He even showed me how to make tumors shrink up and disappear. That didn’t always work either, but sometimes it did, and sometimes the tumor didn’t come back. And when someone got brought in that had what I’d call pneumonia, he couldn’t make it go away right off, but usually they’d feel better right away, and well, after a night’s sleep. They’d be back working in two or three days, instead of a couple weeks.
Like anything else, what he did had its limits. Sometimes someone wasn’t helped at all—everyone dies sooner or later—and he said the shaman who couldn’t live with that had better quit and go to farming, for peace of mind. For me, not being perfect wouldn’t be any problem; I’d been doing it all my life.
It was a mild sunny morning in Three-Month when I met Vulkan. Or when Vulkan found me. I’d felled a tree and was chopping logs out of it when I heard Blue Wing yelling from way up high, I couldn’t tell what. Then I felt someone looking at me—someone of power—and turned around. And almost shit myself! There was a BIG boar hog standing between two trees watching me. Not that he looked like any hog I’d ever seen, not even a razorback. I could tell he was a hog, but for size he reminded me more of a shorthorn bull, a good four feet high at his humped shoulders. He had a thick coat of bristly hair, dark gray on the sides and nearly black along the back. His tusks looked like ivory sickle blades, and I’d judge his weight at better than half a ton. There was no doubt at all that were he to meet a bear in the woods, that bear would go up a tree quick as a wink, crying for its mama.
I should have been scared to death, but after the first shock I wasn’t; somehow I knew he wasn’t there to rip me up. So I stepped onto the log I’d just cut, squatted there and looked at him.
hSo you are the one.h
His “voice” was deep and hollow, like someone talking with an empty milk pail over his head, but somehow I knew there wasn’t really any sound to it—that the words had come into my head without him ever speaking. “Could be,” I said. “It depends on who the one’s supposed to be.” That amused him; I could feel it. “Sounds as if you’re looking for someone in particular,” I went on. “What brings you?”
hAn urge. The purpose will no doubt unfold itself for us in good time.h His hooves, the only dainty thing about him, brought him a few steps closer. hYour aura marks you as someone of power,h he said. hA ruler and magician.h
He had an aura too, all animals do, but with all that hog to look at, I’d paid it no attention. Now I did. It wasn’t what I think of as an animal aura. More like yours or mine or Blue Wing’s, but different. His spirit aura showed at least as much power as that giant body. I wondered if all great boars were like him, and he answered my question without my putting it into words.
hWe are alike, they and I, in being magicians, and in essence, rulers. And in various other respects. But still we vary one from the other, though less than humans do.h
Then he just stood there. It seemed like if he’d come looking for me, it was up to him to lead the conversation. But if he didn’t know why he’d come, maybe I ought to keep things going till he remembered or figured it out, or decided to leave. “My name’s Macurdy,” I told him. “What’s yours?”
He didn’t answer for a minute. Then, hYou may call me Vulkan,h he said. hWe do not have names, but I like that one.h
After another half minute with neither of us saying anything, I tried something else. “From what I’ve heard, you folks eat animals, and I’ve seen where one of you rooted up skunk-cabbage and ate it. But big as you are, it must take a lot to keep you fed. Seems like you’d leave more sign around than you do.”