by David Klass
Eko, of course, is a far better and more experienced telepath than I am. Given time, I have no doubt she’ll find the right frequency to exchange cogitations with these tribesmen. I just hope she makes friendly contact before they put us in a giant pot and light a fire under us.
The warriors slow. One of them tilts his head back, puts his hands to his lips, and makes a high-pitched birdlike trill that echoes away through the trees.
A few seconds later we hear an answering trill.
Is he doing a Tarzan routine and exchanging pleasantries with the forest creatures, or is he letting his tribe’s lookouts know that we’ve arrived?
We walk forward, and I have the creepy sensation that we’re being watched. I scan the underbrush, but I can’t see anyone. No eyes scrutinize us, no spears or blow darts aim at us, and no feet softly pad after our own. Still, I sense their presence. Eko, I think someone’s out there.
Yes, I feel it, too.
Can you see them?
Of course not. We’ll only be able to see them when they choose to reveal themselves.
Are they going to kill us?
If they wanted to, they would have done so back at the river.
Why? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have us march back on our own, and then slaughter us? It would save them the trouble of lugging our bodies through the forest.
They’re used to carrying dead animals home from their hunts. If they wanted to kill us, they would have done it without bringing us home and exposing their children to whatever unknown dangers we represent.
I hope you’re right. So what should we do?
Nothing. Just be your normal friendly self. Whatever happens, don’t run away or act violent.
I try to obey Eko’s instructions and put aside all thoughts of fight or flight. But the feeling that we’re being watched intensifies. Did someone shake that vine, or was it pushed by the wind? Is that a monkey screeching overhead? It sounds vaguely human, and I see one of the warriors smile and nod his head slightly.
We burst through a layer of brush and suddenly the welcoming committee is waiting for us. There must be twenty of them. Women. Kids. Toddlers. They’re almost all completely naked. Some of them hold clubs and spears.
They react at the sight of us. I realize for the first time how strange we must look. Eko is a foot taller than the tallest of them, and I have six inches on her. Then there’s my blond hair and blue eyes. If what Eko said about them is true, they’ve never seen any outsiders before. We must look like Martians.
The women and children surround me. Some are smiling. Others look scared. They begin to touch me experimentally. They’re laughing and whispering. Someone gives me a hard pinch. Ouch. Eko, what should I do?
Go with it. They’re just curious.
I see that she’s also surrounded.
They hang on my arms and crawl between my legs. Before I know it they’ve toppled me, and I sink helplessly beneath the mass of a dozen men, women, and children, all pinching me and sniffing my hair and tugging at my ears.
One grinning little brat even bites my leg. I don’t think it’s cannibalism, just curiosity—he wants to know how I taste.
69
I try to get to a kneeling position, but there’s too much weight on me. It feels like half the tribe is sitting on my back.
Curious hands sweep over me. They tug my hair and my beard. They slip off my sandals. Slide off my shorts. Eko!
No harm done. They’re not big on clothing.
I manage to look up from my prone position and spot a kid running off with my shorts on his head like a safari hat. Another kid grabs them and soon it’s a big game of capture the shorts.
Meanwhile, an old woman has gotten hold of one of my sandals. She sniffs it and then discards it disgustedly into the underbrush, as if tossing away a ham sandwich that has gone stale.
Suddenly they all let me go and start to back off. I’m not sure what’s spooked them, but I’m glad to get back to my feet.
Eko is also standing. We’re both completely naked.
I feel a little exposed, I tell her.
Get used to it.
There are women and kids. It’s not … natural.
It’s totally natural. Try to look on the bright side. At least they didn’t eat you.
One of them took a bite. What’s happening now? Why did they just back off?
The shaman is coming.
An old man saunters up, wearing something strange on his head. It looks like a cross between a bad toupee and an extremely lifelike Halloween mask. As he gets closer, I see that it’s a jaguar skin, complete with the enormous cat’s head, which stares at me with lifeless eyes.
I feel myself shiver. Eko, what exactly is a shaman?
The spiritual authority of the tribe. They’ll do whatever he says, so try to stay on his good side.
I look back at him and smile.
The old guy makes no effort to be friendly back. He has a leathery face, cracked and wrinkled, like a catcher’s mitt that has been left out in the sun all season. His hair is white, and when he opens his mouth I see only three teeth. But wizened and worn down though he may be, his eyes are penetrating and they scrutinize me with care.
They remind me of the Mysterious Kidah’s eyes. Come to think of it, this old shaman bears more than a passing resemblance to the sphinxlike figure who croaked out the word “destiny” to me in my out-of-body vision.
This shaman now literally holds Eko’s and my destinies in his gnarled old fingers, and he doesn’t look favorably disposed. He scowls at us and asks a few questions of the warriors who brought us back.
The warriors reply, pointing to Eko’s index finger, and no doubt describing how she drew a picture on the air.
The old medicine man grumbles. He’s not happy, or maybe the spirits he communes with are not pleased. At any rate, he looks like he’s ready to sign our death warrants. His face hardens as he looks us up and down one last time, and I notice that the women and kids have pulled back, and the warriors have stepped closer and are holding weapons.
Eko, we should run for it.
Don’t move.
The warrior standing nearest to me flicks his eyes from my neck to my heart to my groin. He’s measuring me for a strike and trying to choose between death spots.
Eko, this shaman doesn’t like us one bit. If he gives a thumbs-down, they’re going to slice and dice us. Let’s at least make a fight of it.
No, stay still and remain silent. Keep smiling.
I smile at the warrior, who seems to have settled on my throat as the best target. He looks back impassively, his fingers tightening on his spiked war club.
Then an odd thing happens. The fierce old shaman looks shocked for a second, and then he steps forward, peers up into Eko’s face, and breaks into a wide grin.
Next the stone-faced warriors break into smiles, and finally the women and kids start to catch whatever happy germs are going around. They giggle and flash grins at Eko.
I take it you figured out a way to get through to them? I ask Eko.
She’s smiling back at them. Yes. They have such lovely, uncluttered minds.
They were about to slaughter us.
It was nothing personal or cruel. They love but they don’t hate. Death is a natural part of life for them. It’s all around them, in the rain forest every day.
The kids run back up to us, smiling and laughing. They take our hands and lead us forward. All of a sudden we’re the flavor of the day again.
I find it a little hard to adjust to these mood swings. One minute we’re about to be eviscerated by blunt weapons, the next we’re treated like honored guests.
Where are they taking us now? I ask Eko.
To see Kidah, she replies, with an uncharacteristic mix of dread and awe. Or at least what’s left of him.
70
I hear running water. The kids pull me around some palm trees, and I see a river spilling down rocks in a small and beautiful waterfall. A dozen huts are
built around a clearing near the pool at the bottom of the falls. They look like miniature versions of the longhouses that the American Indians used to build. They have a framework of posts and poles, covered with sheets of bark and palm leaves.
One of the huts is smaller than the rest, with an animal skin for a door. The children lead me to it and then run off. Eko, what is this place?
The spirit home, she says. Part medicine lodge, part holy of holies. Whatever is inside, be respectful.
The old shaman walks up and lifts the skin, and Eko and I bend and enter.
The medicine lodge is dark and smells faintly of incense. As my eyes adjust to the gloom I’m disappointed to note that there are no statues or paintings or masks, just what looks like a fire pit in the middle, with a small hole in the thatch above it for smoke to escape.
Where are the spirits? I ask Eko. Don’t they have totem poles or giant golden idols?
She doesn’t bother to respond. She’s turned away from me, to the darkest wall of the hut. I turn in that direction and hear something, and then I glimpse movement.
Live animals are kept tethered in the far corner of the hut—birds, rodents, snakes, and even giant insects. Maybe they use them for sacrifices.
I step closer, and see that the creatures are all free. They’re not caged or tied up. The birds could fly away. The snakes could slither off. The large butterflies could flitter up through the opening in the thatch.
They don’t. They want to stay here.
And then I see why.
They’re keeping a corpse company. Perched motionless on his still limbs. Fluttering above his bloodless face. As I watch, a gorgeous golden butterfly lands softly on his shock of white hair. Seconds later, a brightly plumed songbird flies in through the opening in the thatched roof. It sings a few melodic notes as it circles the lodge and finally lands at the dead man’s feet.
The shaman lights a torch from a glowing ember in the fire pit and walks over. In the flickering light I see the face of the corpse clearly. It’s a small face, desiccated and mummylike. He looks like he could have been lying here for a thousand years. Eko, it’s Kidah, right?
She looks too shocked to respond telepathically. She just gives a tiny nod, and sinks to one knee beside him.
I glance back, and see that the chief and the other elders of the tribe are watching carefully.
I guess we got here too late, Eko, I say.
She’s kneeling before Kidah, all her attention focused on him. In the torchlight, I see that even though he has the face of a mummy, and his limbs are as stiff and wooden as the lodge poles, his chest is moving shallowly up and down. He’s still alive!
Eko touches his face. She spreads her hands wide and assumes the tense, meditative pose of a priestess in a deep trance. A strange keening sound breaks from her lips and repeats itself, over and over again. It’s not a word, nor a tune from a song. It’s an ululation. An urgent appeal from some mysterious place deep inside her.
I’m positive that the shaman has never heard anything like this supplication from a thousand years in the future, but he seems to understand Eko’s behavior in a way that I don’t. He gives an answering chant in his own language, and the chant is taken up by the warriors standing around.
I recognize the singsong chant I heard in my dream.
Eko’s arms are spread wide over the wizard. I can feel her reaching out to him on a deep telepathic level.
Suddenly the warriors gasp and their chanting falters as a nimbus of lambent silvery energy kindles around Eko. It lights her beautiful face and sparks outward from her extended fingers, till it flows from her to Kidah. The birds, insects, and animals shrink away from this mysterious flame.
Bathed from head to foot in the silvery radiance, the sleeping wizard reacts. He stirs slightly and his eyelids flutter. I half expect him to sit up in bed, like Sleeping Beauty awakening in the fairy tale. But Kidah doesn’t wake, or even yawn or roll over. His eyelids close again, and his body becomes rigid once more.
Eko snaps out of her trance and topples toward the floor. I catch her and see that she’s conscious, just utterly exhausted by whatever she just tried to do. “Are you okay?” I whisper.
I failed. I couldn’t wake him. You have to try.
Me? What can I do? Reviving slumbering wizards wasn’t in the curriculum in Hadley High School.
She looks up at me. You are the beacon of hope, and you are also your father’s son. Please, you must try.
Okay, but … try to do what?
What you were born to do, she tells me. Save the forest. Save the future. It’s all up to you.
I step past her, to the foot of the platform. Look down at the old man lying flat on his back. I think I’d have better luck trying to rouse King Tutankhamen. “Okay, old fellow,” I whisper. “Hocus-pocus, wake up and focus. We’ve got to save P.J. and stop that spidery colonel from destroying the earth, so rise and shine.”
There’s no response. It’s like trying to wake up a slab of marble. I reach down and touch his sandpaper-dry forehead, and try contacting him telepathically. Yo, Kidah. Time to get vertical. Snap out of it!
Still nothing. Faintly, behind me, I hear the tribal chants rising and falling.
I turn back to Eko and the shaman and shrug. “Sorry.”
They’re staring up at me. Way up. I realize that I’ve levitated off the floor! I’m floating above Kidah.
A pulsing blue light glimmers from my father’s watch and flickers over the walls of the hut.
I look down at Kidah, and with the help of that magical blue light I’m suddenly very close to him, touching him, probing the inside of his mind. I sense how extraordinary that mind is, or was. Because it’s not there. Just a yawning and empty abyss.
The dark emptiness of it starts to swallow me. I pull back, crash hard to the floor, and black out.
71
I wake to the heat of a roaring fire. I register that I’m outside, that it’s late afternoon in the rain forest, and that something is crawling through my scalp.
I open my eyes and see Eko’s beautiful face looking down at me worriedly. She has my head on her lap and she’s stroking my hair. She looks relieved that I’m awake.
“What happened?” I ask her.
“You tried your best,” she says softly. “You literally knocked yourself out.”
“You did, too,” I tell her. “He almost opened his eyes. I really thought you were going to wake him.”
“I touched him,” Eko agrees. “But I couldn’t find his essence.”
“I know what you mean,” I whisper. “I felt like I was about to establish contact. And then I tumbled into some kind of chasm. Do you think he’s brain-dead?”
Eko shakes her head. “No, he’s still there, somewhere. The Dark Army has awful techniques of twisting people’s minds. Kidah would normally be able to fight off such an assault, but when he traveled back through time he exposed himself, and they must have taken advantage of his vulnerability.”
I remember poor Gisco, and what the colonel did to the thought processes of my dear canine traveling companion. “Is there any way we can untwist it?” I ask.
“I’m not sure,” Eko admits. “We did everything we could. And the shaman has tried everything he knows.”
I sit up with an effort, and feel dizzy for a few seconds. Then it passes and I’m able to look around at the wooden huts and the two dozen or so men, women, and kids who are watching us silently.
“How did they find Kidah in the first place?” I ask her, looking back at them. “And why did they take him in?”
Eko has apparently communicated enough telepathically with the shaman to know the answers. “They found him stumbling aimlessly through the forest,” she tells me. “Birds and animals were circling him, giving him a magical nature escort. The tribesmen had never seen anything like it. They recognized Kidah as a special person, a great spirit. He collapsed, and they brought him back to their holiest place. He’s been lying there ever since, an
d the birds and animals and insects still come to him …”
Several women walk over carrying large baskets. They smile down at us, and Eko looks back at them, nods, and stands.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“There’s going to be a ceremonial banquet tonight in our honor,” she informs me.
“Great, I’m starving. What’s on the menu?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Eko admits. “I can’t get a read on it. It’s their local delicacy. Something they farm. Maybe manioc or cassava. They’re going to harvest it now, and want to know if we’d like to come along.”
“Count me in,” I tell her, and get shakily to my feet. “Do you know how long it’s been since I had a good meal, let alone a banquet? Let’s go!”
A dozen of us tromp off through the woods to harvest the feast. I’m famished, but as we make our way through increasingly dank underbrush I grow wary. What fruit or vegetables could they possibly grow in this fetid forest?
We draw near some fallen palm logs, and I start to smell a musky, rotten stench. “What do you think it is, Eko? Mushrooms? Truffles?”
“I’m not sure. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
We reach the logs. I see that the hearts of the toppled palms have already been removed and, I presume, eaten long ago. But the fibrous pith has been left in the trunks to rot. The women pry it out with sticks.
It gives off a heavy, rancid odor. Eko, our lunch is starting to seem less appealing.
She doesn’t look happy either. Eko’s a vegetarian, but she’s also very practical. Whatever it is, we’ll eat it and we’ll like it. We’re their guests now, but they can turn on us in a second, she reminds me telepathically.
They lay the rotten pith down and crack it open with rocks. Inside, white creatures the size of golf balls are rolling around. At first I think they’re mice.
A little girl scoops one up in her hands and shows it to me with a smile. It’s a humongous grub. I smile back at her as I choke down nausea.