Yanoako territory, the Amazon jungle
AKHU, SHAMAN OF THE YANOAKO, tossed in his hammock undisturbed by a baby’s first cry in a far away place called Texas. Instead, his mind echoed with the nightmare of his own terrified screams as he relived his struggle to break the hold of the swirling water sucking his small body deeper and deeper into its green depths. He beat his arms wildly, knowing as he did, he was losing the battle. Looking up through the swirling column, he could see the sun shining dimly.
Suddenly, the whirlpool relaxed its grip, and he felt himself shoot toward the surface. Clearing the water, he heard the murmur of voices reaching out, tugging insistently at his eyelids until they pulled them open.
The dream again, he thought, remembering how, as a small boy he was caught in the tug of a whirlpool and would have drowned had an older boy not swum to his rescue.
He rolled and perched on the edge of his hammock. Through his hut’s entrance, he saw the sun had already cleared the trees surrounding the village. Some of the men had gathered in the courtyard, busy stringing their bows and putting curare-tipped darts into their corn-shuck quivers in preparation for the day’s hunt.
I won’t join them today, he thought.
As Shaman, he could choose his own path and needed only the gods’ approval for his actions. He let his body fall back into the hammock, closed his eyes and smiled, remembering last night and the boys’ curiosity. He could see their faces, framed in firelight as they huddled together and watched him expectantly.
Waiting for another story, he had thought as he reached up and untied his necklace holding the sacred Stone of Memories, his badge of office. Locked within its shimmering depths was the trail the tribe’s Shaman had taken into their peoples past for as long as any could remember. They held sacred these memories, believing as long as they remembered them the tribe would live on.
Like many times before, the boys’ gasps of awe greeted his actions as he took the Stone, held it toward the fire, and watched it draw rainbow bands of light into its depths.
To the boys, moments spent waiting for Akhu to begin his storytelling moved as slowly as a three-toed sloth. So impatient and curious, Akhu thought as the hint of a smile formed on his lips and he began turning the Stone slowly in his hands.
Curiosity was a trait Akhu understood very well. If it had been a disease, it would have killed him the morning nine flood times ago when it brought him uninvited into then Shaman Twanke’s hut in search of this very Stone.
How quickly the seasons have passed since Twanke’s path into the stone became my own, he thought.
That morning, only the sun breaking above the trees saw him slip into Twanke’s hut fired by his burning desire to know.
The night before he and the other boys had gathered around the fire with Twanke. As usual, Akhu, like the others, sat spellbound as the old man spun stories from the Yanoako’s past.
Twanke remained by the fire for a long time after telling his tale, staring silently at his Stone of Memories. The boys waited patiently for his permission to leave the circle. Finally, realizing none would come, all but Akhu left the fire for their hammocks in the long house.
Looking across the fire at his teacher, he thought, I must see what he sees, and vowed, some day I will. At times like these, he always hoped if he sat quietly and waited patiently long enough Twanke would finally let him look into the Stone and experience its mysteries for himself. However, just like all the other nights, his patience went unrewarded, weariness finally overcame his curiosity, and he, too, left the fire to join the other boys.
Sleep that night was slow in coming. When it finally did, it brought with it the familiar dream of whirling water sucking at his thrashing body.
Just like today, he awakened the next morning to the sound of the men preparing for the day’s hunt. From the edge of his hammock he watched as they picked up their blowguns and quivers of darts and filed out of the long house, their freshly oiled bodies glistening in the sun as they walked past the communal garden before disappearing into the jungle.
However, that morning he had seen something else, something that broke the grip of caution and jerked him from his hammock. Twanke was with the hunters, and he was not wearing his necklace!
Once he had seen him secret the stone away in the folds of his hammock and was sure it must be there. Bolting to the outer edge of the poles supporting the long house, he ran across the village courtyard and in a moment reached Twanke’s hut and quickly slipped inside. Cool night air still lingered within its shadows, its thick thatched walls muffling the sounds of the awakening village.
Several times before, he had crept into Twanke’s empty hut and had always enjoyed the freedom he felt there. Everywhere else, others surrounded him: their smells, their voices, their moans in the darkness all part of the fabric that was his life. The press of their presence was a constant reminder only the Shaman was a complete and solitary person. He and the others were only small parts of the whole…the tribe.
Hardly daring to breathe, he went to Twanke’s hammock and nervously reached his hand into its folds. Sure enough, just as he suspected, the necklace was there…he could feel it. Drawing it from its hiding place, he eagerly grasped the large center Stone and held it out amazed, how even in the hut’s faint light it came alive with bands of shimmering colors.
As he watched, the colors transfigured into translucent blackness that slowly peeled away to reveal a small opening in the stone. In only a moment it widened to become the yawning mouth of a cave that swallowed first the stone that birthed it, then the hut itself.
Akhu felt a current, stronger than the great river at flood time, as it swept him into its gaping mouth. It’s happening again, he realized, as his curiosity surrendered to helplessness that quickly gave way to panic as the current became the whirlpool of his nightmare sucking him into the stone’s dark depths.
In a moment, the sounds of the awakening village with its cacophony of laughter, barking dogs, and screech of quarrelsome monkeys fell silent.
He was moving faster and faster through a corridor ablaze with a whirlpool of stars vanishing as quickly as they appeared, leaving him to plummet on in darkness that seemed to throb with hidden life. Trapped in the gullet of a great beast…swallowed alive, he thought as frantic seized him!
Still faster he flew. Ahead he spotted a pinpoint of light that growing brighter dissolved the darkness into gray half-light. Clinging about him like a fog, it slowly lifted to reveal strange and frightening things: Metal birds flew about spitting fire from their wings. Boiling mountains of fire, whipped into waves as if by a strong wind, rolled toward him, leaving in their wake the charred bodies of men and animals.
As he raced along the passage, he glimpsed high stone walls with men rushing about bracing ladders against them. Warriors with long knives slashed away at their enemies, who were falling in bloody heaps about them. Painted on the shields of some were crossed red lines, on others a small sliver of the moon and a star. Arrows rained down from the walls on the warriors below, their howls of pain following him as Akhu careened still deeper into the Stone.
As the light grew still brighter, the scene changed again. He saw an ax raised high then driven down. A head, its face frozen by death in a look of disbelief, fell from its jerking body, rolled toward him, finally stopped, and fixed him with a sightless stare.
The stench of burning flesh filled the tunnel as he sped past a blur of bodies cast into a blazing fire. He glimpsed a woman holding the limp body of a baby, its life dripping away into a pool of red at her feet, her wail of unbearable sorrow following him as he careened on…faster…faster.
Suddenly, surrounding him were swaying bodies and the babble of voices as women sang and danced before a metal god whose belly billowed smoke. He felt a blast of heat from its red-hot hands, held out impassively to receive a screaming child.
Still, faster he shot through the tunnel.
Everything was a blur now. Only the dissonant shouts and screams, the roar of beasts and cries of their prey continued to remind him of the terrifying vistas he could no longer see.
As quickly as it began, the bedlam died away, the tug on his body relaxed, and he felt himself slowing.
Slower and slower, he moved forward until finally he felt solid earth under his feet. Relief replaced panic when he realized he was no longer in the cave but on a trail bordered by a jungle so still only his beating heart broke the silence. In the distance, he saw a bright light spilling between two soaring stones standing sentinel on either side of an opening in a wall blocking the path.
A woman, unlike any he had ever seen was standing beside the stones. Her skin was white like milk, her hair the color of melted gold; about her flowed a garment the color of lilies, that rippled across her body like still water disturbed by a sudden breeze. Around her neck, she wore a golden charm and in her hand, she held something dark and edged in gold.
She smiled and raised a hand in welcome.
“Have you been sent to guide me,” he asked the smiling woman. “Not yet,” she said, “but soon.”
“Not ever!”
A deep drumbeat of a voice echoed through the tunnel, stirring again the screams and babble that had followed him on his descent into the stone.
From somewhere, beyond the reach of the light, he heard a low guttural snarl. Hardly had it died away when a black jaguar crept from the darkness and fixed burning eyes of undiluted hate on him.
It’s about to spring, he thought, feeling his body stiffen, and I have no weapon!
The snarl erased the woman’s smile and instantly replaced it with the glare of a determined hunter.
At that moment the beast sprang.
Akhu felt its hot breath on his face just as the woman stepped between them. Reaching out, she touched the cat with the black, gold-edged thing she held, and when she did, the creature shattered like a clay pot at her feet.
“Soon I will come to guide you, Akhu,” the woman said, turning and facing him. “Soon,” she repeated the word with a calm assurance that betrayed neither fear nor notice of the beast that had just threatened them.
“Shi will send me to you.” She smiled again as she backed into the light still spilling between the stones. “You must follow no one into the forbidden land until I am sent to lead you.
I will come soon…soon…”
Her voice trailed away to a whisper then was gone as she disappeared into the light.
“Akhu!” A demanding voice called for his attention. “Look away from the stone! Look away now!”
Somehow, he knew the voice must be obeyed and willed his eyes to look away from the light into which the woman had vanished. Immediately he felt himself shoot upward through the tunnel even faster than his descent.
“Look at me, Akhu.”
Twanke’s voice, he realized as he felt the Stone relax its grip. “Look at me.”
He felt his head being shaken from side to side.
As his vision slowly cleared, he realized he still stood near Twanke’s hammock except now Twanke stood beside him. Familiar sounds of the village had replaced the awful cries and sights of the tunnel—he was once again among the living.
“My Stone”, Twanke said as he gripped his shoulder and gently reached out his hand. “Have I not told you curiosity baits many traps?”
“I saw strange things, Father,” he remembered saying. “They frightened me.”
“I know, my son.” Twanke cupped his upturned face in his hands. “I, too, have seen those terrible things, sights more frightening than the charge of a wounded jaguar.”
Even nine passing flood times could not erase from Akhu’s memory how Twanke stared into his eyes, as if searching for something he had lost, before asking, “and did you see anything else?”
“I saw a beautiful woman standing in the light beside great stones on the path.”
“And?” There had been a hint of excitement in Twanke’s voice. “I asked if she was sent to guide me.”
“And how did she reply?”
“She said, ‘Not yet, Akhu, but soon Shi will send me to guide you.’”
“She called your name, my son?” Akhu remembered he saw tears in the old man’s eyes and finding no words to explain, could only nod in reply.
“I too have seen the woman,” Twanke whispered so softly his words seemed meant only for himself, “but she never called my name.”
Pulling himself up, Akhu sat on the edge of his hammock and through the hut’s entrance could see the last of the hunters as they disappeared into the jungle.
He remembered again his boyhood vision in Twanke’s hut and his first journey into the Stone of Memory. Will this be just another day or the day the beautiful woman keeps her promise?
At the edge of the courtyard, he saw mothers gathering their children together preparing to go work in the village garden or collect firewood.
Will it be just another day for them as well? He left his hut and walked wearily into the village’s ceremonial area.
Since that morning many flood times ago when he first looked into Twanke’s Stone of Memory one word had followed him through his days and into his dreams. When?