Soul Catcher Read Online Free PDF Page B

the shaman
spirit come to drive the sickness from this world!”
    David, hearing the strange words, lost his
footing, almost fell, and was once again afraid.
    ***
    From Katsuk’s announcement to his
people:
    I have done all the things correctly. I used
string, twigs, and bits of bone to cast the oracle. I tied the red
cedar band around my head. I prayed to Kwahoutze, the god in the
water, and to Alkuntam. I carried the consecrated down of a sea
duck to scatter upon the sacrificial victim. It was all done in the
proper way.
    ***
    The immensity of the wilderness universe
around David, the mystery of this midnight hike to some strange
ritual, began to tell on him. His body was wet with perspiration,
chilled in every breeze. His feet were sopping with trail dew. The
Chief, an awesome figure in this setting, had taken on a new
character. He walked with such steady confidence that David sensed
all the accumulated woods knowledge compressed into each movement.
The man was Deerstalker. He was Ultimate Woodsman. He was a person
who could survive in this wilderness.
    David began dropping farther and farther
behind. The Chief became a gray blur ahead. Without turning, Katsuk
called: “Keep up.” David quickened his steps.
    Something barked. “Yap-yap!” in the trees
off to his right. A sudden motion of smoky wings glided across him,
almost touched his head. David ducked, hurried to close the gap
between himself and that bobbing white loincloth.
    Abruptly, Katsuk stopped. David almost ran
into him.
    Katsuk looked at the moon. It moved over the
trees, illuminating crags and rock spurs on the far slope. His feet
had measured out the distance. This was the place.
    David asked: “Why’d we stop?”
    “This is the place.”
    “Here? What’s here?”
    Katsuk thought: How is it the hoquat all
do this? They always prefer mouth-talk to body-talk.
    He ignored the boy’s question. What answer
could there be? This ignorant Innocent had failed to read the
signs.
    Katsuk squatted, faced the trail’s downhill
side. This had been an elk trail for centuries, the route between
salt water and high meadows. The earth had been cut out deeply by
the hooves. Ferns and moss grew from the side of the trail. Katsuk
felt into the growth. His fingers went as surely as though guided
by sight. Gently, gently, he pulled the fronds aside. Yes! This was
the place he had marked out.
    He began chanting, low-voiced in the ancient
tongue:
    “ Hoquat, let your body accept the
consecrated arrow. Let pride fill your soul at the touch of my
sharp and biting point. Your soul will turn toward the sky
...”
    David listened to the unintelligible words.
He could not see the man’s hands in the fern shadows, but the
movements bothered him and he could not identify the reason. He
wanted to ask what was happening but felt an odd constraint. The
chanted words were full of clickings and gruntings.
    The man fell silent.
    Katsuk opened the pouch at his waist,
removed a pinch of the consecrated white duck down. His fingers
trembled. It must be done correctly. Any mistake would bring
disaster.
    David, his eyes adjusting to the gloom,
began to make out the shadowy movement of hands in the ferns.
Something white reflected moonlight there. He squatted beside the
man, cleared his throat.
    “What’re you doing?”
    “I am writing my name upon the earth. I must
do that before you can learn my name.”
    “Isn’t your name Charlie something?”
    “That is not my name.”
    “Oh?” David thought about this. Not his
name? Then: “Were you singing just now?”
    “Yes.”
    “What were you singing?”
    “A song for you—to give you a name.”
    “I already have a name.”
    “You do not have a secret name given between
us, the most powerful name a person can have.”
    Katsuk smoothed dirt over the pinch of down.
He sensed Kuschtaliute , the hidden tongue of the land otter,
working through his hand upon the dirt, guiding each movement. The
power grew in him.
    David shivered in