Soul Catcher (8 page)

“Are you hungry?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then I will teach you how to live in my
land. Many things are provided here to sustain us—roots, sweet
ants, fat grubs, flowers, bulbs, leaves. You will learn these
things and become a man of the woods.”

“A w-woodsman?”

Katsuk shook his head from side to side. “A
man of the woods. That is much different. You are sly and have a
devil in you. These make the man of the woods.”

The words made no sense to David, but he
nodded.

Katsuk said: “Raven said to me we can travel
by daylight. We will go now because the hoquat will be sending men
on foot. They will come to this place because of your sly
handkerchief.”

David ran his tongue over his lips. “Where
are we going?”

“Far into the mountains. We will find the
valley of peace, perhaps, where my ancestors put all the fresh
water once.”

David thought:
He’s crazy, pure
crazy.
And he said: “I’m thirsty.”

“You can drink from the spring. Stand up
now.”

David obeyed, wondered if the thongs would
be tied on his wrists. His side hurt where he had slept on the rock
floor of the cave. He looked at the light flaring outside.
Travel by daylight ... with a helicopter out there
somewhere?

Was pursuit close on their heels? Was crazy
Katsuk running in daylight because searchers were near?

Katsuk said: “You think your friends will
fly to us in their devil machine and rescue you.” David stared at
the cave floor. Katsuk chuckled. “What is your name?”

“Hoquat.” Without looking up.

“Very good. But your friends will not see
us, Hoquat.”

David looked up into staring dark eyes. “Why
not?”

Katsuk nodded at the cave mouth. “Raven
spoke to me out there. He told me he will conceal us from all
searchers in the sky. I will not even bind you. Raven will keep you
from running away. If you try to escape, Raven will show me how to
kill you. Do you understand me, Hoquat?”

“Y-yes. I won’t try to escape.”

Katsuk smiled pleasantly. “That is what
Raven told me.”

***

Genesis according to Charles Hobuhet, from a
paper for Anthropology 300:

And therefore a man shall leave his father
and shall leave his mother and he shall cling to the spirit which
binds him to his flesh, being naked before this flesh as he can be
naked before no other. And were he not ashamed before this
nakedness, aware of this bone from his bones, then shall his flesh
be closed and made whole. Then the heavy sleep shall fall upon this
man, though he built a god. And finding no other helper, all the
names of man shall be his. And his god shall cause the heavens to
fall that every beast of the field might call the man, seeking a
soul. A living soul is its name. All the cattle, all the fowl,
every creature shall be brought unto the man to see what was formed
from the primal substance into a living soul. And man, to his
separation from that which formed him, will say only its name,
thinking this his helper of helpers. But Alkuntam has said: “Not
being good, thou shall die. And all things that live shall become
flesh of your flesh, and a separation from the heavens—and
therefore a man.”

***

The noise of a helicopter had awakened
Katsuk shortly after noon. He lay motionless in the shadow of the
spruce, locating the sound before he lifted his head. Even then, he
moved slowly, as an alerted animal, aware that the low limbs
concealed him, but avoiding any disturbance to attract a searcher’s
attention.

The helicopter came in over the trees below
the rock slope, climbed to circle above his hiding place, went out
and around once more. The
thwock-thwock
of its rotors
dominated all other sounds around Katsuk as the machine circled
over the cliff above him and back over the open ground of the
slope.

Katsuk peered upward through the concealing
limbs. Sunlight flashed from the helicopter’s bubble canopy. The
machine was green and silver with Park Service markings on its
side. Under the sound of its rotors it made a greedy hissing noise
which set perspiration flowing in Katsuk’s palms.

Why did they keep circling? What attracted
them?

He knew the spruce hid him, but the abrasive
presence of the searchers sank into his nerves, sent his mind
leaping to escape.

Around and around the helicopter went,
circling the open slope with its boundaries of cliff and trees.

Katsuk thought of the boy in the cave. The
men in the helicopter would have to land and shut down their
machine before they could hear a shout. They could not land atop
the cliff, though: Stunted trees grew from the rocks up there. And
the slope below the slide was too steep.

What were they doing here?

Katsuk tore his attention from the circling
machine, scanned the slope. Presently, his gaze focused on
something out of place. Far down the slope below the slide, in the
narrow strip of grass and bracken before the trees, something
unnaturally white glistened.

Where all else should be gray and green an
odd whiteness lay draped in the bracken. A sharp woodsman’s eye in
that helicopter had seen it.

Katsuk studied the white thing as the
helicopter made another pass. What was it? The wind of the rotors
disturbed the thing, set it fluttering.

Awareness exploded in him:
Handkerchief!

Hoquat had slipped a handkerchief out of his
pocket and let it fall there. Again, the wind from the helicopter
stirred the square of cloth, betrayed its alien nature.

The thing shouted to an observer that
something man-made lay there in the wilderness, far off the usual
trails. Such a thing here would arouse a searcher’s curiosity.

Once more, the helicopter came in over the
trees below the rock slope. It flew dangerously low, tipped to give
the man beside the pilot an opportunity to study the white object
through binoculars. Katsuk saw sunlight flash from the lenses.

If the searcher aimed his binoculars into
the shadows beneath the spruce, he might even detect a human shape
there. But experience worked against the men in the aircraft. They
had recognized the nature of the rockslide. They could see wind
from their craft raising dust in the shale. They would see the
slide as a barrier to a man on foot, especially to a man encumbered
by an inexperienced boy. They would know a man could not climb that
slope.

The pilot tried to hover his craft over the
slope, giving his observer a steady platform, but a strong wind
beat across the cliff in turbulent eddies. The helicopter bounced,
slipped, drifted close to the treetops. The engine roared as the
machine climbed out over the rocks. It skidded in a gust of wind,
went around for another circuit.

Katsuk crept farther back into the
trees.

The pilot obviously was daring, but he would
know the perils of attempting a landing near the white object which
had attracted him. He must have radio, though. He would have
reported the strange thing he had seen. Searchers on foot would be
coming.

Again, the helicopter skimmed in low over
the trees, dipped across the slope. Engine sound filled the
air.

A slow, grinding rumble came from the rocks
below Katsuk. The slide began to move as the helicopter’s
thunderous vibration loosed a key rock in that delicate balance on
the slope. The movement of the slide built momentum with ponderous
inevitability. Tufts of dust puffed in the tumbling gray. The rocks
gathered speed, raised a storm noise that drowned out the
mechanical intruder. The machine climbed out of the clearing just
above a rising cloud of dust that lifted into the wind. The odor of
burnt flint drifted into the notch past Katsuk.

Abruptly, a flock of ravens that had perched
silently in the grove behind Katsuk through all the disturbance
took flight. Their wings beat the air. Their beaks opened. But no
sound of them could be heard above the avalanche.

The entire slope was in motion now. A great
tumbling maelstrom of rock roared downward into the trees, buried
the bracken, hurled bark ships from the trunks. Smaller trees and
brush snapped and were smothered beneath the onslaught.

As slowly as it began, the slide ended. A
few last rocks bounded down the slope, leaped through drifting
dust, crashed into the trees. The ravens could be heard now. They
circled and clamored against this outrage in their domain.

From a circling path high over the clearing,
the helicopter played background to the ravens.

Katsuk peered up through the limbs at all
the motion.

The helicopter drifted out to the right,
came in for another pass over the subsiding dust of the rockslide.
The handkerchief was gone, buried beneath tons of rocks. Katsuk
distinctly saw one of the men in the bubble canopy gesture toward
the ravens.

The flock had opened its ranks, whirled, and
called raucously around the intruder.

The machine slid across Katsuk’s field of
vision. It climbed out over the tree and its downdraft sent the
birds skidding.

Some of the ravens settled into the trees
above Katsuk while their mates continued dipping and feinting
around the helicopter.

The machine climbed out westward, set a
course toward the ocean. The sound of its engines faded.

Katsuk wiped wet palms on his loincloth. His
arm brushed the knife at his waist, made him think of the boy in
the cave.

A handkerchief!

The ravens had protected him—and the
rockslide. The spirits might even have started the slide.

As certainly as if he had heard the man’s
voice, Katsuk knew the searcher who had gestured at the ravens had
explained that the birds were a sure sign no human was around. The
aircraft had gone elsewhere to search. Its occupants were secure in
the message of the ravens.

Head bowed, Katsuk silently thanked
Raven.

This is Katsuk who sends gratitude to Thee,
Raven Spirit. I speak Thy praise in a place where Thy presence was
made known ...

As he prayed, Katsuk savored appreciation of
the ignorant hoquat beliefs. Whites did not know
The People
had sprung from Raven. Raven always guarded his children.

He thought about the handkerchief. There had
been one in Hoquat’s pocket. Surely, that was the one on the
slope.

Instead of angering him, the defiant gesture
ignited a sense of admiration.
Darling ... clever ... little
Hoquat devil!
Even the most innocent remained sly and
resourceful. Hands tied behind him, terror in his heart, he still
had thought to leave a sign of his passage.

Awareness growing within him, Katsuk studied
the small seed of admiration he now held for Hoquat. Where could
such a feeling lead? Was there a point of admiration that might
prevent Hoquat’s death? How much were the spirits willing to test
Katsuk?

The boy had almost succeeded with that
handkerchief.

Almost.

This then was not the real test. This was a
preliminary skirmish, preparation for something greater to
come.

Katsuk felt wild awareness telling him why
the boy had failed. Something was tempering them here—both of them.
Katsuk sensed that his own thinking had changed once more, that
these events had been anticipated. The blur of black wings, that
waterfall of ravens, had seized upon his awareness. He was being
watched and guarded.

Fear had searched all through him and left
him clean.

What had it done to the boy?

The blue-gray panting of the rockslide, the
dust cloud rising like steam, had set the wilderness in motion, had
given it a new voice which Katsuk could understand.

Tamanawis
, the being of his spirit
power, had been reborn.

Katsuk rubbed the place on his hand where
Bee had marked him. His flesh had absorbed that message and much
more: a power that would not be stopped. Let the searchers send
their most sophisticated machines against him. He was the Bee of
his people, driven by forces no hoquat machine could conquer. All
that lived wild around him helped and guarded him. The new voice of
the wilderness spoke to him through every creature, every leaf and
rock.

Now, he could remember Janiktaht with
clarity.

Until this moment, Janiktaht had been a
dream-sister: disheveled, drowned, eyes like torches among
treacherous images. She had been a tear-clouded mystery, her
perfume the rotting sea strand, her soul walled in by loneliness, a
graceless memory, accusing, united with every witch enchantment of
the night.

Now his fears lay buried in the rockslide.
He knew the eyes of Charles Hobuhet had sent reality: Janiktaht
dead, sodden and bloated on a beach, her hair tangled with seaweed,
one with a welter of lost flotsam.

As though to put the seal on his revelation,
the last of the raven flock returned from pursuit of the
helicopter. They settled into the trees above Katsuk. Even when he
emerged boldly from the spruce shadows and climbed to the cave
where Hoquat lay captive, the ravens remained, talking back and
forth.

***

Fragment of a note left at the Sam’s River
shelter:

Your words perpetuate illusion. You clot my
mind with foreign beliefs. My people taught that Man is dependent
upon the goodwill of all other animals. You forbade the ritual
which taught this. You said we would be punished for such thoughts.
I ask you who is being punished now?

***

As they picked their way down the remnants
of the rockslide and walked openly into the forest, David told
himself the helicopter was sure to return. The men in it had seen
his handkerchief. Katsuk as much as admitted that. What did all his
insane talk about ravens have to do with anything real? The men had
seen the handkerchief; they would return.

David looked over his shoulder at the cliff,
saw a thin cloud above it clinging like a piece of lint to the
clear-blown sky.