Nirvana Effect (3 page)

The tribesmen were troubled.  Whispers circulated through them like an insidious breeze.  The younger boys looked wildly about with darting eyes.  They feared for Mahanta.
 

Mahanta was not supposed to choose a child’s staff for this coming-of-age.  Edward found himself leaning in, as though the few inches he gained would give him a more microscopic view to what was happening.  Forgotten was the need to run.

One of the biggest of the males of the tribe stood up and shouted to Nockwe.  He spoke too quickly for Edward to interpret, but it had a tone of indignation.  It was matched by several angry cries from the crowd, though no one else stood.

“Do you break the way, Dook?” Nockwe shouted back in Onge.  He
spoke slowly, so that all could hear. 
His feet were planted firmly
, his composure unperturbed
. 
He would let no man disturb his dominance of the tribe.

“This child breaks the way with his wea
pon, C
hieftain.  Does he mock our ways?”  The dissident matched
Nockwe’s pace, speaking more to the crowd than to his ruler.
 
He
was playing politics; Dook wanted Nockwe’s title.

Before Nockwe could answer, he was stopped by the medicine man, who had quietly risen from his trance during the disturbance and now gripped Nockwe’s arm. 

“
TAUN!”
he shouted at the top of his lungs.  It was a curse Edward had never heard before, directed straight at
Dook
.  It blasted the big man down back to h
is knees and silenced the other dissidents
.  The medicine man then whispered in Nockwe’s ear.

Nockwe surveyed the crowd.  “It is the way.  The boy has chosen,” he announced.  “The boy may choose any
weapon
to become a man.”

“Turn around, boy,” rasped the medicine man.

Fear gripped Edward.  Despite the intertribal politics, there was something else occurring here.  He couldn’t quite grasp it
.  T
he adrenaline pumping through his veins
kept
it just out of reach of his mind.

The youth faced the fire now.  Edward was long overdue on returning to his hut.
  His legs wanted to run but he could not turn his head from the scene.

They continued their ritual. 
“I face the fire,” Mahanta shouted.

“I face your life,” shouted back the medicine man.

“I face a boy,” cried Nockwe.

“We face a boy,” shouted the tribe in unison.

Silence.  Mahanta
acknowledged them by bowing his head.  “I am a man,” he asserted.

“By whose spear?” returned the medicine man.

“By the tribe’s spear,” shouted Mahanta.

“What shall you slay?”
asked Nockwe.

Silence again.  The silence
grew
too long.  Mahanta was breathing heavily.  Edward wondered what drug was coursing through his veins. 
Maybe he’d blanked out.

“What do you slay, child?” coaxed the medicine man.

Mahanta said nothing.

“What do you say, child?  Will you slay the hog?” the
medicine
man asked again.

Mahanta shook his head - no.  The tribe
grew more agitated. 
The medicine man quieted them with a small hand motion.  H
is stage presence was impeccable
.

Patiently, he asked Mahanta, “Then what shall you slay?”

Mahanta gripped his stick and spoke slowly in the formal version of their tongue.  “As it is sung in the psalms of our ancestors, I shall slay the panther as a child, and defying my elders, remain a child immortal.”

“Blasphemy!” shouted a
man in
the crowd.  Several joined h
im
and started shouting, their weapons
to
hand.

“You call yourself a god?” asked the medicine man.

“I call myself a child.  And I shall slay a panther tonight with this toy and so become
immortal,” said Mahanta, defiant.

The medicine man nodded, feinting as though he were just motioning toward Nockwe to get his attention, but with a cat-like grace Edward would have never expected out of the old man, he grabbed Nockwe’s spear and in one swooping motion hurled it over the fire at Mahanta.

I
t was hard for Edward to make
out by the firelight at such a distance, but in an instant it seemed that Mahanta’s whole body shifted, as though jerked like a rag doll by an unseen hand.  The spear flew where he had been just a moment before.   Mahanta
struck the spear in midair with his staff, shattering it in two. 
It
s
splinters flew into the crowd of Onge
.

The tribesmen could no longer contain their excitement. 
Edward could make one of the voices out, one of the younger men who he knew trained under the medicine man.  He seemed to be quoting.  “He shall shatter the spear of the spirit guide.”  Others voiced
terse
agreement.

For only a moment, Mahanta locked eyes with the medicine man.  Then, with his tiny staff still gripped in his hand, Mahanta launched into an all-out sprint towards the jungle.

Edward’s stomach dropped. 
Mahanta was running directly at him.

Mahanta flew with an unnatural speed.  He wasn’t just running - every muscle in his body seemed to be propelling him as though he were clawing up for air along the ground.  Some invisible force was pushing him, pulling him toward the jungle, and toward Edward.

Behind Mahanta, most of the tribe started running
, their weapons to hand
.  Edward drew back.  They were coming so quickly. 

He had a choice to make.  He could bolt for it, but surely they’d see him and his long shadows.

Edward frantically edged around the hut, losing his footing in mud.  He heard the thundering footsteps of the tribe draw nearer.  Mahanta flew by.  Edward
threw himself into the hut
behind which he
’d been
hiding.  He
would wait it out.
 

Edward noticed the walls of this hut didn’t come all the way down to the floor.  It was a cooking hut
.  He jumped up onto a
bench against the far wall to avoid running the risk of some observant Onge noticing his legs.  The shadows of the tribe raced on the floor.  Their feet drummed the earth, only yards away. 

It would only take one
Onge taking pause at the hut
to see him through the holes in the bamboo reeds, but they were
all in pursuit of Mahanta.

Edward started to get the same feeling he’d had just half an hour before when Nockwe had entered his hut.  He might not survive this night.

Through one of the wider gaps in the wall, Edward peeked to see what was happening.  The tribe had all raged into the jungle. 
He didn’t know enough to be
able to
analyze it.  Unanswered questions whizzed through his mind.  Were they trying to kill Mahanta or just watch him?  What was happening? 
Mahanta ran as though possessed.  Perhaps he had overdosed on whatever drug he’d injected in his veins. 
An insane part of
Edward
wanted to follow, to run with the tribe as though one of them. 

As the pounding of the Onge feet receded towards the nearby jungle, the voice of reason (and terror) triumphed.  It was time to return to his hut.  He had been fortunate; no need to push his luck.  The men were in the jungle.  The women seemed to be gone somewhere, too.  The whole village was empty.  He wouldn’t even need to sneak to make it back safely. 

He stepped down from the bench and turned toward the doorway
.

An Onge stood where only the darkness had been a minute ago.  It was Nockwe.

Edward clambered back to the bench and tried to pry his way through
t
he
gap in the wall
, to no avail.

He was trapped.  The only way out of the hut, full of holes as it seemed, was through the doorway and through Nockwe. 

Nockwe’s hand gripped
the dagger at his belt. 
Edward was happy Nockwe’s spear had shattered.
  The
chieftain edged toward
Edward as he spoke in Onge.

“You are a foolish white man.  I told you not to leave the hut.”

Edward kept eyeing the
sheathed dagger.  He felt numb
and out of breath
.

Nockwe moved
closer
still
.  “You will pay a fool’s gamble to feed your curiosity
.”

Here was a shimmer of hope.  Nockwe was
still
talking.  As long as
Nockwe
was talking, he was not dead.  Edward abandoned all pretense of not knowing Onge.  “I heard shouts.  I thought there might have been violence.”

“You left the hut!” shouted Nockwe.

“I feared for my life.”

Nockwe shifted his feet and checked his back.  When he addressed Edward again, he spoke quickly and softly.  “You were right to fear so.  You
are a good white man
but a stupid one.”

Edward was barely able to keep pace translating in his mind.  Onge was definitely not second nature to him yet. 

“There is nothing you could gain
,” said Nockwe, “and everything you could lose. 
This we call the fool’s gamble.  By the laws of the tribe you will die.”

Edward
could not press back any further to the wall.  He scanned the room for weapons, anything that could help him.  He had nothing but his bare hands to defend himself from Nockwe.  Edward waited for him to make his move.

Nockwe’s move never came
.  “I’ll not be the one to kill you,” he said.  “You are a good white man - you see my peoples’ hardships and you help.  But you are victim of your curiosity.  If the tribe learns what you saw, either I or someone else will have to end your life.”

Edward started breathing again
, sagging from the wall
.  Nockwe would bend the rules so long as there were no witnesses.

“What is happening?”  Edward asked.

Nockwe
shrugged after considering his question
.  “You just saw a coming of age.”

“But he didn’t ask for a hog.  He was supposed to ask for a hog?” asked Edward.

“But he asked for a panther.”

“Yes, a panther.  Why?”

“I
don’t know
.  There is a legend…”

“With a panther and a child’s staff?”

“You came before the yelling.”

Edward smiled weakly.  “I am a very stupid white man.”

Nockwe grinned.
“You speak very good Onge for
being such a stupid white man. 
There is a legend
, it must be what Mahanta is thinking.  But it is only a fable.
  No boy can kill a panther with a t
oy
.  No man can even find a panther to kill.  The panther finds and kills him.  This is the way of panthers and men.”

“He took a drug,”
Edward
said.

Nockwe furro
wed his eyebrows and searched Edward’s eyes.  Finally Nockwe
nodded
, accepting
the truth in
his
statement.  “What sort?” he asked.

“I thought you’d know.”

Nockwe shook his head.  “There is no drug or potion for the ceremony.  Nothing to dull the senses.  Even with the hog half-dead and drugged we do not want to lose any of our youth to an accident.”

“It was by some sort of
…umm…
infusion,” said Edward.  He had to use the Onge cooking term; they had no medical vocabulary. 

“Perhaps that explains it.”  Nockwe’s
eyes glossed over momentarily.  He looked disheartened.

A cry
reached them from
the jungle.  Nockwe whipped
back into action.  “You will follow me, w
hite man,” he instructed
, “and stay very close if you want to live through the night.  I am no threat, but the tribe is.  And I am a threat in the presence of the tribe.”  He gripped Edward’s shoulder.  “You are a friend to my people, but they are no friend of yours.  So remember when I am your friend and when I am not.  Come with me.”

“Should I
just
g
o back to my hut?” Edward asked.  At that moment, his hut was very appealing.

“The hut is not safe for you there.  You were right to fear for your life in the hut, if that is true.  But only because of what is now occurring.”