The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,61

transcend fear.’

Itzama smiled. ‘I was presumptuous, perhaps, to assume I could teach you anything.’

‘You are a shaman, you say. What does that mean? How is it different to what I do?’

‘People like me have a specific function. We leave our bodies to work for our community in the other world. I was taught to alter my state of consciousness in such a way I could walk with the spirits. The spirits give to us the knowledge. We learn from them and pass on what we know to our people.’

‘Spirits like Coyote.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I must do this also. Take me with you. Coyote is a trickster, but I have him by the tail and I won’t let go.’

‘You are a very beautiful woman,’ said Itzama.

‘Coyote tricks,’ Flick said. ‘It won’t work. I know what I am.’

‘You people have a wonderful gift that you think is a toy,’ Itzama said. ‘You have passed beyond human, yet you can’t let it go.’

‘I don’t disagree,’ Flick said. ‘You’re not telling me anything I hadn’t worked out for myself. But there are those among us who do have great knowledge and who use the gift properly, if not wisely.’

Itzama paused for a moment, then said. ‘I would like to hear the story of how you came to be here. I wanted to ask before, but the time was not right. Are you ready now to tell me?’

Flick laughed. ‘I would have thought you’d have read my mind and found that out for yourself.’

Itzama rested his elbows on his knees, and cupped his chin in his hands. ‘It is your turn for the story.’

‘It began,’ Flick said, ‘when a har named Cal came to Saltrock, the town where I lived, some years ago.’

Itzama shook his head. ‘No, that is not your story. How did you come to be here as you are? What is your beginning?’

Flick put his hands over his face. In the darkness, he looked into the past. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, his voice muffled through his hands. ‘It is like a dream.’

‘Try.’

‘Something… something had happened,’ Flick said. ‘I was at home, and we were preparing to leave. Packing. My mother was crying and my father wasn’t there. A truck was coming for us and we were going to go someplace else. There was a war going on, but inside the war, yet outside of it, was Wraeththu. It was like a ghost haunting us, a scavenger at the edge of the battle zones, seeking the weakest. There were drugs I had to take, because when the call came no one could ignore it. You just got up, like you were sleepwalking, and went out of the house. You’d find yourself with your nose pressed against a fence, so desperate to get through it, you’d want to push your flesh through the wire and fall into a thousand pieces. You believed that if you did that, on the other side, your body would remake itself and you could walk away, find the source of the call.’

Itzama said nothing. The only sound was the pop of twigs in the fire and the soft call of a nightbird beyond the cave.

Flick looked up, directly into Itzama’s eyes. ‘I didn’t stop taking the drugs, not once. I remember going outside, carrying a box that was so heavy. I remember thinking about all I’d had to leave behind, and I was afraid for the future. They told us there were safe havens, but I couldn’t believe it. Everything was falling apart. It felt like the end of the world.

‘I saw the big truck and our neighbours were getting into it. People were running around and there was so much noise. There was fire in the sky to the east and the sound of explosions. I remember standing in this little pool of quiet, looking around. Sound just faded away, and it was like watching a silent movie. Then I saw him. Among the trees in the yard opposite. Tall and dark. I saw his long coat, his big boots. He just looked at me. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t even curious. I just thought, that is another way, another road, and it is looking at me. I put down the box and went to him.

‘He was har, of course, slinking like the ghost I believed them all to be among the panicking human population. On the lookout, seeking souls. I couldn’t hear the call, because of the drugs, but I could see the road. Does that make sense?