Soul Catcher (13 page)

David listened to the low music, lulled by
it. Presently, Katsuk stopped, restored the flute to its pouch.
Hoquat breathed with the even rhythm of sleep. As though it were a
thing of reality which could be seen and touched, Katsuk felt a
bond being created between himself and this boy. Was it possible
they were really brothers in that other world which moved invisibly
and soundlessly beside the world of the senses?

My brother, Hoquat,
Katsuk
thought.

***

From a paper by Charles Hobuhet for
Philosophy 200:

Your language is filled with a rigid time
sense which denies the plastic fluidity of the universe. The whole
universe represents a single organism to my people. It is the raw
material of our creation. Your language denies this with every word
you utter. You break the universe into lonely pieces. My people
recognise immediately that White-head’s “bifurcation of nature” is
illusion. It is a product of your language. The people who program
your computers know this. They say: “Garbage In—Garbage Out.” When
they get garbage out, they look to the program, to the
language
. My language requires that I participate with my
surroundings in everything I do. Your language isolates you from
the universe. You have forgotten the origin of the letters in which
your language is written. Those letters evolved from ideographs
which stood for movements in the surrounding universe.

***

In the low light of morning, David stood
beneath a tall cedar, fingered the five pebbles in his pocket.
There was dew on the grass outside the cedar’s spread, as though
each star from the night had left its mark upon the earth. Katsuk
stood in the grass adjusting the straps of the pack. Morning’s red
glow remained on the peaks beyond him.

David asked: “Where are we going today?”

“You talk too much, Hoquat.”

“You’re always telling me to shut up.”

“Because you talk too much.”

“How ‘m I going to learn if I don’t
talk?”

“By opening your senses and by understanding
what your senses tell you.”

Katsuk pulled a fern frond from the ground,
set off through the trees. He swung the fern against his thigh as
he walked, listened to the world around him—the sounds of the boy
following, the animals ... Quail ran through an opening off to his
left. He saw the yellow-brown patch of an elk’s rump far off
through the moss-green light of the morning.

They were climbing steadily now, their
breath puffing out in white clouds. Presently, they came to a
saddleback filled with old-growth hemlock and went down into a
gloomy valley where lichen grew like scabs on the trees.

Water ran down their trail, filling the deep
elk tracks, exposing small rocks, splashing off the downhill side
wherever a channel formed. The dominant sound around them was the
fall of their own footsteps.

Once, they passed a squirrel’s head left on
a log by a predator. The head was being picked at by birds with
black topknots and white breasts. The birds continued their feeding
even when the two humans walked within a pace of them.

At the foot of the valley, they came out of
the trees to the reed fringe of a small lake. There was a dun-blue
skyline full of haze beyond the lake; wax-green trees came down to
the far shore. A stretch of mud indicated shallows off to the
right. Bird tracks were written in the mud, crisscrossing from food
to food. Mergansers fed alertly along the far shore. As Katsuk and
the boy emerged from the screening trees, the ducks fled, beating
the water with a whistling in their wings, gaining flight at the
last moment and circling back above the intruders.

David said: “Gosh. Has anybody ever been
here before?”

“My people ... many times.” Katsuk studied
the lake. The ducks had been wary. That was not a good sign.

A windfall hemlock lay across the reeds into
the lake. Its back was scarred by the passage of many hooves.
Katsuk dropped the pack, stepped out onto the log. It trembled
beneath him. He wove his way between upthrusting limbs to a flat
space near the open water, hesitated. A black feather floated
beside the log. Katsuk knelt, plucked the feather from the water.
He shook away clinging moisture.

“Raven,” he whispered.

It was a sign! He thrust the feather into
his headband, steadied himself with one hand on a limb, immersed
his face to drink from the lake. The water was cold.

The log trembled under him and he felt the
boy approach.

Katsuk stood up and once more studied his
surroundings. The boy made noisy splashings drinking. There was a
marsh at the lake’s upper end and a meadow beyond the marsh with a
stream slashing through it. He felt the boy leave the log,
turned.

The pack was an alien green mound beyond the
reeds.

He thought of the food in it: a package of
peanuts, two chocolate bars, tea bags, a bit of bacon, some
cheese.

Katsuk considered these things, thought:
I am not yet hungry enough to eat hoquat food.

The boy stood waiting beside the pack,
staring at it.

He is hungry enough,
Katsuk
thought.

A grasshopper went “Chrrrk! Chrrrk!” in the
reeds.

Katsuk returned to the boy, picked up the
pack.

David said: “I thought you were going to
fish.”

“You would never survive alone in this
country,” Katsuk said.

“Why?”

There is something wrong about this place
and you do not even feel it. Come.”

Katsuk settled his shoulders into the pack
straps, went back into the trees to the game trail which ran
parallel to the shore.

David followed, thinking:
Something wrong
about this place?
He sensed only the biting cold, the way every
leaf he touched left its deposit of moisture on him.

Katsuk turned left on the game trail, fell
into a stalking pace—slow, alert, every motion fitted into the
natural tempo of his surroundings. He felt himself caught up in the
supernatural world of Soul Catcher, a movement of ecstasy within
him, an ancient religious ritual described by every step he
took.

The wilderness was too wakeful. Something
had slipped out of place here ... a broken pattern, a special
quality to the silences. It all focused on that meadow at the head
of the lake.

David tried to match his movements to
Katsuk’s, thinking:
What’s he seen?
The oppressive caution
of their movements filled the forest around him with danger.

They passed a salmonberry patch, the fruit
still hard and unripe. David watched Katsuk

pause, study the bushes, saw how the leaves
went swaying as though they were tongues telling him of this place:
voices from the bushes, from the trees, from the lake—conversation
all around but intelligible only to Katsuk.

Is it more hikers?

David stumbled on a root, finding himself
possessed by both hope and dread.

The trail slanted up the hill beyond the
salmonberry bushes. Katsuk heard the boy stumble, recover his
balance, heard the crouched silence of the forest, a creek running
in shallows down to the left. Trail dew had left streaks of
moisture along the sleeves of the dead hiker’s shirt he wore. He
felt the damp chill against his skin, thought how it would be to
have a sheepskin coat.

The thought shocked him to stillness, as
though the forest had sent him a warning.
A hoquat coat!
He
knew he never again would see a sheepskin coat or feel its warmth.
That was hoquat nonsense. And he realised the essence of the
warning: hoquat clothing weakened him. He would have to discard it
before long or be destroyed.

Slowly, he resumed the stalking climb, heard
the boy following. The trees were too thick below him for a view of
the meadow, but he knew the danger lay there. He slid under a low
branch, shifting the pack to prevent its rasping on wood.

The trail branched. One arm went down the
hill toward the meadow. The trees were thinner below him, but still
no vista of the meadow. Katsuk eased himself down the trail, around
a thick spruce, and there was the meadow. The bright light of it
was like a collision after the forest shadows. The creek sent a
straight black gash through tall grass and patches of blue camas
and bog laurel. Elk had beaten tracks across the lush pasture and
had carved out a muddy ford across the stream.

Katsuk felt the boy ease up behind him. He
studied the meadow. Abruptly, he clutched the boy’s arm to hold
them both frozen. A dead elk calf lay in the meadow, steam still
rising from it. The calf’s head was twisted under its body, the
neck broken. Great claw marks flowed along its flanks, red against
the brown.

Katsuk moved only his eyes, searching for
the big cat that had done this. It was not like a cat to leave such
a meal. What had frightened it? He stared across the meadow,
abruptly conscious of the discordant potential in the crouched boy
beside him. Hoquat was not trained in silence. He could attract
whatever had frightened away the cat. Katsuk felt his stomach as
tight as a drumhead with tension.

Softly, as though without beginning, a wave
motion traversed tall grass at the far side of the meadow. Katsuk
sensed the cat shape within the grass. He felt his heart rolling, a
stone beat in his breast. The wave of grass moved diagonally toward
the upper end of the meadow where the creek emerged from a wall of
trees.

What had frightened the beast?

Katsuk felt anger. Why was there no sign to
specify the danger? He gripped Hoquat’s arm tightly, began to drift
backward up the trail, pulling the boy with him, heedless of the
occasional snapped branch.

A grouse began to drum somewhere far up the
hill behind him. Katsuk fixed his hearing on that sound, moved
toward it. They were partly screened from the meadow by the trees
now. He no longer could see the wave of grass. Katsuk’s thoughts
were one long pang of uncertainty: something wrong in that meadow,
so wrong it shrieked at him. His lips felt cold to his tongue,
cracked and cold.

David, frightened by Katsuk’s silent probing
and the sudden retreat, moved as quietly as he could, allowing
himself to be hauled up the hill toward the drumming grouse. A
bramble scratched his arm. He hissed with pain. Katsuk only tugged
at him, urging more speed.

They glided around the uplifted root tangle
of a nurse log, a long hemlock studded with young trees feeding on
it.

Katsuk pulled the boy into a crouch behind
the log. They peered over the log.

“What is it?” David whispered.

Katsuk put a hand over the boy’s mouth to
demand silence.

David pushed the hand away, and as he moved,
the sharp crack of a rifle shot in the meadow sent echoes rolling
back and forth across the lake valley.

Katsuk pulled the boy flat behind the nurse
log, lay tense and listening, breathing in an even, shallow rhythm.
Poacher! It has to be a poacher. There is no hunting allowed in
here.

A hazelnut tree shaded the hiding place
behind the log. Its yellow-green leaves filtered the sunlight,
glistened on a spider casting its net between two ferns beside
Katsuk’s head. The nimble hunter with its silken web spoke to him
of this place.
Poacher
. In this valley, the poacher would be
one of his own people. Who else would dare use this place? Who else
would know of the supplies hidden in buried steel drums, of the
camouflaged huts, the cave that had been a mine?

Why were his people here? He had honored all
the principal spirits. His deed was ready to be sung. The design of
it lay in his mind where Soul Catcher had imprinted it. The thing
was a tattoo needle to impress its shape upon the entire world!

Would his people try to stop him?

There could be no stopping. The hiker had
been killed. His blood was a promise to this forest. The body might
never be found, but Hoquat had seen the blood flow, had seen the
young man die. Hoquat could not live now.

Katsuk shook his head, moving his eyes
through the dappled light, seeing-but-not-seeing the silver wheel
of the spiderweb.

No!

He could not think of the boy as a witness
to the killing. Witness? That was hoquat thinking. What was a
witness? Vince’s death had not been murder. He had died because he
was part of a larger design. His death was an imprint upon
the
Perfect Innocent
, to prepare the way for the sacrifice.

A deep sigh shook Katsuk. He sensed Hoquat
shivering beside him—a small forest creature caught in the web and
almost resigned to its fate.

***

Sheriff Mike Pallatt:

Look, this Indian lost his kid sister a
couple months ago. He adored that kid. He was her family,
understand? After their parents died he raised her almost by
himself. She was raped by a gang of drunken bastards and went out
and killed herself. She was a good kid. I’m not surprised Charlie
went off his nut. This is what comes of sending an Indian to
college. He studies how we’ve been giving his people the shitty end
of the stick. Something happens ... He reverts to savage.

***

David jerked upright into empty blackness.
He shivered with fear and cold. He hugged himself to still the
trembling, searched for something to place him in a world, any
abrasive edge to convey reality. Where was he?

He knew why he had awakened. A dream had
taken him, loping along the edge of awakening. It had confronted
him with a black stone, then green water and rippling glass. The
smell of rancid oil had tickled his awareness. Something had chased
him. Something still ran close behind him, singing softly of things
he knew but did not want to hear. Even the awareness that the song
contained a meaning terrified him.

David exhaled a sobbing breath. Fear
shimmered over him with a bass hum of sweat and running and the
remembered dream. He felt the white gold pulsebeat of gods and
firelight. The thing with meaning pressed close. It was right
behind him. He felt his muscles wanting to run. His mouth tasted of
rusty iron. He felt his throat jerking with sounds he could not
make. The thing behind him was going to catch him! The words of its
song draped over his mind, a white-gray whispering, smooth as
glass, promising happiness while it presented him with terror.