Chapter 14: The Shaman

The simple fact that Dr. Hardy and nurse June were able to knit Mike's arm, mend his shattered leg, and hold infection at bay was a true testament to their skilled and dedicated care. It was also unlikely that the leg would have healed at all, in any form that would let Mike walk on it again, if it hadn't been for the inner focus he'd used during that agonizing night in the rock slide.

Anyone else would have died from massive infection, or barring that, would have required reconstructive surgery and titanium hardware to knit the bone fragments back together. Years of physical therapy would have resulted in a slow limping gait.

But that was not Michael Peterson. He was a shaman. Modern culture does not recognize what thousands of years of wisdom has taught the "healers" of remote cultures: human beings are spiritual creatures, by creation and by intent; in our essence, in our souls, in our intelligence, conscious and subconscious. As such, we human creatures have the capacity to greatly influence our physical bodies, the "containers" which carry us though a lifetime which is but a short transitory moment in our existence. As a shaman, Mike held the knowledge to heal, knowledge that did not rely on the accepted tenants of western medical teachings; teachings which in fact know little and accept nothing of the ancient methods; all are discounted as superstitious and dangerous.

Michael continued to focus his energies to heal his injuries. He must soon rise from his sickbed and walk as before, freely and easily with two good legs under him. This was a setback, unexpected and inconvenient, and it was also a premature beginning. But as always before, he would find a way. The boy was unusually gifted and would grow quickly.

A warm afternoon breeze blew through the screened windows of the parlor, fluttering Vi's lace curtains. Mike lay on his bed, his injured leg comfortable in the open air, wrapped loosely in a gauze and linen covering. It had been a week and although he could not yet move the leg, he could sense that the shattered bone splinters had become aligned and were knitting together. The torn and crushed flesh was healing; the toxins were gone and new cell growth was accelerating. He would need long days of intense focus to complete his healing, followed by weeks of carefully rebuilding new muscle and bone strength, but he would become whole again. His left arm was well-joined. It lay in a sling across his chest and he could feel the bone fusing, new growth bridging the fracture. He had a ravenous appetite but Vi simply smiled at the challenge. She kept a full bowl of beef stew, and a platter of home-baked wheat bread slathered heavily with home churned butter and wild honey by his elbow.

Young Graydon had gone home the day after the rescue. He had agreed to say nothing of it. As far as his family was concerned, he'd had an uneventful few days of fishing and camping and returned home as a matter of course. He was busy catching up on chores and garden weeding, and he was digging out another irrigation ditch, this one to carry more water into the small orchard that was recovering from years of long neglect. He told his mother that he'd need to spend the coming weekend at Brightman's ranch, helping Jim with the hay cutting.

"It's much too early. He'll need answers, and soon. First those dreams, and then this accident and finding you, the center of those dreams, real! He's a boy, for heaven's sake. All of thisâ€"it's asking too much!"

Jim Brightman twisted his pipe nervously in his fingers, not noticing that it had gone cold long moments before.

"It's asking too much, expecting him to go along, staying silent, without getting answers to all the questions we could see in his eyes!"

"He'll be fine, trust me. He may be a young one, but he's got a patient soul. As long as he can trust his own feelings, and feel the 'rightness' of what he senses and sees, everything will be well with him. He'll accept it as it comes, in good time. We must be careful to let him come along at his own pace."

Mike lay back. He savored the lingering flavor of the tea. He contemplated the weeks ahead, weeks in which he must get back on his feet and begin upon the path that he and the boy would walk together.

Explosions, the stuttering rattle of machine gun fire and the cries of soldiers on both sides of him crashed in his ears. He was bone-tired, exhausted, and filthy. The stench of his own body and of the bodies packed tightly around him choked him. He was cold, teeth-chattering cold. His fingers could hardly grip the map in his hands, and there was no feeling in his feet. Frozen mud, blood-stained snow, and the gloom of a dark forest, a nightmare scene of shattered trees and shell-craters lay revealed in bursts of light from the shell-bursts, the muzzle-flashes of the guns on their line, and the sometimes blinding mortar bursts on the battlefield in front.

He looked down and saw his arms in olive drab battle uniform. He felt a heavy helmet on his head. To his right a man lay sprawled forward, hanging half out of their foxhole, a gaping wound in the center of his blood-soaked back. On his left, a young soldier with old eyes and a filthy, pale white face stared back at him, laid back against the frozen foxhole mud, his rifle held across his chest, its breech open.

"Sir, I'm out of ammo. I've got nothin' left. It don't matter. Next time they come, they're gonna cut us to pieces. Ain't hardly none of us left to stop 'em, Sir."

Graydon could sense sorrow in his mind, but it was not his mind ... was it? Not his eyes ... were they? No time. Infinite sadness, resignation, but no fear. A terrible sense of loss: too many good men, lost, gone, given up as a horrible price for a conflict that had not been their choosing, a terrible war that had been thrust upon them. This was no easy walk to victory. This moment had been reached in an endless fight for frozen, agonized footsteps, each step bought with a precious life. Now it seemed their struggle might end in this mud-crusted waste for his remnant, his bloodied handful of survivors who had been his platoon. They had resisted the onslaught, they had regrouped, and they fought again and yet again, but now they were cut down, worn down, depleted.

His vision filled with an orange haze and blazing eyes peered forth and he grew and rose up and stalked the battlefield, flowing forward through the shattered trees and over the gaping wounds of the torn earth. Blackness of night wrapped around him; he inhaled the stench of death and savored it on his tongue. He tilted his head back and screamed a thundering, shattering, reverberating howl that soared in its pitch and intensity, ascending to a shrieking wail that pierced the quavering souls of all who heard him.

He sensed the tracking tracer rounds coming from in front and to his flanks as he flowed forward. Mines exploded in his footsteps; bullets flew like frantic hornets through and around him as he surged forward, seeking, reaching, groping for the frightened souls he could taste within his reach.

Terror! Absolute, disbelieving, mindless terror. He would feed on it, savor it, gather it into himself and send it back redoubled in an onslaught upon those who fought for evil; those poor, wretched innocents sent to fight and die for an evil regime that had exploded upon an unbelieving world.

They fled, a few, then a dozen and then a hundred, and then a thousand they fled in blind panic, flinging everything aside: weapons, packs, anything that encumbered them. They fled, not understanding but knowing that if they hesitated in their flight they would perish in some nameless horror beyond nightmare, horrors from which death would be a blessed relief. They ran until their legs could carry them no further, then blindly in gasping terror, they crawled with bleeding hands in the frozen mud.

Lieutenant Michael Peterson came back to his senses in the freezing foxhole. His radio crackled to life. "Regroup! Fall back and regroup! Medics are coming for the wounded!" The exhausted survivors rallied and in disbelief they stared out at the empty battlefield where moments before they had faced certain annihilation. It was silent. Nothing out there moved. Nothing out there lived.

In his dream he was weightless, floating free, toward a light, a pinprick of light that centered his expanding view of a star-filled universe. His senses flowed to it: the brilliant circle swelled, raced to him as he flew ... It grew and wrapped around him. It enclosed him. He was home.

The sense of welcome was overwhelming. A warmth grew in him, his sense of belonging, of rejoining, of endless generations of family coming forward to enfold him unto themselves. He sensed conviction as he gazed about. His mind opened to a universe of understanding. He accepted and he knew: