Taco Del

 

Fourteenth: Shaman

 

I don’t find Wiwe in any dictionary at the disposal of the Wiz. Even The Fish draws blanks and she has access to multi-lingual databases. Doug seems to be as clueless as I am, which does not inspire confidence.

Whatever or whoever this Wiwe is, it’s not a good thing, that much I think I get. I file this in the back of my brain and move on to more politically charged matters, such as how I break it to Hismajesty that the runes suggest old Bird Beak (AKA Elvis), whom we have befriended (at my personal say-so) may be planning an attack on us, his noble benefactors.

I s’pose there’s no way to do it than just do it. To that end, I compose my words (“Majesty, it has come to my attention that the very Potreros we have taken under our wing are about to be sold out by their treacherous Lord.”) and I puff myself up.

Then I procrastinate. I will sleep on it, I decide. What’s one more day more or less?

By morning I am glad to be a practicing procrastinator, for I dream. I am in the courtyard of the Mission, then I am in the sanctuary, then I am in a small place full of dense smoke or one helacious helado. Then I am in a place that is all three and none of the above, all at once.

I am sitting cross-legged on a sandy floor, and a voice says, Shaman. I don’t say anything, and the voice says again, Shaman, and I realize it’s talking to me.

“I’m not a shaman,” I say, feeling acute shame.

A hand points out of the smoke, which I can now smell, and directs my attention to the gritty floor beyond my knees.

“Cast them,” says the Voice, and I realize my rune can is in my hands.

I spill the rune junk out onto the sand.

Deja view: I’ve been here before. The stuff lays out just the way it did in the Mission courtyard. Exactly — peach pit and nails and all.

Okay. I get it.

The nails form a circle and their points are turned in toward the other junk. The peach pit is in the middle of it all, and I realize this has been so since the first time it turned up.

Suddenly, my eyes go wonky bigtime and the runes become features on a map. Instead of pebbles and chips of glass, I see land and water and Embar and Potrero. Instead of nails, I see a Threat coming from across the Bay and I see a mysterious, black pit at the middle of it all.

Shame makes me blush, or would, if I was real. The peach pit wasn’t just a piece of garbage, it was the center of the rune. When I think how many times it turned up in my can and how many times I chucked it overboard, I want to sink through the dream floor and dribble away into the Bay.

I am no longer so sure about Lord E Lordy. Is he attacking me or flanking me? Is he friend or foe? And what the hell is in that pit?

Wiwe, the Voice says, on cue.

This is important; I want to be very sure I understand. I reach my hand out and point to the pit. “Qué es?” I ask.

Wiwe, says the Voice, again. Carrier away of souls.

Well, I gotta say, that’s good for a soul-deep chill. Freezing, I break into a sweat. I can feel it creeping, icy on my dream-skin. My voice comes out of my dream-throat like it’s squeezed from a concertina. “Whose...whose souls?”

Make the world safe from Wiwe.

Make the world safe?

“Wiwe carries away souls. Is that what you mean? Did he... carry away the souls of the Ohlone Dolores?”

We are here, the Voice informs me.

“Is Wiwe holding you guys captive? Do you need to be rescued?”

Make the world safe from Wiwe.

Are they asking me to rescue them? I take a deep breath.

“What do I do?”

Before the dream me can exhale, the place changes again. The walls and ceiling suck in until it’s close and round and I can see it’s made of mud and wood. Someone sits across from me in the sand and a fire burns between us. I can’t see him; he is just a shadow, a form, less than either.

“When I was a young man,” he says, and his voice is like a sigh, “I dreamed of the Mountain. It told me, ‘You will live to an old age, for nothing can hurt you.’ After this, the Mountain would come to me in times of trouble and tell me I would be alright. I would talk to the power of the Mountain in my dreams and it would answer me.

“One day, as I traveled, I grew very sick — so sick I was afraid I would die and my spirit would go South. I was afraid the Mountain had forgotten me, for I had forgotten it. As I lay beneath a fir tree dying, a shaman came to me. He said my Mountain had sent him. He put a stick into my hands and said, ‘This is a soul stick. Seize this and look to your power and your soul will cease its journey South.’

“I grasped the stick and remembered my Mountain and turned my eyes to it. And it was as the shaman said. I became well. Then the shaman told me something else, ‘You are called,’ he said. ‘Your Mountain calls you to become a shaman, like me.’

“I looked to the Mountain and felt it was so. But I saw that if I were to become a shaman, the Mountain’s power might fail me before my old age and I would die. So I refused. Still, the Mountain kept its promise to keep me safe in times of trouble, and I did not forget it again.

“Later, after my son was born, the Mountain asked again, ’Will you become a shaman, a healer?’ Again, I refused. I knew the work was dangerous. I dreamed and knew I would die if I became a shaman. I refused the power because I wanted to become an old man. This I did, for the Mountain’s promise was true. But my wife went South before me; my son went before me; my people went before me. And that left only me — an old man.

“And what is a man?” he asks me. “A man is nothing. He is less than nothing — less than a beetle, or the dung in which the beetle crawls. A man must be with his family. The family is everything. No man should forget this and think his life is important apart from that. I refused the Mountain, though its claim on my soul was great. I refused to save the souls from Wiwe. And so I lived to be old...and alone.”

In the silence of the dream, I hear the snap of flame, the sough of wind; I smell smoke, fir, dried spices, sweat; I see nothing but the smoke and the fire; I feel the heat of flame on my face; I feel this man sitting across from me, watching me, and I feel as if I’m being given some kind of choice.

I open my mouth to speak, to ask what this means, and he says again, “Save the world from Wiwe.”

The place and the man are gone and I lie in the dark trembling.

Firescape wakes up, rolls over, and touches my face.

“What?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

And I truly don’t. I determine to take some time to consider the possibilities. But just then, all I want is for Firescape to melt the ice off my skin and out of my veins. She does it so well, I'm in no hurry to consider anything for quite a while.

In the morning it becomes clear that time is not something I have. The first thing I notice by dawn’s early light is that Firescape has already gone to work; her AK is gone from its rack by the bed. The second thing I notice is that Doug, who is perched in the big old window by the balcony, is trembling like crazy. He’s leaning toward the glass, too; if he had a nose, it’d be making tracks on the pane.

I get out of bed, pad over there and put my arm around him.

“What is it, Doug?” I ask.

I put my face to his branches and breathe in his perfume, but all I get is a stomach full of anxious flutters. I can’t tell if that’s him or me, but I'm the only one here who's got a stomach.

I look out the window, even press my nose against the glass, trying to see what he sees. All I get is that something’s crawling around out there and I gotta “get” it before it gets me.

This will require a quest.

I determine to refuel before I begin questing, and take Doug and myself off to the Sang Yee Gah for breakfast. We go to Doug’s favorite juk shop, the Dragon Boat. It’s kind of a grand name for a place whose main food item is rice porridge. Still, it’s a great place for thoughtful silences if you can ignore the noise: dishes clatter, people chatter, somewhere cooking oil snaps and pops like a pot of mad.

The smells here are twice as loud as the sounds. They are black and red and gold smells, smoked and spiced and soaked in sesame oil. Sometimes the din sets my poor brain off on a runaway trolley and I end up miles from where I mean to be, someplace I’ve never been and don’t know how I got there.

Today is like that — my mind is all over the place. Thanks to a little tug at my immortal soul and an accompanying whiff of fir, I finally get it under control and the loud noises and smells become a background for eating and thinking.

I eat rice porridge and drink hot green tea and think about impending doom. I determine that I will cast runes in the Dolores courtyard again, and this time I will pay attention and remember that the line between omens and junk is...well, there is no line between omens and junk. You could be looking at either, so, in most cases, it’s safest to err on the side of omens.

I’m getting up from my chair when I realize that Doug has sprouted a small square of rice paper, which is caught in his topmost branches. The paper has a familiar lavender tint and has been neatly folded. Deja view.

I unfold it. In one corner of the paper there is a strange symbol, which I recognize but still don’t know. In the middle of the paper are Chinese characters I do recognize. They form two words: Tin Hau.

This is the Chinese name of the Queen of Heaven. She’s one of the Immortals. She’s also the Goddess of Waters, which is appropriate. According to legend, she was born as a mortal on the island of Mei-Chou in Fukien province. Her padre was a sort of mayor or something like that.

She had these dreams, see, about saving fishing boats near her village. And the weird thing was, every time she had one of these dreams, some boatload of fishermen would come limping back into port talking about how they’d been saved from certain doom by some freak happenstance. By the time Tin Hau was twenty-eight, she was perfect, so she died and became an Immortal. (I gotta admit, I'm very glad Firescape isn’t quite perfect. It’s her temper, ni dong, which I won’t say I encourage, but I sure don’t regret.)

Anyway, Tin Hau got recalled to the Abhá kingdom, and her story was inscribed on some temple walls in Hangchow somewhere around 1228. About fifty years later, Kublai Khan read the wall scrawl, had her declared a goddess and started calling her Queen of Heaven. He was a Buddhist, you know.

Anyway, she got to be known as the Imperial Consort, which made her second in rank only to the Jade Emperor. She started out being a protector of boats and fishermen and ended up being general goddess of the general waters of the earth. We celebrate her on the twenty-third day of the third month.

Since it isn’t anywhere near Tin Hau’s feast day, I gotta believe this note is in reference to her temple over on Waverly.

“What do you think, O Tree?” I ask Doug formally, hoping he can hear me in the chaos sounds from the Dragon Boat’s kitchen. “Do we go to the Tin Hau?”

A waiter speeds by, nearly tripping over me and almost making me miss Doug’s thoughtful nod. Accordingly, I take myself off in the direction of Waverly street. It’s not a bad idea, I tell Doug, to get a little divine intercession while I’m at it.

The Tin Hau is on the fourth floor of the building, which leaves me with a choice to make — lug Doug up the stairs, leave him behind in the lobby, or trust the ancient and enigmatic elevator. Since I got not idea one of what sort of situation awaits me, and Doug is getting to be almost as tall as I am (empotted), I do the latter.

When I cross the upper foyer and step into the sanctuary, I am almost immediately overwhelmed with more of the Sang Yee Gah’s smoky smells. Braziers ooze fragrant incense and, at several altars, little offerings send nice smells toward heaven. The main altar at the head of the room is dedicated to Tin Hau, herself, but the room is a clutter of smaller, less impressive shrines. I stop to take stock and to absorb the serenity in the smoky scent of meat and flower and incense.

I have not even bothered to ask myself why I have been summoned here or by whom, and this brings me to a sudden profound realization about myself and my life. I am, pure and simple, a reactor. I let myself be dragged through life by my nose. And who, you might ask, is doing the dragging? Everyone from the Wiz to Doug to a fat ginger cat, that's who. Everyone, including Bags and Kaymart and Firescape and Hoot and Lord E and even the Whisperers...maybe even most especially the Whisperers.

A ugly little thought wriggles into the back of my mind and tells me this makes me a fool, but I honestly can’t work up much indignation. Fact is, I got nothing better to do with my time and, with the possible exception of old Elvis, none of these nose draggers mean any harm. Hell, Firescape can drag me any-damn- where she wants. Besides which, I was the one who settled myself on a career in merlinry, no one else. Bags just gave me a push.

I shake my head and bring myself back to my study of the sanctuary. There are several worshippers in the room, kneeling in various places. Two of them are paying their respects to Tin Hau. None of them so much as twitches as I enter the room hauling the Radio Flyer and Tree. As I approach the main altar, though, one of the monks rises and makes his way back through the room in a route that will take him right past me.

He sees Doug and pauses to smile and bow deferentially.

Nin hao, Wondrous Tree. And greetings to you also, distinguished merlin. You have come to seek the blessings of the Queen?”

I return the bow, not quite as deferentially, so as to be culturally correct. He is a young monk — possibly even younger than I am — and has a face that reminds me of Firescape’s. Except for the eyes, which are really strange in some way I can’t quite wrap my mind around.

“After a fashion,” I answer. “I have received a message to come here. Does anyone here seem to be in a state of waiting?”

The monk’s smile deepens. “Everyone, merlin, is in a state of waiting. But this you already know.”

He bows again and disappears behind a thoroughly carved screen at the rear of the room.

I make my way to the main altar, twitching a little like I always do after a dialogue with a monk. I feel like part of me has been communicating while another part of me has been whistling dixie. In this case, I am doubly bothered by this guy’s eyes.

I kneel to the left of the remaining monk, placing Doug in between and slightly behind. The monk is a wizened little fellow, and I wonder how long he has been kneeling here with his nose wedged between his folded hands. He is making a raspy little sound that’s almost as wizened as he is, and I realize that he’s snoozing.

As I am pondering how to wake him — for after all, he could be the one who sent me the message — Doug takes matters into his own hands — or branches as the case may be. He tickles the old fellow’s cheek.

The monk’s a happy napper and comes to with a big smile on his face. His watermelon seed eyes take in first Doug and then me and he bows low at the waist.

Nin hao, effulgent Tree. And felicitations to you, as well, most enlightened merlin. May the Queen of Heaven bless you.”

Then he goes back to his devotions.

Okay, no help here, I guess. I glance about the sanctuary, seeing altars, hanging braziers and lots of smoke. Behind me, the other monks are frozen lumps of dark and light linen. Only their prayers stir the heavy air.

I sigh and turn my gaze up to Tin Hau. She is beautiful. Very similar of face to my beloved Jade Berengaria Firescape. Her two companions, however, are not terribly beautiful. They are terribly terrible. Wherever she goes, you see, Tin Hau is accompanied by Thousand League Eyes and Favoring Wind Ears. You just gotta imagine what they look like; my words could never do them justice.

It is while I am pondering Thousand League Eyes that I feel this immensely powerful yank at my immortal soul. It is not a pleasant feeling, nothing like Doug’s tugs or Firescape’s but, Damn, I think, I been here before. This is a familiar yank from a very cold place.

My instincts get very weird on me at this point. Part of me wants to scram most diligently; part of me wants to crawl under the altar; part of me wants to rise up and face the Watcher, saying, “Hey you! Get your butt out here!”

I am a man of too many parts at this moment.

I fight the impulse to turn around and get an eyeball on Mr. Thousand League Eyes. Instead, I keep my head down and glance sideways into a polished brass gong. The monks behind me are still praying away, eyes straight ahead, prayer beads whispering through their fingers. Beyond them lies a clutter of shrines and the big old dragon screen where the friendly young monk disappeared. The second my eyes light on the thing, I know that’s where he is — the Watcher.

I sweat. What I need now is the powers of a real shaman. What I got is the Tree and Tin Hau and the Whisperers.

“Is this the Peach Pit?” I ask the Dolores under my breath and am scared spitless when the name Wiwe sputters out of a brazier practically under my nose.

I grasp one of Doug’s boughs and break one tiny needle. The scent gets to me even through the smoke. I look up at Tin Hau.

I need stuff, O Queen, I think at her. Real stuff.

What I need is to be invisible, or at least hard to see.

I fasten my eyeballs on the smoke around Tin Hau’s head and begin the Chouyan incantation. I think of smoke. With a little more effort, I begin to think like smoke. I become smoke. My eyes are wonky as hell, and my brain feels like it’s full of sandalwood and jasmine. I sink very low next to Doug and the old monk, and ooze back to the next shrine, and the next, and the next.

When I stop oozing I’m behind the small shrine of Men Shen, Protector Against Demons, who is guarding the screened doorway, his tiny bow and arrow aimed at the dragon panel. On the opposite side of the doorway is a shrine to Chang Tao Ling, God of the Afterlife.

This is not a comforting juxtaposition.

Now I am two steps from the screen and there are no more shrines to ooze behind. I rise up from behind Men Shen, thinking smoky thoughts. I see a ripple of plum silk through the coiled, carved serpents of the screen.

“Taco! Thay, watcha doin'? We been lookin' all over for you!”

Creepy Lou’s voice freezes me where I stand. So much for being smoke. The plum silk flashes behind the knotted serpents and disappears in the snick of a door latch.

“Damn!” I cry, and leap forward to squeeze behind the screen.

I am face to face with a closed door. I fumble with the latch, while behind me Creepy Lou is jostling up and down, back and forth going, “Thay Taco, what's rumblin'?” and I hear the voice of my own gemlike Jade saying, “What the hell are you doing? I gotta talk to you!”

The door is not locked, and it swings open onto a broad, east-west hallway with a muy low ceiling and about a godzillian doors, all closed.

I experience claustrophobia because of the ceiling and brain freeze because of all the doors, but before I can shake off these conditions and move my ass, I realize that a monk has appeared at my elbow with smokelike stealth. It is the friendly young monk I saw disappear behind this very screen.

Where the hell’d he come from, my inquiring mind wants to know. I immediately suspect magic.

The monk no longer looks particularly friendly. He is still smiling, but it is a strange veil of a smile, which is not helped by those eyes.

“You are disturbing our devotions, merlin,” he tells me. “I must ask that you leave.”

Creepy Lou has gone round the screen and pops up behind the monk, jouncing and jostling, up-down-side-side. He waves at me. Behind him Firescape appears, also waving.

“Who uses these rooms?” I ask the monk.

“We use them,” he says and repeats: “I must ask you to leave, merlin. And take your too energetic friends with you.”

His eyes don’t seem to move, but I can feel their gaze shift.

“Someone in plum silk was eye-balling me from behind this screen,” I say.

His eyebrows rise, and his smile gets bigger. “We monks,” he says, “do not wear silk.”

Duh. “I know. Who does? Who might use these rooms?” I add.

He tips his head. “Our...master dresses himself in silk.” His face gets this funny, pinched look. “I could not reveal his name, even were I to know it.”

“You gotta call him something.”

“We call him Master Chen. But that is not his name. That is his station.” He gestures at the door to the foyer. “You have been asked to leave. My brothers and I wish to continue our devotions.”

“I need to talk to Master Chen.”

“Master Chen has left the temple.”

“I just saw him — ”

“He is no longer here.”

Again he gestures at the exit. Creepy Lou and Firescape are gesturing at the exit too.

I give the Cheshire monk a look I hope is particularly fierce. I try to bore right on into his eyes, and that is when I realize what it is about them that gives me the oooga-boogas. They are not a monk’s eyes. A monk's eyes are sunny little bowls of peace, contentment, and kindness. There is none of that in these eyes; these eyes are full of something wild and dark and dizzy-making as a bottomless pit.

Inside my chest, my heart shrivels to a prune, and it occurs to me to wonder, somewhere in the back of my suddenly frost bitten little brain, if he’s even real. Real people, I mean, ‘cause I got the distinct impression that the lights are on, but there’s nobody home — at least, not the rightful owner.

I’m outta here. I head back to the main altar to retrieve Doug, who has been waiting patiently beside the old monk. I bow hastily to Tin Hau and, as my knee touches the floor, I feel a tug at my shirt.

I glance at the old monk. He doesn’t raise his head, but only turns his face toward me. His eyes grab me and wrap me in a straight jacket. Unlike the young monk’s eyes, these eyes are bright and clear and burrow right into my soul. Without seeming to move, he slips something into my free hand. Then he retreats into his devotions again.

I am about to ask him something, anything, when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. The young monk is approaching from the rear of the room. I slip whatever it is the old monk has given me into a pocket and leave the temple with Creepy Lou and Firescape practically on top of me.

Out on the street, the two of them start talking at once. I don’t get one word of it, just white noise.

“Stop!” I cry, and they do.

I turn to General Firescape.

“Creepy Lou has a report of great urgency,” she says and nudges him with the muzzle of her AK.

He’s nodding like a bobbing doll and tugging at his left ear.

“Yeah. Report. Yow! You’re not gonna believe, Taco. There’re cars and trucks and people!”

“What? Where?“

I glance at Firescape for some sense of what he means, but she’s still looking at Lou, and I don’t like the expression on her most expressive face.

“Theen ‘em comin' down the Slot,” Lou goes on. “Next thing I know they’re all over the Mission.”

My heart takes a dive down a dark hole.

“The Mission,” I repeat stupidly.

“The Dolores,” says Firescape.

“Yeah, the Doloreth.” Lou nods wildly and snatches at air. “Ghost Town. Whithper-ville.”

“Who are they?” I ask. “What’re they doing?”

“Don’t know. Uh-uh. Nada clue. But they’re mean SOBs.”

“They’ve got all kinds of machinery,” Firescape volunteers. “Trucks and hoes and cats and jeeps and some stuff I’ve never seen before. And these big cranes on tank treads. And they got weapons that’d make your eyes bug out. They gotta have way more fire power than these things.” She bounces her AK on her hip. “According to the rumble, the Potreros took these goons on somewhere along 16th and they shot up the place with lightning bolts. Oh, and they got winnebagoes. Dozens, of ‘em. In working condition.”

“Maybe they’re refugees from somewhere. Gypsies.”

“With heavy machinery, serious firepower, and a fleet of winnebagoes?” my wife asks doubtfully. “They don’t act like refugees. They act like an invasion force or at least like guys on a mission. They knew exactly where they were going, as in bee-line. And this is the chiller-diller: smeagols say they came in over the Bay Bridge.”

This is a chiller-diller, ‘cause the Bay Bridge has been less of a bridge and more of a barrier for a muy long time. This is because in the third year of the reign of Levi Menorah, son of King Jerry Steinmetz, there was a quake that did some damage to all and sundry, but mostly to the Bay Bridge which had fallen into general disrepair. The then king of Treasure Island, who liked to call himself Blackbeard for literary reasons, helped things along a little with a hefty charge of dynamite. I’m not sure whether he wanted to keep T-Islanders from coming into the Gam Saan or if he wanted to keep the Gam Saan from coming out, but two collapsed sections of deck did the job pretty well either way.

The significance of all this is that these alien guys had to have fixed the Bridge before they could come across it, which says stuff about their techno-power I don’t much like. It also means there could be a whole mob of truly angry T-Islanders in their backtrail. We have not had much in the way of contact with the Island for more years than I’ve been around, so I got no idea what to expect from that quarter.

Great. Another Big Unknown.

Firescape watches all of this flicker across my face like a message from our sponsor, then says, “Deadend’s got smeagols posted on the Bridge. Just in case something else decides to come across. There’s a squad of Wharfside knighties up there with.”

“These aliens,” I say, not without some quivering, “what are they like?”

Lou shrugs. “Just guys. Folkth. A few women, I think. Hard t’tell from a far away. But they look like people, pretty much. They’re drethed funny, though — like for skulking.”

He stamps his right foot and yanks at his hair. Dust flies.

Firescape nods.

“You’ve seen them, too?” I ask her.

She nods again. “Me and Deadend saw them coming down the Potrero side of the Slot. I got knighties out skulking STAT and told Deadend to mobilize all smeagols. Then I came looking for you.”

“So Deadend hasn’t talked to His M?”

“He scrammed. Like I said, I told him to get out smeagols and he don’t generally procrastinate on a direct order from a superior officer.”

Here I am, chasing some invisible dude in plum silk, while funny-dressing guys with winnebagoes are taking over the Dolores. And me the last to know. I got it backwards again as usual: I’m scopin' the Peach Pit, when I should’ve been keeping an eye out for the Nails.

Damn. And why, I gotta wonder, didn’t the Dolores say anything? Here their stomping grounds are being overrun and they go all clammy on me.

Then my dream washes back over me and I get this horrible feeling that the Dolores did say something. They told me I had to save the world from Wiwe and now it looks like Wiwe has driven his winnebago right down the Bayshore into the heart of the Gam Saan.

Suddenly I realize I’m confused and scared — a truly dynamite combination. I look at Doug. His boughs are droopy and quivering all at once. He must be as scared as I am. Not a good sign.

“Firescape,” I say, “we gotta head back to the Palace to reassure the Majesties and begin a plan of action. I’ll need you to call in at least half a dozen of your best knighties and a couple of Deadend’s slinkiest smeagols. We got some serious scopin' to do.”