Page 68 of Ascendent
“You must go back into the world, Sasha.” Kilaqqi pressed his palm to Sasha’s cheek. He smiled. “You must go back into the world and fight these demons. You will fight them in starlight. You will defeat them where they attack this world.”
He stared into Kilaqqi’s gaze. He saw the oceans of time, the sands of history. Stars cascading on waves, moonlight that had shone for an eternity of eternities. Did Kilaqqi know? Did he know Sasha was heading to NASA? That he was going into the heavens? Did he know everything that there was to know, forward and backward in history?
“If you did not need to save the world, I would ask you to stay.” Kilaqqi patted his cheek. He sighed. “You could be a great shaman one day. Your bear spirit is strong. You are a very special man.”
“I’m not—” He stammered, sputtered. “I’m nothing. I’m just from Norilsk. My great grandfather was a prisoner in the gulags. My family has always been nothing. And now they’re all dead. I’m all that’s left, and I’m nobody. I’m nothing.”
“You are exactly who you are. You are Sasha Alexanderovich Andreyev. You are the son of the ancient men who hand printed cave walls. You are the son of scientists who first peered up to the heavens, who first counted the stars in the firmament. You are the son of men who believed they could puncture the roof of the world, sail amongst those pinpricks of light. See the faces of the gods overhead. You are the predecessor of men who will soar beyond the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. You are the creation of stars being born, of the universe’s endless cycle of life.
“Every atom of you was created in the heart of a star, Sasha. Yours and your love’s, created in the same moment, of the same atom, and then scattered for a billion years. The calcium in your cheek bone, the iron in the blood that pumps faster through your heart when you see your love. The eyes you see with, that bears the image of your beloved on every micron of your cells. You knew him once inside a star. You know him again now, on Earth. You will know him again in the future, in another form. Your love is imprinted on this universe, in all its intricacies, all its perfections, its imperfections, all the ways it twists and turns. And when you reach the end of time, your love will still be there with you. Because he is of you, and you are of him. And you will always be you.”
Time unfurled, ribbons of night and oceans of starlight unspooling, falling, cascading like rivers that turned into waterfalls, that swept him away in the current of forever, that tipped him end over end into the darkness of space, past Mars, past the moon, past the navigation satellites, the military satellites, satellite radio, past the humming ISS, down through the outer limits of the atmosphere, the first drag and tension against his body, the first roaring wind against his soul. The sun shifted from a coppery wink to a blazing disk, a golden medallion that warmed his bones.
He plummeted farther, his fingers dragging through clouds, tearing apart sunbeams as he rode the skies, as he flew, finally flying without his MiG, without his jet. Exultation sang in his blood, the joy of the eagle, a purity so clear, so fresh, he felt reborn. Stripped of the atoms of his shame, burned away like a chrysalis fracturing. His ice entombment was over. He was alive.
His eyes opened.
He was on his back, lying on a bear skin pelt in the center of the valley. He was naked. The sun was rising, tickling the horizon through the trees, casting radiant light up through the sky. He remembered riding the sun, remembered reaching across the horizon. He blinked. The memories settled within him, a part of him, but no longer vivid. Something that lived within his bones.The human mind is not large enough to contain all the knowledge of the spirit quest,he heard as a whisper. Maybe from the wind, or the dawn.
He sat up. His stomach rebelled, clenching and tearing in two. He rolled, scrambled on his knees, and puked in the grass, sour reindeer piss mixed with bile. He heaved again.
Drums stopped. He only noticed their presence by their absence. Kilaqqi rose, and he crossed the grasses to his side, kneeled, and rubbed his naked back. His drum was made of reindeer hide, with paintings of the heavens, Bear, and the underworld etched on the front. His drum stick was carved from a single piece of wood, shaped like an eagle in flight.
“This tree was struck by lightning,” Kilaqqi said, holding out his drum stick. “Very powerful, for casting shamans into the upper and lower worlds.”
“Did you come with me?”
Kilaqqi smiled.
Sasha groaned. His head throbbed, and his stomach clenched again, squeezing around nothingness. “What was that?”
“Reindeer juice. Muscimol. The reindeer, they eat the mushrooms that grow on the taiga. The poison doesn’t harm them, and they filter it out. We drink their piss to experience the mushrooms as gifts from the gods. Blessed by the reindeer.”
He heaved again. His stomach was empty, and only rancid bile came up, dripped from his lip.
Kilaqqi laughed. He slapped Sasha on the shoulder. “It is a trip, huh? The spirit journey is not for the faint hearted, or the weak willed. You are stronger to have survived it.” His eyes twinkled. “Let’s get back to camp. They will have sacrificed a reindeer for you. You need to eat, build your strength!”
Sergey. “I need to go home.”
“You will. And you will be whole when you are there.” He stood and held out his hand. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirteen
Bonfires and drumswelcomed Sasha and Kilaqqi back to the summer camp. The smoke was different, sweeter, less like corpse rot and decay. Sasha followed Kilaqqi through an archway made of smoke, let a group of women wash his body with smoldering smudge sticks of fragrant pine branches. He wrapped the bear pelt tighter around him, trying to cover his nakedness. Everyone had seen everything already, but still.
He shifted the pelt lower, tightened it around his hips.
A cluster of people were working around a cooking fire. The sacrificed reindeer hung from a rope tied around its ankle and thrown over a tree branch. Parts of the reindeer had been cut off in whole, the skin stripped, the ligaments removed and separated, the bones delicately taken from the carcass. An entire reindeer skeleton was being reassembled on a decorated fur, surrounded by bowls of fire, pine boughs, and antlers.
Kilaqqi led him to his yurt, gave him back his clothes. His trousers were filthy, stained with dirt from his collapse the day before. He tried to brush off the dried mud as best he could. Kilaqqi slipped back into his worn and faded jeans, tied his leather belt and pouches around his waist, and donned his iron antler headdress. “Leave your shirt off,” he said.
The paintings Kilaqqi had drawn on his chest were smudged into a red and black mess. He looked like he’d gone body surfing in a mud puddle. Sasha dropped his sweater and followed Kilaqqi.
They were seated side by side at the head of a long line of leather skins, each decorated with ribbons on the edges, stitched with scenes of bears and reindeer, the stars above, trees that stretched through to the underbelly of the world. He picked out moments he recognized. The cave with Bear. The ceiling of the highest heaven. The land of the dead.
The bones suspended in the tree branches whistled on the wind, light melodies and dancing tunes, sun-warmed music that seemed to caress Sasha’s mind, paint images of light and happiness on his soul.
Drumming started, not the ceaseless repetition of Kilaqqi’s drumming the night before, but a festive, vibrant dance. Men and women danced together, laughed, dragged their children out and danced with them. Roasted reindeer meat was passed around. Sasha embarrassed himself with how fast he ate, how much water and warm reindeer milk he chugged down. Fresh blackberries stained his fingers. Fire-blackened turnips and carrots made the rounds, along with potatoes and onions. Kilaqqi showed him how to wrap strips of reindeer and vegetables in cabbage leaves, then laughed at him when the first bite sent everything sliding out the open back.
