The Shamans at the End of Time, page 9
“Feel the people,” Edna whispers and, as if a bandage is taken from my eyes, I see them differently: small red flames absorbing the faint blue tendrils from Moira. My eyes are still closed. In less than a minute, the lower part of the amphitheater looks like a net of almost white strings, each intersection centered round someone’s head. I feel connected to them in a way that I can’t understand. “The Mother’s Web.” Edna enlightens me.
Without a break, I start to play the Lonely Shepherd; my inner eye is eager to see if something changes in the strange world that was hidden from me until now. There are no changes and, when the time comes, I start to the Romanian Rhapsody.
“Breathe now,” Edna whispers, just before I am ready to start El Condor Pasa and, for the first time, I see changes in the vision before me. Moira now looks like being made of light, though I am able to see even the smallest detail of her skin. She undresses, and starts to dance naked, without music, her body swaying left and right. The people, down in the amphitheater, imitate her, as if hypnotized by a female version of Ka, the python from Kipling’s The Jungle’s Book. “Play for the River Dance,” Edna whispers and, note by note, the condor takes life from my nai and flies majestically over the valley. There is such force in the music, and I finally understand Moira’s choice. “Be ready,” Edna says.
Before I know what to be ready for, a shock moves through my brain.
“You are now inside the Second River of Thought,” Edna whispers, I and hear her not in my ear, but directly in my brain, and I feel her like a physical presence inside me. Strangely, I don’t feel afraid of that trespassing.“Few people can reach the Second River. Learn to fly.”
Instinctively, some part of me rises a few feet above my head, and I gather everything: the girls, Edna, even though she is behind me, Moira, Rune and the people in front of me. My song continues, as if there are two versions of me, acting in a separate, yet interlinked way. It’s fully dark now, but I see everything with disconcerting clarity.
With the last note, silence falls around us, and no one moves. The light recedes from the people, flowing back to Moira, and then it vanishes. I see Moira breathing heavily and collapsing in Rune’s arms. She looks exhausted, but neither Rune nor Edna seems to be worried. The part of me levitating three feet above my head still sees everything with a strange clarity, through the darkness.
“Come back,” Edna whispers, and I feel her mind intermingling with mine, teaching me how to control that second me. “Now fly again,” she says when I am whole again. I obey, and the second me flies above my head again. “Come back.” This time she is doesn’t help me, and I struggle to return the part that now seems to like acting independently from me. “Be gentle. That part is you.” Guided by her whispers, it takes me a minute to accomplish the task. Alone. “Open your eyes.”
Rune brings Moira to me. She is still breathing heavily, in the faint light of the torches. “Thank you,” she says, and Rune moves down the hill, keeping her in his arms.
Thin light is passing through the clouds, hovering over a world that I have barely started to understand. The source is clearly a natural satellite, and I crave to see its form. Its form may clarify where I am now. My will is split in two. I would be less afraid if the invisible moon proves this is Earth, but it would be more exciting to see an unknown celestial body. Walking back, I try to understand what happened to me during the River Dance.
There may be something out there, something that is conscious and intelligent, listening to us, and Moira seems able to transport us into that hidden world. Shamane... the word starts to have a different meaning to me, and I feel like a storm is ready to break out in my mind. But it could be just a dream, one of the many strange dreams I have had in a brief period of time. Even my presence here may just be a dream. A strange, long dream, the result of a traumatic coma. Back in my room, I sit on the edge of the bed, head in hands.
“That was not a bad performance.” Andrei’s voice fills the room, seeming to come from the door, and it seems so real, as if there is a person or a loudspeaker there. I refuse to raise my head. It doesn’t matter; the Head appears between my knees, staring up at me. He always finds a way to stare right into my eyes. “You could make good money, playing here.”
“Money?”
“Just a generic term for civilized people like us. Here it’s about food, skins and women. Whatever you want, in whatever order you want. Only alcohol is missing. Those two girls look good. What are you waiting for? We need some distraction. Play for them, and they will not refuse to please you in bed. Your sleeping bag is made for fun and for two.”
This is strange. I never think like this. How can my unconscious mind be so different and so ... conscious of carnal pleasures...? It’s trying to steer me in the wrong direction. Is this a test?“Are we so civilized? I see a floating head of a man who... Well, who died in a war started by civilized people, in another timeline, or on another planet, and even though he’s dead he doesn’t...”
“Beethoven, Mozart, Pink Floyd, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Confucius. Wars and theft created them. The first astronomic observatory was made possible only by wars and theft. The shamans, wizards, priests or however you want to call them, needed food, clothes and shelter. This is how we started on the road to progress, by killing and robbing other people, so we could grow stronger, wiser and richer.”
“And this is how you ended.” I pointed at the severed head. “Quite a wise end.”
“It happens, sometimes,” he said and pouted like a child. “How do you feel?”
“Strange. I am talking to a floating head.”
Andrei rolls his eyes, but stays silent.
“I don’t know if seeing you is different from leaving my own body with Edna’s help. Was it a hallucination, what happened in the amphitheater? What is the River Dance?” Strangely, I am waiting for the Head to confirm that I really had an out of body experience, and that there is something there; I don’t know where, I don’t know what. Around or above. Everywhere. Something that Moira helped me to connect with.
“Does it matter?”
“I guess it does.”
“Why?”
“It’s the difference between Moira tricking their minds and mine into a collective hallucination and Moira helping them... Well helping them to see something I don’t yet understand.”
“Ah, the Rivers of Thought, connecting people with a higher intelligence. The Mother and her intelligent web. You need to sleep.” The Head looks visibly bored by my ruminations and he vanishes. My strange thoughts are here to stay.
Why did he mention an intelligent field? My mind is moving hieratically from one piece of knowledge to another, and Penrose’s theory of quantum consciousness comes to me.
That may fit, even though no one actually proved it. If I am to believe in coincidences, the simple fact that I remember that theory, after the River Dance, could make it the real thing. There is something out there. Or maybe not. I stand up abruptly and pace around the room, rubbing my chin. I need to learn their language faster. It may take a while until I can talk philosophy with them.
Chapter 8
Moira woke up late that morning, the humming of the previous night still vivid in her mind. I’ve never had such a high level Communion, she thought. There is something strange about Vlad and his music.We already know that his mind is strange, neither Vlahin, nor Kalach. She stood up, dressed and went out of the hut, to be greeted by a bright sun, its disc half visible over the mountains. When was the last time I woke up after the sun? She mused, smiling wanly. I am hungry. She turned and found Rune and Edna eating at the main table, outside the hut. “Who gave you the right to eat without me? I will curse you if there is nothing good left.”
“Leftovers,” Rune said, without stopping to chew. “Bear, rabbit. There is no more deer meat.”
“Fish?” Moira asked, a trace of hope in her voice.
“That was the first thing we ran out of yesterday,” Edna laughed.
“Bear then. It tastes better knowing that the animal tried to eat Malva. Where is she?”
“Sleeping, with Selma. They woke up some time ago; checked to see if Vlad was awake, and went to sleep again. I never knew anyone to sleep as late as Vlad.” Edna’s laughter filled the place. “He is a bad example for the girls.”
“He is a late bird. Through the wall, I can hear him catching flies, late in the evening. Someone should teach him how to hunt. He makes way too much noise for a simple fly. I still wonder how he managed to kill that bear. He doesn’t look like a hunter.” Moira took a piece of meat, but she did not start to eat.
“His people may look different,” Rune said. “But there is strength in him, or certainly determination. I’ve never sat on a life bear’s back. You need a big heart to stick a knife into a bear’s ribs, and then take a trip on his back. He did all that for a few strangers.”
“Big heart, indeed, and there is kindness in him too. I have a feeling that he likes children,” Moira said. “And he likes music too. His skills are a good addition to our clan.”
“And the Communion?” Edna asked, amused.
“I may be wrong, but I felt six Amber Stones, yesterday evening, during the River Dance,” Rune said, thoughtfully. He was not a shaman, but he had the Shaman Vein. With proper training, Rune could have reached three and a half Amber Stones, but there was no shaman left alive to initiate him and, anyway, he was too old now. If it was not done at the proper age, people could die during the initiation process. The brain was no longer flexible enough to accept the changes. The Vlahins knew that girls could become shamanes before the age of twenty. For men, the threshold was twenty-one.
“You are right,” Moira said, still not eating. “This was the strongest Communion I’ve ever led, and our people are happier. There were too many minds for me to link with during the Communion, but I had the feeling that Vlad entered the Second River of Thought.”
“Yes.” Edna closed her eyes for a few moments, trying to recollect her interaction with Vlad during the Condor song. “His second self drifted away. He struggled a little to get back, but I helped him.”
“He must have the Shaman Vein. But I can’t feel it.” Frustration filled Moira’s voice;she still hadn’t eaten anything.
“Eat,” Rune said, gently. “Food helps you think.”
“I don’t feel Vlad’s vein either. But,” Edna raised her forefinger, “we’ve already agreed that his mind is different, so his Shaman Vein may be different too.”
“But I can feel the vein in the Kalachs, and they are different too. I know, I know,” Moira raised the hand that was not occupied with the steak, “Vlad’s mind is even more different than the Kalachs’. More different than everything we know, and more complex. I don’t care that he is different; I am just frustrated that I can’t understand him better. We need him, and we need the second man the Mother promised us too. That bearded man is the strongest one, and if Vlad is so ... strange...” Her voice trailed off; she was not yet able to grasp all the implications.
“I had an uncomfortable premonition,” Edna said. “In that brief period of time, when I entered the Third River of Thought, I saw both of them. They were together, and they were dressed the same way, in those skins that are so soft and strange. And both had a backpack. We must talk about that when Vlad learns our language.”
“He is advancing fast,” Rune said, tentatively.
“Yet not fast enough,” Edna shrugged. “We need to know.”
“I may need to make a High Communion with Vlad,” Moira said, and finally taking a bite of the chunk of meat impaled by her stone tool. “After he learns our language,” she said after a while, impatience filling her voice. “That thing with storing words on ... paper,” she struggled to remember the name, “looks ... important to me, though I am not yet sure why. It’s just a feeling.”
“If he can teach us how to make paper, we can store memories. It’s made from a plant, if I understood him, not from skin. Who knows if that plant grows here? The girls told me that he stored words in both languages with the same signs. The sounds seems to be similar, so we may be able to learn the signs too,” Edna said, and paused; something was bothering her. “Yesterday, I saw him looking at pottery. He tapped some of the pots, listened to the sound they made. He did not look surprised. Maybe he knows how the Kalach make it. It costs a lot of furs to buy pottery from them.”
“He can probably do things for the Mother’s House but, after he learns our language, he must join the hunters too. No one can hunt without understanding the commands. It’s dangerous.” There was some melancholy in Rune’s voice; he could no longer hunt. He was once the Chief of the hunters, but the wound he suffered, in the last battle against the Kalachs, ended that. At least he was lucky enough to survive; Edna’s mate was killed in the same fight. “If we take into account the music part, he may spend half of the time doing things for the House.” He looked at Moira, who nodded. It was unusual for a man to spend so much time in the Mother’s House, working with Moira and Edna for the spiritual good of the tribe, but they had never seen a more unusual man.
Vlad woke up late, to find there was no one in front of the hut. I was expecting Selma, he thought, and glanced up at the sky. It’s noon. He still didn’t understand why the girls took care of him by rotation, but that was not his worst worry. From the moment he woke, memories from the night before assailed him, and he chose to ignore them. Too many strange things had happened during the night, and he wanted to distance his mind a bit. There was time enough to think of them later. There were three bowls on the main table on Moira’s terrace, one of them covered, the other two empty: one large and one small one. Steak, he sniffed. Would that be for me? His stomach grumbled, reminding him that his last meal was almost a day ago, before he played for the dancers. Better wait for someone, to tell me what I can eat. Unconsciously, he tightened his belt, then sat at the table. The empty bowls attracted his attention, and he pulled the larger one closer. Coiling and earthenware technique. They know to make kilns. His finger followed the small grooves in the surface; they looked like a spiral. The walls of the bowl were hard. The small one was different. Pinch and pit firing technique. Why use this technique when the other one produces pottery of better quality? Maybe because it’s cheaper to create earthenware. His stomach grumbled again. Where is everybody? He turned, looking for a familiar face, and saw Edna walking toward him. Her eyes were fixed on the small bowl in his hands. What’s wrong? Carefully, he put the bowl back on the table.
Edna sat across the table from and smiled. That calmed him.
Beginnings are always difficult, especially when such different cultures are involved. “Flam.” He smiled sheepishly, and rubbed his stomach.
Surprised, Edna pushed the covered bowl toward him. “For you.”
“Not know,” he said, in his rudimentary Vlahin, and took a piece of steak from the bowl. Bear. I ate this yesterday too. It’s not bad, but I wish I could have some potato puree, tomato salad and a bottle of Feteasca wine. But that won’t happen. He bit off a large chunk and forced himself to chew well before swallowing it.
“You can eat whatever food you find on this table.” She smiled, seeing his hunger, then realized that he could not understand. “Food here.” She tapped on the table. “Vlad eat. No ask.”
“Thank you,” he said, still chewing, and she remained silent until he had finished. Now in a much better mood, Vlad remembered her staring when he was analyzing the small bowl. “Bowl?” He pointed again at it.
Edna stretched out her hand, and pushed the empty bowls in front of him, and moved to his side of the table. They looked at each other, and laughed. Neither knew how to say what was needed so the other would understand.
Vlad tapped the large bowl. “Good.” Then he did the same on the small one. “Bad.” Edna nodded. “Who?” He pointed at both bowls.
“Kalach.” She followed his lead and pointed at the large bowl. “Vlahin.” She pointed to the other one, but she could not say that it was made by another Vlahin clan, dwelling in the north eastern plain. Here, they were specialized in tanning.
I should have keep my mouth shut and not said that the small bowl is bad. How could I know that it was made here? It seems the Kalachs are more advanced. They were the ones who killed Catalin. But then, the Vlahins may be just as violent. I must be more careful. What should I say now?
With her shamane’s senses, Edna felt his fear. Why is he afraid? How can I tell that we were waiting for him? That the Mother sent him to help us? That we are in debt because he saved three of our children? She placed her hand over his. “Vlad, friend,” she said and smiled at him and, relieved, he smiled back, without really understanding why she had reacted that way. Edna touched the large bowl, looking at him again. How should I ask if he knows how to make it? Maybe is too early for such talk. Yet curiosity and need pushed her to try. She repeated the names, pointing at the respective bowls, then she pointed at him. “Vlad?”
Me what? Is she asking what kind of pottery my people have? “Vlad,” he said, and pointed at both bowls. Of course we can make them, though only academics would try to produce such relics.
Edna’s eyes enlarged for a moment. “Edna is Vlahin. Vlad?”
“Romanian.”
“Vlad or Romanian?” she asked, pointing at the bowls.
She wants to know if I can produce them. The coiling technique is easy to master. To build a kiln may be more difficult. “Vlad.”
“Would you make them for us?” she asked immediately, forgetting that he could not understand, but he deduced her wish from her expression.
