They Called Us Shaman

by Corinne Beenfield

I wait for a long time, but the first person to come down the hall carries a tray of food. Only pure food—a brimming spinach salad of grilled peaches, raspberries, chopped nuts, and I think that must be goat cheese. I’m so surprised to see it here at The Academy that I stare as if the plate has burst into flames. Jolting myself out of my food trance, I see the man opening Wild Dove’s door. I try to swoop into the black room without making a sound.

  Light from the doorway falls onto Wild Dove’s seated figure. She slouches as though her spine is soft from exhaustion and hunger, but at least she is upright. That’s more than I expected.

  He says something to her but I don’t understand the words—they sound like English to me. From his tone I can tell he is taunting her. My eyes adjust to the lighting, and I see that Wild Dove looks far worse than when Ramose showed me the memory of her. Great purple welts cover her arms, grotesque against her skin that has gone ghostly pale, unnatural for her ethnicity. Her dark hair is matted with blood, and there is a gap where someone has ripped hair from her skull. Yet when I see her eyes, there is still a light on, and she looks at the man as if she is untouchable. In a way, she is.

  She tilts her head, a soft smile on her lips, and when she answers him in his language she seems almost amused. Her hand waves the food away as though it were a fly, and the guard’s jaw clenches. When he speaks his words come out through gritted teeth.

  Wild Dove nods slowly as he talks, then closes her eyes and rests her head back on the wall behind her. She motions for him to go, but instead, he crouches down to her, stabbing the food with a fork and eats a bite loudly. Her eyes flutter open and watch him in her peripheral without turning her head. The next bite, he lifts to her mouth, but not delicately. She only looks straight ahead as he laughs and scraps the fork over her closed lips, smearing vinaigrette on her cheeks. Her face doesn’t even flinch. He scoffs, his fun ruined, and throws the fork into the bowl. Taking it with him, he leaves with a slam of the door.

  The charcoal black of the room covers me as I shapeshift. Wild Dove can obviously hear my movements, for she stiffens and instinctively pulls away from the corner where I am before seeming to remind herself to show no fear. Undoubtedly she thinks that she has been left in the room with one more of their coercive tactics, and though I want to throw myself on her in a hug, never mind the stench, I hold back so as not to scare her.

  Taking the blueberry from my front teeth where just moments ago there was a beak, I whisper into the void between us. “Wild Dove! It’s Joanna!” Though I know she can’t understand me, I hope she can at least recognize my voice. Slowly, I reach out and barely make contact with her hand. Just as with the guard, she doesn’t respond, doesn’t move. Turning her hand over, I gently place the single blueberry in her palm and wonder if this too she will reject.

  For a moment, it just sits there, and then I feel her fingers close and she lifts the hand away from me. Perhaps throwing it away, perhaps eating it. The only way to know is to check.

  “Can you understand me?” I ask.

  She is silent.

  “Yes,” comes back the whisper with perfect clarity.

  I kneel on the floor fn front of her and reach again for her hands. I might not be able to see her, but the ability to communicate has struck a light of sorts inside me.

  “Ramose and I have been so worried. They shouldn’t be treating you like this. We need to figure out a plan to get you out of here—there must be a way. What have you seen that we could use—”

  “I won’t go.”

  Her words sever my thoughts as clearly as land is severed from the sky. “What? If you stay—”

  “I will die. No need to give me a reminder.”

  I sit back on my heels, floored. I shake my head. “How can you just sit here and let that happen? We need you.”

  I hear her sigh, and this time she squeezes my hand. “We are all going to die.” Her voice comes out softer than the crumpling of paper. “I will not escape, abandoning my people, leaving them to suffer alone. And if perhaps, my death is the first, it could awaken in them a desire to fight. They won’t listen to my words. Maybe they’ll listen to this.”

  Inside me, whatever piece is left of the animals I’d become seemed to take over my heart—racing, growling, fighting with teeth bared. “No!” I insist, my hands clenching to fists with her fingers inside. “What good will you be to us then? Do you think they’d let others know you died at their hands? Of course not. They’ll just say you ‘got sent home.. Gadian will stash your body somewhere in the centuries of time, and your death will be wasted.”

  “You’ll tell our people the truth.”

  “Don’t you dare give up! We can still convince them—our people haven’t gone completely deaf! I’ve seen inside their minds—many want to go home. How can you give up hope? How can you have so much faith in our captors to squash us out of existence? We are shaman!”

  My question hangs between us, and when she speaks, I can see her in my mind as clearly as if the lights were turned on - her head, though bloody and bruised, held high.

  “It is not their science and power I believe in. It is our people, the only ones who could free themselves, who have let their magnificence atrophy, whom I have stopped believing in.” She pauses. “But perhaps there is one more way to get them to listen.”

  I sit up, the tempest inside me stilling. “Go on.”

  “I have an idea. But I cannot speak of it.”

  “Not even to me? I’m trying to break you out!”

  “It’s the last way—the only hope. But no, you cannot know specifics. I know what Gadian is capable of. He will force a drug on you to bring you to hysterics, to make you tell him whatever he wants. He tried it on me several times, but I couldn’t have focused my mind enough in that state to control the Academy’s languages if I wanted to. But he could get whatever information he wanted from you.”

  “Not if he doesn’t know I’m involved. Your idea is dangerous, isn’t it? I can be of help if you just tell me!”

  “Oh, you’ll help, and you’ll know just what to do when the moment comes. But right now, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

  I wish I could see her face, could read there what she has hidden from me. She has been the leader I would follow into battle, but now I’ve found her to be a captain going down with her ship. Can a woman who has let go of hope be trusted? What has she left to lose?

  But then, is this not true of us all? Our options are burning around us, sinking below waves. Death surrounds us on all sides, but we have to look somewhere for leadership, to someone who cares for us more fiercely than for herself. There is no one else I can rely on more. I don’t know what she knows, but I can trust her anyway.

  “Yes. I’m in. Let’s free our people.”

  ___

  “I was thinking about dreams,” she whispers in the dark. The nightmares had come back, and when I came to comfort her, she had again asked me to stay. Drifting into our room comes the sound of a party being thrown in the next apartment over. They must have invited a Master of Tongue, for we can understand each other. “Alessio’s was to be a somebody, Leo’s was to fly, Azure’s is to save her son. It seems nothing guides the course of our lives more than if we pursue our dreams, for better or worse.”

  “Mmm.” I nod, running my thumb along her forearm.

  “What happened to Leo’s dream? Did he ever fly?”

  “He—”

  “No, wait.” She shifts until on her hip, facing me. “Don’t tell me. Show me.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she answers. “I have to know what happened to him.”

  “All right, then.” Turning on my side, I reach forward until our hands intertwine and clasp tight. We close our eyes, and the moment before our foreheads touch, I hear her whisper.

  “Ramose, what’s your dream?”

  I swallow once before answering. “To be with you. Free of here. I could live anywhere you are.”

  She’
s quiet, then places her forehead on mine. I think she won’t respond, so I call to the earth and welcome the memory, hoping to hide in it.

  At the last moment before the memory takes over, I hear her voice on a breath. “My dream is to be with you too.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Tuscan Italy, October 1470 A.D

  My hands shake in golden exhilaration as I step back from my flying machine. In the sunlight, all thirty-three feet of the silk wingspan seem to glow, beckoning me to climb aboard. The frame is pine, sturdy but light, and I’ve designed a headpiece for steering, while pedals connect to rods and pulleys, making it flap. To me, it seems the most beautiful thing on earth.

  After months of work, I have wings of my own. I won’t be in human form, like Alessio, or bird form, like Joanna, but have found my own inspiration in bats. I exhale, rub my hands against my trousers, and then crawl onto the board resting in the center of the invention. Lying face down, I consciously try to slow my breathing away from a hyperventilating pace, yet despite my elation, a palpable teal ache wraps itself around my ribs. In the months since Joanna has disappeared, I have never wanted her here so fiercely as I do now. Not to laugh in her face, not to show her I had it in me all along, but simply to celebrate with someone who was more family than friend. To have someone to soar with.

  As I place my feet and hands on the pedals, the risks of taking off, steering, and landing all bombard for my attention at once. Joanna’s words come back to my mind as fresh as if she’s speaking them into my ear. You can’t fly, Leo, and I’m not going to watch you kill yourself trying. For a moment, a sickly yellow fear plagues my body, and not another breath comes. Now Alessio’s voice trumps over Joanna’s memory.

  How audacious are you, thinking that you of all people could learn to fly? It’s impossible. The more you try, the more you humiliate yourself.

  Is this another desperate suicide attempt from a delusional man? And if I do survive, does each attempt truly strip me of self-pride and leave me a mockery?

  Perhaps. I cannot say either of them are wrong. And yet . . .

  And yet my personal code rings louder than their voices, with the beauty of church bells and the power of a cannon. Suddenly I see how I have no desire simply to exist—a life like that is worth the gamble. I intend on living—no, even more. On making with my life the most I possibly can. I am more than a bastard son. I will do more than fall passively into the place society has left for me. My fears flow out of me, leaving only the tingle of adrenaline in my fingertips and a red warrior heart beating in my chest. I can do anything. I am unstoppable, and no, not even the threat of pain or death can hold me back.

  While a silver courage courses through my veins, I begin to pedal.

  Suddenly Leo’s memory fades, but a new memory approaches on the coattails of the last. I can’t tell how much time as has passed. Perhaps it is the same day, perhaps even years later, yet once again the flying machine is before me.

  The candle flame flickers angrily in the dark barn, the stalls in the corners hiding in the black where the light won’t touch. I stalk around the machine. The longer I look at it, the more discouragement boils brown and thick inside my chest cavity. I am alone—there are no animals here, just the flying machine and my table covered with papers. Some of them have my notes about how a bird flaps its wings not up and down, but almost in a figure eight. Others contain sketches of other flying machines I have contrived. There are over five hundred of my papers, actually, and all five hundred tell me the same thing. “Experiment is the only way to truly know anything.” Is that not what I have taught the people so many times? Yet experiment after experiment have all led me to only one truth. While my machine may have the ability to fly, I could never create enough power to lift off.

  I lower the candlestick until the bare flame is reaching toward the raw silk, yearning to kiss it. What a deadly kiss that will be. My hand is remarkably steady as I watch the silk begin to blacken and smoke, wax dripping down the side of the candle. Another second, and my beautiful flying machine will be nothing but flames and ash.

  But I can’t. Pulling the candle close to me, I throw my papers on the ground and stalk out of the barn, locking it closed behind me. There my flying machine will stay, until years or rodents turn it from its grand form. Ash or dust, it matters not.

  For no matter how destined for the sky, it will only stay grounded.

  Just like me.

  ___

  The memory ends, the dark around us stripping away everything but our two bodies, facing each other. Letting go of each other’s hands, I put my arms around her and pull her close. She doesn’t resist, just places her fingers on my bare chest, and I wonder if she can feel how my heart rate races at her touch. There’s an ache inside me that demands not to be ignored, but when she speaks, I know her mind is centuries away from me.

  “If only he knew what would happen,” she said.

  “You mean the war? Or that flight is possible?”

  “Yes,” is all the response she gives.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Californian Remains, November 2048 A.D

  I’d had to ask.

  Azure had returned from visiting her son. All that was once soft in her face was now set and determined.

  “One night I really thought that was going to be it. I was losing him. It was the worst night of my life, and when he made a comeback, I vowed we’d never get that close to the edge again,” she explained when working with me late into the night. “We’ve found another puzzle piece to the cancer cure, but something is still missing. We are so close. We haven’t come this far to…” She paused, unable to finish her sentence, so I did for her.

  “To only come this far.” I gave her an encouraging smile.

  She nodded and leaned back, ready for me to dive in.

  But my mind was somewhere else.

  “You said you flew to see your son?”

  “Yes, in an airplane.” Rather than the research she wanted to do, I first begged her to give me some of my own. For the next hour, she explained to me terms like “aerodynamics” and “pilot” and “runway” while sketching out the remarkable machines for me on her drawing pad.

  Behind each one, I saw a brilliance like Leo’s, and couldn’t help but wonder, Did he start this? Is that what all his work came to? And that night when at last Azure dismissed me for a few quick hours of sleep before resuming her research, her drawings never left my mind.

  Ramose had long since gone to bed, and I lay in my bed trying to settle to sleep, but one thought of my sweet friend after another jumped out at me, like trout leaping and breaking still water.

  Flight had been accomplished, not by shaman but by scientists.

  Scientists like Leo.

  When I arrived here, I looked at scientists as if they had a burning touch, warping all their hands rested on. But since then, I’ve come to see my Leo in a way I never had before. And if there is anything I know about Leo, it’s that what he touches takes on a life and beauty others hadn’t realized. If he considered himself a scientist—one of “them”—t hen perhaps there is more here for me to understand.

  So I asked Ramose to show me what happened to Leo, and he gave me the two memories of the flying machine. They haven’t left me ever since, two days later.

  Now I sit with Azure, her perfectly penciled eyebrows knitting together as I speak, as if by staring hard enough at me through one of their microscopes, she will see what she has missed in all our previous sessions, that lost link of knowledge that will save her son.

  “Did you ever doubt the earth? And if so, would doing so make it harder to shapeshift?” she asks, the end of her pen pushing up her cheek when the door bursts open.

  “Excuse me!” She turns fully in her seat to glare at the intruder. “We’re trying to get some work done here!”

  I don’t recognize the man who grins at her, triumphant. “It’s that Navajo rebel leader—she caved! No more problems from her! She finally agreed to bridg
e the communication gap again. She is being taken to her long-term quarters now.” He walks into the room, and Azure turns back to me, trying to keep her face from showing emotion. “You should have seen how much she ate! It was like watching an animal.” He chuckles. “That one meal alone should take care of our little communication ‘glitch’ for the whole day.”

  “We are done for now, Joanna. You’re excused.” She can’t even look at me as she waves me away, as if the man will see an invisible arch of empathy stretch between her and me.

  I stagger into the hallway, my mind swimming in a black eddy round and round. Wild Dove surrendered? What horrors did they inflict to crack her? Or perhaps the slow, grinding death of self-starvation became more than she could bear.

  The hallway buzzes loud with the hum of gossip. For weeks, we hadn’t been able to speak to each other when suddenly the words are back, and on every side, shaman and scientists alike gobble them up, talking fast with tongues hanging out as if we were the ones who had been starving. One thought drives each foot in front of the next. I have to find her.

  Apparently, I’m not the only one with this feeling. The current of the hallway flows forward, toward the Forum, and I realize everyone wants to see her. While few of this mass were her devoted followers, all of our worlds hinged on her choices. It’s not concern, but unbearable curiosity that drives them forward.

  I could hardly swim upstream from their hysteria if I tried. As the crowd pushes and gushes around me, my eyes scan for another familiar face. Panic rises in my chest as I cannot find Ramose. Does he know what is happening? Where is he? How can we save Wild Dove now, with her firmly back in the center of Their tight fist? My breath becomes irregular, more rapid and then more shallow. I must find him. He alone can explain this to me, can free my thoughts from the whirlpool and set the course clear before me. Where is he?

  The crowded hallways converge at last at the Forum, and looking up, I can see her. For once, the scientists have not tried to powder the nose of their intentions. Wild Dove weakly shuffles, a guard on either side of her, while everyone around can see how she has been broken beyond repair.