Shaman, Healer, Heretic (16 page)

“I don’t want to go there again.”

“Okay, we’re gonna make sure you don’t go there again.”

Eventually she managed to calm him down, but it had clearly been a setback. When she and Brad went upstairs, his parents had listened gravely to Livvy’s story as his mother held Brad and Roger crossed his arms.

“In the end,” Livvy concluded, “I’m just not sure what to tell you.”

Telling someone that they might potentially have the makings of a shaman and that their vision quest might have begun accidentally would be thrusting a lot of responsibility and information on them. It would be an especially bad thing to do if it wasn’t true. With all the turmoil in the Multiverse and the way that the kachina had seemed to be able to come and go, Livvy wondered if Brad had slipped through as a result of something happening to the Middleworld and not necessarily because of something related to his own abilities.

“What should we do?” asked Roger.

“No unsupervised meditations,” said Livvy.

“But I meditate every day,” moaned Brad.

“I know,” said Livvy. “I’m sorry.”

He bowed his head and his mother stroked his hair. Without the meditations, he’d regress quickly. They all knew it.

“Maybe we should move up the trip?” Margaret said to Roger.

Brad perked up.

“Can you manage it?” asked Roger.

It was Margaret’s job responsibilities that would be the hardest to rearrange. Margaret looked at Brad, who was waiting anxiously to see what she’d say.

“I can manage it,” she said, smiling at him. He hugged her.

“Well, I guess that settles it,” said Roger with a little smile.

He held out a small white envelope to Livvy.

“Thanks as usual.”

Although she took the envelope and put the money in her bag, it didn’t feel like she’d been much help today, but she didn’t want to say that in front of Brad, and she needed the money.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

As Roger opened the door, Margaret said, “We’ll let you know our plans.”

“That sounds good,” Livvy said as she turned around and took in the three of them, standing together, their arms around each other’s waists. A wistful smile came to her lips

“If I don’t see you before you leave, have a safe trip.”

“Will do,” said Roger.

As the door closed and she turned to face the dark street, she sensed that relocation would be a good thing for Brad–the sooner the better. Somehow, L.A. didn’t seem like the place to be right now.
 

FOR ONCE, LIVVY had slept late. No phones, no landlords, no visitors. When she finally woke up, the sun was high and the bedroom was getting warm. Despite the bump on the back of her head and the bruise on her stomach, she had slept like a rock. Nacho still wasn’t back, but sometimes he would disappear for a couple of days. She knew other people in the building fed him and that it was too soon to worry, but she worried anyway.

As she lay there, her mind roamed over the bizarre events of the last few days. Brad had accidentally gone to the Middleworld. She had seen a kachina manifest in the real world, only to then be rescued by that kachina in the Underworld. And, of course, Indra had somehow died. Although she knew she hadn’t been responsible for any of it, it was all beginning to leave her with a guilty feeling. Maybe there was something she could have done. But what? Nothing seemed right anymore and everything seemed to be changing.

She took her phone from the nightstand and propped another pillow behind her head. After she texted Min, who texted right back, she looked at her news feeds.

“Shamans Outed for Rash of Sicknesses,” read one article title.

“Shamans Blamed for Epidemic,” said another.

She sat up and started scanning through the regular news feeds. There was the national economic and political news, foreign affairs and arts, but all of the local news seemed to be about the sudden increase in emergency room traffic. In one news video, the anchor posed a question.

“Are shamans spreading disease in your neighborhood?”

“What?” said Livvy out loud, not believing what she was hearing.

“That’s what reporter Alice Gaylord is reporting on this afternoon from downtown. Alice, what’s the word on the street?”

The screen flipped to a black female reporter somewhere in a Hispanic business district.

“The word on the street here is fear.”

She took a couple of steps over to a storefront.

“People in this neighborhood say that shamans are a real part of this community and that they are spreading disease.”

An older man was waiting for her at the door of his shoe repair business.

“This is Mr. Hernandez who is the owner of the Mr. Shoe repair shop. Mr. Hernandez,” she said turning to him, “can you tell me why you think shamans are causing what is essentially an epidemic.”

She leaned the microphone over to him. Mr. Hernandez held his hands in front of him as though he were an usher at church and nodded.

“The shamans are real,” he said with a Hispanic accent. “
Las curanderas
, they are here. Many people in this neighborhood can’t afford to go to the doctor so they call the
curandera
. The
curandera
comes to your house and they can heal your sickness if you pay them.”

“Oh, please,” said Livvy.

“Well that doesn’t sound too bad,” said Alice, playing along.

“It’s not,” agreed Hernandez. “It’s not until they want you to be sick. There are evil
curanderas
, very bad, very powerful. If they want you sick, you will be sick.”

“I see,” said Alice, glancing at the camera. “And you think that’s happening in this neighborhood.”

“I seen it with my own eyes,” he confirmed, nodding. “My cousin called a
curandera
and then got real sick and nearly died. Then it happened to my neighbor. You ask anybody here,” he gestured to the street. “Everybody knows somebody who’s been real sick lately.”

“And you think that the evil shamans are responsible?”

“It always happens after they visit,” he insisted.

“Of course it does,” Livvy protested. “Because they’re sick to begin with!”

But then she thought of Brad, who hadn’t particularly been ill but had been worse off after her visit.

The camera swung over to a trio of middle-aged women who stood side by side. Alice leaned over and held the microphone to them as a group.

“These ladies think that the shamans are the carriers of an infection,” said Alice. “Can you tell me again what you saw?”

The women on the sides looked at the one in the middle, who spoke up immediately.

“Yes, my best friend called a
curandera
and she came while I was there. She had this little guinea pig and she killed it, right in front of us,” the two other women shook their heads and clucked. “Oh how it squealed! And then she looked at its insides, you know, the guts, and told my friend that she had a stomach sickness. Then she took the dead guinea pig and she rubbed it all over my friends head and arms and stomach, and told her not to drink any alcohol.”

Livvy shook her head. What the woman had described was actually a traditional shamanic ritual, one rarely performed these days, especially in large urban centers, but this woman had taken all the lurid details out of context. As she squirmed under the covers, Livvy realized she was sweating and threw them off.

“And what happened to your friend?” asked Alice.

“She’s in the hospital now,” said the woman on the far side. “She’s very sick now.”

“It was the
curandera
,” said the one closest to Alice. “She made her sick.”

Alice turned to the camera.

“At this time, hospitals are not reporting any pattern to the ailments that people are experiencing. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence for the flu or other type of bacterial or viral infection. The only common factor may be the shamans.” She paused for dramatic effect. “This is Alice Gaylord, reporting on the shaman phenomenon that seems to be sweeping the downtown area.”
 

AS LIVVY CLIMBED the stairs in the hospital, she knew she’d have to avoid the nurse who’d had her escorted out before. She opened the door to the third floor just a crack and scanned around. There wasn’t anybody in the hallway. Quickly, she stepped out and trotted softly down to Room 349.

She had been surprised to get another call from Diana, especially so soon. Mitch had lapsed back into a coma the next morning and the doctors were taking a wait-and-see attitude which neither Diana nor Saul cared for.

Livvy rapped quietly on the door as she glanced at the hallway in back of her. Saul opened it, saw who it was, and pulled it open for her to pass through. He also took a glance at the hallway, satisfied.

Before Livvy knew it, Diana was hugging her. She either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care about the tiny spark between them. Livvy guessed it was the former. She looked even more haggard than the last time.

“Oh thank you, dear,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

“Yes,” said Saul, behind her. “Thanks.”

Diana led her over to Mitch. He looked much as he had when Livvy had first seen him, possibly worse.

“The doctors don’t have an explanation for why he’s gone back into a coma,” Diana said. “Of course, they couldn’t explain how he’d come out of it in the first place.”

Livvy looked at the heart rate and blood pressure monitors. His pulse was thready and his last few blood pressure readings had been very low.

“The nurse said they’d test him for brain activity tomorrow,” said Saul from the other side of the bed. “I don’t know what happens if they don’t see any.”

Livvy knew. If the patient didn’t have a medical directive, it’d be up to the family to decide whether or not to keep him on life support. As she gazed down at his face, she recalled the first healing. He hadn’t seemed too anxious to return to the real world, although she had never asked him why. He seemed set on staying in the Multiverse until she’d told him he wasn’t dead. Now, she had to wonder if he’d made up his mind not to come back. If that were the case, there was no point in trying to force him. They’d all end up right back in this situation.

She looked at Diana and then Saul and decided to say it.

“I don’t think he wants to come back.”

“What?” said Diana. “How can you know that? You just got here.”

“He didn’t want to come back last time, but he didn’t want to die either,” said Livvy, looking at his face again. “I think it’s possible that he may have decided…not to come back at all this time.”

“Nonsense,” said Saul. “He’s never said anything like that.”

“No,” said Diana. “Never.” She looked down at Mitch and then back at Livvy. “Why didn’t you tell us this last time?”

Livvy sighed. “It’s not really anybody else’s business but his. A shaman might see a lot of things on the other side.”

She let it rest at that. The silence of shamans on matters of their clients in the Multiverse was something akin to doctor patient confidentiality.

“Can’t you at least try?” asked Diana.

When they had called her, they had probably thought it would be a slam dunk. Call the shaman and bring Mitch back, like last time. Unfortunately, it was never that easy. Especially with the strange things going on in the Multiverse right now. Looking at his vitals, though, and having met him in the Multiverse, Livvy already knew it would almost certainly be pointless. Even so, she was bringing them bad news and she hated to do that.

“Just try,” said Saul.

“Please,” implored Diana. She put a hand on Livvy’s arm.

Livvy finally looked at her. She had meant to tell her that it’d be useless, a waste of time, and a waste of money. With Tiamat roaming around it wasn’t worth the risk, either. But the look on Diana’s face wasn’t just exhausted. Her thin smile fell miserably short of masking the desperation and fear beneath the surface.

“All right, I’ll try,” Livvy heard herself say. As Diana exhaled with relief, Livvy continued. “Just be aware that it’s different now and there’s only so much that can be done on the other side once they’ve gone too far.”

“I understand,” said Diana, but Livvy heard the hope in the woman’s voice and knew that she did
not
understand.

Livvy settled into the chair, leaned her head against her sage pillow, and put on the goggles.
 

• • • • •

In no time, Livvy arrived in the Underworld. She rolled to her feet but stayed close to the fountain in case she needed to dive right back in and escape to the Middleworld. She looked in every direction, knowing that if Tiamat were near she wouldn’t need to look for her–she’d feel her.

The plaza was a ruin. Giant blocks that had tumbled from the surrounding buildings lay scattered all around. A gusty wind blew leaves and small bits of trash until they came to rest on debris heaps, piling up like a snowdrift. The place looked deserted.

The clouds weren’t moving, which might be a bad sign. It either meant that Mitch wasn’t here or that she was nearly on top of him.