Kalik lost eight warriors in the mouth of the gorge and on the unclimbable walls. He began a siege of terror. Hoots and screams echoed between the cliffs, night and day. The roar of bears. The rumble of avalanches shook our gully all one day. I woke once to the Children’s screams and heard the terrifying pour and thunder of a river in flood.
How did he do it? Kalik understood how to use others’ imaginations. Intuitively, he already knew what images were in our minds. He only had to distort and enlarge them into fears. But how could I explain that to the Children? All they remembered was the Kalik who had killed their families, who had practised evil upon them. I tried hooting back at Kalik’s hoots, screamed when he screamed, and the Children copied me. They screeched and roared louder than any bear. Still, I knew Kalik’s inventiveness and warned them we must be patient.
After several nights of noise, Tepulka woke me to a great silence. Maka had seen something on the high rock wall that bulged and soared above our camp. We looked up the great swell of rock, but nothing moved.
“It might have been a huge bird flying across the moon. But it looked like a man’s shadow thrown upon the wall,” said Maka. “There!”
My skin prickled cold. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled. Limping high across the wall of rock, hands weaving, dancing, posturing, enticing, body doubling and straightening, I saw the shadow of the obscene creature who had haunted me in the Land of the White Bear.
I had never told the Children of the Carny. How he had come like an apparition, dancing tall, then shrinking dwarfed, bending low, repulsive. Singing in his eldritch voice, screeching, chattering, gossiping. His hands fluttering over people, too familiar. Now I told Tepulka and Maka of his oppressive reek like a sunless swamp, how his stench filled the snow-house where we waited for Cheena’s marriage. Of how the Carny gulped greedily at fresh seal liver and blubber, blood and oil over his face, in his hair. How the women hid their children behind themselves, away from his dancing, unclean fingers.
I told them of the Carny’s wispy oily beard, his pursed and horrid lips, his white-lashed eyes that looked painful, raw.
“He had a child chained to his belt. A hood over its head.” I told how he unhooked the chain and made the child dance half-naked. A dance no child should know. How he dressed the Child after the dance, how its weary eyes disappeared under the hood. The snick of the chain.
“His slobbering, dribbling mouth disgusted me, his sore eyes, but his hands were the most repulsive part. They were never still, crawling, leaping and joining, fingers fluttering apart again. He tried to touch me with those hands, so I struck them away. He hated me.”
I told them of how the Clock stopped, how Cheena could not marry, how the gloating Carny vanished with the Child. And how Cheena gave herself to the Droll to save her people.
I told Tepulka and Maka of how Arku and I set the great bear traps in the Metal People’s village. “We caught one and killed it. In another trap we found the torn-off part of the hind left foot of a white bear. Next day, we saw the Carny, limping on his left foot.”
I could hear my own voice, its babble, but had to tell the story. Tepulka and Maka listened as I told them of my dream when I thought the Carny was Kalik. How I dreamt of him as the Showman.
I got control of myself. I mustn’t alarm the others, make them feel helpless, but I had to explain the shadow on the rock-face. “Kalik knows how to play upon our fears. He uses superstition, just as the Carny did. He understands how to set going the most appalling memories in the minds of his victims.”
“How is it both Maka and I saw that thing on the cliff?” asked Tepulka. “The same figure you were seeing?”
“There is a thing the Shaman told me about,” I said. “A thing he called hypnotism. Mass hypnotism can make us all think we’re seeing and hearing the same thing.”
Tepulka nodded, only half-convinced. And Maka just stared at the wall of rock above where we had seen that evil shadow prance behind the fluttering curtains of its hands.
“I read a book,” I said, “about people who grew up in a cave. The only things they ever saw were shadows thrown on the wall by other people passing before a huge fire. So the people in the cave grew up believing the shadows were the only real things in the world. Kalik’s using that idea to try and convince us what we’re seeing is real. He’s using the pictures in my head. Using them to convince you as well. But he’s only a man like us.”
Back by the campfire, Tepulka and Puli now on watch at the parapet, I told the rest of the Children about the Carny. How Kalik was putting his evil pictures into our minds, using the moon to cast his shadow on the bulge of the cliff.
“We’re safe here, as long as we don’t let him frighten us. We’ll beat Kalik if we wait long enough.”
“Tell us that story about patience,” said Maka. “You know – about the wooden doll.”
I had read it to the Children long ago but remembered it well enough. And I told it now.
“There was once a hunter and his wife far from their people. His wife died, and the man thought he must die of grief. He made a doll out of wood and dressed it in his dead wife’s clothes. He painted the face like hers. He carved the hands like hers. He sat the doll the other side of the fire and talked to it as if he was talking to his real wife. A year went by, and he still missed his real wife, but talking to the wooden doll eased his heart.
“One night he came back from hunting and found the fire going. The next night, there was a pot of water over the flames. The next night, meat was cooking in the pot.
“The man started finding the hut swept. His tunic mended where a bear had torn it. Firewood heaped beside the door. Water carried up from the stream. One day he came home early and saw a woman going into his hut. The man rushed inside and found the doll had gone. Instead, his wife sat by the fire, cooking his meal.
“‘You missed me so much,’ said the woman, ‘the gods felt sorry and sent me back to look after you. But you must not make love to me until we have rejoined our people. Then it will be safe. Until then, if you even touch me, I will disappear and never come back. You must be patient.’
“As soon as the river froze, they filled their packs with dried meat and set out to find their people. Across the river of ice, they climbed through the mountains. As they came down their other side, it began to snow. On the plain far below, the man and his wife could see smoke from the tents of their tribe. But the snow was too deep to go any further.
“‘We must be patient,’ said the woman. They made a tent from the skins they carried, lit a fire, and slept either side of it. The hunter killed a bear, and they cooked and ate some meat.
“‘We have enough for many days,’ said the woman as she hung the rest to freeze.
“‘I hope the snow melts soon,’ said the man.
“‘Be patient,’ said the woman. ‘Remember the gods’ warning.’
“They ate their meal and made their beds either side of the fire. More snow fell and rose around the tent. Each day the man looked down the mountainside at the smoke rising from the tents far below on the plain.
“‘I wish we could get down there,’ he would say. ‘Amongst our own people. And then we can touch each other and make love.’
“‘We must be patient,’ said his wife.
“When the bear meat was eaten, the man snared a deer. His wife cooked some meat and hung the rest. Outside, the snow began to melt.
“In the morning, they could almost get through the snow. ‘We must be patient,’ said the woman. ‘The snow is still too deep. If we try to get down the mountain now, we will die.’
“Her husband nodded. When the deer was eaten, the man caught a white hare, and they ate that. Early next morning, the man looked outside. Most of the snow had melted. They could get down the mountain! He cried with delight, rushed back inside, and kissed his sleeping wife awake with the good news.
“And he found himself kissing wooden lips. Holding a wooden doll in his arms. A doll dressed in his wife’s clothes.
“The man ran down the mountainside. His people heard the agony in his screams as he fell, picked himself up, and ran again. They tried to quieten him, but he shrieked his story, went mad, and died. Through the snow, they followed his tracks back up the mountainside to his camp. There they found a wooden doll dressed in his wife’s clothes. The lips burned away where it had fallen in the fire. And behind the tent, they found a woman’s footprints disappearing under fresh snow drifting down.”
In the last light of the fire, the Children looked grave. Maka and I went down to the parapet. Puli and Tepulka were glad to be relieved. They rolled themselves in their blankets, and lay down behind us.
High above our heads, the Carny’s shadow danced across the wall again that night. But this time it carried a bundle wrapped in soft deerskin. As the shadow pranced and crouched, it unwrapped the bundle and held out the shadow of a wooden doll. But the doll moved its arms and its feet kicked. A tiny mewling came down the air. Maka screamed and fell. Tepulka was there at once, lifting her, carrying her away. Paku came running to keep watch with me. And the shadows disappeared.