by Lake, Jay
Maraga was already cutting Burd’s red cloth into strips with a reed she had sharpened on a stick. The first strip she wrapped around my left arm. It made a striking contrast to the deep brown of my skin, and I strutted proudly this way and that, letting her admire it.
Burd touched my arm. I looked at him warily.
With Nonu translating, Burd said: “You must have your people put their spirit-boxes in the stone tree.”
“We cannot take gifts from the spirits until we know why we have been brought here. If we accept their food, we must serve them and their purposes.”
“How will you find out what their purposes are?” Burd asked.
“I must walk with them and talk with them,” I told him. “They will tell me which spirit brought us here, and why. Only then can we decide what to do next.”
“How will you find these spirits?”
“They are everywhere,” I said impatiently, waving at the grass, at the reeds, and the river itself. “They fill the world. Every object, living or not, has its own spirit.”
He nodded, understanding at last.
Maraga touched my elbow. “The hunters,” she said.
“We will talk again later,” I told Burd. “If you have any questions, ask Nonu. She will be your teacher among us.”
“Thank you,” he said, but I was already following Maraga to where the hunters stood, in the center of our little walled village.
The oldest came forward and threw the day’s game before me: two small, ratlike creatures and a snake hung on a reed pole. “The hunting is bad here,” he said. “There is no game to be found larger than these.”
I frowned; they had found hardly enough to feed an entire village.
“A few of the boys had gone down to the river to spear-fish,” the oldest hunter went on, “and they had better luck.” He motioned, and two boys ran forward. They carried about twenty fish strung through the gills on a wooden stick. Some of the fish were small and thin, but a couple were fully as large as small dogs. Most were in between in size. That made me smile. It would not be a feast, but we certainly would not go hungry tonight.
The women had gathered enough wood for a fire, and after he had instructed me in its use, I lit the fire with Burd’s spirit-given lighter. Since the spirits had given it to Burd, and Burd had given himself to us, I figured it was safe to use.
As flames rose, snapping and crackling through the wood, the women began to prepare the evening meal. I looked up at the sky and saw stars beginning to appear: they were strange, not in the familiar patterns I had seen all my life, and I wondered what that foretold. The spirit-world is now our own, I reminded myself.
* * * *
With darkness, we began hearing strange noises from the direction of the white-skins’ camp. I picked up a spear, motioned for Burd to do the same, and we went out together to see what was causing the commotion.
It was a strange scene at the spirit-tree: most of the white-skins had shed their grass mats and spirit-box-given cloths and were rolling around on the ground screwing like dogs in heat. It is natural to turn one’s gaze away and pretend not to notice when men and women join together, but there was something wrong about it here, something both terrible and frightening. It was as though the white-skins’ souls were possessed by evil spirits. These were not the acts of men and women, but of beasts.
Then I found a dead white-skinned woman—strangled, it looked like. A few feet beyond her, a man had been stabbed to death dozens or hundreds of times with a bit of reed sharpened into a knife. It was still buried in his chest.
“Stay ready,” I told Burd, hefting my spear to show him what I meant. He took a stronger grip on his own spear.
We circled around the spirit-tree, finding a couple more dead bodies. Then, among the joined couples, I spotted Clay and pointed him out to Burd. Burn ran to his friend, spoke to him, but Clay only snarled murderously and swung a fist.
When Burd backed away, Clay rose and charged at him, screaming, flailing his arms. I rushed to Burd’s side to defend him. When Clay turned on me, his eyes wild and senseless, I drove my spear into his belly.
Gasping, he stopped and just looked at me, then slowly sank to his knees. I jerked my spear free and hit him in the face with its butt. He collapsed and did not move, either dead or dying.
Face pale, Burd stared at me. He jabbered something, then turned away, fell to his knees, and abruptly vomited.
Had he never seen blood or death before? I wondered. He was acting like a boy on his first village raid.
The woman Clay had been screwing leaped to her feet and padded silently off into the darkness. I picked up a couple of pieces of red cloth she had left lying in the dirt. The spirits would not mind my taking them, I thought.
Now I had seen enough to confirm my suspicions. Whatever had happened to the other white-skins hadn’t affected Burd: the decorations on his face and chest had marked him as human, and the evil spirits had left him alone.
“Let’s go back,” I told him, and when I started for our village he picked himself up and followed.
As we neared the village gate, a small brown figure suddenly hurtled out of the grass at me, screaming like a monkey. I dropped my spear and heaved a small body up into the air.
It was Joqua, one of our village’s youngest boys. He was only eight or nine years old, thin as a reed, but still strong and wiry. He kicked until Burd grabbed his feet, and together we wrestled him to the ground and sat on him to keep him.
He was chewing something in his mouth. Burd reached out, pried Joqua’s jaws open, and pulled it out, almost losing his fingers to Joqua’s teeth in the process. It looked like a white slug in the dimness. Burd smelled it suspiciously, then passed it to me.
It was soft, sticky, and warm to the touch. It had a sweet, spicy scent.
“Gum,” Burd said. He mimed pulling something out of a container—and I realized he meant this strange gum had come from his spirit-box. I had been right; the spirits had tried to trick us with their presents. If we’d put our spirit-boxes into the spirit-stone, we would have fared no better than the white-skins.
I looked back at the spirit-tree, listening to the cries and sobs and moans of white-skinned men and women in the power of evil spirits. Perhaps, I thought, this gum was like the javara we made and snorted to bring us closer to the spirits-world. That seemed likely.
Little Joqua had quieted. He let me pick him up, and I carried him the rest of the way into the village. I kept the gum in my hand the whole way.
* * * *
We pulled the village’s gates shut. While the women saw to Joqua, I called all the men together. They gathered around me and I told them all I had seen at the white-skins’ spirit-tree.
“The spirits tricked them,” I said, holding out the gum. “This gum is like javara. It opened their souls to the spirits.”
“Then they are possessed now,” Eona said.
“That is true,” I said. “They did not protect themselves as we did. None of them had painted their bodies to mark themselves as human.”
“We must drive them away from here,” Eona said firmly. “There will only be more trouble if they remain.” A number of others echoed his words.
I shook my head, though. “We must not do anything until I have walked with the spirits,” I said. “I have the gum now. I will chew it, and I will see who has brought us to this place, and for what purpose. Only then may we act.”
Eona thought about it a minute, then nodded. “That is wise,” he admitted.
I sat by the fire, stared into the flames for a heartbeat, then put the gum into my mouth and chewed slowly. The taste was odd, sweet and bitter at once, like nothing I had ever eaten before.
Little happened at first. Slowly the flames began to turn green, then blue, rising before me like a moun
tain of color. I felt the heat through my whole body, closed my eyes, and felt myself soar over the land like a bird.
I came to land in a clearing in a place very much like the forest in the real world where I had lived. There were bright birds in the surrounding trees, and monkeys chattered down at me as gold and red butterflies flitted about my head. I could smell the rich moistness of the earth and feel the warm breeze on my skin. I looked at my arms and found my tattoos had returned; I looked as human as I ever had.
A wide trail led through the clearing. I followed it. Tree branches wove together over my head, and it grew darker. I came to an old stone ruin, and seated on top of the ruin was an enormous black beetle.
“Are you Cocoti?” I said to the beetle. I felt myself tremble with fear. Never before had I come face to face with this great spirit.
“I am Cocoti,” said the beetle. Its voice was sharp and strong. “Why have you come to the spirit-world, manling?”
“I have come seeking answers.”
“What answers do you seek?”
“Why have we been born into the spirit world?”
“You are no better than monkeys,” the beetle said, “no matter how you decorate yourselves.”
“Answer my question, Cocoti,” I said, bolder.
“Do you raise your hand against me?”
“No,” I said. “You are the greatest of all the spirits, Cocoti, and all men fear you. But answer my question, Cocoti, and perhaps I can help you in return.”
“It is a high price to pay.”
“I will pay it.”
The beetle paused, its six huge black arms waving in the air. “You are in the spirit world,” it said at last. “You are not dead, manling, but neither are you alive yet. You who are the dung of a wild dog must know that.”
“Then what are we?”
“You are the future,” it said. “You are all the future.” And then it leaned forward and bit off my head with its shiny black jaws.
* * * *
I woke cold and stiff, gasping in pain. A thin light was bleeding into the village through the walls to the east; the sky looked gray. I felt a drop of rain strike my forehead, then another.
The fire had gone out. I rose and looked around.
Eona and Maraga were both watching me. Their eyes were puffy; they hadn’t slept all night, it seemed. Eona’s spear lay at his feet. He had been guarding me.
“Are you well?” Maraga asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“The spirits—?”
“I saw Cocoti,” I said. “He says this is not the spirit world. It is another test.”
“We already knew that.” Eona said.
“Yes,” I said.
Men, women, and children were sprawled here and there throughout the village, one head pillowed on another’s stomach or thigh, arms intertwined. Men and women were already pairing off. Only the white-skins all slept singly, off in one corner.
There was also one man lying behind Eona and Maraga. He wasn’t breathing, I saw.
“What happened to that one?” I asked.
“Burd killed him,” Eona said simply.
“What?” I cried.
Maraga said, “He tried to murder you when you were in the spirit-world.”
I shuddered at the thought. A man who died while his soul was in the spirit-world would have his soul trapped there forever. It was a horrible fate.
“Why would he do such a thing?” I asked. “It makes no sense.”
“Look at his face,” Maraga said.
I went to the man, knelt, turned him over. Blood had pooled in his right cheek, turning it black where it had touched the ground, and the paint on his face had all smudged. It was the hunter I’d worried about the day before. I’d thought I’d known him then. Today, in the morning light, I knew he did.
“Ngosoc,” I whispered.
“You named him as your murderer before you died,” Maraga said. “Then men of our village killed him that night.”
It was true: he had bewitched me in the real world, sending evil spirits into my stomach to kill me. He was forty years younger now, and I did not know how I had failed to recognize him. It must have been more of his witchery.
“Burd killed him?” I asked.
Eona nodded. “The white-skins set the grass on fire by the spirit-tree. we were all at the gate, watching the flames, when we heard a warrior’s cry behind us. It was this one—” he nudged Ngosoc with his toe “—running at you with a spear. He would have driven it through your back. Burd grabbed a spear, threw it, and killed Ngosoc.”
“Was it a clean blow?” I asked.
“Straight through the heart,” Maraga said. “The spirits must have helped him.”
I thought back to how I’d saved Burd from Clay the night before. Now Burd had saved me in turn. If throwing away the spirit-boxes had been our first test, letting Burd and the other white-skins join us must have been the second.
I told Eona and Maraga as much.
“It is true,” Eona admitted. “The spirits have been guiding you. Though I still do not like or trust white-skins, Burd is different.”
“He will become a human being,” I said.
I walked slowly to the gate, untied it, pushed it open. Eona and I stood shoulder to shoulder looking out toward the spirit-tree. The grass-fire still smoldered a bit, sending smudgy gray pillars of smoke toward the sky, but a heavier rain began to patter down around us. I knew it would put out the last of the flames.
You are the future. How many more tests would Cocoti pose for me before he was satisfied? What would the next test be?
“They must become human beings,” I said, realizing the truth at last. It had been before me all the time. It was the greatest test ever posed by Cocoti. “You said the white-skins came to your people in the old world, making them worship Virgin Mary. The white-skins were wrong. There is no Virgin Mary. There is only Cocoti here, and he is still testing us.”
“What must we do?” Eona asked.
“First we must decorate the white-skins,” I said, “to protect them from evil spirits. Then we must take their spirit-boxes and destroy them, for they are the source of the evil. The white-skins must join our village and live as people among us.”
“All of us together?” Eona asked, brows creasing.
“Yes,” I said, and I could see it in my mind: white and brown, all working together, building the greatest village the spirits had ever seen. It could happen. It would happen.
You are all the future.
All of us. That included the white-skins, I knew.
I leaned on Eona’s shoulder and told him of my vision and all Cocoti had revealed to me. He agreed on my interpretation.
“But what if the white-skins will not join us?” he asked. “They have never lived among us as people.”
“You have your spear,” I said. “I have mine. If they will not become people, we must treat them as dangerous animals and kill them. When their souls are reborn, they will know the truth.”
“The truth,” he echoed. Then he smiled. “It is a good plan. Cocoti is right. When will we start?”
“Now,” I said. “Wake the other men—and Nonu. She must speak to the white-skins for us. It is early; the white-skins will be sleepy and disorganized. Perhaps some will still be possessed by evil spirits.”
“Yes, headman.”
That was the first time he’d ever called me that, I realized. He had accepted me fully. That was another test, I thought. Will you never stop, Cocoti?
As Eona woke the others, I looked out across the grassy field and dreamed. We would all come together, I thought, every man and every woman in the world, all of us serving Cocoti and the spirits. White or brown, green or purple, the color of our
skin would not matter. Our rebirth in the spirit-world was only the beginning.
You are the future. You are all the future.
I would make sure of that.
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