Shaman, Healer, Heretic (5 page)

Livvy realized her hands were trembling and clamped them together in front of her to quiet them.

“I need you to stay still, no matter what you see. Can you do that?”

In answer, Anita stopped moving.

Livvy paused, thinking about the room in the real world, wishing now she’d had SK clear it and unplug everything. Too late now though. She’d have to work extra hard to stay in control.

“Okay,” said Livvy, standing up. “I’ll see you on the flip side.”

Livvy widened her stance and dug her feet into the soil. As she looked up, she shut her eyes and reached her hand up to the sky. She thought of Anita, her children, and their strong bond.

Don’t miss
, she thought.
Focus
.
Don’t let it get away.

Slowly and very carefully, she extended her fingers.

“Lightning,” she whispered and snapped her eyes open.

A white bolt of electricity snaked from the center of the whirling clouds and sliced through the sky at blinding speed. Its searing heat flashed over Livvy’s face as her vision went painfully white. She heard it strike the ground with an explosion that was deafening. It had found its target.
 

IN THE REAL world, Dolores gasped as Anita inhaled sharply. The lights in the room flickered and small sparks danced in the holes of the electrical outlets. Someone at the doorway screamed as the lights died. In a moment, the lights were on again and Anita was coughing.

She sputtered at first and then brought a shaking hand up to cover her mouth.

“Anita!” screamed Dolores, stepping over Livvy to get next to the bed. “Oh thank God, Anita!”

The crowd from the door surged in and lined the other side of the bed, three deep, jockeying for a good view. Anita slowly opened her eyes as the intent faces watched.

Still lying on the floor, Livvy started to reach up a hand to remove her goggles but felt someone pushing it back down.

“Here, let me do that,” she heard SK say.

As he lifted the goggles off her face, she blinked a few times and then quickly turned her head to gaze up at Anita, who was staring at the crowd.

“What is everybody doing here?” Anita asked weakly.

Dolores threw her arms around Anita’s neck and sobbed.

Livvy propped herself up on one arm and leaned over to put space between her and Dolores’s feet.

“I’ve got a bottle of water in my bag,” she said hoarsely to SK.

“I’ve already got it,” he said, holding it out to her.

She slowly sat up, took a long drink and wiped sweat from her face.

“How you doing?” he asked, keeping a hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, although she didn’t feel that way. The latent body heat and dehydration that came from working in the Multiverse were hitting full force. She knew it would pass but that didn’t make it any better.

She looked back over to the bed where everybody was crying now and trying to hug Anita. They had started to spill further into the room and SK helped Livvy move out of the way and sit in the chair that Dolores had been using.

“We thought you were dead!” someone exclaimed.

“It’s been days since you were awake!”

“Dolores sat here the whole time!”

Then the kids were on the bed. The older girl buried herself in Anita’s chest and yelled “Mama!” over and over. The little one started to wail in the tumult.

Livvy smiled. It had been a difficult healing but this was the payoff, the reason that she hadn’t given up. Although a bit shaky, she stood up to get a better look.

Quiet descended on the room and, as one, the crowd looked at her. She had intended to step closer but stopped instead. The cry of the infant was the only sound.

Although what she read in their faces shouldn’t have been a surprise, it was–like a quick slap. Some faces were clearly awed, others angered, some thankful, but mostly, they were afraid. The old woman with the rosary made the sign of the horns at her, a defiant look on her face, as the crowd separated from her.

Next to Anita, the little girl peeked at Livvy but when Livvy looked, the girl shrieked and also gave the sign of the horns.

Unable to look at their faces, Livvy looked at the floor. As her eyes misted up, she let go a shaky sigh.

“Let’s go outside for a minute,” SK said quietly.

Without a word, she picked up her mat, put the goggles in her bag, and followed SK out of the bedroom. The young couple that she had seen on the way in were gone.

“Did you see the lights go out?” someone whispered behind them.

As she approached, people looked away and took a step back if they could. Even the cute boy with the earphones stared at the wall. Outside in the hallway, doors slammed shut as people hid, until Livvy and SK were by themselves.

“Wait right here,” he said. “There’s the little matter of a payment.”

Livvy leaned against the wall, exhausted, but not wanting to sit because it’d be too hard to get back up. Her mind raced as it processed what she had seen in the Multiverse and what she had managed to do. She had almost lost control of the energy, even the little bit that she had called down. Then she remembered the vicious talons on her scalp and reached a hand up to her head, but there was no blood. She knew that what happened in the Multiverse shouldn’t manifest in the real world, but it had seemed real. As she lowered her hand, she realized it was shaking.

In a couple of minutes SK was back.

“All right,” he said. “One hand on the railing, one on me.”
 

BY THE TIME they reached the diner, Livvy had nearly recovered and was starving. As she handed her menu back to the waitress and reached for her tea, she saw SK smiling at her.

“What?”

“You did good back there,” he said. “I know it was a difficult one.”

“Well, it was a weird one, that’s for sure,” she said, looking down, not knowing what to do with the compliment.

“Weird?” he asked.

“I didn’t see anybody in the Middleworld.”

“What do you mean you didn’t see
anybody
?”

“Not one single spirit helper or ancestor. It was empty.”

SK wasn’t a shaman, but he had worked with so many it was as if he’d actually been to the Multiverse.

“There isn’t always somebody by the lake,” he said.

“That’s true,” she said, considering for a moment. “But I’ve never seen it completely empty. There wasn’t so much as a fly.” She looked down at her tea. “I don’t know. It gave me the weirdest feeling.”

“So, what about this kachina?” he asking before sipping his coffee.

She pulled up the sleeve of her jacket and held out her arm but the small welt was gone.

“What am I looking at?” said SK.

Livvy took off her jacket and pulled up the short sleeve of her t-shirt. No welt there either. She touched the spot but it had disappeared.

“There was a spark between us, where he tried to touch me. It left marks, but they’re gone now.”

SK set his coffee down, frowning, and Livvy realized he was watching her.

“Look,” she said, putting her jacket back on. “Even when I was drinking–”

“You ever have any dealings with kachinas?” he asked, focusing on her. “You know, on the other side?”

“Never,” she said, surprised. “I’ve never even seen one there. I thought they were rare.”

“I think they are and you’re not really their type of shaman.”

Despite the spread of shamanism to most parts of the urban landscape, the old gods tended to stay with familiar customs, people, and places. The most likely shaman to encounter a kachina would still be someone from the Pueblo world.

There was also a debate about the type of shamanic experience that different entrance methods allowed. Since techno-shamanism was the newest form, it raised suspicion among traditional shamans. In fact, it tended to raise more than just suspicion. Some traditional shamans were openly hostile. Luckily, shamans never saw one another in the Multiverse.

“You’re sure it was real?” SK asked.

Livvy thought hard about it. She knew as well as SK that spirits and ancestors from the Multiverse did not have a physical presence in the real world, pretty much by definition. They were spirits.

“I don’t think it ever really touched me,” she said, touching her upper arm through the jacket. “Just that spark thing.” She paused and tried to remember. “I don’t know. It seemed so real at the time.” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

SK picked up his coffee again but didn’t say anything.

“SK,” she said quietly, “you know I’m on the wagon, right?”

It wasn’t only that SK brokered most of the shaman work in the area or that most of her income came through him. Somehow, his opinion of her mattered–a lot.

He nodded. “I know it,” he said.

Livvy breathed a small sigh of relief and took a sip of her tea.

“By the way,” SK said, “lightning came out of the wall sockets.”

She sputtered and spewed some tea.

“Oh my god, was anybody–” she managed, between coughs.

“No, no, no,” he said. “Not even close. There was just a little bit. Just wanted you to know.”

The waitress arrived with two plates of pancakes and set them down, but Livvy hardly saw them. Even though the coughing fit had stopped, her heart raced. She knew her face must be flushed.

“Nobody saw anything. Just me,” he said, when the waitress left.

Livvy shook her head and looked down at her lap.

“By all the gods in the Multiverse, why lightning?” she muttered. “Why me?”

Livvy had marveled at the variety of spirit helpers in the Multiverse, some menacing, some cute, but all recognizable, all normal. Why couldn’t she have had one of those and not some freak thing like lightning?

“It’s a gift,” said SK. “A rare one.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Liv, look at me,” he said and waited several moments. “Livvy?”

She sighed and looked up.

“A lightning shaman is born once in a generation, if we’re lucky,” he said. “It’s rare and it’s powerful.” He hesitated. “But it’s also dangerous, hard to control.”

Only recently had she figured out that she had the most control when the lightning strike was close to her, as with Anita earlier.

“You’re going to have to work out how to handle it, and eventually you will, but it’s going to take time. You need to cut yourself some slack.” He paused but didn’t take his eyes off hers. “Agreed?” he asked.

She nodded.

Three teenage boys in a booth a couple of tables away laughed out loud–a little too loud. Livvy glanced over and saw them looking at SK. They stopped abruptly when they realized she was looking at them.

“Fact of life,” SK said, not even looking over as he reached for the raspberry syrup. “Eat your food before it gets cold.”

The tables here always had three types of syrup: maple, raspberry, and blueberry. One by one, Livvy took all three and poured as much syrup as the plate could hold. There was actually a secret fourth syrup, if you knew to ask for it, but Livvy had missed her chance when the waitress had brought the food.

“You know,” said SK, looking at her plate with mild revulsion. “Maybe you should just skip the pancakes and ask for a mug.”

“Syrup is the food of the gods,” said Livvy, as she carefully moved her fork through the three flavors, creating a striated pattern. “Pancakes only exist because there is syrup.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, until Livvy’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. It was Jack.

They’d broken up months ago. Subconsciously though, she had left his number in the address book hoping he’d call. It had seemed less painful than deleting it.

“You need to get that?”

“No,” she said, trying to aim for a casual tone of voice and not succeeding.

SK nodded as he chopped through the stack of banana pancakes with the side of his fork.

A voicemail notification arrived on Livvy’s phone. Jack had left a message. She stared hard at it.

“You know, it’s okay if you get that,” said SK.

“I’ll get it later.”

“Mmm hmm,” he said, turning his attention back to the plate.

Livvy did likewise and realized that she’d hardly made a dent in her pancakes but that SK was nearly done.

“How is it you eat so much?”

He shrugged.

“High metabolism I guess.”

Livvy got a text message notification. Jack was texting her now.

“Please call. Emergency,” it read.

“Well, look, I need to get going anyway,” SK said, but Livvy barely heard him.

He stuffed the last wad of pancakes in his mouth, took out his wallet and left twenty-five dollars on the table for the bill. Then he rifled through the big bills under the table. He took a few out and folded them up tight before handing them to her.