Speak Rain
Page 39
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Shaking off the effects of a fall into a great pit Daniel tried but couldn’t determine how long he’d been lying in the bottom of it. Rain was pouring in from the sky and the water collected in a muddy mess beneath his back. It was rising quickly, beginning to trickle into one ear. The rain was so heavy it created a roar that bounced about in the forest above and fell into the hole heavily.
As he stood up in the hole, Dan noticed the shadow above him at the edge of the pit. Lightning flashed around the creature again and the shaman’s teeth shone metallically.
“Why do you fight?” the shaman said with humor in his voice. But it was a laugh that chilled Daniel.
As he looked for handholds along the side of the pit, he replied, “I’ve come to bring Rachel back with me!”
The shaman laughed again in his thunder and folded his arms before him around the staff. Dan started and then slipped, then turned to the opposite wall to try it. Rain water had filled the pit up to his shins by that time.
“Why do you fight?” the shaman asked again in a lower tone, but without any additional compassion. “She is not yours.”
Struggling to find any root, any handhold, any solid possibility of climbing out of the pit Daniel put his hands at his side and tried a new approach.
“Because…I love her,” he said.
The Shaman guffawed his derision, uncrossing his arms again and tipping the staff from one hand to the other, then back again, before responding with an outstrecthed gesture of his free arm.
“You have not even been with her, fool!”
“Wha?...” Daniel sputtered wiping a little mud from his face. “What are you talking about?”
The Shaman started pacing back and forth at the edge of the pit where he had stood. “You do not love her…and she does not love you! I know this! You have never been together even once!”
Understanding glimmered in Daniel’s mind.
“Just because we’re not lovers does not mean I don’t love her!”
He threw his arms at the wall beneath the shaman and drove his hands into the muddy edge hoping for purchase. He flexed his arms with all the strength that remained in them and then drove his right foot into the wall violently. He was able to raise himself a couple feet in this way. The shaman sneered at him.
“You have no business with this woman!” the shaman growled. “And you have no business to usurp my control in this region!”
So that’s what this is about, Daniel’s mind echoed back at him. He thought it must have been one of his “other” selves trying to instruct him again. Desperately he tried to listen to what the voices in his head could tell him, hoping beyond hope it would give him an edge, some leverage, to manipulate the Shaman.
“You can’t have both!” Daniel yelled. “She would never stay with you!”
The shaman took to pacing again and then turned. His mouth seemed to unhinge and open wide showing glowering teeth and let out a guttural howl and hiss at the same time.
“You can’t be a Shaman of rain and have the love of a mortal woman at the same time!”
The Shaman calmly folded his arms around the staff one more time. Eyes alternately glinted red and electric blue with reflection of nearby lightning strikes on the mountain.
“That!...I know,” he said. He presented a smug grin following his assessment.
Daniel played his final pitch more quietly, “Let us go. Please?”
Nodding his head at Daniel as if he were trying to mesmerize him the reply finally came: “Trade.”
Daniel slicked the dripping rain from his hair back so that he could see more clearly. “What?!”
Anger welled up as Dan tried to understand what the Shaman wanted.
“Let us trade?” the Shaman cooed.