The Shaman of Kupa Piti

by A. Nybo

  “Are you here to tell me I can return to my claim?”

  The Russian’s rumbling speech flowed over Leon like thunder rolling through a valley. A strange sensation that caused something in him to tighten and something else to loosen left him feeling perplexed. Something beyond explanation had just happened. Leon couldn’t identify what it was, but it made his thoughts fuzzy and disjointed.

  “Mr. Menshikov—” Charlie began.

  “Sergei,” the man corrected.

  “Sergei,” Charlie said. “I’m Sergeant Charlie Gibson. We met at the station.”

  “I remember.”

  “This is Federal Agent Leon Armstrong,” said Charlie. Sergei nodded acknowledgement. “Before we can decide if you can return to your claim, we need to speak with you.”

  Catching movement in his peripheral vision, Leon turned his head to the right to see a magpie sitting on a drum. When he turned back, Sergei was staring at him, eyes wide and lips parted. Leon wondered what he had done to draw such a stunned reaction.

  Sergei seemed almost entranced for a moment before he swallowed visibly and stepped forwards to look out the door. He waved his arm at the magpie and swore, “Suka blyat!” He did the same in another direction, as if shooing away a second bird, but there was nothing there Leon could see. Sergei continued to wave at the air for a few moments before turning his attention back to them.

  “Come in,” the Russian invited and then walked off into the depths of the house, leaving them to close the door and follow.

  Charlie looked at Leon and mouthed, “What the hell?” before entering the house.

  Leon was left standing on the doorstep, wondering if any of that had actually happened. He didn’t understand what had caused either man’s reaction. Trying to dispel the incident, he gave a mental shrug. It wasn’t important.

  After entering the house, Leon walked down the inside steps. He gazed around the interior and stood dumbfounded at the sheer beauty of what he guessed had once been a working mine. The walls and ceiling, although undoubtedly sealed, were the same raw earth as the mines he’d been in earlier, machinery lines still visible where it had been dug out. Earth-toned tiles covered the floor.

  “Are you coming?” asked Charlie from the other end of the passage.

  Downlights set above artworks were the only lighting in the passage. With a blink, Leon examined the few extremely colourful but sparsely detailed paintings as he passed them. Turning into the kitchen, he stopped in his tracks. He’d never seen anything like it before and wondered how much of this arid country town hid such marvels.

  Rich, dark wooden cupboards lined one wall, granite countertops working to mediate between the wood and the earthen walls.

  “Coffee, water?”

  “Water would be welcome, thanks,” said Charlie and turned to Leon. “You?”

  Leon tried to collect himself. It was just a house, for chrissakes, but there was something electrifying about the entire place, and it wasn’t just the beauty. The air seemed to be charged with that odd calmness that indicated a storm was about to hit.

  “Um, yeah, water would be good, thanks.”

  “What did you want to know?” asked Sergei.

  Leon watched the man’s confident movements as he made himself coffee and pulled a jug of water from the fridge.

  Dressed in jeans and a dropped-armhole tank top, and with bare feet, there wasn’t much Leon couldn’t guess about his build. Only a centimetre or two shorter than his own 183 centimetres, Sergei’s medium frame was all muscle—undoubtedly hardened by the physical labour of mining.

  “Mr. Menshikov,” Charlie began.

  “Sergei,” the Russian reminded him.

  “Sergei, are you aware that items were found in and around your claim that relate to the crime committed at Mr. Jovanovic’s?” asked Charlie.

  “Miro’s?”

  “Yes, Miro’s.”

  Sergei’s eyebrows shot up in almost comical surprise. “At my mine? What was there?”

  “There were a number of objects found buried near the frame of your genset,” said Charlie.

  “What sort of objects?”

  “Some coins, bones, flowers, that sort of thing.”

  Sergei set two glasses on the counter. “They belong to me. I put them there.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “That’s not related to what happened to Miro.”

  “Perhaps that’s something we need to rule out,” suggested Charlie.

  “It’s part of my spiritualism.”

  “Which is?”

  Sergei picked up the jug and took his time pouring the water into the glasses. “Neo-animism,” he said finally. He set the jug down, and it seemed to Leon that Sergei was purposely avoiding looking at him, until it almost became a physical weight.

  And then he did.

  The force of Sergei’s gaze wasn’t just challenging, it was seeking, probing, and it penetrated Leon to his very core. Despite the power in those eyes, Leon refused to look away. He withstood the examination and returned it.

  Charlie’s throat-clearing was a patent attempt to break the stand-off, but still neither Sergei nor Leon backed down.

  Leon’s breathing was growing shallow, and his cheeks were starting to burn, but he maintained eye contact.

  “Isn’t that like, ah, um, a Druidic belief?” asked Charlie.

  The raised eyebrow could’ve been an unspoken question for Leon, or it could’ve hinted at superior knowledge. Sergei smirked and transferred his weighty gaze to Charlie. “I don’t think they’ve patented it yet.” Silence hung in the air for a moment. “Was that all that was at my claim?”

  As surreptitiously as he could, Leon regained his breath and composure. Jesus Christ on a fucking pushbike! Leon had never experienced anything like it. Even now he couldn’t drag his eyes from Sergei, and he was certain the Russian’s attention was still on him, although his eyes were on Charlie. He picked up the glass and drank in an attempt to ground himself.

  “No.” Charlie’s tone sounded apologetic. “There were three strips found tied to the ladder, similar to those you reported hanging from Miro’s ladder.”

  The weight of Sergei’s attention seemed to lift from Leon then and move to Charlie.

  “So he was still there.” Sergei studied Charlie like he was looking for wrinkles developing right at that second. “He was in Miro’s second drive, wasn’t he?”

  “We believe so, yes. In addition to the three strips, there were bones at the end of the drive.”

  “What sort of bones?” Sergei finger-combed the hair on his chin.

  “We’re not sure yet. We don’t have the results back from forensics.”

  “How big were they?”

  “What?” Obviously the question had taken Charlie as off guard as it had Leon.

  “The bones. How big were they?”

  “About yay long.” Charlie held his hands about half a metre apart.

  “Miro’s femurs?”

  Leon was surprised at the strange turn this interview had taken. It wouldn’t have been the tactic he would have used, but it was revealing. Sergei’s calm objectivity suggested that at the very least, he was no stranger to violent crime—but then Leon had already decided Sergei was not the usual kind of witness. Hell, he wasn’t the usual kind of anything.

  “What makes you think that?” asked Charlie.

  Sergei pinned the sergeant with a penetrating stare. Leon was sure he saw Charlie falter under the gaze. “Missing bones in one mine, bones found in another, and given the length of them, why would I think anything else? How were they placed?”

  Leon was as surprised by the question as Charlie appeared to be.

  “Is it important?” Charlie had clearly lost control of the interview, but if he were practicing his philosophy of not pissing the miners off, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  “It could be, for my spiritual purposes.”

  Leon searched for signs of sarcasm, but Sergei seemed genuine
.

  “They were in a cross,” said Charlie.

  “What sort of cross? One that signals wrong or a crucifixion cross?”

  Leon’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you ask that?”

  Once again, Sergei took his measure. His hazel eyes twinkled. “Because it is important to me. Spiritually,” he added, as if he’d known the next question Leon was going to ask.

  From the corner of his eye, Leon could see Charlie looking from one to the other of them and back again when Leon didn’t answer.

  “A cross that signals wrong,” said Charlie.

  “And the hide strips? What was tied to them?” asked Sergei.

  “We’re not entirely certain. Small bones of some sort and feathers.”

  Leon shot a withering glare at Charlie. Why the hell was he giving so much information to a potential suspect?

  “About how long do you think it took from the time you left Miro’s mine until you reached the police station?” asked Leon.

  Sergei looked into the distance as he thought. “About forty-five minutes or so?”

  His gaze met Leon’s, and although his expression didn’t appear to change, Leon got the distinct impression the man was laughing at him—as if his most carefully guarded secrets had been scrutinised and assessed as ridiculous. Heat rose in Leon’s cheeks, and the slight flaring of Sergei’s nostrils made him look furious, but the sparkle in his eyes said he was amused.

  Leon struggled with the odd thought that Sergei could smell his weaknesses—and that catching wind of them excited him tremendously.

  There were still questions to ask, but despite his rising anger, the sensation he was being hunted drove Leon to effect his escape. “Well, I think that’s about all for now. If we need anything else, we’ll get back to you.” He was surprised at how confident he sounded.

  “You’re free to work your claim if that’s what you want to do,” said Charlie. “But it’s probably not such a bad idea to take a few days off. We have no idea whether this murderer is likely to return to the scene. If you want someone to go with you when you return to your claim, one of us will accompany you in case further events have occurred. Unfortunately, we lack the resources to put a watch out there.”

  “Thank you. I’ll give it some thought.”

  They thanked Sergei for his help and left.

  It wasn’t until they were back in the police car that Leon could breathe properly again.

  “He’s kind of intense, isn’t he?” asked Charlie.

  That was the understatement of the year. Leon felt like he’d been emotionally ravished—or something. “Yeah.” He allowed a decent break before continuing, “Why did you tell him what was tied to the hide strips? He is still a potential suspect.”

  Charlie’s chuckle sounded as uneasy as Leon felt. “Why not? He saw the ones tied to the ladder in Miro’s claim.”

  “That was Miro’s claim. We shouldn’t be revealing additional information. If everyone knows what was there, how are we expected to be able to tell if anyone has inside information?”

  “Point taken,” said Charlie. “To tell the truth, I find him kind of disturbing. I mean, what was all that about on the veranda? What the hell was he swearing about?”

  “He was shooing the magpie away.”

  Charlie cast an uncertain glance at him. “A magpie? As in one?”

  “I only saw one. But there must have been more I didn’t see because he shooed them away as well.”

  “Well, if you saw one, that was one more than I saw. To me it looked like he was telling the air to go away.”

  Leon didn’t know how Charlie could have missed it. “It was right on that drum, not ten feet from us.”

  “I saw the drum, but I didn’t see a bird.”

  “You need your eyes checked, then.”

  “Maybe I do,” Charlie agreed. “Regardless, he’s strange. He frightened my constable so much I think he forgot how to write.”

  Leon’s chuckle was more relief than amusement. The entire visit was still sitting on him like a physical presence. “What did Sergei do to scare him?”

  “Nothing. He was very civil, especially since he’d just found Miro’s body. That can’t have been easy. It was as eerie as arriving in hell to find it deserted when we were out there. And there were three of us. He said at the time that he thought the murderer might still be there. Can you imagine being down that mine, with a body all mangled like that, thinking that the person who did it was in the other drive? I would have been a nervous wreck.”

  “Not so much if you’re on the killing team.”

  “Do you think he was part of it?” asked Charlie.

  “I don’t know.”

  Leon didn’t know what to make of Sergei, other than that he was as intense as a hawk on the hunt. Regardless, he had to admit that if Sergei wasn’t involved, he had some balls. Leon had been in some tight situations, but he’d always had a gun for company, not some broken pickaxe handle or whatever it was Sergei had grabbed as a weapon. Still, what else could he have done? Fallen in a heap and cried until someone found him? Leon guessed that was a possibility, but one that would have been likely to get Sergei murdered.

  They lapsed into silence. Leon was still pondering being down a mineshaft with a psychopath for company when Charlie parked the car at the police station.

  “So what do you think that means?”

  “What what means?” asked Charlie.

  “If Sergei was down there with the murderer and he wasn’t part of it, why isn’t he dead too? Why did the killer go to such lengths with Miro but then let Sergei walk out?”

  Charlie chuckled as he opened the car door. “Maybe Sergei scared the hell out of the killer too.”

  Leon got out of the rapidly warming vehicle, uncertain whether to smile or not. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Despite it being well past knock-off time, once inside the station, Leon made a call to Lars Andersson at Europol to see if he could uncover any information regarding Sergei. With a promise from Andersson to get back to him if and when he discovered anything, they hung up.

  Charlie gave Leon a lift to the hotel where he was staying, and as at Sergei’s house, Leon was entranced by the beauty and uniqueness of the underground dwelling. A mixture of earthen walls, natural brick, wood, and earth-toned tiles made the place a stunning work of craftsmanship. One thing it didn’t share with Sergei’s home was the sensation that the very air was crackling with energy—which Leon was thankful for.

  While the rooms sported the same natural earthen walls, he was pleased that the bathrooms were modern, although he wasn’t quite as pleased when he saw himself in the mirror. He looked like a chocolate bar that had been left in a hot car and had melted—which he guessed was a fair estimation of what had occurred.

  His cropped brown hair was flat from his uniform baseball cap, so he scrubbed at it so it stood on end. “You’re getting old, bro,” he muttered to himself as he looked at the prematurely greying stubble on one section of his chin. Turning his head slightly, he studied the strange greying patch of hair above his ear that he’d first noticed almost a year ago. Wasn’t there supposed to be some sort of symmetry to the way hair went grey?

  Twenty-eight was too young to go grey.

  HOURS AFTER Doris departed, Sergei was still pacing around the house, stalking from one room to another. When silent questions and exclamations returned no answers, he finally broke. “What the fuck?” he demanded—mostly from his subconscious. Why had the spirits chosen an Australian Federal Agent?

  In the intervening hours since Leon’s departure with Charlie, Sergei had gone over every dream, every trance, and every thought he’d had of the man with the silver patch of hair over his ear.

  When he’d first started dreaming of him, Sergei hadn’t attached much importance to it, but when he became a recurring element of Sergei’s dreams, he knew one day they would meet. Then, six months ago, the man had appeared to him in a trance in which Sergei spoke with the shadowlanders. Sergei
had tried to dispel the man from his vision, but the shadowlanders had championed him. Over the next few months, Sergei had come to understand that they needed to collaborate.

  Now that Miro had been murdered and he was involved with it, and Agent Leon Armstrong was here to deal with it, he could understand the nature of their collaboration. But the rest?

  “What. The. Fuck?” he demanded again.

  And the spirits had gathered on the veranda to ensure their first meeting could not be misconstrued. Leon’s lack of reaction to Sergei’s arm waving suggested he had seen at least one of them. But did he know what it was he’d seen? Being that Leon was an AFP agent, Sergei doubted it.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head, face towards the ceiling.

  Although most shamans had spirit spouses, it was rare that a shaman had a partner in linear reality. His father had been one of two noaidi on the entire Kola Peninsula to have one. But then his father had been a rare man indeed; not only was he a noaidi with a partner, but he also had a noaidi son.

  Sergei stopped pacing. Maybe that was it—he wasn’t a real shaman. Perhaps the spirits were choosing him a partner before deserting him for good. After all, the shadowlanders knew only too well how reluctant he was to adopt the noaidi mantle. They’d inflicted spirit sickness on him often enough to show their displeasure with him. He didn’t want to recall all those days he hadn’t had the strength or the will to drag himself from bed to feed or clean himself.

  But a Federal Agent? Seriously?

  Were the shadowlanders pushing them together in the hopes they would kill each other? What else could they expect? Sergei moved between three worlds, and Doris Silver Patch’s logic and science would deny the very existence of at least one, and possibly two, of those worlds.

  The tone of their last few dream meetings left no doubt that the nature of their relationship involved more than mere collaboration, but whether that developed tomorrow or next decade, he didn’t know. Calming his thoughts, he decided nothing would come of it soon. It would take some time for the abyss of the worlds between them to be bridged.