They Called Us Shaman

by Corinne Beenfield

  ___

  “No! I was so close!” She pummels the water once with her fists, and I can’t help but grin. She’s unbearably pretty when she’s angry. “Stop laughing at me! I failed again.”

  “Try once more today.” I reach for her, untangling her tightly folded arms until her soft hands rest in mine.

  “I feel like an idiot, standing for eons like a statue in this pool. Before long, I’ll start spouting water out of my mouth.” She pouts, bottom lip out, the perfect imitation of a toddler.

  “Well, if it helps, I never like you so well as when you fail over and over.” I smile, and she glances at me out of the corner of her eye, “Because failure is simply a sign that you tried to surpass yourself.”

  She swivels a bit in place. “You sound like Leo,” she says toward the water.

  I squeeze her hands until she meets my gaze. “Try once more,” I urge, then let go and step back.

  At last she nods and again closes her eyes.

  THIRTY

  The Californian Remains, October 2048 A.D

  Each year on my birthday, just before going to bed, Mama would wrap her arms around me and by candlelight tell me the story of my birth. I knew it by heart, but never tired of hearing how she would tell it.

  “The worst moment of my young life was when you came without a cry. Your papa and I felt so helpless. As long as I live, I will never forget your precious body on the table, the midwife lifting your arm and then it falling with dead weight to the hard chestnut table. It seemed like you were already gone.”

  But I wasn’t. Mamma took me in her arms, placed my tiny bare body against the skin of her chest, and pulled me from death’s grasp. “It was like the sun had gone out, and I thought I would never feel warmth or life again. But then it did come back! When you finally started crying, your papa and I wept tears of joy, and the three of us just held each other like that, our tears wet on each other’s faces. I was never the same again.”

  It seemed like the sun had gone out, she had said. I knew this feeling the moment I woke up in the Academy. Hopelessness. But I didn’t relate to the rest of her story, of life being touched again by sunlight and warmth, until now.

  For weeks, Ramose and I spent whatever time we could together behind the waterfall, striving with every cell in my body to connect with the earth. He’d instruct and encourage me, and sometimes I would feel a swelling as if magic were so close, if I but strove harder, focused a bit more fully, I would reach it. But each time, I couldn’t control my mind enough. A simple thought of, “It’s not going to work,” and the feeling would flee away as though a frightened bird. “No, no, no! Come back!” I would scream in my mind, but it was no use. We would leave, defeated, but by the time my head hit my pillow, I knew I had to try again. Each night, the hours would slide into the morning as I tried to control my thoughts, practiced envisioning myself again with wings, forced myself to recall the exact way the wind had felt through my feathers. Yet eventually, sleep always won.

  But no more.

  I wait behind our waterfall for Ramose, my outstretched fingers floating on the warm surface. It’s evening, apparently, for the lights of the pool have been dimmed, changing the water here from its usual turquoise to twisted dark ripples of black and gold. Small eddies swirl under my palms, and lifting my hand, I watch the drips run from my fingertips, somehow both opaque and clear at the same time, before landing again in the water below. There tiny halos appear, one encircling the next. Ramose is late, but I don’t mind. Between practices with him and research with Azure, time to myself has become as sparse as stars on a cloudy night. Right now, just give me warm water and some silence—that’s all I need.

  As I cast my eyes about my aqua cocoon, they come to rest on the waterfall itself, on the movement of the silver and the beauty of the blurred images beyond it. Stepping toward it, I turn and let the falls splash against my shoulders. My lips part as I exhale deeply, letting it wash away the weight I always carry these days. The water runs smoothly across my skin like a gentle caress, across my shoulders and down my back.

  With an inhale, I close my eyes, then lift my head back into the flow. The water rushes against my head, making my hair cling to my face, but no matter how wet I become, my spirit cannot be damped. I feel as alive as if I were soaring. The sun has come back into my life. Here is color, here is warmth, here is a light that I didn’t know if I would ever see again.

  Time melts to nothing, nothing at all, with only the rhythm of my breath measuring the moments. Whether five minutes or twenty pass this way, I do not know. More than that, though, all other time disappears as well. My regrets in the past, my fears for the future. All there is left is now, and the awe that slides over me as close as skin.

  This time, it is different. The surge of magic begins in my fingertips, but rather than desperately clinging to it, I let it come to me, as all wild things should. Then it is upon me, golden and pure and coursing, it would seem, through my every vein. It is beauty as only the earth has to offer. They can strain it, treat it, filter it, but the earth was still there. Just waiting for us to sharpen our senses enough to feel it again.

  Though I don’t open my eyes, I feel as though so much light cannot be contained inside me. It would seep through my cracks if I don’t direct it. Swan, I gently command, and this time all it takes is the one simple thought. My human form begins to slip from me, taking on smooth white plumage in its place. I sigh, feeling the familiar prickle of wings where a split second ago was only pink skin.

  “Joanna! Wait! You’ll be seen!” There’s a splash and I open my eyes reluctantly, as though being pulled from heaven’s gates. Looking at myself, I feel a pang to see that the swan form has fled, but the magic glow coursing through me still remains.

  Ramose is rushing through the water toward me, one of those sunshine-through-the-rain smiles upon his face. “You did it! You did it!” he exclaims, his arms open to me.

  It takes me a moment to come out of my trance, but then his smile catches fire. “I did it. I did it!” I’m jumping, the water leaving me weightless, and I fly into his arms. He lifts me and I wrap my legs around his waist, feeling high off the triumph. We laugh together, victorious and giddy. With one strong arm, Ramose holds me in place, then slowly with his other hand, he softly cups my face. Suddenly my mind snaps back to clarity. I remember the miniscule bathing suit I succumbed to wearing several practices ago, and become shamefully aware of my bare legs wrapped around Ramose’s strong torso, of my exposed shoulders and neck so close now to his every breath. My heart rate that just moments ago had slowed to a steady stroll now makes up for lost time, racing out of control.

  “Hmm,” I happily sigh but look away, attempting to turn my attention back to the waterfall. I loosen my legs to climb down, but Ramose’s arm holds me there steadily. I rest my hand on his chest to push off, but for some reason don’t. My hand stays there, and he doesn’t miss his chance. With a gentle finger, he guides my eyes back until he holds the gaze I had tried not to give him.

  “You are . . .sensational.” His voice is husky and low. There’s a hot intensity in his dark eyes and set jaw, a spark of the inferno that I want to consume me. I don’t move. I’m frozen from either fear or excitement, I’m unsure which. Ramose leans in, resting his forehead against mine, and it’s not until he takes my cheeks in both his hands that I realize I’m the only one holding myself around his hips. I don’t fight against the moment anymore, against the thoughts going through me. His smell reminds me of a summer evening, rich and warm. Our breaths mingle as he turns his head slightly to the side, his nearly closed eyes watching my lips. Surprising myself, I close my own eyes and don’t turn away.

  “Hal 'astatie taqbilak,” he whispers. My eyes fly open and I pull back. Is he using a term of endearment from his native language? “Madha?” he asks.

  No. He’s not meaning to do this.

  “Non capisco,” I answer. I don’t understand. But though I speak the words normally, by the time t
hey reach my ears, they seem hollow, lifeless, like a body that has exhaled its last breath.

  The magic is gone from them, I realize.

  With it, it has taken the only security we had to hold on to. The communication walls, in an instant, have gone back up.

  I tremble, now undoubtedly from dread, and Ramose sets me down. He is paling quickly, his breath haggard and rough. “Hadath shay’ ma Hamamat Albaria,” he says as he meets my eyes, and I don’t need to know Egyptian to understand what he is saying.

  Wild Dove must be dead.

  ___

  It’s the not knowing, I am told, that will drive a person mad. I’ve seen how a society can be tortured by the idea of a missing child, but will make peace with the death of a child. Not knowing is an anguish that doesn’t end, a song with no final notes. Apparently.

  But never did I understand the immensity of what the earth had given me until now. For the first time, I am living in that not knowing, no matter how I search in quiet moments for Wild Dove and the others.

  If Joanna had asked a month ago to be shown what happened to Leo and her mama, I would have turned her away, would have felt it was better that way. I would have thought I was sparing her pain.

  But I would have been wrong.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Tuscan Italy, August 1470 A.D

  The crowd that normally has a life of its own has become a stilled beast. Where before housewives heckled for the best price, old friends caught up, and new friends were made, now only my voice is heard. The vendors and even the dulcimer player in the street have all abandoned their posts as if pulled here by unseen hands.

  “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing,” I tell them. “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” In the crisp autumn air, the wall of their bodies pressing in keeps the gritty wind away. The wind that I used to think would speak to me—I tell myself I would no longer listen if it did. “And how do we apply our knowledge? For thousands of years, we have let the idea of magic hold us back in our lives, and all with little to no proof of it at work. But what can a man use to guide him day-to-day? How long must we sit in the dark before we see that the world of insight is before us?” There is hardly a single utterance in the throng, but one face stands out to me. Isabetta. Joanna’s mother.

  Since Joanna and Alessio ran away together—his final blow to me, taking the dearest friend I’ve ever known—I haven’t been able to face Isabetta but instead have thrown myself into my work. Her eyes cut into me now, yet so do a hundred others, and I must finish my speech for them. “We learn the art of science,” I find my words again. “Experiment, allow yourself to fail. Forever question, forever wonder, without letting the beliefs of old paralyze your ability to learn. Please understand, there are three classes of people. Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see. My people, my kin and my kind, I beg you to see.”

  With that, I nod to the crowd, and a smatter of applause follows before they begin to disperse and go back about their daily errands. Isabetta stays stock-still, knowing I will come to her.

  Walking forward, I don’t know how to form my face, and only make a weak attempt to smile. She doesn’t return it, though her eyes are soft and curious.

  “Isabetta.” I kiss each cheek. “I have been thinking about you. How are you holding up?”

  She pulls back and looks at me, her eyes never blinking. Since Jo left her mother must not be eating much, for her skin clings to her like a wet rag. She had always been the town beauty, but you would hardly notice now with the layers she has buried herself in to keep out the world. Pulling her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, she doesn’t respond to my question.

  “I have heard about your new outlook, Leo. You’ve got the town in quite a stir. Why? Why are you doing this?” she pleads. “It would break her heart if she knew.”

  I must stick up for myself, but try to make my words as gentle as possible, for she looks as if a breath of wind would be enough to do her in. “So I must choose, then, between being loyal to myself and a friend who abandoned both of us?”

  She steps forward, forcing me to meet her eyes. “When did it become ‘us’ versus ‘them’ for you? This isn’t like you at all. You’re hurting others to satisfy your own desires, and it’s anything but all right. This is wrong. Can’t you see that, Leo?” She looks at me like she’s never seen me before, as if I’ve transformed into some sort of monster. The look—from Isabetta, of all people—gnaws on my orange bubble of pride even more than her words.

  “Who are you to judge between right and wrong, Isabetta?” I defend, then motion to the crowded street. “If you were to ask each of these people to name a few things that they know to be true, do you know what you would find? Some of the very things one man sees as right and true, another will ‘know’ the exact opposite. You see me and what I am trying to teach the people about science as so very wrong, but you don’t see how liberating it can be.” I clasp her on the shoulders, imploring her to understand. “I didn’t decide to pit science against magic in the first place. It has been this way for centuries, perhaps as long as man has walked the earth. But I am sounding a war cry. I will give those of us without magic a voice. A hope. They deserve that. We deserve that.”

  Isabetta looks away from me, which with how close we are standing only makes the moment more painful. “I don’t believe she abandoned us.” She finds the word I used earlier, examines it then holds it up for me to see. “Joanna would never leave without a word. Something happened to them, I’m sure of it.”

  I consider her words, and my voice lowers as I finally answer.

  “Whether or not she ran off with Alessio, I do not know. But Joanna did desert me. Months ago, she did abandon me when I needed her most.”

  Isabetta’s head tilts in a way that reminds me so much of Joanna, and she leans in as though looking at something in my features she missed before.

  “Is that why you are doing this? Because you are mad at them for being able to fly?”

  I want to pretend she is wrong, yet my eyes find the cobblestones at my feet, and when I breathe in, the air tastes red with guilt. Perhaps, I respond in my mind. The hours I’ve spent trying to convince myself of the opposite only affirms the truth she’s hit upon. Jo and Alessio’s words had shattered my soul in pieces, and just as I was gathering the shards to attempt to repair it came the second blow. Sweet Jo, who has known me better than any soul to walk this earth, had disappeared like a shadow does in the night, leaving only darkness behind. My midnight-blue grief now breaks me beyond recognition or repair, and yet a broken heart still beats. So I get up each day, the fragments of all I had loved gathered close to my chest, and throw myself into the only thing I have left to care about anymore.

  “I do this,” I weakly shrug, “because I don’t know what else to do.” My words come out defeated, a white flag waving.

  Isabetta doesn’t respond, but after a moment accepts my surrender with a nod. “I don’t blame you,” she gently whispers, then kisses my cheek in farewell. “Please take care of yourself, Leonardo.” With that, she slips back into step with the other shoppers and is gone. Watching the spot where she disappeared, I wish her forgiveness could give me peace. But how can it, when I still blame myself? When guilt for what I’m doing gnaws on my flesh? Still, I can’t stop. Some part of me feels it is right, that I was always meant to do this.

  The crowd closes around me, and claustrophobia strives to bind me still. Tilting my head up from the streets, I find the empty sky, and it gives me the strength to free my limbs and walk away.

  Away from the market, away from the city where my name is becoming revered and celebrated in prominent homes. To the hills, where despite my charcoal betrayal, I still can’t help but hope I will hear that same name softly whispered in the breeze.

  ___

  I open my eyes before she does and just look at her as she finishes the memory. Her eyebrows are drawn together in conc
ern, her dark lashes pinched tightly closed. When she exhales, her crimson lips part for just a moment before she opens her eyes and meets mine.

  My heart rate picks up, and I realize that for months I’ve been approaching this war all wrong. In battle, it’s not the enemy who is of the most importance, not the hate you feel coursing through you for all that he stands for.

  It’s the person behind you who matters, the one worth placing yourself between them and the enemy. Only then can fear turn into bravery, because hate will never justify war.

  Only love can.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Californian Remains, October 2048 A.D

  I pull back from the memory and open my eyes to find Ramose already watching me. The corners of his eyes tilt in concern, and I give him a gentle smile to try to say, “I’m okay.” He nods, though he looks unconvinced. I had asked him to show me the memory of Leo, and I know if he is going to show me any more, he needs to see that I can handle it.

  Our communication has become a muddled dance, with plenty of missteps and stumbles as we try to figure it out. We use our full repertoire of hand gestures, facial expressions, and bilingual grunts and laughs, though it’s rarely enough. I can speak to Ramose in Italian, and then he can ask the earth for a translation. But it’s not as though he’s suddenly been endowed with the gift of tongues—it takes time for him to watch the memories, and sometimes he doesn’t completely understand what he is being shown. He can figure out a few staccato words, but the easiest way to reply is to show me memories from the earth, forehead to forehead.

  This is how we found out Wild Dove is still alive. For now.

  I had watched, in the memory, a door open, a triangle of light falling into an otherwise pitch-black room. Strong hands reached down and clasped around clothing that smelled from going so long unwashed. There was a body hiding in those layers, and the hands thrust it up from the ground until it was standing on two feet. Wild Dove.