Episode 2: The Female Shamanka

Kashvi

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. 

But never in all her sixteen years did Kashvi expect to see a dragon, much less a dead one.

Heavily pregnant, Kashvi left the cooking rice at the firepit to her mother’s supervision and waddled after her younger sister. She passed the village fence and stepped onto her sister’s footprints. For whatever reason, her headstrong sister left the village against father’s wishes and headed towards the eastern mountains.

Splashing through the last unharvested rice paddy, Kashvi momentarily lost Shadi’s trail as it disappeared in the unexplained patches of sterile ground, turning the valley into barren wasteland. Two summers ago, many of the valley monkeys had contracted scabies. Most of their fur fell off, leaving dry, sickly patches of skin.

Now the valley itself was ailing, and everyone was worried as their home deteriorated. For the past thirty days, Kashvi had rolled away from Qarin’s garlicky breath and wiggled out from beneath his dead-weight arm long before dawn to meet her mother, also a shamanka, in the sacred hut next to the chief’s thatched roof lodge. 

However, the eternally merciful Gleymother had yet to reveal what was happening. It was the all-knowing Gleymother’s eyes that had nourished the Lupuna tree in the center of the village, her magic that had grown it from babe to giant and into the towering warrior with muscled boughs and shaded visage.

But no matter how many prayers Kashvi and her mother uttered or how many fibers of incense they’d burned, the eternal Gleymother had been silent about the valley’s slow death.

In the cavernous silence of Gleymother, another voice had begun speaking. This new voice was not sharp like a spear, self-righteous like an older brother, nor brusque like a chief who wanted to dismiss you because he was busy. No, this new voice reminded her of her father, calling to her with a tenderness and kindness that made her want to hear more from this warm and tender voice.

Gentlefather.

That’s what she’d started to call it.

Ugh! Blasphemy.

But the suspicion lurked in the back of her mind: Did Gleymother know of her unfaithfulness and therefore refused to speak?

Jogging through the rice marsh, Kashvi approached the thick copse of banana trees, jolting to a stop to avoid a banana cluster to the face. The bananas were shriveled and gray, and when she pushed them aside, the stem cracked and they fell. Kashvi lowered herself to one knee, inhaling the unfamiliar odor of rot, her fingers tracing the outline of a crisp banana leaf. She set her palm on the tree and tapped it: its bark fell off like ash. Alarm coursed through her chest, her spirit trembling.

Gleymother, what is happening?

No charms of hummingbirds twirled about her, twinkling gaily in somersaults. No sound competed with her ragged breathing, not even the incessant shrieks of the capuchin monkeys.

Gentlefather?
She scanned the rest of the banana trees: no leaves, no fruit. They would starve if this continued.

A scream rent the humid air—Shadi. The yucca field was less than a hundred feet away. Kashvi jogged across yet more barren earth, her bare feet slapping up dust where there once was peat-filled fen.

She could hear Shadi crying just beyond the sharp-leaved pineapple plants, but she couldn’t see her. Hurry, hurry. A pit suddenly gaped open in front of her, and Kashvi dug her toes into the ground to keep herself from sprawling headlong into the hole, arms cartwheeling as she fought to keep her balance on the edge.

She peered down over her round belly. Azure blood pooled around the desecrated Gley, its face carved, its body wingless, its feet clawless. As had happened for days now, her frail stomach forced out its contents. Fear tremored through her, the suspicion that she had contracted malaria surfacing yet again. Sweating, trembling, she wiped her mouth with a shaky hand and pushed her mahogany braid out of her face.

Shadi tried to climb up but slipped, tumbling down into the blood-soaked mud. Covered in filth, she scrambled halfway up the hole, desperate to escape. “Get me out, Kashvi. Please,” she rasped.

Kashvi leaned over the pit, her protruding stomach making it difficult to bend and grab Shadi’s small, ten-year-old hands to yank her from the crater of death.

Merciful Gleymother of the Lupuna tree.

Once the girl landed in what was left of Kashvi’s lap, Shadi began weeping anew, tears sliding from her face onto her sister’s orange-beaded top.

Shadi had no signs of physical injury, but Kashvi looked her over once more. One of the girl’s chocolate braids dangled past her chin, which was smudged with dragon blood. Her narrow eyes, irises blue like their mother, darted from Kashvi to the dragon and back again, panic and fear causing her breath to come in short gasps.

Kashvi licked her thumb and rubbed an offensive bloodstain from Shadi’s round, childish face. “It’s okay, you’re okay,” she said, pulling her close again and kissing the top of her braids. “Relax. You’re safe.”

“I want mama,” Shadi said.

Kashvi shook her head, her chin grazing her sister’s forehead. “We go straight to chief.”

Her sister froze. “But women can’t go before—”

“We must,” Kashvi said. “It is our right as shamanka, as women who hear the voice of the sacred Gleymother. We must be strong and tell him what we have seen.”

Shadi frowned. “Father will not like it.”

It was the Vallis People’s way to share news with the head of the house, but this, Kashvi decided, would bypass tradition. She sighed, considering her husband’s disapproval. “Neither will Qarin.” She urged her sister to her feet and stood, still lightheaded and nauseated.

“You okay?” her sister asked.

She brushed her soiled hands on her swollen belly. “Don’t worry about me. Come. Let’s hurry.”

Shadi sprinted ahead to the village, but Kashvi chanced another vomiting fit by glancing down into the hole a final time. She didn’t recognize the spear embedded in the holy dragon’s chest: it had no markings to distinguish its owner. Unease wiggled in her chest like a piranha about to attack.

The killer was nameless.

Or it was a ghost.

As soon as Shadi and Kashvi returned to the village, they hurried to the chief’s lodge, but their mother, Adweta, intercepted them, her grass skirt rustling in anxiety, her eyes round like mini egret bird eggs. “The spirits,” she said to her oldest daughter, clutching her quartz necklace to her chest. “They are coming for you.”

Kashvi’s water broke.