The Shamans at the End of Time, page 19
“Fine, what place is this?”
“The castle of Torrechiara.” The Head stared at Vlad, some expectations filling his eyes.
“There are so many Italian castles,” Vlad shrugged.
“This,” the Head pointed again at the ceiling, “is one of the earliest geographic panoramas in the history of art. It depicts a spiritual pilgrimage, a love story, many things, everything in just four parts. One of the few such type of paintings figuring a woman’s journey. It gives the watcher the impression that hers is an endless pilgrimage. Does it sounds familiar to you?”
“Sixteen century?” Vlad asked, feeling unable to pierce the riddle and, even more, feeling that it could find something unpleasant by trying to solve it.
“The castle is older, but it was fully rebuilt in 1480. Remember that, for a watcher on the floor, the woman seems to be locked in a circular loop, and who knows in which of the four parts the woman will find her way out? There is a castle in each quarter. An interesting riddle, isn’t it? A watcher is nothing more than a bystander, it can’t influence the woman’s loop. All the paintings here, belong to Benedetto Bembo. There are not many who know about him. There,” the Head pointed at the southeast wall. “it’s where the story starts. Cupid does what he knows the best: shoots arrows. The man has been shot in the breast, and clasps the arrow with both hands. Again drawing his bow, Cupid turns toward the woman, who has been shot too, but she does not appear to notice it. That is also an interesting riddle. Cupid spreads arrows without real discernment and, sometimes, his victims feel the effect much later. You may link the woman’s reaction to the part on the ceiling where the she finds her way out in the previous story. But let’s go further.” The Head flied to second scene: the woman gives a sword to a knight, who kneels before her. “Do you know what symbolizes this?” The Head tapped with a finger on the given sword, producing a muffled sound.
“Chivalry. He has vowed to be her protector, and it seems that she has accepted him.”
“Well, well,” the Head clapped his hands. “It seems that something finally moves in your shaman head. In the previous scene, the woman did not know how deep she was touched by Cupid’s arrow. Now, that she found to whom she was bond by Cupid, she accepts the man as her protector. Who is her protector? Try to find the missing links. So many things depend on that.” He winked and, the next moment, Vlad started to fly, passing through the closed window, going higher and higher. The castle became smaller, until it vanished from sight, and he found himself alone in his room.
Did I dream? Vlad asked himself, and his eyes moved around the room, searching for the Head.
“No.”
He started, then looked at the place from where the sound came: he found nothing. I never heard of that castle. How could Andrei know...? No, that head is not Andrei, it’s just a figment of my imagination. A morbid one. How could I know about...?
He walked around the small room, and finding himself in a cage, went to the door. He stopped for a while, thinking that Moira could be outside - the Shamane had the habit to stare at the sky when in search for answers. He wanted to be alone, but his feeling of being caged was stronger, and he stepped outside to gaze up at the clear sky. Without the light pollution, to which he was so long accustomed, there were a myriad more stars to be seen - here, at last, the Milky Way deserved its name. The stars seemed almost close enough to touch, and the full moon shone so bright that he could make out details on the peak behind the village. Caught in the view, he forgot for a while what had happened. A shooting star crossed the sky, and Vlad shook his head, then looked around: he was alone.
“Torrechiara,” he whispered. “For one thing I am sure: I never visited that castle.” He stretched his body, as if trying to wash out a malefic presence, then tried again to find a logical explanation. “I may have seen a movie.” There was a small thought in a corner of his mind that, somehow, he saw before the castle from outside, but the thread was so thin that he could not grab it consciously.
After a brief glance at Moira’s door, he walked away, and his path took him unconsciously to Edna’s hut. He felt closer to her than to Moira. She was in front, sitting on the small bench aligned with the wall of her hut. It was just a four feet long, one foot in diameter, log.
“Sit,” Edna said, tapping on the wood of the bench. “What bothers you?”
Andrei’s head. “The Mother.”
“Ah, our new shaman is coming to life,” she laughed quietly.
What should I ask? How should I ask? Undecided, Vlad rubbed his chin. I don’t think that they have the notion of blasphemy. “How far is her power going? Or how large is she? I don’t really know what I want to ask.” He smiled sheepishly, not realizing that she could not see him.
“Look there,” Edna points at the Milky Way. “Everything you see is the Mother.”
“That’s far,” Vlad said, tentatively.
“From there, our world looks the same, a tiny spot of light.”
Vlad gaped, his mouth opened and closed in a swift succession, no sound living him. “How do you know that?” he finally managed to ask.
“My grandmother was an eight stones powerful shamane. She was part of the Amber Stone Ring. During my initiation, she transported me there.” Edna’s finger pointed at the Milky Way again. “The Rivers of Thought can go anywhere in the Mother’s Web.”
A Mayan Stela, from in southern Mexico, came to Vlad, a depiction of a shamanic journey into the underworld with a number of unknown dimensions of time and space, marked by the undulating waves of the celestial planes. Shamans, traditionally, go on a journey into the underworld, and this carving depicts such a journey. Or so we think. The Mayan shamans used a powerful hallucinogen: 5-DMT, extracted from a toad. Were they really traveling through the celestial planes, or is just our imagination? Vlad asked himself, remembering his own failed experience with the Siberian hallucinogen . “Did you go on the Moon too?”
“Yes,” Edna said, her voice nostalgic. “My mother was still able to go there. Once, I had the impression that I went too, but I am not sure if it was real, or just my imagination. I am not my mother and even less my grandmother. We are going downward. Our power is decreasing, and the Kalach may destroy us.” I hope that Vlad is able to reverse our decline. More she thought about what happened to her during his initiation, more she understood that the shamanes needed the shamans to realize their full potential, and that the opposite was also true. The Mother’s plan has place for both women and men. They complement each other, and they should not fight each other. Fighting would only make us weaker.
“Could you see Earth?” Vlad asked, his voice edgy.
“It looks like the Moon seen from here, just that it has a blue color.”
He breathed deeply. Then it may be that the Head’s knowledge about the Torrechiara castle comes from the Mother’s Web. A part of me went there. I may be able to see my parents, if I learn how to do it. “Yes, it has a blue color.”
Both remained silent and, after a while, Vlad returned to his room. It was almost morning when he fell asleep.
Chapter 16
The beginning of autumn was the time when, Bron, Selma’s other bond would come to visit her. This time, instead of waiting for Vlad to learn the rules, Edna found necessary to tell him how the visit will change his time spent with Selma.
“You want to say that for next ten days she will stay only with that man?” Vlad asked with a scowl.
“Everybody must respect the rules. You are not angry when Malva goes with Rand. Why are you upset now?”
“I don’t like that either, but it was me who interfered between them.”
“It’s the same thing. Bron was Selma’s first bond. We told you about their bonds”
“Until now it was just a story.”
“Ten days pass fast.” Edna caught his hand and squeezed it gently.
“Maybe for you.” He pulled his hand and walked away at a brisk pace.
We may know soon who will mate whom, Edna thought, looking at him, a thin smile on her lips. I think that Malva will go with Rand and, Born is a nice man, but he is not Vlad, and he is not here. Selma will go with Vlad. Her shamane’s sense of the future told her that the village will have two new matings in Spring. Selma is older, so she will have it first. There will be two matings this Autumn too. Who will initiate the boys on how to please a woman? Each woman without a mate would take turns to initiate one boy for a month. As there were many lone women after the wars with the Kalachs, Edna was still waiting for her turn. “No,” she whispered after counting when she will have to do her duty. I will be the first one in Spring. Vlad will make problems. Why can’t he take this things naturally? He fussed even for one kiss on the mouth. But it will be awkward for me too. He will mate my daughter. Vlad is twenty-two. Maybe he is already initiated. Why to initiate a man if he is not mating? Spring is still far. I have to watch him careful the next days. He may react badly, and with his fighting skills... She shook her head, and went to talk with Moira.
The visitors from the northern clan which place was close to the modern city of Caransebes, came the same day, late in the evening, and Edna sent Vlad to his room. He looked through the holes in the walls, trying in vain to guess who Bron would be. There were three bonds from that clan coming into the village, all men - girls would never travel to meet their bonds. Vlad recognized the man only when he took Selma in his arms, embracing her tightly. She laced her arms around the man’s neck. “She will kiss him,” Vlad whispered bitterly, and went away from the hole. I can’t watch.
The next morning, Bron came to take Selma away, and the first thing he did was to kiss her. The Vlahins seemed to appreciate Vlad’s way of ‘feeling’ a girl. Warned by Edna, Selma glanced at Vlad’s room, and found that he was still inside. Feeling alone, she kissed Bron with the same passion in front of Vlad’s angry eyes, who saw everything through the hole in the wall. He just wanted to check if he could leave the room without meeting the other pair. His foot hit the wall, and he bit his lip to stifle a cry. The noise was enough to alert Selma, and she stopped Bron, then pulled him away.
Edna saw her daughter walking away faster than a young couple would do it normally, and she left her hut quickly. Seeing no one in front of Moira’s hut, she breathed with relief. Yet something happened, she thought, and walked toward Vlad’s room. She knocked and entered without waiting for reply and found him sitting head in hands, on the edge of his bed. He saw Selma kissing Bron, she thought and fought to stop a chuckle, sometimes his reactions to such normal things were hilarious. “What’s your plan today?” She sat on the bed next to him, and her hand played with his hair.
“I have no plans,” he said, morose.
“A shaman is not allowed to be lazy.”
“I am not a shaman.”
“Two shamane say that you are.”
“I will work on the kiln for pottery.”
“Do you need help?”
“No, I want to be alone.”
“Fine. I will come with you, to see how the kiln looks, then I will leave you alone.” I hope Selma is not there.
Vlad had chosen an isolated place, just north of the village. It was a small plateau, almost round, some thirty feet radius. Surrounded on three parts by the forest, it offered an impressive view over the village and the Great River. Some young couples protested in the beginning - it was their favorite place but, with some mumbling, they accepted that pottery is a more serious thing for the clan than their rendezvous.
He stood up and walked out of the room in silence, followed by Edna. “I did not work much in the last days,” he said, trying to remember the last time when Edna visited his place.
Both shamanes and Rune were going almost daily to see how fast his work was advancing, but he did not know that. It was a matter of great importance to the clan, but they did not try to hurry him. Though when they did not know much about pottery, they saw him struggling to make that strange kiln. This was the second kiln Vlad was trying to make. The first one was easier to build, and gave him eartheware pottery and bricks for the new one yet, for the moment, he had less than a tenth of the bricks he needed. It was a small kiln, firing a temperature of around four hundred Celsius degrees, not good enough to make good pottery or even good brick. The issue with these kilns was efficiency. In such small things, the thermal loss is high.
“I still don’t know how to make the second kiln,” he said, sheepishly.
“At least we know now how the Kalachs are able to make their large pots. The coiling which you taught us works well.”
“But if I am not able to heat the clay at a higher temperature, the large pots and bowls will be fragile. You have to throw them away in less than half a year.”
“They will still be cheaper than buying everything from the Kalachs.”
“Perhaps,” Vlad shrugged.
The difficulty of his task resided from trying to make a double chambered kiln, so the pottery would be heated uniformly. The Kalachs’s bowls that Vlad had studied were having several nuanced of heated clay spread with no rules, and he supposed that they were using pit firing. He needed to make sure that enough heat will get into the clay in a homogenous way, and with all his desperate search in his memory, there was nothing there to advice him. He also wanted to regulate the firing atmosphere - oxidizing or reducing. He was able to design modern ovens, and he was thinking in technological conditions that could not be fulfilled with only bricks and sand mixed with clay as mortar. There was a large discrepancy between what his mind still anchored in a modern technology wanted and his means. The structure would be both too fragile and hard to make. For some weeks, he thought of making quick lime, but he needed another kiln, and more issues to solve. It was also hard to find combustible. It was not easy to cut logs with stone axes.
Nervously, he kicked a half buried stone, and he bite his lip to hide his pain. “Bloody stone,” he mumbled and walked further. His attention still inward, noticed the stone without really seeing it. After a few more steps, he turned quickly and knelt in front of the small pit left in the ground by the uprooted stone. Edna followed his hieratic moves, but chose to not interfere. “I am so stupid,” Vlad whispered. “This is how I should make the kiln. Half-buried. See?” His finger dug a bit more, and Edna knelt beside him. “I will not need bricks to make the underground part. I will just put clay plaster on the walls and make a strong fire. This is our kiln.” He smiled and Edna smiled back.
Relieved, Edna saw the spark in his eyes, and his determination. The clan will have pottery, and Vlad’s mind will stay focused, away from Selma.
“I need two men to help me dig the pit. Tomorrow. I will need to find a good place, and make some calculations.”
“What kind of place you need?”
“A natural hole, some six feet long and three feet wide, in a place which is not too rocky.”
“Let me think,” Edna said, and closed her eyes, trying to remember if such place existed close to the village. “A ravine would be good?”
“No, if water flows there when it rains. It should be at the edge of a flat surface.”
“Would be that good enough?” Edna pointed behind him, at the edge of the meadow, a waggish smile on her lips, and Vlad burst into laughter.
“It was difficult to find that place.” Caught by some thinking fever, he walked briskly, followed by Edna. “It’s a bit smaller, but we may be able to enlarge it. Here,” he pointed at the open part of the hole, “it will be the mouth of the kiln. If I am able to find a way to build two chambers, there will be two mouths: one for the fire place and one for the pottery.” He took his bayonet and started to dig in one of the walls. He found pebbles, sand and clay. “Clay will help us.”
Focused, Edna stood at the end of the hole, measuring it, and she finally understood what he wanted.“I will send you two men,” she said and walked away.
It took them the remaining of the day to fashion the hole the way Vlad wanted it, and four more to plaster the walls with clay that needed to be carried from half a mile away. From the edge of the pit, for half a foot, the walls were arching smoothly inside, as it they were to be made into roman arch. There were three small transversal beams made of oak wood, to prop the half arches. They would burn, but slowly enough to resist until the half arches were consolidate enough by the fire to stand by themselves. It was the point when Vlad finally let aside his modern technology and decided to make a false baking chamber to store the pots . The useful surface was four feet long and two feet wide. Stuck to the long walls, he made two parallel shoulders, ten inches wide, two feet tall. The kiln itself would be two more feet higher, from which only one foot was above the ground. Leaning on the shoulders, there will be a grate made of clay, separating the lower combustion chamber from the upper baking chamber, with flues to transfer the heat into the baking chamber. He knew that after each firing he had to open the ceiling and extract the pottery, and that parts of the grate would need replacement. This way he could make a smaller mouth for the combusting chamber, and the heat retention would be higher.
When it was her day, Malva came to help him too. There was not much time for their usual play, and with his mind absorbed by his tasks, Vlad did not feel that she was starting to be a bit more distant.
“The walls are ready. We need wood,” Vlad told them just before starting to eat. As usual , he was eating at Moira’s table. Rune and Edna were there, as it was Malva. He frowned and turned to search for Selma. She is still with that... The last seven days, he was able to see her only in the morning, when Bron came for her.
“How much wood?” Edna asked, quickly.
“A lot,” he said, morose, his mind still drifting after Selma. “We need to fill the kiln tightly with hard wood like oak and ash, and make a three feet high mound of wood on top of it. The wood underground must be thick, something like a twelve-year-old child’s thigh. Outside we can have smaller branches. Then we have to cover it with earth. Some old skins that can be spared would help to place earth on top. They will burn,” he added.
