That is exactly what happened to me. If you're going to ask me what exactly a Siberian Shaman was doing in a heartless giant metropolitan city, well, I don't know. Or at least I can't be quite sure. All I knew was that there he was, in a dark and dingy alley, being robbed at knifepoint by this guy in a really tattered old business suit. I just happened to be there, and shouted "hey!". The mugger just looked at me, and then ran away.
The grateful Siberian Shaman was built like a stout Eskimo, with a protruding middle aged belly. His attire was that of a flashy a country singer from Nashville. And like quite a lot of people in this cold and heartless city, he didn't know much English. Grinning broadly he showed me a postcard of the Statue of Liberty, addressed to all the way to "The Shaman, Siberia, Russia". He was a tourist, which explained everything.
Despite his lack of English, he managed to convey his message by vigorously pointing at the sender's address on the back of the postcard. He wanted my help. I had seen a documentary about shamans once. Their spirits could supposedly change forms, into eagles, bears or tigers. Anything. I had a number of valid excuses to smile and kindly tell him I was in a hurry. I didn't use any of them.
There was no specific address on the card. Just Greenwich Village. "The Village," I said to him, pointing at the address. "Do you have a metro map with you?" The shaman looked at me blankly. "Map?" I repeated. "For the subway?" He shook his head. I refrained from muttering "damn tourist" and ended up taking the man to a subway and getting him a map. When I had repeated the instructions on taking a train at least about three times, he looked at me and said "Starbucks".
"Huh?" I asked.
"Coffee. Starbucks. I will treat you to coffee." There was one conveniently located just outside the subway. "Yes?"
"I see." Once again I thought of the many excuses to worm myself out of the invitation.
I soon had a cup of regular designer coffee in my hand.
"What do you want out of life?" he asked, sipping an exotic Javanese blend.
I blinked. "Pardon me?"
"What you wish to do most?"
"Oh..." I nibbled on a blueberry muffin. "I dunno... Silly stuff. Like I'd like to float out of my body and see stuff. Like everything shown on Discovery and National Geographic... Dharamsala, Sulawesi, Patagonia... things like that." My job as a receptionist had so far enabled me to go all the way to Kentucky. I didn't brag about it though. "And of course I'd like to meet the man of my dreams."
The Shaman laughed. "You know what he looks like?"
"No," I laughed. "But lessee... I think he's got curly hair, and he's probably Jewish."
"You not Jewish!"
"No, I'm a Vietnamese Buddhist, but that's beside the point. There's just something that makes me think he's going to be Jewish, with curly hair. I just adore curly hair. And he has to have seen the world- just like I want to see the world."
"Ah! You ask for too much!" he scolded me.
"So what's the harm?"I said, putting four satchets of sugar in my coffee. "Wishing is fun." I stirred my coffee, tasted it and then added another two satchets of sugar. I knew all about that old saying "wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first". I just never paid it much heed. "Besides," I added, waving my spoon around like a wand, "you never know what might pop up in the next corner."
Or a dingy alley.
That night, long after I had waved the shaman off in a train, I suddenly got a very strange feeling. I found the need to open my window, ignoring the noise of the city outside. Then I stretched out my palm. And there was my soul/spirit, a small glowing ball of blue.
"Off you go," my body said to my soul, and blew gently at me.
And off I went.
I flew over Dharamsala, visiting the temples with golden Buddhas. I jumped on the shaven heads of young monks dressed in orange and crimson. They couldn't see me, but a few could sense me as if I was a stray little breeze. I also rang the bells, and danced with the wind amongst the prayer flags. I sat on the knee of an old woman begging in the streets. She saw me and smiled. After getting only two rupees- which she gave to her baby grandson, she went to a nearby hospice to die. I kissed her cheek and left her. Then I wandered around the rocky hills and mountains, until I saw a small stone hut on a barren hill. Inside was an old monk, reading the sutras. He smiled when I settled on his study bench.
"Don't be sad," the holy man said to me, giving me a gentle pat. I could understand him. I could understand any language. "This was but one life, there are many others to come and many others that have gone."
He went back to reading the sutras and I listened to him until it was dusk. That was when he picked me up and put me on his right palm. "Go back to your body!" he advised. "You must not leave it alone lest it forgets you or someone else tries to take it." His blew me out the single window of his hut.
I woke up. I was crying by the time I was in the shower. I thought of the prayer flags, of dancing in the wind and reading the sutras under a candle light. She was being born elsewhere, the old woman. That was the real magic.
The work day was filled with comments like: "Justine, you look different today" and "have you started wearing makeup" from both collegues and complete strangers. My usually discreet boss blurted "hi gorgeous," in public and then asked me out on a date in the privacy of his office. It wasn't the first time he had asked. But it was the first time I had rejected him. His shocked expression prompted me to tell him that I had violin classes, though I'd never even touched a violin in my life.
For lunch, I had the usual sushi and green tea, impressing the old security guard with my skills at the chopsticks.
When I walked around after work, I seemed to see everything differently. Trees, stunted or otherwise, were vibrant of life. The people who walked by were in different shades of the same colours, each as complicated and different as the others. I even went into a music store, and touched a violin. I felt smoothness of the polished wood, the tautness of the strings, the curves- everything about it. It was a gorgeous instrument. The price tag, however, scared me.
I went to a violin concert that later evening, but the only ticket I could get was right at the back. I couldn't help but notice a man sitting two rows in front of me. I think it was because he seemed bored out of his skull while his date concentrated on the music. I smiled and then closed my eyes.
Then I was hovering right on the front, looking at the musician who was as beautiful as the music she was playing. I sat on the cello, felt the strings as it vibrated with the bow. I could see myself too, sitting way at the back, looking entranced, still as a statue.
The show ended with a standing ovation and I quickly returned to my body, and got up and clapped with the others. It had been grand being on the stage.
I went to into the Great Barrier Reef in Australia at bedtime. There was so much to see! I played with a crab dressing itself with plants and barnacles for camouflage. It tried to catch me but missed. And then a moray eel swallowed me, and spat me out. I rode on the back of a manta ray as it flew into the deeps and met a wise and ancient turtle. She seemed to have seen my type before and allowed me to sit on her nose as she surfaced in the middle of I don't know where. It was time to go, she seemed to be telling me. And I was late for work.
The always-punctual receptionist was late for work, for the time ever. Everyone was surprised.
The old security guard seemed worried.
"Oh nothing. I just got caught up in something and got late," I told him, honestly enough.
"This city is no place for a sweet little thing like you," he said. "There are many wierd people around."
I thanked him. "But I can take care of myself perfectly well." I didn't watch the Discovery or the National Geographic channels for the next two days. I was at work on time and I concentrated more on my pottery classes.
On the Friday that week, while everyone my age was planning for the clubs and parties, I watched tv. The boss seemed to have found a more mature and sophisticated woman to go out with. Not that I objected. But it did hurt.
Africa, I thought. I had never been to Africa. There was a documentary on the National Geographic about witch doctors. That would be interesting.
This time I left pretty early- the sun hadn't even set yet. I flew over all the African Countries I had heard of- Cote d'voire, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, the Democratic republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Sao Tome e Principe, and Botswana. It was in the steamy jungles of Congo Brazzaville that I came upon a ceremony. There was a sick child in bed. The witch doctor was trying to ward off evil spirits from her body. It was a bad case of malaria and she was suffering a lot. The medicines the doctor at the nearest town had provided didn't work. She was going to die.
I sat on her shoulder to comfort her. She opened her eyes to look at me. She even managed a smile before she died. The girl's parents couldn't see me,
But the witchdoctor could, and I soon found myself in a net. The witch doctor had caught me. He started chanting and cursing and spitting while the villagers cried for the dead one. I tried to protest but he wouldn't listen to me. He was convinced I was the evil spirit that had killed the child and vigorously started shaking me in front of her relatives. He tied me up in the enchanted net and then hung me up on a pole.
I don't know how long I was trapped for, but I was getting worried. I was still up there when it dusked on the jungle, and the moon rose.
The girl was taken away and buried in a Christian ritual, and I was still up on the pole, losing track of the days that passed. I began to fear for my body.
I could sense something had happened. Something terrible.
Then a mouse looked up at me from the base of the pole. She was a nice one- just curious to know why I was stuck up there. I was in the process of telling her when a black cat pounced out, intending to catch the mouse, and knocking over the pole instead. The mouse scurried away safely.
The cat sniffed at me, wondering what the glowing blue ball was. She started scratching at the net, tearing it open. I was free. I kissed the cat, making her swat the air, and then I rushed to the coast, riding the wind. The Atlantic ocean was vast. And I was getting slow. Normally I would be able to get back to my body at an instant. But my body wasn't pulling me back this time around. Now I was sure something terrible had happened. I was so slow that by the time I was back at the city, it was already dusk the next day. Then I couldn't move. I fell down with a thud over the city's park and right at the feet of a man. And he could see me because he was looking down at his feet. And then he proceeded to pick me up.
"Where did you come from?" He looked around and then up at the sky, and then back at me. He didn't know what I was. All he was looking at was a glowing blue ball. Even I couldn't figure out why he could see me. He had neither the spiritual aura nor the purity nor the final realisation the others had had. He poked at me, frowning. And then he shrugged and put me in his front shirt pocket.
He took me out of his pocket at his messy apartment. He was a bachelor, no doubt- judging by the NYU paraphernalia on the walls- along with a degree in journalism, witty a anti-Microsoft posters and a few pictures of famous female celebrities here and there. And of course, there was the ubiquitous dusty music system at the corner. There also seemed to be a lot of camera and photography related magazines and equipment lying around.
He put me beside a dorky looking picture of what seemed to be a younger version of him and his parents- on his bar mitzvah. Fishing through a pile of clothes on his bed, he pulled out a towel put in some music and headed for the shower.
Had I been in my full form I would have blushed when he came out after fifteen minutes, in all his full birthday glory. Not that he was well endowed, or under-endowed. He sang as he dried his hair. He couldn't sing a note. I found that charming. Then he looked at me. "You're kind of cute- in a luminiscent ballish kind of a way," he said, picking me up. He shook me. "What are you? Interesting. Little swirls of light."
His phone rang. I was still in his hand. "Hi mom... yes mom... yes, I remember I have a date tonight... yes mom... yes I know I'm already thirty-four years old- you don't have to rub that in. Yes I know you want me to get married and have kids... now mom stop crying... I will give you grandkids one of these days... I'm just busy... what do you mean get a decent job? I'm a photojournalist! Mom! Okay I'm going to hang up now okay? I'm going to go and pick up whichever lady you set me up with... okay? Good night... love you too." He looked at me again. "Bleah... nag nag nag." He put me down to get dressed and tried cleaning up the apartment at the same time. He put away the pictures of the famous female celebrities, folded away his clothes in a closet, and dusted his music stereo and neatly piles his magazines.
"Not bad," he muttered, running his fingers through a mess of curly hair.
Then he went for his date, leaving me all alone and immobile in his apartment, next to the dorky looking picture.
As the hours passed, I started getting messages from my body. It was resting, and someone else was dreaming in it.
While I was trapped in Africa, another lost soul, one who had travelled too far and too long, had found my body while it called for me. Now the body had been forced to house the stranger, and I was left stranded. And I had no idea what to do.
The man returned just before midnight- and with a woman. I would have groaned and turned away if I could. Especially at having to watch the two of them make out. I wanted to be back home so badly, to my own body, and to sleep.
They would have gone as far as having sex had it not been for the phone. He went to the bathroom with the cordless and then came back out, looking excited.
"Hey babe, something's come up," he said. "I really have to go!"
"What? Now?"
"Yes now." He dialled some numbers on the cordless. "I'll call a taxi for you."
She left, looking more than a little pissed off. "Now I'll never get married," he sighed, packing his camera.
He was about to leave me again when he saw me. "Is it just me or are you sulking? Or am I just going crazy talking to little luminescent marbles?" He put me in his pocket again.
After a few more phone calls and several taxi trips here and there, we boarded an aeroplane. Being stuck in the pocket of a flannel shirt, I couldn't see much, but I did catch a conversation about heading off to the former Yugoslavia. But he did take a peek at me. And to keep me company, he shoved his press card down his pocket. He looked dorky in the picture. But he had a nice name. Isaac.
And while he napped, my body kept relaying the story. She had slept with my boss. Not only that, he was in my apartment, right now, in my bed.
Isaac woke up and looked down his pocket. The aeroplane, filled to capacity, was not a good place to have a conversation with a marble. So we went to the bathroom instead.
"What?" He looked at me, frowning. I saw myself in the mirror. I had some swirls of red in me. I was alarmed. "Oh dear," Isaac said. As if it would help, he put me under the cold water tap. And then under the hot water tap. Neither helped. "So it's not a temperature thing," he observed.
We landed and then boarded a bus. I was a long trip. I was back in his pockets, having to listen for clues and hints as to what was going on. But I couldn't concentrate. All I heard were loud noises people shouting. And I felt Isaac running, the sound of his camera. I heard boots, people crying, and gun shots. I felt many souls leave the realm, giving me their stories as they did. They were men, women and children, killed by reasons they could barely grasp, or not grasp at all. And I could hear Isaac's heart pound. He feared for his life. I feared for my soul.
And all this was sent to my body, while the stranger was sleeping. She was having nightmares while I was living one.
"Oh man! Shit," I heard Isaac utter more than a few times. Someone else had died, this time someone he had known for many years. A fellow journalist. I could feel his despair. I tried my best to comfort him, though I was sure he couldn't feel it. But he looked at me, and then gave his pocket a pat. I heard the camera clicking some more, and then we were racing. And then there was a gunshot. And he fell.
"Get up!" Someone growled. "You're under arrest."
I desperately called my body, still sleeping and late for work. I started losing contact with it when the stranger woke up.
Poor Isaac was thrown into a damp poorly lit room. He wasn't hurt. We were in the room for a very long time. Meanwhile, the news from my body was getting worse. The stranger missed the day at work. The boss had declared his love for me. And the bitch had stolen a rather large sum of money from him. But she was clever, whoever she had been in her past life. A computer whiz, and a witch! Just before she had gone to bed she cast a nasty spell on anyone I and my body and ever disliked. And it worked.
Isaac looked out the small window that was near the ceiling. A full moon was shinning through.
"Look, a crow!" he said to me. I was in his hand. "More bad luck?" I know he didn't blame me for his bad luck. Worse things had happened before... the uncertainty, the loss of lives. He had never known he was coming back alive from any of the other situations.
The crow flew off. Isaac was released. And I was back in his pocket. His equipment was returned to him. I heard the men apologising for the mistaken identity. They had thought he was a spy. And now they wanted him to take pictures of them.
Isaac seemed to have a good command of the foreign language. He asked them to get into this pose and that pose. And then he left, out in the dark save for the moon.
He had no clue where he was. "Is that the same crow?" he muttered. "I'm just getting superstitiously paranoid here."
It dawned soon after. Isaac had me in his hand again, lightly cupped. I think he was beginning to suspect I was something other than a glowing marble. We were in a small village, now ravaged. The houses were pockmarked with bullet holes. It was eerily silent.
And then snipers. Isaac started running. I felt his shock as he was hit. He fell to the ground, and into a ditch.
He was unconscious and I was in the mud. And then I heard a click of a gun.
I would have screamed if I could.
It was a woman dressed completely in black. Her was a fake blond and permed to a stiff fluff. And she was me, my body! She had a gun pointed at Isaac's head.
Isaac slowly regained consciousness, only to almost have a heart attack with the stranger's fierce gaze.
"Where is it?" she demanded. Her eyes were almost glowing red.
"Where's what?" Isaac said, innocently enough.
"Don't be a idiot. I could kill you here and you'd just be yet another dead reporter."
"Scary thought," Isaac muttered. He grimaced at the wound by his side. "But really, what do you mean? What are you looking for?"
"My soul," the stranger said impatiently.
"Soul, you mean the blue thing?" He felt his pockets. I wasn't there. He looked at his hand; I wasn't there either. I was well hidden in the mud. "It must have fallen off somewhere. Are you sure it's yours?"
"What's that fucking crow doing there?" She looked up at the bare branches of a tree nearby. She shot at it. And missed.
"Oh clever, just let everyone know you're here," Isaac muttered under his breath. His hand absently plodded in the mud. He found me. His pain was bad. But he was going to live.
"Hand it over," she demanded. She could have just shot him. But at this close proximity I had some control over my body. She would shoot her/my own feet if she dared to shoot him, and she knew it. But she probably doubted that I would shoot my own feet as well.
"What will you do with it?"
"Destroy it," she said with an grin. My face had never looked scarier. It was caked with makeup too.
"Why?"
"It's giving me mental cramps- it's a matter of self-preservation, you see. Now give it to me!"
Isaac made a move to. And then threw mud in her face and kicked her over instead. He grabbed her pistol.
"Look, I don't know who you are...but I can't let you have it...I." He wasn't able to explain why. I began to feel the first impulses of strength within me.
I moved in his hand. It was a very small move, but a move nevertheless. Perhaps it was because my body was so close to me. Or perhaps it was Isaac.
"Asshole!" She screamed. I moved more. Then I leapt out of Isaac's hand and tried to enter my body. But she caught me instead. "Idiot," she muttered, squeezing me in her fist.
She calmly got up and wiped the mud from her face with her free hand. Isaac couldn't bring himself to shoot her. Something was telling him that would be a grave mistake. "Don't piss me off," she said in a low voice. "And don't point that thing at me. It isn't a camera you twerp." Isaac lowered it.
"I've seen you before" he said, with sudden realisation.
"In your dreams!" the stranger said with a snort.
"Yes. Exactly," Isaac answered. "But you looked different."
"I am different. You saw someone else."
"No, it was you."
"Then for that reason you won't shoot me." She began to walk away, with me in her tightly clenched fist. I didn't know what she was going to do with me. But if she destroyed me so hastily, there was a possibility my body would die too. "I'm going to put you in a jar in your room," she said. "My room," she corrected. "And this body is going to be mine. And don't you underestimate me, you idiot."
I did not underestimate her. But I did notice the crow following us.
"Damn, why is that foul thing following us." My body and I walked through the war-ravaged town, turning a few heads, of soldiers, militia, and ordinary people. None of them fired at us. Perhaps it the sight of a strange platinum blond oriental woman in the heart of war ravaged Europe. And she walked with such confidence too.
But still the crow followed. And I could see Isaac trailing behind, hiding in the ruins.
The stranger was having trouble holding me. I was gaining more power, and my body was rebelling against her. But she kept her grip and started chanting arcane words to some ancient spell.
Despite my urge to wild panic, I controlled myself and the crow quietly followed. We passed the town and were now in the fields. Away from people's eyes.
The crow suddenly screeched. I forced my body to throw itself against the ground, hitting my own head against the well. I rolled on the grass. The crow picked me up in its beak and placed me on my body's mouth. The stranger opened her eyes, and her mouth.
My head hurt in a dizzy fit. I groaned. And then I threw up. The crow, which had been perched on the edge of the well, flew down. He picked a small red marble I had thrown up. And swallowed it.
"Gross," I muttered. The crow just looked at me. It seemed to be grinning. "Well, go away now," I said, feeling my head. "You're giving me the creeps." The crow flew up and into a tree. And as for me, my head was pounding.
As soon as I managed to get up I drew a bucket of water from the well with a rusty bucket, noting wryly a little iron would do me good. I washed my mouth, and my face and I felt a lot better.
"Hey there."
I looked up. I couldn't remember him. But he did seem very familiar. "Hi." He was cute though; He had curly hair, though currently muddy.
"Are you all right?"
"I guess." I had no clue where I was. "You're hurt."
"I'll be fine. It's just another lucky gunshot wound. Didn't do much damage, just a graze... really. I'm Isaac. Isaac Schwarz. And you are?"
"I'm not sure, but I think I'm-"
"Roselyn?" He totally miscalculated.
"No, Justine." I started recalling. My life was a mess back home. I supposed it would be fun trying to sort it out. "Are you Jewish?"
"No, I'm an atheist, kind of. Well, I was born Jewish," he admitted. "Are you from New York?"
I nodded. "You too huh? The Village?"
"Yep, ye olde Greenwich Village." He smiled. "How are you going to get back home?"
"I don't know," I said, and found myself laughing. He just looked at me. "I seriously don't! Maybe I'll just fly home!" I got up from the grass, wondering which way to go. My feet were wobbly.
"On an aeroplane?"
"What did you think?" I rolled my eyes and flapped my arms. He laughed.
"Let's just go home," he then said, taking my hand. His was warm, and made me feel safe. We walked the road away from the town with the crow still following us. "Do you by any chance, believe in destiny and fate and all that shaman shit?" Isaac suddenly asked, looking at the crow.
"No."
"What a coincidence. Me neither."
We looked at each other. And then we were both laughing.
The crow finally flew away, with what sounded like the last laugh.
Minoti Baro is 24 years old and comes from northeast India. She majored in English literature in Delhi and is now studying metalsmithing at Wayne State University in Michigan. This is her fourth story to appear in Aphelion.
E-mail: minoti@generalogic.com
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