by Angela Hunt
Alex turned to look at the shaman, who stood with the boy’s parents. The men wore expressions of complete confidence, but a flicker of worry moved across the mother’s face.
Alex felt her heart twist in sympathy. Mothers were always the first to worry when their children encountered difficult situations.
The villagers remained at the base of the kapok tree until the remaining color bled out of the air, then the shaman lifted his hand and called his people back to the safety of the shabono.
Following the others, Alex looked up at Kenway. “Do they just leave him for the night? What if he f-f-falls asleep and tumbles out of the tree? He’s only a little boy.”
“I think we have to trust them.” He slipped his arm around her waist as she struggled to manage a spot of uneven ground. “But if the shaman’s in the mood for conversation tonight, I think we need to ask a few more questions. Something beyond our ken pervades this place, and it may yet hold the answer we are seeking.”
Alex looked at him, wondering if the atmosphere of the place had addled his thoughts, then decided to save her energy and not argue.
18 APRIL 2003
6:00 P.M.
As night fell, once again Michael was astounded by the shaman’s generosity. The women brought food to their leader; he shared it with the expedition team members. This time all his fellow travelers save Delmar repaid the shaman’s hospitality by returning a portion of the food to his palm leaf, but Michael knew they could not stay in this village many more days. All they needed had been freely offered, and while food and water seemed to be sufficient, he had seen no signs of a surplus. The presence of the research team was draining the village of precious resources, and they had brought nothing to make up the deficit.
They needed to work quickly, Michael realized. Deborah Simons waited in a hostile village, Shaman’s Wife was failing rapidly, and Alex’s condition worsened with each passing hour. If an answer existed in this place, they needed to find it in a matter of days, not weeks or months.
As he had hoped, the gregarious shaman was willing to talk after dinner. With Delmar interpreting, Michael joined Alexandra and Emma in a conversation with the old man.
“I’d like to know about the boy,” Alexandra told Delmar, her eyes shifting to the shaman’s lined face. After the Brazilian interpreted her question, the shaman gave her a smile, then lifted his hand to the open sky in the center of the shabono.
As Delmar translated, the old man spoke in a tone filled with awe and respect. “The boy is resting, waiting for the Great Spirit of the keyba. He will wait through the night, until the first light of morning. When we see him again, he will be healed from the shuddering disease.”
Michael shot Emma a look. “Almost like an initiation ritual, isn’t it?”
The anthropologist jerked her head in a brief nod of agreement. “Many tribes require trials of endurance before a boy can be considered a man. This may be the keyba version of purification.” She paused to take a bite of her banana, then swallowed and smiled around their small circle. “In medieval times, squires who had passed the tests of knighthood had to participate in a ritual that included a cleansing bath and a full night of prayer in the chapel. The next morning they took a vow of loyalty to their lord, kissed his cheek, and received a ceremonial blow on the shoulder in return.” She shrugged. “Interesting that this jungle version also includes a spiritual aspect.”
Alexandra lifted a finger. “But the purpose of the keyba ritual is healing.”
“The boy didn’t look sick.” Michael admitted what he’d been thinking earlier. “He might well be carrying a form of prion disease, but I saw no signs of it.”
“And you can’t tell me they require that kind of athletic endeavor from everyone.” Emma jabbed her finger to the ground to emphasize her point. “What if someone bears a handicapped child who cannot climb? Are they doomed to suffer this alleged disease? What about the girls? Are they supposed to climb the tree, too?”
Michael turned to the shaman. “Does everyone approach the keyba? Even the girls and little ones?”
After Delmar had translated the question, the shaman shook his head. “Everyone walks the keyba,” he said through Delmar, “except those who choose not to. And the little ones, the weak ones—the Great Spirit of the keyba sends a mighty hawk to carry their souls to his land.”
Alexandra blew out her cheeks. “Everything begins and ends with spirits in this p-p-part of the world,” she grumbled. “I would give anything to find a native who can think in terms of practical science. I don’t expect them to understand astrophysics, but it’d be such a giant step forward if these people could realize that life requires biological answers, not spiritual hocus-pocus—”
“What makes you think the issue being addressed is not spiritual?” Despite a nagging voice that warned him to keep quiet, Michael tossed the question at her. “Perhaps we of the civilized world are at fault for wandering away from basic spiritual truths.”
Emma lifted her hand. “Let’s postpone the infighting, shall we? We have more important matters to discuss.”
“I’m willing to stay on topic,” Alexandra answered, her words clipped. Her eyes, trained on Michael, gleamed with defiance. “If the reverend doctor here stops trying to slow our progress with useless suppositions, we might actually learn something tonight.”
Sputtering on his indignation, Michael clenched his fist. “You think faith is useless? How can you ignore the myriad medical studies which have proven that prayer leads to quicker recovery from surgery, more rapid growth in premature infants, and has even been shown to help infertile women conceive babies?”
Alexandra flicked a dismissive wave in his direction. “Those studies aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. It’s not faith that works wonders; it’s the blindly optimistic attitude possessed by people who identify themselves as spiritual.”
Michael set his jaw, furious at his increasing vulnerability to her. Why did he care what she thought? She was nothing to him but a colleague and a friend—when she felt like being friendly. He shouldn’t allow her to rile his temper, but he couldn’t help it. He cared. He cared a great deal.
Drawing a deep breath, he forced himself to calm down. “Tell me, Alexandra—do you think that boy in the kapok tree is exhibiting blind optimism?”
She snorted. “Of course! If he doesn’t break his neck before morning, he’ll come down, the shaman will pronounce him healed, and life here in Stone Age village will go merrily along. Truthfully, I’ve begun to wonder if these people are sick at all. Perhaps they were once afflicted with prion diseases, but something in the area eradicated the infective agent. Maybe they were like the Fiore in New Guinea, and once they stopped drinking the bones of their dead, the disease disappeared. But these people keep climbing the tree, risking their lives, and believing that it’s the tree that heals them.”
“Do they drink the bones of their dead?” Emma asked the question of Delmar, who murmured a phrase to the shaman. After a moment, the old man replied.
“No,” Delmar answered, his voice flat. “They do not.”
Alex shot Michael a look of triumph. “Your Ya-ree came from the Angry People, right? He was infected in that tribe. This tribe did nothing to infect him or cure him.”
“So you think the tree has no healing powers at all?”
“No more than usual. Olsson said other tribes use the seeds and leaves for other cures, so I have no problem with that. But as far as curing prion damage—that’s a stretch, Doc. No, I d-d-don’t believe it.”
Michael rubbed his jaw as an outlandish idea leaped into his mind. The notion was sheer madness, perhaps even desperate lunacy, but at this point he and his silent patient had nothing to lose.
He turned to the shaman. “Delmar,” he said, holding the shaman’s gaze, “ask him about Shaman’s Wife. He told us the keyba could not help her—was that because the Great Spirit of the keyba is unable to help, or because she’s unable to walk the tree?”
“He says,” Delmar translated, “that the Great Spirit of the keyba can cure anyone. But this woman cannot climb.”
Michael glanced at Milos Olsson, who was lounging by the fire and half-listening to the conversation. “What if we could get Shaman’s Wife into the canopy? Would the Spirit of keyba heal her then?”
Across the circle, Alexandra groaned. “Now I’ve heard everything.”
The shaman, however, listened to the translation of the question, then lifted his brows. “Could they get the woman into the tree?” he asked through Delmar.
“I think we can.” Michael jerked his chin toward Olsson, who had moved closer to the conversation. “If we cut several lengths of vine and devised some sort of harness, could we manage it?”
Olsson glanced from Michael to Alexandra, then tugged at his beard and grinned. “We could use the double rope technique with prusik loops. It would be quite a workout, but yes, we could climb that tree.”
“Could we transport my patient?”
Bancroft’s deep voice rumbled into the conversation. “I could carry her. If it’ll get us back to Deborah Simons quicker, I’d be happy to give it a try.”
Taking charge with quiet assurance, Michael looked at the shaman. “If my friends and I take this sick woman into the canopy of the kapok tomorrow, will the Great Spirit of the keyba cure her?”
Once he had heard the translation, the shaman answered with an uplifted hand and a few chanted phrases.
Michael leaned toward the interpreter. “What’d he say, mate?”
“He said,” Delmar looked around the group, “that if you can reach the sun and if the woman is willing, the Great Spirit of the keyba will make her well.”
19 APRIL 2003
5:38 A.M.
As the rising sun pinkened the sky around the kapok tree, Alex stood in the opening of the shabono and clasped her hands, fervently wishing for coffee. Mists covered the empty field outside the village, and she could see no signs of movement in the jungle beyond. But the sounds of life surrounded her—the screech of parrots, the whistle of the toucan, the chatter of monkeys.
She had not slept at all in the just-passed night. Long after the communal fire dimmed and her companions snored, she lay in her hammock and forced herself to breathe deeply, hoping her body could use the period of inactivity to rest. But her brain never ceased to hum with thoughts and random surges of emotion—indignation, worry, wonder, and fear.
Her hands trembled now in odd moments, while words that should have sprung immediately to her lips had begun to play hide-and-seek in her memory. She could walk, once she found her footing, but her legs seemed weak and unable to function after she’d been sitting for long periods. In a few weeks, maybe days, she would be slurring her words and faltering . . . then she would no longer be able to walk at all.
Sadness pooled in her heart, a dark despondency akin to nausea. She’d pushed herself, risked her life and Caitlyn’s, and for what? The discovery of a healthy tribe who climbed trees, spoke in riddles, and couldn’t help the desperately sick woman they’d brought to them for healing.
Her heart contracted at the thought of her daughter. In a matter of days, Caitlyn would realize how sick her mother was, and one day in the future she would grasp the rest of the truth. If fatal familial insomnia was genetically inherited, Caitlyn would have stood a fifty-fifty chance of not contracting the disease, but in reading Alex’s notes, Caitlyn would learn that prions could be passed during pregnancy. The placenta that provided a child with oxygen and nourishment could also bestow a death sentence.
Alex closed her eyes as the shaman’s words came back to her on a tide of memory: The spirit of sickness lives in everyone from birth, and everyone knows this. It lives in the Angry People, and it lives in this people, too.
Amazing, that such a primitive man could instinctively understand how prion-affiliated diseases were transmitted. Despite his keen understanding, however, the shaman seemed to have missed the fact that something in Keyba Village’s environment had eradicated the disease. Alex strongly suspected that their dancing and dangerous treeclimbing were completely unnecessary.
Lifting her face toward the rising sun, she studied the towering kapok in the center of the cleared field. The sunbeams tinted its leaves with gold; parrots fluttered in the midst of the canopy. By August, Olsson had told her, the leaves would fall and the tree would begin to flower. If a child of Keyba Village climbed at that time of year, it might be possible to see a little body perched high in the branches, a tiny figure risking life and limb for the sake of superstition.
She moved aside as someone touched her back, then stammered an apology when she saw an entire line of sleepy-eyed villagers patiently waiting for her to move. Silently stepping to the right, she let them pass through the narrow opening of the alana. No one spoke as they passed, even the babies remained silent on their mother’s hips, eyes wide as if curious about why they had risen before the sun to go outside.
When heavier footsteps swished the grass, Alex knew her teammates had also come out to observe this sunrise ceremony. With Kenway, Caitlyn came forward wearing a concerned expression, but her worried look melted when she saw Alex. She slipped an arm around her mother’s waist. “I was freaking out, Mom. When did you come out here?”
“Not long ago.” Alex pressed a kiss to the top of the girl’s head. “I’d have waited if I’d known the people had planned a parade.”
Michael slipped his hands into his pockets as their eyes met. “Glad you found your mum, Cait.” He lifted a brow. “Everything all right?”
“Right as rain.” Injecting a cheery note into her voice, Alex gestured toward the field. “Shall we join the others?”
They walked behind the villagers, who had assembled in a semicircle around the base of the tree. Every head lifted toward the canopy while the shaman moved forward, raising his arms as he sang out a chant in nasal tones.
Standing with her arms looped around her daughter’s shoulders, Alex thought of the little boy and realized this would be an apt time for prayer to GODWITS . . . if one were desperate enough to place hope in such silly efforts.
Idly, she raked her fingertips through Caitlyn’s tangled hair. “I hope the kid makes it down in one piece.”
Michael crossed his arms. “For once, Dr. Pace, I find myself agreeing with you.”
One of the villagers shouted and pointed to a bit of greenery bobbing at the midpoint of the crown. The entire group began to yell, punctuating the air with uplifted fists.
Alex called to Delmar. “Can you tell us what is happening?”
“They’ve spotted him,” he answered, “and now they’re calling encouragement.”
Alex snorted softly. “They’d be better off keeping their ch-chchildren on the ground. I think we should tell the shaman that all this is ridiculous, that they have obviously managed to eradicate the disease through some other means—”
“Patience, Doctor,” Michael chided. “Remember your Hippocratic oath? First, do no harm.”
“What harm? I’d be helping them take a giant step forward.”
“You don’t know that. We’re the outsiders here, and we haven’t the foggiest notion of what this keyba thing is really all about. Until we know, we will do nothing but learn.”
Alex lowered her voice. “In case you’ve forgotten, your patient hasn’t time for us to sit around doing nothing.”
“Which is why we’re planning to do something today. Olsson and I have already worked it out.”
Alex felt a shock run through her as their eyes met. “You’re not honestly planning to climb that tree?”
“We are. And I’d suggest you come with us . . . if you’re still interested in finding a cur
e.” His eyes added if you’re able, and Alex knew only Caitlyn’s presence had prevented him from tossing the words at her as a challenge.
She opened her mouth, about to snap that she could manage anything he could, but a sudden whooping sound stopped her in midbreath. They both turned as a cry came from the kapok, then the boy appeared in the understory. Moving in the rhythm established by the people’s chants and his own answering whoops, he used his vine to good effect, sliding swiftly down the liana.
When the boy’s feet touched the ground, he released the vine and lifted both hands in the universal gesture for victory.
The villagers surged forward, surrounding him in celebration. Hands slapped his back and patted his head. Children squealed. His mother and father stood proudly apart from the others, awaiting his progression from the tree to the shaman. Walking in the midst of the jubilant mob, the boy came forward, a broad smile wreathing his face.
Silence fell over the assembly as the boy planted his bare feet firmly in the grass before the shaman, then lifted his hands and boldly uttered a proclamation.
Delmar lifted his head as the boy’s words floated on the heavy air.
Alex caught his eye and mouthed a question: “What’d he say?”
Delmar waited for the shaman’s answer, then shouted over the crowd’s joyous reply. “The boy said, ‘I have been touched by the light of keyba, and the Great Spirit has healed me of the disease that kills.’”
“And the shaman?” Michael asked. “What did he say?”
Delmar shrugged. “The shaman replied, ‘May you see with new eyes and honor the Spirit of keyba in all you do.’”
Emma Whitmore, who had come closer to listen to Delmar’s translation, fisted her hands. “What I would give for a notebook! I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”
