Shaman, Healer, Heretic (11 page)

The man slid the receipt across the counter and counted out her cash on top of it.

“That’s eighty dollars,” he said.

Eighty dollars
, she thought, for something that had probably cost her father a month’s salary. She felt ashamed for parting with it and for so little money. It was the economy, the man had said. Everybody was dumping jewelry. Bad timing. He hadn’t even looked at the main diamond, except to notice that it was under a carat. The value he’d put on the entire ring was determined simply by weighing it. He used the current value of an ounce of gold to determine the price for the whole thing. It had taken all of three minutes.

She gathered up the money and put it in her front pocket.

“You’ve got thirty days,” he said, picking up the ring.

As she turned to put the receipt in her bag, she felt a sudden pain in her chest, sharp and searing. She put a hand over her heart, pressing down as she involuntarily bent over, and put the other hand on the counter to steady herself. The receipt dropped to the floor as she sucked in a breath with a hissing sound.

The man had disappeared behind the counter, already putting the ring on display in the case between them, and hadn’t noticed.

As suddenly as it started, it was gone. Her mind raced through the symptoms of a heart attack: chest pain, nausea, shortness of breath, a cold sweat. She waited to see if the pain would come back.

“Are you all right?” asked the man from across the counter.

She stooped lower to pick up her receipt and stood up slowly, trying to inhale. As she rose, she could see that he was watching her. With an attempt at a smile, she waved the receipt.

“Bent over too quick, didn’t you?” he said, taking the velvet board and heading toward the back of the shop. “I do that sometimes.”

Gulping air, she pushed away from the counter and made it out to the sidewalk. The bus bench was only a few yards away and empty. As she collapsed there, she rubbed her chest. What had happened? It couldn’t have been a heart attack. She was too young and, although her parents had died in their late forties, there didn’t seem to be a family history of heart disease.

Luckily the bus didn’t arrive for another twenty minutes, allowing her time to recuperate. By the time she boarded, she was almost feeling normal. Taking up her usual place in the back, she checked her phone. It had been unusually silent this afternoon, but now it was going off like crazy. As she was browsing the different news feeds, she received a text from Min.

“Did u feel it?”

“Feel what?” she texted back.

“The chest pain.”

Livvy stared at the message and her pulse started to race.

“Look at this,” said the next text.

There was a web address. She clicked on it and waited a long minute as a video loaded. The web site must have been getting hit from all over. The black screen finally gave way to the beginning of the video. It was clearly a shamanic healing.

The video was low quality–probably from a phone–but Livvy could make out a shaman on her pallet with candles burning in the dimness. Several people were in the room and, as the video panned, she saw the client was lying in a bed. The sound of chanting and drumming came in sporadically, between loud scraping sounds that probably came from the videographer’s fingers.

Then, the video jerked back to the shaman. The people in the room were saying something.

“Yeah, I’m getting it,” said the videographer in a deafening whisper.

As Livvy watched, the video zoomed in on the shaman. Someone seemed to be shining a flashlight on her chest. Without warning, the spotlight erupted into a flame. In seconds, the shaman was on fire, from head to foot, but never moving.

People crossed in front of the video and there were screams, and then the video stopped. Even as Livvy watched, her various news feeds came chiming to life. The video was going viral, spreading through the Internet as fast as people could send a link.

The chest pain, Min had said. Yeah, she’d felt it. She rubbed her chest. It seemed like a lot of shamans had felt it.

Even as she exited at her stop, Livvy couldn’t put down the phone. The video was starting to make the regular news sources. It was being called a hoax. Nobody even knew that shamans existed anymore. There were headlines about spontaneous combustion. Religious nuts claimed to see Satan’s face in the flames and others called it the Holy Spirit.
 

LIVVY WAS REPLAYING the video as she came through the front door and didn’t see the kachina. She jumped when she finally did, nearly dropping the phone.

“Dammit!” she said without thinking.

First her mother’s ring, then the chest pain, then the video, and now this–again.

He stood there, staring at her, implacable. She wanted to run; she wanted to cry, and now she realized she wanted to scream–and probably had wanted to scream all day.

“I have had it with this,” she yelled. “I’ve had enough of you!”

Both the rattle and flute were tucked into the top of his kilt. He reached up a hand and patted the center of his chest.

“Yes, you,” she screamed, shaking.

He reached up his other hand, made a fist, and placed it in the center of his chest under the other hand as though he were clutching something there.
Oh gods, not this again
, she thought as her shoulders sagged.

“Look, Mr. Twenty-Questions,” she said loudly. “I’m not playing today.” She took off her bag and threw it to the floor. “I don’t know what you want–”

He motioned to her.

“Yeah, I get that, but I’m not into it. You shouldn’t even be possible.”

He pointed to his chest, but Livvy shook her head. Whether she was getting used to seeing the kachina or whether it was time for this day to be over, she didn’t know. All she knew was the tiredness now sinking into her bones.

“All right, look, Tawa–”

He made a small motion on his chest, drawing an imaginary circle there. Then he thumped himself with both hands in the circle. He watched her and waited. Then he repeated the cycle. He drew a circle in the middle of his chest and then slowly rubbed the spot.

Livvy brought her own hand up to her chest.

“The pain,” she said. “What about it?”

He stopped and dropped his hands to his sides.

“Do you know what caused it?”

He beckoned her.

“The Multiverse,” she said.

He beckoned again, waving his hand faster.

Inwardly, Livvy recoiled. Making a vision journey for clients was one thing but making the journey for purposes of your own, well, it wasn’t done. Or, to be more accurate, shamans wouldn’t admit to it. Besides, the last few visits had been strange. She looked at the kachina. He was drawing the circle on his chest again. What did he know?

“Was that shaman really burned alive?”

He nodded his head slowly, and she noticed the singed feathers again.
 

She’d sensed the truth of it, despite all the rumors about hoaxes on the nets. The chest pain had been bad, but somehow having the kachina confirm it made it even worse.

“Let’s say that I make the journey. What’s to say it won’t happen to me, that I won’t burn up?”

He lifted the rattle from his kilt and tapped himself on the chest.

“Oh you? You’re gonna make sure I don’t become a crispy critter?”

He shook the rattle in an arc in front of himself, like a rainbow.

“Uh huh.”

Although she wasn’t from the Pueblo world, she knew from the net that the kachinas were legendary, some of the oldest and most powerful of spirits. Standing in front of her was possibly the most powerful of them all, the sun kachina, and he had managed to manifest himself in the physical world, even if not for long stretches of time.

Mamacita had said it. Something was very wrong. That something, though, was in the Multiverse.

Livvy looked at the kachina. His unchanging face made him seem patient, as though he could wait forever. She realized that, as a spirit, he did have forever. And not only was he patient, he was persistent.

“All right,” she said, exhaling. “Let me get the goggles.”

When she came back from the bedroom, he was gone. Again, she felt the uneasiness that came from the sudden disappearances. As she lay down on the couch, she glanced around the room, worried about making a trip to the Multiverse with no one watching over her, but she had made her decision. She took a deep breath and put on the goggles.
 

THE KACHINA WAS waiting for her in the Middleworld, right on the path. Livvy realized he appeared smaller, probably because she couldn’t measure him against her ceiling.

“Lead on,” Livvy said

He responded by heading toward the lake.

“The Underworld, huh?”

He made no sign he’d heard.

She followed him into the lake, and in moments they were in the central plaza of the Underworld, but it was deserted.

“So, where is everybody?” she asked.

Again, he didn’t seem to hear as he headed down one of the major streets. The clouds were circling, going nowhere in particular, which didn’t surprise her since she wasn’t looking for a client or a particular spirit. The kachina looked up as well, following her gaze. As she looked at him, it occurred to her she’d get further if she used yes or no questions.

“Has everybody left?”

He kept walking but shook his head no.

“No? Are they hiding?” she asked, looking around.

Again, he shook his head no.

“So, they haven’t left, but they’re not hiding.”

Again, he shook his head no.

“What?”

They passed the high rises of the downtown area. There wasn’t a spirit of any sort to be seen. A chill wind occasionally gusted in the opposite direction.

“Oh, so some of them have left and some are also hiding?”

Yes, he nodded his head once and pointed all around them, to what seemed to be empty buildings. If spirits were hiding here, you’d never know it.

The kachina led on as Livvy considered the ridiculousness of her situation: in the Underworld, with a kachina no less, and not a single other spirit could be seen. It was starting to look like a ghost town. She had to smirk a little at the thought. It actually
was
a ghost town.

Livvy felt it before she heard it–an explosion, in the distance. There was a rumbling deep in her chest that went down to the soles of her feet. Small chunks of facing fell from the building facades as the kachina and Livvy moved to the middle of the street to avoid the debris.

“What was that?”

Before the kachina could answer, there was another explosion.

Again, the ground thudded, and the buildings shook. A window broke behind them at street level. Livvy searched in all directions, but there was no smoke or fire or any other evidence of the blasts.

Then there was another explosion, even louder than the last. The buildings around them emitted groaning sounds as the metal inside the superstructures struggled with the impacts. Livvy realized what was happening.

“Something’s coming,” she said.

The kachina nodded.

Something very big was coming. They weren’t hearing explosions, they were hearing footfalls–gigantic, enormous, heavy, footfalls.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Livvy, moving backwards, wary of getting too close to the buildings as more windows shattered.

The kachina shook his head no. He motioned her to calm down, to wait. He wanted her to see what was coming.

“Like hell,” Livvy said. “When whatever is making that sound gets here,” she stopped as the ground rumbled and bucked again. “This is the last place we want to be,” she yelled.

Small fissures started to appear in the asphalt.

“Come on!” she yelled and grabbed the kachina’s arm, ignoring the small sparks between them as she pulled him backward. They both wobbled as the ground shifted. “Come on!” she yelled as she continued to drag him backward, turning him toward her.

Beyond his headdress, Livvy saw something moving–something taller than the buildings. It was casting a shadow against one of the skyscrapers. As she looked up, the kachina whirled around to see what she was seeing. The enormous and steady thudding continued, becoming deafening.

Transfixed, they stared as the shadow grew. Whatever it was, it was around the corner at the end of the next block. A great serpent-like tail with a spade at the end flicked into the air and smashed the top edge of a building on that block, sending bricks flying in every direction. They both hunched lower. The shadow ran across the road and up onto a building to their left. A horned head appeared in silhouette.

As one, she and the kachina began to backpedal on the buckling street, back along the thoroughfare that led to the central plaza. No longer interested in seeing what was going wrong in the Underworld, Livvy turned and ran. The kachina followed her. Ornamental stonework pitched into the street as the giant footsteps grew closer. Livvy and the kachina ran in a zigzag pattern down the street to avoid being crushed by the debris.