The Mysteries of the Shaman Stone

Chapter Five

In the morning, when everyone gathered for tea at a table under a self-made shed, German asked Alexander how he slept. “Simply excellent, but there was this dream about wolves again, and some blood-sucking creative bit my back at night”. Saying this, Sasha turned his back on him. Choking from what they saw, Herman and Nikita exchanged glances. In several places on the back, a birdshot was visible right under the skin, apparently fired from a rifle by Nikita. They said nothing to Alexander, only processed the wounds on his back and quietly pulled out the pellets.

Part II

Sending Sasha to the river for water, Herman and Nikita began to confer, what should they do next.

“This is some mysticism! I can’t believe in your fairytales, Herman, I do dabble myself, writing fiction stories. But to think of something like this happening in my life – Alexander is a wolfman! It’s just crazy!” – Nikita said.

“What about brownies and all the other mystical stories in Moscow newspapers and on TV?” Herman objected.

“Are you kidding me? It’s just PR crap for the sake of hype,” Nikita replied. “And here we have something that just doesn’t make sense! What shall we do, Herman? You’re a local, aren’t you?”

“There is only one solution: we have to take a boat and visit shaman, he ought to know what to do in this situation. It’s better not to tell Sasha anything right now to avoid frightening him. In the meantime, we will prepare for our journey and head up Vitim. We need to cover two hundred kilometers to reach the rapids while it’s still daylight. We need to go to the Shaman Stone. According to our ancient legends, it is there that a very old and powerful shaman lives.”

“What if he’s not alive anymore?” Nick asked.

“It’s impossible. Our spirits that they converse with have always lived there, near the Shaman Stone.”

Having brought enough water and seeing my friends hastily preparing to depart, I began to help them. We were all silent and concentrated, putting in all things that could come in handy on the road. Having loaded the backpacks into the boat, we went up the river. Having nothing to do, I picked up the binoculars and started watching the shore that we departed from. Trees and shrubs standing on the banks of the river shone with bashful nakedness tens of meters deep. Spring foliage, not fully developed yet, could hardly cover their trunks. One could see some kind of animal or other interesting things in the thick of the woods. Staring at the opposite side into the binoculars, I saw a pack of wolves running along the shore. The pack was led by the she-wolf already familiar from my dreams. Sensing my gaze, she stopped and, turning its chest toward me, pierced me with her eyes as if with a dagger. A string snapped inside my heart and a lump rolled up my throat that was preventing me from breathing. Seeing the state I was in, Nikita snatched the binoculars from my hands. Having a look, he shouted:

“Wolves! Herman, wolves, about ten of them running right behind us along the shore!”

“Damn them,” – Herman said and accelerated. The forty HP Yamaha rattled heavily on the reinforced transom custom-made for the boat motor of our “Crimea”. Having calmed down and put some clothes on to make myself warm, I fell asleep without noticing. I dreamt of my girlfriend Olya, who was waiting for me in Moscow. We were lying in my Moscow apartment and she was gently kissing my back, whispering to my ear:

“My Sashenka, I love you so much!”

I felt so good and, facing her to give her a kiss, I suddenly saw the fair-haired she-wolf that was licking my back bitten, as I thought then, by gnats. Jumping up abruptly – something that you should not do in a boat with low sides – I lost balance and immediately fell into the water. Half-asleep, I was beating my arms against the surface as strongly as I could, but the heavy clothes and my gumboots were pulling me to the bottom like a stone. Already saying goodbye to life, I felt how someone forcefully pushed me from the depths, supporting me and keeping me on the surface of the river for several minutes, until my friends approached with the boat.

“You rock, Sanya!” they exclaimed and, grabbing me by the arms, dragged me into the boat.

“To the shore,” Herman ordered to Nikita and the latter, like a seasoned captain, turned the wheel and headed off to the shore. “When did he learn to drive a boat?” I thought for a second. And then I started trembling hard, enough to set the teeth on edge. On the shore, taking off all of my clothes and jumping in the wind like a hare, he began to rub himself with vodka. My friends helped me by rubbing on the back.

“Just don’t get sick, Sasha,” Herman kept on saying, rubbing so hard that it seemed that there was a wall in from of him. Having set up a tent, we climbed into our sleeping bags. We could not go any further. The wet clothes in which I swam in the Ugryum River was drying on sticks stuck between the stones. And the last rays of the sun, evaporating moisture from it, went beyond the horizon without completing their work.

“Pity that there were only twenty kilometers left, but Sasha can’t travel naked,” Herman said and we all laughed. Having tied dogs near the boat twenty meters from us, we went to sleep. It was a slight to behold: Nikita was sleeping on the edge, embracing “Saiga” gun, with Herman with a carbine and all optics removed from it so as not to knock down the sights on the other side. And there was I, in the middle of this formidable guard, unarmed and languid from the vodka I drank. After chatting and laughing at each other, we quickly surrendered to sleep. At first, I didn’t dream, then one by one the memories of childhood began to flash through and, without noticing how this happened, I was speeding again inside a wolf pack. I was feeling so excited inside and could only feel my heart pounding heavily in the chest from the intense running. “There is something missing,” I thought. “Where is my girlfriend?” Stopping abruptly and turning on the side, I felt the alluring smell of a female. There was another smell nearby – that of a big male. “Did I really get a rival?” my blood rushed furiously to my head. Having jumped out into a small clearing and seeing my female on a towering hill, covered with soft thick moss, grinning and not letting a huge, almost black, wolf come closer. Overcome by rage, I rushed at him and a deadly fight ensued. I had more chances to win: I was on my territory, and it was my flock and my female, and he was a mere migrant. All this gave me much more strength, and soon the neck of the enemy, which I squeezed with fangs with all my strength, became limp, and he fell dead. Satisfied with the victory, I calmed down and licked the she-wolf in the head playfully. She began to lick me in response. Reaching the tongue to my nose, she suddenly stopped. “What a dry and hot nose you have, you must have gotten sick,” I heard her thoughts. “Lie here, I will be back soon,” and my girlfriend disappeared in the darkness. I don’t know how much time passed but, emerging from the night as suddenly as it disappeared, the she-wolf brought in her teeth some small roots, which she placed next to me. Intuitively understanding what they served for, I began to chew these roots. “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself. “How do I know the taste?” and woke up immediately! My snoring friends were lying next to me on either side. Closing my eyes and trying to get back to sleep, I failed. Moreover, moving away from sleep and feeling the bitterness of ginseng in my mouth, I remembered a night's dream. Passing my tongue inside my mouth, I felt bits of root and wool on my teeth, apparently, from the opponent I had killed. I was scared as never before! Getting up quickly and taking the rifle from Nikita’s hands, overcome by some strange desire, I wandered in thought along the shore. All of a sudden, a she-wolf blocked by way. Throwing up a gun from surprise, I could not pull the trigger, and we looked at each other for several minutes. In her eyes, I saw myself, clad in a wolf skin. The earth started spinning and the ground started crumbling under my feet.

Waking up from Herman’s slaps on my cheeks and opening my eyes, the first thing I saw was his face.

“I said you were going to get sick, here you are, and who's running half-naked in this cold? We’ll get you back on track in half an hour.” Saying this, they stuck a Dimedrol injection mixed with Analgin in my ass cheek. Some time passed, the fever disappeared, and I started to regain clarity of mind.

“Alright, that’s it, get yourself together,” Hera said to me, holding out my stuff that had dried in the wind. An hour later, our "Crimea" was approaching the shore, where right near the water stood the Shaman Stone. It was a huge megalith that dominated the surrounding nature. It towered and radiated powerful energy.

“Do you feel the force and energy emanating from it?” I asked Nikita. He started at me and said nothing. Without waiting for the boat to land, I jumped right into the water that reached the edge of my boots. So I threw myself at the stone with all my strength, hugging it, pressing my body against it, hot from the fever that was rising again. I suddenly felt such a relief and unearthly bliss. Closing my eyes, I started talking to the stone. Or, rather, the stone, invisibly to me, began singing an ancient shamanic song to me. “I am shaman, the stone spirit, standing before the sick! More than this, I can’t do! I always do the shaman thing around the world! The animal I ride is Manchirian elk! I travel far and I travel close, doing the shaman thing! I always see the creations of Higher Lords (the stars)! I always see the Higher Lord (the sky)! Who lives the shamanism, who lives the victories – here is my wide tambourine! Tonight, until the dawn begins, there is no thing I don’t see or know! Sick or wounded, there is enough strength to some, Hold me tight, and your illness disappears.” With every word of the song, my body parted with the sickness, filling with strength and energy instead. It seemed to me that we had become one with the stone, and I could stand there for a long time just enjoying the sense of euphoria that gripped my body if Herman had not grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the stone with force!

“You can’t hold on to the stone for a long time, or you may feel bad,” he said.

“Oh, come on, you and your bogus stories again,” Nikita uttered. Then we all noticed a bird flying in a strange way, apparently with a damaged wing. Having reached the stone, the bird sat on its top and literally a minute later, flapping its wings, it flew on as if nothing had happened. Nikita, who did not believe his eyes, bent down and picked up a large black ant on the ground, which one of us stepped on. The ant was still alive and jerking its legs. Finding a small depression in the stone, he laid it there. We silently encircled the stone, watching the ant. At first, nothing happened for a minute. Suddenly the ant rolled to his feet and briskly ran along the stone, down to the ground. Mouths open, we all followed him with an amazed gaze. Then Nikita made us laugh, throwing all his things on the ground and pressing himself against the stone, hugging him like a mother. Herman also hugged the stone on the other side.

“That’s enough. The Shaman Stone can give strength and health, but can also take it from those carried away,” he said. “Let’s go find the shaman, his home must be somewhere in this area”.

Throwing our backpacks behind us, we went up the hill, following a barely noticeable pathway. After about three hundred meters, a large chum with smoke coming up appeared before our eyes. It stood in the middle of a large clearing, and there were two smaller chums next to it, where a woman with two children was cooking something on fire. Herman went to her, asked her a question in Tofalar language and then returned to us.

“The shaman went to the taiga. He’ll only return tomorrow. The woman said we can spend the night in one of the chums”.

Having made ourselves comfortable and cheerful from communication with the Shaman Stone, we ate like wolves the venison offered to us by the tofalar woman, giving her five cans of tinned meat in return, at the sight of which the woman's eyes sparkled with joy. There was no refrigerator in the taiga, and the meat spoiled quickly, so the tinned meat was a lifesaver for any woman, allowing her to prepare a quick and tasty meal for her men and children. Knowing a little about tofalars, one could assume: this often saved them from the wrath of husbands who kept a firm hand on their wives. Many families living in the taiga still have many bans on women. For example: you can’t get into a man’s saddle, touch a weapon, step over men's belongings and many other restrictions that I found weird. Having eaten a good and tasty meal, the three of us, accompanied by dogs, decided to fish grayling on a small mountain river, which expanded as it flew closer to Vitim, rolling over large boulders, from which we were going to fish. Catching about four dozens of large graylings in no time (we could hardly eat more than that, including the dogs), we began to gut the fish right on the shore for subsequent salting. An hour later, we decided to try our slightly salted fish. Nikita and Herman ate salted grayling like wolves. Me, I found the salt annoying for some reason. Grabbing blindly one of the fish left for frying in the evening and therefore unsalted, and biting off a large piece of it, I realized that I like unsalted fish more. I ate about five of them, thinking that my friends would not notice it, and started feeling thirsty.

“I think I’ll take a walk,” I said to my friends and went down to the river. There, I had to face another surprise. On the shore, some wolves were sitting as if waiting for me. Without a drop of fear and going straight into the pack, I sat on the grass. The wolves surrounded me; my nocturnal girlfriend came closest to me and laid her head on my shoulder. Closing my eyes, I heard her thoughts: “Tonight I will tell you news, and it concerns only the two of us.” As I sat there, Nikita and Herman, having followed me, were watching this scene from the bushes. Nick was clicking with the camera all the time, saying:

“If we tell someone, nobody would believe it, and the photos will be the proof. Did you see, Herman, how he ate raw fish like a true wolf?”

German said nothing and simply admired the crazy beautiful picture of the love between Man and the Wolf. The careless fall of the photographer who got hooked on a branch instantly broke off this idyll. The cursing and the crunch of branches that followed made the flock run up the valley, and after a minute they disappeared from sight. Sitting with my back on friends, I was smiling and happy from the guess that dawned on me. The night was to become a confirmation of that. So I had nothing left to do, just wait until it comes. I never wanted to give a few hours out of my life the way I wanted to now, just to bring the desired moment closer. Living in Moscow, where the work of the head of the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union made me dangle all over the country and abroad, while the catastrophic lack of time simply did not give me an opportunity to relax even for a minute – and here at the other end of our country, having arrived at the invitation of my friend and writer Herman, I simply forgot about everything, and with every minute that I passed here, my wish to go back to the fussy world created by men became smaller. To stay here forever in the bosom of Mother Nature, not ruffled by civilization, and to enjoy the surrounding wild unbridled beauty was what I now craved for more than anything. Apparently, having felt my thoughts, Herman suggested that I communicate a bit with my home via satellite phone. Before that, Nikita had been chatting on the phone for five minutes. He wanted to step aside and tell the editor about the mysterious stories that happened to us, but he changed his mind in time, imagining what he would do if he heard such things from others in Moscow. The editor will surely think that we have been drinking here until we got delirious, so it was better to come back and show everything. Reluctantly taking the heavy phone from his hands, I dialed the number of the only person dear to me – Olga. I heard her excited voice, and it stirred a feeling of tenderness in me. Realizing that I missed her, I just kept on listening to her voice so dear to me and kept silent.

“Why the silence? I need to tell you something important,” Olga asked at the other end of the line, seemingly offended.

“Olenka, dear, I’ll come back soon,” I said and hung up in fear without understanding why. The big red disk of the sun was setting behind a hill, the night was getting closer. I was lying in chum, watching this miraculous sight through a half-opened curtain and falling asleep quietly.

“Sleeping already. Will we tie him with a rope?” Nikita asked Herman.

“He must be sleeping. The damn rope is of no help, you can’t deceive nature,” he answered. “Tomorrow, the shaman will come and decide what to do with him,” Herman gave up and, turning on his side, went to sleep. In my dream, I met my she-wolf again. While swimming with her in the river and chasing each other, I suddenly heard her thoughts again. She was grateful to me for the fact that we would have cubs soon, and they would grow as brave and strong as their father. Rejoiced at this news, I rushed to race with her like mad. Having regained consciousness from Nikita shaking me, I realized that it was already morning…

Part III

Having regained consciousness from Nikita shaking my shoulder, I realized that it was already morning.

“Get up, you sack rat, wash yourself and let’s have breakfast.” Upon leaving the chum, a picture of an early sunrise appeared before my eyes. It seemed that a magic crown of light and gray clouds, like a fluffy head surrounded a huge hill, under which our camp lay. “What a beautiful sight,” I thought and immediately heard the dogs barking, and a reindeer relay jumped out of nowhere into the clearing.

“Haigu, haigu!” shouted an elderly charioteer sitting inside. In his hands he held a long flexible stick, which he used to urge the deer, directing them in one direction or another.

“Here comes the shaman,” said German who came up to me. Hearing this, a feeling of inner anxiety began to wake up in me. Sensing a clear threat to my internal state, which I was already getting used to, coming from this person, I heard the thought of running away. Overpowering myself with a huge effort, I went up to the Shaman, who was surrounded by my comrades, explaining something to him hastily. As I approached, Herman switched to Tofalar language, and I did not understand what they were talking about anymore. The Shaman was piercing me with a gaze from under the thick gray eyebrows. Sucking on a pipe, he listened to Herman, nodding his head, sometimes inserting sparse words into the conversation. I only intuitively understood: the conversation was about me and my fate; unable to stand the man’s gaze, I stepped aside. Some time passed, and we were invited to eat. Having sat down in a circle near an impromptu table made of a mat covered with a white, apparently festive tablecloth, we began our meal consisting of boiled deer meat, fried hare, steamed tortillas, which replaced bread, and some kind of homemade jam as dessert. I don’t know what berries it was made from, but it was very tasty. After rummaging in his backpack, thrifty Nikita pulled out a bottle of good whiskey. After the second shot, we all cheered up, and even the old Shaman who, at first glance, seemed very severe, became more sympathetic to me. The alcohol relieved tension, and we began to communicate more confidently with each other, not hesitating to ask questions. Without much pussyfooting, Nikita shot out to the Shaman:

“Dear Sir, explain to me what is going on here? A stone heals birds and revives insects! My friend Alexander runs at night with wolves in the taiga.” The old man, sucking on his pipe, looked with interest at the agitated Nikita. Then he pulled the pipe out of his mouth and asked him, not answering the questions asked:

“And what is going on where you live in, in a big city?”

Nikita did not understand what the Shaman was driving at. The old man, keeping it quiet for another minute, answered:

“Nothing strange happens in our taiga, except for what has been living and thriving here for thousands of years, created by nature and spirits or, as you call it, God. We do not change anything, do not destroy and use what the Spirits gave us. On the contrary, you have destroyed everything spiritual in the place you live in, built your cities of stone and glass, invented flying birds, cars, completely changing your world. You have built churches where, as you say, the main spirit that you call God, lives. And sometimes you go there to pray for forgiveness, for your sins that are much more numerous than it could ever be possible to absolve. You call all of this a civilized way of living, thinking that it is what life is about! Yes! You could call that life, but it’s an imagined life that you invented. (You can also add about corrupt prosecutors and judges here). Now, we, the children of nature and spirits, live in these faraway places, guarding one of the last sanctuaries of our spirits. If it’s gone tomorrow, our whole world will collapse into the abyss and darkness, along with your money and the evil that this fetish produces.

Having said all this, the old man became silent. His words made us all think deeply. And I was once again convinced: I should stay here in the wild, leaving the worthless, bustling, as it seemed to me now, Moscow life, where, the last time I came to the countryside or visited surrounding nature, I could not find single a drop of inspiration and sensuality, something that is so essential for writing good prose. Only one soulless blockbuster about robots and other civilizations came out from under the pen. The complete absence of nature was to blame. The dachas were all alike: bombastic brick palaces with automatic gates and a minimum of trees. One day, having visited my friend on the riverbank in order to get some literary inspiration, I saw a shore, overbuilt with moorings for yachts and boats for kilometers. It did not even have a meter-wide gap for grass and trees, just solid concrete. The voice of the old man, who started talking again unexpectedly, brought me back out of my state of reflection:

“Alexander,” Shaman talked to me all of a sudden “You are between two rivers now. You are still in the middle. But with each day, your old, fake life is being replaced by the one that you’ve found by entering into the water, putting on your pass to this new life: the skin of the wolf you killed. Our legends say: if a man, knowing what awaits him, puts on the skin of a wolf on purpose while entering the water, he no longer has a chance to return to normal life. The hunter became a wolfman forever. Not everyone could pass such a test of dual life, many went crazy. There were times when hunters simply killed themselves. But this situation has two sides: becoming a wolfman, the hunter brought several times more catch, thereby saving his family from extinction in the taiga in bad years for fishing, consciously condemning himself to suffering in return for the lives of members of its clan saved from hunger! You have a chance, Alexander, as you made this rite without knowing it. Therefore, if you ask well the spirit of the wolf, he can let you go; you only need to want it really bad. Without your will, we won’t be able to do anything. And now I want to tell you one story which will let you understand another reason the Tofalar hunters wore the skin of a wolf, the leader of a pack. AI heard part of this story from my father, and our spirits told me what he could not see and hear, and what other people couldn’t tell me. My father, the head of a very large clan, consisting of five children and many relatives, was a very famous shaman and a successful hunter who always brought home a lot of catch. He would have lived on happily and in abundance, but one day he received some people clad in military uniform. One of them, apparently the eldest, dressed in a black leather jacket, introducing himself as an enlistment officer, asked my father to help him gather as many tofalar warriors as possible to send to the front, where there was a lack of soldiers. Nobody, except my father, could do this, as male tofas were scattered over a large territory in the taiga, and only a very skilled, respected hunter could gather all of them and could know where they could be found. Having agreed to meet with him at the same place in a month, my father disappeared in the taiga for a long time. Having returned three weeks later with a bunch of deer skins, he began to erect a few more chums for an increasing number of new hunters who came up every day from the taiga. Finally, as the day agreed between my father and a man in a leather jacket was getting closer, about forty men had gathered at the camp. The enlistment officer, whose name was Ivan Pavlovich, arrived and addressed them with a speech.