The Sorcerer Read online

  Now Lefthand unwillingly tore his delighted gaze from the drawing. He looked at the shadow antlers, swaying slightly across the sketch from him. His eyes followed the shadow back to the deerskin boots, standing positive and straddled, up the stocky legs to the worn jacket, and Provider’s considering face.

  The twins stood together, spears in hand. They were wrapped in reindeer skins whose antlers branched over their heads. The tattered reindeer foreheads fell to their eyes, which hungrily dwelt on the magic drawing. Onedeer stood back to the side. His fair, handsome face was sulky.

  Provider bent down to examine the sketch. He looked at it upside down and walked around to see it right side up. He squatted before it and raised a questioning face to his brother.

  “Yes,” Bisonhorn nodded.

  Lefthand clasped his arms and squeezed himself. He felt he might burst like a seedpod, and let out joy.

  Provider took the small bone blade that hung from his waist and set the point to his thumb. He pressed and the dent in the skin became a hole. Black in the moonlight, a drop of blood oozed out of the hole. Provider leaned over the drawing and shook his thumb, and blood spattered the reindeer’s head. Serious and silent, Bisonhorn was pricking his own thumb. Then Onedeer came forward into the circle, blade at the ready.

  Lefthand hastened to snatch up his own blade and press the point to his own thumb. He scarcely felt it and he managed to keep a grave, noncommittal face like Provider’s, as he too shook blood onto his drawing.

  Now the hunters struck their spears into the snow and crouched beside Lefthand. Opening their right hands wide, they pressed the palms all around the reindeer, one here, one there, until the palm prints looked like the track of some weird monster stalking the deer. Turn where he would, the sketched deer could not escape; he would trot straight into the printed hands.

  Provider indicated that one thing remained to be done. He waved his spear so that its shadow fell across the deer. Hastily, Lefthand drew four straight lines rammed into the deer’s throat, chest, stomach, and rump.

  This broke the flow of the lines, and Lefthand forgot the intense joy he had felt in them. Indifferent now, he stood up with the hunters and moved away, leaving the moon to watch over the drawing.

  Later in the night a mouse scrambled across and erased it.

  2

  Moonlight shone on the herd in the hollow. Antlers gleamed in the white light. Held high, held low, swinging, bobbing antlers forested the mossy gorge. A constant clicking troubled the air, the click of antlers and hoofs and bony joints. Reindeer browsed and scraped the snow and slept, for as far as the fawn could see.

  The fawn was used to being in the center of the herd, fenced in by countless slender legs, smelling milk and moss and deer. Here on the edge of the herd he was drowned in a sea of new perceptions. The world went on by itself, bare of legs or antlers. The cold wind smelled only incidentally of moss; there were other mingled scents that wrinkled his nose.

  Before him arose the ice-sprayed rock of the gorge wall, twice as high as his head. Junipers looked down over its edge and beyond it hung the moon. Over the gorge wall whined a chill wind, bearing unfamiliar smells that drifted down to the fawn’s expanding nostrils. Two of these smells were very unpleasant. One was quite close, the other faint and farther away. Neither raised any picture in the fawn’s mind. He snorted to clear his nose. Then he capered back to his mother who lay content in a soft snow bed, chewing her cud and watching him.

  Lefthand also watched him. Crouched in the junipers on top of the gorge wall, he saw the fawn walk over and stand beneath him, flicking its tail and looking about with wide dark eyes. He saw it test the air, he saw its surprised look. His heart stood still but the fawn looked up and past him with a large, wondering gaze. Then it snorted, jumped, and bucked, and bolted back to the doe.

  Lefthand watched it with excitement. It was the fawn he had sketched back in the forest glade. Surely it was the same deer! He was not really surprised for he knew he had this magic. He turned from the fawn and looked away down the gorge into the forest of antlers and haunches. The sight of so much meat so close awakened hunger in him as pain. If he closed his eyes now, he would see in the dark of his brain a fading fire, a crackling reindeer shoulder …

  Would the wolf never call?

  Lefthand glanced across to the opposite bank of the narrow gorge only ten strides wide. Immediately his eyes met the ravenous eyes of Onedeer, peering wolfishly through the junipers.

  Then Lefthand remembered. Had the fawn sensed his urgency. He made himself relax and sat limp, listening to the cough and click of the herd.

  The doe lurched to her feet. Head up, nose wrinkling, she looked straight at Lefthand.… No, she was looking beyond him.

  Far down at the south end of the gorge a wolf howled.

  Lefthand’s eyes met Onedeer’s, and a thought flashed between them. It might be a real wolf!

  The reindeer were lifting their heads, testing the air. The doe stamped, still looking over Lefthand’s head. The wolf howled again, this time with an exasperated note.

  Together the boys rose. Shouting like night fiends they hurled their spears.

  They were to frighten and stampede the herd toward the waiting men. Lefthand did not take time to aim carefully, and was not surprised to see his spear dive into the snow a good pace behind his fawn’s rump. He had thrown at the fawn because he had a magical connection with it. The doe would have been a better target, but now it was too late to think of that. He was leaping from the bank, and running to retrieve his spear.

  A young buck trotted dazedly past him. In its plump side bobbed a spear with blood welling and running around the shaft. Onedeer had aimed with care. The buck would fall before the men ever touched it. It would be Onedeer’s second kill.

  Now the fawn was again in the midst of the herd, pushed and jostled by shoulders and antlers. Through the milling legs two weird figures ran toward him, sticks flying ahead. His mother pushed against him, almost knocking him down, but he was pushed again from the other side. Now the herd was running. Earth rumbled, snow flew up from a hundred churning hoofs. The fawn could not see where he ran. He followed the white rump ahead and ran from the howls behind.

  The pursuers felt the rumble of the galloping herd in their feet. In their bodies they felt the pulse of hunger, of their own pounding blood. They ran in a great, feeling noise.

  Halfway down the gorge the running herd left behind a dark shape on the snow. Onedeer’s buck writhed on his side, his short antlers scraping snow and earth. Onedeer paused to wrench out his spear. Lefthand jumped over the buck and ran on.

  The fawn rammed into the deer ahead. The herd had suddenly stopped. Sharp hoofs trod on his back, knocking him to the ground. Through the forest of legs he saw new terrors approaching, two creatures, antlered, smelling strangely of deer. A stick flew and dug into the shoulder of the big buck ahead. The buck sagged. The herd divided and flowed around him and between the two fearsome shapes. The fawn struggled to his feet and bolted blindly forward.

  Provider’s spear whizzed over the fawn’s back, and struck the doe beyond. The fawn rushed out of the gorge into wide, moonlit space.

  3

  Moonlight shone on trampled snow; on blood-soaked moss; on the eager, wildly happy people moving among the kills.

  Lefthand stood gulping two handfuls of innards. Warm blood trickled between his fingers and he licked them.

  Bright crouched over a carcass, pulling back the skin with her hands and a bone blade. In the moonlight her hair shone white, her hands blood-black. Onedeer came and gave her a pile of innards cupped in his hands. Jay hopped up and stood looking greedily.

  Bright gave Jay the pile, of course, and licked the blood from her hands while the child laughed and ate and laughed again, jumping like a wolf puppy around the carcass. Lefthand laughed, gurgling through his mouthful, and Onedeer ran back to help the men cut out more innards.

  Lefthand stood idle. He had not killed a single anim
al and so could not split any stomach or hand out the steaming riches within. He could help Bright with the skinning. Maybe later he would, but not now while the others were gleefully gutting their kills.

  He looked around for Onedeer’s buck. It lay fifty paces back in the shadow of the bank. It could have been a rock or a mound of moss, but for the white belly faintly reflecting moonlight.

  Lefthand went slowly back to it. He stooped, blade in hand. The air around was heavy with blood-scent, the aroma of spilled life. Only this buck lay intact, unopened, its vitals writhing in secret under the skin. Lefthand was tempted. His hand reached out with the blade—and stopped. He had no right.

  He turned and opened his mouth to call Onedeer. “Come gut your buck!”

  Bright was looking at him. Her eyes were two immense holes of darkness, her mouth a third.

  Jay froze in mid-leap. He came to earth in a crouch, and grabbed Bright’s arm. His mouth hung blackly open.

  Farther back the three hunters stood together. They stared, guts oozing unnoticed through their fingers. Onedeer pointed. His finger was aimed beyond Lefthand, just as the doe had looked beyond him.

  Lefthand had time to engrave this picture on his mind before he was seized.

  4

  Tremendous claws raked his chest and stomach. Wounds burned his flesh. One, two, three flashes of pain, and he stopped feeling.

  His open eyes continued to see. The hands that held and ripped him were black in the moonlight. They were hairy, strong with the strength of three men. He knew then who held him, whose furious growl tunneled through his head.

  Would the men move?

  They stood like rocks, popeyed, slack-jawed. They were not afraid of animals. But this enemy was not entirely animal.

  It was Bright who moved. Shrilly screaming, she leaped up. Spreading her fingers like claws, she bounded forward. She was unarmed and had even dropped her bone blade, but her crooked, bloody fingers, her streaming hair, and the agony of anger that gnarled her face gave the bear pause.

  He thrust his long snout across Lefthand’s shoulder and snarled at Bright.

  Past the fanged jaw that jutted against his cheek, Lefthand saw Jay spring up. He did not believe it, but he saw Jay snatch a severed antler and run, yelling, toward him.

  Lefthand felt himself lifted, dragged back. One monster hand held him, the other reached over his shoulder grabbing at Bright and Jay. They hopped like hares, screaming, raking the air with fingers and antler.

  And now at last the hunters moved. Through a deepening red mist Lefthand saw them run up. They held their spears backward so as not to injure their spirit friend, but hold the spears they did, and jab and poke, while the claws swatted and the woman and child leaped around them. The air was rent with screams, grunts, and growls. Sometimes the spear butts jabbed Lefthand, but mostly they thudded against the sides and legs of the bear.

  Provider worked around to the side and delivered a telling blow. Lefthand felt himself released and dropped. The hairy, long-clawed spirit foot whose track he had followed stood directly before his eyes, planted like an oak. Then it rose in air and withdrew. A deerskin boot planted itself on the spot like a slender sapling. Moonlight and shadow mingled and swam in the thickening red mist.

  THREE

  THE DARK

  1

  Far through the moonlight ran the fawn. His long legs pumped steadily, strongly. His heart thumped a regular loud rhythm. All his being was action. His senses were numb to the whiteness around him, snow-white and moon-white, to the click and pant of other deer running near him. His brain was filled with the image of the two fearsome figures, the antlered monsters. His ears still carried their howls, his nostrils their scent.

  The fawn ran more slowly as his heartbeat became a painful thud. He gasped for air in harsh, aching breaths. He stumbled and finally stopped. His brain stirred and woke from nightmare.

  Around him was white silence. He twitched his ears and caught no sound but familiar deer noises and those were at a distance. Lifting his head with an effort he spread his nostrils and found no whiff of the monster-scent. The fawn began to look around.

  The herd had scattered over a wide, tumbled slope. Bushes and young trees blocked the fawn’s view, but after gazing a while in the direction of a wheezing sound he caught sight of a large gray shape obscured behind a willow clump. The shape flicked its tail, a small bright flash in shadow, and the fawn made a weak leap of joy.

  He swung around and headed in stumbling haste for the willows. Already in anticipation he felt the doe’s rough tongue kissing his shoulder, he tasted her warm milk. Eagerly he staggered away from loneliness, closer to the gray form.

  It was not the doe. The fawn knew that before he came around the willows. He stood downcast, looking after the panting deer who moved slowly away. He was an old buck whose heavy antlers and snowy ruff dwarfed his bony hindquarters. He paused and looked back at the fawn. His eyes were startled at first, then mildly friendly. He turned away and continued his slow progress along the slope, and the fawn followed. He could not remain alone.

  Through the bushes went the unlikely pair, brushing the branches, snatching at winter-tight buds. Other shapes appeared, stepping out from thickets and hollows of darkness. Slowly the herd was coming together, finding itself, moving always along the hillside away from the sinking moon.

  The fawn smelled each new arrival hopefully. He would dart forward at sight of an adult herd member, then stop in his tracks and look mournfully around for another. The deer smell was overwhelming around him. But still he looked and smelled for the one at whose side he had always walked and browsed and slept.

  When the exhausted reindeer let themselves down in the snow to rest, the fawn lay down by himself, alone in his own skin. There was no warm flank to snuggle against, no moss-scented breath meeting his own. He turned on his side and stretched, reaching out his nose and tail and the tips of his hoofs. A sharp pain ripped across his stomach. The fawn threw up his head and gathered his feet to rise. The pain became intense and steady and he could not rise because of something wrapped around him.

  He opened his eyes wide with fear in the fading gray moonlight and wondered.

  And then he thought, “What am I doing here!”

  Now Lefthand remembered himself. He was not a reindeer fawn. He had no tired, heavy hoofs. His feet were encased in stiff boots and lay side by side as though he were dead. The running, the search for the doe, the gathering herd—he had dreamed all that. This was reality: darkness, pain, a thick warm skin wrapped firmly around him, and a loneliness colder than that of the orphan fawn.

  The young reindeer had strong, swift legs. His eyes and ears and nose were competent. He needed the doe only for comfort and kindness.

  Lefthand had no strength. He knew that he had sustained some terrible injury. Now he remembered what had happened. Staring into blankness, he saw again the hideous, grinning jaw thrust past his cheek, and the reaching, swatting paw with its long curving claws. Lefthand sweated under the robe. He remembered his father, and Bisonhorn and Onedeer, standing and watching while the bear grabbed him.

  Had they gone away now and left him? He could easily imagine their doing it. No words would be spoken. His father Provider would make a gesture, a spread hand with the palm down, and the others would bundle up the meat in the skins and walk away. Bright would wrap the robe about him first, a final gift, and Jay would look back and whisper, “Why?”

  Straining his ears, Lefthand heard no sound. Spreading his nostrils almost as the fawn had done, he caught a wonderful scent—a whiff of woodsmoke.

  Very slowly, neck muscles bulging, Lefthand turned his head. Away to his right the dimness was touched with red. If he turned a little farther … He moved his shoulders and pain woke all up and down his chest. He had to know. Gritting his teeth, he turned his head as far as possible till he was looking flat along the snow.

  A red glow framed a huddled shape.

  Lefthand breathed a deep sigh
of relief. He knew that shape, that scene. From his infancy, darkness, red glow, slumping silhouette, had been the form of Home. Waking at night as a little child, loved and fed and not expected to hunt, he had seen a woman hunched beside her dozing fire.

  And now he sensed the presence of other sleepers. Curled in their skin robes they sighed and stirred, giving off reassuring smells of woodsmoke, blood, and sweat.

  Lefthand lay looking steadily at the comforting shape outlined in red. His head swam with pain and he wondered vaguely if it might not all be a dream. He was not a fawn. Perhaps he was not a wounded young hunter either. Perhaps he would wake in the morning and find himself a dark, dreamy little boy already called Lefthand. He would get up hungry, and Mother would gladly find him a bit of meat she had hidden among her jumbled possessions on the baggage sled. He would take his little spear and hurl it at trees and if he missed it would not matter. He would wrestle with Onedeer and Onedeer would win, and that wouldn’t matter either. Comforted by this confused hope he let his eyelids sink, and darkness came.

  Behind Bright the sky gradually lightened until the sun rose, small and cold, in the wide winter sky. Morning shone into the camp and the hunters moaned to themselves. They pulled their robes over their faces and turned away from the light. They had marched all the day before and hunted all the night. They had eaten and now their stomachs were deliciously full, their robes were warm, and daylight could not arouse them.

  Lefthand lay unconscious, drowned in a rising tide of fever. Jay opened one eye, looked at the morning, and rolled over tighter in his bison skin. Bright, nodding by the fire, began to dream.

  She saw a pair of small, soft hands stringing a necklace. They were the hands of a little girl named Bright. She was stringing reindeer vertebrae on a cord of twisted sinew. Some of the hollow bones were painted red, some black, some with red or black dots. The stubby little hands worked patiently and Bright felt a throb of joy in the beauty of the growing necklace.