The shaman coughed into his hand, and laid his udanta stick to the side of the fire. He rubbed the spittle between his blackened palms, flicking a bit of ash from the ring of stones to absorb it all before he use the pestle to scrape his palms clean. Mata sat, his hands folded carefully in his lap, watching with great interest as the old man worked his magic. Mata’s question still lingered in his mouth, even after asking it, as if the question was a bird that needed to be freed at the next opportunity. The shaman pulled a leaf from his dream satchel and crushed it with the pestle against the mortar. Nodding with a grunt, he lifted the mortar to his brow and prayed under his breath to the great sky gods for guidance for his spirit self. Hoping his prayer was lifted on the smoke of the fire, the shaman dumped his mortar into the fire, inhaling the flash and thick gray fumes before they left the cave.
Mata sat very still, like a rock on a beach, wondering what the answer to his question would be.
The shaman held his breath, and exhaled with a grimace. As his eyes opened, Mata saw the shaman’s pupils had consumed his eyes, with nothing but endless black beneath his lids. The darkness was fathomless, ending in the whirling sparkles of galaxies undiscovered and stars unseen. In the shaman’s eyes laid a window to the depths of creation, and the old gods looked back at Mata, constraining themselves to this old man in a dark cave on a planet they had never seen.
“SPEAK, CHILD.” The shaman’s voice was not his own, it was the voice of a god.
Mata let his question fly again, finally releasing the flurry of words from it’s prison within himself. “Where do the spirits of the dead go?”
“SPIRITS OF THE DEAD ARE SPIRITS NO MORE.” The shaman’s head tilted like a bird’s, a sudden movement with a sudden stop.
“They live again?” Mata asked. The shaman had warned about multiple questions, but Mata felt he had to know. He had to find his Seka again.
“THEY LIVE ELSEWHERE. THEY ARE OURS.”
“Can I go Elsewhere?” Mata tried. He felt panic in his stomach at the question. It was bordering insult for a god.
The shaman’s head tilted the other way, and the shaman’s lidless eyes flashed with a dark energy. “PERHAPS. WHAT CAN YOU GIVE US?”
Mata looked at his thin, yet strong hands, thinking of the little he had to offer. He had nothing… an orphan, barely a man now, with only his leather skins, his axe, and his hunting gear. He could survive in this world, but he had nothing to offer, and his heart had nothing to feel since Seka had fallen ill.
“I can only offer myself,” the young man answered.
“WE DO NOT PROMISE YOU WILL FIND THE SOUL YOU SEEK.” The shaman’s face almost was one of conciliatory worry. As if the god felt pity for Mata.
“I am willing to take that chance. I have nothing here,” Mata answered.
“SHE WILL NOT KNOW YOU.”
Mata’s eyes flicked upwards and he felt the connection with the god. He felt like the god had reached into his heart and pulled it open. He saw strange things as the god whipped its tendrils of dark energy over his mind, shoving knowledge and experiences in the folds of his brain. His eyes rolled up into his head as he started to convulse, the madness of the god’s touch on Mata was unavoidable. He felt his bladder release, and the warmth spread across his thigh.
A flash in his inner eye. A young woman laughing with her friends. She had red hair, not the jet black of Seka, but Mata knew it was her. He could see her delicate fingers wrapped around a strange white bowl, in the shape like a small vase, a white spout that Seka drank from. He heard her friends laugh with strange words, a language he had never heard before. Another flash, and his different-but-same Seka was sitting in a dark cave, a fire brightly lighting her face, booming noises coming from all around, rows and rows of people behind her, their faces alighted the same. The fire that must have been in front of them must have been huge. Another flash, and his Seka-that-was-not-Seka was dressed strangely, in a second skin that was not animal leather, on boards strapped to her feet, flying down a snowy mountain, her breath escaped her lips in a cloud, being left behind in the snow as it drifted down. Her face was covered in a see through water that did not move, her eyes flicking left and right, her body shifting on the boards at her feet, plowing the snow upwards in the opposite direction. Mata’s confusion only grew, the changes flashed in his vision, and he saw Seka again, her hair tied on her head, straining on a strange thing that moved the ground underneath her feet. She ran, but did not move forward, sweat poured down her face as she smiled in her exertion.
The god removed his fingers from Mata’s mind, and Mata felt both empty and full after this strangeness retreated. “EVEN NOW? DO YOU WISH IT?”
Mata smelled his urine in the cave, mixing with the strong smell of the wood smoke, and the shaman’s body stink as he strained under the force of a god pushing itself into the shaman’s shell. He felt naked and disconnected from himself. Mata the Hunter of the Long-Tooth smelled the place of the first Seka-that-was-not-Seka, felt the noise of the other memory, heard the rhythmic pounding of her feet on the strange machine, all these things were his memories now. Mata knew his answer as it was already leaving his lips, “I wish it.”
“MATA, YOU WILL SERVE OUR DESIRES AND YOU WILL BE OURS FOR YOUR LIFETIME IN SEEKING HER. WISH IT.”
Mata swallowed. “I wish it still.”
The shaman’s neck broke as his head swung around backwards and the corpse fell forwards into the fire, the shaman’s lifeless eyes looking at the ceiling as the fire took to the hair and necklaces. If the shaman had been present at his own death, he would have been surprised to see that his cave was empty, and Mata was not sitting in front of him. Only the skins, the spears, the ax, and the bag remained, but Mata was no more.
Mata’s eyes snapped open in shock, and he stood up suddenly, scaring the people around him. He reached out for a pole nearby to steady himself as his mind reasserted itself in a panic. An elderly lady on the bench across from Mata smiled at his reaction.
“Are you alright, young man?”
Mata felt the strangeness of the words in his ears, hearing a language that he felt that he should not understand, yet he did. It was English. What language had he spoke before? It almost escaped him. It was El-am. He spoke El-am. Not English.
“Bad dream?” Mata-that-was-not-Mata replied, his mouth forming strange words, he ran his hand down his front in embarrassment, feeling strange clothes and fabrics under his fingers.
“I thought so. Sit down, you dropped your backpack, by the way,” the old woman smiled. She lifted a crooked finger and pointed underneath the metal bench.
“Thanks,” Mata returned, ducking his head thankfully, his senses finally returning to normal. He released the swaying metal bar and sat down, grabbing his backpack and setting it on his lap. He was on the metro. A tunnel deep underground that had a metal cart travel through it, a subway? The words filled his mind as he unlocked the knowledge as he needed it.
The old woman leaned forward, and her eyes blinked to a deep black void, unending, unknown stars wheeling in the depths. In a whisper that only Mata could hear, she uttered, “YOU KNOW ALL THAT YOU DID AND ALL THAT YOU WILL NEED AS YOU WILL SERVE US HERE AS YOU WISHED IT.”
With another blink, the old lady’s eyes returned to normal and she leaned back to read her magazine(?).
Mata felt it all. The strangeness and the familiar fighting each other viciously. A short faced cave bear and long tooth (sabretooth tiger?) fighting each other on the moor slopes above his village, the growling and high pitched scream of the great ones seeking dominance as the village burned their fires high to keep the beasts away. He had lost Seka not long after, the fires could not keep illness away, and the spirit of death had found her. He felt the subway rock and tilt as it took a slight curve, heading for midtown. He felt his letter jacket on his arms, the backpack full of coursework and textbooks in his lap. His name…
His name was Matt Johnson, and he was a junior in high school. Mata closed his eyes tightly, and he saw Seka-that-was-not-Seka in his memory, a hand holding a Starbucks(?) coffee, her red hair framing her face. She took a drink from her latte, and he saw her name.
“Sarah,” Mata said under his breath. He grinned. He had to find Sarah.
Down at the other end of the train car, a blond man in a suit grimaced behind his newspaper. He felt the presence of an Emissary nearby… which was strange, because a competitor would not just appear without warning. Something had changed. He lowered his hand to the small caliber handgun under his jacket for reassurance. He adjusted it and lowered the newspaper. The train car was typically full for this time of day, and nothing looked out of place. He felt the whisper in his ear, the light touch of his Sponsor.
“ITS THE BOY IN RED AND WHITE, UTU HAS CHANGED THE GAME,” it said and then his Sponsor was gone.
The man leaned forward looking down the train car, and saw an young black man in a letter jacket holding a backpack, looking at the crowd around him in awe. He was definitely new, and an easy kill.
Detective Ethan Ness leaned back in his seat, deciding he would follow the young man for now… and see how the gods laid it out. It was their will after all, who was he to contest it? An Emissary had a place, a part to play, and the Game was the only thing that mattered. He would follow his Sponsor and do his part.
Kids got shot all the time. He would be careful.
As Jaskueli had in every lifetime so far.