The Droll’s Gift

Lips snarled back thin. Mouths agape in rictus. Cheeks ridged in grimace. The Cliff People reeked of terror. Eyes bulged. Foreheads wrinkled. For a strange moment I thought how like fighting dogs we look when afraid. Bodies scrambling over and under each other to crouch against the wall. Arku tried to quieten them, but I saw a man fling aside a couple of small children, dive, and burrow to hide under somebody else. His stench!

My mind flashed and I was back in the Guardians’ pass, seeing the upturned faces of the Salt Men as the mountain fell upon them. The memory saved me from panic. That and the sound of my name: “Ish!”

I ran after the lamp the Shaman carried. Into the darkness outside. So black it seemed there was no air. I gulped, smelled and tasted the horrible odour again. Heard a single mooching step, the slurp of a leathery body dragging across snow.

“I do not believe in the Droll!” I formed the words with my lips, wondering if I was afraid to say them aloud. Tried to remember the Shaman’s warning against superstition. The sound of a single footstep came again.

“Anathema maranatha…” There was comfort in the power of the Shaman’s chant but I could not understand the words. I sensed he was holding something up. A book, I thought, peering. But he could not have a book there. That word again. “Anathema!” Suddenly the lamp was struck to the ground. The light went out. Either side of me, Jak and Nip trembled.

A brutish shriek wove itself through the Shaman’s voice. Entreating, bullying, rising to scream down his incomprehensible words. Now, by its tone, begging.

“Don’t trust it!” I shouted, but the Shaman’s chant continued unshaken. The shrieking counterpoint shifted shape and tone, and all in blackness. Following the denunciatory voice and that other which now sobbed, complained, and whined, I floundered after. How long, I do not know. And heard somewhere far away the toll of a heavy bell.

When darkness pressed against my face, an invisible wall of black fur, when I could no longer breathe for its fetid thickness, a storm exploded. Toothed with sleet, a buffet of wind flattened, tumbled me over and over. I skidded across ice, slammed up against the wall of a house, Jak and Nip thumping into me. Something else rolled and struck. I crouched against the storm’s fist, felt and found the Shaman unconscious. Knew him by the blade of his nose, the snow mask.

I hooked my fingers in the neck of his tunic and dragged. Jak got his teeth into the bearskin hood and pulled. Nip yelped in the outer doorway of Arku’s house. We dragged the Shaman through. Then I could not get the door to close. And suddenly Arku was there with Kelu, shovelling, clearing snow, heaving the door to, our three backs to it. Had it faced the wind, we could never have got it closed.

A huge hand hammered the roof. Heads hidden, the Cliff People cringed, a single animal of scrabbling legs and arms. Shrieking.

I picked snow out of the Shaman’s mouth, nostrils, ears, did not dare lift the mask. He was cold, rigid. As if all breath was pressed out of his body. Something had clawed one side of his face. I stripped off the torn bearskin. His flesh was bruised, scratched all over.

A creak. Both inner and outer doors swung open. The storm had gone. A great silence. And I heard the terrible bray again, the stamp of a single foot outside, the drag and suck I had heard before.

A woman’s voice – Cheena’s – said, “The Droll has come for her gift!” And she ran towards the door.

Only the Shaman could stop the Droll, but he lay as if dead. I ran to stop Cheena.

“No, Ish!” said a voice. Something split inside my head. Light flashed white. Blinding…

I opened my eyes, and pain cracked across them like a whip. I closed them again, turned from the light. Agony rolled with the movement. I could hear Arku’s voice. Could not understand what he was saying. And I must have slept.

I woke, pain a dull tug at the edges of my mind. I could see, when I opened my eyes. Something bearded. Whiskers. Jak’s face looking into mine, close up. And Nip’s. Then the Shaman’s voice.

“I think so.”

“Drink this and lie still. Arku hit you on the head to stop you going after Cheena. She gave herself to the Droll, as her gift. Don’t try to say anything. Everything is safe again.”

When I woke again, my head still ached. I had to squint to see things properly. We were in a smaller house. Just the two of us. Nip and Jak. The Shaman held a bowl to my lips. I tasted something sharp, and slept.

I was clear-headed when I woke again. The warmth from an oil lamp kept in by the thick turf walls and roof, the layer of snow outside that again. The Shaman sat bare to the waist, ointments daubed on the scratches and cuts that covered him, snow mask staring into the dark. I moved, and Jak and Nip padded across, but the Shaman did not stir.

I must find what had happened to Cheena. I moved slow and deliberate, thinking out each step first. Outside, my piss was a greenish colour, and there was something green in the snow when I spat. The drink the Shaman had given me.

The Cliff People were still inside their houses. In front of Arku’s door was a tangle of tracks. One set of footrprints led away, Cheena’s. I followed them over a rise. And there Cheena’s tracks were joined by a line of huge single footprints and a broad smear across the snow, the tracks of the Droll, her dragging belly. Cheena’s footprints vanished there. The Droll had taken her gift.

Back inside our small house, the Shaman stood, emerged from his trance. He knew where I had been, told me it was hopeless. “Cheena thought her life was useless because she could not marry and have children. So she gave herself to the Droll.

“I can fight the Droll only with the people’s help. If they want to believe in their own superstition, there is little I can do.”

“I tried to follow you.”

“We were not enough on our own. There is no such thing as the Droll, Ish, only what people choose to believe.”

“But the scratches on your face, your body?”

The Shaman touched his cheeks. “Perhaps I fell against something in the storm.”

“What about the tracks?”

“What tracks?”

“Cheena’s. And the Droll’s!”

The Shaman led outside. No sign of Cheena’s, nor the huge single footprints I had seen before. Only my tracks and Jak’s, going out, pausing, and returning.

“It was all inside your own head. You imagined the Droll because you wanted to believe in her.”

“What about Cheena?”

“Cheena walked into the storm thinking she was saving her people. She died bravely, but for no good reason. Her body will sink under the new snow and never be seen again. And the Cliff People will believe for ever that Cheena gave herself to the Droll, her gift.”

Standing in the snow glare, remembering to put on my mask, I believed the Shaman. I wanted to forget the sounds outside the house, the panic of the Cliff People. My own fear.

“I sometimes wonder,” said the Shaman.

“I sometimes wonder if people need their Droll.”

I stared surprised. “It’s just superstition. You said!” I could hear astonishment in my own voice.

“But do people need superstitions? I am getting old, beginning to ask questions that are unhelpful. People want a younger Shaman, one who will drive away the Droll. The Shaman must not believe in superstition. Do you see what I mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

The Shaman sighed and led me back inside. “People like to panic, Ish. If there are several, they encourage each other to shriek all the louder. You have seen the sledge dogs working as a pack. So long as they have a leader, they will run all day. If the leader is weak, they fight. Or panic. The Cliff People know I am getting old, less sure of what I believe. And the Carny has done his clever best to make them doubt me.

“He will go ahead of us to the Coal People and the Bear People to the south. Spreading fear with his Clock. The Carny is evil. But because he is, it makes it easier for the Shaman to do good.”

“I know it is difficult to understand.” The Shaman was stripping off his clothes so I could dress the wounds that covered his body. “But once you become the Shaman, you will wonder why it was you were ever confused.”

I did not know if I still wanted to become the Shaman.

“You once said your father, Hawk, was the leader of the Travellers…”

“He would have understood that leaders are not better than other people. They just carry more responsibility. Which lets the other people behave irresponsibly, sometimes. Lets them have their superstitions, even enjoy them. Without their leader, they would be lost. But there is always another side to things, Ish: without followers, the leader would be lost.”

“I think I understand.” Squint-face, his Salt Men seemed lost without him. They depended upon him. And without them he could never have killed Tara and the Metal People, pursued Taur and me.

I had known the terror of being left behind, cast out by my own people. Much of my life I had spent on my own or with only one other person – Hagar, Taur. For a while I had dreamt of having a family with Tara. And I remembered the times Taur and I had dreamed and talked of becoming Gardeners, Farmers, with a family.

“Perhaps I don’t know enough to become the Shaman.”

“You can read and write. You are becoming a healer. You are learning leadership. When you become the Shaman, you will find confidence and strength – as if you had grown extra muscles, extra brains. You will think clearer, see your way through problems. You will become the Judge. People will admire your wisdom. They want strong leaders. Wise judges.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“It is the way things are.”

As I spread salves on the wounds on the Shaman’s back, part of my mind was seeing Cheena’s and the Droll’s tracks. Had I imagined them, seen them only because I wanted to?

My arms ached as I dropped the bearskin tunic over his head. I helped the Shaman lie himself down. Heaviness spread up my arms and through my body. Was I just like all the others? Did I want to believe in the Droll? I lay down my heavy head and slept.