The young shaman was to go on another journey to his mentor. But, as always, the place was unknown. He only knew that when the snow melted away, he would have to set off. But where?..
Not knowing what to do, Saosh Yant sat on a huge tree stump that remained from an old oak, and began to play the xomus. It was full moon. The cold silver moon had risen above the mountains and watched the country with its sad magical gaze. It was hurrying him, “Go, go, Saosh Yant! He is waiting for you! It is time!” He had abandoned himself to the xomus playing, forgetting about everything. Kudai Kam had once told him, “Everything you do, my friend, you should do with total dedication. Then you will succeed. Or don’t do it at all! Don’t waste your time.” Saosh remembered these words throughout his life. And now he was entirely, with every fiber of his being, absorbed in the xomus playing, summoning the assistant spirits. They soon came to him and began to show him the way. Without hesitation he took his things (he had made everything ready beforehand) and set off. His parents just sympathetically watched him go.
“He is going to Him,” the mother whispered with reverential awe.
“Let him go,” the father nodded. “Such is his path. Don’t hinder him.”
“He could at least say good-bye,” the woman sighed.
“He’ll come back. Stop worrying, Mother. Let’s go to sleep.”
They returned into the house and Saosh Yant went the way shown to him by the spirits.
He was walking through the taiga in the Altai Mountains and when at times he began to stray from the way, the spirits gave him a sign: now a hawk flew by with a shriek, firmly holding its prey in the claws; then quietly but very near, an owl winged past. So close that Saosh had time to see the light-colored fluffy belly. Now a roe deer leapt out and ran past, then a maral showed its back, or a sudden gust of wind blew, wailing in the bare tree-crowns – it meant that he had to go that way. In this manner, little by little, sign after sign, Saosh came to the Chulyshman River Valley.
The steep, unscalable cliffs surrounded the bed of this proud and offish river. Down the stream was Lake Teletskoe. Since ancient times it had been believed to be the realm of the God Erlik, Lord of the other world. It was considered that at its bottom lived Erlik Khan himself. And every year he took no less than ten people, or even more, to satiate his gluttonous appetite. Rumor had it that the divers who had reached the bottom of Lake Teletskoe, returned white-haired. They were unable to speak for a long time, and didn’t answer any questions, giving the impression that had just met face to face with Erlik himself. When they recovered, they said that at the bottom of the lake they had seen dead bodies which had been there for centuries. Undecayed. Because even bacteria could not live in such cold. Discolored to pale blue and horribly bloated, disfigured by time. Even fish didn’t live in such cold depths. So there was no one who could eat these bodies. And the outer beauty of the lake was shaded in by this stern, mysterious, relentless and even sinister glory.
The Chulyshman Gorge had a similar nature. There was an aura of cold, sternness and severity about this area.
Saosh Yant was going toward the river’s headwaters. After two days’ journey he came to the Katu-Yaryk pass, which could be translated as “ravine” or “gorge”. The man-made road from the gorge bottom to the top looked like a serpentine band that stretched out on a relatively smooth slope. It wasn’t smooth in every sense of the word, though. Having appeared at the end of the last century, it had made life easier for many of the locals but also taken the lives of many others.
And now, having come close to the pass, Saosh Yant noticed a smashed frame of a car, which was like a reminder at the bottom of the slope.
“What happened here?” Saosh Yant thought with caution.
He closed his eyes, tuned in, turned his head toward the car, and the next instant the picture emerged before him. A small, dilapidated Zhiguli is going down the winding mountain pass. It is cram-full with things of all sorts. Loads of packs, sacks and suitcases. Boxes, bundles, baskets… There hardly is room for the people in all this junk. There is even a goat in here! It keeps bleating plaintively, but nobody is paying any attention to it. By little and little, the Zhiguli is crawling down the bending slopes toward its aim. The people keep quiet. The driver is feeling very nervous, but gives no sign of it. Only his clenched jaw reveals how he feels. In the passenger compartment, if one could call it that, there is a tense silence. Close to the middle of the pass a peculiar smell appears. The smell which one can never forget or mistake for another. An experienced driver will know at once what it’s all about. It’s the smell of overheated brakes. The next instant the brakes fail, the car rushes along the road, and on the nearest bend the driver loses control and the car falls down the precipice. A short fall, a strike against the ground… And then it starts rolling over all the way to the very bottom of the gorge…
“Well,” thought Saosh Yant wonderingly. “Mountains don’t forgive thoughtlessness. Or mistakes. But there must have been signs which the people who were getting into this car, could hardly fail to notice. Something minor, something wrong or fishy. Or this aching, sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, for that matter. One should always listen to this feeling. But they did not. They shook it out of their heads and said to themselves, ‘Ah! Things will work out! We should be lucky.’ And this is the result. So I will learn by this example. I will listen to what my instinct prompts me to do, pay more attention to all the signs that are shown to me all around! To what the spirits tell me.”
“Peace be with you, my brothers! May you rest in peace! Gods be with you!”
With these words Saosh Yant bowed to the ground, then stood silent for a while, watching the twisted car frame. Then he turned and began to climb the narrow road carved out in the mountain, upward.
