The youth lay still, not moving, except
for the occasional wheeze of air escaping his lungs. His mother
had done all she could for the boy; His head rested on grain-filled
cloth pillows, and every few minutes she dabbed a cool sponge across
his head, clearing the heavy beads of sweat from his brow. But in
the silence of those moments spent waiting for the Shaman to arrive,
the tears she had worked to contain during her vigil broke through.
Finally, she heard the shuffle of
movement outside the cottage door. The boy's father entered. Trailing
him was a tall, simple man dressed in poorly stitched clothes. He
wasn't as old as she'd expected, in fact no older than the boy's
father. His jet-black hair was surprisingly neat-cut, but his dark
eyes seemed wise, and he carried a carved walking stick with a scuffed
base, which told her he'd spent those years deep in the darkest
woods, no matter how many or how few.
"Is this your son, Madre?" the Shaman
asked. "Is this Juan?"
Setting down his walking stick, he
moved past the boy's mother to the side of the bed. The Shaman was
a big man, strong of muscle beneath his simple-tailored clothes,
but he carried himself with a grace uncommon for his height and
stature.
"He was walking in the forest, Shaman,"
the boy's mother said, her voice broken and panicked. "With his
father, gathering wood for the fire."
"The boy is a dreamer, Shaman," his
father snapped. "Easily distracted by sights and places in the glen."
Shaman quickly assessed the boy, then
turned to the worried faces of his parents. "Perhaps he has the
making of a Shaman in him, if the trees and wildlife interest him
so deeply. But first," he said, indicating the dark purple bruise
that blemished the honey-colored skin of the boy's left foot. "Madre,
stand back."
The boy's mother joined her husband
at the distance Shaman had requested. Over his shoulder, both parents
watched, sickened for their ailing son, as the Shaman clapped his
large, rough hands together and began to rub them, one against the
next. The summer heat inside their cottage seemed to grow with each
circle of his fingers.
"Is it a bite, Shaman?" Padre asked. "Venom,
from some creature in the woods?"
"Silence, please," Shaman whispered.
"This will be delicate."
Padre's grip on his wife's shoulder
tightened. They stared at the Shaman's intricate movements, transfixed
by what happened next. The Shaman gripped Juan's left foot by the
ankle with one hand, and then placed the pointer of his other flush
against the purple discoloration. Juan jerked suddenly on the bed.
"Remain calm," Shaman said. "Madre,
a bowl if you would, at once."
Madre's paralysis broke. She hurried
into the kitchen and quickly returned with a small stone basin.
She held the bowl at ready as Shaman withdrew his touch. Trailing
his finger, suspended in the very air, a string of viscous red fluid
emerged. Shaman maneuvered it carefully into the stone bowl. Once
he had finished, Juan's labored breaths grew noticeably smoother.
Shaman wiped his hands and stood. Similar beads of perspiration
now pooled on his forehead.
"A toxin," he said, steadying himself
again on the carved walking stick. "I have removed all that I could,
but he has already absorbed much of it."
Madre set the bowl down. "Will he
get better, Shaman?"
"I cannot say," he answered, shaking
his head, scattering raindrops of sweat. "This bite-" He indicated
the discolored bruise. "I don't recognize it, or the toxin. But
have hope, Madre. He is a strong boy, and out of immediate danger.
If I can find the source of this toxin, I may be able to help your
son further. Padre, will you show me where you found him?"
"Yes, Shaman, right away."
Stopping only long enough to embrace his wife, he extended a hand
toward the door. Shaman, too, comforted the boy's mother. "Keep
him cool and resting. I will return with as much hope as I can find
up there."
"Thank you, Shaman," Madre said, trying
her best not to cry, but failing.
"Save your tears, Madre," Shaman soothed.
"We might not need them."
The lush pathways of the deep woods
grew steadily darker. At some places, the trees had grown so close
together they totally blocked the sun. In these regions of the glen,
plants with leathery leaves and brightly-colored blossoms covered
the ground. The perfume from orchids carried in the humid air, heavy
and hypnotic.
"The boy, he is our only child," Padre
said as they walked at a brisk pace deeper into the woods. "Sometimes,
perhaps I am too hard on him. His head is so filled with dreams."
"A boy needs dreams," Shaman said.
"But also, discipline."
"I love my son, Shaman," mumbled Padre.
"I could never forgive myself if something happened to him."
Shaman stopped suddenly in place.
The boy's father was several steps ahead when he realized the familiar
click-clicking of the walking stick had ended. When Padre revolved,
he found Shaman standing at a place on the path where the canopy
of vines and branches had opened enough to let in the sun. Padre
knew what was visible beyond the break in the trees, the tall metal
remains of the old city, growing less and less distinct as the years
passed.
"Shaman?" Padre asked.
Shaman shifted in place on his walking
stick and nervously fingered several of the intricate grooves in
the patterned carvings. "Padre, it isn't that long since we returned
to the woods. Even those of us who have given our lives to understanding
the forests, even we don't know all the dangers that surround us
here. There's no telling how that old life-" he pulled up his walking
stick and aimed it at the ancient city, "how it affects our new."
"We are close to where Juan was injured,
Shaman," said Padre. "This way to where I found the boy after he
cried out and collapsed."
Gentle slopes rose up on two sides
of the glen. Light spilled down through breaks in the canopy, enough
that a meadow had taken root beneath the stretches of pine forest,
nourished by the sun and a small, spring-fed pond and its estuaries.
A decent armful of sticks lay scattered on the path, right where
the boy had dropped them.
"He comes here often," Padre said.
"To dream."
Shaman nodded. "It is a beautiful
place for such notions. Padre, tell me what you yourself have seen
in this place."
"Birds," the boy's father said. "As
bright as the Quetzlcoatl, but only from time to time."
"There are no venomous birds," Shaman
said. "And none that would attack a youth the age of yours in this
manner, on the foot. Whatever bit or stung him did so from the ground,
not the air."
The soft hum of summer insects drew
Padre's eyes to the meadow reeds. "Some insecto, Shaman?"
"Perhaps. Remain still and calm, Padre."
Balancing the carved walking stick
between both hands, Shaman rolled the wood back and forth, faster
and faster, forcing air through the furrows. A subtle whine filled
the glen. It grew quickly louder, higher, until almost too precise
to be heard
"A universal sound," Shaman whispered.
"They will come. Look!"
Padre followed Shaman's eyes to the
edge of the timothy and lavender, where a sudden stirring teased
the meadow grasses. The first to emerge was a large black beetle
with yellow stripes. A pair of small green locusts and a slow-moving
walking stick followed it. The air in the glen filled with lemon-colored
butterflies, dragonflies, and darning needles, which hovered stationary
in the humid mists above the spring-filled grotto before flitting
away.
Shaman studied each of the insects,
but dismissed them as having been the source of Juan's injury. He
ceased spinning the carved wood between his fingers, and almost
immediately, the insects that responded returned to invisibility
in the glen.
"The worst here is the wasp," Shaman
said. "And even his is little more than a painful sting. Whatever
harmed your son was not of their making." Padre nodded, but remained
still, as if afraid to speak following Shaman's request for silence.
"Juan's attacker was some other creature."
Bringing the walking stick up from
the earth, Shaman turned it on its side. For a moment during which
his eyes roamed the carved patterns, he didn't speak. Then he cautioned
Padre to remove himself to the edge of the glen in the direction
they had come from. Saying no more, he blew into the meticulously-carved
groove he'd located. A broken, choppy whistle joined the chorus
of chirs and chirps around them.
Shaman repeated the action. The broken
whistle, this time louder, sounded again. It was a surly noise,
one that crawled on the exposed skin of Padre's arms, forcing gooseflesh
to rise despite the humidity, a noise that touched some secret inner
place, primitive, primal.
Shaman continued. At one point, Padre
realized the chirring sounds in the glen had quieted fully. Now,
except for the broken whistle of Shaman's breath in the furrows
of his walking stick, all that remained were his own heartbeats.
They drummed in his ears.
And then, under the trees, a stirring in the pine needles.
Padre peered over the Shaman's walking
stick toward the gentle slope of the forest embankment. A long,
undulating movement from beneath the carpet of pine needles slithered
toward them. Through breaks in the litter of branches and fallen
needles, Padre caught flashes of a shiny orange color. A second
broken whistle, almost identical to the one Shaman created each
time he blew into the carved grooves of his walking stick, joined
in. The mysterious presence slithered closer, to within a yard of
where Shaman stood.
A long, forked tongue poked out from
the break in the forest floor. The second broken whistle hissed
louder. Horrified, Padre watched as an enormous snake slowly raised
its head up and out into open view, a head twice the size of his
own hands, a body, he guessed from its impression in the needles,
easily the length of a man. The image of it - its orange underbelly,
milky-colored spine and striped face - made Padre shudder.
"Shaman!" Padre huffed.
The pale eyes of the orange python
shifted lazily in Padre's direction, but drifted back to the Shaman,
where they stayed.
"Silence, Padre," Shaman said in a
calm voice. He lowered the walking stick slowly, deliberately. The
orange python flicked its long tongue at him, its broken hiss unchallenged
in the silence of the glen. From where he stood, Padre noticed Shaman's
unblinking eyes locked with the snake's. The air in the glen, already
tense and hot, grew strangulating.
But at the moment when Padre was sure
the python would strike, it curiously lowered its head and assumed
a passive stance. Leaning in, Shaman placed both hands on the sides
of its head. He gave the snake a gentle squeeze.
"There are no venom sacs," Shaman
whispered. "This animal is not responsible."
"Another snake, perhaps?"
Shaman continued the gentle hand movements
along the scales of the orange python's neck. "No. Where these live,
there are no others."
The giant snake, seemingly charmed
by the Shaman, lowered its head down even further. In the most unexpected
of that day's events, Shaman, too, leaned closer, pressing his lips
to the raised crown of the python's skull.
"Dios, mio," Padre sputtered
beneath his breath.
A moment later, Shaman raised his
head and released his grip on the orange python. He backed slowly
away from the giant snake. The python held its place for a few seconds
longer before turning in the direction it had come from. Padre watched
it slowly slither away, back beneath the carpet of needles.
"If this is not the source of Juan's
affliction," Padre asked, eyes still wide in disbelief at what he
had just witnessed. "If it was not the snake, or the bird, or the
insect, what was it, Shaman?"
Shaman didn't answer right away. Instead,
he tipped his eyes skyward and faced the afternoon sun. Squinting,
he wiped fresh sweat from his forehead. "Today is a warm day indeed,
Padre. Very warm. A day when a young boy might seek to cool himself
from the rays of the sun…"
Both men faced the trail of firewood
that had been dropped on the forest path, a trail leading up to
the edge of the grotto. Drawing in a deep breath, Shaman stepped
closer to the water.
"Do you think whatever attacked my
son was in the water, Shaman? Some venomous creature?"
Carefully, Shaman brushed the well-traveled
tip of his walking stick across a patch of bent reeds, a disturbance
in the grass, a depression the right size for a boy's footprint.
"We shall see, Padre," he said, parting the cat-o-nine tails for
a better view of the water.
On the opposite side of the shore,
the waterway fanned out in a half-circle. Small tributaries cut
fingers through the lush green sedge and meadows. Shaman felt his
feet sink into the spongy carpet of grass and steadied himself on
the walking stick, which he dipped into the clear, cold water -
water that was far too clear, too cold for the long, hot days of
summer that had discolored and dried up even the best-protected
of fresh springs.
Shaman made another observation. Within
the currents, growing beneath the water or floating in patches on
the surface, was a single, frill-leafed swamp plant, the only vegetation.
No lilies. No alodea. Just the same frilled leaves.
"Curious," Shaman said. He lifted
the walking stick and gently poked the nearest cluster of submerged
vegetation. Immediately, a small black shadow darted from under
cover beneath the frill-leafed plant. Shaman's keen eyes tracked
the shadow. "A fish!" he said.
A few more digs with the heel of the
walking stick uncovered several more of the little black fish, each
small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, not much of a threat
by their size alone. But in the clarity of the cold spring water,
he noticed the whisker-like stingers protruding from the faces of
the fish. Shaman nodded. "Stinger-pouts!"
"Fish?" asked Padre. "Did Juan step
on a poisonous fish?"
"It would appear so," Shaman said.
"Though as I told you in the cottage, I did not recognize the poison
afflicting your son. Stingers may sting, but seldom could they inflict
death. I believe we have yet to find the source of the toxin, Padre,
just the way it was delivered."
Shaman stared at the water and the
small black fish cloistered around the plants.
"But now I think I understand."
They followed the tributaries up through
the deep, dark forest, until the angle of the sun had shifted considerably.
The ruins loomed ahead of them, visible
through breaks in the branches, rising to many times their height,
a collection of pitted stone structures and bridges over the waterway.
Here, the base of the stream shifted from soil to concrete. Water
bubbled up from some place deep within the ruins, a part of that
old life that had continued to affect the new. Picking his way carefully
to the bridge above the stream, Shaman looked toward the horizon,
then down into the continuous stream of water that originated from
the broken pipes of the old city.
"This is what poisoned your son,"
he said. "This water."
Padre joined him on the bridge. Their
vantage above the ground afforded a scoping view of the old city,
the abandoned buildings that still towered in the distance, some
a hundred times taller than the tallest trees, some snapped in half,
others blackened by the fires that had burned so long ago. "Que,
Shaman?"
"The stinger fish that hurt your son.
It only stung him. But a toxin in the water was what poisoned him,
Padre. A poison from our past."
An invisible fist closed around Padre's
stomach. He looked toward the ancient city as a sense of hopelessness
closed in around him. "My son, Shaman. How does a boy of the woods
survive something so dangerous?"
Shaman's eyes again traveled the waterways.
He followed the current down from the concrete to where silt and
sandy bottom resumed. The frill-leafed vegetation was everywhere.
Shaman noticed several of the stinger fish and smiled. Suddenly,
he understood. "By being a boy of the woods, Padre. Come on - and
with haste! Your son's future is at stake!"
The youth, while obviously sickened
by the taste, stuffed more of the frilled plant his mother had prepared
into his mouth.
"Good," Shaman said. He patted Juan's
back. The boy smiled weakly, but his fever had broken, and the strange
discoloration of the sting had already begun to fade.
"You are sure?" Madre asked. "Sure
he will be fine, Shaman?"
Balancing the bulk of his weight upon
the walking stick, Shaman nodded. "The stinger fish. They were the
only living creatures in the water, except for this marsh plant.
The fish eat the plant and digest an element in the plant that protects
them from the poison in the water."
"It tastes awful," Juan groused.
"Swamp cabbage usually does, my friend."
The boy's smile returned. "But I am
very happy to be here to taste it, awful or not. Thank you, Shaman.
Thank you for helping me, and for helping my Madre and Padre."
Shaman touched the boy's shoulder.
"I have heard of your preoccupation—with the forest. We Shamans
try to learn all we can about these deep woods. There is still so
much to understand, but today we know them just a little bit better."
A sound at the cottage door turned
all eyes toward Padre, who entered carrying a rough, straight branch.
Padre shuffled nervously in place, as if not quite knowing what
to say. He handed the branch to Juan.
"Padre?" the boy asked.
Padre glanced to the Shaman, then
Madre, before returning to the boy's warm brown eyes. "Until your
foot heals fully, you will need a good walking stick. I found this
one in your favorite glen, Juan. I thought while we waited for the
wonderful meal your Madre has prepared that the Shaman might even
teach you a few of the things he knows, if he would be so kind."
"A boy needs dreams," Shaman said.
He took a deep breath of the warm air, which was filled with the
aromas of good cooking. "I would be happy to."
Juan accepted the rough, uncarved
walking stick from his father, a wide smile on his young face.
Later that night, with Shaman's guidance,
he began to carve.
— THE
END —
