The Devil's breath

13

Death was a vacuum. For a nanosecond it was suffocatingly quiet, as still and silent as a crypt buried deep beneath the oldest, biggest church imaginable, a place so noiseless that, if a million people screamed at once, they would not be heard. Air did not move. Thought did not exist. Sensation was diminished to a moment so fleeting, it was impossible to experience it.

And then a surge of thunder, like a confused and violent wave breaking on a shallow reef, hurled him into a void.

As his heart stopped, Max’s mind reverberated through consciousness, traveling beyond the speed of light and sound, as if seeking a portal in space where it should merge, make contact with whatever it was in the great unknown.

Starbursts of light, like the very best fireworks display in the sky, suddenly inverted and became pockmarked black speckles. Then that too suddenly vanished and became … nothing.

Max’s brain told him he was drowning, that he had fallen, for it was now a sensation of tumbling through this invisible force. No time to think, no moments to recollect what he had read once: that when you die, there are welcoming spirits singing heavenly music reaching out to guide you onwards and upwards. This was a white-water ride in a black sea of fear.

His instinct for survival fought against this overwhelming sensation but, like drowning, the moment came when he could struggle no longer, and finally he surrendered. It was a moment of being instantly fearless, incredibly calm. A beautiful warmth enveloped him as he floated. There was no pain, nor was there fear; instead, he had the simple desire to bathe in the comfort and safety of whatever it was that soothed him. In that moment of surrender, his mother’s face touched his own, her hand stroked his cheek, her lips kissed his eyes; he smelled her hair and a breeze of a whisper told him he was loved. That his pain was over. That he should sleep. That she was always with him. Always had been.

An echo of a memory, of what was his own voice, softly called to her. Mum, I missed you so much…. I love you, Mum…. I knew you weren’t dead … I knew…. Can we go home now …?

There was no answer. The gentle night carried everything away and left him as still and unmoving as a deep underground pool of water.

Time does not exist in death. Max stayed in darkness until something flickered. Wisps of fire, then brighter light, a pyramid of flames. Shadows broke the glowing heat. Muted sounds, a chant, ebbed and flowed.

The shaman plunged his fingers into a pouch of powdered herbs. He forced them into Max’s mouth, the sticky mess adhering to the boy’s gums, sitting under his tongue and, through his salivary glands, entering his system. Everyone moved away as the shaman placed his hands on Max’s stomach and heart. When Max’s heart stopped, the shaman pulled a huge eland skin across them both, ushering them into darkness.

Within two minutes, Max’s heart thudded, as labored as an old engine trying to start. BaKoko, shaman, shapeshifter, forced a liquid concoction down Max’s throat; Max choked, then vomited, and finally slept, embraced like a child by the wizened old man.

More than twelve hours later, Max’s eyes opened. The canopy of stars greeted him, and sticklike shadows chanted and shuffled around a big fire. Two men held his shoulders, another two his arms and legs,!Koga was one of them, as the shaman curled his fist and ground it into Max’s lower stomach. He worked his fist up below his sternum, and Max felt a lump that became a ball of energy. It rose through his belly and into his lungs and heart, and blood poured from his nose. The men dragged him to his feet, pulled him towards the flames and carried him around the fire as the chanting increased and the blood kept flowing. He was part of a trance dance which lay at the heart of Bushman culture-the Dance of Blood.

Another journey began.

His shadow-form raced through the night, across rock and sand; his eyes saw everything. The moon was high, its pale imitation of day etched the land. Animal-like, he sped across a plateau, its edge reaching into space. Max paid no attention and leaped from the precipice. Whatever form he had taken on the ground had changed, and now he could fly. He soared, glided across canyon and ravine, dry river beds, trees and hills. The dream was reality. A supernatural energy possessed him, an inhuman instinct coursed through him. Arms were wings, his feet curved talons. He felt the night wind and let some unknown guide possess him.

A mottled canopy nestled across the ground, filtering shapes of trees, disguising their hidden secret. It was the dove. The dove beneath the trees that Max had seen in the cave.

He cried out.

A screech, like an eagle’s cry, echoed through the emptiness.

Max was dancing around the fire alone, his head back and mouth open, though that primal shriek was silent. The others watched him. His eyes focused on their hazy images. Suddenly exhausted, he sank to his knees. Hands lifted him, laying him on a grass mat, then covered him with cloth and skins for warmth. The shivering fever had started. It would be hours before he regained consciousness.

!Koga sat with him, bathed his head and face with precious water, and wondered where his friend’s spirit had traveled.

Through a shadowland of dreams, Max vaulted time, soaring through extraordinary landscapes, and then lay dormant as waves of color lapped across his body. Throughout it all, in various guises, was the jackal-Anubis of the Egyptians-weighing his heart on the scales of heavenly justice to see where his spirit should be sent. Then, as a running dog, it paralleled Max’s every move, and changed again into a watchful creature, sitting by a roaring fire in the night, dancing with the flickering images. Never an enemy, always a guide, the dog-creature watched, unperturbed by Max’s unconscious confusion. But deep within the cave of his own mind, Max knew instinctively that the jackal would guide him.

For two days!Koga sat with the fever-ridden Max. The Bushman boy had selected a branch from a wild currant tree from which they made their bows, and had patiently shaped the curve he wanted. As he fastened the gut string and tested its pull, Max groaned and eased himself onto one elbow. His mouth was clammy; the dried blood had been washed from his face, but its metallic taste coated his tongue.

Max eased the stiffness from his muscles. His arms were covered in dried mud; his torso and hair were also caked. He stood up uncertainly.

“Your skin. It was burning,”!Koga said. “I put mud on you. It is good; it will protect you.”

Max took the water-filled ostrich egg!Koga offered him. A small mouthful at first, with which he rinsed his teeth and throat and then spat out. It felt as though he had cleared a ton of muck, and then he drank greedily. The encrusted mud had dried into what felt like a second skin; his shorts were tattered, his nails broken; his muscles still ached from the spasms of the fever and the contortions from the Dance of Blood. But he felt strong. Stronger than he ever remembered. The Bushmen watched him and he gazed back, seeking out every face, looking into their eyes. He was saying a silent thank-you to them all, and they seemed to understand, nodding at first and then breaking into smiles and laughter. The shaman, BaKoko, gestured him towards the tree’s shade.

“BaKoko stopped the poison,”!Koga told him as they walked across the compound. “He gave you medicine, only he can do this. It was he who brought the blood from inside you.”

“I think he may have given me some kind of hallucinogenic weed; they can lock you up at home for taking that stuff,” said Max.

!Koga showed no sign of understanding, so Max smiled and put his arm around his friend. No need for that to be explained.

As they sat with the other men, who kept a respectful distance from the shaman, they ate food the women had prepared. Strong-tasting eland meat, some root bulbs cooked deep in fire embers, and a mixture of some kind of cornmeal that Max did not recognize. It made no difference, because he was famished, and the food disappeared quickly. All the time he ate, the BaKoko’s words simmered like steam from a boiling pot, a steady low murmur of storytelling that!Koga could only translate in fits and starts. But the essence of the old man’s words was clear. The Bushmen still believed Max’s arrival was foretold, that his journey demanded courage and that he was brought to them so that the snake might strike, that he would fall, that the scorpion would sting and that the great darkness would come upon him. It was meant to be. He must understand that this world they lived in was a dream, that few could be shapeshifters, that as he understood more of what now lay within him, he could use the creature he desired to guide him through danger. If Max allowed the thoughts to take hold, he could experience the essence of any animal. This was a rare privilege and carried with it a responsibility to be used wisely-if it was not, the force that had now been set free within him would devour him.

All of this the old man explained until the sun skimmed the top branches of the trees and the shadows deepened. Finally the old man nodded to!Koga. The boy presented Max with the hunting bow he had made while Max lay unconscious, a sheath full of arrows and a small pot of deadly poison for the arrowheads.

They had made him a hunter. Honored by their gesture and humbled by their care for him, Max solemnly accepted the gift. Across the flat wilderness the sun retreated. The shadow raced like a tide, smothering everything before it. Max caught a shimmer of movement through the trees, at the edge of darkness, and thought he saw a jackal’s eyes watching him.

Max and!Koga ran: steady, loping strides through the night. Their lungs burned for the first hour and leg muscles tightened, but then they pushed through any debilitating thoughts of pain or discomfort and settled into a comfortable pace. Once their breathing eased, their efforts were almost silent as their feet padded rhythmically into the sand. The black-edged mountains, so far away they looked like a troubled wave rising from the sea bed, snared a dark blanket of storm clouds where frayed whips of lightning disturbed the night.

Max was uncertain where he was going. Instinct-and something else, something he couldn’t put his finger on-guided him. It was as if his mind had projected a picture of the journey. It wasn’t exactly clear, because it had no shape or form, but maybe it was a kind of mental radar, he explained to himself. Whatever it was, he trusted it. Throughout the night they kept up a steady pace, but it was Max who led the way now and!Koga who struggled to keep up. Dawn gave them renewed energy, the sunshine easing fatigue. Max gazed at the mountains; the plateau he saw was the same he had seen in his dream-or vision, he wasn’t sure just what to call it yet-and it played back to him like a recorded film. He had flown from the cliff face, had swooped beyond the ravines and riverbeds to the trees. For a moment he hesitated, the memory catching him unawares, the urge to fly again almost irresistible. Max’s relentless pace determined that the boys seldom spoke-both needed their energy and single-mindedness to go to the place of the dream. They traveled north and east for two days, leaving the mountains behind them, moving towards the place where Max’s father had witnessed the death of several Bushmen. The last place he was seen alive.

At night they ate the dried meat!Koga’s people had given them; Max refused to let!Koga hunt and light a fire. They were nearing danger and Max did not want to take any unnecessary chances. As he slept on the hard ground, no longer worried by the discomfort, his sleep was confused, his mind unable to separate scattered dreams from images of shapeshifting which appeared murky, as if seen through smoked glass. His body twisted and turned as his mind tried to find a place of stillness.

By the third day he knew he needed less sleep than usual. There was no denying the tiredness, but his rest took the form of a deep sleep for a couple of hours, and the remaining hours became a light-headed meditation. Conscious of being unconscious was how he described it to himself. But there was one image which came to him of which he could make no sense and which frightened him. It was the maw of a giant creature, its worn-down teeth covered in matted slime; it was deaf and blind and breathed a vomitous steam. In one of his visions Max stood on the edge of the creature’s jaws, saw the monster’s bile gush from its stomach to its throat and heard its wheezing gasp for breath as the mist rose from its depths. He knew without doubt that it was the gaping jaws of hell-a bottomless pit that sucked bodies down to be devoured. And the picture he could not erase from his mind was of falling into the churning cauldron.

When the Bushmen died at the place!Koga’s father called “where the earth bleeds,” the hunting party had dug their loved ones’ graves, smeared the dead with animal fat, covered them with red powder, then laid them in a curled sleeping position, like unborn children. The shallow graves faced the direction of the rising sun and their hunting bows and spears were placed beside them.

The two boys stood in the clearing; wind swirled dust cones, momentarily obscuring the burial site; then, as the wind changed direction, the haze settled and the desecrated graves could be seen. The bodies were gone and only their scattered weapons remained. Some were broken, others seemingly tossed aside. This was not the work of wild animals digging up the corpses.

!Koga wandered to the clearing’s fringe. Who, in such a desolate place, would dig up and take away the bodies of his people? Max looked in each grave; there were no clues as to who was responsible, so he gathered the weapons, put them in a neat pile and waited for!Koga. While Max squatted on his haunches in the shade of a withered tree,!Koga went further away from the burial site, his eyes searching the ground. Finally he went down on one knee, touched his hand to the dirt and walked back to Max.

“There were two vehicles.”!Koga nodded to one side of the clearing. “Those who came first went from here towards the rain mountains.”

Max followed him to the other side of the clearing. He could not see any signs as to who might have been in the clearing before them. There were no animal tracks, no scratches from hoofs or claws, but!Koga had spotted the faintest of indentations.

“The others,” he said, “they went towards the salt pan.” That meant searing unwelcome heat, but a vehicle would leave tracks.

Max walked across the same ground. It took some time, but then he too saw the marks. Flat stones had been moved slightly, they no longer nestled comfortably in the hardened earth. He felt fairly pleased with himself for having at least spotted that much. He walked a few hundred meters away from the clearing, where damp lines etched the soil. These whiskers of moisture seeped up from below ground, lacing the area, and, because of the red dust, they took on the appearance of blood trails.

Max searched his memory. There was something his father had said in his field notes when he read them in Angelo Farentino’s office. Evidence of borehole machinery, his father had written, which was not supposed to be in whatever area his father had been when he wrote about them. There was no evidence of excavations or tunnel digging here. But the Bushmen had taken Max’s father’s notes from him, and then Tom Gordon left. Where? Which direction? The natural conclusion was that he knew of a watercourse, an aquifer that seeped deep into this area; then it seemed likely he would have headed that way. But!Koga had said that there were two directions the vehicles had taken.

Confusion tangled his thoughts. He was finally getting closer to his father, so taking the wrong direction would be unbearable. It suddenly seemed faintly ridiculous to him. A western boy, without a compass, using a wristwatch for a bearing, caked in dried mud, with a primitive bow across his shoulder, standing in the middle of nowhere, without sign or sound of another living creature except a Bushman boy who squatted in the shade, waiting for him to make a decision. His father was missing, bodies had been dug up, he was lost, had survived attack, lived through deadly poison, seen images he could not describe, yet forty thousand feet above his head an airliner made its ragged white incision across the sky. Four hundred people were sitting up there while he stood in this dust bowl with a useless cell phone in the pocket of his tattered shorts. He waved at the disappearing silver bullet. “Hello! Have a nice holiday! Don’t forget to send a card!”

He laughed at his own foolishness but quickly sobered when he saw!Koga looking at him with uncertainty.

“I’m sorry. It’s just too crazy for words. You understand?”

The boy shook his head.

“No, of course you don’t,” Max said. He felt slightly ashamed of his outburst and didn’t know whether he should make some effort at reverence for the desecrated graves, but he couldn’t think what form that might take.

Clearing his thoughts, Max suddenly knew what to do. He turned and headed for the dark mountains scarring the horizon.

“We go this way?”!Koga asked.

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” Max answered. Something was pulling him, he did not know what, but it was that same deep instinct that had brought him this far. And there was something else that comforted him.!Koga was more than a guide and companion. He and Max had straddled cultural barriers, and this friendship was forged out of dangers faced and hardships endured together. Other than finding his father, there was nothing more Max wanted to do when this was all over than to help the Bushmen. He would make sure the world heard about their plight.

!Koga had told him how they were prohibited from the land they had always known and hunted; vast tracts of national parks protected animals that the Bushmen needed for food and clothing, and cattle farmers were taking most of the land that remained.!Koga’s people were being squeezed into ever smaller pockets. It just wasn’t right. Their way of life was almost extinct. He caught the thought and mentally chastised himself-he was making himself sound too important. There was no prophecy in those cave paintings, nothing that suggested he was going to help the Bushmen. That was a fantasy created by the Bushmen from his father’s drawings.

He was simply determined to succeed but, perhaps because of those cave drawings, the Bushmen had nursed him and given him some kind of power. The same memory now flashed before his eyes. The eagle in his mind had soared and found the hidden dove. He knew he was going the right way.