Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert
David saw the tension in Katsuk, listened for the sound of the hikers. The tracks appeared fresh. Water trickled down the trail but had not yet filled the tracks.
Katsuk turned, glanced at the boy, motioned flatly with one hand—back up the way they had come.
David shook his head. “What?”
Katsuk stared up the hill behind them, said: “That big log we came over. Go back there and hide behind it. If I hear or see any sign of your presence, I will kill you.”
David stepped backward, turned, and climbed back to the log. It was a cedar, its bark hidden beneath moss, but live limbs climbed skyward along its length. Katsuk had pointed out another such fallen tree, calling it a nurse log.
The limbs would be trees some day. David climbed back over the nurse log.
He sank to his heels there, stared through the shadows. His eyes looked for color, for movement. In his own silence, he grew aware of the constant sound of water dripping all around. He felt the dampness of this place. His feet were sopping and his trousers were dark with water almost to the waist. It was cold.
Katsuk stepped down to the trail, turned left in the direction of the hikers’ tracks. He glided down the trail, moving with a wraith quality—brown skin, the white loincloth tugging at David’s gaze.
The trail switched back to the right. Katsuk turned with it. Only his head and shoulders remained visible to the watching boy.
Abruptly, far down the hillside David saw color and movement—a group of hikers. As though vision opened the air to sound, he heard their voices then: no distinguishable words, but sudden laughter and a shout.
David sank farther down behind the log, peered out between a tangle of dead limbs. As he did it, he wondered: Why am I hiding? Why don’t I sneak around Katsuk and get to those hikers? They’d protect me from him.
But he sensed his own destruction in any movement. Part of Katsuk remained focused on his captive, some inner sense. There might even be ravens around.
David crouched, tense and quivering.
Katsuk had stopped, head and shoulders visible above the trail embankment. He stared up toward David, then looked up the trail.
David heard noise up the trail then, tried to swallow in a dry throat. More hikers?
He thought: I could shout.
But he knew any outcry would bring Katsuk and the knife. Slogging, heavy footsteps became audible.
A bearded young man came down the trail. A green pack rode high on his shoulders. His long hair was bound at the forehead by a red bandanna. It gave him a curiously aboriginal look. The hiker glanced neither right nor left but kept his attention on the trail. He walked with a stiff, heel-first stride that jarred the ground.
David felt giddy with fear. He no longer could see Katsuk but knew the man lay in wait down there somewhere. He would be watching the hiker from some hidden spot below.
David thought: All I have to do is stand up and shout.
The other hikers might not hear it, but this one would. He was just passing David’s hiding place. The other hikers were a long way down there though. There was a stream down in that canyon. Its noise would hide any sound from up here.
David thought: Katsuk would kill this guy ... and then me. He told me what he’d do ... and he meant it.
The bearded hiker was at the switchback. He would see Katsuk momentarily, or pass right by without noticing anything.
What was Katsuk doing?
For several minutes, Katsuk had felt a test of purpose building to a climax. In that dark passage before he had reached the trail, he had felt an odd fear that he would find his secret name carved some place—on a tree or stump or log.
At the few open places, he had stared up at the sky—now gray, now bright as blue-green glass. It was a crystal without form, but ready to take any shape. Perhaps his name would be written there.
A bulbous gray quinine canker on an old stump had filled him with foreboding. He had thought of Hoquat following him like a pet on a leash. Then, wonderingly: Soul Catcher has given me power over Raven, but that is not enough.
He wondered if there were any thing in these mountains with the power to set his universe in perfect order once more. A vision of Janiktaht filled his mind: a head with sand on its cheeks, a head turned to seaweed shadows, the face broken upon its imperfections. The ghost of Janiktaht could not set things right.
Now he heard the voices and laughter of the hikers below and thought it was people taunting him. He heard the lone straggler coming.
The forest was a dull green-gray world suddenly, lidded by a lead sky. The wind had gone down under the trees, and in that new silence of birds and a storm building, Katsuk thought he heard his own heart beating only when he moved, that it stopped when he stopped.
Hatred formed in him then. What right had these hoquat to play in his forest? He felt all the defeats of his people. Their sobs and oaths and lamenting echoed within him, a swarm of unavenged shadows.
The bearded hiker came around the switchback, his head down, the many signs of fatigue in his stride. The pack was too heavy, of course, filled with things he did not need here.
With a dull shock, Katsuk realized he had seen that bearded face before—on the university campus. He could put no name to the face, only a vague recognition that this was a student he had seen. It bothered him that he could not name the face.
In that instant, the hiker saw Katsuk crouched on the trail and jarred to a stop.
“Wha ...” The young man shook his head, then: “Hey! It’s Charlie the Chief! Hey, man, what’re y’ doing out here in that getup? You playing Indians and settlers?”
Katsuk straightened, thinking: The fool doesn’t know. Of course he doesn’t. He’s been in my forest without a radio.
The hiker said: “I’m Vince Debay, remember? We were in that Anthro 300 class together.”
Katsuk said: “Hello, Vince.”
Vince leaned his pack against the trail’s uphill embankment, took a deep breath. His face betrayed the questions in his mind. He could not help but recognise the strangeness of this encounter. He might recognise the face, but he must know this was not the same Charlie the Chief of that Anthro 300 class. He must know it! Katsuk felt hate covering his face with a stale mask as dry and wrinkled as a discarded snakeskin. Surely, Vince could see it.
Vince said: “Man, am I tired. We’ve been all morning coming from the Kimta. We were hoping to make it to Finley Shelter by tonight, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to make it.” He waved a hand. “Hey, I was just joking, you know—about Indians and settlers. No offense.”
Katsuk nodded.
“You see the other guys?” Vince asked.
Katsuk shook his head.
Vince said: “Why the loincloth bit, man? Aren’t you cold?”
“No.”
“I stopped to blow a little grass. The other guys must be almost to the bottom by now.” He peered around Katsuk. “I think I hear them. Hey, guys!” The last came out in a shout.
Katsuk said: “They can’t hear you. They’re too close to the river.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Katsuk thought: I must kill him without anger, an act of irony. I must cut a malignant and venomous thing from my forest. It will be an event in which the world may see itself.
Vince said: “Hey, Chief, you’re awfully quiet. You’re not mad or anything?”
“I am not angry.”
“Yeah ... well, good. You want a little grass? I got half a lid left.”
“No.”
“It’s high-grade stuff, man. I got it in Bellingham last week.”
“I do not smoke your marijuana.”
“Oh. What are you doing out here?”
“I live here. This is my home.”
“Come on! In that getup?”
“This is what I wear when I search for a deformity of the spirit.”
“A what?”
“A thing by which men may know sanity.”
“You’re putting me on.”
r /> Katsuk thought: I must end it. He cannot be allowed to go and report that he has seen me.
Vince rubbed his shoulder beneath a pack strap. “This pack sure is heavy.”
Katsuk said: “You have not yet discovered that having too much is no better than not having enough.”
Nervous laughter jerked in Vince’s throat. He said: “Well, I gotta catch up with the others. See you, Chief.” He hunched his shoulders into the straps, taking the weight of it off the embankment, stepped past Katsuk. There was obvious fear in his movements.
Katsuk thought: I cannot pity. That would make the earth fall away from beneath my feet. My knife must go cleanly into this walking youth. He pulled the knife from its sheath, moved after Vince. The knife must pay homage to his blood and break open the time of death. Birth must end with death, with eyes gone dull, memory gone, heart gone, blood gone, all the flesh gone—the miracle ended.
As he thought, he moved: left hand into Vince’s hair, yanking the head back, right hand whipping the knife around and across the exposed throat.
There was no outcry, just the body slumping back, guided by the hand in the long hair. Katsuk dropped to one knee, caught the weight of the pack on it, held the jerking figure upright. A jet of red gushed from the slashed throat, the lucid color of a young life spurting in a bright fountain onto the trail—a rose petal spurting, ebbing, softly now and now frothing, resurgent, the body twitching, then still.
It was done.
Katsuk felt that this moment had been following him all his life, now to catch up with him.
An ending and a beginning.
He continued to support the body, wondered how old this young man had been. Twenty? Perhaps. Whatever his age, it was ended here—the pleasure and the time passing, all a dream now. Katsuk felt his mind whirling with what he had done. Strange visions captured his awareness: all a dream, black and hidden, an evil profile, clouds under water, limbs of air moving with jade ripples, a green crystal fluid carving traces on his memory.
This earth had green blood.
He felt the weight of the sagging body. This flesh had been a minor pattern in an overlarge universe. Now it faded. He allowed the body to fall on its left side, stood, and peered uphill toward the log where Hoquat lay hidden. It was a hillside suddenly full of green light as clouds exposed the sun.
Deep within himself, Katsuk prayed: Raven, Raven, keep the edge on my hate. 0 Raven, keep me terrible in revenge. This is Katsuk, who lay three nights in thy forest, who heeded no thorn, but did thy bidding. This is Katsuk, thy torch, who will set this world afire.
***
Special Agent Norman Hosbig, Seattle Office, FBI:
Just because we suspect he may have gone to some city doesn’t mean we stop searching that wilderness. As of today, we have almost five hundred people in all phases of the search over there. We have sixteen aircraft still in the park—nine of them helicopters. I read in the morning paper where they are calling it a strange kind of contest, modern against primitive. I don’t see it that way at all. I don’t see how he could be walking those trails unseen with all the people we have searching.
***
David had watched the killing, standing up from his hiding place, his mind raddled by terror. That young hiker who had been so alive—nothing but a carcass now. Katsuk’s eyes were fearful things, their gaze hunting through the gloom of the hillside. Were they seeking another victim?
David felt that Kutsuk’s eyes had been hidden in some far depth, coming now to the surface—brown and terrible and so deep from where they had been.
On trembling legs, David crept up the hill behind his hiding place. He knew his face was contorted with terror, his breathing all out of pace, coming fast and shallow. But he had little control over his muscles.
All he wanted was release.
Slowly, he started, moving parallel with the trail. He had to find those other hikers! At last, he turned downhill, stumbling over logs and limbs. Movement restored some of his muscle control. He began to run, emerging from the trees onto a lower section of the trail.
There was no sight or sound of the other hikers or of Katsuk.
He was running all out now. There was nothing left to do but run.
In a trick of the light, Katsuk saw the running boy—hair flying, a winged head, a slow-motion being of solid light: ivory with inner brilliance, splendid and golden, swimming upon the green field of the forest and the air.
Only then did Katsuk realise that he too, was running. Straight down the slope he went in great gulping strides. He burst out upon the switchback trail as Hoquat rounded a corner above him, caught the running boy in full stride, and swept him to the ground.
Katsuk lay there a moment, catching his breath. When at last he could speak, his words came out in a wild drumbeat with little meaning outside the angry syllables pounding.
“Damn! Damn! Damn! I told you! Stay down earth ...”
But Hoquat had been knocked unconscious, his head striking a log beside the trail.
Katsuk sat up, grinning, his anger evaporated. How foolish Hoquat had appeared—the stumbling flight of a recent nestling. Raven had, indeed, anticipated everything in the universe.
There was a bloody bruise on the side of Hoquat’s head. Katsuk put a hand to the boy’s breast, felt the heart beating, saw vapor form as the boy breathed. The heart, the breath ... the two things were one.
Sadness overcame him. Those loggers on the La Push road! Look what they had done. They had killed Janiktaht. They had killed this boy beneath his arm here. Not this moment, perhaps ... but eventually. They had killed Vince, growing cold up there on the trail. There would be no sons of Vince’s making. No daughters. No laughter ringing after him. Not now. All killed by those drunken hoquat. Who knew how many they had killed?
How could the hoquat not understand these things they did with their own violence? They remained blind to the most obvious facts, unwilling to see the consequences of their behavior. An angel-spirit could come down from heaven and show them the key to their actions and they would deny that spirit.
What would the nine drunken hoquat say if they saw Vince’s dead flesh up there on the trail? They would become angry. They would say: “We didn’t do that!” They would say: “We just had a little innocent fun.” They would say: “Christ! It was just a little klooch! When did a bit of tail ever hurt one of them?”
Katsuk thought of Vince walking on the campus—not innocent enough to satisfy Soul Catcher, but naive in the rightness of his own judgments. A preliminary sacrifice, one to mark the way.
Vince had judged his own people harshly, had shared the petty rebellions of his time, but had never sent his thoughts ahead to seek out a way in his world. He had merely reacted his way into sudden death.
Katsuk climbed to his feet, threw the unconscious boy over his shoulder, trudged back up the hill. He thought:
I must not pity. I must hide Vince’s body and then go on. Hoquat stirred on Katsuk’s shoulders, muttered: “My head ...”
Katsuk stood the boy on his feet, steadied him. “You can walk? Very well. We will go on.”
***
Psalm of Katsuk: written on the backs of trail registry blanks and left at Cedar Cabin:
You brought your foreign god who sets you apart from all other life. He presents you with death as His most precious gift. Your senses are bedazzled by His illusions. You would give His death to all the life that exists. You pursue your god with death, threatening Him with death, praying to take His deadly place.
You stamp the crucifix across the earth’s face. Wherever it touches, there the earth dies. Ashes and melancholy shall be your lot all the rest of your days.
You are a blend of evil and magnificence. You torture with your lies. You trample the dead. What blasphemy resides in your deadly pretensions of love!
You practice your look of sincerity. You become a mask, transparent, a grimace with a skull behind it. You make your golden idols out of cruelty.
; You disinherit me in my own land.
Yea, by the trembling and fear of my people, I blight you with all of the ancient curses. You will die in a cave of your own making, never again to hear birdsong or trees humming in the wind or the forest’s harp music.
***
David awoke in pale dawn light. He was trembling with cold and damp. Katsuk’s hand gripped his shoulder, shaking, shaking. Katsuk wore clothes taken from the dead hiker’s pack: jeans that were too tight for him over the loincloth, a plaid shirt. He still wore moccasins and the band of red cedar bark around his head.
“You must awaken,” Katsuk said.
David sat up. A cold, gray world pressed around him. He felt the damp chill of that world all through his body. The clothing on Katsuk made him think of the hiker’s death. Katsuk had murdered! And so swiftly!
That memory conveyed a deeper chill than anything in the creeping gray fog of the wilderness.
“We will go soon,” Katsuk said. “You hear me, Hoquat?”
Katsuk studied the boy, seeing him with an odd clarity, as though the dull gray light around them were concentrated into a spotlight which illuminated every movement in the young face.
Hoquat was terrified. Some part of the boy’s awareness had translated the hiker’s death correctly. One death was not enough. The ritual of sacrifice must be carried through to its proper end. Hoquat must not let this awareness rise into his consciousness. He must know it while denying it. Too much terror could destroy innocence.
The boy shuddered, a sudden, uncontrollable spasm.
Katsuk squatted back on his heels, felt a sudden inward chill, but kept a hand on Hoquat’s arm. The flesh pulsed with life beneath Katsuk’s fingers. There was warmth in that life, a sense of continuity in it.
“Are you awake, Hoquat?” Katsuk pressed. David pushed the man’s hand away, flicked a glance across the sheathed knife at
Katsuk’s waist.
My knife, David thought. It killed a man.
As though his memory had a life of its own, it brought up the picture of his mother warning him to be careful with “that dreadful knife.” He felt hysterical laughter in his throat, swallowed to suppress it.
Katsuk said: “I will be back in a few minutes, Hoquat.” He went away.
Katsuk turned, glanced at the boy, motioned flatly with one hand—back up the way they had come.
David shook his head. “What?”
Katsuk stared up the hill behind them, said: “That big log we came over. Go back there and hide behind it. If I hear or see any sign of your presence, I will kill you.”
David stepped backward, turned, and climbed back to the log. It was a cedar, its bark hidden beneath moss, but live limbs climbed skyward along its length. Katsuk had pointed out another such fallen tree, calling it a nurse log.
The limbs would be trees some day. David climbed back over the nurse log.
He sank to his heels there, stared through the shadows. His eyes looked for color, for movement. In his own silence, he grew aware of the constant sound of water dripping all around. He felt the dampness of this place. His feet were sopping and his trousers were dark with water almost to the waist. It was cold.
Katsuk stepped down to the trail, turned left in the direction of the hikers’ tracks. He glided down the trail, moving with a wraith quality—brown skin, the white loincloth tugging at David’s gaze.
The trail switched back to the right. Katsuk turned with it. Only his head and shoulders remained visible to the watching boy.
Abruptly, far down the hillside David saw color and movement—a group of hikers. As though vision opened the air to sound, he heard their voices then: no distinguishable words, but sudden laughter and a shout.
David sank farther down behind the log, peered out between a tangle of dead limbs. As he did it, he wondered: Why am I hiding? Why don’t I sneak around Katsuk and get to those hikers? They’d protect me from him.
But he sensed his own destruction in any movement. Part of Katsuk remained focused on his captive, some inner sense. There might even be ravens around.
David crouched, tense and quivering.
Katsuk had stopped, head and shoulders visible above the trail embankment. He stared up toward David, then looked up the trail.
David heard noise up the trail then, tried to swallow in a dry throat. More hikers?
He thought: I could shout.
But he knew any outcry would bring Katsuk and the knife. Slogging, heavy footsteps became audible.
A bearded young man came down the trail. A green pack rode high on his shoulders. His long hair was bound at the forehead by a red bandanna. It gave him a curiously aboriginal look. The hiker glanced neither right nor left but kept his attention on the trail. He walked with a stiff, heel-first stride that jarred the ground.
David felt giddy with fear. He no longer could see Katsuk but knew the man lay in wait down there somewhere. He would be watching the hiker from some hidden spot below.
David thought: All I have to do is stand up and shout.
The other hikers might not hear it, but this one would. He was just passing David’s hiding place. The other hikers were a long way down there though. There was a stream down in that canyon. Its noise would hide any sound from up here.
David thought: Katsuk would kill this guy ... and then me. He told me what he’d do ... and he meant it.
The bearded hiker was at the switchback. He would see Katsuk momentarily, or pass right by without noticing anything.
What was Katsuk doing?
For several minutes, Katsuk had felt a test of purpose building to a climax. In that dark passage before he had reached the trail, he had felt an odd fear that he would find his secret name carved some place—on a tree or stump or log.
At the few open places, he had stared up at the sky—now gray, now bright as blue-green glass. It was a crystal without form, but ready to take any shape. Perhaps his name would be written there.
A bulbous gray quinine canker on an old stump had filled him with foreboding. He had thought of Hoquat following him like a pet on a leash. Then, wonderingly: Soul Catcher has given me power over Raven, but that is not enough.
He wondered if there were any thing in these mountains with the power to set his universe in perfect order once more. A vision of Janiktaht filled his mind: a head with sand on its cheeks, a head turned to seaweed shadows, the face broken upon its imperfections. The ghost of Janiktaht could not set things right.
Now he heard the voices and laughter of the hikers below and thought it was people taunting him. He heard the lone straggler coming.
The forest was a dull green-gray world suddenly, lidded by a lead sky. The wind had gone down under the trees, and in that new silence of birds and a storm building, Katsuk thought he heard his own heart beating only when he moved, that it stopped when he stopped.
Hatred formed in him then. What right had these hoquat to play in his forest? He felt all the defeats of his people. Their sobs and oaths and lamenting echoed within him, a swarm of unavenged shadows.
The bearded hiker came around the switchback, his head down, the many signs of fatigue in his stride. The pack was too heavy, of course, filled with things he did not need here.
With a dull shock, Katsuk realized he had seen that bearded face before—on the university campus. He could put no name to the face, only a vague recognition that this was a student he had seen. It bothered him that he could not name the face.
In that instant, the hiker saw Katsuk crouched on the trail and jarred to a stop.
“Wha ...” The young man shook his head, then: “Hey! It’s Charlie the Chief! Hey, man, what’re y’ doing out here in that getup? You playing Indians and settlers?”
Katsuk straightened, thinking: The fool doesn’t know. Of course he doesn’t. He’s been in my forest without a radio.
The hiker said: “I’m Vince Debay, remember? We were in that Anthro 300 class together.”
Katsuk said: “Hello, Vince.”
Vince leaned his pack against the trail’s uphill embankment, took a deep breath. His face betrayed the questions in his mind. He could not help but recognise the strangeness of this encounter. He might recognise the face, but he must know this was not the same Charlie the Chief of that Anthro 300 class. He must know it! Katsuk felt hate covering his face with a stale mask as dry and wrinkled as a discarded snakeskin. Surely, Vince could see it.
Vince said: “Man, am I tired. We’ve been all morning coming from the Kimta. We were hoping to make it to Finley Shelter by tonight, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to make it.” He waved a hand. “Hey, I was just joking, you know—about Indians and settlers. No offense.”
Katsuk nodded.
“You see the other guys?” Vince asked.
Katsuk shook his head.
Vince said: “Why the loincloth bit, man? Aren’t you cold?”
“No.”
“I stopped to blow a little grass. The other guys must be almost to the bottom by now.” He peered around Katsuk. “I think I hear them. Hey, guys!” The last came out in a shout.
Katsuk said: “They can’t hear you. They’re too close to the river.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Katsuk thought: I must kill him without anger, an act of irony. I must cut a malignant and venomous thing from my forest. It will be an event in which the world may see itself.
Vince said: “Hey, Chief, you’re awfully quiet. You’re not mad or anything?”
“I am not angry.”
“Yeah ... well, good. You want a little grass? I got half a lid left.”
“No.”
“It’s high-grade stuff, man. I got it in Bellingham last week.”
“I do not smoke your marijuana.”
“Oh. What are you doing out here?”
“I live here. This is my home.”
“Come on! In that getup?”
“This is what I wear when I search for a deformity of the spirit.”
“A what?”
“A thing by which men may know sanity.”
“You’re putting me on.”
Vince rubbed his shoulder beneath a pack strap. “This pack sure is heavy.”
Katsuk said: “You have not yet discovered that having too much is no better than not having enough.”
Nervous laughter jerked in Vince’s throat. He said: “Well, I gotta catch up with the others. See you, Chief.” He hunched his shoulders into the straps, taking the weight of it off the embankment, stepped past Katsuk. There was obvious fear in his movements.
Katsuk thought: I cannot pity. That would make the earth fall away from beneath my feet. My knife must go cleanly into this walking youth. He pulled the knife from its sheath, moved after Vince. The knife must pay homage to his blood and break open the time of death. Birth must end with death, with eyes gone dull, memory gone, heart gone, blood gone, all the flesh gone—the miracle ended.
As he thought, he moved: left hand into Vince’s hair, yanking the head back, right hand whipping the knife around and across the exposed throat.
There was no outcry, just the body slumping back, guided by the hand in the long hair. Katsuk dropped to one knee, caught the weight of the pack on it, held the jerking figure upright. A jet of red gushed from the slashed throat, the lucid color of a young life spurting in a bright fountain onto the trail—a rose petal spurting, ebbing, softly now and now frothing, resurgent, the body twitching, then still.
It was done.
Katsuk felt that this moment had been following him all his life, now to catch up with him.
An ending and a beginning.
He continued to support the body, wondered how old this young man had been. Twenty? Perhaps. Whatever his age, it was ended here—the pleasure and the time passing, all a dream now. Katsuk felt his mind whirling with what he had done. Strange visions captured his awareness: all a dream, black and hidden, an evil profile, clouds under water, limbs of air moving with jade ripples, a green crystal fluid carving traces on his memory.
This earth had green blood.
He felt the weight of the sagging body. This flesh had been a minor pattern in an overlarge universe. Now it faded. He allowed the body to fall on its left side, stood, and peered uphill toward the log where Hoquat lay hidden. It was a hillside suddenly full of green light as clouds exposed the sun.
Deep within himself, Katsuk prayed: Raven, Raven, keep the edge on my hate. 0 Raven, keep me terrible in revenge. This is Katsuk, who lay three nights in thy forest, who heeded no thorn, but did thy bidding. This is Katsuk, thy torch, who will set this world afire.
***
Special Agent Norman Hosbig, Seattle Office, FBI:
Just because we suspect he may have gone to some city doesn’t mean we stop searching that wilderness. As of today, we have almost five hundred people in all phases of the search over there. We have sixteen aircraft still in the park—nine of them helicopters. I read in the morning paper where they are calling it a strange kind of contest, modern against primitive. I don’t see it that way at all. I don’t see how he could be walking those trails unseen with all the people we have searching.
***
David had watched the killing, standing up from his hiding place, his mind raddled by terror. That young hiker who had been so alive—nothing but a carcass now. Katsuk’s eyes were fearful things, their gaze hunting through the gloom of the hillside. Were they seeking another victim?
David felt that Kutsuk’s eyes had been hidden in some far depth, coming now to the surface—brown and terrible and so deep from where they had been.
On trembling legs, David crept up the hill behind his hiding place. He knew his face was contorted with terror, his breathing all out of pace, coming fast and shallow. But he had little control over his muscles.
All he wanted was release.
Slowly, he started, moving parallel with the trail. He had to find those other hikers! At last, he turned downhill, stumbling over logs and limbs. Movement restored some of his muscle control. He began to run, emerging from the trees onto a lower section of the trail.
There was no sight or sound of the other hikers or of Katsuk.
He was running all out now. There was nothing left to do but run.
In a trick of the light, Katsuk saw the running boy—hair flying, a winged head, a slow-motion being of solid light: ivory with inner brilliance, splendid and golden, swimming upon the green field of the forest and the air.
Only then did Katsuk realise that he too, was running. Straight down the slope he went in great gulping strides. He burst out upon the switchback trail as Hoquat rounded a corner above him, caught the running boy in full stride, and swept him to the ground.
Katsuk lay there a moment, catching his breath. When at last he could speak, his words came out in a wild drumbeat with little meaning outside the angry syllables pounding.
“Damn! Damn! Damn! I told you! Stay down earth ...”
But Hoquat had been knocked unconscious, his head striking a log beside the trail.
Katsuk sat up, grinning, his anger evaporated. How foolish Hoquat had appeared—the stumbling flight of a recent nestling. Raven had, indeed, anticipated everything in the universe.
There was a bloody bruise on the side of Hoquat’s head. Katsuk put a hand to the boy’s breast, felt the heart beating, saw vapor form as the boy breathed. The heart, the breath ... the two things were one.
Sadness overcame him. Those loggers on the La Push road! Look what they had done. They had killed Janiktaht. They had killed this boy beneath his arm here. Not this moment, perhaps ... but eventually. They had killed Vince, growing cold up there on the trail. There would be no sons of Vince’s making. No daughters. No laughter ringing after him. Not now. All killed by those drunken hoquat. Who knew how many they had killed?
How could the hoquat not understand these things they did with their own violence? They remained blind to the most obvious facts, unwilling to see the consequences of their behavior. An angel-spirit could come down from heaven and show them the key to their actions and they would deny that spirit.
What would the nine drunken hoquat say if they saw Vince’s dead flesh up there on the trail? They would become angry. They would say: “We didn’t do that!” They would say: “We just had a little innocent fun.” They would say: “Christ! It was just a little klooch! When did a bit of tail ever hurt one of them?”
Katsuk thought of Vince walking on the campus—not innocent enough to satisfy Soul Catcher, but naive in the rightness of his own judgments. A preliminary sacrifice, one to mark the way.
Vince had judged his own people harshly, had shared the petty rebellions of his time, but had never sent his thoughts ahead to seek out a way in his world. He had merely reacted his way into sudden death.
Katsuk climbed to his feet, threw the unconscious boy over his shoulder, trudged back up the hill. He thought:
I must not pity. I must hide Vince’s body and then go on. Hoquat stirred on Katsuk’s shoulders, muttered: “My head ...”
Katsuk stood the boy on his feet, steadied him. “You can walk? Very well. We will go on.”
***
Psalm of Katsuk: written on the backs of trail registry blanks and left at Cedar Cabin:
You brought your foreign god who sets you apart from all other life. He presents you with death as His most precious gift. Your senses are bedazzled by His illusions. You would give His death to all the life that exists. You pursue your god with death, threatening Him with death, praying to take His deadly place.
You stamp the crucifix across the earth’s face. Wherever it touches, there the earth dies. Ashes and melancholy shall be your lot all the rest of your days.
You are a blend of evil and magnificence. You torture with your lies. You trample the dead. What blasphemy resides in your deadly pretensions of love!
You practice your look of sincerity. You become a mask, transparent, a grimace with a skull behind it. You make your golden idols out of cruelty.
Yea, by the trembling and fear of my people, I blight you with all of the ancient curses. You will die in a cave of your own making, never again to hear birdsong or trees humming in the wind or the forest’s harp music.
***
David awoke in pale dawn light. He was trembling with cold and damp. Katsuk’s hand gripped his shoulder, shaking, shaking. Katsuk wore clothes taken from the dead hiker’s pack: jeans that were too tight for him over the loincloth, a plaid shirt. He still wore moccasins and the band of red cedar bark around his head.
“You must awaken,” Katsuk said.
David sat up. A cold, gray world pressed around him. He felt the damp chill of that world all through his body. The clothing on Katsuk made him think of the hiker’s death. Katsuk had murdered! And so swiftly!
That memory conveyed a deeper chill than anything in the creeping gray fog of the wilderness.
“We will go soon,” Katsuk said. “You hear me, Hoquat?”
Katsuk studied the boy, seeing him with an odd clarity, as though the dull gray light around them were concentrated into a spotlight which illuminated every movement in the young face.
Hoquat was terrified. Some part of the boy’s awareness had translated the hiker’s death correctly. One death was not enough. The ritual of sacrifice must be carried through to its proper end. Hoquat must not let this awareness rise into his consciousness. He must know it while denying it. Too much terror could destroy innocence.
The boy shuddered, a sudden, uncontrollable spasm.
Katsuk squatted back on his heels, felt a sudden inward chill, but kept a hand on Hoquat’s arm. The flesh pulsed with life beneath Katsuk’s fingers. There was warmth in that life, a sense of continuity in it.
“Are you awake, Hoquat?” Katsuk pressed. David pushed the man’s hand away, flicked a glance across the sheathed knife at
Katsuk’s waist.
My knife, David thought. It killed a man.
As though his memory had a life of its own, it brought up the picture of his mother warning him to be careful with “that dreadful knife.” He felt hysterical laughter in his throat, swallowed to suppress it.
Katsuk said: “I will be back in a few minutes, Hoquat.” He went away.