They Called Us Shaman

by Corinne Beenfield

  “So my captivity pays for your freedom, then.” I look her in the eye, unflinching.

  “Well . . .” She looks away, at my princess chamber. The room is windowless perfection. “If this is captivity, I don’t think I’d mind it a bit.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I take the gown from her. Hanging it back up, I close the doors of the wardrobe. “You aren’t separate from the people you love most.”

  She swallows, and I think an argument waits in her throat, but no words come out.

  On the far end of the main room, an elaborately carved door opens, and through it a man steps toward us. His skin is the rich color of clay and soil, and it’s the first thing I notice about him because, well, how can I not? Only his loins and thighs are covered by a white wrap-around skirt, a triangular piece of celestial blue cloth in front and a thick crimson belt around his waist. He wears a necklace with rays of gold as thick as my hand and a lapis-looking stone resting between his collarbones. His shoulders are broad, his build thin, yet muscular and sinewy, like a mountain cat. His hair is black as blindness and it is cropped short, only slightly longer than the stubble on his cheeks and chin.

  “Ah, here’s your roommate now.” Azure smiles and I spin around to face her. I turn my back to him so he can’t see my mouth moving.

  “My roommate is a man??” I frantically whisper and gesture over my shoulder.

  “Clearly.” She mischievously smiles and raises a delighted eyebrow in the direction of his bare chest.

  “I cannot room with a man!” Panic settles into my chest. This is wrong. If anyone at home knew I’d slept nights in the same room as a strange man, the shame would become my shadow. Azure stands there, the corners of her mouth perpetually turned as if playing a game where the goal is not to laugh. She simply doesn’t seem to care that a person can be ruined from assumptions made about moments like this.

  “Please!” I fiercely mouth the words.

  But Azure just childishly shrugs as if to say, Sorry, it’s out of my hands, though I can tell she’s loving this. “Ramose!” She looks past me and greets him warmly—too warmly, I think. I have to spin back around to face him, and though I attempt to stifle the trepidation on my features, he would have to be a fool not to see right past my façade. I flush, trying not to let my eyes settle on the vast amounts of skin he is showing, but then feeling sure that I’m staring too intensely at his face.

  I wish I were anywhere but here.

  His gaze upon us comes into focus, and he stops walking towards us as suddenly as though he had run into a wall. For the briefest second, his eyebrows raise, eyes widen, and his mouth falls open. Then with an exhale, he closes his mouth and gives me a soft smile. I feel my body flush warm against my will. He offers no words in return to Azure, so she plows forward before the awkwardness can settle over us. “This is your new roommate, Joanna. She just arrived.” Azure said it as casually as if I had arrived via horseback, and the slightest scoff escapes under my breath. Azure pretends not to notice. “Joanna, Ramose. He was a big name in Pharaoh's court, what, something like 2000 BC?”

  Ramose only gives her a slight nod without taking his eyes off me. As our eyes lock, instantly comes to mind that first moment with the swan that I just recounted to Azure. Just like then, Ramose’s dark eyes connect with me more than words could. They are so gentle and searching, like a lantern fighting off nighttime in the woods.

  “I am sorry for your circumstances.” Ramose’s voice is soft, his face etched with sincerity and intensity. “But I am grateful for the company.” He’s handsome, yes, but there is something more there, something magnetic coming from deep within that goes beyond his looks. I wonder if everyone senses it when they first meet him, if they feel that draw to know him more.

  Suddenly aware of the pause I left hanging between us, I quickly answer, “Thank you,” and try to make my gaze nonchalant.

  “Joanna.” Azure’s voice is chiding. “Welcome to the future. Men and women live together all the time. Who knows? You may even come to enjoy it.” She grins knowingly, and as Ramose turns away, I think I can see his face flush. My own cheeks are burning as she goes on. “Now, I should let you two get to know each other. Don’t stay up too late!” Her voice sings at the end again. I hate it when she does that. My neck itches, and as I scratch it, I look away from Ramose and watch her step toward the door. She places a hand on it, and I hear it click open just as it had when we entered. In those short supervised moments, we had still been locked in. Controlled.

  At the last moment, Azure looks back at me, her expression soft. “I enjoyed hearing your story today, Joanna. Give us a chance—I think you are going to like it here. Most . . .” Her glance flits like a bird to Ramose. “. . .people do.” With that, she gives a broad smile. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Azure slips out and I stand in that grand audacious room, unsure what to do with myself as though I was unaccustomed to my own limbs.

  I don’t like her. I don’t trust her. Yet I want to run after her and call her back because that would be better than being left to my thoughts. Now I have to face what I have done.

  I betrayed the earth. I told its enemy all about it. In a moment of desperation, I sold what was precious for cheap. Perhaps I deserve to lose magic. I chose to help them, and choose to continue if it means getting to go home, but I hate myself all the same for doing so. Never in my life have I had such little pride in who I am.

  Suddenly the room seems a vacuum where no life can survive. Isn’t that Their whole objective? Silence settles on my skin, seeps into my blood like a poison and seems to pulse through me, through my fragile heart then into every inch of me. It flows into my lungs. My hands begin to tremble and I pull them close to my lips, trying to steady them, though truly, what part of me is steady? My eyesight is blurring. I’m attempting to breathe, yet no air is making it to my poison-filled lungs when suddenly, I feel a hand on my shoulder. Turning, I face Ramose, who gently smiles and gestures to the table of food behind him.

  “Are you hungry? The world always looks a little brighter when you have a full stomach.” I don’t answer. I can’t for lack of air, but he sees the pleading glance in my eyes and walks the two steps to the table and pulls out a chair for me, where I promptly collapse. I stare blankly at the platter in front of me, as if I’ve never seen food before, the weight of sorrow paralyzing my limbs at my sides. Ramose watches me for a moment, then begins to fill a plate. Setting it in front of me, he kindly urges, “Try to get something down. It may help.”

  After a minute of sitting, I feel able to catch my breath and raise my hand to the plate. Everything on it is foreign and strange, with only the exception of bread and soft cheese. Picking up the knife, I spread the creamy white cheese in abundance, then raise the fresh, warm bread to my mouth, its enticing aroma promising this will be worth my effort. And it’s right. Biting down, it tastes like nothing I’ve ever known. Each ingredient in the bread and cheese must have been of sensational quality to reach this level of perfection. Yet like everything else here, it cannot satisfy me. The taste of what is lacking chokes me before I can swallow my first bite, and a sob catches in my throat. I clutch at my chest, at the pain that is palpable there.

  I want to be stronger. If I could make it so the misery of what has happened couldn’t touch me, I would. But this is the curse in my blessing. I feel too much. It’s what makes it so I can be in touch with the earth normally, yet right now it’s what makes it feel as though my heart was smashed upon the repulsive counterfeit marble floor at my feet. My tears start to flow unchecked, my whole body shaking with grief. Reaching in front of me, I try to clasp on to something, anything to support me, and my fingers turn white as they clutch at the table. I cry for all I’ve lost, all I’ve just done, for the life I’m entering that I can’t bear. A life without Mama, Leo, Italy, or the earth. How can I possibly be the same? They are a part of me that has died, yet the rest of me has to carry on.

  On the other side of the ta
ble, I sense Ramose walk up and tentatively pull out the other chair. He sits and turns toward me, though I don’t meet his eyes. But he stays, and somehow I feel as though his heartache is laid on the table in front of us too, that it is reaching out to me to say, “You aren’t alone in this.”

  Finally, my sobs turn to hiccupped breaths, and I can look up at him. “How?” The word comes out small and groveling. “How did they silence even the earth? How can the food not hold its voice?” I pick up the silent slice of bread and thrust it toward him, demanding an answer.

  He runs his fingers over the dark stubble on his cheeks, then slowly answers. “They’ve processed it. Changed it so far from its original form that we can’t hear the voice of the earth hiding within it. It is injected with preservatives that make it so it doesn’t spoil fast or so the hot things stay hot and the cold things stay cold.” Stabbing a smoking piece of meat, he holds it up to me. “This has been sitting here for three hours, yet it seems fresh off the stove. Even the water we use to bathe ourselves has been treated. They have left nothing untouched. They can’t. How then could they contain us?” He pauses, perhaps watching any strength I have left erode to pebbles, and attempts to cheer me up. “But Azure is right—most people do like it here. There is a beauty to be found here, I cannot deny that.”

  Suddenly, as though I hadn’t seen him before, I notice the subtle way his lower lip comes out, the way his eyebrows are drawn in and then up. He is no less heartbroken than I am, I realize—simply less shocked. My despair may be cascading over me, but his grief flows deep where it can’t be seen, a river underground.

  “If that is so,” I tilt my head, “then why are you so sad?”

  My question catches him off guard, though one corner of his mouth turns up.

  “Not one for small talk, are you?”

  “Well, it’s not as though we could talk about the weather.” I gesture to the windowless walls around me. To my surprise, he chuckles, and the laugh, though small, is sunshine through the rain.

  For a moment, I think he might answer my question, but then he stands up. “If you aren’t hungry, I would suggest getting some rest. There is sleeping wear in your drawers, and brushes for your hair and teeth in there as well. For privacy, you can go into the bathroom. I have a feeling you will rather like something in there called ‘indoor plumbing.’” He gestures to the door I first saw him walk through. “When you are ready to sleep, slide your hand across the lamp beside your bed and it will go off.”

  Sitting back in the seat, I just shake my head and toy with a fork on the table. “Why bother? No amount of sleep is going to take care of the kind of tiredness I feel.”

  He shrugs one shoulder. “Perhaps not. But when you sleep, all of this—” He waves his hand in a swoop, taking in the room. “—goes away for a while.”

  A valid point.

  He walks to his side of the room and begins to get ready for bed. Numbly, I take his advice. I find my sleepwear in the drawers, like he said—a silk nightgown as blue and soft as a baby’s eyes. When I come out of the bathroom minutes later, his side of the room is dark, and I tread quietly so as not to disturb him, my mind still on the fabulous alternative to a chamber pot I had found in the bathroom.

  The bed will take a bit of unearthing—I count no fewer than thirteen pillows. After tossing four to the floor, I give in to the task and instead bury myself in them. Once settled under the duvet, I have to reach over the pillows to turn off the lamp, and I realize I must look ridiculous. For a moment, I envision myself stuffed inside a cannoli, engulfed in sweet cream and softness, and I can’t help but smile at the thought. My mind churns, confused. What sort of place is this? There is so much beauty here. Perhaps it isn’t all bad.

  Perhaps.

  From across the room, Ramose starts to speak into the darkness. He doesn’t raise his voice for me to hear. He almost seems to be talking himself, and I have to hold perfectly still so that the rustle of the duvet won’t swallow his words.

  “As a boy, I enjoyed going out in the boats. My parents and I lived near the Nile, and I would fish often. Most everyone used baskets to catch the fish, but I found that if I carefully secured a dead, bright insect on the bottom of the basket, the fish would come straight to us. The fish would swim into my baskets with hardly a passing thought.”

  He pauses, his story hanging between us. With the lights out and the abundance around us now hidden, his words alone seem real, like a single star in an otherwise barren sky. I remain still, wondering silently if he will go on. When he speaks, I can hear the agony in his voice.

  “That is why I don’t wish to be here. No matter how lovely the bait, we are captured all the same.”

  ___

  I wake from the memory and place my palms over my eyes. My hands pull down over my cheeks, the stubble scratching at my fingers. Exhaustion wishes to overtake me, but the cogs in my mind refuse to rest, spinning without result. “Come on, Ramose,” I whisper to myself. “There’s work to be done.”

  Yet each memory is a cog of its own, and the more I find, the more prongs fit into each other and whirl and chink together until one mechanism at a time, a machine takes form.

  Like all machines, I must create it for a purpose. To unlock doors. To break walls.

  To give us our freedom.

  TWELVE

  The Californian Remains, July 2048 A.D.

  If I were nailed inside a coffin, I couldn’t feel more claustrophobic, but apparently no one else in the room shares my feelings. On every side of me, people dance as if it’s their last night alive, though perhaps this mentality is just a tactic to get them not to worry about what they’ll be feeling in the morning. If music could blow this roof off, I’d easily be soaring free by now, but instead, I stand in the chaos caked in sweat—and not all of it my own. Next to me, Azure laughs, and she has to lean in for me to hear.

  “Oh, Joanna! You are a fish out of water, aren’t you?” She grabs my hand as though we are friends and leads me to a table on the outskirts. I notice a table beside ours that contains a group of young Shaman. The whites of their eyes are far from white, but a teary red. Around the table, they are smiling and laughing as they share something in front of them, cleaving to it like a lifeline. No one seems bothered by the blood dripping from one man’s nose. I meet his eyes briefly as he wipes the blood away with the back of his shaky hand. He drops his gaze, but it’s too late. I saw the loneliness there. How could I not recognize it when I face it more often than my own reflection? It strikes me that for how happy the group seems, why do they keep needing to reach into that bowl?

  “How’s that culture shock treating ya?” Azure asks as a platter comes around with tiny drinks. She takes two.

  Sliding into my seat, I look at the people in front of me, each dressed to show as much skin as possible, each skin different from the one next to it. “Cultures shock, I should think you mean.” I tilt my head, trying to take in their uniqueness despite the dim lighting. “It’s as if the entire world were condensed into this one room. How do they even communicate with each other?” The thought has occurred to me before, but never when Azure was around to ask. “And how does everyone I meet speak my language?”

  “Please.” She looks amused. “We have the highest concentration of Magic Ones in history, and many of the modern day’s greatest scientific minds. Do you think much limits us?” She jerks her head back quickly, swallowing her drink in nearly one gulp.

  “Joanna!” Alessio’s voice is near, though I don’t see him in the mass. I stand, searching for him. I’ve been at the Academy three days now, answering the questions and continually asking, “Can I see Alessio yet?” Today, at last, the answer is yes.

  “I found them. They’re here!” he calls to someone else just as I see him break through the crowd. He walks as though each time his foot meets the floor, it wasn’t completely expected, but his smile is pure daybreak as he gathers me into his arms.

  “Darling!” I squeal, throwing my arms aroun
d his neck. He kisses me passionately, and I try not to think of the onlookers, but only to kiss back. Some drink in his hand sloshes onto me, but I don’t even bother to look.

  “Oh, you’re beautiful! Isn’t she beautiful?” he asks the man approaching behind him. The man is older than most everyone else here and carries himself with neither the self-conscious bounce of youth nor the deteriorating stupor of old age, but with the confidence that he is exactly where he wants to be in his life. With light hair, rounded shoulders, and a trim waist, he is handsome for a middle-aged man. He holds himself with all the surety of a man who tomorrow will be appointed king. When he smiles at me, there is a softness to his gray eyes, and yet something in the back of my mind screams at me not to trust him. Soft doesn’t mean safe. Something soft could be just perfect for smothering a life out.

  “Yes, she is all you described her to be.” He smiles at me as Azure jumps to her feet.

  “Dr. Richardson!” Her breath catches and she fumbles to put down her glass, then extends her hand. “What a pleasure! I’m Azure Vickers, sir. I hadn’t heard that you were mentoring.”

  “Call me Gadian. I generally don’t.” He smiles and sits down, Azure gesturing for him to take a seat a moment after he already has. “But I made an exception for young Alessio.”

  “Joanna . . .” Azure turns as though just now remembering me. “Gadian is the director of the Academy. Remember, I told you about him?”