Kiss the Morning Star (18 page)

The earth spins. Magma cools, crystallizes. “You were right,” I say.

“Damn straight I was.” Kat’s fingers weave into my hair, deftly combing and twining it into a thin braid. The sensation of each strand knitting together is so astonishing that I fall completely out of the world to ponder it.

“Right about what?” she says, when it becomes apparent that I’m not going to elaborate.

“Right about…everything.” I close my eyes to enjoy the sparklers and sunbursts on my eyelids. Pleasant images, but just little empty distractions. “You’re so smart, Katy Kat.”

“You’re really tripping hard, aren’t you?”

“That’s what I’m talking about.” I feel the words slide back into place. “You were right about the acid. We totally should not have done this.” Tears escape my eyes.

“Are you okay?” Kat leans down and kisses my forehead lightly, just a brush of lips and breath and love, and I can see the kiss through my eyelids—a burst of light peach and rose.

“No, that’s what I’m saying. It’s too much, too much to handle too soon.” I roll over onto my side. “It’s just…a lot of a lotness.”

“A lot of a lotness?”

“You know. A lot of a lot. Ness.”

“And God? Are you learning anything from this trip?”

I think for a long time, while she continues to braid my hair. “It’s not working out that way.” My words sound like they’re coming out at the wrong speed. “But the lot of a lotness is sending me inside myself instead, and Katy…” I wait for the words to revolve slowly toward me. “It’s…awfully…ugly…in…there.” I sit up so Kat can reach the hair on the back of my head, her fingers twining and twining until my whole head is transformed, and then I turn to her and slowly smile, wearing a crown of coils.

Kat studies me with her dark eyes. “We should probably stay away from the boys for a while, hey?”

I nod, but I don’t trust myself to open my mouth.

“All right.” She stands up, then bends to haul me to my feet as well. “Let’s go try to get a little sleep. It’s going to get better, Anna babe. Ugliness is just a preface to true beauty.”

I squeeze her hand and stumble after her toward the tent. I want to believe her.

The hours pass, but not in any kind of real sleep. I turn and turn under the blanket, but I can’t escape from this dream. Or not even a dream—more like an endless loop of film playing over and over—

“You said we could ask him.” I shiver in the night air and cross my arms over my chest. “I keep dreaming about her, and I’m sure it won’t stop until I ask him.”

“Well, but Anna, it’s four in the morning. We can’t just knock on the shaman’s door and demand a meeting. I mean, can’t you wait until the festival?” Seth and the rest of the guys are still hanging around the fire, which has settled into a comfortable bed of glowing coals. Zane sits, wrapped from his chin to his toes in a fuzzy red wool blanket, his eyes glued to the embers in front of him. He looks as though he hasn’t moved a muscle in the last six hours.

Seth tries to lead me toward a chair by the fire. He holds one hand on the small of my back, and I hate it. “You’re still tripping, Anna. You don’t really need to see the shaman right
now
.”

I shake my head, twisting away from his hands. I’m
not
still tripping. I suppose the acid isn’t completely gone from my system, but my head is clear. “This is not about the drugs. This is about my mother,” I say. His nearness petrifies me. I can’t stay for the festival. I need to get far away from Seth before I ruin everything. My stomach clenches, and I take another step away. If it’s not already too late, that is. “Seriously, Seth. Can we…can we please go?”

Zane shakes his mane of wild hair. “Anna, dude, sit down, please. Nobody is in any condition to drive right now.”

I don’t sit down; I can’t sit down. I circle the fire, walking around the outside of the ring of chairs. Around and around, my brain circling relentlessly around the idea, the same way that green scarf had spiraled up into a sky the color of Katy’s eyes.

“We could walk there, to the land where they’re holding the festival,” says Bo. “The waitress at the restaurant said the band has been there since midweek, hanging out, drumming and stuff.”

“Wait, are we close?” I stop circling. “Can we walk to the shaman?”

“Sure,” says Bo, “but it’s kind of far. The road is just past the place we had dinner.”

My face burns at the thought of that road. How was I to know that was the shaman’s front yard? I shake my head. It doesn’t matter; Seth doesn’t matter.

Seth tries to talk me out of it. “It’s a long walk,” he says. “The shaman might not even be there, and besides, it’s the middle of the night. What if the shaman won’t see us?” He puts his hand on me again. “You’re not thinking clearly, Anna babe.” There’s something ugly about his mouth when he’s telling me no.

“Don’t call me that.” My voice is too sharp. “I’m sorry.” I lure him away from the circle, start him toward the road so the rest of them will follow—disentangle themselves from their chairs like ancient, heroic trees extricating their roots from the soil and migrating. I take Seth’s hand and squeeze. “Katy’s the only one allowed to call me that.” I laugh, and so does Seth, and it’s okay for a moment, even though I can see the dark bubble of sadness that wells up in him when I take my hand away. This whole situation is sad. I need to be gone.

“Come on, you guys! Let’s go see the shaman!” I traipse along the edge of the road with my ragged entourage, following the pale path of the pavement in starlight. We walk for what feels like forever, all of us quiet and soaked in wonder, full of whispered revelations and small observations.

It takes my breath away when we hear the drums. I know the boys talked earlier about the drumming, but I hadn’t really expected it to be so powerful. I can feel my heart adjusting its rhythm to match the beat. Our steps fall into the measure as well, and even my thoughts shift into a meter that’s like poetry, like song.

We slip past the little brown gate, following a well-worn footpath I hadn’t noticed until now. Seth and I exchange a glance as we pass the place, but there’s no room in this rapid rhythm for shame or sadness. There’s a bounce in our steps, even before we hear the shaman’s voice—an indescribable voice that shifts up the scale in eerie arpeggios and draws me, draws us all, toward it.

Up ahead there is a clearing, and in that old pastureland we can see a little tent city—shelters in all shapes and colors, lights softly glowing in some of them. At the edge of the field, they’ve set up a small, circular stage. It is lit by a ring of tiki torches and some scattered candle-lamps. Around the stage, about fifteen or twenty people are sitting, cross-legged, on camping mats or sprawling on blankets and rugs. Along the periphery, more people are dancing—whirling their bodies in time to the drums, following the winding syllables of the shaman’s voice.

The music is unending—a jam that keeps reinventing itself, reemerging in a new form. Sometimes the shaman sings; sometimes only drums. We sit together on the grass and listen. As we sit there, my head straightens out entirely—the lingering remainders of the acid melt away—leaving me with a feeling like the moment just after unpacking a suitcase, when everything is exactly where it belongs for once. I notice the precise moment the shaman disappears from the stage.

“Follow me,” I whisper to Katy. The boys are oblivious. Bo and Frankie are dancing near the edge of the woods, and both Seth and Zane are completely entranced.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t tell them?” Kat’s voice is worried, but she hurries after me toward the dark woods. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Into the woods,” I say. “The shaman is waiting.”

A thin layer of nerves buzzes along the surface of my skin as I approach the black edge of the forest, but my eyes are open wide; the darkness gives way a little at a time, reluctantly falling into shadows and shades of gray. I pick out an opening in the woods and find a trail, an uncertain smudge of charcoal in the inky blackness ahead of us.

Kat grips my arm. “Anna, no way.” She pulls me back. “Please, don’t make me go down that trail, not in the dark.” Her voice cracks. “Can we at least bring the boys? Safety in numbers?” Her fingernails dig into my skin.

I hesitate, but there is a force compelling me, and I shake my head. “No. No boys.” I step into the forest.

“Well, I’m with you,” says Kat, twining her fingers into mine and pulling me back for a moment, for a kiss that’s like the bright color of bear grass in the sun. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

Something in her tone makes me scared that she knows what happened with Seth. My chest contracts; my lungs feel as though the air has been vacuumed out of them. Around me the darkness is thick and strangling. I turn back to the trail without speaking, but I keep a tight grip on Katy’s hand.

The trail is long enough to keep the Shaman’s brightly painted teepee hidden from sight during the daylight, but once we round the last bend, we can see it glowing in the darkness, a curiously bright cone of canvas in a circle of flickering torches. Music still permeates the air. Even the torches seem to burn with the same rhythm.

“This is creepy,” whispers Kat.

I hear singing coming from inside the tent—much softer, but the same singing we heard onstage. As before, the voice draws me. I approach the door flap and wonder how to knock. This thought makes me laugh, overcome with my own absurdity.

From within the teepee, the singing dissolves into an answering laugh. “Come in, then!” says a voice. “Don’t be lurking outside my door.”

My fingers grapple with the edge of the flap, and Katy and I duck inside.

“Wow, it’s roomy,” says Kat. She turns to the figure seated along the opposite side of the circular room on what appears to be a small futon. “Um, hi,” she says, tugging me forward a little. “You must be the shaman. I’m Kat, and this is Anna.”

The shaman’s face is pleasant, joyful even. “A pleasure.” That soft, strangely resonant voice again. The shaman’s hands move lightly across the head of a small ceramic drum. The sound is soft and soothing. I breathe in time.

Kat twists her hair into pigtails as she talks. “Look, I’m not sure how this works, or whatever, I mean, I know we’re probably supposed to bring you tobacco or something or at least have an appointment, but we just…Anna had a dream about her mother. She wants to talk to her in the spirit world.”

The shaman laughs softly. “No, she doesn’t.” A soft rhythm of taps on the drumhead, a ringing sound as thumbs strike the ceramic edge.

“What?” Kat’s fingers stop their twisting. “She doesn’t what?”

“She doesn’t want to talk to her mother in the spirit world.” The shaman’s eyes study Kat for a moment and then shift once again to me. The effect is instantly sobering. A hand beckons me closer before returning to the drum. “Why are you here, Anna?”

I swallow, my throat dry. “I…I saw her scarf. She was laughing. I
miss
her.”

The shaman’s eyelids lower, a protracted blink. “I can feel your urgency, Anna. I can feel you seeking.” Shadows falling across cheekbones. Eyes opening; for a moment they appear transparent. “Here.” The shaman holds something out to me, a green shimmer tucked into a brown hand, a hand glowing with a warm light.

I reach out, take the piece of fabric, recognize it at once. “Where did you get this?”

The shaman’s hands beckon upward, drum falling silent. “It came spiraling down out of the sky one day.” In the quiet of the tent, the musical voice is honey seeping out of the comb, full and heavy and ambercolored. The sound fills the room, slows it all down.

I lift it to my nose and inhale the soft hints of jasmine from my mother’s throat. It’s impossible. A miracle?

“Can you prove that God exists?” The words are pulled from me.

The shaman laughs, a throaty chuckle.

“We’ve been looking everywhere,” I say. “We made a list. We need proof.” I turn to Katy, realizing the truth as I do. “
I
need proof,” I say.

The shaman’s eyes grow suddenly fierce—dark and sharp like obsidian. “If you want to find proof of God’s love, you can’t go checking off a list, chasing after all these
things
, all these experiences you think will present evidence for you one way or the other. If you want proof, Anna,
you
have to be the proof. If you open up, you will not lose everything. You will find it.”

My brain stalls. The honey of the shaman’s voice has filled the teepee, slowed everything down until it stops. “This is my mother’s scarf,” I whisper.

“It’s a shadow to comfort you.”

“It smells like her.”

“You won’t stay for the festival, will you.” It’s not a question.

“I can’t,” I say.

“Be open,” says the shaman. “You know what love is.” A raised hand. Eyes close. We are dismissed.

The morning lingers on into early afternoon before we get moving. Seth heats water over the fire, and I watch him through my eyelashes, thinking about how weird it is to meet people like this, to get close to them, and then…they’re gone. Will we ever see them again?

“Are you sure you won’t stay for the festival?” says Seth, his voice soft in my ear.

I move away from him, feeling complicated. “Yeah, I can’t…I can’t stay here anymore.” I can’t be so close to him, is what it is. I can’t look at him without getting confused. “Wanderlust, you know?” I look at him then, at that charming smile. I could almost kiss him, and the thought of that hurts on several levels.

He nods. “I’ll miss you,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

That’s it for good-byes, and it feels all right. The shaman’s words are tucked into a pocket inside me, mostly untouched. I wave at Seth through the open window as I back out of the spot, and he blows me a kiss. Kat squeezes my hand and turns up the music so that the sound drowns out the space of our leaving.