The shaman
He sat on the ground and sighed. Blood was dried and there was a metallic tinge to the air, nothing stirred. No wind. Trees stood like soldiers. The wind from last night was dead.Gone. If one were watching him, one would notice he did not move for hours on end. He not stir when mosquitos lit on his skin by the hundreds. When large yellow flies bit his arms he sulked deeper into his sadness. Yet, he did not move. He was akin to the death around him.
Then,
from out of the forest, a banging, a crashing and a reindeer floated into the clearing, nostrils flaring up . Prancing. Still, the man sat . Smelling him, the stag stopped and turned , nostrils hurriedly opening and closing. He snorts. He paws the ground. A raven caws. But, not in the normal corvid manner. Lately, the Soviet ravens mimiced wailing, weeping or sobbing. And this is what moved the Chukchi to raise his eyes : a strange sniffling and crying. his eyes are puffy and red.He is tracing something into the ground. A look of infinite sadness wrenches his face as he takes in the reindeer with green moss drooping his antlers as if it were hanging from a living xmas tree. The man opens his mouth, inhales and caws. The deer jerks to the left and seems to hover above the abbattoir, disappearing into the distance, until he is but a fleck on the horizon. The man slowly moves his eyes around to the trees, searching for the raven.He calls him with raven sounds. Clouds scuddle across the sky. The wind picks up, and directly above him, he hears the hybrid caw and sob of the raven, which turns his eyes skyward to see the raven outsretch his ebony wings and propel forward into air and at the same time drop white steamy liquid in one long tendril, the wieght of the liquid, moving with gravirty, dancing, forming into another rope, into 3 different ropes of white , millimeters from each other, like stark white stalctites aimed at his forehead but instead of driving into his skull, piercing his grief wracked grey matter , the ravens gifts splatter at once on the poor mans forehead, splattering him in white. The sobbing of the crow slowly disappears as it sails over the treeline toward the beautifulKolyma region. Gone. But, there ! Do you hear that? Sobbing. On all trees are ravens, all with beaks open, their variegated plaints and dirges wafting over the air, over the tableau of death. There is work to be done. And then the more important work: waking from this nightmare. Wails rent the air...and then sobs. Corvids are known to be almost perfect imitators. They mimic toilets flushing, machine guns, motors, cats, dogs, Chinese, thunder, water running, anything and everything.
As if paying their respects some of the assembled corvids: crows and ravens began to whistle Chopins funeral march. Duh, duh, duh...while others quietly sobbed. The effect was unsettling to say the least. Our hero walked to the shovel and began digging right where the ashes of his bed used to be. While digging, halfway through, he realized burying the dead in the ground was very un-Chukchi, but very very Russian. He looked at the half burned bodies of his parents. There lay his Chukchi father, his arms gone. face a charcoal mask. And, lying next to him, on top of his disappeared arm, is his Russian mother. Amazingly her body was intact. Her skin looked fresh, her face sooted but content . Her cheeks almost shone. He bent down to gaze more at her brilliant skin. Why wasn't she burnt like his father?Perhpas she was gone when the fire started and lay with him afterwards? This is too much, he thought. The corvids flew from their perch to the ground . Hundreds of them, crows and ravens looking askance, walking jerkily among the dead reindeer without touching any of the flesh. He went to caress his dear mothers cheek, yet when his fingers made contact with her skin her entire body collapsed into ashes.
What is to be thought in such moments? he stared, of course he stared. At where his mother once lay and where his fathers corpse was. The corvids flew off, disappearing into the sky, dots on the horizon.All, except one, which lay rolling on its back in an anthill, a white mask over its face. Dizzy, vertigionous, fazed, awkward, he stood directionless. What to do?Where to go?
and the crow, it said somethig, what?did it really say this?no.Yes. Mosk-va! Mosk-Va!
And, without knowing exactly why he placed one foot in front of the other , walking towards another world, another place, towards Moscva.
Pisdets!He whispered.
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