Spirit Hunter Read Free Page B

does not move, even when I come closer and crouch right beside him: he is away again. His spirit-horse has gone wandering.
Did it drift up the mulberry tree to the World Above or sink down through glittering lake-waters to the World Below?
    I sit down at my teacher’s side and wait. The bones are curved and yellowish: sheep shoulder blades. So Shaman Tulan wants to learn what is to come. By the time I see the flicker of his spirit-horse again, my legs ache with sitting still so long. But I have learned to be patient. The old man turns to smile at me, prodding the flames with a bent stick.
    “So, Asena. I’ve been waiting.” Tulan’s eagle-guide appears, perching on his shoulder, eyes fierce, watching me. Tulan’s gaze burns my skin. “You are troubled. What have you been dreaming of, Asena?”
    “Death,” I tell him, frowning. “Death and a battle. My wolf showed me.” I shiver, even in the fire’s heat. “It wasn’t only men fighting with honour: there were women and brats, too. Was it a foretelling? Will it really happen?”
    My old teacher tosses a mulberry twig into the fire. It crackles, catches light, glowing. He turns, meeting my eyes once more. “Not a foretelling but a warning,” he replies. “Come, I’ve told you this before: wise men and women steer their own path – we are not just borne along wild and unsteady at the whim of the spirits, like a wall-dweller trying to ride a high-spirited stallion, as some folks would have you believe. But your dream was a warning from the spirits, all the same, and we should heed it. We must go travelling, you and I.”
    Tulan’s eagle-spirit spreads its wings and flies up, up away. A true eagle of flesh and feathers would have pushed Tulan to the ground with the force of its talons, but he barely seems to notice his guide is gone.
    Heart hammering, I take up the sheep bones and drop them one by one into the flames. There’s a quick sizzling as clinging scraps of tendon and flesh blacken, charring. Smoke rakes the back of my throat. I close my eyes. To travel with my master, I must turn away from the world of men; I must forget it all – fire, warmth, talk, good meat and hot kumis, the touch of my mother, anger, joy, the smell of horses, Baba laughing. Everything. It is so hard to do.
    At my side, I hear Shaman Tulan’s deep, steady breathing. He is already gone, leaving his body a hollow shell, but in my mind I see Yan and Tela walking away from the fire, hand-in-hand, and again I taste the sourness of jealousy. It’s like bad milk.
    I push it all away. To journey to the World Above, I must think of nothing. I must be as nothing, just as I have to do when I wish to be hidden.
    I feel a swift tug deep in my belly and stare at the waving bulrushes, at the sunlight on the waters: I am here, but not here. At last, at last – I am leaving my body, leaving it behind like an old jacket crumpled on the ground.
    I fly free.
    I’m astride my spirit-horse, up in the World Above. Tulan rides at my side. His eagle-guide swoops above us in the unstained sky. My wolf runs ahead, a swift shadow half hidden by swaying grass. Cold fear slips through me. Straying from the body for too long is dangerous, even for a shaman. All worlds touch: the worlds of spirit, the world of men – and Shaman Tulan is old. Of late, he has been out of his body more often than not. He is like a man in a boat trailing his fingers in the water, leaning further and further over the edge till he falls.
    My spirit-horse rides faster, faster. Tulan keeps pace at my side. We leave the shimmering grasslands of the World Above far below, riding hard through clear blue sky.
    Look down
, Shaman Tulan says, and the grasslands of the World Above fade; now we are soaring high above our own camp, high over the earth, watching sheep moving like small tufts of grey cloud down among the pine trees. Back by the tents, our horses are shifting where they stand, uneasy, ready to run. I see my horse Shadow at the