In the light, it was possible to really appreciate a lot of the theme camps and art pieces and the silly bits of whimsy that merged into an LED-lit blur at night. Like the giant plastic Buddha cross-legged in an inflatable zebra-print chair, seemingly laughing at his Elvis wig. Or the tree that had been yarn-bombed with a rainbow-striped sweater. A scattering of people were ringed around a white shade canopy, chatting and joking as they added bits to the growing mural painted on the walls.
Now that everything was fully built, I was able to see all the big art installations clustered at the very heart of camp, the ones that would be burned as well as the non-burnable structures around the perimeter. One of those non-burning ones was a whole camp called Faerie Wood, full of all kinds of trees from artificial Christmas trees to potted plastic ficus, painted and garlanded and hung with colored glass bottles. Most of the art was big enough to climb on and in, everything from a giant wooden birdcage full of perches, to a working carousel powered by people pushing on long poles in the pedestal, to a three-story plywood ziggurat with elaborate patterns cut into the walls, on which people wrote and drew in marker.
But the true centerpiece was the Metamorphosis. Just as Burning Man burns a giant wooden man every year (and having seen the original Wicker Man, I can’t say that didn’t creep me out a little), regional burns have some central piece of art that gets burned at the height of the festivities. Much like Tibetan sand painting, it’s a sacrifice of sorts, a reminder of the fleeting nature of everything in the world. Butterflies are, I’d read on the site, a popular motif for Morph, and it seemed like this year would hold with tradition. The Metamorphosis piece was a soaring, abstract tree. It was adorned with leaves, flowers, and fruit made of paper and cardboard. The highest bough supported a huge chrysalis--at least as tall as a person. I could only imagine how spectacular it would be when it was aflame.
Passing through the center of camp, I crossed a wide open field with a stage off to one side. It was occupied by a couple of DJs playing eighties music, and the field was scattered with people at play. There were kites flying. Clouds of bubbles filled the air from wands and bubble guns. I saw people dancing near the stage, one guy teaching another one to cartwheel, a dozen or more hula-hoopers. There were a few people practicing partnered acrobatic poses, someone else juggling while riding a unicycle, a group of people doing sun salutations. There was even a line strung low to the ground between two sturdy floodlight poles and a couple of people taking turns walking it. On the far side of the field was a huge steel tripod with aerial silks hung from it, and someone small and wiry spinning through space on them.
Next to that frame was the pavilion, a big structure with a smooth floor and a scattering of picnic tables, grills, and chairs, and another water spigot with a hose and a trough nearby. It was a great place to be around people while still getting some relief from the sun.
Sarafina wasn’t there yet. I wandered through the structure, enjoying the happy buzz of noise around me and the upbeat music giving everything a party mood, and crossed to the opposite side where a sign announced the Goblin Market. In keeping with the non-commercial spirit of the event, nothing was actually for sale in this bazaar of tables and shade structure, but rather for the taking--or the leaving. More signs encouraged Morph-goers to gift things to the Market for other people to discover. One whole side was dominated by racks of clothing and costumes and tables full of accessories, dotted with mirrors for people to play dress-up. There was a little reading room with chairs and rugs, the walls formed by shelves of used books. A couple of tables offered necessities like sunscreen, bandages, can openers, and extra tent stakes. There was a coffee setup, big silver urns of coffee and hot water with all the fixings. A very popular table seemed to be a combination crafting area and art supply swap, where a knot of people were currently making tutus out of scrap tulle. Some tables just had interesting odds and ends on them--one had a sign that said, “Are you the home I’m looking for?”
I found a mug on one of the tables, wiped it out with the hem of my shirt, and got myself another cup of coffee. It was such a luxury to not have to drink it black.
“Hey,” I heard behind me as I stirred in my mixture of milk, sugar, and cinnamon. I turned around to see Sarafina there, and I felt my heart wag like a lost puppy’s tail at the sight of someone who might be a friend--I know, it’s a little sad. I hoped she’d still be a potential friend after hearing my message, and not just write me off as some kind of wacko.
“Hey!” I said, perhaps a little too eagerly, and I tried to rein it in and be cool. She stepped past me and filled up her own mug. “Thanks for meeting me.”
She shrugged, and half-smiled. “I can’t just blow off some big mystery,” she said. “You know how to get a girl intrigued.” We fell into step together and strolled back toward the pavilion, heading for a pair of Adirondack chairs with a little table beside them. “So what’s this big thing you have to tell me?” She was trying to be lighthearted, like she wasn’t sure how seriously to take this whole situation. Or me.
I curled up in my chair with one leg under me and the other knee pulled up. She coiled catlike in hers. “This is going to sound crazy,” I began.
“I’m your soul mate?” she guessed. “We’re related? You went to school with me and had a crush on me?”
“No.” It came out a little too forceful. Her grin faded as she studied my face, and her eyes got serious. She wrapped her hands around her mug and brought it up to her lips like a shield. But she was listening.
I started again. “I was in an accident a few years ago. It was pretty serious. For a while it looked like I wasn’t going to make it, but obviously I pulled through. I...shit. I don’t know how to say this to you without sounding completely nuts.”
“Okay,” she said, still guarded, still listening.
I sipped my coffee for courage. My hands were trembling. I was silent for several long moments as I tried to force the words out. “So here’s the thing. I was given the choice to return to life and recover through the aid of Pomba Gira--through a Pomba Gira spirit, I guess I should say, since there are a bunch of them. In return, I have to-- work for her.”
Sarafina had a definite reaction to that name. I saw all the little shifts in her eyes and body. “Pomba Gira, like, the Brazilian spirit? Who’s all about sex and death and city people?”
“You know who she is?” That was impressive. I’d had to look up the name on the internet when I was in the hospital and the name haunted me.
“Heard of her. I’m Brazilian, I remember the aunts and grandmothers talking about her in a hush.”
“She came to me this morning.” I sighed. It was almost painful to listen to these things coming out of my own mouth. I’d grown more or less used to thinking about them, but saying them aloud was something else altogether. “One of the things she wanted to talk about was you. She wants you for her own.” I related the message I’d been given, with all the instructions.
When I was done, I saw fat silent tears breaking free from the corners of Sarafina’s shimmering eyes. “Please promise me you’re not bullshitting me,” she whispered.
“I’m not. I swear it. Whether you think I’m crazy or not, I swear to you that I believe this really happened, that I saw her and talked to her and I did not make this up.”
She licked her lips and then pressed them together, sucking in a deep breath through her nose. When she could speak again, she said, “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“You don’t?” Hope, awful burning hungry hope, shot up from my gut.
“No.” She dashed at her eyes and smiled, shaky. “I just never...I was raised Catholic. I was a fucking altar boy, if you can believe it. I left it all behind when I transitioned because it was made clear to me that there was no place for me there. But I really missed Mother Mary. Is that stupid?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I had the same feeling when I left.”<
br />
She nodded. “So you know. I wandered for a long time. I just...didn’t expect anyone out there to...want me.” She looked away.
I stared down into my coffee as I sipped it, giving her a few moments to be unobserved. I knew, better than most, that being wanted by a spirit entity could be very good or truly horrific. But I also knew too well how it felt to be unwanted and alone, to hunger to be seen and accepted.
I reached out to her after she’d collected herself again, and took her hand. She squeezed mine back. “Clearly,” I said in my gentlest voice, “you are worth it to her to make a special effort to reach you.”
“So you’re a shaman?” She swiped at her eyes again.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I mean, I’m not Native American or anything like that.”
She laughed. “Tribal people don’t actually use the word ‘shaman’, you know that, right? That’s an anthropologist term. But I get what you mean. Is ‘spirit worker’ better?”
“I don’t really know what that means,” I confessed. “I just know that sometimes I get messages for people, or I get told things that I need to do.” I hesitated. Something in the back of my brain nudged me hard. I took the plunge. “Like coming here. I came because there’s something I’m supposed to do here. I’m not sure what yet, but I guess there are other people I’m supposed to find too.”
“Seriously?” She straightened up. Was she going to bolt from my crazy talk?
“I know, it sounds so--”
“Girl, you need to come with me right now. Right now.” She stood up and tugged on my hand and her tear-stained face regained its brightness. “Come on!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A half hour later, I found myself surrounded by a small but attentive audience in a guerrilla-army-themed camp called the Popular Party of the Free Radicals Front, that combined their absurdist take on socialist revolution with the rallying symbol of Transformers toys outfitted with neckerchiefs and raspberry berets.
I accepted the offer of a cold mimosa made with champagne “liberated from the war chests of the bourgeois swine”, sitting in the shade of an olive gray military surplus tent at a battered table strewn with cartoonishly-drawn Rube Goldberg plans for the overthrow of their rival camp, the Swank Swine, source of said champagne. Around the table with me and Sarafina were a very curvy sly-eyed woman of about thirty who wore her fatigues and neck scarf like a pinup model and introduced herself as Comrade Cherry Bomb, a slightly scruffy Asian guy about my age with a smirking grin but a friendly air and the defiantly legal playa name of “Joe”, and another woman roughly in her early fifties called Tamar.
Tamar had shoulder-length, silver-threaded tawny hair in shaggy waves mussed by her habit of running her fingers through them, and resting skeptic face. She wore a faded Iron Maiden t-shirt and not a trace of makeup. Everyone else let her take the lead in the conversation, and it was mainly to her that I re-told the story I’d shared with Sarafina and then some, including my visions and Charlie’s death. She showed no hint of surprise or suspicion, and she nodded now and then as I talked, producing a crumpled napkin from her pocket when I stopped talking about Charlie and ducked my head, staring at my lap and biting my lips hard. I didn’t get into the details of my youthful experience with the demon, however, and skimmed over the parts about my Beloved, referring to him only as the lord of the island. Some things were still too private to share.
“So,” I said when I was done. “That’s about it. Sarafina said that you all felt like you were called here, too?”
“Sort of,” said Tamar. She sounded like she might be from New York or New Jersey. Brooklyn, maybe. “Not so clear as what you got. We were coming anyways, the three of us, and Sara of course too, like we always do. But I kept doing tarot readings that were telling me some shit was going down. I got Cherry to give it a whirl too, and she was seeing the same things. Danger, a dark figure, someone needing help, advice to band together with others to succeed at whatever we’re supposed to do.”
“You don’t know either.” I deflated. Dammit.
“Nope. But, you almost never get the whole picture. The puzzle-cracking is half the fun, right?”
“If you say so.” I looked around the table. “So, who else is there? To band together with?”
“This is pretty much it,” said Cherry.
Five of us. Should have been six. I had no idea how many of us this would take, whatever “this” was. “Well, I’m glad to meet you all. I’m still new to all this--I guess I just told you that.”
“Yeah, congratulations on your shamanic death,” Tamar said with ironic good humor.
“I don’t know what that means.” It was becoming my theme for the day.
She smiled and sipped her own mimosa from her white-speckled blue-painted metal cup. “You poor kid. You didn’t know anyone you could ask about this stuff?”
“No. My dad is second-generation Cuban and my mom was born in Russia, so there was some Ocha de Regla and Slavic folk magic mixed in our Catholicism for the grandmothers, but they’re gone now. I’ve dabbled in a lot of things since I was in my teens, but it’s hard to know who’s for real.”
Tamar nodded like that was all totally normal. I wanted to hug her just for that. “Shamanic death,” she began, and paused like she was trying to figure out where to start. “The best thing is for you to talk to someone else in the spirit worker community. I’ll tell you what I can, but it’s not what I do, you know? What I can tell you is, when the spirits come calling for someone, that person has some kind of ordeal. Maybe almost dying like you, or actually dying and being revived. Or getting injured or real sick, or having something big taken away. The spirit, or spirits, get them through it. It changes them. And then they get the abilities they need to do the work those spirits want from them.”
My head filled to overflowing with questions. “And being able to see things? To get messages for people or get instructions?”
“Seems to be a pretty common part of the deal. You got big work to do, you get some new tools to do it with. I’m willing to bet there’s stuff you’ll find you can do that you didn’t even realize was there.” She looked sympathetic. “You’ll feel a lot better when you talk to some experienced spirit workers, you’ll see.”
Just hearing that there were others like me made me feel like a whole new world was opening up. “Maybe they can help me understand what the point of all this is? What this work is that I’m supposed to be doing?”
“Probably,” she agreed. “You still got free will, you know. You can still decide what you want to do with your talents, beyond what’s asked of you. Mostly you’re gonna find that out from listening to your spirit. She’ll tell you what she wants in her own good time. But I can guess what it might be, since she’s a Pomba Gira. She likes the outcasts, the street people, the vagabonds and starving artists, the sex workers. She’s partial to those who are desperate and have no place else to turn, the people that society throws away. I’ll bet you’ll be helping those people.”
Sarafina’s mouth quirked in a pensive little smile at that. “So, this demon.” She arched a brow. “You told me you left last night because you saw someone who was bad to you in the past. So he was after you, at some point.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “It was a long time ago, back when I was a teenager. It went on for years. I still don’t understand how I survived it, or how I got free. All I know is that I only saw him when I was closest to, you know. If he’s here, if he’s visible, then it’s very likely that it’s because the person he’s after is close to death. But if Rosa Vermelha is right--”
“Then it might be preventable,” said Tamar, her face grim.
“If I can find them.” I heard the edge of desperation in my own voice. “If I can even figure out who it is. If there’s any way to tell how they’re going to die. If there’s anything anyone can do to prevent it.”
“But if we can
cockblock him somehow, it might give that person a better chance?” Joe was a delicate fucking flower, it was clear. But I liked the sound of that “we”.
“If we can’t stop the person from dying, then yeah, at least maybe we can make sure he can’t have them,” Tamar agreed.
All of us fell silent for a few moments, thinking. I was glad it wasn’t just me who was stuck on a solution.
“Okay,” said Joe at last. “We should try a few different ways to go at this. Better chances we’ll hit on something that works. I’m thinking I could talk to the land spirits here. Put out some gifts, see if they’ll bite.”
“No,” said Cherry, so quickly that I wondered what that was all about.
“What would that do?” I ignored the angry look she shot me.
“Spirits of the land can be pretty protective,” Joe also ignored Cherry, to her obvious irritation. “The atheists over at Science Faction would be pissed as hell to hear anyone say it, but Morph is soaked in magic from all the transformation and ecstatic stuff that happens here. This was already a thin spot on the border to Faerie, might’ve once been an actual gate here long ago. If they’re alerted to an intruder like that, they might be motivated to help. And I’ve got kind of a knack for making contact with them, I guess you could say.”
“Stop it,” said Cherry. Tamar laid a hand on her arm.
“But if they help,” said Tamar, “they will have a price. One that they may or may not be willing to negotiate.” She was looking holes in Joe as she said it.
“One we don’t have to accept,” he shot back, and looked at me. “The fae are a pain in the ass and not at all within our control. But I’ve got experience making deals with them, and I can tell you that they will always give you the chance to accept their terms first. The danger isn’t what they ask. The danger is in us, when we want what they can give us so badly that we accept without thinking it all through.”
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 11