Her body is bruised and bloodied, like when I saw her, but the image is new for the rest of the crowd. A murmur goes up around me, something like pity, I would hope. Casting my eyes to my people, I see something I have longed to see in them since the day I arrived.
Compassion.
On one side of me, two girls who look like sisters clasp each other’s hands, and a young man next to me covers his mouth with his shaking fingers. I see that more than a few have tear-filled eyes. A surge of love for them fills me, seeing them like this, seeing their humanity come back to them. Something finally woke them from their zombie state. It is the cruelest irony that Wild Dove is too far gone to realize what she has done.
For she is gone—one look at her eyes tells me that. They are hollow, lifeless as a cadaver. Not a single muscle on her face shows emotion, not even defeat. She walks vertically—that’s about all that makes her human now. She has become the zombie, has traded places with her people. She had been willing to give her life for them, yet in the end, the price was perhaps even higher. Death may very well have been preferable to giving up her mind.
A rock forms in my throat, and I shove past the mob. I have to help her. Looking at the guards on either side, I suddenly remember that day with the wolf, protecting Leo when he couldn’t protect himself.
Of all the shaman here, I know how to get in touch with the earth. There must be something I can do. But what? What good are my abilities at calling someone back who has crawled inside some invisible shell and become unreachable? Yet I push forward before a plan can even begin to take shape in my head. All I know is I cannot be one of the thousands of bystanders.
I’m nearly to her. I could reach out and touch one of the guards escorting her when I feel a strong hand close over my arm.
“Joanna, stop!” Alessio pulls me back. “Don’t draw attention to yourself!”
I try to yank out of his grip, but he holds me tightly. Whipping my face forward, I call out, “Wild Dove! I’m here! You’re not alone!”
She doesn’t turn toward her name—doesn’t so much as glance at me. But I’m close enough to see something in her eyes change. Where just a moment ago they looked doused in ice water, suddenly there is a brief glint in them, sunlight on a ripple. She’s not back, not truly, but she is in there.
Instead of looking at me, her chin tilts up, and her heavy gaze slowly rises until it lands on a set of double doors.
The doors I first walked through here.
On the other side, the room that I woke to when kidnapped and sedated. The Transitional Room. I remember how a glass window took up the entire wall, the last I had seen of my stars.
It’s the only room in all of the Academy to have a window.
Suddenly I know what I must do. Was this always Wild Dove’s intention? Or can I only pick up the shards of the plan she had failed at?
Either way, I step forward with confidence, calling to the earth. My sweet earth that had once been so stifled, I didn’t know if it was still there. Yet now I’ve done my part, learned how to tune my ears to its muffled song. For it does sing on. It is inescapable. It’s in the fibers of cloth in my clothes, in the sweat of the bodies surrounding me, in the very air I breathe.
Exhaling, I focus my mind as I have trained myself so many times to do.
Alessio’s grasp becomes easy to shrug off as I begin to change form.
___
I spot her too late. The person in this world I want to keep safe more than anything has just made herself the biggest target she can, impossible to miss.
“Joanna! No!” The air turns raw as I yell for her, but she doesn’t seem to notice at all. She just runs her hoof along the floor and sets her stare straight ahead, as though she actually believes that no good thing can die.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The Californian Remains, November 2048 A.D
It’s my bones that change first. My spine thickens and curves, jutting me forward onto all fours. My now-huge shoulders hunch up toward my head. Around me, I hear voices exclaim in surprise as my change becomes obvious. Brown fur covers where had been skin, and I close my eyes during the most painful part of the transformation—the horns that rip from the flesh on my skull, growing in seconds to become nearly the length of my human arms.
Opening my eyes, I see that the conversion is complete. I drag my hoof firmly along the floor, my only warning to those around me to get out of my way. On all sides of me, people flee for fear of being gored. I fix my stare upon the double doors in front of me as though it is a matador’s red cape and charge.
Head down, my forehead and horns collide first with the wood-like doors. There’s a satisfying thwack as each is ripped from their hinges. As I butt them again, they become only wreckage for me to tromp over, and I’m in the room.
The entire room is aglow with the last golden rays of day, and it kindles a new fire in my heart. The window is before me, clearly on the other side I can see the desert floor dried in a honeycomb shape, the wind pushing piffs of sand across it. In the distance, blue mountains jut up like shards against the orange glow of a sunset.
Picking up as much speed as I can, my head hits the imitation glass. The crack, so close to my ears, seems like an explosion. Stepping back, I see spider veins across the entire surface. One more blow, and I will have it.
But suddenly, an immense clap rips through the air, and the next moment, searing pain splices at my hip. Agony tears my bull form from me, and I collapse on the floor. The tiny tin projectile rolls off my back as I change and onto the carpet at my feet, but the wound remains, pulsing as blood pools out of me.
My head swims, my thoughts become murky, as I watch Ramose attack the shooter—some mentor I have never met. Ramose kicks away the gun, just like the one Gadian had, and the two wrestle to get to it first.
Outside the door is pure chaos, and the guards who were flanking Wild Dove now turn their attention to the crowd that wants to surge forward. Looking at me with something awake and curious and childlike in her eyes, she walks toward me.
Kneeling at my side, she strokes my hair back from my face.
“I’m . . . sorry,” I gasp each word out. Tears cloud my vision, knowing that our sacrifices mean nothing now. She gave up her mind, I gave up what chance we all had, just for it to end now. “I . . . failed. Us. You,” I sputter.
She caresses my head a moment longer, as a mother would comfort an infant. Then her lips bear the semblance of a smile, some hint to a lovely thought hidden from me. Standing, she fixes her gaze upon the sunset.
“No,” she whispers. Then once more, more firmly. “No.”
With shocking strength and a swing of her shoulders, the right side of her body meets the glass in the center of the spider-web cracks. Already weakened, it cannot resist her force and full weight. Glass shatters out into the pure evening sky.
Wind rushes in as Wild Dove’s body falls.
___
Through the door, I saw her great bull body fall to the ground, shaking the floor under our feet when it hit. Instantly she became human again, but to me, she will always be something more. Our angel, breaking down the gates of heaven to let us in. Pushing against the crowd, I got close enough to see Joanna’s body heave in pain, but at least she was still alive.
Now at Joanna’s side comes and kneels Wild Dove. As she looks up to the cracked glass, I can see the decision in her eyes, and I know what she is going to do. Standing, she takes the sacrifice Joanna would offer—her very life—and carries it to the altar.
THIRTY-NINE
The Californian Remains, November 2048 A.D
No one screams her name. I wonder if in the mayhem I created many even understood what she did for them. She had become their hero, whether they knew it or not, their warrior with sword blunt from the months she had spent in battle. There is no greater gift than to give of oneself, and she gave all, both body and mind.
Opening my mouth, I try to cry out after her, but pain strangles the sound in my throat an
d leaves my scream to settle in my bones. Pain from the tin arrow, pain from a life lost. Heart and muscle and spirit and skin all are consumed in excruciating torment.
Until the wind comes to me. I feel it running through my veins, embracing my lungs, resting deep in my heart. Each beat still feels heavy, but where there is wind, where there is some piece of the earth, there is hope.
Through the door there are audible gasps as the breeze wraps itself around those at the entrance of the room, whispering to them to come, like a lover.
“It’s broken, the glass! Let’s go!” comes a shout, and I wonder if the people will even heed the call.
To my surprise, the room floods, shaman outrunning their mentors. Quickly the mentors see their folly in making themselves elite—by definition, they are outnumbered. Several pull out weapons, but a single Arabic shaman commands the guns to fly into his hands before a shot can ring out. But there is something in his eyes—panic, as though he tries to keep a dam from breaking with his bare hands.
“Hurry!” he calls out. “When more come, I won’t be able to hold them off!”
On either side of me, shaman pour toward the opening and out of my sight. I try to arch my back to see but can only spot a sliver of sky. As I watch that tiny space, several change form and take off as herons and bats, eagles and even dragonflies. Many just jump off the ledge and fly as Alessio can in human shape, and there on the edge of the broken window, I see other abilities at work too. Three shaman kneel on the floor, eyes closed and hands cast over the ledge until I see a thick net of vines growing rapidly into the room.
“Quick, climb this!” One of the three, a middle-aged man, jumps up and turns toward the crowd, waving them over. The natural ladder fills with my people as they surge forward and begin to climb down. I can hardly believe it—the people I thought had become numb were not so passive as I had believed.
It occurs to me that we should be having more difficulty speaking if Wild Dove is dead. Maybe another Master of Tongue shaman cast their abilities in the room, or perhaps Wild Dove’s last meal was large enough to have a lingering effect.
The room continues to fill with shaman as they swell over the broken edge and into the sky. I suddenly recognize a face in the crowd, the healer who had tried to help the fallen man all those weeks ago.
“Please!” I muster all my strength and grab at the hem of her clothes. “Help me!”
She looks once at the sky, waiting for her, then turns back to face me. “Of course.” She kneels by my side, surely knowing time is not on our side. We may outnumber the mentors, but they will bring backup and more weapons, each able to kill many of us. But she stoops over me and flutters her eyelids to almost a close, her hands hovering an inch above my wound.
“It’s more long than deep. I just need a few minutes,” she whispers, brow knit as she focuses.
I immediately feel change begin, and I watch her as she works. Behind her, five Geokinesis Shaman complete a rock avalanche that reaches the tip of the ledge. When they could have been escaping on the vines themselves, they instead called every boulder in the Californian Remains here to create this makeshift mountain.
How long had I seen my people as victims? Mindlessly deluded? How differently I see them now. Perhaps we all are part victim, part hero.
Suddenly the air is rent again with that great clap as tin arrows begin to fly through the air. I look to the Arabic man who had gathered the weapons, and see only his back, lying on the ground, a slash as though from a knife at his ribs.
With only a gasp the healer’s eyes fly open, her spine arching as a tin arrow finds its place there. She collapses forward, over my legs. If she hadn’t paused to help me she would have escaped in time.
My people begin to fall, one by one. At the doorway, I see that hell has broken loose from only one man. Gadian, firing rapidly at any shaman in the room or sky, his jaw set. Others with weapons guard anyone else against coming into the room, but they don’t shoot.
“You, you, and you.” A familiar voice near me speaks up, taking command of the situation. “Help me take him down.”
“Ramose!” I cry out. “No! Come back!” But if he is anything, he is a protector. I know what he must do. Just as I had known what I had to do, and Wild Dove had as well. He turns, and locking eyes with me, he gives me a brief brave smile, and I know it may be my last time seeing him alive.
That’s a terrible moment to realize you are in love with someone.
Gently, I close the eyes of the healer and slide her body from my legs, then crouch on all fours. She had enough time to stop the bleeding of my wound, and though it still throbs with pain, it no longer dominates me.
Crawling, I make my way toward Gadian. He doesn’t so much as glance at me, much more concerned with the shaman escaping than the one working her way back inside. Through the mass of bodies both running and dying, I see Ramose. He and the men he called to him squat behind a couch and just watching their body language, I understand their plan—each man on one of Gadian’s limbs.
But the weapon he holds is like none I have seen before, the ammunition just keeps coming. What is four more tin arrows lost?
I have to do something. My hands splay out, looking for anything that I can use. Near me is a woman’s still body, and my fingers pry her shoes from her feet. Eyes on Ramose, I wait until the last possible second before he is about to pounce.
As he and his men stand, I sit back on my heels, and raising my arms high above my head, I throw both shoes at Gadian’s face.
The unexpected force knocks him off balance, his finger pulling the trigger and hitting only the ceiling. In an instant, Ramose and the others are upon him. Ramose wrestles the gun from Gadian’s hand, and Gadian tries to head-butt Ramose in protest.
“We have Dr. Richardson!” one of the men shouts to the guards at the doorway. “Let our people free or he dies!”
They look at each other.
“Don’t do it!” Gadian commands them, his arms forced behind his back. “It will be the end of all of us!”
“No!” I step forward, between him and them. “We only want peace! We only want to leave with our lives!” I walk closer, imploring the guards. “You don’t need to have blood on your hands. You don’t need to live with the knowledge that you took lives from people who wouldn’t have hurt you.”
“You can’t listen to them! This will ruin everything we have worked for!” Gadian’s face reddens as he yells over the chaos.
But they just look at each other, and I realize these men want us to win—at least, a part of them does. For them to take this win, in this manner, isn’t a win worth having.
Straightening my spine, I force myself to ignore the screaming pain in my back. My hand trembles as I reach out to them.
“Hand me your weapons. You don’t want to do this. You don’t have to do this.” My voice quiets as I draw closer, and I know they can hear me over the tumult. “You are not murderers. You are scientists. And you never signed up for genocide. Just give them to me, and I promise, we will not shed a single drop of blood.” Soon I’m an arm’s reach away. Finally, one man looks away from me as he places his cold, steel firearm in my fingers.
“Thank you,” I whisper. He doesn’t answer, but steps forward into the crowd.
One by one, the others hand me their weapons, then disappear into the sea of people.
Turning back, arms full and heavy, I face Gadian. I expected him furious, fuming, but he meets my gaze with those unnervingly calm gray eyes of his. “There is nowhere in time you can hide from me,” His voice almost sounds kind. At the sound of it, something in the pit of my stomach rots. “I will find you. And one night, I’m going to slip inside your home. I’m going to slit your throat. Then your family’s. That’s what ‘going back home’ will get you.”
I try not to shudder, not to let him see my weakness, yet I can’t look at him. Instead, my eyes find shaman pouring through the huge broken window. Down the vines, the makeshift mountain, some even
transporting on wind currents, disappearing then reappearing every hundred feet or so. Yet it’s the sight of the flaming sunset, dark silhouettes of man and transformed animals against the blazing sky, that touches me down to my core. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
And suddenly I know what I must do. Turning, I meet his eyes and answer him in a whisper. “I’m not about to give you that chance.” Then looking to the group, I speak louder as I hand out the guns. “Gag him.” I command the others, unsure when I become the one they took orders from. But they are all looking at me. “We will take Gadian. His arm has a chip embedded in it that will get us into the time machine.”
“We are going home,” one man speaks up, the trace of a grin on his lips.
I wish I could smile back.
But the view of our people soaring on the wind gives me the strength to stand my ground. They deserve to be free. And this is the price asked of us. The cost, if we do not, could be unbearable.
“This is bigger than us getting home. Magic has been given hope again. Our people who would have been wiped out are freed.” I pause and meet Ramose’s eyes.
He gives me a slight nod. Go on.
“They were murdered into extinction once, which is why Gadian had to go back in time to find us. But that was his big mistake.” I turn and meet Gadian’s pinched eyes.
Now I smile.
“This is how we will ensure that magic gets its second chance. We will destroy the time machine.”
___
Sometimes life demands everything of you. Home, family, your dreams. At times, it can be the cruelest of creatures, a thief that is unashamed. It comes again, walking within your walls and taking the very things it left last time.
But once in a while, it gives something truly remarkable back. And when it does, its gift surpasses all it took.
They Called Us Shaman Page 25