Shamanka

by Jeanne Willis

  Sam is woken up by an ear-splitting shriek; the eagle has returned. It glares at her, its beak poised like giant secateurs. She can feel the hot steam escaping through its nostrils. Her immediate thought is that it will rip her nose off and throw her over the side. The mother eagle is shocked to find a strange, featherless creature in her nest and, naturally, her first thought is to get rid of it. Aware that the eagle is still grieving for her baby, Sam protects herself by mimicking the cry of the chick.

  How does a child born in London know what bald eagle chicks sound like? Easy. Mr Fraye had taught her at the breakfast table. He went through his whole repertoire of birdcalls from albatross to zebra finch and when Sam knocked the top off her boiled egg, he threw his voice into the shell and gave it the cry of an eagle chick.

  Those kinds of breakfast antics are not something you forget easily. Sam closes her throat to create the right pitch and starts squeaking like a fledgling. The eagle cocks her head quizzically and the fury fades from her eyes. The thing in her nest doesn’t look like a chick, but it sounds like one, so she gives a motherly grumble and flies off to fetch it some food.

  Five minutes later, the eagle returns with a fish. Sam has no choice but to open wide and let her stuff the slimy, flapping morsel into her mouth. It’s big, so she has to chew. Trying not to retch, she swallows the flesh and guts, sieves the bones through her teeth and spits them out.

  Satisfied that her chick is full, the eagle puffs herself out, settles like a duvet on top of Sam and dozes off. It’s hard to breathe with a fifteen-pound bird sitting on your chest. Sleep is impossible so Sam amuses herself trying to ease a feather from her breast. It’s not difficult if you have magician’s fingers; she’s so gentle, the eagle barely twitches.

  Sam whiles away the rest of the night trying to spot the constellations. Kitty has taught her most of them; she can see Pisces clearly from where she’s lying. Unfortunately, it reminds her of the fish she ate earlier, her stomach churns and she averts her gaze. Over there is the Great Bear and there’s Gemini, the Twins – or is it? There’s an extra star. Has Sam discovered a new constellation? The star winks back; it’s telling her the secret of the universe in cosmic semaphore. Babies know the secret. We all know it – it’s printed on the inside of our skulls; but by the time we’ve learnt to talk, we’ve forgotten our first language, Starspeak. Occasionally we almost crack the code, but something or somebody always interrupts us.

  As dawn breaks and the eagle flies off, Sam is on the brink of understanding. She unties the cord. She stands up triumphantly in the nest, certain that the great universal truth – the Grand Plan – is within her grasp, that it’s only a fingertip away. All she needs to do is stretch…

  “Sam? Saaaam! You can come down now!”

  Kitty’s voice shatters the peace. Sam loses concentration and the truth slips away. The moment has passed. How frustrating – but at least she knows the answer is out there. She almost touched it. She will be able to reach it when she’s taller.

  It’s much quicker coming down the tree than going up. Sam arrives at the bottom bloodied and disorientated. She’s had no water or sleep. She’s shivering but smiling. Ruby is waiting for her.

  “Is your initiation complete?”

  Sam produces the eagle feather.

  “Did you find the answers you were searching for?”

  “I only found more questions.”

  Ruby’s face splits into a smile. She is delighted with her student. “Then you came closer to the truth than your father did.”

  John Tabuh had visited Ruby. He wanted to know if it was possible for a person to leave their body and travel at will – or whether Professor Farthy was right. Was it just a hey-lucy-nation caused by the rhythm of the drum playing games with the temporal lobe?

  Ruby had sat John down under the red cedar tree and offered to send him to the Astral Temple. Although he was sceptical, Christa persuaded him to try, hoping that he might see his father; he missed him so much.

  The drum drummed and John Tabuh was surprised to find himself in a place that wasn’t entirely in his head. But his father never showed. He was there, but he wasn’t at home, it seemed, to a son who hadn’t completed his mission.

  The witch doctor regarded John’s visit to the temple as cheating. It would have been possible for him to discover what was real, what was magic and what was illusion right there if Yafer had allowed it, but he didn’t approve of short cuts; they taught nothing but laziness.

  John was unable to disguise his frustration, so Ruby had offered to guide him to the Lower World instead. He was grieving and she hoped it might comfort him to see his dearly departed. However when he came back, he was even more upset.

  He’d seen an old Mexican couple with his twins in their arms; he’d smelled the herbal soap his mother used to use; but he didn’t see the girl he wanted to see more than anyone else in the world. Sam guesses it was her, but as she’s still alive there’s no way he could have met her down among the roots where the dead reside.

  “He dismissed the whole experience as a dream,” sighs Ruby. “I suggested he walk across hot coals to see if it would bring him closer to the truth, but he said no, anyone could walk on hot coals. They might look hot, but it was just an illusion. The heat isn’t sufficient to burn the soles of your feet – not if you walk fast enough.”

  “He’s a magician,” says Sam. “He knows these things.”

  “He doesn’t know everything,” says Ruby. “He said he was going to China to see what other illusions he could expose. He was convinced that the unexplainable could always be explained and that there was no such thing as magic.”

  “I hope he’s wrong,” frowns Sam. “What do you think, Ruby? What is magic?”

  Ruby Featha makes the sign of a triangle with her forefingers and thumbs. “Magic is something even the spirits cannot explain. All I know for sure is what it isn’t. Perhaps you too will find your answer in China.”

  Kitty tuts loudly. “We can’t afford to go to China.”

  They’d sold the last pearl to get to Canada. Sam takes off her ringmaster’s hat and produces a racoon. “Perhaps I could earn money performing magic tricks for your tribe, Ruby.”

  “And I can carve you a new tumtum pole,” adds Kitty.

  Ruby shakes her head. “We do not use money. We could only pay you in beads, bread and kindness.”

  Beads, bread and kindness are a whole lot nicer than hard cash, but try explaining that to the ticket man at the airport. It’s no good looking at the ponies either; they’re swift, but unless they sprout wings, they’ll never make it to the border, let alone Beijing.

  “You can go anywhere if you set your heart on it,” says Ruby. She holds the eagle feather up to the breeze and lets it go. “Follow the feather. Mount your steeds.”

  The feather flies off. They follow it right to the edge of the plain. The wind drops. The feather falters; it floats down into a stream and falls between some rocks. The rocks are too far from the bank for Sam to leap onto them, so Lola is sent to fetch it.

  “Quick, Lola! Grab it before it gets washed away.”

  Lola leaps, lands with one foot on each rock and feels around for the feather.

  “HAVE YOU FOUND IT, LOLA?”

  No, but she has found something half-buried in the sediment. It’s the size of a crow’s egg. She washes it in the clear, running water. As she holds it up to the rising sun, it radiates fire.

  It’s a ruby.

  MAGIC CHINESE LINKING RINGS

  The masked magician takes six solid steel rings and juggles with them. Then, in a blink of an eye, they’re all joined together. How?

  THE SECRET

  1. The masked magician has a group of three rings linked together and a group of two rings linked together.

  2. There is also a single ring called a key. This has a split in it, large enough to pass another ring through, allowing him to link up all the rings.

  3. The magician hides the split in the key ring usi
ng fingers and misdirects the audience with exaggerated hand movements to disguise the trick.

  FU BAR YETAH

  They sell the ruby to a gold prospector. He wears a ten-gallon hat and a bootlace tie and his boots are high. So is his voice, which makes me wonder if he’s really who he says he is.

  What does Sam care? She has a rucksack full of dollars, she’s off to China.

  The marvellous thing about the Chinese is that they happily accept people in disguise. They have a long tradition of theatre in which men play the part of women. Then there are the geisha girls who blank out their real features with ghostly make-up, cherry lips and tiger’s eyes. Consequently, when our threesome get off the plane, nobody glances sideways at Kitty’s mask or the ginger hair poking out of Lola’s dress. Lola carries a fan to hide her face, but really there’s no need.

  They are met by a small boy dressed in saffron robes. “Greetings, Miss Sam, Miss Kitty, Miss Lola!” He bows and gives them each a paper basket containing a mandarin. He’s a shaolin monk and he’s come to take them up the mountain to the Hall of the Heavenly Kings.

  “Who sent you?” asks Sam. “How do you know who we are?

  “My master, Fu Bar Yetah. He tell me to fetch three ladies: lady in magic hat, lady in funny mask and hairy ginger lady.”

  He explains that his master had been visited by a woman called Ruby Featha during his meditation time and that she had told him of their imminent visit.

  “I have come to lead you along the right path,” he announces. “My master say there are many paths but not all lead to enlightenment!”

  “I’ve got a weak cart,” sulks Kitty, thumping her chest. “Can we hire a rockshaw?”

  There are no rickshaws, only bicycles. They hire two with sidecars. Lola drives Kitty but, being a performing orang-utan, she does it standing on the seat with one leg out behind her, then sits back-to-front on the saddle, pedalling with her hands. Finally she drives so close to the edge of the mountain that Kitty screams and jumps out.

  “Miss Kitty walks, we all walk!” says the boy. “My master say mountain is too steep for wheel of bike but never too steep for wheel of fate!”

  “Is it much further?” grumbles Kitty.

  “My master say no destiny is too far if you desire it enough!”

  Kitty leans against a tree, puffing heavily. “He says a lot, your mister.”

  After a gruelling climb, they arrive at a set of golden gates carved with lions’ heads. Beyond the gates, in front of a temple, there are rows of monks practising hand-to-hand combat in silence.

  The boy folds his arms proudly. “One day, I will be as good as these men. See what I can do already!”

  He drops his arms by his sides and breathes in deeply through his nose. His eyes bulge slightly then, without warning, he leaps vertically and lands neatly on his bottom in an overhead branch.

  If Sam hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she would have thought it was impossible to reach that branch without a trampoline. Perhaps the boy has springs in his shoes. She examines his feet, which are swinging playfully in the air. He’s wearing silk slippers that are far too thin to conceal any trickery. She looks up at him in amazement.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Ah, many years of practice, Miss Sam!”

  He can’t be much older than eight – nine at the most.

  “You’re not old enough to have practised for many years.”

  The boy jumps down and, landing as lightly as a kitten, explains that his mother left him at the temple when he was a baby. He’s been training with the monks ever since.

  “I practise morning, noon and night. Master say an iron beam can be worn to a needle if you rub hard. Would you like to see me jump again?”

  There’s no stopping him. This time, he aims a little too high, misses the branch and falls flat on his backside in the grass. He springs to his feet, his cheeks crimson. “It is all in the breathing,” he says, ignoring their giggles.

  Sam tries to compose herself. “All in the breathing?”

  He nods energetically. “Very special breathing called qi gong. Food and water moisten skin and muscle but only the main breath – qi gong – make the body this strong!” He throws a few kicks at an invisible, midget enemy, then continues. “Before hand or foot strike, first must come breath! It give you courage, strength and energy. My master say if the mind controls the breath, a boy can jump an abyss.”

  “How useful,” mutters Kitty.

  She’s so short of breath she can hardly stand, let alone jump. The boy is exhausting to watch.

  “I can make my breath so fine, I can pierce a wooden board with my finger … have you got a wooden board?”

  “Sorry,” says Kitty. “It’s the one thing I forgot to pack. Have you got a wooden board, Sam? No? What a shame. How about you, Lilo?”

  No one can oblige, so the boy grabs Sam’s divining rod, holds it out in front of him and punches a neat hole through the crotch with his forefinger.

  “All in the breathing,” he whoops. “That is qi gong!”

  Sam takes the divining rod away from him. “That is a hole.”

  It’s incredible that his tiny finger managed to penetrate the wood, but how dare he damage her rod! That was a gift from Mrs Reafy! She’s really angry with him but the boy is so offended, she apologizes and blames her temper on tiredness. It was a long plane flight and a hard bike ride, and she still hasn’t caught up on her sleep after her night in the eagle’s nest.

  “We’re all tired,” says Kitty.

  Realizing he’s no longer in the dog house, the boy cheers up immediately. “Ah, you ladies short of energy? I find you some. Come – come!”

  Somewhat bemused, they follow him through the golden gates, down a gravel path and across the grass until he stops in front of a large, flowering bush.

  “You can absorb energy from all living things,” he says. “Sit!”

  The three of them sprawl about on the lawn. Lola rolls onto her back and grasps her toes.

  “No! No floppy ladies! Sit with legs crossed, back straight and hands like so.” He assumes the lotus position and takes a deep breath.

  “I can’t do that with my legs,” moans Kitty. “I should have stayed in Egypt. The worst thing they make you do there is stand with your head sideways.”

  The little monk ignores her. “Breathe into your belly and absorb the energy from the bush.”

  Lola stands on her head and looks at him through her legs, Kitty lies down and eats her mandarin but Sam does as she’s told. She copies the boy’s breathing exactly and, after a while, she can feel the blood cooling her veins and her heartbeat slowing down. Suddenly, she is aware of a couple of bright electric threads, like miniature lights strung on a spider skein. They stretch from the bush to her fingertips.

  A flock of finches flies out of the bush and flutters along these two threads of energy. Three of them settle on Sam’s shoulder. Another three perch on the boy’s head.

  “Why?” whispers Sam. “Why are they doing that?”

  “They are attracted to the magnetic field. It is same as one they use to migrate.”

  Kitty sits up. “They’re just attracted to the breadcrumps on your soldier.”

  But there are no breadcrumbs on anyone’s shoulder. No one has eaten any bread. After the finches have flown, Sam feels curiously revived. Kitty, fortified by the mandarin and a lie-down, accepts the boy’s invitation to see his room, which is to the left of the exercise yard.

  It’s very basic; the facilities are worse than the ones at their hotel in Arizona. He hasn’t even got a bed but he says he likes sleeping on the stone floor; it removes his negative energy.

  The only items of furniture are a statue of the Buddha, a candlestick and a jug of water with a lizard swimming in it. The boy does, however, have a fine collection of weapons, all of which could be deadly in the wrong hands. Kitty doesn’t approve, and with good reason.

  First, he demonstrates how to whirl a wooden staff,
knocking Sam’s hat off in the process. Having done that, he brandishes his broadsword with such ferocity, he slices the top off the jug, which sends the lizard flying across the room. It lands with a sticky plop against the wall. The boy is incorrigible.

  “You want to see me fight with tiger hammer?”

  “NO!”

  “Ha! I bet you can’t do this.”

  He snatches up his staff and hits himself violently across the chest, splitting the pole in two.

  “I wouldn’t want to do that.” Kitty winces.

  Sam, who knows a thing or two about trick swords, picks up the staff and examines it. Perhaps it’s cardboard painted to look like wood, in which case it would have split with ease. Perhaps it has a false compartment in the middle or a minor explosive device.

  She can’t find anything dodgy at all. It’s a sound piece of wood. The boy had genuinely broken it across his chest.

  “Qi gong!” he cries. “What I tell you, Miss Sam? All in the breathing!”

  It seems that qi gong is a force to be reckoned with. Sam is keen to master the technique and asks if he wouldn’t mind teaching her the basics.

  The boy throws back his head and laughs. “How long you plan to stay – your lifetime? Take you many, many years to learn. First you must master Ch’am – this is the calming of body and mind to a single focus. Only then can you endure big elephant pain. Come, the monks will show you!”

  Sam, Kitty and Lola follow him into the temple. The boy slips off his shoes and enters, bowing so low his pigtail touches the wooden floor. Sitting on a jade throne is a man with a shaved head and a very round face. In front of him, ten monks are meditating; the boy sticks his tongue out.

  “When you meditate,” he whispers, “you must put tip of tongue against roof of mouth. You must not let thoughts of dragons playing at your gates distract you. You must be quiet as a junzi strolling in a faraway mountain. You must be as silent as a—”

  “Quiet!” bellows Fu Bar Yetah.

  One of the monks tuts, his concentration ruined. Seizing the moment, the boy slides on his knees towards his master and, tugging at his voluminous trouser legs, introduces his guests.