by CE Murphy
Sonny’s voice got warm. “I like how you assume it’s a woman.”
“Ain’t it?”
“In fact, it is. If you’ll give me your address, Gary, I’ll see if she’s available this evening.”
I gave her the address and phone number and went back to Annie, who said, “You knew a lady shaman?”
“That old lady up in the painted caves in France seemed like a shaman to me, doll.” Still true, even if it wasn’t who I really meant. Explaining Jo kept right on being too hard, especially when I was saying I knew a shaman, past tense, when I shoulda been using words that meant future memories.
Annie’s nose wrinkled, remembering more than just the cave paintings we’d gone to visit thirty years earlier. “She seemed in need of a bath, to me.”
“I reckon I would too if I’d been living up there with the cave paintings since they were made. Doesn’t matter, though, does it? As long as somebody comes along. Miz Smith said she’d send somebody.”
“I think I should rest before her friend arrives,” Annie said quietly. “I don’t suppose it really matters, Gary, if it’s a typical illness or someone attacking me somehow. I’m still sick, and it’s been a long day.”
“All right, sweetheart. You want to go lie down in the bedroom our out here on the couch?”
She smiled. “The couch is fine. The sunshine will keep me warm. You can go tidy up the kitchen for me.”
“There ain’t no universe in which you left it a mess.” I got a blanket an’ tucked it over her when she lay down, then trucked into the kitchen. The breakfast dishes were still in the sink, which was Annie’s idea of a mess. I cleaned up and dug through the freezer to find somethin’ to cook for dinner, muttering about slim pickings. By my reckoning it’d been too long since I’d cooked for my girl, and I wanted to do it right. I checked on Annie, who was sleeping, and slipped off down to the store to get a chicken for roasting. Nothin’ fancy, but comforting all the same.
When I got back there was somebody walking up the drive, a tall thin woman with iron-colored hair and a long nose. She looked maybe twenty years younger than me. I parked and got out sayin’, “If you’re selling religion, I ain’t buying.”
She stopped where she was, ‘bout thirty feet away. She was carrying a round leather bag with something light enough to bounce against her hip in it, and was wearing a grey hand-knit cardigan that came down to about her knees. “I’m not selling anything. My name is Hester Jones. Did you call Sonata Smith earlier this afternoon?”
“Oh, hell. I did, yeah. I’m Gary. Sorry for being rude. Thanks for comin’ over, Miz Jones.”
“Hester will do.” She had just about the sourest voice I’d ever heard, like nothing on this earth was gonna meet with her approval. She finished comin’ up the drive, gave me and my chicken a good hard look, then flicked a sharp eyebrow up. “I’d like to meet the patient.”
“She was sleeping when I left her—”
“That’s fine. If she can stay that way it may help. We’re trained to resist shamanic power, Mr…” Like Sonny, she realized I hadn’t given her a last name, and shrugged. “Shamanic magic requires belief on the part of the patient as well as the shaman. Sleeping minds are more malleable. If it’s a minor illness—”
“It ain’t.”
Something in my voice stopped her dead. After a couple seconds she started up again, following me, but her own voice got more sour-apples. From what she was saying, I thought she was trying to be gentle, but she had the bedside manner of a shark. Just as well Annie was gentle enough for two of most anybody. “I don’t want you to raise your hopes too high. Most people only call in shamanic practitioners in desperation—”
“I’m desperate but it ain’t because I don’t believe. It’s cause I do. A good friend of mine was a shaman, a powerful one. I know what kinda things she could do, and I’m hoping you can do somethin’ similar. My wife, she don’t just need healing. She needs shielding, and we gotta find out who did this to her, too.”
Hester Jones stopped again, this time just outside my front door, an’ touched my arm, which I didn’t figure was somethin’ she was comfortable with. “I may be able to help her find a spirit guide, which is as much ‘shielding’ as I can do. I don’t even understand what else you might mean by that.”
For a couple seconds things came tumbling down around me. Jo wasn’t your average shaman, an’ I knew that, but I didn’t have much else to compare her to. Took another couple seconds to shake all of those preconceptions loose and say, “Spirit animals are great. I got some first-hand experience with that. How ‘bout reading auras? I guess I donno if that’s somethin’ most shamans do, either.”
“Sonny called me because I’m good at auras,” Hester said, which made me feel like a damned fool, ‘cause Sonny had said that. I guessed I might be more rattled than I was letting on, even to myself. “Let’s begin with what healing I may be able to do while she’s sleeping, though.”
“All right. All right, thanks.” I led her through the kitchen ‘cause I had a chicken to put away, then went out to the living room where Annie was still huddled under the blanket. She’d never been a big lady, but she was looking real tiny and fragile, small enough to make my heart hurt. Hester went over, all business-like, an’ knelt beside her.
She wasn’t there ten seconds before she flinched back, color rising fast in her thin face. “There’s something very dark inside her. Anything I tried outside of the safety of a sweat lodge and a power circle would risk my life as well as hers.”
“I got a sauna.”
For somebody with such a sour-apples face she had a pretty good smile. I figured I’d surprised it outta her, ‘cause it went away again fast, but it was there for a minute. “I’m not sure I would have thought of that. Thinking outside of the box.”
“The one shaman I know never even found the box. Lemme go light it up in there. Whaddya want to build a power circle with? Salt? Grass cuttings? I got all kinda stuff.”
“Your sauna’s separate from the rest of the house? A circle can be built around it?” Hester got up so we could talk without disturbing Annie. I led her through the house to the back yard. It was smaller an’ a lot more private than the front yard, and had the sauna and a hot tub that never did much more than catch falling leaves in it. The tub was on the back deck, but the sauna was tucked up against the trees, with a glass roof that letcha see leaves moving like ghosts through the steam. Annie had never liked being hot since the fever, and never used it, but I relaxed in it a couple times a month.
Hester looked like I was some kinda genius. “The roof is perfect. Contained but also open to the sky. Salt would work well to draw the circle. You’ve done this before.”
“A time or two. One other thing. I donno if it’s how it’s usually done, but I’m coming in there with you two. I ain’t letting Annie be alone through whatever happens.”
Hester’s mouth prissed up. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I ain’t asking.”
If her face got any prissier she was gonna turn into a lemon. “What would your shaman friend have done?”
“She woulda said the more the merrier.” Thing was, I knew that was true. No way Jo would try keeping me, or anybody important to someone, out of a healing circle. ‘course, that wasn’t the answer Hester was looking for or expecting, so her face just about did turn into a lemon. But she nodded, an’ I went to heat up the the sauna, asking, “How much steam you want in there?” on my way.
“The steam is less important than the heat.” By the time I got back from lightin’ things up and getting the salt, Hester was losing her priss and startin’ to look more serene. She took the salt and circled the sauna, mumbling some kinda mumbo-jumbo that woulda made Jo laugh, but that I reckoned set her mind at ease. She stopped when she had about two feet left open, and nodded at me. “If you’d like to get your wife now, I’ll close the circle when you’re both inside. Try not to wake her if you can.”
“I’ll try.” I
figured Annie would wake up the minute I touched her, but she only nestled against me when I lifted her. I hated to think what that meant for how she was feeling, and about how much she was trying to hide her sickness from me. She didn’t wake up in the colder air outside, neither, and I took her into the sauna still wrapped in the blanket from the couch.
Hester came in a couple seconds later, looked at me holding Annie, and decided not to argue about it. My girl was sweating already, curls tightening up against her forehead. I kissed one of ‘em and settled down to wait and watch. Truth was, Jo hardly used any of this kinda stuff. Power circles, sometimes, but never sweat lodges, so I didn’t know what we were getting into, except altered states of reality. Hester finally took that bag off her hip an’ pulled out a flat drum kinda like the one Jo had, only not painted so fancy. That was familiar, anyway, so I relaxed a bit as she started playing. Annie’s breathing fell into rhythm with it real quick, and Hester said, “I think we’ll try the spirit quest first, before any attempt at healing. It might help.”
“Sure, doll. Makes sense to me.”
From her face, I didn’t think anybody had ever called the woman doll before. Not that most fellas used it these days anyway, but she looked like she’d bitten into something sour again. She kept her mouth shut, though, an’ I didn’t try real hard not to laugh. Way I saw it, laughter was good mojo, and Annie and me needed every bit of that we could get right now. The heat started getting worse, an’ we all got quiet a while, nothing but the sound of Hes’s drum and our own heartbeats keepin us company. Annie took a sharp little waking up breath, and I kissed her forehead again, murmuring, “It’s okay, darlin’. We’re doing a little spirit quest for you.”
“Shouldn’t I be awake for that? I’m hot. What’s that smell, the cedar? We’re in the…” She tensed up and relaxed again almost all at once. “Oh. We’re in the sauna. Gary, you know I don’t like saunas.”
“It’s just for a little while. You relax, Annie. Just close your eyes and let whatever comes wander through your mind, all right?”
“Who’s playing a drum?” She sat up a couple inches, sweat rolling down her forehead, and frowned at Hester, who never stopped playing.
“I’m here to guide your quest, and perhaps try a healing later. My name is Hester Jones, and you should lie back down.” She wasn’t real polite about it, and Annie bristled enough to make me grin. Jo was always going on about how shamanism was mostly about change, and about getting inside of somebody’s head to give ‘em a moment when the world slips to the side and looks a little different. She said that’s the thing that makes healing possible, having an instant when all your preconceptions fall apart. Since even the idea of a shaman was kinda mystical and soft-seeming, I figured just meeting Hester Jones threw most folks’s expectations into a tailspin.
Annie, still bristling, sat up insteada lying down like a good girl. “What quest? I want to understand what’s happening.”
Hester gave me a look like that was somehow my fault, but I woulda bet the farm that she liked knowing what was goin’ on too. Besides, I wasn’t that much of a damned fool. I hadn’t stayed married forty-eight years by putting words in Annie’s mouth, or by taking ‘em out. After a good hard glare at me, Hes answered Annie: “We’re going to perform a spirit quest. Your husband is right in that there’s very little you have to do except be receptive. The drum will help bring you into a trance state, and if a spirit guardian wishes to help you, it’ll come to you in the trance. Usually an animal you see four times has chosen you.”
“And why are we doing this?” Annie was using her professional nurse tone, the one people hopped to without thinking why.
Hes looked like she knew what was happening, but she answered anyway. “Because a spirit animal will protect and fight for you as we try a healing. It’ll also make you more receptive to a healing.” She added that like she thought Annie was gonna need a lot of receptivity to consider magic healing as a possibility, but I had faith in my girl.
Annie’s mouth pursed up and her eyebrows bobbed a couple seconds before she nodded and relaxed into my arms again. “All right.” A heartbeat later her eyes were closed, her breathing as steady as it could be with her lungs clogged up, an’ the drum was takin’ us all away again.
I didn’t know if it was doing anything for Annie, but after a while it brought a couple fellas I knew outta the dark. The white raven and my tortoise came in to visit, but I didn’t think they were so much looking out for me as Annie. Both of ‘em were looking outward, waiting on something, and every once in a while I got a glimpse of different critters ghosting their way through the dark. Once I caught sight of a crow, and once other of a buncha walking stick bugs, but my guides kept waiting, looking for something I didn’t know what.
I guessed they finally saw it, even if I didn’t, ‘cause the raven started hopping around and flapping his wings like he was all excited, and the tortoise hunkered down feeling satisfied. The raven bounced up on the tortoise’s shell and settled there, preening and shaking his feathers while we waited some more.
Seemed like about forever before Annie let go a real soft long breath and whispered somethin’ I couldn’t quite hear. Then she turned her cheek against my chest. “How interesting. You should try this sometime, Gary. Something actually came to me. A—”
“Don’t tell us,” Hester barked. She was flushed, prolly from the heat, but she was kinda agitated, too. “A spirit guide’s choice is a private matter.”
Annie lifted her head and gave Hes a hairy eyeball, but didn’t say anything else. I didn’t figure I’d want Hes knowin’ what my spirit animals were, either, even if she was helping out. “You all right to try this healing thing, then, Miz Jones?”
She nodded, but she was paying attention to Annie, not me. “I need you to understand that a shamanic healing is most effective when the person seeking healing is receptive. Without your belief, there’s very little, perhaps nothing, that I can do.”
Annie gave her a hard look. “That certainly puts the onus on the patient. Does it help you sleep at night?”
Hester’s pink cheeks went pale and I tried to pick up my flapping jaw, not remembering the last time I’d heard Annie being that sharp, though I got where it was coming from. She’d spent a lotta years as a nurse, and always said a good attitude helped, but for her, medicine worked whether the patient believed in penicillin or not. I could see how the idea of laying it all on the patient would bug her right down to her bones. She started looking like she mighta regretted saying that, but she not like she wasn’t gonna back down on having said it.
It took a long damned minute for Hes to find her voice. “Shamanic healing doesn’t have to be at odds with modern medicine. I would encourage you and anyone else to also pursue conventional treatment. But if you’re willing accept your own role in the healing process, shamanic magic may be able to help.”
Annie’s cheeks were pink too, like she’d helped herself to the color that’d drained outta Hes. She was as embarrassed as I’d ever seen her, an’ murmured, “Of course I’m willing to accept it.”
Hes nodded, so I guessed they’d sorted it out in the way women do when they ain’t gonna say what they really mean. “I’ve had a glimpse of the illness within you. We’ve done a spirit quest. I think we may need to do a spirit journey, now. If we leave this plane, the illness inside you may manifest itself separately, which would allow us to fight it in physical form and drive it away. Does that make sense?”
“Not really, but I’m not sure that matters. Will it make sense as it happens?”
“It should. I’ll bring you to the Lower World—”
“No.” That was me, surprisin’ all of us. Hes straightened up, looking like she was ready to give me a tongue-lashing, but I shook my head and kept talking. “Take her to the Upper World instead, all right? I ain’t sure this thing can’t just walk in and out on whatever levels it wants to, but I know the deeper you go the closer you’re getting to its home territory. Reach fo
r the sky, darling. Don’t dig down deep. All right?”
Hes looked uncertain. “The Upper World’s spirits are more capricious. Trying to draw this illness out for a battle there may let it escape and do harm elsewhere, if we fail.”
“You can’t—” I shut up before I finished asking, ‘cause I already knew the answer. Jo threw magic nets around all over the place, all the time, but I’d seen her and her pal Coyote fighting together once, and it had mostly been on Jo’s shoulders. Coyote was a full-out shaman, one who wasn’t walkin’ the warrior path that Joanne was on. He could manage some shields, but twisting magic into other shapes and catching things in it was outta his league. And Hes here couldn’t even shield somebody else, so there was no chance she was gonna pull out a gimmick like Jo mighta. “I’d say it’s worth risking.”
“And do I get a say in this?” Annie sounded stronger, like her spirit animal was already doing some good. “What kind of harm could it do, Miss Jones?”
“I don’t know. It’s a strong darkness, though. Right now it’s focused on you, but if it’s freed to pursue weakness in others, it could reach hundreds or even thousands.”
“Then there’s no choice at all. My health isn’t worth hundreds of others.”
“Annie—”
“Gary. Miss Jones, if we try to examine this…darkness…in the Lower World, can you contain it?”
“It’s more likely. I can reinforce our power circle there, which adds layers of protection.”
“Annie.”
“Gary. No. I have not spent a lifetime nursing others simply to choose the good of the one in my last days.”
“Dammit, Annie!”
“Garrison Matthew Muldoon.” Annie sat up, cheeks pink and eyes flashing hot. She threw her blanket off an’ got up like she was gonna stare me down. “If I am dying I am by God going to do it on my terms, and you’re going to accept that.”
“On a cold day in Hell, sweetheart.” I stayed sitting, ‘cause I was about a foot taller’n her and didn’t need to stand to be damned near eye level to her. ‘sides, the sauna already wasn’t big enough for three anyway, if two of ‘em were having a fight. “If you’re dying, I’m raging every step of the way.”