Morgan's Rescue (18 page)

     
"I've told them nothing, Culver."

     
He stared at her. "Sure," he said mockingly. This was the first time Pilar had lied to him so openly. Usually her lies were subtle as a jaguar noiselessly stalking her prey through the jungle. Her blatancy angered him.

     
Her lips parting, Pilar stared at Culver, then at her grandfather. "Listen to me, Culver," she said in a low, firm tone. "My grandfather is a shaman. So is my grandmother. You have lived in
Peru
long enough to know that they possess a knowing far beyond our own. My grandmother told me last night when we arrived that they had been expecting us. They travel in the other dimensions, the worlds of the past and future. They know what is happening around us."

     
"Really?" he said condescendingly. "Then ask them the outcome of our little jungle hike. Is Morgan alive? Will we successfully rescue him?" He snorted. "Better yet, ask the old man if either of us will survive. On second thought, I can answer those questions myself. Do you know what the likelihood of survival is on our mission?
About ten percent.
Which means we've got a ninety-percent chance of buying the farm.
I don't need a shaman or an
ayahuasca
ceremony where I heave my guts to find out that answer."

     
"Don't you dare make fun of my
grandparents!
Just because they're shamans from a culture you don't accept or believe in doesn't take away from what they know!"

     
Rane got up and moved away from Culver. She slid into Pilar's lap and linked her long, slim arms around her mother's neck as she rested her head against her shoulder. Pilar tried to control the feelings in her voice, aware that their argument was upsetting Rane. "For your information, people who drink
ayahuasca
during a ceremony for a valid reason do not have to heave their guts out. The cleaner a person is inside, the less vomiting
he
or she experiences."

     
"I see," he growled, placing the radio back in its protective plastic. "So I'm not clean inside. Well—" he looked straight at her "—you're the jaguar priestess around here. Go ahead and go to your grandparents' ceremony. I'm staying out of it."

     
Tabling her anger, Pilar gaped at him.
"Jaguar priestess?
What are you talking about?"

     
"Oh, come on," he drawled acidly as he leaned over and picked up a revolver, preparing to check it over and clean it, "You know damn well what I'm talking about."

     
"No, I don't!"

     
"Pilar, you keep surprising me, you know that?" Culver pulled the safety off the Beretta and studied the weapon critically. "Here you are a jaguar priestess for your people, and you never told me. In fact, you said so little about your real parentage—"

     
"At the time, it wasn't important," she snapped. No, at the time, she thought ruefully, they'd fallen into each other's arms, loving hotly, without regret or apology.

     
Culver's mouth twisted into an ugly line as he broke down the revolver piece by piece to begin oiling it against the jungle's humidity. "A hell of a lot of things weren't important except surviving."

     
Stung, Pilar held Rane more tightly, feeling her daughter tremble at the amount of anger in their exchange. She stroked her long, dark hair, flowing loose around her shoulders. All her life, Pilar had worked to keep her daughter from the violence of the world. Rane sighed and closed her eyes, nestling her face in the curve of her mother's neck. She relaxed, and Pilar was grateful. Too bad her touch didn't have the same mollifying effect on Culver; but too much bad blood had passed between them, Pilar admitted. She could hardly blame him.

     
"My grandparents have been telling me for as long as I can remember that I had a special responsibility to fulfill with my life," she explained in a low, controlled tone. "But I wasn't aware until you just told me that it was as a jaguar priestess." She glanced at her attentive grandfather, who she knew was listening with his heart. He didn't know much English, but from experience, Pilar knew that the revered shaman could understand on another level exactly what was being said. "That is something I will have to speak to them about now, on top of everything else that is going on."

     
Culver gave her a questioning look but said nothing. Out of long habit, he began applying oil to the gun's dark metal. Pilar sounded so convincing. If he hadn't learned so painfully, firsthand, of her ability to deceive, he would have believed her statement. She looked sincere and a little in awe of the information he'd given her. Hell, she was just good at lying, he told himself angrily.

     
"We've got enough to worry about right now," he snapped. When he saw Rane flinch at the tone of his voice, he softened his words. "You do whatever you want to prepare for our little hike tomorrow morning. But I know that vision vine is hallucinogenic, and you'd damn well better not meet me tomorrow in a drugged state."

     
Glaring at him, Pilar whispered tightly, "I would never jeopardize your life like that and you know it!"

     
"Really?"
Culver allowed the sarcasm to drip from his voice. "You've got a funny way of looking at things, then."

     
"What are you talking about?"

     
"You've already killed me in a hundred different ways."

     
Stunned, Pilar drew in a sharp breath, pain shooting through her hammering heart. She felt Don Alvaro's fingers move in a caressing motion on her arm.

     
"Mi nieta,"
he murmured, "there is much to do before you go. Leave Rane here with Culver. You will come with me, eh?"

     
Blinded by agony, Pilar nodded. Easing her daughter from her lap, she set her in the chair and asked her to stay behind. Rane nodded and curled up in the chair, rocking it slightly with one slim leg. Unable to look at Culver, Pilar helped her grandfather to his feet. He took the twisted, dried jungle vine he used as a cane and leaned heavily on it.

     
As they walked slowly through the sprawling village, protected beneath the trees' stretching limbs, Pilar tried to steady her breathing. Her heart ached without relief, and as she gently steadied Don Alvaro with a hand around his upper arm, she said unevenly, "I don't know why this happened, Grandfather."

     
"What?" he inquired, looking down at her
kindly.

     
"My being teamed up with Culver again. I—I thought he was out of my life—forever. I never expected him to walk back into it." She rubbed her heart with her hand. Combating tears, she whispered brokenly, "I still love him so much. I've hurt him so badly. . . ."

     
"
Niña,
child, you carry both his and your own burden in your heart. It is very hard to carry one's own grief, much less another's anger and hurt, eh?"

     
Sniffing, Pilar fought back tears and pressed her head against his thin shoulder as he slowly wound his arm around her and drew her against him. "Y-yes, it is, Grandfather."

     
"Perhaps," he said, looking toward the hut where he'd lived all his life, "when you drink of the ceremonial cup this evening, the winds of
ayahuasca
will speak to you in a vision that will make the way more clear. Perhaps—" he smiled at her gently "—your heart will be healed of the many burdens it has carried alone for so long. The secrets you carry are heavy,
mi niña.
"

     
Pilar stared up at her grandfather for a heartbeat. Her grandparents were wise, and she allowed her panicked soul to find peace in his liquid, brown gaze, a soothing of the violent ache in her heart. Shamans were wonderful healers, she reminded herself.

     
Pilar recalled one of the many stories her grandparents had told her when she was a child sitting in the hut at night, about how one had to undergo a near-death experience before receiving the calling to become an apprentice shaman. Since shamans traversed all the dimensions, they could not be afraid of such travels. Only those who had died could be admitted to these other
worlds,
and shamans were able to make such journeys and live to tell about it—because they themselves had died and returned to life.

     
Don Alvaro brought Pilar into the hut where Aurelia was kneeling, grinding corn on a heavy, flat stone. Nearby, a small fire of coals was ready to cook the tortillas she was preparing for them. "Pilar knows of her path as a jaguar priestess," he said as he sat down in his favorite rocking chair, crafted from scraps of mahogany.

     
Aurelia stopped her grinding. "Eh?" She looked at Pilar, who took a seat at the rough-hewn table. Light from the four windows filtered in, accentuating the shadows. "Well," she said busily, returning to her grinding, "we knew she would learn of it soon, anyway."

     
Pilar ran her fingertips across the table's worn surface. "Why didn't you tell me?"

     
Aurelia sighed, sifting the corn flour into a small pottery jar. Wiping her hands on her colorful red-and-black skirt, she slowly rose from her arthritic knees. "In order to become a priestess, you must almost die." Aurelia halted in the middle of the hut and stared at her granddaughter. "You have not had that experience—yet."

     
"Once you had lived through the experience—passed to the other world and returned—" Don Alvaro added softly, "we would have told you. Then you would already have understood the death experience, and what we do as shamans." Opening his hands, he said, "The journey you and Culver take tomorrow will place you in a life-and-death situation. You will have many choices along the way,
mi niña.
We pray for you.
And for him.
We pray that you return to us alive, but we cannot yet know if that will happen."

     
Aurelia came over and patted Pilar's slumped shoulder. "
Mi niña,
the life path of a jaguar priestess is the hardest of all." She smiled a little and touched her large, ample breast. "I serve the jaguar goddess myself. The first half of my life was filled with tests involving life and death—my own and others'. By the jaguar's grace, I passed them and lived to work in her service as a
shamanka,
" she said, using the term for a female shaman. Her worn, plump fingers rested against Pilar's hair. "Your heart carries many burdens, my little one. We ache for you as you do yourself. But a
shamanka
cannot heal others unless she knows what it is like to suffer in many areas as a human being. How can she understand another's pain if she has not traversed that path herself? So you see, it is necessary, this painful process we undergo, to become worthy of the jaguar goddess's attention."

     
Shaking her head, Pilar looked up into her grandmother's round, brown face. She felt such peace and love radiating from the old woman that she opened her arms and slid them around her grandmother's ample waist. Closing her eyes, she buried her face against Aurelia's softness. The feel of her grandmother's still-strong arms encircling her gave her courage and dissolved some of the lingering agony in her heart. "I'm so scared," she whispered. "I've hurt Culver so much. I don't know how I'll get through this mission with him. Being around him is like holding my hand in a fire. I hurt all the time, Grandmother. Sometimes I hurt so much I can barely breathe." Looking up, her eyes bathed in tears, she said brokenly, "Sometimes I wonder whether, if I quit breathing, the hurt would finally go away. . . ."

     
"Ah,
mi niña,
" Aurelia scolded softly, framing Pilar's face with her work-worn hands. She leaned over, her features bare inches from Pilar's as she held her granddaughter's gaze. "The jaguar goddess is hard on us, I know. And the love you carry in your heart for this
Norte Americano
is a blessing and also a curse to you. Is that not what being a
shamanka
is all about? You stand with one foot in this world, your other foot in the many other worlds. How can you know pain if you do not know pleasure? How can you know love if you have never loved fully? Your heart and soul were given to Culver. We do not question his love for you, nor yours for him."