A woman screaming...pain, fear – regret twisting in her pitch.
A fire crackling...its shadows frantic behind those gathered around it for safety and prayer.
Mountains in the distance... Stars in the sky...
Dirt under my feet... The grass is dead here.
The air smells...different – like a memory... Less industrial; less like now, more like...then...
Oh shit...
...I think it's working.
The "inducing" Berget added to my bottle! (You remember; in the restaurant over breakfast with the Unibrower?)
I'm...I'm dreamembering!
But, wait, wasn't I just...running...?
Doesn't matter. Need to focus; navigate; take contro—
Whoa... What...just happened? I was outside, under the stars...and now...
...blood...
My hands are covered in it when I dip them into a stone basin – but not, apparently, to wash them...
Dude... What the hell are you doing?
Or...what the hell am I doing...?
OK. Have to concentrate. These are my memories now; they're in my head; these are my coarse hands reflecting the light of the fire in the blood that covers them – the human—? No...armadillo blood. Flashes of me retrieving it from a hole our tribe set as a trap, gutting it, then finding its...its tiny heart...
The heart is in the basin now, wet with its cold blood, along with a foot-long shaft carved from a lightning-riven tree that's attached to a mountain lion's claw with a sharpened edge for cutting. There's a flat, round, yellow jasper crystal at the base that represents the strength of the sun. And there's a tangle of blackened sage representing the baby in her poisoned womb, all over a bed of osha root that—
OK, that wouldn't have been my first choice for ritual snack food...
I find myself chewing on the root sprinkled with the blood of the dripping heart. It's bitter...but familiar...
The taste pulls me into another memory, away from the fire and the screaming woman and the night sky, and into the daylight, next to an old man...
No. Focus, damn it!—
The old man is handing me the root to chew – this time without the armadillo blood – and he's explaining its significance in Sioux as a mechanism of healing – but I don't have time for this... I have to—
Oh... I'm back! Did...did I do that...?
I'm under the stars again, surrounded by my tribesmen softly chanting after me:
"Wakan witshasha, wakan witshasha, wakan witshasha..." Men and women's voices harmonized into one, with the children they hold whispering beside them.
The chant means "mystery man." It's what they call me – or him, I mean; the shaman—
Whoop! ...Never had that happen before. Someone just hit the fast forward button on my dream-player and pushed me in a jerky, double-speed motion back into the tent; the one with the screaming woman and stone basin...
And I hear the drums start outside, and a song of exhortative humming from the harmonized throats of the tribe. I smell the osha root on my breath and blood on my hands; I can taste the offering mixed with it – an offering that will do little good but set the minds of the tribe outside at ease. For those of us inside – ease is not something we will find on this night.
YOU ARE READING
The Journals of a Vampire Scribe
VampireIn a world where preternatural creatures have recently surfaced as members of society, a young, not-so-good-with-girls vampire finds himself in the company of one he's not entirely sure what to do with, and stumbles through the reality-bending cons...
