Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert
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. I
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.
The dream singing persisted.
David heard it and tasted bitter acid in his throat. The dream terror washed around him in that faint tide of sound.
He shuddered, wondering if he still dreamed, if the sensation of awakening was illusion.
A spark of orange light formed in the darkness. He heard movement near the light. Cautiously, he reached up with his left hand. His fingers encountered a rough wood surface.
Memory filled him—a dungeon cave with moldering plank walls. Katsuk had brought them here at dusk, searching out the way, exploring ahead while the boy crouched in shadows. This was a secret place used by his people when they broke the hoquat law and hunted game in these mountains.
The orange light was a remnant of the tiny fire Katsuk had built in the cave mouth. Movement of shadowy arms flickered across the light—Katsuk!
But the singing continued. Was it Katsuk? No ... it seemed far away and full of words he could not understand—a whistling flute and a slow, walking rhythm on a drum. Katsuk had played his flute one night and this sounded like a distant parody of that playing.
David’s fear ebbed. That was real singing, a real drum, and a flute like Katsuk’s. There were several voices.
The poachers!
Katsuk had crept away in the first dark, returning much later to say he recognized the people camped in the trees at the edge of the meadow.
A groan came from near the fire. Was that Katsuk? David strained to hear what Katsuk was doing. He wondered: Should I let him know I’m awake? Why did he groan?
Again, the groan sounded.
David cleared his throat.
“You are awake!” Katsuk hurled the words at him from the cave’s mouth.
David recoiled at the madness in Katsuk’s voice, was unable to answer.
“I know you are awake,” Katsuk said, calmer now and nearer. “It will be daylight soon. We go then.”
David sensed the presence over him, blackness in blackness. He tried to swallow in a dry throat, managed: “Where will we go?”
“To my people.”
“Is that them ... singing?”
“There is no singing.”
David listened. The forest outside the cave gave off only the soughing of wind in trees, faint drippings, stirrings, and rustlings. Katsuk pressed something hot beneath the boughs beside David: another heated rock.
“I heard singing,” David said.
“You dreamed it.”
“I heard it!”
“It is gone now.”
“What was it?”
“Those of my people who have eaten spirits.”
“What?”
“Try to sleep a little longer.”
David remembered the dream. “No.” He pressed against the moldering boards beside him. “Where are your people?”
“Everywhere around us.”
“In the forest?”
“Everywhere! If you sleep, the spirit eaters may come to you and explain their song.”
With sudden realisation, David said: “You’re trying to tell me it was ghosts singing!”
“Spirits.”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“Have you prayed for your spirit?”
“No! What was that song?”
“It was a song asking for power over that which no human can defeat.”
David groped in the darkness for the sleeping bag, pulled it around him. He leaned over the place where Katsuk had placed the heated rock. Crazy Katsuk! He makes no sense.
“You will not sleep?” Katsuk asked.
“How soon will it be daylight?” David countered.
“Within the hour.”
Katsuk’s hand came out of the dark, pressed David toward the warm rock. In a soothing tone, Katsuk said:
“Go to sleep. You dreamed an important dream and ran from it.” David stiffened. “How do you know?”
“Sleep,” Katsuk said.
David stretched out over the rock. His body drank the warmth. The musky, falling, swimming attraction of sleep radiated from the warmth. He did not even feel it when Katsuk’s hand released him.
He lapsed into a state with no sharp edges. Magic and ghosts and dreams: They were gauze in an orange wind. Nothing completed a sensation of touch. Everything blended, one blur into another: warmth into the cedar boughs beneath him, Katsuk returning to the cave’s mouth, the dream into the chill where the rock’s warmth failed to reach him. Vagueness everywhere.
All blurred and faded.
He felt his childhood fading, thought: I am becoming a man. Memory treasures stored up against just such an awakening, receded into gray impressions—pictures he recalled pasting in a book, the rungs of a staircase where he had peered through to watch guests arriving, being tucked into bed by a benign figure whose face was lost in a halo of silver hair.
David sensed warm orange firelight. Katsuk had built up the fire at the cave’s mouth. He felt damp cold under
The groan sent a shock all through David.
Vagueness vanished, taking sleep and the dreams of his childhood. He thought: Katsuk is sick. It’s a sickness no one can heal. Katsuk has caught a spirit and eaten it. He has the power no human can defeat. That’s what he meant about the song! The birds obey him. They hide us. He has gone into some place where humans can’t follow. He has gone where the song is ... where I’m afraid to go.
David sat up, wondered at such thoughts coming all unbidden into his mind. Those were not the thoughts of childhood. He had thought real things, penetrating things. They were thoughts from immediate pressures of life and death.
As though his thoughts had called it into being, the song started up once more. It began out of nothing, the words still unintelligible, even its direction undefined ... somewhere outside.
“Katsuk?” David said.
“You hear the singing?” He spoke from near the fire.
“What is it?”
“Some of my people. They hold a sing.”
“Why?”
“They try to call me out of the mountains.”
“Do they want you to turn me loose?”
“They have eaten a small spirit, Hoquat. It is not as powerful as my spirit.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“When it is daylight, we will go to them. I will take you to them and show them the power of my spirit.”
***
From Katsuk’s speech to his people, as reported by his Aunt Cally:
This is the way it is with me. My mind was sick. My mind suffered the sickness of the hoquat. I lost my way without a spirit to guide me. Therefore, I had to beg medicine from anyone who would give it to me. I begged it from you, my people. I begged it from my grandfathers, my father’s brothers, all the people we came from, all our ancestors, my mother’s grandmothers and grandfathers, all the people. Their medicine words poured down upon me. I felt them within me. I feel them now. They are a fire in my breast. Raven leads me. Soul Catcher has found me.