"James Herbert - Soul Catcher" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert James)

He thought: I am in the center of the universe!

Bee spoke to him then: "I am Tamanawis speaking to you. . . ."

The words boomed in his awareness, telling him his name. He spoke it aloud:

"Katsuk! I am Katsuk."

Katsuk.

It was a seminal name, one with potency.

Now, being Katsuk, he knew all its meanings. He was Ka-, the prefix for everything human.
He was -tsuk, the bird of myth. A human bird! He possessed roots in many meanings:
bone, the color blue, a serving dish, smoke . . . brother and soul.

Once more, he said it: "I am Katsuk."

Both selves flowed home to the body.
He stared at the miraculous bee on his hand. A bee had been the farthest thing from his
expectations. He had been climbing, just climbing.

If there were thoughts in his mind, they were thoughts of his ordeal. It was the ordeal
he had set for himself out of grief, out of the intellectual delight in walking through
ancient ideas, out of the fear that he had lost his way in the white world. His native
soul had rotted while living in that white world. But a spirit had spoken to him.

A true and ancient spirit.

Deep within his innermost being he knew that intellect and education, even the white
education, had been his first guides on this ordeal.

He thought how, as Charles Hobuhet, he had begun this thing. He had waited for the full
moon and cleansed his intestines by drinking seawater. He had found a land otter and cut
out its tongue.

Kuschtaliute -- the symbol tongue!

His grandfather had explained the way of it long ago, describing the ancient lore.
Grandfather had said: "The shaman becomes the spirit-animal-man. God won't let animals
make the mistakes men make."

That was the way of it.

He had carried Kuschtaliute in a deer scrotum pouch around his neck. He had come into
these mountains. He had followed an old elk trail grown over with alder and fir and
cottonwood. The setting sun had been at his back when he had buried Kuschtaliute beneath
a rotten log. He had buried Kuschtaliute in a place he never again could find, there to
become the spirit tongue.