Song of the Shaman by Annette Vendryes Leach

recorded you singing the song? For my report, of course.”
    Zig shrugged. “I don’t care.”
    Bruce hastened to open a file cabinet under his desk and took out a small portable cassette recorder. He opened the deck and removed an old tape, rewound it on the end of his pencil, put it back into the machine, and closed the lid. Then he pressed the red and black record buttons and moved the cassette deck close to Zig. Zig closed his eyes and began to hum, then to sing, a soft, tuneless lamentation, his voice unlike a child or a man’s. It was as if an instrument flowed through him from a faraway land.
    At once the sound transported Bruce to another time and place. The air was thick with herbal smoke. He saw himself peeking through a slit in a tent, watching, listening to a tribal ceremony, taking notes on a damp piece of paper, the ink skipping, notes he needed for his dissertation…
    When the singing ended Bruce stopped the tape. Fascinated, he looked at the boy. Zig was motionless.
    “I’d like to talk to you some more about this, Zig. Zig?”

1899
    Panama City, Panama
    IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT when Louise and her father finally went to bed. Charles continued to grumble and cling to logic. Seeing that Maud was stable at once pleased and baffled Charles, and convinced him not to disturb Benjamin’s service. Louise found it impossible to sleep thinking about all that had happened. She replayed scenes in her head, picturing Benjamin’s rigid expression when he grasped Father’s arm. At dawn she tiptoed from her room to Maud’s doorway and found Benjamin sitting in the same place she had left him—his body statuelike, unflinching. Louise was afraid to enter the room when he opened his eyes.
    “Are you all right?” she whispered.
    His face glowed. “Everything was just like Grandfather said.”
    He was exhilarated and she sensed it, too. He spoke of how through his song he had communicated with the spirits that beset Maud well into the night. Louise hung on every word.
    “Were you able to drive them out? Are they gone for good?” she asked, inching over to him.
    “Only time will tell. Grandfather said I must feel it to know. There can be no doubt.” Benjamin skimmed the disheveled room.
    “But he taught you the way to heal.”
    “About herbs and songs—yes. He also told me that in Sibo’s world there is no teaching or learning, because there is no belief. There is only certainty.” He paused for a moment, then added, “When one becomes the flute, the song of healing can flow through to others.”
    She looked down at the scratched wood floor.
    “I don’t think I’ll ever understand.”
    “But you do. Because you are here with me, you do.”
    He was looking deep into her again, past her eyes and face, past her insecurities and heartache and emptiness. He looked until she felt something real, a point of light inside her. She felt the gentle warmth from that small beam spread over her entire being.
    MAUD’S PROGRESS WAS STEADY but slow, making Benjamin’s stay longer than expected. He awakened in Louise a passion for drawing despite her father’s claiming it a frivolous activity. Rosa got used to the smell of boiling herbs in the kitchen alongside her pots of stew. Charles reimmersed himself in his work at the canal. Even Maud, feeling better at last, resumed her natural state of coquetry, soaking up the attention of the handsome young shaman and making eyes at him when he rubbed her forehead with his tinctures. Louise made her medical journal entries, but more and more her descriptions veered from words to portraits of Benjamin. As the days passed they grew more comfortable around each other. Benjamin started recalling bits of his early childhood in the city before he went to live in his grandfather’s village. While lingering in the garden one afternoon he had a sudden memory.
    “I remember running along a thicket of bushes that led to paned doors…very much like the ones here.” Deep in thought, he