The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [61]
He looked back again and she was gone.
He stopped and turned, and then felt a tap on his shoulder. He spun around, half expecting to see someone holding her, a shiny blade to her throat, or a pistol to her head.
“Why are you stopping again?” she asked.
He swallowed and licked at his cracked lips. “I wanted to make sure no one was following us,” he said. “Help me pull this. I’m tired of pulling.”
He helped her take hold of the rope and together they began towing the toboggan. The girl was strangely quiet for too long, and after a while he began to feel guilty. He was about to say he was sorry when she said, “My grandpa first told me about the Big Mouth Baby when I was just a little girl, and maybe tonight, if you’re not so crabby, I’ll tell you the story.”
22
On the first night of camping with the old woman, they all curled up beneath the blue tarp and stared up at the dark cloud-covered sky. The old woman slept holding her shotgun on her caribou skin, wrapped in her blanket, on the side closest to the crackling fire, and the girl in the middle with him beside her, braiding her grass with the old woman watching closely, giving instructions in Yup’ik every so often.
“Will you tell us a story, in kass’atun, so John can understand?” the girl asked.
“It’s fine. I don’t need a bedtime story,” he said.
For a long while the old woman said nothing. Then she clicked her tongue, sighed, and began a story. “Ak’a tamaani, a long time ago, there was a shaman called Big Belly.”
“Big Belly—Big Mouth Baby—I’m seeing a pattern here,” John joked.
“Shh,” the girl whispered. “We don’t interrupt stories, John.”
“Sorry.”
The old woman continued. “He wasn’t always called Big Belly. I forgot what they call him before his belly got so giant, but he was a good shaman. He would travel under the ice and bring good luck to the hunters. The hunters wanted luck, so they cut a hole in the ice, but the shaman used his magic and could tell there was already another evil shaman travelling under the water, so he said he would wait for that shaman to go back to his village. But the men didn’t listen and they forced him to go down under the ice. Just like he thought, he ran into the evil shaman flying beneath the ocean, and when one shaman met another they would use their magical powers and fight. When they encountered each other, they had a huge battle. The other shaman was evil and more powerful and he broke the good shaman’s back. When the fight was over the good shaman went home, but he was swollen from the seawater and his back was broken with a giant hump like a brown bear. Using his arms, he pulled himself into the village. He asked one of the strong young men to hit him in the back with a club. The young man clubbed him four times until his back was straightened. His back was fixed but he started to miryaq, throw up, salt water all over the man’s house. Everything smelled like the ocean. Even though he was real sick, and vomited all that water, his belly stayed big and bloated like a frog stomach until he died. He never went under the ice again, and from then on they called him Big Belly.”
“Cool. I’ve only ever heard scary stories about shaman,” the girl said.
“Shamans were important back then. We had good shamans and bad shamans. The shamans were our priests, our doctors, our counsellors. The people would go to them when they were sick, if they wanted a baby, or if they needed luck hunting. This was before we knew about hospitals and Jesus and heaven. Back then those shamans could travel to places and talk to animals, giants, and even the little people. Bad shamans would put spells on enemy villages and make people sick or crazy, but good shamans could heal the sick and change the weather and bring animals during times of starvation. Back in those days of the shaman, Yup’iks could become animals and animals could become Yup’iks. There was just a thin skin, like the surface of the water or young river ice, that separated the worlds.”
“Maybe the hunter is a bad shaman,” the girl said.
The old woman sighed.