Two scenes from "Through The Wilderness"

Two scenes, starring Joe Crow, the shaman-to-be who fell into bad medicine (alcohol) and was freed by one of the MCs parents, who are telepaths. He realized what they'd done to him, and promised to aid them. They are, in the first scene, under attack by telepaths trying to take over the town. The next scene is a about three hours later.]


Walking. The old man was walking through it, clothed but naked, letting the wind blow through him in this world, and the other. He was glad it was dawn, George Smith, because otherwise he may have been seen and accused of flashing pretty girls, for he was wearing nothing under his coat, and nothing on his feet. There was only the snow under the feet, one step, another step, pattern, beating, drums. He understood voodoo drums now, and omm, and the use of drums for meditation. Repetition was the key, the thing to keep you you.

He walked, digging his feet in to the solid reality of snow seeping into boots, into the muddy trail along behind him, the play of wind in the trees and his air. Boundaries, that was the key. At some level they broke down, he knew. He’s been in the dream before, where the subject/ object duality broke and all was subject. I am here, everything else is there. He had to remind himself of that several times as his feet tingled not entirely unpleasantly.

No one understands how useful lies are, how necessary, until they’re faced with a truth that is more than personal truth. Walls were important. They kept things inside. That was the real reason for walls, not what they keep out but what they don’t let in.

He’d been doing this forever, and for twenty years. Time was as much an illusion as everything else he thought. Perhaps it was all illusion, but then the illusions are real. He could feel his thoughts, and other thoughts. It was amazing, sometimes, how many things a person thinks of, at so many levels. And so he walked, trying not to think of certain things, to let the pattern, the sameness, wash through him.

He was building walls, because the dams were falling and it was all the magic he could offer in return for the freedom he’d been given from his curse.

But right now it felt like dominos. And his feet reminded him that he was also sacrificing his toes if he kept this up for much longer.

*****

The old man lay in the bed, whispering prayers to the Great Spirit as tubes entered and left his body like strange alien worms. The self-important men told him he could lose his toes, but it didn’t bother him as much as his failure. There had been many times he’d failed himself, but failing others was always harder to bear.

He drew on his strength, what little he had left, and prayed. It was not a last resort, his plea: all magic is prayer, invocation, conjuring. But if nothing answered, he was not sure what he would do. The pigeon came into his morphine dream later as he slept. The fact that it was his totem didn’t surprise him, nor that he was a statue it crapped on.

“You are needed,” it told him.

“Fuck off,” he said pleasantly. He’d have preferred it be a crow, to go with his name, but the universe never worked that way.

“You are needed,” it repeated sternly.

He’d disappointed it, but that was nothing new. The old man chronicled his life as a history of disappointments.

“No one needs anyone,” he said cheerfully. “We are all free. Wondrously, gloriously free to do whatever we want.” He wasn’t sure if it was the morphine that spoke or if it was him.

“People will be hurt,” the pigeon said softly.

“No. This - all of it - is an illusion. Maya. All of that. If they are hurt, it’s their fault and their choice. Not mine. I can’t live anyone else’s life but my one. No one can.” The fierceness in his voice surprised him.

The pigeon laughed, sadly. “Dying in a hospital bed is a sad use of enlightenment.”

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Of course,” his totem said. “But that is all you are. Not good, not better than anyone else. Just right. And, maybe, wrong as well. Everything matters, you see. Everything. We are drawn to each other by our natures and our choices, but what we do once we are drawn together is entirely up to us.”

“I tried. I failed.”

“You tried alone,” the voice said, deeper now. “Alone, there is only failure in the end. With others, you may succeed.”

“And do what?” he spat. “Miracles? I know how that roads ends. Mobs. Death. I have no wish to die for anyone, nor for their ideals. Besides, what would I be dying for? None of this is real!”

“No, no it’s not. But the beauty is real,” the pigeon said, and vanished as a nurse put more morphine into his system and he drifted into sleep without dreams, and a dream of spiders and nets and winter tales, with dim memories of Shakespeare burned into his minds by the public - white - school system.

‘I have drunk, and seen the spider’. It didn’t seem funny when he woke up.