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 walclass="underline" 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.