The Shaman's Secret

by Natasha Narayan

  “May I help?” I asked, moving over and placing a hand on his arm.

  He shrank back into his seat.

  “Professor. Please. What is it?”

  He didn’t reply. For a moment, I think, he had forgotten I was there. I bit back my frustration. At this moment the good professor was behaving as if it was he, not his poor daughter, who was in a coma. I knew, deep down, that there was nothing I could do to hurry him up. Kit’s father is a dreamy old dear; he lives in his own world. For his daughter’s sake I had to respect that, and not try to rush him into normal behavior. So I sat on the dusty floorboards by his armchair and waited.

  When I next looked up, because I had fallen into a bit of a daze myself, I saw tears in his eyes.

  “Theo,” I said, using his first name. “Please, what is the matter?”

  He looked at me. “It’s no good. I can’t do it.”

  “Can’t do what?”

  “I can’t come back to your hotel.”

  “Why ever not?”

  A tear slipped out of his left eye and rolled down his cheek, coming to rest in his grizzled beard.

  “I just can’t.”

  “Why? Surely you want to see Kit as soon as possible.”

  “I—can’t.”

  I stared at him, horrified.

  “You don’t understand anything. You’re just a boy. You see, I saw Tabby die. I can’t—” He broke off.

  “What is Tabby?” I asked, thinking it might be the name of a favorite cat.

  In answer he reached into his pocket and drew out a fine gold chain. Hanging from it was a small locket. I opened it and the likeness of a lovely young woman gazed out at me. She had an oval face, unruly springing hair and eyes that even in that tiny miniature flashed with fire. Instantly I knew who it was. The likeness was unmistakable. Kit’s mother.

  “My wife, Tabitha. She was brought to me that December night. Ten inches of snow we’d had. A white Christmas, the church bells ringing. Her pelvis had been fractured. Her nose crushed. They said it was an accident. A startled dray horse. She lay in the bed. Looked at me, her eyes always so bright. But, you see, they were all that was left of her. Her eyes. All the rest was blood and—”

  His voice broke into gasps and he stopped, looking down at his shoes. I put an arm round his shoulders. What could I say? I felt awkward, because he was the father … Well, let’s just say I felt strange embracing him. There was a lump in my own throat, which hurt like hell.

  “I saw Tabby die,” he said. “It wasn’t good or peaceful. Anyone who tells you that is lying. I can’t watch the same thing with—”

  “Kit is not going to die,” I said. “You must believe me. We will save her.”

  “I can’t see her in pain.”

  “She is not in pain. The doctor assures us of that.”

  He looked at me as if I was lying to him, his eyes blurred with tears.

  “Professor. You must come. She loves you.”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re her father. She needs you.”

  He rocked back, as if I had struck him.

  “It is your duty,” I said, though I felt my words were cruel. “Please come. You will never forgive yourself if you don’t.”

  “Very well,” he said. Heavily he pulled himself out of the armchair, moving like a very old man. As I watched, he placed a pair of socks into his Gladstone bag.

  Chapter Three

  Professor Salter looked up from his daughter’s bed and stared at me. His mood had changed as he came into the bedroom. The tears were gone; in their place was a simmering anger.

  “What did you do to her?” he asked.

  “I haven’t done—”

  “Kit was well when I last saw her. My lovely girl … and now I find her like this. You were the only person there when she was struck down. You were meant to be protecting her.”

  I nodded. Kit was lying there between us, white and thin. She looked waxy, like a corpse. He was right. I should have looked after her better.

  “You’re not a boy. You’re a young man. Older than my daughter …”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. I felt choked, and for a horrible moment I thought I would cry. Kit was covered with one of those American patchwork quilts, the bright colors contrasting with her waxy bluish skin. “Professor Salter …” I began, but Aunt Hilda shushed me and took her brother’s arm.

  “It’s not Waldo’s fault,” she said.

  “I read your letters. You told me about it,” he said, turning on her. “You said that Waldo was the only one in the cave … Why did he take her there in the first place? A young, innocent girl. That’s what I want to know. What did you think you were playing at, young man?” Anger had mottled the professor’s skin and bright red patches stood out on his cheeks. “My dearest Kit …” His voice broke.

  “Theo,” Aunt Hilda tried to soothe him.

  “I should horsewhip you!” He glared at me, trembling.

  “Yes, sir.” I hung my head.

  My answer seemed to take the puff out of him. He collapsed into an armchair and covered his face with his hands. There were shabby patches on his jacket. Patches Kit would have taken care of.

  “I would do anything … anything,” I said quietly, “never to have set foot in that blasted—”

  “Enough,” Professor Salter interrupted. His mood had changed again; his eyes had become hard. He turned to his sister, Hilda. “The question is, what are we going to do?”

  Hilda hesitated for a few seconds before replying. “Of course Kit has seen doctors here, the best doctors that money—”

  “Doctors!” Professor Salter threw up his arms. “What do doctors know?”

  “Theo. You are a man of science.”

  “They didn’t help Tabby,” he snapped. For a moment brother and sister glared at each other.

  “Tabby was an accident, Theo.”

  “That’s what they said. And now Kit—doesn’t that strike you as strange?”

  “Look, Theo, there is something else we could try.” Aunt Hilda dived into her pocket and produced the leaflet that the man had pressed on us last night. Theo smoothed it out and read it. Several times. I could see he was struggling to understand what it meant. Grief had dulled his wits.

  “What is this?” he said at last.

  “I’ve asked around,” Aunt Hilda replied. “This man, Walter Silas, he is well thought of in San Francisco. Apparently he has worked miracle cures on many hopeless cases.”

  “Sounds like a fraud,” Professor Salter said, looking at the leaflet again. “Is there any evidence for this?”

  “We’re desperate. What have we to lose?”

  “So you want to use my Kit, my …” He paused, glaring at both of us. “You want to experiment on her. You really think that’s a clever idea?”

  We looked back at him in silence.

  The next morning, the five of us went through the back of a large gray stone building into a garden that ended in a tumbledown shed. Here among coils of wire, bolts, nails and strange contraptions sat a man who could have been the double of Professor Salter. Walter Silas was wiry and untidy, with a shock of gray hair and protruding eyes. Perfectly friendly, but one of those people you feel is not listening most of the time.

  “He’s away with the fairies,” Aunt Hilda whispered to me as we sat on a dirty wooden bench. “Waldo, I’m nervous.”

  I gripped her arm for a second. Frankly I was scared out of my wits.

  We had argued for hours last night about bringing Kit to Professor Silas’s workshop. Finally we had all agreed it was the right thing to do. It was a chance, however slim. The alternative was that Kit could lie in a coma for years. Her life would be wasted.

  I think Professor Salter cheered up a little when he saw the workshop. Like Isaac, he is a man of science, and was in his element here. And I think, for our clever friend Isaac, this grubby shed was heaven. He picked everything up and examined it and by the time the helmet was ready to go on Kit’s
head he had elbowed out the cloddish Rumbelow and was acting as Silas’s assistant.

  As Kit lay corpse-like on a stretcher, dressed in a lacy white cotton nightgown, Isaac fiddled with the bolts on a shining copper helmet. We were going to put this dangerous new substance, electricity, through my friend’s delicate brain. This could kill Kit; that’s what I thought as I watched Silas fiddle with his machine. It could kill her stone dead.

  The galvanic electro-shake was a curious contraption, about the size of a small man, made of copper with dozens of knobs down the front, like the buttons on a shirt. Wires sprayed out of it, blue, red and green. Kit was laid on a table and covered in a sheet, her head encased in a copper helmet, which was taken off the machine. Wires ran to her splayed fingers. I didn’t understand what these scientists planned to do—I won’t pretend to you that I did.

  Finally all the preparations were finished and the machine was switched on.

  “Wait,” I called, just before they were about to start the electrical stimulation. I looked straight at Mr. Silas. “Have you ever conducted an experiment like this before, sir?”

  “Of course,” Mr. Silas replied airily. “I’m a pioneer.”

  “That suggests that this is the first time. Tell me, sir, how many patients have you tested the galvanic electro-shake on?”

  “A dozen or so. At least, one or two or three. Can’t remember exactly. Remarkable results in comatose cases and so on …”

  “Lord help us,” Hilda Salter muttered under her breath.

  “I usually work on bridges. These new cable cars—I told Isaac here about them. We’ll go for a ride after this experiment.”

  “No, we won’t,” Hilda barked. “Not unless …” and she stopped.

  Rachel finished the sentence for her. “I think, Mr. Silas, none of us will want to go for a ride in a cable car. Not unless our friend Kit can come with us.”

  Mr. Silas flushed as he was reminded what his “experiment” consisted of. “Of course,” he said. “I understand. Do I have your permission to proceed?”

  Professor Salter nodded. His skin was gray, and there were deep rings under his eyes.

  Without further ado, Mr. Silas turned a knob on his contraption and, as we watched, a huge current traveled up the wires to Kit’s head.

  Nothing happened. Nothing.

  I pulled my eyes away from Kit’s white-sheeted body and looked around restlessly. I couldn’t bear to see what was going on. At the door to the shed a figure in a cream linen suit had appeared. It was a man, who stood there watching. Something about the narrowness of his body, the stoop of his shoulders, was familiar. And the pale, pale skin.

  But this man had black hair. Jet-black hair that contrasted oddly with his corpse-like pallor. A caterpillar-sized mustache curled above his upper lip.

  It took me a few moments to recognize the man. It was Cecil Baker, our old enemy. Or was it his brother, Cyril? Both of them were murderers, monsters who wanted Kit dead. It only took me a moment, looking at him, to realize what he was doing here.

  We had been tricked. This was a trap.

  I turned to my friends, my mouth opening in an agonized yell.

  Dr. Silas said, “Looks like we need more power.” He reached out and turned the middle red knob on his machine to maximum.

  “STOP!” I shouted, launching myself toward the machine. “FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, STOP HIM! THEY ARE GOING TO KILL HER!”

  Too late. A massive charge of electricity sizzled down those wires toward Kit’s brain.

  Chapter Four

  Kit’s Story

  What am I doing here? One minute I am in China, in the caves above the Shaolin monastery. I am standing there, water dripping all around me, with the bones of a long-dead saint in my hands. The next minute I am waking in a shed full of twisted metal and wires … They tell me I am in America.

  America, the new world.

  My father, Isaac and Rachel. Their faces loomed above me as I lay on the table. My joints ached, the light hurt my eyes and my mouth felt dry. I tried to talk. My tongue was swollen. It felt unfamiliar, scaly, like a cobra coiled in my mouth.

  “Kit?” Rachel was holding my hand, gulping. My father beside her, blocking out the light. He had aged, his hair a shocking white, new lines on his face. His eyes were wet. It made me feel strange. I had never seen Father cry before.

  “I’ll never leave you again. I promise,” Father muttered.

  You didn’t leave me, I wanted to say. It was my fault, Father. My tongue wouldn’t work so I could only look at him and hope he knew what I meant. He held out his hand and took mine. My heart tumbled inside my chest. His image flickered and for a moment all I saw was his outline, muzzy, whitish against a glowing light.

  “Don’t punish me, Kit. I mean to spend much less time on my work. I will be a better father to you.”

  What was he talking about? He is a wonderful father. Kind, generous and not too attentive to what I get up to.

  Rachel was crying, fat tears dripping down her face. She let out a sob and used a tissue to blow her nose. Even Isaac’s eyes were welling up. I couldn’t cry. I felt a deep bewilderment. The world seemed soft, insubstantial, as I looked out at it. I remembered the feeling so strongly I could touch it, of peace, of being curled up in a deep, dark place.

  A safe place.

  “We must take her home,” Father said, turning to Rachel. “We must take Kit back to Oxford as soon as possible.”

  In the background I could hear shouting, screaming. It was somewhere far away, tinny to my ears. Something crashed and then clanged and clattered away across the floor. I could hear Waldo yelling and Aunt Hilda’s deep voice. And someone else, someone whose voice was a high-pitched, ghastly whine.

  Making a supreme effort, I pulled my body up. My ribs hurt and the breath came hard. Rachel and Isaac both rushed to stop me.

  “Nooooo. You mustn’t,” Rachel wailed. “It is too soon.”

  I had to. I had to see. I had managed to lever myself upright. Waldo and Aunt Hilda were bunched together, both talking at once. In front of them was a man—it came to me in a rush, Cecil Baker. No, not Cecil, his brother, Cyril. They were so alike it was hard to tell which of the twins it was. Or at least they used to be. This man was transformed. With hair dyed black, trimmed mustache. He looked more wrong than ever, like a ghost pretending to be a dandy.

  “You don’t understand,” Cyril said, his voice rising. “It was me—I SAVED KIT’S LIFE.”

  Waldo and Aunt Hilda both began shouting at once. Their voices rose hysterically. I heard the word “killer” and “get out.” A bookshelf full of screws and bolts had been overturned, and pieces of metal rolled all over the floor.

  “YOU SHOULD BE THANKING ME, NOT CURSING ME,” Cyril Baker shouted.

  You can make yourself do anything, even if your body rebels. My body was telling me to lie down and let all this pass, but I made up my own mind. Using all my strength, I sat up straight and spoke.

  “YOU … SHOULD …”

  Everyone in the shed stopped arguing and screaming and turned to me. There was pin-drop silence. I took a gulp of air, which streamed into my lungs, giving me new strength.

  “LISTEN … TO … HIM.”

  Having spoken, I collapsed back onto the table. Someone had propped a bolster behind me, so now I was sitting half upright. Five words, but they had a sensational effect. My friends looked astonished, as if a ghost had spoken, while Mr. Baker’s mouth widened in a broad smile.

  “Kit Salter is finally back,” he said. “You have me to thank for that.”

  “Stand aside, you monster,” Aunt Hilda said to Mr. Baker. To me she muttered, “I’m so pleased to see you here again, my darling.” She glared at Mr. Baker and then came over to enfold me in her stumpy arms. I struggled for a second and then relaxed into the embrace. She smoothed back a strand of hair and looked into my eyes.

  “Welcome back, Kit,” she said, and then switched her attention to Baker. “We all know that you hate my
niece. We all know that she is the only one, apart from me, who has ever thwarted your plans.”

  “I’ve changed,” Baker said. “Ask Professor Silas.”

  The shabby man he pointed to was cleaning a metal mannequin. He was bent over almost double, rubbing it with a soft cloth. As he worked, he clucked to himself. Absorbed in his task, he hadn’t heard Baker and didn’t reply.

  “Silas,” Baker called out, “who sent you Rumbelow? Who funded your galvanic electro-shock machine? Didn’t I make you seek out Kit Salter and cure her?”

  “Perfectly true,” Silas replied. “Why? Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters!” Aunt Hilda exploded. “This man is our sworn enemy. He is a liar, a cheat and a murderer.”

  “A murderer?” Silas asked.

  “I know of at least five murders he has personally ordered.”

  “No! Really? Are you sure?” Silas said. “I mean, he’s always been good to me. Paid in advance. Dollars. Nuggets of gold. Most generous terms.”

  “He is rich,” Waldo said. “But his wealth is based on death, slavery and—”

  “Waldo,” I interrupted from my slumped position, “let Baker talk. There is something … He may be telling the truth. Please—”

  But Waldo and my aunt interrupted me indignantly, leaving me unable to finish.

  Thankfully my father came to my aid. His angry voice sliced through the babble. “NO ONE IS DOING ANY TALKING!” he said. “We are going to take Kit home. She will rest. She will see a doctor. This is not the time for argument.”

  He glared at the five of them: Waldo, Isaac, Rachel, my aunt and Baker. Shamefaced, my friends came forward and eased me onto the stretcher that lay near the table. Swaying between them, I was carried out into the garden. The last thing I saw was Mr. Baker’s pale face and black hair, looming over me like a deathless vampire.

  Chapter Five

  Over the next few days I was cocooned in gossamer, coddled like the weakest newborn babe. I was swaddled in soft blankets despite the heat, talked to in hushed voices. Nothing was too good for me. No food that I demanded too exotic. I was drowning in kindness.