Soul Catcher (21 page)

David thought:
That’s a very strange
thing. How do you get a nonthought into your head?

Katsuk had started this queer train of
thinking. He had accused the boy of thinking too much in words and
had said this was a failing of all hoquat.

David glanced at Katsuk. The man obviously
was thinking right now—squatting there, thinking. Did Katsuk use
words?

They had spent most of a day coming down
into the lowlands after crossing the high ridge and the river.
There were seven pebbles in David’s pocket—seven days, a week. They
had spent the night in an abandoned park shelter. Katsuk had dug up
a poacher’s cache of blankets and tallow-dipped cans of food. He
had built a small fire in the shelter and they had eaten beans and
slept on spruce boughs over the ashes.

It had been a long hike from the shelter.
David glanced up at the sun: early afternoon. Not too long, then.
He hadn’t really thought about the time.

The trail into the lowlands had followed a
watercourse. It had plunged through salal thickets, forded the
river, followed dry sloughs. Once, they had surprised a cow elk
poking her nose from an alder copse. Her fur had glistened.

David gave up attempting to not-think. He
began mouthing “David” silently to himself. He wanted to say his
name aloud but knew this would only excite the craziness in
Katsuk.

He thought:
I’m David, not Hoquat. I’m a
hoquat, but my name is David, not Hoquat.

The thought rolled through his mind:
David-not-Hoquat, David-not-Hoquat ...

The trail from the high ridge had crossed
well-traveled park trails twice. One of the trails carried a
pattern of recent boot tracks in mud. Katsuk had avoided the mud,
had taken them up a game trail that angled across an old burn. They
had crossed another river beyond the burn and Katsuk had said there
would be no more man trails now.

Katsuk seemed to go on and on without
tiring. There was a nervous, sweaty energy in him even now as he
squatted beside the river. He had brought the blankets from the
poacher’s cache, one of them rolled and tied at his waist, the
other carried loose over his shoulders. He had discarded the
blankets when he had squatted beside the river. His dark,
flat-cheeked face remained immobile in thought. His eyes
glistened.

David thought:
I am
David-not-Hoquat.

Was that another name? he wondered. Was it a
halfway identity, David-not-quite-Hoquat? He recalled that his
mother had called him Davey. His father had occasionally called him
Son. Grandmother Morgenstern had called him David, though. Names
were odd. How could he be Hoquat in his own mind?

He thought:
What’s Katsuk
thinking?

Was it possible Katsuk knew how to
not-think?

David raised himself on his elbows, pushed
the chewed blade of grass from his mouth with his tongue, said:
“Katsuk, what’re you thinking?”

Without looking up from the river, Katsuk
said: “I am thinking how to make a bow and arrow in the old way. Do
not disturb my thinking.”

The old way? What’s that?”

“Be still.” David heard the edge of insanity
in Katsuk’s voice, lapsed into sullen silence. Katsuk studied the
river, a milky-green. He noted the shadows on a tumbling twig.

An uprooted stump came twisting through the
current which boiled under the vine maple shadow. The stump was an
old one with dark-red-brown punk wood in the root end. It turned
slowly, end over end, roots up like clutching hands, then falling
over, sinking beneath the slick water, the cut end rising into the
afternoon sunlight. Water drained from it and the whole cycle
started once more as it passed.

The stump made a sound in its
turning—
klug-slumk-hub-lub.

Katsuk listened, wondering at the language
of the stump. He felt the stump was talking to him, but it was no
language he understood. What could it be saying? The cut end was
gray with age. It was a hoquat scar. The stump did not seem to be
talking about its own travail. It went down-stream, turning and
talking.

He felt the presence of the boy with
disturbing intensity. That was flesh back there with all of its
potential for good or evil ... for both at once. Goodevil. Was
there such a word?

Katsuk felt that he and the boy had fallen
into a new relationship. Almost friendly. Was that Tskanay’s doing?
He felt no jealousy. Charles Hobuhet might have been jealous, but
not Katsuk. Tskanay had given the boy a moment of life. He had
lived; now he must die.

It was correct to feel friendship toward a
victim. That subdued the enemy soul. But this new association went
beyond such friendship.

How did we get into this new
relationship?

It could change nothing, of course. The
Innocent must ask for death and be killed.

Katsuk felt sadness twist in his breast.
There could be no stopping this thing. There had been no stopping
it from the beginning. It had come out of the ice. Bee’s message
had been cold. And Raven’s. It must end with the Innocent
slain.

The boy stood up, walked upstream off the
grass, sat down with his back against the cathedral pillar of a
rotten stump. He began searching for grubs in the rotten wood.

Katsuk refused to look at him.

Let Hoquat escape ... if Raven would permit
it.

The vine maple shadow lay black on the
river. The water appeared calm on its surface, but Katsuk felt the
wild power underneath. He felt himself being driven by such a
power—Soul Catcher within. Soul Catcher moved like the water, deep
and strong underneath.

Katsuk found one of the blankets beside him,
wiped his eyes.

David cast an occasional sidelong glance at
his captor. Why was Katsuk so changeable? The man hovered between
friendliness and violence. One minute, he would explain a legend of
his people. The next second, he could scream for silence. Katsuk
had been very different since he had played the flute in the old
mine shaft.

For the moment, the boy felt a strange
happiness. He watched the river, the waning sun. He was aware of
movements and patterns. For a time, he dozed. Katsuk would catch a
fish soon and they would eat. Or Katsuk would find another
poacher’s cache, or make a bow and arrow and kill game. Katsuk had
said he was thinking how to make a bow and arrow.

David’s eyes snapped open. He felt no
passage of time but knew he had slept. The sun had moved toward the
horizon.

A long sandbar protruded into the current
downstream. The river turned there in a wide arc against a thick
stand of hemlocks. A matchstick pile of silver and gray logs lay
stranded on the sand. The sun, about two log-widths above the
hemlocks, colored the tops of the stranded logs yellow-orange.

The light and color reminded David of Carmel
Valley and his home. He wondered what had brought that memory. He
decided it was the heat waves dancing over the logs. This day had
been so bone-cold when they had walked through the forest shadows,
but the sun-warmed ground beneath him induced a comfortable
drowsiness.

As they had come down from the high country,
the land had grown increasingly wild and rugged. The steeper
mountainsides and narrower canyons had given way to a broad valley
thick with trees. Just before coming to this place, they had
crossed a long, narrow ledge covered with stunted fir, pine, and
spruce. An ancient storm had twisted the trees together, some
fallen and dead, some leaning and still alive.

Katsuk continued to stare at the river.

David sighed, feeling hunger pangs. He
searched for more grubs in the stump. They were juicy and
sweet.

As he ate the grubs, he had a sudden vision
of his mother delicately plucking hors d’oeuvres from a tray held
by a maid. He imagined what his mother would say if she could see
him now. She would be frantic and hysterical even when he told her
about this. Her eyes would go wide. Gasps of shock would escape
her. She would cry. David had no doubt these events would occur.
Katsuk had promised: There would be no killing unless the victim
asked for it.

David felt no special worry. It was a time
for storing up memories. A wonderful curiosity drove him. This
would end in time and he would have a glorious adventure to tell.
He would be a hero to his friends—kidnapped by a wild Indian!
Katsuk was wild, of course ... and insane. But there were limits to
his insanity.

The light on the stranded logs had become
like sunshine on autumn grass. David watched Katsuk and the
hypnotic flow of the river. He came to the decision this might be
one of the happiest days of his life: Nothing was demanded of him;
he had been cold, now he was warm; he had been hungry and had eaten
... Soon, they would eat again.

A long orange-brown deerfly landed on his
left wrist. He slapped it reflexively, wiped the dead insect from
his hand on a clump of grass.

Katsuk began singing: low-voiced. It was a
chant oddly in tune with the river and the golden sunlight. His
voice rose and fell, full of clicks and coughing sounds.

The thought in Katsuk’s mind was that he
desperately needed a sign. He needed an omen to guide him from this
place. Swaying, he chanted his prayer song, appealing to Bee and
Raven, to Kwahoutze and Alkuntam. Soul Catcher stirred within him.
Gusts of wind began to blow along the river—the wind that came
before dark. Katsuk sensed a barrier, an obstruction to his prayer.
Perhaps it was Hoquat blocking the way. Katsuk recalled Hoquat’s
dream. That was a powerful dream. The boy could have a wish—any
wish. When he was ready. There was a powerful spirit waiting in
that boy.

The wind chilled Katsuk’s cheek. A glacier
filled the river source up there and the wind of evening blew down
the valley toward the sea.

Katsuk sensed that he had left pursuit far
behind in the upper reaches of the Wilderness Area. Not even a
helicopter crossed the sky here, although earlier there had been a
jet soundlessly drawing its white plume high over the peak that
dominated the eastern skyline.

As he thought these things, Katsuk continued
chanting. The memory of Hoquat’s dream troubled him. It lay
festering in his awareness. It was a thing which might defy Soul
Catcher. How could the boy have dreamed a powerful spirit? He was a
hoquat! But that was a warning dream, a thing to spread disquiet
around. And Hoquat appeared content. Had he wished the thing which
would not be denied him?

Movement on the river stirred Katsuk from
his reverie. A long, smooth limb, pearl gray, and glistening,
drifted on the current. Katsuk’s gaze followed the limb. It
appeared to glide downstream independent of the current. It was
headed with a sure inward direction toward the figure squatting
beneath the vine maple. The limb pierced the vine maple’s shadow
like an arrow penetrating its target. The shadow moved along the
length of the limb. Katsuk felt shadow darkness penetrating the
wood.

He broke off his chant, breathed a long
“Ahhhhhh.”

The limb surged across a dark upswelling of
current. It came directly at him. One end drove into the muddy
embankment at Katsuk’s feet. He knelt, lifted the limb from the
water with a feeling of reverence. He sensed something powerful
struggling in the wood.

Gently, he examined what the river had sent
him. The wood felt smooth and vibrant beneath his fingers. Alive!
Water dripped from it. One end had been burned, the other broken.
The wood had not been long in the water. It was not soaked. Not a
deformity or twisting of grain marked its smooth length—almost as
long as he was tall. At its thickest end, it was larger than his
clenched fist. The tapering was almost indiscernible, less than a
finger’s width.

How supple and alive it felt!

Katsuk stood up, put one end on the ground,
his hand in the center, and tried to flex it. He felt the wood
fighting him. It quivered with hidden power. It was the wood of a
god-bow!

The feeling of reverence strong in him,
Katsuk lifted Hoquat’s knife from its sheath to test the hardness
of this wood. A large black bee darted across his line of
vision—another, another.

He hesitated, the knife griped tightly in
his hand. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

Ahhhhh, that had been close!

One touch of hoquat steel on this wood! Just
one and the spirit power would leave it. His prayer had brought the
wood of a god-bow and he had almost defiled it.

Katsuk’s throat was dry from the nearness of
that defilement. He returned the knife to its sheath, slipped the
sheath from his waist, hurled the hated instrument into the river.
Only when the blade had sunk beneath the current did he feel free
from deadly peril.

How close that had been!

He glanced to where the boy sat, eyes
closed, drowsing. The spirit had been strong in Hoquat, but not
strong enough. That evil spirit with its subtle persuasions had
almost tempted Katsuk into an act of defilement. Who knew where
such an act could have led? It might even have given Hoquat the
upper hand here. When two beings were bound together this way,
captor and captive, the tie that bound them could be pulled in
either direction.

Katsuk grasped the limb in both hands, held
it high over his head. How beautiful it was!

He sang the song of dedication. He dedicated
it to Bee. Bee had sent this omen wood.

The whole course of what he must do came
into his mind as he prayed. He must find obsidian and fashion a
knife from it to work this omen wood into a bow. That was how it
must be done: a bow fashioned in the ancient way, then an arrow
tipped with the stone point from the ocean beach of his ancestors
at Ozette. From ancient times to this time, it would all be
connected.

Katsuk lowered the limb, relaxed. He sensed
his ancestors singing within him. This is how the Innocent must
die!