Nirvana Effect (4 page)

Nockwe backed toward the entrance. 

“Follow me, white man,” he said in English to Edward.  “Stay close.”

Edward numbly followed.  Nockwe‘s English was better than he had before pretended. 
And I thought I had Nockwe fooled.
  “Where are we going?” Edward asked.

“To the jungle.”  There would be no arguing with him.  He was already moving out the doorway.  “Perhaps we can help young Mahanta survive the night,” he said quietly.  They heard anoth
er shout from the jungle.  “W
e must run.”

Edward plunged into the jungle
, trying to keep up with Nockwe.  Edward had never dared travel the jungle at night.

Nockwe
wasn’t running so much as swimming through the jungle
, leaping across crevasses and darting between
minute openings in the
foliage
with ease and fluidity
.  He somehow always
found footing despite the irregular undergrowth, and Edward had a hard time emulating him.  The missionary was in good shape, but nowhere near the physical prowess of the head of the Onge tribe. 

As he sprinted deeper into the jungle, Edward’s need to keep up with Nockwe grew.
  If he lost his guide,
he had no way back to the village
. 
Nockwe changed direction unpredictably, and Edward’s lungs heaved the humid air
until they felt ready to collapse.

Nockwe stopped suddenly, but Edward didn’t see him in time.  He slammed into the chieftain.  Nockwe’s firm hands grasped him and kept him from falling headlong.  “
Shteck!
” whispered
Nockwe
.  It was the
Onge inju
n
ction for silence.

Edward
strained his ears over his own desperate breathing.  Far in the distance
he heard the
shouting and running of the villagers
. 

Edward and Nockwe
twisted their heads
back around.  An animal was shrieking not far from them
. 
Edward scanned the trees. 
At any moment it might drop on him.

“There,” said Nockwe.  “The panther.”  Edward was relieved to see Nockwe point in the distance.  It had
like it was right there.
 

An Onge battle cry
drowned out the
last of the roar. 
It sounded like Mahanta.

“Quickly,” urged Nockwe
.  He rushed toward
Mahanta
, away from the mob
of villagers closing in behind them
.  Edward had to fight his every impulse in order to follow.  His only comfort was that there would be only one pa
nther, but hundreds of angry Onge in the opposite direction and thousands of
jungle
animals should he simply flee into the darkness
.

They
broke into
a clearing.  At the far end of the open space was a huge, ancient tree, its branches arching down to kiss its far-reaching roots. 
Mahanta and the panther danced back and forth before it, silhouetted by the moon.

The panther was furious, yowling, jabbering, hissing and scratching, pouncing at Mahanta.  Mahanta bore the stick in his hand and pounded the panther’s skull every time it made a pass at him. 

The young man moved as though he were some sort of animal, himself - something far more wild and threatening than the jungle cat.  Edward had never
seen a human being move like he did
.
The panther struck with an inescapable
power and agility
, and yet here was this boy who dodged it easily.

Neither Nockwe nor Edward advanced closer than the edge of the clearing.  The chieftain muttered a curse. 

Edward wrenched his eyes from the fight to look at Nockwe. 
Hi
s
moonlit
eyes
watched the
figh
t, but Edward could tell by hi
s frozen pupils that he was thinking, not watching.  Unexpectedly, Nockwe wrenched his head to the right as though he were a deer reacting to the crack of a rifle.  “DOWN,” he whispered furiously in English, shoving Edward into the grass.

Edward soon saw that Nockwe had good reason for
his abruptness.
  The sharp pain
of
Nockwe’s
rough handling faded into
the back of Edward’s mind as he tuned his ears to the soft sounds of hundreds of footsteps nearby.  The tribe had reached the clearing, too
.  Peeking up from the gr
ass, he saw the villagers exit the jungle here and there
.  They cautiously kept to its edge, just like
Nockwe
.

Edward turned his eyes back to the roaring panther and the quiet youth.
The panther was further enraged and had lost all caution in its pouncing.  As soon as it landed it launched into the air again, trying to
reach Mahanta.  It may as well have been pawing at its shadow.

Mahanta only struck the occasional blow as he dodged the cat.  He kept glancing at the tribe gathering at the edge of the clearing.  He wasn’t looking for help. 

S
eems like he wants an audience.
 
Edward dismissed the thought as soon as it came to him.
 
Mahanta was fighting a real panther.  This was life or death, and though he fought with a child’s toy, it was no game.  Surely he didn’t care whether or not there was a crowd.  Surely by now whatever drug-induced delusions of grandeur
he had
were shattered b
y the necessities of survival.

Edward
thought about the injection Mahanta had taken
. 
This is a drug-induced insanity.  It must be stopped.
  Mahanta’s drug might have been an effective
upper, but it was only a matter of time before that panther tore him limb from limb. 

Much to Edward’s amazement, n
o member of the tribe moved to intervene, not even Nockwe.

“Is there anything we can do?” asked Edward emphatically from the grass.

“Not if you wish to live,” whispered Nockwe.  “You can’t even be seen here.  And no Onge can intercede in the coming of age.  It would be death.”

“It’s death right now!
  That boy will die!  He’s not in his senses!
”

“Be as that may, there is nothing that can be done.” 
He
sounded resolute, but his shadowy face was slack and his eyes
looked
empty.  Edward knew
Nockwe
wanted to save the boy.  Nockwe’s power was simply not absolute;
he could not break
with the Onge tradition.

There
’s too much dissent
in the tribe for Nockwe
to make
a move like that
. 
Edward had seen the politics at the campfire. 
“Please, help him,” Edward pleaded.

Nockwe did not answer.  His eyes were riveted on Mahanta. 

Mahanta
looked back
to
the crowd
.  The panther had tired and was circling again
, growling at its pray
. 
Mahanta yelled in the formal Onge tongue,
“You shall die, panther, and so shall my earthly flesh!  No mortal Mahanta leaves here tonight!”
  He pulled his staff to the ready.
 

The panther pounced as if to answer,
swinging
for him with its huge paws.
  Mahanta deftly side-stepped and brought
his staff down
with both hands
.  The staff shattered
on the panther’s skull
. 

It
wobbled for a moment, giving Mahanta enough time for a fatal blow.  He jabbed the splintered remains of his staff
at
the panther’s face. 

The cat
flinched back, however,
before Mahanta
could drive his weapon in.  It struck back, swiping Mahanta’s torso with its wicked claws.  It was the first hit the panther had gotten in
all night, and it was a vicious one.  Edward cringed as Mahanta dropped.  He wouldn’t be coming up from that one.

From the grass, Edward could no longer see
Mahanta
.  The
panther
dove, disappeari
ng from Edward’s view as well.
  It sounded like the two were struggling
.

Edward’s desire to run was overshadowed by an impulse to go jump into the fray and help Mahanta
.  He craned his ear as though the extra six inches would give him some insight as to
what was happening.

The noises vanished.  The clearing was quiet as the moon.  The night
felt
robed in an unnatural calm. 

The native figures
looked like statues all around the clearing edge
.  Edward
watched
the faces of the nearest from his hiding place.  Their hopefulness slowly gave way to disappointment as the silence reigned.  Silence was the way of a panther, not a man.

Then came a cry. 

First, soft, then stronger - a victorious, human cry. 

Mahanta’s figure surged up from the grass, hefting the carcass of the panther over his head. 

“
T’ley’to’ni
,” cried Nockwe.  Literally
it meant
,
“
Death God,
”
but
he was certainly using it as a curse
.  Edward cursed, as well.  Though he was glad
to see
Mahanta
alive, he did no
t feel relieved.
  The shock overrode any sense of that.  The wiry young man was shaking the panther over his head like a trophy. 
Edward’s scientific mind was not willing to absorb it all.  He doubted his own perceptions
, as a magician might watching another illusionist’s tricks
.

Nockwe muttered
,
“He lives.  He shall be a god.”

Mahan
ta’s fulfilled a prophecy
…
Edward wondered what Nockwe meant by “god”.

“What does this boy hope to do?” Nockwe asked himself, vocalizing Edward’s own thoughts.  The words echoed
between Edward’s ears.

To the left of Edward came an angry Onge curse.  Edward jerked his head in that direction.  No more than twenty yards away, an older Onge was screaming and poi
nting directly at him
.  The thin grass did little to hide
Edward
from that angle of view.  “Nockwe!” shouted the
native
.  “Behind you!  Th
e white man sneaks behind you!”

Nockwe was startled, but it only took him an instant to regain his composure. 
The last thing Edward remembered seeing was Nockwe’s face.  He looked sorry
. 
His foot
crashed into Edward’s head.  It happened so fast that the missionary could hardly perceive the motion. 

Edward was unconscious before he hit the ground.

“Tell me the story,” Edw
ard croaked.  His head spun
. 
He could not remember how to ask
, “What happened?”

“What story?” asked
Tomy, the teenage Onge
who sat at his side.

“Tell me the
story of what was and is,” said Edward.

He squinted his eyes to take in the rest of his surroundings. 
He
lay in a corner of the largest hut he had ever seen. 
T
here was no hut like it in the village.  It was simply colossal by all Onge standards.  He tried to crane his neck to take in
the entire
scene, but a sharp pain thwarted him.

He lay propped up in a b
ed of straw on the dirt floor.
  Only the chief of the village slept on such a bed
as this.

His head throbbed as though it might hemorrhage or explode at any minute.  Some sort of demon was climbing back and forth along his optic nerves and scalding him to his core.  The pain sharpened further as he came to full awareness.

What happened?  Just tell me.

Tomy leaned in to examine Edward closely.  The boy looked tired, as though he had been watching Edward for quite some time.  His eyes were wide.

Tomy’s stare spurred Edward to start
a self-inventory.  Aside from the sharp pain along his nerves and his immo
bility, his throat and mouth felt
parched.  As he waited for his attendant to formulate an answer, he caught a water
bowl
in his peripheral vision.  He deliberately looked over at it.