“Because,” Habasha answered himself, “sometimes we see wonderful things happening. We cannot help the whole planet, but we can help some of the planet, and you seem more than willing to let us be a part of your lives. I am pleased. Pleased with what I hear, pleased with what I see.”
“My message to you is go where you are wanted. My message to you is that there are some people on this planet who really want what you have to offer, and they will love you and thank you and work with you if you will look for them. We spirits look for those who are willing to work with us and to receive us, and that brings us pleasure because then what we have to share is meaningful.”
“And I say, too, there are people on this planet, among your friends and acquaintances, who do not wish you well, who plot against you, and will cause you pain.” Kathy Dart raised one hand, and Habasha whispered, “I warn you. I have come now to warn you.”
“Who?” Jennifer asked at once.
“I believe, Woizerit, that you do know.”
“Who is trying to harm me? I don’t know!” she said, raising her voice.
“You are an unusual one, Woizerit,” Habasha said. His voice had slowed its cadence. “I see spirits, good and evil, who surround your aura and fight to dominate your soul. Do not be afraid. You are in good hands. Here at the farm, the healing graces will conquer the evil that confronts your mind. Much is being asked of you, Woizerit. You have suffered. You must be careful.” Kathy Dart raised her hand, cautioning her. Her head was cocked, as if still listening to a faraway voice.
“How do I protect myself, Habasha?” Jennifer asked, pulling his attention again in her direction. “From these evil spirits?”
“You want answers always, Woizerit. Answers are only part of the solution. What is more important are the questions.” His voice had shifted. There was an edge of anger in his tone.
Jennifer felt it but kept pushing. “I need the answers,” she insisted. “My life, this life, you say, is in danger.” She caught herself from saying more. She glanced at Eileen and saw her friend furiously shaking her head.
“He who seeks danger receives it. He who looks for happiness finds it. Your unconscious has been responsible for getting you where you are. So you say that the unconscious part of you is somehow manipulating your affairs. Perhaps you are more responsible for your actions than you know. But how can you come to a place in life where you are able to take conscious control of your life and not be the victim?”
Habasha stopped speaking. Kathy Dart’s eyes were open again, and they were blazing, as if blue candles were shining from the irises.
Habasha stopped speaking, and Kathy Dart suddenly stood and stepped away from the chair. Eileen and several of the young students pulled back to give her room, but Kathy moved with the assurance of a sleepwalker through the crowded room.
She had turned away from the sofa, turned toward the wall of students, and Jennifer knew at once that she was coming for her. She should have left when she had the chance, she told herself. Now she couldn’t move. It seemed as if she were frozen to her chair.
Kathy Dart stepped to where Jennifer was seated and, clasping her hands together, raised them to her neck and carefully took off her crystal. Grasping the stone, she placed her hands gently on top of Jennifer’s head. Jennifer closed her eyes, afraid of what was coming, afraid of all the faces watching her.
“O spirits of the past, spirits of our lives, leave this woman, my Woizerit. I implore you in the names of all our gods to seek peace with her. Rise up now and flee us. Rise up and flee us, I, Habasha, ancient of ancient, Dryopithecine, Cro-Magnon, warrior of Atlantis, poet of Greece, priest and lover, knight of the Round Table, Crusader for Christ, pioneer, and profiteer, command the evil spirits that possess this woman to flee this plane, these dimensions, this human body.”
Habasha’s voice had risen. It filled her mind and rang in her ears. She felt the pressure of Kathy’s hands on her head, felt the weight of the crystal, and then she felt the fire. It started in the tips of her toes, seared the soles of her feet, then snaked up through her legs and thighs. It tore her flesh from her bones, flowing to the center of her body in a ball of flame.
She heard her own cries of pain as the fire consumed her body. Flames licked her breasts, rose up around her throat, and set her hair on fire.
Kathy Dart grabbed her then, before she fell, before she disappeared into the shock and pain.
Nada waited for the sun. She had made her paint from the reddish-brown clay by the river’s edge and carried it back to the cave. Now, stacking the clay onto thick green palm leaves, she carried the paints to the wide back wall that faced south. Soon the sun would reach the entrance of the cave, and she would have only a few hours of sunlight in which to paint clearly the pictures that exploded like stars in her mind and filled her up. She could almost taste her desire to depict the scenes of battle that she’d heard as a child, the great battles between her people and the hunters from the north.
Ubba had called her to his side when he saw the pictures she had carved on the cave walls and told her to use her magic hands to paint the battle so that his sons, and the sons of his sons, would see what a warrior he was.
“No man among us will forget the day we battled and killed the Saavas,” he whispered, “and they will remember me when my spirit leaves the earth and goes to sing with the birds.”
Her mother’s heart had swelled with pride, and she, too, had felt her heart fill. She knew she would never be hungry again or want for a warm bed, for Ubba would take her into his own cave and give her to his son, Ma-Ma.
But with the excitement was fear. If Ubba did not like the sketches on the wall, if something displeased him, then he would banish her from the clan. She knew of others who hid in the woods, who slept without fire, and stayed in trees to save themselves from the wild beasts.
Sometimes she caught glimpses of their shadows, following the clan as it migrated with the sun, trekking north after the bears came out of the trees and the frozen north to slap at the fish in the swift waters of the Twin Rivers.
Stories were told in the depth of the caves, stories of Ma-Ta and her brother Ta-Ma. Stories told, too, of Zuua and Chaa and the sons of the old woman Arrr, who was killed by the Spirits, struck down with the fiery flash of lightning. Ubba had banished her male offspring to the forest, fearful that the Spirits would strike again with flaming sky-bolts.
As Nada got ready to begin, others of the clan left their fishing and came up from the river to sit hunched at the entrance of the cave. They sat and watched her with their large brown eyes, waiting for her magic on the wall. Nada paid them no mind, though she was aware of their silent looks. She felt proud, though she did not know the word for her feeling, and busied herself with her drawing tools, slivers of rock that she sharpened herself.
Ubba approached the hillside with the aid of a bone, helped, too, by the sons of his sons, who huddled around him and bayed for favors. One carried a stool cut from the trunk of a tree. A dozen men had labored with the tree stump and fashioned for him a round chair, smoothed with river water and the oil of pigs.
Now it took three of the sons of the sons to carry the chair up the hillside to the flat entrance of the new cave. Nada waited there, hunched beside the gray cave wall.
She waited for Ubba to begin his tale of fighting the Saavas. As he remembered his battles, he told of how he fought with blood dripping into his mouth, it was a tale Nada knew, a long story that she had first heard when she still sucked her mother’s teat. Still, she listened, tried to find the pictures in her mind. She tried to summon up the images of Ubba’s past, the evil dreams that had come to him, and followed him even now, many winters after the spear had sailed through the jungle trees and struck his throat, leaving him to whisper for the rest of his life. She listened with her eyes closed, still sitting on her haunches, thinking of him as a young man, fleet as the deer of the north.