The Master of the Animals Who Lends His Herd

Before the hunter lifts the bow, there is a conversation he cannot hear.

In the world that runs parallel to the visible taiga — the same forests, same rivers, same ridgelines, but turned slightly sideways from ordinary sight — Bayanay the Master of Animals tends his herd. The reindeer that graze on the spirit-side moss are the originals, the soul-versions, of every reindeer that walks on the physical side. When one of Bayanay’s animals is released to the human hunter, a physical reindeer becomes killable. Not before.

The Evenki hunter understands this at a level beneath words. He has been taught it since childhood: you never take more than is offered. You do not boast after a kill. You do not waste what you have been given. You treat the bones correctly — returning them to the earth or water in the proper way — because the bones are what Bayanay uses to reconstitute the animals for the next season. To leave bones in disorder is to damage the master’s herd.

When the hunt fails, it is because the debt has grown too large or the protocol has been violated. This is when the shaman goes.

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The shaman’s name in the Evenki language means something like “the one who is excited” — or more precisely, the one who has been seized by something larger than himself and cannot be unshaken by it. He has been in practice for twenty years. He knows Bayanay’s territory in the spirit world the way he knows the summer grazing routes in the physical world.

He enters trance at the edge of the hunters’ camp, two nights after the fifth failed hunt in a row. The temperature is forty below. The drum is wrapped in reindeer skin to keep it from cracking.

In the lower spirit country he finds Bayanay sitting in his tent surrounded by his reindeer, which are the spirit-forms of every reindeer for three hundred kilometers. Bayanay is not angry. He is patient in the way that something very large and very old can afford to be patient. He shows the shaman what the problem is: a hunter in the group killed a pregnant female three seasons ago and did not return the bones correctly. The debt has been accumulating.

Bayanay names what is needed: a ritual apology, bones returned to the river, a three-day restriction on hunting. He shows the shaman which animals he is willing to release to which hunters when the restriction lifts — specific animals, specific hunters, the exactness of the arrangement confirmed by the exchange of spirit-tobacco and spirit-song.

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The shaman returns and delivers the terms.

The hunter who killed the pregnant female is mortified. He has been carrying the weight of the failed hunts without knowing why they were failing, and the relief of having an answer is almost as great as the shame of the transgression. He performs the apology ceremony. The bones are returned. The three-day restriction is observed.

On the fourth day, three reindeer walk into the hunters’ sight line at close range and stand still long enough for the hunters to approach. In the language of the hunters, this is called being given. The reindeer are not running. They are presenting themselves. Bayanay has released them.

The shaman records the transaction in the way shamans record things — not in writing, but in his body, in the specific shape of the debt and its resolution, in the knowledge he carries about the spirit-side economy of this particular stretch of taiga. He adds it to everything he already knows about the ledger that runs between the living and the masters who actually own the world’s living things.

The hunter who receives the gift of the standing reindeer does not waste a single part of the animal. He thanks it before and after. He returns the bones to the river with the correct words, at the correct time, in the correct position.

The debt is cleared.

The herd, on the spirit-side, grazes undisturbed.