Eyes of the husky

# Trigger warning: bullying

I sprint towards the dog-walker. The guy with the husky. Ace dog: like a wolf. I slow, keep close behind them: safe now. The Year Six gang won’t bother me this close to a grown-up. Where can I empty out the maggots? Mum will go spare if she finds any. Traffic lights. A pause, chance for my heart to stop pounding.

The husky stares at me. What’s it like, being a wild dog, kept on a lead? I’ve seen them on the telly, pulling sleds in Iceland or somewhere. I can see the muscles, even when he’s still. The lights change and we cross. I turn into our road and head home. Tap every other railing, counting under my breath. A bus rumbles past, pulls up. The shaman steps out.

The shaman has a bushy beard and a deep voice. The shaman is my uncle. He lives in our basement. Mum sighs, but really she’s pleased he’s here. ‘Mostly harmless,’ she mutters. We walk the last few steps together. Mum won’t be back yet, so I can get a carrier bag and shake out the disgusting things wriggling in my blazer pockets. Maybe the bullies have had enough fun this week. They don’t find me every day.

***

On Friday the shaman makes supper for us. Big pot of vegetable stew, with chillies and spices. Mum’s working day shifts at the hospital now.

‘Alright, Davy?’ he says, ruffling my hair.

I wish he wouldn’t do that. I’m nearly ten. Not as bad as Nan calling me her ‘blue-eyed boy’, but still. The stew makes my tongue sting, so I eat lots of rice. He fetches a pot of sour cream from the fridge, dollops a big spoonful onto my plate.

‘Sorry. I didn’t like chilli at your age. You’re very brave.’

Mum smiles at him. ‘You wouldn’t eat any vegetables, then.’

I eat lots of vegetables, because that’s what Mum cooks. Cauliflower cheese and oven chips. Jacket potatoes and baked beans. It’s filling, but some days I fart a lot. The other kids hold their noses, call me names. My class aren’t too bad. I don’t go to the bog when Year Six are around, though. You don’t want your head shoved down the pan more than once.

The shaman didn’t always live with us. He used to visit, but not often. Dad didn’t like the shaman: ‘Your hippy brother coming to stay, again?’

Back then, the shaman was just Uncle Ian. Uncle Ian knew a lot about nature. He’d take me out to the moors, and we’d gather sticks covered with lichen, stones with holes through them. If Dad was shouting at the football on the telly when we got back, we’d stay down in the basement. One time he brought me a battered little book. ‘Insects of the British Isles’ it was called. There were pencil ticks on most of the pages.

‘My introduction to ecology,’ he said.

Mum said that Uncle Ian had gone travelling. We didn’t see him for ages.

I didn’t recognise him when he showed up one day with two huge rucksacks. He was hugging Mum, and her shoulders were shaking. He was very brown, and had this huge beard, and his clothes smelt of the joss sticks Mum burned when Dad was at the pub.

‘Hello, Davy, lad,’ was all he said when he saw me in the hallway.

He took me to the coast for the weekend. It was very cold, but we went on the beach and gathered seaweed, shells and bits of cloudy glass. ‘No such thing as bad weather, simply inappropriate clothing,’ he said, shivering. We had fish and chips for supper.

‘I need to go and sort some things out, Davy,’ he said. ‘If you like, I can come back and stay in your basement for a bit? But I’ll be working most of the time.’

‘What is your work, Uncle Ian?’

‘I’m a shaman, laddy.’

I didn’t know what a shaman was. When I asked Mum about his work, she said he was a researcher in ecology, and gave talks at universities. I didn’t know what ecology was, either.

He goes away for a couple of days, returns smelling of autumn leaves and bonfires. The house feels sad and empty when he’s not there.

He’d been with us a couple of weeks when he asked Mum if it was OK for him to give classes in the basement. She sighed, said ‘yes, but no more than five or six at a time, and what about the insurance?’

That weekend I asked him straight out. ‘What is it you teach, Uncle Ian?’

‘Shamanism, Davy. How to hold open the passage to the other world.’ So since then he’s been The Shaman.

His students hurry down the outside stairs to the basement. Plants in pots grow next to his front door. Two young men, but mostly women. Some are very pretty. I wait, then tiptoe down the inside steps, along the narrow passage.

I listen outside his door.

‘Why do we try to avoid pain?’ he asks.

‘Because it hurts,’ I yell silently.

‘What happens when we try to avoid pain?’

Murmuring from inside.

‘Yes: it mutates, becomes a different animal. The slug of apathy or the mouse of despair.’

How horrible to be the mouse of despair. Quivering, hiding under a pile of leaves, waiting for the owl to seize you. Despair means giving up on your life. A mouse can’t fight an owl, but why doesn’t it choose a better hiding place? What if it gathered all the other mice, and they agreed to fight, like a platoon? If the owl got scratched by lots of mouse claws, maybe it would decide to leave them alone. But that’s stupid. Mice can’t talk, so they couldn’t do anything like that. What if Year Five got together to fight off the bullies of the top class? We’re nearly as big as them. Not like mice taking on a huge owl.

The next morning, the shaman walks down the road towards school with me.

‘Everything OK, Davy?’ he asks. I nearly tell him about Year Six, but he couldn’t do anything, so I just nod.

That evening he asks if I’d like to come and sit in on one of his classes. I’m a bit scared, but I’m not going to be a mouse or a slug. I go down to the basement from the inside. Past the old coal bunker. I knock on the shaman’s door. It’s one big white room. The blind is made of thin bamboo strips. Patterned rugs on the floor. Beanbags piled up against the wall. There’s no telly. I look at the desk: a copper bowl next to a jug, plant in a pot, candle in a tub of sand, two little drums. On a low table are things we found on our walks: feathers, rocks, bark, seashells.

Students come in from the outside door. Once everyone’s sat on the floor, the shaman asks them to bring out the objects they chose. They open their backpacks, pull out random things: a book, an old-fashioned alarm clock with a bell, a box of tissues.

‘If you didn’t bring anything, just choose something from your pocket.’

I find a couple of trading cards I was saving for the worst bully.

‘Put them on the floor in front of you. Imagine those items stand for the emotions you don’t want to feel.’

I remember terror, thinking I was going to drown. Nasty laughter from those around. I hold my breath.

‘You don’t have to feel those emotions right now. Just look at the objects. Why did you choose those particular things?’

Sometimes the bullies leave you alone if you turn out your pockets. The shaman lights the candle, starts tapping the drums. Left hand, right hand. It’s a rhythm, like the tick of the kitchen timer.

‘Focus on breathing out. Make the out-breath longer than the inhale.’

I feel my breathing slow. He keeps tapping.

‘If it’s comfortable, close your eyes.’

I do, then open them a tiny bit to see if everyone else has. He smiles at me. I snap them shut. The drumming continues.

‘Just keep focusing on your breath…. Imagine you’re walking through a forest. You’re feeling calm and interested. You notice the trees. What do you see? Leaves, trunk, bark, branches. There’s a gentle breeze.’

The slow rhythm of the drums starts to feel like a heartbeat.

‘You’re going to meet the animal who will offer you power and support. You’re curious, calm, alert. You see that creature approaching. What message do they have for you?’

The bright blue eyes of the husky meet mine. I feel his strength flowing into me. I remember running for hours, with my pack. Snow fluttering through the air as we kept heading forwards, feeling our muscles working, part of the pack. The light changes. I become aware of the drumming.

The shaman’s voice: ‘You don’t need to figure this out, overthink it. Just trust that you’ll have your power animal with you next time that unwelcome feeling returns. ’

The drumming slows.

‘Focus on your breathing, and when you’re ready, open your eyes.’

Sounds of cloth rustling against beanbags.

***

The shaman and I go for walks on the moors again. I help him collect the tools of his trade: feathers, bark, stones. I’m glad he’s still with us. It was the shaman who told Mum I needed to go to the funeral: ‘The boy will only wonder, otherwise.’ The shaman got back from his travels the day after Dad died in that motorway pile-up. He took me down to the basement and explained what happened at funerals. Mum had asked me to choose my favourite photo of Dad for the order of service. She laughed at the one I chose. That strange laugh that sounds like a dog bark. The picture from last summer, Dad in the team strip, toasting Mum with a pint.

I pass the husky on my way to school. His piercing blue eyes meet mine. I know his yearning to run. The Year Six bullies don’t come near me any more.