They Called Us Shaman

by Corinne Beenfield

  I go to lift my hand, to show her the piece of raw fruit I still cling to, but something tells me not to hand it over so easily. Dropping my hand to the side, I take a deep breath. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Let’s get that healer back here, get some raw food so she can connect—”

  “No.” Azure cuts me off and turns from me. “I’ve already tried. But there’s no way—”

  “Why not?”

  “Gadian. Gadian forbids it.” Her chin trembles, and I think for a moment that she hates herself for what she says next. “He would rather see the man die.”

  ___

  Closing my eyes, I wade through the questions in my mind. “Knowing”—that’s what my gift is called. How simple that makes it sound. But I suppose “searching-and-studying-the-memories-of-others-throughout-all-of-time” is a bit lengthy for a title.

  My thoughts churn, gray as rain at sea, when suddenly a memory comes, a point in the right direction, like a shaft of light breaking through the heavens. I still have treacherous waters to sail, but I head toward the light.

  FOURTEEN

  The Californian Remains, July 2048 A.D.

  “That wasn’t your call, Azure.” Gadian’s first words in nearly twenty minutes cut the air, leaving it broken and disjointed.

  After Azure had left me to return to the man, I had slowly crept back in. Peering through the doorframe, I shoot a glance down the hallway that is now empty. Though I just transformed the taste of banana still lingers sweet on my now tiny tongue. I may be only the size of a fist now, but still, I pray no one comes down this way. It seemed impossible to leave the fallen man behind, as if that’s my own father lying on the gurney. One by one, the doctors and nurses left until now, when it’s finally just Azure and Gadian in the room, not knowing there is a pair of ears listen at the doorway. Azure’s features have stayed fixed on the injured stranger, but it seems Gadian isn’t here to offer condolences.

  He has unfinished business with Azure.

  Azure looks up, as though surprised to see Gadian still there. “Sir?”

  “You encouraged Wild Dove to give that healer raw fruit. Of all the people in the Academy to give a green light to…” He shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose as if he can’t bear to think of the collateral damage he will have to deal with.

  “A man was dying in front of me. How could I not?” I’ve seen before how Azure’s eyes fill with awe when in Gadian’s presence. Yet now her eyes pinch almond thin. Whatever awe was once there has fled.

  Sighing, he stands. “You have to think of the bigger picture. Think of the example you would have set, allowing raw fruit to be given in front of an entire crowd of Magic Ones.”

  “Anyone could see this was an extreme situation,” Azure defends.

  Gadian sniffs. “It would have been relinquishing control. If this can’t be a win for science, I will not let it be a win for magic. It would have shown that magic has the upper hand to science. The only raw food we give is carefully measured and attentively administered, like medicine, but once it is spontaneously given, it will be easier for others to follow that example. If that ice were broken, I think we would be surprised to see how many ‘extreme situations’ begin to arise. To allow that call to be made by anyone is asking for disaster, as each person will judge differently what is worthy of magical assistance. We cannot afford to lose our advantage. Would you risk this entire research project, years’ worth of collecting data, the efforts of hundreds of people, in one moment?”

  “With all due respect, are you putting a price on a human life?” Azure’s voice is soft, yet firm.

  Gadian puts his hands in his pockets and walks around the room, seeming to look for his response. “Azure, why are you here? Why did you take this job at the Academy?”

  “To become a great scientist. The best I can be,” Azure says, suspicious of his question.

  “And what does that mean to you? To be a great scientist.”

  “Well . . .” Azure gathers her thoughts, rubbing her lip. “It would be someone who wants to learn about the world around them and goes to great lengths to do so. Someone who questions, investigates, researches, and tests their predictions.”

  “And why bother to do all that?”

  Azure knows her answer this time. “Science makes the world better each day. Diseases that used to leave helpless children crippled or dead are eradicated, travel that once took years can be done in hours, and previously impossible tasks can be done with a click of a button. Each day, we are progressing, better than the one before. And that is something I want to be part of.”

  Gadian has been nodding and walking about the hospital room while she spoke. But now he stops, rocks back on his heels, and his stare bores into her with each stern word.

  “And why,” he asks, “did you tell Wild Dove to give up that raw fruit?”

  For a moment Azure's mouth doesn’t form words, as though such motives couldn’t be explained. “Because . . .” She finds her voice. “I couldn’t live with the regret if I hadn’t. Come on, sir—can you imagine facing the grief and shame every day of knowing you could have done something, but had held back?” Though her statement had been innocent enough, it lays thick and cold between them, a lake of ice, as that is exactly what he is doing. “I just . . . I felt like even if I lost my job, it would have been worth it. Don’t get me wrong—I love this job, and I worked my tail off to get here. I don’t want to leave. But . . .” Her voice catches, and she straightens herself in the chair. “I still feel like it would be worth it.”

  Oh, I wish I could swoop over and hug her!

  Gadian just watches her, his silence holding her as fast and merciless as a snake holds a sparrow, intent on choking out her song. Yet when he speaks, the words come out loving, forgiving. The voice I had always imagined would belong to a father. “You spoke of regret. Shame. Grief. Worth. These feelings cannot be kept in a beaker, looked at under a microscope, or weighed on a scale. See, Azure? There is nothing scientific about them. Here is the great obstacle that all scientists must face—to live as human beings radiating with emotion in every moment, and yet to set it aside.

  “To be a great scientist, you must learn how to rule out emotion, to use your head to make decisions objectively, and not to let your fickle heart run the show like every other person alive. Emotion will look at this very situation and scream at you, ‘Save that man! Don’t let him die!’ but reason will show you much more. When you look at this with logic, you see that the contributions this Academy has made to science has saved thousands of lives, and to risk it all for one man would be to throw away the possibility of finding ways of helping thousands more. Are you so young that you can’t remember leukemia? Car crashes? These used to be very real fears in people’s lives, but no more. Because of us. Because of science.”

  Where just a moment ago Azure had sat tall as a sunflower, she now wilts, as if his words severed her from her roots.

  Then with astonishing bravery, she stands.

  “No one needs to know that magic was used to heal him. I’m going to find the healer and some raw fruit, and then we can send them both back in the machine to their own times. People may talk, but no one will know for sure what happened. You can fire me, you can call security, but I have to do whatever I can.”

  Gadian stands in one movement, blocking the doorway. Reaching behind him, he pulls a small metal object from concealment at his waist. I have no idea what it is, but Azure clearly does. She backs up, ramming her hip into a medical tray, but she hardly gives it any attention. She raises both hands in surrender. “Whoa! Gadian, you don’t want to do this!”

  “You’re right.” He still speaks in his loving father voice, making me sick. “I don’t.” For a moment, both just watch each other, then Gadian sets the weapon on the bed at the injured man’s motionless feet.

  “Pick the gun up,” he orders Azure.

  Confused, she shakes her head.

  “Pick it up or I’ll shoot him.”
r />   Reaching out, she lifts it from the thinning hospital sheets. From how she holds it, I can tell she’s never touched one before.

  “You have a decision to make. Magic or science. Who will you choose? Shoot him, or shoot me. Or refuse and I will decide for you. I know where my loyalties stand, but do you? So decide. One way or another, there will be a body left in this room.” His voice shakes as he clutches the edge of the bed frame white-knuckled. “Magic or science?”

  Azure pales instantly, and clearly forgets how to breathe right. She looks down at the weapon in her hands as if it will give her some guidance, as if it cares whether it is shooting human flesh or a hunted animal or a clean sky.

  It couldn’t care less. It is nothing more than a lifeless object, just as one of the men will become when she makes her decision.

  “Why are you doing this?” She looks up, pleading.

  “To show you that I will die for what I believe in!” Though he doesn’t shout, the vessels in his neck strain and threaten to burst. “To teach you that science is the highest, purest form of knowing, and is not knowledge power? How could it ever bow down to magic? Beg for help? No. It is science or magic. What will you decide?”

  Azure’s eyes dart with the panic that is the primal urge in all living beings. Yet all at once, they steady. Clarity comes to them, a conscious decision made. Calmly, she looks at the weapon in her hands. “You say to use logic. Emotion would have me choose between you two, but logic says there is always another way.” She looks up and meets Gadian’s eye, then raises the gun to her own head.

  “Order help for him right now or I will shoot myself. With your gun. The evidence wouldn’t point to him.” She gestures to the man in the bed. “Don’t damn yourself, sir. You’ll die for what you believe in, but death could be the easy way out. Could you live decades longer, having everything stripped from you, charged with a murder you didn’t commit?”

  For a long time, there is a terrible nothingness as she waits for Gadian’s response. To both our surprise, he begins to chuckle. “Set down the gun,” he says, stepping aside. Azure’s face washes with relief, but still she pauses, her finger wrapped around the steel.

  “I’m not sure that’s wise, sir.”

  He smiles with one side of his face.

  “You impress me, Azure. Fine—go find the healer. Meet me in the south wing, level three, the fourth door down on the right. That’s where the time machine is kept, though you won’t be able to get in the door without the chip embedded in my arm. I’ll get him transported there quietly, and you can return my gun to me there when you see I’ve kept my word. Tell no one of our plans. Hurry.”

  Serious now, Azure straightens. “Thank you, sir.”

  “As I said, call me Gadian.”

  She only nods, and without another word, she steps past him out of the room, the weapon hanging in plain view at her side.

  Leaving, she never notices the European free-tailed bat hiding on the ceiling of the hallway. Perhaps I should have saved the piece of fruit, but I hadn’t been able to get the little girl, Elleny, off my mind. I had to know what had happened to her father. Maybe if I was there, I could help.

  With Azure gone, Gadian is alone in the room.

  But rather than leaving himself, he walks over to the man’s machines, his back to both me and the man. What is he doing? Turning, he stares down at the man and places one hand in a pocket. In the other, I see a bag. The same bag, I realize, that had a tube running from it to the man’s arm. Another bag has been put in its place. What is going on?

  Gadian’s voice stills to a whisper.

  “‘But things like that, you know, must be

  At every famous victory.’”

  With that, he pats the man’s foot and walks from the room.

  It’s over. Seeing the man’s chest continue to rise and fall, I breathe a sigh of relief.

  Too soon.

  I’m not sure what he has done until it is too late, as the man exhales one last time and the screens around him begin to shriek.

  ___

  Erasing myself, I see through new eyes. With an exhale, I am gone.

  I find myself lying on a pull-out couch, a quilt over me and an old Daffy Duck pillow under my head. It’s my last thought as Ramose before the boy’s memory fully takes over.

  I remember the pillow from when we were kids. Funny that she’s held on to it this long.

  Sea-green walls glow with morning light as my sister steps barefoot into the kitchen. Her red hair is matted from sleep, slumping on her shoulders, but she is all the more beautiful for it. Of course, no brother would tell her this.

  Closing my eyes again before she sees me, I pretend to sleep in—it is my vacation, after all. I hear her open the cupboards and pour her usual oatmeal into a bowl, then it spins in the microwave while she rinses fruit for on top.

  Her fiancé comes in only wearing a pair of sweats, all muscle and dark blond hair, walking as if he already owns the place. I wish I was asleep—the sound of their good-morning kiss is enough that my gagging might just give me away. No matter how old she becomes, this will never get any less weird.

  She excuses herself to get dressed, and minutes later when she comes back, I hear her stop short.

  “Oh. You ate my oatmeal and fruit. If I’d known you wanted any, I would have been happy to make you some too.”

  To my surprise, Gadian chuckles. “This was my breakfast, sweetheart. I got up before you and started making it. Don’t you remember? You must have heard me in here and imagined it at the end of your dream or something.”

  Cracking an eye open, I see her furrow her brow, that same frustrated, confused look she always had when doing homework. She scratches her forearm without answering him and turns to the fridge again.

  I want to sit up, to side with her, but to do so would blow my cover and show I was just a lazy, eavesdropping guest.

  But it doesn’t matter. It’s so ridiculous.

  Nothing will come from this anyway.

  FIFTEEN

  The Californian Remains, July 2048 A.D.

  I move through the Academy as though a blizzard is inside me, all chaos and cold. It had taken all my concentration to keep my bat form as I had left the infirmary, knowing I had just witnessed a murder.

  I search the Forum for Alessio, my breathing becoming more shallow, more rapid by the moment. He has to know that the man he has made into a god is a god of war—he cannot be trusted. All he wants is our destruction. I saw it in his eyes as he strode from the room—he was calm. Dear Earth, he was calm. Though he had just taken a life, it did nothing to unhinge him, nothing to rattle a moral center.

  For he must have none.

  I knew at that moment Gadian has no intention of returning any of us to our times and families. Our lives only hold worth to him as far as we can further his research. Once he has learned all he wants, we will be discarded. Of course. You cannot give thousands of Shaman knowledge of the future and then send them back, unchecked, each to their own time. Where would Gadian’s precious control be then?

  Why does he hate us so much??

  Alessio is nowhere. Nowhere, and without his sturdy arms and reassuring kiss, I feel myself plummeting into a mental free fall. I stumble through the crowd, eyes wild for Alessio, but when I need him most, he’s gone. The door to my room comes into view; I hadn’t even realized I was making my way here. My necklace clicks it open, and pushing my way through, I collapse on the floor, wishing it was actual granite, wishing more than I ever have before that I could find comfort in the earth.

  “Joanna! What’s the matter?” I hear Ramose come running, but don’t look at him. My knees curl up and I hug them, salty tears falling unchecked, darkening my dress. What should I do now? The hope I had of returning was nothing but a desert mirage, yet how can I be expected to go on with life here? If I speak out, there’s no doubt in my mind that Gadian would discard me too. I can almost see him walking away from my cold body, that same nauseating calm on h
is face. But how can I live in silence about what I’ve seen? To live with a secret so evil and black in my belly? What should I do?

  Though the room is warm, every inch of me begins to shiver and tremble as though the blizzard inside cannot be contained.

  “How can I help?” Ramose begs. When I don’t give him an answer, he finds his own. “Let’s try warming you up.” His arms wrap around me and then he’s talking as he carries me, but his words bounce off me like hail on a street. After setting me on my bed, he attempts to pull the covers over me, but I shoot up, curled knuckles grabbing his shoulders.

  “We have to do something! His Elleny, she will never know—but what about us? He’s not going to let us go home. He never will. He could have been saved, it wasn’t too late, but he wouldn’t let her . . .” One thought seems to jump in front of the other, only allowing fragments to come out.

  Witnessing a murder is a really good way to get in touch with your inner basket case.

  “Shhhh.” He pulls me to his chest and holds my head, stroking it slowly as though I were a child woken from a nightmare. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Is it?” I pull back and look him in the eyes, only centimeters away. “No! How could it ever be okay? You don’t know what I saw—”

  “Shhhh.” He cuts me off by simply placing a finger against my lips. Then he looks around the room, as though the lamps and chairs could be listening in. “I do know. I know what you saw, and what form you were in when you saw it.” His voice is so soft, I have to lip-read as much as listen, but now he has my complete attention.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You aren’t the only one . . .” Now I do have to watch his lips, for no sound comes out. “. . . Who sees Gadian for who he is.”

  “How do you ‘know’ what I saw?” I tilt my head, confused.

  “That is my gift,” he mouths. “Knowing.”