The Shamans at the End of Time Read online

  In silence, we return to the place where I woke up and find our heavy backpacks, but no rifles. At least it’s a peaceful dream. I shrug.

  “What should we do now?” I askCatalin. It should be me driving my own dream, but I decide to take things easy and be lazy. Such a wonderful feeling to be in control of your laziness during a war. There will be enough things to worry about when I wake up. If I wake up…

  “We need to figure out where we are,” Catalin says after a while. “And we need help.” He taps some commands on his tactical display. “It’s dead,” he mumbles, and I do the same with the same result. Even inside the dream, our tools have been jammed by the enemy. Silent, he looks around, then up at the sky, still blue, with some ragged tatters of clouds streaming far to the south. “I don’t like that,” he points to the predatory bird. “It reminds me of that plane.” He doesn’t need to say which plane. Neither do I. “This place is strange, like a different world. I feel it.”

  Any dream is strange. It takes me a bit of effort to stop a smile surfacing on my lips. Why upset him? Then I laugh at myself. Even in a dream, I don’t want to contradict his strange beliefs.

  “The energy vortex saved us,” he says, thoughtfully.

  “Of course. Let’s move. That direction.” I point down the meadow.

  “Good idea. To find people we need to climb down. I am sure there is no war here.”

  For the moment…

  We walk in silence, and from time to time, we glance up at the sky, quietly, in search of that bloody predatory bird.Its presence rakes my mind. Our paths seem strangely intertwined. It’s still there, and I try to imagine its aerial perception from that high place. Eagles’ eyes see things in two particular ways. The middle of the eye acts like a magnifying glass, looking for details, which means for prey. The outer side covers a larger area looking, of course, for prey too. I can’t be prey for an eagle, I think, annoyed. I’m too big. Yet, in a corner of my mind, associating it with that plane, I fear that in a dream, an eagle is able to hunt me, and I may end up looking like Dan.

  “I wonder where we are,” Catalin says after a while, his voice now calm.

  In a dream.

  “How far we are from the front line? They may think we’re deserters if we don’t return quickly.”

  “What makes you think that we will return?” Deliberately, my question is ambiguous, letting him decide between ‘we can’t’ and ‘we don’t want to’. Can I trick my own dream? Unable to stop a sudden smile, I turn my head, pretending to be busy with the surroundings.

  “You know,” he says, worried, “even if we return, it will be hard to make them understand that we did not run away.”

  “Your vortex,” I say without turning, a bit more maliciously than I intended.

  “Vlad, do you really think I believe you when you agree with me on this subject? And if you don’t believe me, who will? The Court Martial?”

  I jerk my head back to him, just in time to catch his laughter, and I wonder if the real Catalin is aware that I only pretend to believe his stories. “But do you agree with you?” I ask, curious and ashamed at the same time.

  “Yes, Vlad. There are many strange things in our world. Some of them are hidden, and some we are afraid to learn about. Portals exist. In the past we were able to use their power. Maybe some are still active today, but we have lost our knowledge of them. Maybe. I feel odd energy sometimes. I can’t explain why or how. I just feel it. It’s real. And on that hill, it was quite strong.”

  “Any vortex here?” I gesture around. “Do you feel anything?”

  “Nothing,” he says.

  My dream has outplayed me, and that has made everything more interesting. I don’t know how other people dream, but for me it’s like playing with a friend, waiting for a surprise that always comes. It makes sense, in the end; my dream counterpart is that part of my mind to which I don’t have conscious access. And my mind knows that I only pretend to believe Catalin. Once, I discussed the mysteries of the mind with Catalin, late on a cold early spring night, around the fire, vapors and words leaving our mouths like pagan mysteries. That night, he was the watcher of our platoon, and after a pause, he told me that I had a strong unconscious mind, touching Mother Earth - whatever that could mean.

  “Well,” I go back to the game again, “if we are far enough from the front line to prove that no normal transport could take us here in such short time…” l leave my phrase unfinished, to allow Catalin enough space to surprise me again.

  “Do you really think a Court Martial will absolve us on such grounds?” Catalin says jokingly, and for a moment I am tempted to tell him that we are in a dream. “Military judges are not famous for their logic.” He scratches his beard, like he’s trying to find a solution.“Run!” he growls.

  Sprinting after him, I turn my head in the direction he was looking, a moment earlier. Unconditional reaction is the product of camaraderie, trust and military conditioning. It has saved my life twice in the past. From the forest, on the left, a bunch of men bursts out, in the way that hunters chase their prey, spreading like the missiles from that bloody plane, trying to cut us off. They herd us down, toward the meadow’s end, and we have no choice but to obey their order. The predatory bird resurfaces in my mind like a frightening shadow. I have no time to check if it’s still in the sky. Maybe the eagle has metamorphosed into the savages hunting us. And savages they are, dressed in skins, hunting us with bows and spears.

  The long mound, ten to fifteen feet high, resembling a sand dune, slows us; then from its top, we scramble fast and slide down on the grass. For a while we are safe. Two arrows hiss over the mound, hitting the ground a few feet in front of us. They want to slow us down. I am slightly faster, and I hear Catalin’s panting progress behind me. I adjust my pace until he catches me up. “Faster,” I breathe, and Catalin nods, unable to speak. Feverishly, I calculate that the archers must be more than two hundred and fifty feet behind us. They are good, I think, knowing what I know about archery. The best archers a dream can provide, I laugh inside. Gasping for air, we sprint faster, and my backpack becomes a burden, yet I don’t think to throw it. Neither does Catalin.

  We skid to a halt just before we fall over a cliff that has appeared abruptly in front of us. Braking hard, our boots stir the gravel, and distant clicks, of small rocks falling, echo below our feet: clack, clack, for a few seconds. A moment of respite; my breath comes dry, cold and gasping in my throat. A hundred feet below, a wide river flows, at great speed, between massive rocks. I glance back; the savages are coming at a speed that puzzles me – they could beat any sprinter in an Olympic final.

  “We have to jump,” I say casually. It’s just a dream. Catalin is not convinced; for him everything is real, so I grab his hand.

  “There could be rocks under the water,” he says, hesitantly.

  Could be… There are arrows behind us.” I point back to that certainty. “Now!” We jump together yet, in flight, our hands separate, each of us aloft with his fear. At first, arrows fly swiftly past us, whispering softly in intermittent cadences, leaving behind the mundane sensation of a surround sound theater.

  Falling like a stone, I remember movies with people jumping over a cliff, moving their legs like they’re walking in the air. I always found that ridiculous and don’t try to imitate them, embarrassed to try. I don’t know why I should feel embarrassed in a dream, but that feeling follows me all the way down. The other feeling I have is not fear, but utter disappointment – I was expecting to fly.

  I hit the water with a splash. It’s cold… I shiver. Catalin makes the same splashing noise a second later. For no particular reason, I note that my body was two feet in the water by the time he hit. In dreams, gravity can vary. I have had some dreams in the past, taking place in strange worlds, where I could fly without wings. Going deep underwater, inside a cloud of gurgling, white bubbles, disappoints me even more– it would have been much easier to fly to the opposite shore. And dry. The cold creeps under my sk
in, and I don’t try to move. From diving training at a seaside resort, a long time ago, I remember that the water will push me up. My thoughts linger for a while, recollecting the warm tropical sea and the multi-colored fishes swimming through the reef. With a tinge of fear, I hope that the ‘push me up’ rule applies to this dream too. It takes a bit longer than I was expecting to reach the surface, and I fight for fresh air, panting, my mouth wide open. Cold air hisses like a snake through my throat. It was the backpack; I realize the cause of the delay. Quite realistic, this dream. When I can see again, my first reaction is to look for the savages. They appear on the cliff-edge a few seconds later, shouting unknown words that get lost in the wind, gesticulating with their spears and shooting more arrows at us; but we are now more than two hundred feet away from the place we fell, plus the difference in height between our positions. The water is faster than I thought, and we’re slaloming. To distract the archers, I realize. Somewhere to the side, more arrows hit the water with a short burp, before disappearing under the small waves. Their meteoric passage is short-lived, but I notice stone arrow-heads. Soon, the shore bends to the left, and we areout of the savages’ sight. I swim slowly, turning around to find Catalin. He is some twenty feet away, floating face up, flowing calmly with the water.

  “We have to get to the shore,” I say. He does not answer, his right hand just makes a small gesture of acknowledgement through the water. Glancing at the shore, I understand his indifference; there is no way to ‘get to the shore’ – for as far I can see, the shoreline is nothing more than a hundred-foot-tall wall of stone.

  Drifting looks easy at first, an occasional movement, the water carrying you effortlessly but, after a few minutes, I start to feel tired. And cold. The backpack is heavy, but I think it may have a role to play in my dream- I rarely have simple dreams, and sometimes they flow like a quest that I have to solve. For no reason, an old dream, in which I carried a heavy lyre with me for several hours through a desert, comes back to me. At the end of a long passage, I had to sing to a sentry so I could enter the oasis he was guarding. Behind me, Catalin is as calm as before, and that unnerves me. It’s my dream, and I should be the composed one. Still looking back at him, I hit a log, two foot in diameter, which is partly hidden in the water. A third of the log is visible, and I would have seen it, if I wasn’t looking back at Catalin. I gasp from the pain my ribs, and I curse my dream, the savages, the war and whatever else comes to mind. My left hand clings to the log, and at a snail's pace I climb up, until my belly is resting on the rough bark. It’s an old oak. Still immersed, my legs act as an anchor; the log is slowing down, and Catalin is getting closer.

  “Come,” I stretch my hand toward him, still irritated by his calmness. When his hand touches mine, I grab him. “You lazy man,” I growl, pulling him toward me and the log. My position is uncomfortable; I am overstretching, but slowly I pull him until his head hits the wood. “You deserved that.” I grin, though he can’t see my face; his head is somewhere under my right arm. I turn my head awkwardly, just to let him see the merriment on my lips. When my spine starts to complain, I stop turning, my eyes fixed on the arrow tip sticking out of Catalin’s neck, right under his chin. “Well, it’s my dream, Catalin,” I say, annoyed that my dream is already too long and too bloody. Usually, I don’t have this kind of sick dream, and I blame everything on the bloody war still raging in the real world. I must be wounded. The Cheshire Cat’s head that looks like Andrei starts to fly around me, a dark reminder of what I should expect when the dream is over, and I stop complaining. I gesture savagely at the flying head, and it vanishes. Enjoy the dream...

  Slow, like a well-trained horse, the log continues to drift, with me riding it on my belly, my right hand still holding Catalin’s. He follows us like a steer and, after a while, I finally grasp the rules of the dream: I have to use his body to force the log toward the shore, onto a sand bank sandwiched between the ridge and the water; the savages are now far behind us. When we hit the bank, the log shudders, and then aligns itself to the shore. My feet hit the bottom, and I am able to stand again in the shallow water, which goes now up to my chest. I pass Catalin around the head of the log and pull him onto the sand until he is half out of the water. I don’t have enough strength to pull him any further. Unhurried, I take off my backpack and lie down on the sand, not worried that I am wet and shivering. I no longer care.

  After a while, the cold becomes too much, and I curse the dream again. My watch shows I’ve already spent thirty-seven minutes inside my dream. Quite a long time, and the watch could have misled me, yet somehow I have the feeling that those long minutes have really passed. I take off my clothes, and lean back. The spring sun is not strong, but the sand has a dark blue color and it’s warm. After a while, I no longer shiver.

  I must have fallen asleep. That is my impression when I am startled by a crow’s cawing, coming from a tree not far from me. The sound is hoarse and lugubrious, like bad luck. And it goes on and on. It’s a male, I recognize after opening my eyes. His head is moving back and forth, thirty feet away from me, working hard to emit those sounds just to irritate me. I stare at him, but he is not impressed. Neither am I. Just annoyed. I stare until my eyes hurt, then I close them. The sound doesn’t stop. Awful dream. I grab a stone half hidden in the sand, but the crow flies off before I can throw my projectile. Stirred by the flapping wings, a curious effervescence swirls inside my mind, an unwanted revelation, taking me by surprise like a sudden storm.

  It’s not a dream,” I whisper, astonished not only by the abnormal event itself, but also by how quickly and easily I have accepted an unnatural turn of events that I would normally scoff at. My mind is unexpectedly calm, maybe because of Catalin’s weird stories, or maybe because I am a soldier, primed to see weird things, yet I can’t think clearly. I don’t shout, don’t curse, don’t jump to my feet; I just cross my arms under my head, feeling the warmth of the sand on my skin, silent, eyes tightly shut. The sun is just above me, and two warm spheres of light glow through my eyelids. It’s not a dream. It could be worse... My mind is now more than calm, it’s numb, void of feeling, unable to think, to question what has happened until I remember Catalin, and tears flow down my face, washing away everything I have lost. When my tears have run their course, I find myself staring at the river without seeing it. My watch shows that one more hour has passed, and, however I try, I am unable to remember a single string of thought during that time. I was not asleep, I protest, and slowly stand up.

  I have to bury Catalin. The thought of burial passes through my mind for the second time in one day. Not even a full day. First Dan, now... Lacking the courage to look at Catalin, I check my surroundings: it seems to be a safe place, at least for a while. On my left, the large river glinting in the sun; on my right, a steep wall of stones, rising from the sand. Who will bury me? I shake my head with the awful thought that the savages may be cannibals, and I may find my final refuge inside someone’s belly. I need to choose Catalin’s last resting place: but there is only sand. It takes me a while to dig the grave, close to the stones, at the highest point, where the water cannot reach it easily. After taking off his backpack, and breaking the shaft of the arrow, I drag Catalin slowly, without looking at him through my tears. After a while, I stumble, unable to go further, and I freeze until I find enough courage to turn. The bayonet. Trapped by an old root, it acts as a brake. I untie Catalin’s belt, jerkily, still not looking at his face. An old image comes to me: stealing cherries from a neighbor’s tree – a fourteen-year-old Catalin smiling at me. I fill in the grave, still not looking at him – I want to remember that young face smiling at me. Who will bury me? I ask again. Does it matter?

  “You are back in Mother Earth, Catalin.” I repeat his words after I finish my prayer. If such a Mother exists. I fall onto my knees, sobbing like a child.

  Night comes fast, dark and uneasy, filled with many frightening sounds, and I am too frightened to light a fire or to eat. Inside the sleeping bag, I grip my ba
yonet until, finally, too tired to take note of every noise, I fall asleep. I don’t remember my dreams in the morning. Awake, for a moment or two, I hope that I am back, among my comrades in arms, and Catalin is still alive. I blink, then I blink again: the river is there and the blue sky. In the bushes above, a bird welcomes the rising sun. My watch shows seven AM. I believe it.

  I’m hungry. Even at the worst times, your body keeps functioning. Absently, I open a can of military rations – it tastes better than ever before. Mechanically, I go through the self-preservation routine, learned during the war; I dig in the sand to hide the empty can. When I’ve finished, it looks like a small grave and, growling, I kick out at it. Leaving a trail of sand behind it, the can falls in the water with a splash. It reverberates in my mind, and I freeze, listening to the slightest noise. Unconcerned, the bird is still singing.

  Free to worry again, I am still afraid to ask questions about my whereabouts and how we arrived here. It doesn’t help that I have no one to ask. Maybe I can ask Mother Earth. The thought makes me smile madly until I laugh out loud. That releases some tension. I can’t stay here forever. My military training and months of surviving at the front take over, and my eyes flick back and forth, river to mountains, avoiding Catalin’s grave. Without that grave, I can still think about some kind of normality, like stumbling over a cast of actors shooting a movie about the Stone Age or whatever mundane explanation I can find. But the grave is there, and the tip of the arrow is now in my hand: grey stone painted with blood, attached with resin to a small piece of wood. Arms wrapped around my knees, eyes closed, I let my mind drift home, where my parents were waiting for me to return from the front. Andrei’s head appears in front of me, floating at the same level as my head. We stare at each other, eye to eye. Unconsciously, I try to push the head away. It performs a graceful curve around my hand and comes back to the same position, staring at me again.