest of his painting things. The bag of earthblood powder, it felt like, ready to mix with his water to make red paint. But he was almost out of water. And nowhere in his sack did he feel the firestarter flints, or the little bag of duff and dried wood chips he needed to start a new fire.

He didn’t know what could have happened to them. Terror struck him again, swept through him and took him off. He needed to ice over that torrent of fear and stand on it. Needed to be ice cold, and yet he was burning with fear.

After a time the terror let him go, it flung him to the floor crying. It occurred to him that he might have taken the firestarter kit out of the pack when he lit the third lamp. Although he had lit that lamp from the ones already lit, of course, using a splinter, so there would have been no reason to take out the flints and duff. But it could have happened. That had been nearby; he wasn’t sure exactly where, because in the blackness he had carried all the lamps to this spot by the sack.

He crawled in the direction he thought the third lamp had been, felt the floor of the cave. Nothing. Then he lost the sack for a while, trying to return. When he relocated the sack he cried again, and after that he took the sack with him as he crawled around. He found some rocks on the floor, and some charcoal sticks tucked against one wall in a little hole. A jaw with teeth, giant in the dark, bigger than his head: a cave bear skull, it had to be, long and toothy, with the bump and rise in the forehead that marked it as a cave bear, although its sheer size was enough to tell.

Nothing. He had lamps, wicks, and oil, but no flints or duff. No way to make fire. He banged the rocks he had found against each other, and some brief sparks flew red across the blackness, like shooting stars, but nothing like what it would take to start duff burning; and besides, there was no duff.

He was stuck in the black of the cave. There was no way out, except to try to walk or crawl in the right direction.

By now he had no idea what direction was the right direction. He needed to find his wall again to get oriented, but standing up and walking around, hands stretched before him, he came to one wall, then another wall; he reached up and felt for scratches, smelled his fingers to see if they were perhaps smearing charcoal; but everywhere felt the same in the pure blackness, and his fingers always smelled like charcoal now, no matter what he touched.

Cold, tired, hungry, thirsty. Filled with fear, and then, as more time passed, with a rending grief. Oh that it should come to this! Thorn would be so mad at him if he turned up in the spirit realm so soon, having gotten lost in their own cave! It was almost funny to think of the look that would be on the old snake’s face. But it wouldn’t be funny if it happened. And what about Elga? She would be angry too, but so sad.

He crawled around on hands and knees until he felt something like a footprint. There were many bear prints in the hardened old mud of the floor, as they were deep enough to last through many a spring flood. They pointed in all directions. And he could feel by putting his own feet in them that they were far too large to be a person’s footprint. When he found another one, he fitted his foot into it, and knew it was a person’s footprint. Encouraging. But people had walked around. It didn’t mean he had a clear direction.

If he went toward the end chamber, there would be a series of drops. While on the other hand, if he had to step up, and if he was lucky enough to encounter the stepping stone placed at the bottom of that one big step, he would know he was headed in the right direction, at least for as long as he could keep any particular direction steady.

So he filled his sack with his things and put it on his back, and tried to go uphill. If he ran into a wall, he tried to determine which way the floor was tilted, and continued as upward as he could.

He crawled on and on, using his hands to feel the floor ahead of him. He felt like he was holding a straight line as he went, but he wasn’t sure. Thorn had once remarked that no one without light would ever be able to find his way out of a cave this big.

He lost his sense of time. He got colder. The cave’s air seemed colder now, and down below the floor, something was laughing at him louder than ever.

At some point, it felt like many fists later, he stopped to eat the last of his food, and without wanting to, he drank the last of his water. Some parts of the cave’s walls and floor were wet; he could lick the walls for moisture, perhaps. In him a despair was growing, a realization that dying in here was quite possible. He refused to accept that, even to think about it. It was impossible to come to grips with anyway. But the laughter from under the floor of the cave sounded like the thing that had chased him into the crack in the gorge cliff, on the last night of his wander. Quartz or not, that thing had known it almost had him. It had laughed at that knowledge then. And now it knew it was right.

He lay there and cried. The blackness itself was getting to be enough to suffocate him, to strangle him right there on the cold mud floor. Thorn was going to be so angry! Elga was going to be so sad!

He fell into sleep, or something like sleep.

Later, shivering with cold, he woke and pushed up onto his hands and knees and crawled forward. As he crawled Thorn said scornfully in his ear, Every time you run into a wall, turn to the left. Then, even if you have to circle the inside of the entire cave, you will eventually find the kolby and be born out of the earth. Isn’t it obvious?

Loon crawled on, feeling dully that he had a plan he could pursue till death. Onward.

Then a hoot seemed to come from somewhere:

—Loon! Loon!

He shouted as loud as he could:—I’m here! Help! HELP!

Part of the black turned gray. There grew a lightness there, and he turned to face it, to suck it into himself like a great draft of life itself. Yes, that was light, just as distinct as sunlight, even though it was merely a pale black among darker blacks. The cave walls in that direction were shadows in blackness, and the cave itself therefore loomed around him again, visible as black on black.

He shouted again. He didn’t recognize anything of what he saw, couldn’t tell whether the grayblack shapes were distant or close, a day’s walk or something he could reach out and touch; he tried touching what he saw, but nothing was touchable.

He sat there. The light seemed to dim, and in terror he cried out again,—Help! Help!

Once before he had called out in this same desperate way, when as a child he had plunged into the river and could not feel the bottom, and somehow had thrashed back up to the surface and shouted out HELP to anyone who might hear. Such a cry of fear! And that time his father had pulled him out.

The sounds in the cave began to say,—Loon! Loon!

Then the light grew, and suddenly he could make out the cave roof above him, folded and ribbed like a gut. He was going to be reborn out of Mother Earth’s kolby; this was what the birth passage looked like from inside. His tongue had felt folds in Elga like what he saw now looking up.

Then he heard that one of the voices was Elga’s. A prick of light stabbed him right in the eye; he threw up his hands to block it, crying out in shock and relief and joy as he clambered slowly to his feet. He stood there swaying unsteadily, staggering as he called out,—Elga! Elga! Elga!

The blazes of light came from torches. Their flames bobbed wildly, shadows flew all around him like flocks of giant birds, ah: he saw that the spirit ravens of this cave had been gathered over him, ready to pick his bones the moment he died. Now they flew blackly away, giving him back to the light. The torch flames were so bright and yellow he could see nothing else, it was as if fire alone approached him through the black air of the cave.

Then he saw the people carrying the flames. Elga and Heather and Hawk. Elga gave Hawk her torch to hold, and ran up and embraced him.

—You’re so cold! she exclaimed.

—I’m fine, he said, and felt his face grinning as he wept. Now his teeth were chattering.

They told him Moss was back up the cave a ways, holding a torch for them. And from Moss’s location they knew the way to the red chamber, and then the day chamber. Elga was wrapped around him, almost holding him up. He had been gone too long, they said, so they had come in. It had been four days.

—No, Loon said.

—Yes, Elga said.—Four days. So we came in.

—I’m glad you did, Loon said.—My lamps went out. I couldn’t get them relit. It’s been dark a long time.

—Where are we? she asked, looking around the part of the cave they were in. It had no animals on its walls, although in one area there seemed to be cross-hatchings that did not look like a cave bear’s, they were so squared off.

—I don’t know, Loon said.—I don’t think I’ve ever been in this part. I don’t recognize it. A quick violent shudder of cold and fear rattled him, and she held him closer.

—This is the way out. Toward Moss.

They had trailed a rope behind them from the last spot they could see Moss’s torch; it lay there on the cave floor like a snake. Now they rolled it back up as they returned, and soon saw a glow in the passage ahead. As they came through it, Loon saw that they were actually returning to his chamber, with his new painting there on the wall to their right. He had gone down a passageway deeper into the cave, but in a different direction than Thorn’s lion room. There was his painting right there, and he peered at it curiously, wondering what he had done.

The others were caught by it too, and stopped briefly to look. But Elga wanted them to leave as soon as possible.—We’ll come back with the whole pack, she said.—First let’s get you out of here.

Loon picked up the cave bear skull he had stumbled over in the blackness. Feeling it in his hand as he looked at it, he could see the blackness in how it had felt to him in the dark. Something had tried to eat him.

He put the skull on a block of stone that stood waist high in the middle of the room. He looked around at the chamber he had spent four days in, first painting, then in darkness. He could not tell which part had been longer. It had felt like four years, or four lives. When they came back in here, he would ask his pack to gather every cave bear skull they could find, and bring them in here to mark those four lost lives. Something had to say what had happened here.

Elga nudged him along. Past the owl on the rock, past the stone reed bed. Then there was Moss’s light beyond, at the far end of the big empty chamber. Moss shouted loudly, excited to learn they had found Loon alive. He ran down the room, torch blazing, and seized Loon up in a great hug, swinging him around in the air.—Good man! You made it!

—I did.

—But you’re so muddy!

—I crawled a lot, Loon admitted.

They stood there for a while chattering at him. He was shivering. There was a dim light in the far passageway that they all knew to be the light of day. That was a good light to see.

Suddenly Loon felt how tired he was. Now that they were almost out, he found he could hardly walk. He couldn’t feel his feet. Moss and Elga walked at his sides, held his elbows and helped him over the lumpy mud of the old bear beds. They stopped and let him gingerly stomp the ground, trying to restore some feeling to his feet. His left leg was achy. He did a little circle dance to loosen it up.

He found himself facing a wall that had a big smooth expanse, there between the two doors to the room of the bear beds. There was a red paint mark on this wall, and suddenly Loon said,—Wait, I see something. I need to do one more thing.

They all disliked hearing this, and said so, but Loon cut through them.

—I have to do one more thing!

He stared at each of them in turn, and they quieted and let him be. The world waited for them, after all, just a few score steps toward the light, around the last corner. Given that, they could not deny him.

Loon took the bag of earthblood powder from his sack, got out a bowl, asked Elga for water. He mixed up the powder and her water into a bowl of red paint, thickened by spit he had to ask the others to provide; he was too dry-mouthed to spit.

When the paint was ready, he went to the wall and put his right hand carefully in the paint, so that only his palm was wet with it. Then he pressed the wet hand against the wall, pulled it away: a red palm print, almost square.

He did that over and over. He crouched to work low at first, then stretched up as far as he could. He placed his handprints so that they made the rough shape of a bison. A new kind of stump drawing, one might say. The more he pressed his hand against the wall, the angrier he got. He didn’t know why, or at what. Somehow it had to do with Thorn, or with Thorn dying. We had a bad shaman, we had a good shaman; we had a shaman. And by this stump drawing of a bison, made with his own living hand in earth’s own blood, he would stick Thorn’s spirit to the wall. Let it reside forever in this cave that had almost killed Loon, while Loon would escape out into the world. Something to show what the bison man had been like, his greatness, his power. He pressed his hand into the paint and onto the wall: he wanted to show the sheer mass of him. His hand when he pressed went in the rock right to the elbow. All the worlds in this wall. He made the red marks until the paint was entirely gone. That was Thorn.

Then he was truly tired. He drank some of Elga’s water, and as they walked up and out of the cave, he put his arms over Moss’s and Elga’s shoulders. His left leg was going numb. Trying to keep him in the cave forever. He ignored it and stumped on up into the day.

The cloudy daylight made him throw his arm across his eyes.

—Mama mia, you really are a mess, Elga observed.—You have mud all over you.

Moss said,—You look like you caught fire and then jumped into a mud pit to put the fire out.

—Yes, Loon said.

After a while his eyes adjusted, and he could stand to look at the world. Down below them spread Loop Meadow. Early summer and the Stone Bison straddling the river. All still there, calm in early morning light. It was cloudy, wind pouring over them. They carried him down to camp.

Chapter 67

In camp they washed him off and set him in bed, and Elga took care of him for a day. His feet throbbed as they warmed up. He was thirsty, even though he had already drunk a lot. He was hungry too. And he wanted to see things.

After a day of rest, he went out for a walk.

Looking around their river valley, he saw it all very clearly. He only wanted Elga, he only wanted their days together. They would have a certain number of days, a certain number of years. But he was the shaman now too, no matter what he wanted. In that regard, he would never get out of the cave. And his wander would never end.

He went out with Hawk and Moss on the night of that full moon, sixth of the year, and they walked up to the gorge overlook, as they had so many times before. In the moonlight the air held its usual shimmery awe.

—We should go, Loon said.—Elga told me it’s time. She knows just which ones will go where. Time to be our own pack, and live here at the overlook. You two will guide us, and I’ll be your shaman.

His friends nodded, looking a little uneasy. This was just Loon here, after all. They knew he didn’t have any magic powers. At least he hadn’t in his childhood. Loon saw what they were thinking, and he said,

—I don’t know how I’ll be as a shaman. I’ll find out when I try it. You both know me. You’ve known me since before we even had names. I can’t travel in my dreams, or above the sky. There aren’t any spirits that talk to me or through me. I can’t sing the songs. I can’t help people who are sick. But I’ll tell you this,

and he raised his right forefinger before them and seized them with his eyes:

—I can paint that fucking cave.

Moss and Hawk nodded.—We know, Hawk said.—We saw.

No one else could paint the way he did, Moss told him. The cave was certainly his to take care of. It had been passed along to him from Thorn and Pika, along with the other shaman things. As for the packs, Wolf pack new and old, they could all visit in there together during the ten ten festival, sing the songs and look at the animals in the torchlight, the way they always had. Those were big nights, remembered for years. Those nights would help keep the two packs one, and the nearby packs friendly as before. The Lion pack would surely support them. Loon could definitely lead them through all that. And Thorn’s flute would play the old tunes through Loon. Hawk and Moss could see that in him already; they had heard it; they were sure of it. Maybe there was other shaman’s magic that could be learned later, that the old shamans passed on one to the next. He would find out at the corroborees. Heather could help him too. A way of seeing, a way of being. Cast yourself out into the spaces you breathe, watch what happens.

—All right? said Moss, looking at Hawk.

—All right, Hawk said.

Chapter 68

So late the next day Loon went looking for Schist. He found him down by the river. It was the sixth day of the sixth month. The half moon hung overhead in a twilight sky, which on this evening was a rich mineral blue, arcing east to the coming night, roofing the world with its gorgeous span.

—I’m the shaman now, he said to Schist.—Thorn taught me how, and I spoke with him in a dream when I was in the cave. He told me I’m ready. We’ll go into the cave soon, and you’ll all see what we’ve done there.

Schist nodded, watching him closely.—All right. That’s good. We need a shaman.

Loon said,—But look, some of us are going to move upstream to the abri at the Northerly overlook. The pack is getting too large to make it in one camp. You and Hawk keep fighting, and we all see it, and it could get ugly. It’s already a little ugly. But if one of you beats the other up, it will be even worse. And it’s like that among the women too. They are split worse than anyone. So I’m going to move Hawk and Ducky and Moss and Heather and Nevermind and Rose and all their kids down to the new abri. We’ll be close enough to stay together and work together. We’ll all be the Wolf pack still. I’ll still be your shaman too, and I’ll take care of the cave. Heather will still be your herb woman. We’ll keep doing our ceremonies together, like we do now with the Lion and Raven packs. It will mean you can get what you need to live here. You’ll have your kids you’re bringing up, the pack to handle. You can’t do that with Hawk on you all the time. You’ll be better off without that. This is how we’ll do it. The Northerly overlook is a good campsite, we should have put a claim on it a long time ago, made it a Wolf place. Now we’ll do that, and on we’ll go.

All the time he was saying this Schist was glaring at him, jaw muscles bunching and unbunching like a hyena chewing on bones. Loon never flinched, but spoke as peaceably as he could. He felt peaceful. After what had happened in the cave, this kind of thing was really nothing. He could see it all as plain as Schist’s bulging face: things that happened in the light of day, on the surface of Mother Earth, these were very clear and simple things. In this moment he felt like he might stay calm forever.

When he finished, Schist did not at first reply. He stared at Loon’s face as if trying to recognize him, as if he had lost his Loon and was trying to find him in this new person. As he failed at that, he realized he had a different Loon to deal with. Becoming a shaman changed you, of course. Shamans got strange, went crazy. Loon could see all this in Schist’s face. He almost grinned, almost made a shaman’s story face, even a woodsman’s crazy face. A wooden mask with a look to chill.

But he didn’t want to distract Schist, who was now thinking over what this new Loon had said to him. He was a quick thinker, this was why he was the Wolf pack’s headman. He had made a lot of decisions and judgments over the years, and they had not been hungry for most of the winters he had led them, and people had gotten along. It was an achievement. Thorn had respected him.

Now at last he looked away and said,—I’ll have to talk to Thunder about it.

He glared quickly at Loon, as if Loon might scoff at this, or point out that this was precisely Schist’s problem.

But Loon knew better. He merely said,—I’ve already talked it over with Elga, and she’s the one who told me to do this. The women run every pack. We aren’t any different in that.

Schist nodded, his glance surprised and grateful.

Seeing that, Loon added,—Elga said you should get Starry in charge of things as soon as you can.

—Starry is nine years old, Schist said.

—Elga said that doesn’t matter. She said some people are just born ready.

Schist nodded slowly.—All right. You all moving up there could be good. It will make it possible for us to take in the people from Mammoth pack who were asking about joining us. That would be good. But if we do that, we won’t be able to help you if you get in trouble. I mean, we won’t be able to take you back in.

—That’s all right, Loon said.

Chapter 69

At the summer solstice ceremony he stood to sing the solstice song, feeling still very calm. Both parts of the pack had regathered for the occasion. Everyone could see and feel the change in him. He stood before them in Thorn’s bison headpiece, and the loon cloak Elga had sewn for him, and raised Thorn’s last yearstick to the midday sun, and sang.

That night, after the eating and drinking, but before the dance, he led them all in a torch procession up to the cave. On the ramp they passed all the paintings and engravings on the cliff, all the lines and dots Pika had painted there, sparking a welcome to the world inside the cave. They went in together, in a line, and left a series of lamps on the floor to light their way. Loon told them the story of his visit. He showed them Thorn’s great lion hunt, and it almost shook him to see it again; he felt Thorn so strongly he almost wept, but then the shaman’s calm came back over him in a blink, and he took them all to see his new wall of bison and horses. They sat on the chamber floor where he had groped and crawled in the blackness, and he moved the torches around so that they could see the animals move and flow in the flickering light. He told them to watch the horse rear its head, and moved the torch to help them see it, and some of them gasped. He took out Thorn’s flute and led them through the end of the solstice song:

He instructed them to take lamps and go off and look around the nearby chambers of the cave, and bring back any cave bear skulls they might encounter. They enjoyed this hunt, which lasted half a fist or so, and when they reconvened in the horse chamber, they had seven skulls. They laid the skulls with ceremonial care on the ground around the block where Loon had placed the one that he had found in the blackness. Then he led them singing back out of the cave, the ones at the end of the line picking up their lamps as they went: out of the cave, down the ramp to their midnight fire, which they built up and danced around through to the dawn which came so quickly. Summer was here again. Soon they would trek north to the caribou and the eight eight, the two packs one again for a time.

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

In the hour before that early dawn, Loon left the dancing and went back to their new camp up at the overlook, and lay down on the bed he shared with Elga and Lucky and the finch. He felt all of a sudden as tired as when he had first emerged from the cave.

He looked down from their ledge over the river, seeing the entry to the gorge, the Stone Bison, the ridges behind. Dawn’s light leaked into the world. He sat there on his bed and watched the day begin. The sky shifted from gray to blue, like a jay’s back when the jay hops around.

Then he was standing on the back of the Stone Bison, the river flowing under him, and Thorn standing there beside him. The iced-over river was soon to break up, and it rumbled and cracked from time to time.

—I thought you would stay in the cave, Loon said.

Thorn shook his black snake’s head.—You can’t get away from me that easily.

Loon sighed. It was obviously true.—I’m sorry about what happened to Click.

—Don’t you worry about Click, Thorn said.—Click is my spirit to bear. I’ll find him and keep him away from you. You don’t have to worry about him. It’s me you have to worry about.

—I can see that.

Thorn nodded.—Me, you’re not going to be able to get away from. I live inside you now.

—You should feel free to go, Loon suggested.—You did what you had to do. Now you can go be the base of the Firestarter, the star in the middle, where the stick meets the base.

—I don’t think so. I’m going to stay here and haunt you.

Loon sighed again. All those red handprints sticking him to the wall of the cave, but Thorn didn’t care. Loon said,—I wish you wouldn’t, but I can’t stop you. You’ll do what you want. Whatever you do, I’ll do what I want too. You’re going to have to follow me around. You’ll be like Heather’s cat. You’ll be just another camp robber hanging around.

Thorn nodded.—That’s fine, so long as you remember. Remember the old ways, and all the old stories. Remember the animals, your brothers and sisters. Remember to take your place and play your part. Remember me and what I taught you. Remember!

Then he stepped to the side of the Stone Bison and dove off and flew away, down the gorge, holding his arms out like an eagle. The sight of his flight was so startling it woke Loon up.

He looked around at the morning. People were lying on their beds, asleep after the big night of dancing. Elga was down at the riverbank, talking to some of the other women. Lucky was at Loon’s feet, sitting on the head of their bearskin, talking to himself. The finch was beside him, wriggling in her basket and babbling. Heather was just above the camp on her new shelf, digging around in her bags and buckets.

All right, Loon said in himself to Thorn. If that’s the way you’re going to be, I can take it.

Something the baby girl did met with Lucky’s disapproval, and Lucky shook her basket.—No! No!

—Hey, Loon said.—Leave your sister alone.

—She was eating her gloves!

—That’s all right. Let her. Here, tell me the season song again.

Lucky stood up and sang:

—No no! Loon said.—And lie in twos on the ground! Remember!

And he reached out and flicked the boy on the ear.