The Shaman

The shaman sighed, setting down her staff, adjusting the knife she wore on a belt around her waist and sitting on the dirt floor of the fire-warmed thatch hut, ready to tell her story to the little children seated around her. It was her favorite story about the past.

“Once beyond our time, there lived gods. More than eight billion of them.” A murmuring arose through the gaggle, wondering how that could possibly be. “It was a world that had grown poisoned, detached, depraved. For in that time, animals just like us built massive metal and glass and stone masses that they called cities.” Her voice was melodic, smooth as a prowling leopard in the night. “Those grand places are gone now, but their ruins remain. Ngele, Ranci, Eijin, Rusale, Anber. Their palatial cities were centers of commerce and trade, constructed of the finest materials and each of them housing more of us than there are in the entire world today. They lived in massive towers that scraped the sky and cooked their food over electric fires. And they didn’t have to hunt, for they had massive farms to raise them meat for the slaughter.” The children again murmured, attempting to fathom the sheer scale of the world the shaman described and its many amenities.

“But...if their world was so wonderful, why does it not exist?” a little girl dared to ask.

“You see, what I just described may sound like a great vision of the Far World.” The shaman adjusted herself. “However, this façade of progress hid a deep and troubling reality. Behind their great trades were fields of factories. Imagine a thousand factories producing the smoke of a thousand bushfires each, and all of that smoke contained poisonous airs that sickened the animals and ate at Mother Nature Herself. As their cities grew and grew, they cleared forests, disregarded mountains, reversed rivers, all in the name of what they called advancement. They worshipped a single supreme god”—here there was yet more whispering among the children, for none could figure out how someone could only believe in one god—“that led them to continue on their dark and smoke-choked path. But Mother Nature, She who always lives even if Her daughters do not pay Her attention, glared at them with contempt. She knew that Her daughters had fallen astray, and so she commanded all Her powers and Her sisters to show them the error of their ways.”

“...How?”

“In the final days of these godkind, They sent four great signs among them. The first was when the land shook in the cities of the far west, and overnight Ngele and Ranci became massive heaps of rubble. The survivors collapsed into chaos and lost all that had led them into what they thought was civilization.” The jaws of the children dropped as they tried to envision the apocalyptic scene being laid out before them. “Then came the floods. The seas rose in protest against the gods, and soon, they found the paths of their cities had become raging rivers so high that their tall towers could not protect them. The marvelous city once known as Hatta was a cemetery in the sea, the ultramodern Angha a series of glass islands.” The children were still silent. “Then raging flames began to devour their forests and jungles, from land to land,” she continued, a tension spreading across the faces of her young audience. “Yet there was something unusual about these flames.”

“And what would that be, Shaman?” The young boy stood up, bowed his head out of respect and adjusted his skirt as he returned to sitting down.

“The animals were not harmed!” The children all smiled in relief. “It was at this moment when some of the gods realized the error of their ways, seeing the miracle of the unscathed bears and deer in their forests. Yet the great fires were not the final demonstration of the power of Mother Nature’s sisters.”

“W...what possibly more could She do?” an awed young girl loudly wondered from to the shaman’s right side.

“Without warning, a large wave of dust arose in the land they once called the Middle East, and from there it grew to engulf the whole world. For four whole days the sun refused to shine, the khaki sky standing in its path. Yet, like with the fire, the animals were not impaired by the clouds of lion-colored dust.” The shaman shifted slightly, brushing her long hair back.

“With these four signs, the world had been thinned, cleared and shaken back. Soon, the gods found that they could not keep on living. Of the eight billion gods that once roamed this planet, only eighty thousand remained. And all of them feared Mother Nature and Her mighty power.”
“...So, how did we get to have all this if the world was in ruins?”

“Mother Nature then began the daunting work of setting Her daughters back in order, and to accomplish that, she sent four prophets to create a unified clan, living among and amidst Her creation. Have you not heard the story of the Coming of the Fox?” The children, who were too young to have heard most of the folklore of their world, shook their heads.

“Alright. So, as Mother Nature chose...”

***

After her storytime session and a prayer offering, the shaman took her staff and retired from the school hut back to her own modest residence, a similar structure that sat on a ridge of fig trees overlooking the wide plains. Walking up the hill, she noticed a leopard, laying low and observing a small group of impala that couldn’t see her over an outcropping of rocks. Unwilling to disturb anything that Mother Nature created, the shaman simply stood back and watched. The leopard scanned the scene for a minute before deciding to make a stab at her prey. The impala bounded gracefully from the predator’s grasp, but in the end, it was the leopard who won out, applying the crucial throat hold and beginning to tear into her fresh catch. The shaman, who had been entranced watching this process for several minutes, now turned back toward the path that led to her house and entered the small hut. On her small, low writing platform, there was a small note. Nobody else could have written that except a fellow shaman from a neighboring town. The note was written on barksheet in a steady hand, and she took it and read it:

“Shaman Dabiku,
There’s been a bit of a crocodile in Kamahe lately. He thinks that the order of Mother Nature is wrong, that the old gods were right. I don’t think he’s from either of our towns, but he might be headed your way. If he does anything, you can probably cut him.

—Kinuka”

Dabiku took the note and put it back on the platform. This crocodile seems unusual, she thought. But going between Kamahe and Kisima isn’t that hard, and I don’t think it’s of that much concern. She lowered herself to the meditation mat in the center of her hut and began to enter a trance.

***

“Your so-called goddess has lied to you! Letting animals control you is not the way to live! We are called to dominate creation!” A middle-aged man, with a slightly crooked gait and a rather torn outfit, unevenly walked his way through the small streets of Kisima, bellowing his unconventional message. “The gods were right! Aneir, Ranci, Angha, Elbou, all of their great cities must rise again!” His voice boomed, echoing back from the thatch huts and disappearing off into the vast grasslands. Those around him looked askance at this unusual preacher of heresy. How could Mother Nature be wrong? they thought. How could this man praise and promote the rebuilding of the wicked cities? They scowled at the crocodile, the troublemaker he was. “There is only one god, and his name is not Mother Nature!” he continued.

“Stop it!” A young woman emerged from one of the houses. “Enough, crocodile.” She moved forward, attempting to block the man’s path.

“You, idol-worshipper!” He pushed the woman out of the way.

“Stop it now!” A second young woman emerged. The man simply responded by kicking her to the ground. At that offense, the woman began to get up and chase the crocodile out of town on the western road, but he disappeared into the wilderness. She simply walked the other direction, still aching from the crocodile’s powerful kick. “Shaman!” she cried out as she began to run with all her remaining strength.

***

In the midst of her meditation, the shaman heard footsteps pounding along the path up the fig tree ridge. Soon, a woman was standing at the entrance to her hut, head bowed out of respect.

“Shaman!” she called out.

Dabiku broke her meditative ritual to attend to her new visitor. “...Yes?” She turned her head.

“A crocodile wandered through town and was raving about how Mother Nature is wrong. I tried to block his path and he kicked me before running off to the west!” Dabiku analyzed her condition. She winced in pain but was not bleeding, though the print of a dusty foot was faintly visible on her dark brown skirt. This must be what Kinuka was talking about... she thought.

“So he ran off to the west? Toward Kamahe?” The victim nodded.

“Then I will have to inform Kinuka...” She lowered her head and then realized that the woman was still there. “You may go.” The visitor bowed one final time and left.

***

About half an hour later, Dabiku arrived in Kamahe, staff in hand. Kamahe looked much like Kisima and shared its architectural characteristics, but Kamahe stood on slightly higher land and was also slightly larger.

In Kisima, the shaman’s house was separated from the rest of town by the ridge of fig trees, but Kamahe’s shaman lived on top of a small hill from which the remainder of the settlement radiated. The long, yellow grass wavered in the breeze as Dabiku climbed up the hill and to Kinuka’s house. The resident was writing a small note on barkscrap when she turned around.

“Oh, Dabiku! What brings you over here?” Kinuka made room for Dabiku on the mat, and both sat on the floor facing each other.

“The crocodile showed up in Kisima, the one you wrote that note about.”

“...Oh?”

“He was yelling this message against Mother Nature and kicked a woman in the lower chest. You could see his dusty footprint on her skirt,” she added.

“Hmm. That crocodile...he has rejected his True Mother!?”

“Someone else told me he thinks the old gods and their so-called progress were better.” Kinuka dropped her jaw slightly.

“What evil things to say against Mother Nature!” she growled angrily. “If we see him around town, we’ll capture him and send him over to you to handle.”

“...Or perhaps we can both send him to the Marsh?” At that remark, Kinuka smiled.

“That seems more fitting for someone like that. There She will show him Her true power.”

***

Two days later, the shaman was giving another storytelling session to the same group of children.

“...You might remember from last time that to the Four Prophets, Mother Nature appeared as a red fox. She commanded these four to form a new world, one that respected Her above all things, and one that would not repeat the mistakes of the gods—” She was suddenly interrupted when a woman appeared at the door, her head bowed.

“Shaman?” Dabiku turned around and gripped her staff.

“It’s us from Kamahe. We have the crocodile and are ready to take him to the Marsh.” Behind her was the Crocodile, restrained by rope and being carried, and Kinuka. “We must go now.”

“Alright...” She turned her head back to the children. “I want you to see something that Mother Nature has commanded us to do and handed down through us since She created Her world. Follow me.” The gaggle of a dozen youth followed her, as well as Shaman Kinuka and the crocodile, out of town. They passed the trees that marked the limits of town and walked a dusty road. They stopped two minutes for a grazing gazelle, and then they continued again. They entered a deep, small grove of trees fed by a watering hole. Instead of yellow, the dominant color here was a refreshing shade of green in the canopy and on the grassy ground. Dabiku stopped and turned around. “Do you know what this place is?” They shook their heads no. “This is the Marsh. It is a sacred place, for it is where Mother Nature exacts Her judgment on those who disregard Her and Her commands. It is not just ours, for those in Kamahe and Jamila and Akeyo and all the other villages here come to this place.” She tapped her staff on the ground. “Now, let us start the ritual.”

It was Kinuka’s turn. “Mother Nature, we call upon You at this, the moment of full and true justice. For one of Your kind has lost his way, a cub separated from his Mother. For this cub has gone astray to deny his Mother, to look to the wicked ways of those of old.” Her voice had taken a higher, clearer tone, as if Mother Nature Herself was speaking through her. “Asani, you have been found to have broken Her highest commands and are therefore sent to death.” Kinuka motioned for the bound crocodile to be laid on the ground. He struggled to free himself from his restraint, writhing and jerking, a leopard’s prey in the final moments of his life.

“Mother Nature, let the circle of Your world come back upon this wicked man.” Dabiku pulled the knife out of its sheath, revealing a weapon in an ornate design with inscribed swirls and symbols. Its sharp point caught the midday light. She then took the knife and ran it deeply, across the chest and neck of the crocodile. Blood began to pour forth as he slowly drained away from life.

“Now, children, watch and wait.” The children and the shamans stood back. Eventually, three lionesses approached from different directions and began to feast on the dead prey. Vultures circled overhead, attracted by the smell of rotting carrion as they began to descend into the Marsh. Dabiku and Kinuka watched, fascinated as the lionesses ate through the man’s flesh.

“For Mother Nature is just,” Kinuka whispered to her fellow shaman. “May the hyenas feast on him too.”