The Sorcerer Page 5

  They were ready to climb down the cliff.

  “Lefthand!” Jay slipped a small, timid hand into his brother’s. “Stay with me?”

  Never had he seen so many people all together or heard such tremendous noise. In their wanderings the family sometimes had met other family bands. For a while they might pitch their tents together and share a season of good hunting. As soon as the animals grew scarce, they would break camp and each family would hunt separately.

  They had wandered far since Lefthand was little. His mother had died the last winter they had come to this valley. Most people came every winter but the twins had wandered too far to return. Years had passed since Lefthand had seen this gathering. Jay had never seen it. Feeling Jay trembling against him, Lefthand remembered the stomach-shivering terror that he, as a little boy, had felt here.

  Roughly he squeezed the small, seeking hand and reminded him, “I’ll have to stay with you, Jay! I can’t even walk!”

  FOUR

  THE VALLEY

  1

  As a mountain stream leaps from its last rocky cleft it broadens, slows, gurgles down toward the plain to join the broader river. So the little band of Lefthand’s people emerged from the cliff shadow and fanned slowly out, advancing toward the crowd.

  They would never again be all together. As a reindeer senses the unheard hunter in the thicket, so Lefthand guessed the coming breakup of his world. He could do nothing but push painfully forward with the others, then behind from them and finally alone with Jay and Bright.

  He would not crawl. He walked, though not erect, because the lacerations on his chest and stomach were healing in aching lumps. He limped hunched over, resting on Jay’s slight shoulder.

  Dark quick children darted out of his way. They shot astonished glances at him, then humped themselves up and limped, shaking with laughter. But when they saw Jay their eyes turned friendly.

  Women, talking in clusters, moved slightly aside for him and went on talking. From wild hair to their boots, the short, heavy figures were swathed in worn, patched skins. Their hands moved constantly, gesturing at the brilliant sky, at fires, tents, and trodden snow. They shook fists, arched brows, wriggled shoulders, snapped fingers. Eyes black, brown, and blue, shone with the rapture of talk.

  Somewhere among these swarming clusters Lefthand lost Bright. He came limping to the inner edge of the crowd, the heart of the drumbeat. It drowned out the women’s voices and the children’s shrieks. Lefthand felt himself swimming weakly through a river of rhythm that pulsed around and through him, up from his feet and down from his ears. White earth and blue sky shimmered and shook together.

  A great circle of earth was trodden bare. Here danced the magic herd. Tireless booted feet rose and fell together, following each other in an endless ring.

  With antlers askew, and skin flapping, a reindeer and then a bison passed. The head waved menacingly, the horns curved out like balancing wings. Under the bison skin stamped four boots. A red wolf loped beside the deer, its needled jaws aimed straight up at the sky. Out of its throat smiled a young, painted face. Two ponies followed, one gray, one shining black. Their tails swished to the drumbeat, their little polished hoofs beat time.

  Lefthand lowered himself gingerly to sit on the snow. His eyes stared, his head throbbed. All his wounds ached. At his back he felt Jay squatting, shivering.

  The circle broke for an instant. There in the center danced the Bear. It stamped, then bounded into the air and stamped again. Heavy bear fur swung from its shoulders. Bear claws raked the air, a white horsetail swept the snow. On the reindeer head antlers branched high into the sky. From under the fringed deer brow ferocious blue eyes glared straight at Lefthand, who shrank in dread from the look of recognition in those glimmering eyes.

  Then he was looking at a pair of slim boots that stood firmly between himself and the dance. He looked up. Snowbird was tall and lean now, but her face was the same warm brown that he remembered; her eyes still smiled. Lefthand felt Jay slowly rising at his back, drawn to her friendliness as a flower is drawn to the sun.

  Snowbird crouched in front of Lefthand so that he would not have to look up. She spoke to him, shouting through the drum thunder, as though she had last seen him yesterday.

  “My sister told me you were here!” she yelled. “Show me what the bear did!”

  Lefthand was silent. He had little practice in instant speech and Snowbird’s familiarity startled him.

  “He ripped him up the front!” Jay yelled over Lefthand’s shoulder.

  “Let me see.” She put out a hand—small and thin and laced with blue veins—and grasped the edge of Lefthand’s jacket. Lefthand watched her face as she tugged at the edge and lifted it away from the ooze underneath. He said nothing and did not flinch, but her eyes widened and she gently patted the garment down flat.

  “Yes, it’s bad,” she said. “You need a new outfit, Lefthand. I will make you one!”

  Lefthand opened his mouth at last and made answer. “I need a new body!” he shouted, and Snowbird laughed. Her teeth were strong and white.

  The drum stopped. Silence startled them. Jaybird gripped Lefthand’s shoulder hard, leaning around him to see into the circle. “Get off!” Lefthand hissed, but Jay was frightened and he held on in panic, as an infant squirrel holds onto the bark of a tree. Snowbird turned to look and Lefthand saw, over her shoulder, that the dance had stopped in mid-step.

  In the middle of the circle a reindeer danced around the Bear. He waved his hands frantically, fingers stretched and pointing insistently north. He tossed his head and leaped and skipped, all the time jabbing his antler-miming fingers at the north. The Bear turned around ponderously, keeping his grim face toward the jibbering dancer. The reindeer figure seemed familiar to Lefthand, and as he came around the Bear the third time his mask slipped back from half his face, and Lefthand recognized Bisonhorn.

  Whispers rustled around the circle, flitting from wolf to pony to boar, “They’re coming! He says they’re coming!”

  Yes, Lefthand remembered, the reindeer were coming. He had seen them himself from the cliff top. High time the booming drum should hush.

  Now, as smoke rises from a suddenly extinguished fire, a thin sound of talk and bustle drifted into the drum silence. The magic circle of beasts wavered, the line broke. The two ponies, gray and black, walked across the center together. The wolf head was shrugged off and the young man who wore it stood wiping sweat from his own face. On the far side of the broken circle the bison sagged. His rear end rose in the air and a man fought his way out from under it, while another man slithered out from the chest. The head dangled, horns sweeping snow.

  Horrified, Lefthand watched. He had known what the magic beasts were—he had longed to be one himself. But to see magic dropped, cast aside in public, hurt his soul. There must be more ceremony than this.

  He whispered to Snowbird, “Is that all?”

  She turned an excited face to him. Her eyes shone with anticipation of adventure, of success and good food, but as she looked at him the joy faded from her face.

  “No,” Snowbird said, “that’s not all. They break up this circle to form another, but that one will be secret.” She looked at him intently and he was reminded of that horrible soft look of Bright’s. Then she said, “Come to my fire, Lefthand. I have a little meat.”

  She did not wait for him to hump himself up. She sprang to her feet and walked quickly away into the swirl of the dispersing crowd. Jay let go of Lefthand and dodged after her. “I have a little meat,” he had heard her say. Lefthand smiled wryly to himself as he struggled up alone and began the long, painful journey in the direction Snowbird had taken.

  Men were hurrying around him, each to his own fire. Slinging his mask over his shoulder, each hunter grabbed the last shreds of meat from the embers and stood chewing, facing the river. The women silently raked the ashes with leg bones, hunting any tiny pieces of meat that might have flaked off the last roast. Any they found they handed up to t
he chewing hunters. All the faces shone with hope.

  Snowbird’s fire was the last, the farthest out toward the river. Three figures stood about it. The slim, dark one was Snowbird. She was raking the ashes, solemn as an old woman. She found two shreds of meat. She snatched them up hot in her hand and gave one secretly to Jay, holding it down behind her back. Jay was not in the least shy of her. He skipped up close to seize the tidbit but glanced warily at the third figure.

  Lefthand paused. His heart turned cold. The third figure at Snowbird’s fire was the Bear. He alone of the dancers had not discarded his magic. He stood, regally mysterious, his antlers branching into the fading sky, his pony tail curled about his feet. Only the bear paw had been pulled back from his wrist so that he could eat. The hand that emerged from the paw was thin, knotted, and mottled—the hand of an old man, the sorcerer. It was the only human item of his appearance, and Lefthand was not reassured. He felt the stab of the glance the sorcerer gave him from under the reindeer forehead. Nothing was said. The Bear stood quietly, eating and watching. Lefthand was sure the sorcerer saw into his own heart and knew the dismay he felt. He hesitated.

  “Come to my fire,” Snowbird had said. He had a right to be there.

  And whom, after all, had he expected to see there? He knew that the sorcerer was Snowbird’s father, as well as Bright’s. Snowbird turned and saw him. Her look of invitation was stern and urgent. Lefthand understood. They saw that he was physically crippled. Now they waited to see if he were crippled inside, in the spirit. He gritted his teeth and set himself in motion. He lurched up to the fire.

  Snowbird bent again over her embers and raked with the leg bone. She turned up a charred bit of meat. Looking at the sorcerer, she handed the bit to Lefthand. He found his hand holding it almost against his will. At the other fires only the hunters ate. He faced the Bear and waited.

  Slowly the Bear nodded and for the first time Lefthand heard him speak. The voice was thin and cracked, an old man’s voice to match the old man’s hand that held the meat. It was a surprising voice to issue from that fearsome figure.

  It said, “I will find you something to do in the hunt,” and added a cackle that sounded incredibly like “tee-hee.”

  2

  Darkness was rising from the land, flooding up the cliffs, when the hunters met on the riverbank. Behind them a crowd of fires glowed red among black tents. Shadowy women stood quietly about them. Strangely silent, the children ventured closer to the men, peering up curiously into the masked, almost unrecognizable faces of fathers and brothers.

  Like the other hunters, Onedeer stood erect and remote. He was trying to concentrate his powers, to grow bigger inside. This was a night of magic. Tonight all these men would be transformed. A spirit would take possession of them and fill them with strength and speed greater than their own. Onedeer solemnly tried to forget himself and empty his mind to make room for the spirit, but he did not feel that he was succeeding. He felt unreal, alone, and somewhat sick in the stomach. His mask was heavy and damp with sweat, a dab of paint was melting down his nose and he hoped the men around him did not feel as he did. If they were all pretending, the magic would be powerless.

  Swaying slightly, he brushed against his father, Bisonhorn. By the unresponding touch of Bisonhorn’s arm, Onedeer knew that at least he was not pretending. The spirit was already strong within him. Bisonhorn was ready to work the magic upon the reindeer which would deafen their sensitive ears, smother their nostrils, and weigh down their tireless feet. Tonight Bisonhorn must not be himself, but something bigger and far more powerful. His eyes, resting on Onedeer, were glazed and unseeing.

  For Onedeer, the magic was not complete. He could see Bisonhorn clearly, and the hunters beyond him, and the crowd of children pressing as close as they dared. One small face was looking up at him open-mouthed, the dark eyes wide with joyful surprise. Jay jostled against Onedeer and he backed off in a hurry, frightened by his contact with magic.

  “Jay didn’t think he would see me here!” Onedeer chortled to himself. Then he wiped the thought from his mind. “I am not Me,” he remembered sternly, “I am not Onedeer now, I am the Hunter!”

  Between the children and the dark mass of tents two figures leaned together. Onedeer glanced at them and was again jarred to full consciousness. The girl-figure was his mother’s young sister, Snowbird. The crooked shadow was Lefthand.

  Onedeer looked at Lefthand as though from a great distance. Lefthand should be here with him now, stiff and sweating in a hard-won mask while waiting for the sorcerer. They had always been together. Together they had stalked hares, chipped spearheads, played at hunting, truly hunted. Then in a moonlit instant, Lefthand had been snatched away. He might as well be dead, now. That twisted figure leaning on a girl’s strength could not be Lefthand.

  Onedeer felt cold and empty, as though he was not even his full self without his friend. And in his loneliness the spirit found a foothold.

  Now the silent children parted ranks and drew back. The last magician had come to the river. Slow and solemn, the Bear shambled between the rows of children who knocked each other over in hasty retreat. He swung his head as a bear does, glowering left and right, but not at the children. His gaze was turned inward, and he scowled at some image in his mind or in the air. He swept by within arm’s reach of Onedeer, who almost stepped back but caught himself in time and stood quietly.

  Alone the Bear waddled ceremoniously down the bank and out onto the ice. He was almost lost in the thickening darkness before the hunters followed. There was an aura about the sorcerer—a scent—that kept people away from him. The spirit held him, he was real. He was what they were pretending and trying to be. When a safe expanse of ice stretched behind him they followed, stepping gravely down the bank and onto the ice. Dignity is essential to magic and it would not do to slip.

  They crossed the river at a slow, steady pace and darkness was complete as they climbed the far bank. Like a deer in a herd, Onedeer walked among the men, following the vague shape of the man ahead and feeling the pressure of the crowd around and in back. He moved thoughtlessly, not knowing where he went, and his head swam under the weight of the antlered mask.

  Now they were going downhill. The slope was steep and there were obstacles. Here and there someone carried a torch and by the reflections flashing on either side, Onedeer judged they were passing between rock walls.

  They went single file here, steadily down, and the air that seeped under Onedeer’s mask was stale. The combination of mask, darkness, and stagnant air was telling on Onedeer. He was no longer pretending or acting a part. He was truly no longer sure where he was, or even who he was. He knew with certainty only that he was part of a magical ceremony, and that the purpose of the magic was meat; meat, food, life.

  Shuffling downward, gasping and clutching at the man in front of him, Onedeer remembered what his father Bisonhorn had told him. “Keep a picture in your mind. Try to see, for instance, a fat reindeer.” He tried to see it.

  The picture came with startling suddenness before his dark-baffled eyes. A reindeer stood facing him. It waggled its large, hairy ears and then it turned broadside to him, inviting a spear-thrust in its rounded side. It was a plump young doe with small, thrusting antlers. It would provide the tenderest meat Bright ever roasted.

  Painted on the darkness, Onedeer saw the doe’s hide shine like moonlight. He saw her eyes, wide and luminous, and beautifully stupid. In his mind he threw a spear and did not know that he had actually moved.

  Light flared around him, red and sudden. Blinking, he saw the reindeer truly there. She was thinner than he had imagined her, and she was not standing still. She was running across his path, neck and four legs reaching, stiff and strange. He blinked again and she was still there, exactly the same. Then he knew that she was magic.

  Light assailed Onedeer’s eyes and now noise startled him. A drum was beating, thudding a staccato rhythm off the stone walls. The echo bounced around and up and down. Onedeer looke
d up as best he could in his flapping mask, and saw, stretched above him, the first roof of his experience.

  Magic animals swept stretching horns across it, huge red bison, with tiny black hoofs rumbled overhead. The rock walls were alive with creatures who moved as the torchlight moved, and danced before the dancing hunters; a herd of bucks with spears rammed into their shoulders, red-spotted ponies, and a tusked boar.

  Onedeer hardly knew that he was dancing. He shook his spear at the ponies. He stamped determination, he leaped hope. Then he jabbed and thrust with his antlers—a newfound motion—and jumped and skipped like a fawn. He was the deer he sought, then he was the following hunter. Suddenly he knew he could not fail. Strength surged through his body, tingling in his veins. It was the strength of a hunter, the strength of meat in men’s stomachs. Onedeer was lifted on a rising tide of faith, and hope, and determination.

  From the center of the leaping, howling circle, the sorcerer watched. He alone stood still among the hunters, who, pounding and stamping, forgot their humanity and their limitations. Within the ponderous bearskin the tough old man smiled to himself. The hand that beat the drum ached, and he shifted to the other hand. His ankles shook, his knees wavered, but these weaknesses were hidden under the bearskin.

  His power flowed like a strong stream through the secret chamber, and the hunters drank from it. He knew how to summon vast energies out of darkness, sudden light, and rhythm. And the magic animals who danced with the hunters were all his children.

  3

  Lefthand took the bone rake and stirred the embers of Snowbird’s fire. The occasional charred scraps he turned up were bits of hare, and he wondered about them as he chewed. Snowbird came to sit beside him in the small circle of warmth. The night air was cold as death. Snowbird had paused to throw a hide over Jay, who was curled tightly in shivering sleep. As he uncurled a little she gave him a pleased, satisfied look.