The Sorcerer Page 8

  The men were soon gray brown specks in the distance. The women followed more slowly, backs bent, heads together, talking as they went.

  Lefthand knew how Red felt, stumping away into a new life. He felt Bright’s relief. No sick baby, no wounded boy burdened her. She swung along like a young woman.

  The men’s eyes were on the far distance. They watched continually for a brown speck to move, for a deer to stand up and shake snow from its flanks.

  Lefthand bitterly watched them go, the company of the strong. It would take a tremendous magic to make him whole. He did not believe that this queer, womanish old man could do it.

  2

  “But Snowbird,” Jay protested, “that’s too big for me! See?” He flung himself down on his back on top of the skin. “It goes down to my feet. How can I run in it?”

  Snowbird laughed. Kneeling hunched over the skin she sewed steadily. Her bone needle punched in and out, in and out, and drew the twisted sinew tight and firm through both edges of skin. Under her strong, quick hands a jacket was taking shape. She pushed Jay aside and went on working.

  “It isn’t for you,” she said.

  “Oh!” Jay was used to being thought of, taken care of, first. He had assumed that any new garment made from a fine skin must be for him. It took him the space of a breath to figure it out.

  “It’s for Lefthand!” Jay sat up abruptly.

  “Yes.”

  Snowbird spoke softly, almost secretly, but Jay felt no embarrassment. “Lefthand!” He called shrilly, “Lefthand!” He hopped up and went off around the tent in search of his brother. Left alone, Snowbird bit off the sinew, tied a knot, and began sewing up the other side of the jacket.

  On the far side of the tent a powerful odor hit Jay like a fist. It was the smell of Lefthand, a sickening stink of mixed blood and sweat. There he was, standing fifty steps away from a small fire. Balanced in its embers was a stone bowl reeking with the stench of blood. Sorcerer leaned above it, muttering and poking in it with a reindeer leg bone.

  Sorcerer was an even more startling figure without his Bear costume than with it. His hair, thin and scraggly and pure white, tangled to his bony shoulders. Jay had never seen such white hair before. It spoke of unimaginable age. The face that looked up at Lefthand was wrinkled as the palm of a hand. Almost lost in the wrinkles, small blue eyes shone forth a startling intelligence. The grotesque body, one half gracefully agile, the other dead and shriveled gave a nightmarish impression. The sorcerer looked more spirit than human, more a magic being than a mortal one.

  But Jay had huddled with him in his tent on several cold nights. He had gnawed bones Sorcerer tossed his way and found good meat on them. He moved close to the awesome figure and looked over his shoulder.

  “Auk!” said Jay, “what’s that?” In the stone bowl bubbled a gray, slow-writhing mass.

  Sorcerer chuckled and mumbled something about magic. Then he said distinctly to Lefthand, “Take off your clothes.”

  Lefthand came stiffly forward to the fire. He moved much more easily now than when they first came to the valley and he stood almost straight, though his movements were jerky and brought a look of dumb pain to his brown eyes. With clumsy fingers he tried to untie the sinews that held the filthy jacket rigidly together.

  Quickly Jay ran to help him. “I’ll do it, Lefthand.”

  Sorcerer held up a commanding hand. “Lefthand must do it himself. If he is helped by anyone else”—the blue eyes fixed Jay warningly—“anyone else, the magic will fail.”

  So Jay stood helpless, watching Lefthand’s weak fingers pull and tug. It took a long time. A cloud spread across the sun as Jay and Sorcerer waited, but at last the sinews came apart.

  “Take it off,” Sorcerer ordered. Lefthand began gingerly working the jacket off his shoulders and down his arms, while Sorcerer turned back to the bowl with its bubbling mess. He flexed his hands, tipped his head back, and shut his eyes. Mumbling all the while, he reached out both hands, grabbed the bowl, and lifted it off the fire. He set it down in the snow where it hissed and steamed as if in protest. Then he licked his hands and pressed them flat on the snow.

  Lefthand had managed to get the jacket off. He stood upright, nearly bare before the fire, with all his wounds, healed and half-healed, exposed to the sun. His face was impassive as rock.

  Sorcerer smiled. His smile was as warm as Bright’s. Like hers, it spoke of kindness. But unlike Bright, Sorcerer had knowledge. He not only wished to help Lefthand; he knew how.

  “Let it cool.” He pointed to the gray stuff, still slightly bubbling in the stone bowl.

  “What is it?” Lefthand asked. He spoke through lips tight with dread, and the words came out harshly.

  “It’s only fat. You saw me put it in the bowl. It’s just a lump of reindeer fat. Bear fat would be better but we don’t have any.” Lefthand looked uncertainly at the hot, liquid stuff. He had never seen fat in that condition before. Bright lugged no stone bowls in her baggage sled.

  Sorcerer dipped a finger experimentally in the fat, snatched it out, and sucked it violently. “With this you will heal smooth,” he said, speaking around the finger.

  “Lefthand!” Snowbird’s call seemed to come from a distance. Lefthand was looking at the fat and at the sorcerer standing firmly before him, determined to do something to him as soon as the fat cooled. He was sunk in fear and distrust. He heard Snowbird’s voice, looked up, and saw her running toward him. She was holding something out to him.

  “I finished it,” she said, and came up beside him. She held something before his face.

  It was his new jacket. It smelled only of smoke and deer. Lefthand had not worn a new garment, made especially for him, since he was small. His own mother had made his last new outfit. Bright had mended and altered it and then remade the men’s old clothes to fit him, but any new, boy-sized garments she made were for Onedeer or for Jay.

  He reached out and took the jacket with trembling hands.

  “This is beautiful,” he said to Snowbird, and watched her eyes light up with pleasure.

  “I have some painted bones,” she said, “to sew around the edges. I can put them on any time. Don’t wear that again.” With a scornful foot she kicked the old jacket aside.

  “Snowbird,” Sorcerer broke in, “go work on the leggings. There’s a snowstorm coming and you will soon have other things to do.”

  “A storm?” Snowbird glanced at the bright sky.

  Lefthand nodded. “Clouds are coming.” Even as he said it, another cloud passed before the sun and the world was swept with gray shadow.

  “I’ll hurry your leggings,” Snowbird said. “You’ll have them tonight.” She thrust the new jacket into Lefthand’s arms and darted away.

  “Now,” said Sorcerer, and he dipped his hands in the warm fat. Lefthand handed the garment to Jay. “Hold it,” he said, and stood very still, watching the sorcerer’s greasy hands approach his scars.

  “It won’t be bad,” Sorcerer murmured, “just a little warm.” With firm, quick fingers he smeared the fat over the scars and livid bumps of Lefthand’s wounds. “Breathe deep,” he instructed. “Go limp where it hurts.” Lefthand obeyed. He breathed as slowly as a sleeper, relaxing his screaming muscles. The hurt faded with the sunshine.

  3

  Toward evening snowflakes began to tumble out of a steadily dimming sky. Jay threw his head far back and stared up at them until they seemed to come pelting up at him from a deep, gray abyss. He tottered and staggered, almost afraid of falling into that cold depth. The snowflakes whirled, growing larger and darker as they circled up to strike him on the face and dive dryly into his mouth.

  He heard a giggle nearby, swallowed a snowflake, and jerked up his head. The world swung back into place, sky above and earth beneath. Beside him Snowbird teetered, head back and mouth open, reeling to catch the flakes on her tongue.

  Lefthand watched, relishing silent disapproval. Had she nothing better to do than to chase snowflakes? Maybe there was
a white hare struggling in one of the traps among the willows. Then another, louder giggle caught his ear.

  With a sinking heart, Lefthand turned around and stood appalled.

  Behind him the sorcerer swayed, arms outstretched, head flung back. He held his wide mouth open and the snowflakes swooped in. He did not have to chase them, so thickly was the snow coming.

  Lefthand could not imagine his father or Bison-horn playing like children. These people had no dignity. Watching the foolishness, he felt cut off from his people and his life by more than distance.

  He would be the adult in the group, he decided. He would go to the traps alone.

  He set off, walking slowly out of habit rather than actual pain. His new outfit was soft and clean and pliant. Almost gracefully he was walking away when Sorcerer called after him, “Where are you going, Lefthand?”

  Lefthand flung over his shoulder, “To the traps,” and Snowbird gasped surprise. “Alone?”

  “Why not?”

  “Stop,” said the sorcerer. Lefthand stopped. Sorcerer’s foolish moments only made his authority more pressing when he chose to use it.

  “There is no time for that,” he said softly. Lefthand turned to look at him. So thick was the storm now that he could hardly see the others. They were merely gray blobs in a white whirl.

  “The traps will wait,” said Sorcerer. “Now we’re moving.”

  “To the rock tent?” Snowbird asked.

  “That’s the place to be in a storm like this. You pack the meat and wood. I take the fire. The tents can sit here.”

  Snowbird ran toward the faint blur of the tents, Jay at her heels. Feeling Sorcerer’s gaze upon him, Lefthand followed. This packing of sleds was not his work, but then, what was? He might as well be of some use. He came to Sorcerer’s tent just as Snowbird wriggled out, three small frozen carcasses piled against her chest.

  Carried like that, they reminded him of … of babies! Lefthand’s world was suddenly dark. He seemed to see a monster rising out of the tent, carrying heaped death and sorrow. The hares’ stiff, stretched legs were like thin babies’ legs, the little mouths were seekingly open. A pitiless face grinned at him over the corpses. “You get the wood,” Snowbird said.

  Lefthand blinked the vision away. The world became itself again. It was not a monster he saw going past him to the sled, but a handsome, competent girl packing meat for her family.

  These flashes of vision were usually so quickly over that Lefthand was barely aware of them. This one he would remember. Ducking into the tent he scolded himself. “That’s what’s wrong with me! Onedeer doesn’t see things like that!”

  Searching in the dark among stone bowls, strings of teeth, and bone tools, he found the scattered sticks and twigs. This work was definitely unworthy, but Lefthand obediently thrust the sticks out to Jay’s waiting hands. He was almost accustomed to the sorcerer’s ridiculous ways.

  He squirmed out to find the others leaving, already vanishing. A white-speckled red haze moving ahead was Sorcerer’s torch. Snowbird was pulling the laden sled, which suddenly became heavy as Jay ran and plunked his weight upon it.

  “Oof!” she gasped, “Lefthand, help me!”

  “He doesn’t have to ride,” Lefthand growled. But he did help, putting his mittened hand beside hers on the strap.

  “Is it far, this rock tent?”

  “The other side of the river. In the cliff.”

  “You can find it?” They were not keeping pace with the trotting torch.

  “I’ve been there before.”

  They pulled then in silence, faces down, flying snow stinging their eyes. Down the bank they went with a rush and out on the ice, stepping where the new snow was fluffy. The torch was already far out on the river, all but lost in the storm. The sled swerved and shied behind them and Jay chuckled happily. Once Lefthand glanced back and saw him sitting upright with his mouth open and his eyes crinkled shut.

  At the far bank they paused. Lefthand warned, “Jay, you have to get off.”

  “Mmm,” said Jay.

  Lefthand turned and grabbed the sled and tipped Jay off. Snowbird sighed, picking up the cargo, and Lefthand scrambled up the bank. He hauled up the sled and looked into blankness. The torch was gone.

  “Where to?” he asked, as Snowbird and Jay packed the sled.

  “I’ll lead.” Snowbird walked ahead, stooped into the storm. Lefthand caught Jay’s little hand and pushed the strap into it. Together they pulled the sled along Snowbird’s track.

  “What’s a rock tent?” Jay wondered aloud.

  “A tent made of rock,” Lefthand reasoned.

  “Can it hold us all? How can it be made of rock?”

  “Jay, I don’t know! You just pull.” They stumbled on, blinded by the rushing flakes and the gathering night.

  “This is it,” said Snowbird, and stopped.

  They had come slam up under the mountain. Right before their feet lay a bare, sheltered strip of earth. Sorcerer squatted there, his torch flickering undisturbed. No snow fell.

  Lefthand looked up at the stone wall behind Sorcerer. At the height of three men it leaned out. It kept leaning out and out, making a roof like a tent over the bare ground. Tilting his head back Lefthand saw that the cliff swept out far above their heads, and finally came to a jagged edge. Here the snowflakes hit and bounced, then drifted down to form the ridge of snow in which he was standing.

  He stepped in under the cliff and out of the drift, jerking the sled after him. This, then, was the rock tent. Open to the air, it spread itself over one, shutting out the sky and the falling cold.

  Lefthand sighed happily. He pushed back his hood and looked around. He could see the others almost clearly. Their bustling shapes were obscured only by darkness which Snowbird was busily dispelling. She crouched at the extreme back of the shelter, building a tiny tent of twigs. Sorcerer thrust his torch under the twigs, then leaned over Snowbird, rubbing his hands and whistling softly. As a little flame licked up, it threw his shadow on the rock wall.

  “Oooo,” cried Jay, pointing, “look at the pony!”

  The flame sank down again before Lefthand could see where Jay was pointing.

  “Aha!” tittered the old man. “Aha, yes, there are ponies here!”

  Again the fragile light rose and wavered over the twig tent. A faint glow warmed the wall and a pony stood proudly behind Sorcerer’s head.

  By its stillness Lefthand saw immediately that it was magic. It stood as high as a real pony. Its head was up, mane bristled, tail streaming out in silent wind.

  Without hesitation Lefthand walked over to it. He was drawn by it as though to the presence of something well known, cherished, and a little feared. The pony’s long, hopefully fat body was made of red ocher rubbed on the rock. Its little black hoofs, lifting from the earth, were soot. Lefthand thought of all the magic animals he himself had made. He had drawn them in mud, in sand, in snow, where the first rain had wiped them away as though they had never been. Why had he never thought to use paint? And on hard rock?

  He examined the pony carefully, awed and excited. And the sorcerer watched him.

  “That magic is dead,” the old man said finally. “It was good once, but that was long ago. No pony has been seen in this valley since I was little, like Jay.”

  Jay uttered a croak of disbelief. His thoughts were plain in the wide eyes that stared at Sorcerer. Surely this withered being, with his thin white hair and his wide-spaced teeth, could never have been little like Jay!

  “Oh yes,” Sorcerer insisted, smiling at Jay. “We are all little at first. We do not all reach my age.” And he glanced down at his body with profound satisfaction. “Not many of us reach my age, but we all start out little.” The sharp old eyes strayed from Jay’s face to Lefthand, who was still inspecting the painting, then to Snowbird, bent over encouraging her fire. “When I was little I slept many nights in this place. My mother had her fire where ours is tonight.”

  “Was this pony here then?” Lefthan
d wondered. He dared to touch the haunch, which was painted on a bunching mass of rock. It threw just the right shadow on the belly.

  “The red pony, yes, he was here when we came. My father made the other one.”

  Sorcerer waved a hand to the left. Lefthand started, looking into the darkness. Just visible at the edge of the firelight were the eyes, nose, and ears of a black pony, facing the red one.

  “You saw him do it?” Lefthand tore his eyes from the paintings and looked at Sorcerer with sudden hope. If Sorcerer knew how …

  “Yes, I watched. He did not let the women or the children watch, only the hunters. I was so small I didn’t matter or he didn’t see me. Or maybe that’s why the magic failed.”

  “The magic failed?”

  “The ponies never came.”

  Lefthand could hardly believe it. The ponies were wonderfully real.

  “Why?”

  “Well,” he grunted slowly, “maybe it was because I watched. Maybe it was because of this place. You see,” Sorcerer gestured out toward the valley, “this is an open place. Anyone can see it. Too many eyes weaken a magic. And then, there’s the wind. Snow never falls here, rain never falls here, but the wind blows by. Maybe the wind blew the magic away in the air.” They looked, following his gesture, and saw the cold emptiness a step away, the snowflakes gleaming harshly as they drifted past the firelight. Sitting down, they drew as close as possible to the little fire that now murmured and crackled to itself under the hoofs of the red pony.

  “The magic blew away,” Lefthand prompted, “and what did you do?”

  Sorcerer shivered. He trembled as though the cold outside had reached through his deerskin clothes and gripped his body. But Lefthand knew the coldness came from within.

  “Then we were hungry. My mother knew how to trap hares, but there were none. Every day we went out together, she and I, to set the traps. And we could not see where to set them, because there were no tracks.”