Shaman, Healer, Heretic (6 page)

“That’s three hundred for you,” he whispered, as he transferred the money to her hand. “And seventy-five for me.”

She looked at him and cocked her head, frowning. Normally, for someone who was on death’s door, it was a higher fee and it was usually all in round numbers.

“The family had already spent a wad on the previous shaman and couldn’t come up with the usual.”

“Why just seventy-five for you?”

With the usual twenty-five percent commission, he should have had one hundred dollars.

“One of the lamps was damaged.”

“Oh, SK, I’m so sorry,” she said looking down into her lap at the three hundred dollars. “Here, let me pay for it.”

“No, that’s mine. If I’d known for sure that it was a soul transformation and that you’d need to call down lightning, I’d have cleared the room and unplugged everything. That’s my lookout,” he said, scooting off the bench. “Finish eating.”

As he passed her, he stopped and squeezed her arm.

“That was really fine work today.”

He smiled at her but then glanced at her plate, where the bottom pancake had swelled and nearly disintegrated in the sea of syrup.

“Food of the gods,” he muttered, before pointedly averting his eyes.

Before she could reply, her phone chimed with an e-mail notification–Jack again.

“Thought I’d try e-mail,” it said. “Tried calling and texting. Where are you? I need your help. It’s an emergency. Please call when you get this.”

She looked at the phone, remembering the last time she’d seen him. It had been at his place and he’d told her he wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship. It had come out of nowhere. She had thought things were going so well. They never argued; he never complained about the hours she worked. It had been the best relationship she’d managed to have since dropping out of med school, and it was suddenly over, and she had no idea why or what had happened. Was this his way of getting back in touch?

When she looked up to reply to SK, he was gone. She swiveled in the booth to see the front door but it was closing behind him. Her phone chimed again to remind her there was a voicemail she hadn’t heard. She went to missed calls and hit the dial button next to Jack’s name.
 

“LIVVY, OH THANK God, I’m so glad you called!” Jack exclaimed.

“It’s good to hear your voice, too,” she said, and it was.

Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.

“I have a friend who needs your help,” he said.

A friend needs help
, she thought.
Not
,
hi, I’ve missed you or how have you been?
She slumped, hunching over the half-eaten pancakes. She kept the phone to her ear, though, still hoping.

“It’s a shaman thing. I mean, I don’t know what to do,” he said.

After what he’d learned in his time with her, she knew that he ought to know the difference between something a shaman could help and something that needed a doctor. She thought she heard real desperation in his voice. Maybe she should turn this over to SK. Then again, maybe this was the start of getting back together.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home. Are you coming over now?”

The waitress appeared, took the cash, and cleared the plates.

“Yeah,” she said, sliding out of the booth. “Can you pick me up?”

There was a tiny hesitation on his end. Anybody else might have missed it.

“I can’t. I think I better stay here.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Thanks Livvy, I really appreciate this,” he said and hung up.

She looked at the phone.
I really appreciate this?
Since when did Jack use words like “really appreciate”?
 

LIVVY HAD CONVINCED herself that she’d forgotten about Jack’s good looks. The truth was she hadn’t forgotten at all. Even so, when the door to his condo opened, she stared at him. Just a shade under six feet tall, he had the classic surfer look: tousled blond hair and blue eyes, dark tan. It probably helped that he really was a surfer.

“Livvy, I thought you’d never get here!”

As he reached for her, a small static shock discharged from his hand to her upper back, which they both ignored. Jack, of all people, was familiar with the way Livvy seemed to store static charges like a battery. She’d given up wearing electric watches in high school and had to have someone else put the metal case on her phone.

Jack gave her the “friend hug” before she could say anything.
Uh oh
, she thought.

“Come in, come in,” he said, closing the door behind her. “She’s up here.”

She
.

They were heading upstairs to the bedroom, but it felt like she was sinking. She followed him up anyway, unable to stop climbing the stairs and unable to stop hoping–until she looked into the bedroom. She froze at the doorway. All around the room small votive candles were burning, as well as incense. There was an altar on a high table in the corner and pictures of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli, the greatest of the Aztec gods, were on the walls. Copal offerings were on the altar along with fresh flowers. It was the bedroom of a shaman.

“What’s this?” she asked.

She looked at the woman in the bed–in
his
bed–young, Hispanic, and quite beautiful. Livvy’s stomach tightened.

“She’s a shaman,” he said.

“Yeah, no kidding,” she said, looking at all of the paraphernalia on the altar–in fact, scattered all around the room. “And she’s living here?”

“We’re engaged,” he said.

Click went the snippets of conversation. Thud went the other shoe.

“Oh,” she said quietly.

She fumbled for her phone and brought it out of her bag.

“I’m going to call SK. He’ll be able to find somebody,” she said, even as the word ‘idiot’ repeated in her head.

Jack came over and wrapped his hands around hers on the phone.

“Please don’t,” he said. “You know he’ll just put me in the queue. Do you think I would have called you if I had any other choice?”

She gave a short laugh and shook her head.

“This just gets better and better,” she said, trying to pull away.

“I’m sorry, Livvy,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry, okay?” He held on to her hands. “I don’t know what else to say. I would never have bothered you if I didn’t really need your help–if
she
didn’t really need your help. Please.”

She hesitated, looking into his eyes.

“Please, I’m begging you. I need your help.”

She sighed and looked down at his hands around hers.

“I don’t believe this,” she muttered, shaking her head.

“I do,” he said. “I know you won’t let her die.”

She took in a deep breath, staring at his hands. When they had been together, she had loved holding hands with him. Soft and warm, they enclosed hers completely.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do,” he pleaded.

“Okay,” she exhaled, hanging her head.

“Thank you, Livvy,” he gushed, as he tugged her into the room.

She stood next to the familiar bed and looked down at the woman under the covers who was obviously wearing a lacy black nightgown. Around her neck was a thin gold chain with a sapphire pendant.

“What’s her name?” Livvy asked mechanically, as she took off her shoulder bag and removed the mat.

“You can lie on the bed if you want.”

She swung a silent glare at him that could have melted steel.

“Indra,” he said.

Livvy unrolled the mat on the floor and took out the goggles and pillow.

“What was she doing at the time?”

“Nothing. We went to sleep last night and this morning she wouldn’t wake up. Her pulse and breathing seem fine but I can’t get her to wake up.”

Livvy sat down on the mat and Jack squatted down with her.

“Has she mentioned anything unusual lately? Like maybe an unhappy client or a bad visit?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly.

He was lying. She could tell. Besides, she had never heard of a shaman needing rescue from the Multiverse.

“Really,” she said, fixing him with another glare.

He looked away.

“I think maybe she was trying something new,” he offered.

“Something…new,” she said. “That’s it?”

“Honestly, Livvy, I don’t know. She didn’t really share much about her work.”

He looked back at Indra’s quiet face then back at Livvy.

“Honestly, if I knew something that might help her, I’d say so. I’d do anything.”

That had the ring of truth–painful truth.

“Okay,” Livvy said as she turned on the goggles. “Do you know what her spirit helper is?”

He hesitated, knowing that this was information shamans never shared with one another, and rarely with their intimates. Livvy had never shared hers with anybody, except for SK.

“It could help,” she said.

It better hel
p, she thought, already sensing that she shouldn’t be staying any longer in the Multiverse than was necessary. She wasn’t even sure if she could see another shaman, except in this case, Indra had apparently not traveled as one.

“The butterfly,” Jack said.

Livvy laid down on the mat.

“Back in a bit,” she said, as she positioned the goggles over her eyes.

She took in a big slow breath of sage and exhaled as the symbols flashed by.
 

IN THE MIDDLEWORLD, the sun was bright and the forest air was crisp and clean. Livvy looked up to the sky and saw a few puffy white clouds hovering over the mountain range in the distance. As she watched, the clouds gathered in front of her and then moved off to the right, above the forest. She stepped off the path and headed in that direction.

Again she was struck by the lack of spirit traffic. She heard the twigs snapping under her feet but little else. She glanced from side to side, trying to see as far into the trees as she could, but there was no movement except for a slight breeze among the leaves.

As the thicket and undergrowth became denser, she had to push through, sometimes trudging sideways, before being able to move forward again. The clouds had not stopped moving, so she knew she wasn’t there yet. Nothing moved along the ground either–no centipedes or beetles or snakes. It wasn’t just strange. It was eerie.

Her progress seemed to be blocked by an enormous clump of bushes, so she moved to the left and found that she was entering a clearing. The dappled sunlight of the trees gave way to an irregular oval of bright greens and yellows where the tall grass swayed hypnotically.

She stopped when a small movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. She had almost convinced herself that she was alone but, as she watched, a giant swallowtail butterfly floated erratically into the clearing.

“Well, hello,” she said, as they approached one another. “Looks like I’m in the right place.”

The clouds above had slowed and the butterfly hovered a few paces in front of her.

“Lead the way,” she said, gesturing onward, which it did, to the center of the clearing.

When they stopped, Livvy stood in front of a low plant that she knew well. The large dark leaves and the trumpet-shaped white flowers of the
datura
plant were unmistakable. It was called “devil’s weed” in some parts of the world, “angel’s trumpet” in others. No matter the name though, its roots contained a powerful hallucinogenic that had been known to shamans for centuries. The butterfly settled on one of the flowers.

“Here?” she asked, watching the butterfly. “Where?”

It slowly flapped its wings but stayed put.

“Indra is here?” she tried again.

At the sound of Indra’s name, the flowers quivered. The butterfly barely hung on. Livvy bent down to have a closer look.

“Indra?” she said.

The plant shook violently this time, sending the butterfly off to hover close by.

“Indra!” Livvy shouted.

The ground seemed to mound up under the datura plant.

“What in the Multiverse,” Livvy wondered out loud as she knelt next to the plant.

“Indra,” she yelled again.

The ground mounded up higher, breaking the soil on the top. She gathered a handful of the plant and pulled it out, clods of dirt still clinging to it, and tossed it aside. The top of a human hand was visible in the dirt. The butterfly settled on it.

“Yeah, yeah, I see it,” she said. “Move back.”

The butterfly flitted away.

Livvy brushed away handfuls of dirt and soon uncovered an arm and then a shoulder but, when she glanced back at the hand, it was buried again.

“Indra,” she said, as she brushed the dirt off the hand. “My name is Livvy. Jack sent me to bring you back. Help me if you can.”