Shaman, Healer, Heretic (3 page)

Livvy looked down at the patient, whose skin was a waxy yellow. She thumbed one of her eyelids open and checked pupil reaction. Her brain was still functioning on some level and her eyes had not rolled back. She put two fingers to the woman’s wrist and rested a hand on her chest. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse quick. Livvy laid the back of her hand on the woman’s brow and it was hot, as expected. The patient had probably not been able to drink enough water, if anything at all, and was dehydrated.

The woman who had carried the little girl away had reappeared in the room and taken a seat in the chair again, like a sentinel.

“This is Anita’s sister, Dolores. She’s the one who called me,” said SK.

Livvy looked over at her, across the bed.

“When did her illness begin?” Livvy asked in Spanish.

Dolores groaned.

“Like I told the other
curandera
, and the nurses at the emergency room, and the doctors, she told me she wasn’t feeling good about a month ago. It started in her back.”

She reached around behind herself and touched her lower back to make it clear.

“What did the doctors say?”

“The doctors? Nothing,” Dolores said with disgust.

Livvy nodded. It was the usual story. The doctors glided in and out and it was usually left to the nurses to deal with the patients, from translating the medical jargon to imparting bad news. It seemed like ages ago when Livvy had thought she would be a doctor, specializing in pediatrics. That was a different life.

“What did the nurses tell you to do?”

“They told me to make her comfortable,” she said, her voice quavering and her eyes filling with tears. “It was the only thing left.”

Livvy felt in the pocket of her jacket for the wad of tissues she knew would be there. She peeled one off and handed it to Dolores, who blew her nose. Livvy gently rubbed the poor woman’s back between her shoulders. She could see that Dolores was exhausted, sitting vigil here, watching her sister die.

“Do you think there’s anybody who would wish her ill?” Livvy finally asked.

“What do you mean, like an evil spell?”

The people in the doorway shifted their feet and looked at each other.

“Yes, like an evil spell.”

Dolores glanced at the crowd, then back to her sister, then back at the crowd.

“Well, I don’t know...”

“Tell them about Miguel,” said the young girl who had come to fetch them. She stepped into the room.

Livvy looked from the girl back to Dolores, waiting. Dolores looked at her sister’s face and then at the floor.

“If I’m going to help your sister, I need to know everything,” Livvy said, patiently but firmly.

“Miguel is the father of the children,” said the teenage girl. “But he won’t give any money. Says he doesn’t have it, but I seen him at the club. Anita kept asking him for money and the last time he was here she said he couldn’t come see the kids no more. It was a really big fight. We all heard it.” She gestured in back of her and one of the women in the hallway nodded. “It was right after that she started to feel bad.”

“She wouldn’t want you to hurt the children’s father,” interrupted Dolores.

Livvy crouched down at Dolores’s side and put a hand lightly on her knee.

“I’m not going to hurt anybody,” she said quietly and offered a small smile. “I’m here to help.”

Dolores nodded and held the tissue to her nose. Livvy turned to SK.

“Let’s get started,” she said.

As she took off her shoulder bag, she whispered to him under her breath in English, “Who dropped the ball on the family history? Didn’t anybody ask questions?”

SK replied in Spanish, loud enough for everybody to hear, “That’s your job.” Then in English, much more quietly he said, “Don’t ever question what I or other shamans do in front of the client.”

Livvy frowned but silently unlatched the yoga mat from under her shoulder bag. She hadn’t meant her questions as a challenge. She knew better than to trade words with SK, especially right now. There was a lot more at stake than something another shaman missed.

SK watched in silence as she unrolled her mat.

“Do you want the room cleared?” he asked.

“Either way is fine for me,” she said, flattening the mat. “I’ll be on the flip side in a minute.”

ONLY TEN YEARS ago, a shaman had to get high. Drugs were the Multiverse gateway of choice, the typical means by which shamans entered a different plane of existence. Proponents of the old school method preferred peyote, mescaline, and datura; for the new school: LSD and ecstasy. Of course, drugs had their own world of worries. The danger of taking too much was ever present as shamans attempted to balance on the edge of the void without falling in. Typically, more experienced practitioners would mentor initiates, ostensibly to help guide the vision quest but really to prevent overdoses.

Even when a shaman survived the transition and made it back, there were always the side effects: nausea, headaches, and lingering auras in sunlight. Recovery time was mandatory, both physical and mental. In essence, business was closed for at least a couple of days.

Livvy reached into her bag and removed her goggles along with a new pack of batteries. Except for a few strips of gray duct tape, the goggles were a shiny black plastic. Although at first glance they seemed like they might be large, wraparound sunglasses, the smooth bulging curve at the front of the goggles contained tiny projectors and mirrors that threw images back at the eyes of the wearer.

“Got your knife?” she asked SK, tossing him the battery pack.

If a shaman didn’t want to use drugs, there were other equally demanding routes: fasting, drumming, dancing, chanting and anything else that could lead to exhaustion. It was time consuming to get to the ecstatic state and few urban shamans had that luxury. Clients wanted their results in the next five minutes or they’d be on to a new shaman who did use drugs.

Livvy popped out the old batteries as SK sliced open the plastic on the new. He handed them back to her as she sat down on the mat next to the bed.

The big breakthrough for techno-shamans had been the God Helmet. It had started as an experiment to see if an electromagnetic field could induce the impression of the presence of God using a motorcycle helmet with big magnets built into it. A tiny electric current stimulated the magnets, which caused them to emit a magnetic field, and then the subject would report whether or not they could sense God. Although some people did indeed have a religious experience, possibly because some people always would, a large number of people reported feeling like somebody else was in the room with them.

Livvy stashed the old batteries in her bag, plugged in the new ones and snapped on the power button. The goggles emitted a small electric humming sound. The people at the doorway stood on their tiptoes to look over the bed and see what was happening.

Unrelated to the God Helmet, but shortly thereafter and equally important, the video gaming industry introduced 3-D goggles. The first shaman who had seen the potential of the two technologies being brought together had lived and worked in Silicon Valley.

Livvy took out a tiny pillow that was stuffed with wheat kernels and sage and placed it at the top of the mat. She started to lay back but stopped and looked over at SK.

“Back in a bit,” she said.

“I’ll be here,” he said, squatting down to sit cross-legged next to her.

While she was on the other side, Livvy would have no awareness of her physical body or surroundings. In traditional societies, the role of protecting the shaman as they journeyed in the spiritual world would have fallen to an assistant. Today, in L.A., it fell to SK.

Livvy felt the familiar mat beneath her and heard the crunch of the pillow as she settled in. As she raised the goggles up to her face, the video program was already playing. She closed her eyes and slipped them on. The soft rubber padding around the edge sat comfortably on her cheeks and temple and sealed out anything visual. Slowly, she lowered her hands to her sides and took in a deep breath, experiencing the cleansing smell of the sage. As she exhaled, she opened her eyes.

For tens of thousands of years, shamans the world over had shared a visual set of cues, a group of symbols that marked the entrance to the Multiverse. They had even recorded them on boulders, cliff faces, and the walls of deep caves. Despite the time and space that separated them, the images remained the same: spirals, checkerboards, dots, crisscrossing lines and sunbursts.

Inside the goggles, Livvy watched as the red and yellow symbols bobbed and swayed against the deep black background. They seemed to flow into one another in a random order. Outside the door to the bedroom she heard feet shuffling and conversations in the kitchen and living room. The baby was crying again.

Livvy unfocused her eyes and took another deep breath. As she watched, the spirals and sunbursts became more intense and the sound of the real world faded. Dots and crisscrossed lines morphed into one another. The cycling of the images became quicker. She moved toward them as they started to glow. Their edges became indistinct. As the cycling grew even faster, they started to become less opaque. As she approached, they grew larger and even more transparent, morphing into one another at a frenetic pace, blurring into a bright ball of orange. Beyond them, she saw a familiar landscape taking shape–the Middleworld. She stepped through.

“Is she there now?” asked Dolores, quietly.

SK watched Livvy’s even breathing and saw her pulse rate drop at the jugular vein.

“Yes, she’s there.”

“What do we do now?” asked the girl at the door.

“We wait.”
 

IT WAS ALWAYS high noon in the Middleworld. The trees at the edge of the black lake cast their shadows directly down. As Livvy approached on the dirt path, it seemed unusually quiet. She stopped and listened. Not a cricket or bird sounded. There was no snapping of twigs in the forest to signal the approach of an animal spirit. She could clearly hear the wind as it rustled the branches and leaves–perhaps too clearly.

As she looked to the sky, she saw the clouds gathering. Her spirit helper was approaching. She resumed her walk to the lake, but was aware of the eerie silence. Her footsteps sounded too loud on the gravel beach. As the sky grew suddenly dark, a clap of thunder sounded in the distance, over the peaks of the mountains that ringed the lake. A bright flash, muffled within the clouds above her, briefly lit her white hair with an aura. Her spirit helper, lightning, had arrived.

She had seen the other spirit helpers in the Middleworld and Underworld, animals and insects of every variety, and they had seen her, but she had rarely communicated with them, which was not unusual. They weren’t there to guide or help her. They were simply watching.

Again there was a clap of thunder.

“All right, already,” she said, looking at the reflections of the clouds in the inky water. “I’m going, I’m going.”

The entire sky was now filled with dark clouds. She walked to the edge of the water and took a step in, watching her foot disappear. The lake was particularly cold today.

“Great,” she muttered, shivering.

Rather than prolong the agony, she took another step and then another. Her shins splashed and sent small waves out in front of her. Soon she was waist deep, not bothering to keep her hands raised. In another few seconds only her head was above water and, as the ground beneath her feet dropped off, she submerged.

Whirling eddies spun around her, creating a funnel into the darkness below. It sucked her downward but then expelled her onto dry land. She braced for the impact, landed with a thud, and rolled to absorb the energy until she hit the curb.

“Wow,” she gasped, finally sitting up.

She looked back at the fountain in time to see the inverted spout of the funnel collapsing. That had to be the roughest landing she’d ever had, but there was no time to worry about it.

She stood and moved next to the nearest building. Unlike the Middleworld, the Underworld was buzzing. Spirits of all types were moving around the main plaza, crossing back and forth, heading off into the streets that radiated from the fountain like spokes. Some of them seemed to be in a rush, running by her on the sidewalk.

Livvy looked up to the sky and watched the drift of the clouds. Their direction would be her direction: the way she would go to find Anita. They drifted off somewhere behind her. She checked right and left before she stepped out and headed left along the sidewalk to the nearest street. As she turned the corner and followed the clouds, she passed people and animals and insects that looked as genuine as anything in the real world but which she knew were spirits, their only existence here, in the Multiverse.

A deer strode by in the street to her right, stepping over a turtle. A panther passed her on the left, trotting, its powerful shoulders rolling back and forth as it loped along. A man in a turban and loincloth passed her going in the opposite direction on the sidewalk. She had never run across her own ancestors here, but she had probably seen someone from every country or culture at this point. For their part, they never seemed to take much notice of her, nor did any of the spirit helpers around her. It wasn’t that they didn’t see each other the way that shamans never saw one another in the Multiverse, the ancestors and spirits simply weren’t interested.