Departures

“Oh, but they did,” Cutter said. Now Lucy was frankly staring at him. He went on. “I wasn’t having any luck with fruit for bait, and so-”

“You tried something else. Sure. But why cookies?”

He gri

SECRET NAMES

I haven’t the slightest idea whether this story is fantasy or science fiction. I think it might have fit well in the old Unknown, which often walked the fine pixilated line between the two genres.

Madyu was boiling up a batch of willow-bark tea when Jorj, the tribe’s chief hunter, poked his head into the shaman’s tent. “What do you want?” Madyu asked crossly, not caring to be interrupted in the middle of his spells. He was convinced they added to the pain-relieving value of the tea.

“We will be setting out shortly, wizardry sir,” Jorj answered. He was a big, broad-shouldered man of about forty, with strong features and a brown beard just begi

“Oh.” The spells on the willow-bark tea would have to wait: it was no cure for the ache of an empty belly. Madyu said, “I’ll set to work at once, Jorj Rainbowstar.”

The shaman kept his voice low, but Jorj’s head whipped around in alarm all the same. No one in the tribe save Madyu and perhaps a favorite woman had any business knowing the hunter’s secret name; should an enemy somehow come into possession of it, he might use it to wreak all sorts of baneful sorcery.

Jorj said, “I hope the gods are more in the mood to listen to you than they were last moon-quarter. We came back almost empty-handed.”

Madyu knew the chief hunter was obliquely criticizing him for having used his secret name. He dipped his head to acknowledge the rebuke. “I shall do my best, I promise you. Magic is chancy and imperfect, as you no doubt know.”

“Oh, aye. If it weren’t, we’d all be fatter than we are, and that’s a fact.” Jorj laughed a big, booming manly laugh that finished the job of putting the shaman in his place. Madyu, who

was scrawny, clumsy, and nearsighted to boot, felt his ears turn hot. Laughing still, Jorj left the tent and started shouting to the rest of the hunting band.

With a last mournful look at the bronze tea kettle, Madyu decked himself in the raiment required for hunting magic. He, too, had a coin necklace. His, unlike Jorj’s, was made of quarters silvery on the outside but with a copper center. Most shamans preferred those to silver. For one thing, they had to have been made by sorcery; no modern smith could turn out anything like them. For another, the numbers they bore were consistently bigger than those on silver coins. Each shaman had his own explanation for why that was so, but all agreed it had to have some sort of magical import.

Madyu bowed to north and south, east and west. He patted the ground to show his reverence for the earth powers, waved his hands through the air to draw the attention of the sky gods. Then he began the first prayer of the ritual, the one to make keen the noses of the hunting hounds.

He was a conscientious craftsman and did his best to ensure the hounds’ success. Not only did he call the beasts dawgs after the fashion of his own tribe and those closest to it, he also named them sheeyas, as did the KayJun clans to the east, and perros, as did the Makykanoes to the west and south. He did not know or presume to guess which language the gods spoke, but preferred to cover as many bets as he could.

He went on to bless the hunters’ boots to ensure that they slipped through plain and woods without making a sound. He also blessed their bows and arrows to make the shafts fly straight and true. Again he used all three local languages, and a couple more besides. When tribes met to swap pots and horses and women and metal, shamans generally went off by themselves and traded names. Things were, after all, merely things, and manifested themselves only in this world. But their names, now, their names held power, for names echoed through the spirit world as well.

At any rate, true names, secret names, created those echoes. Madyu remembered the war he’d headed off by ascertaining the secret name of a rival tribe’s chieftain and threatening to do dreadful things to the man’s ghost unless he called off his warriors.

While never easy, that sort of coup was at least possible with human beings, who acquired their secret names from one another. But who could be sure what the secret name of a dog was, or a willow, or a shoe? That was why shamans swapped names back and forth: in the hope of hitting the one true one among the many.

Having done his utmost with the hunters’ animals and gear, Madyu cast the best spells he knew on the beasts they hunted. As he incanted, he thought that any visiting shaman would have admired his technique: He had the cup made from the tip of a wild bull’s horn, the turkey feather, the white-haired deer tail, the rabbit’s foot, and the squirrel skin all ready where he could reach them without interrupting his ritual. He summoned the prey by every name he knew, no matter how exotic. As he did whenever he said the word, he wondered what tribe called a simple, ordinary squirrel a bepka.

He was hot and tired and covered with sweat by the time he finished the hunting magic. Heat and sweat had to be lived with in Eestexas. Legend said that in the Old Time people could make the air around themselves cool whenever they wanted. Madyu, a thoroughgoing realist, did not believe the legend for a minute: if people had ever enjoyed such a useful skill, they wouldn’t have been stupid enough to lose it.

When he went outside, he squinted against the glare. The sun beat down with almost physical force. The tribal encampment was nearly deserted, with most of the men at the hunt and the women out in the fields. Children ran between tents, raising hell. One of them stopped to grin at Madyu. “Look, look, look!” he squealed, pointing proudly. His grin had a gap in it.

“I see, Hozay,” Madyu answered gravely. “What did the tooth fairy leave you?” As he spoke, his hand twisted in the gesture that kept the fairy from stealing teeth that weren’t ready to leave their owner’s head.

Hozay reached into his belt pouch and took out two good iron arrowheads. “Look, look, look!” he said again.

“Very nice indeed.” Madyu fought down a stab of jealousy. The tooth fairy hadn’t left him anything so fine when he was a boy. But then, Hozay’s parents were close kin to Ralf, the chief, and the tooth fairy seemed to favor people who were well off. Those that have, get, even from fairies, the shaman thought resentfully.

He couldn’t stay mad at Hozay, though. For one thing, he looked almost irresistibly cute with his missing tooth. And for another, he didn’t stick around as a focus for Madyu’s pique-he dashed off yelling after his friends.

The shaman walked over to the creek, stripped off his linen shirt and buckskin leggings, and dove in. He came up snorting and blowing and at least a little relieved. Then he went down again, swam underwater over to a rock on which a red-ear turtle was su

He swam a while longer, then went back to reclaim his clothes. He discovered they were not there to be reclaimed. None of the small boys was in sight, either, which gave him more than a little reason to suspect the clothes had not ambled off by themselves. The shaman said a couple of choice things under his breath, added a couple of choicer ones out loud. The shirt and leggings failed to reappear. Swearing and dripping, Madyu went back to his tent without them.