Durch Ferne Welten und Zeiten - 11. Chapter 11: Places of Power

Chapter 11: Places of Power

Over the next few weeks, Joe, TomTom, Adam, and I went to kivas—places of power—including some of the most ancient ones. At each one, TomTom and the local shamans reached out to Phillip’s world, to his shaman.

We were not successful. Uncle Jim said he had an idea, but would need TomTom’s help for a couple of weeks. TomTom and I talked before he left. He was sad that he would be alone for that long. I reminded him that Casey was living with Uncle Jim, and that TomTom thought Casey was a nice boy. “See how Casey reacts to you,” I told TomTom. “If he seems receptive, ask him to share.”

TomTom wanted to know if it really would be okay with me if he shared with Casey, and I reminded him of our talk about being boyfriends. I also reminded him of the words in the book, that love shared is love multiplied. He said he understood, and then grinned. “And if you find someone, someone cute and worthy of you, you ask them, too.”

Uncle Joe and I stood on the porch. Johnny Dashee, Uncle Jim’s husband, had come to take TomTom to their home. Johnny’s Hummer hadn’t left our sight before Joe spoke. “We cannot waste the next two weeks. I have arranged for you to be admitted to the kiva at _____. The shaman there is Alan Redrock. He is young, but accomplished. He will expect you. Take the truck.”

I arrived at the kiva in late afternoon. The Navaho Park Ranger on duty warned me that it was about to close for the day.

“My name is Oliver; I was sent here by Joe Leaphorn. I’m looking for Alan Redrock. Can you say where I might find—”

“That’s me,” the ranger said. “They told me to expect a bila . . . sorry, a non-Navajo shaman. I didn’t expect someone so young.”

I laughed. “They told me to expect a young but wise shaman. I didn’t expect to find a park ranger. Oh, and I’m not a shaman. I just know some—”

“There are no tourists left; it’s nearly closing time,” Alan said. “Come with me, please?” He hung a chain with a ‘closed’ sign across the path, and led me into the eastern entrance of the kiva. He locked the door behind us and flipped a switch. A battery of high-power arc lights lit every corner of the kiva.

“If you don’t mind? Would you turn off the lights? I have a gasoline lantern—”

“Sure,” Alan said. He switched off the lights. The only illumination came from holes scattered high on the walls, the holes through which the sun would shine at different times of the year. It took only moments to pump the lantern to pressure and light it. Alan led me to the floor of the kiva.

“This is one of the largest kivas. It has been reconstructed as closely as possible to the original, and has been opened to tourists for seven years. It is still used for ritual, and at times is closed to visitors.” He paused. “Sorry. That’s what I say a dozen times a day.”

“Please don’t be sorry,” I said. “I am interested.”

He continued his story. When it was over, he asked. “I was told to offer you all possible help. What may I do?”

I invited him to sit on one of the benches beside me, and opened the book. “Here is a chant. We do not have the herbs, but we don’t need them at this point. I will recite the chant. You may accompany me—”

“I’ve seen that chant,” Alan said, “I’ve seen it before. It’s—” He abruptly stopped speaking.

“It’s on a gay web site,” I said.

He nodded. The light from the gasoline lantern was not as bright as his blush. “Yes . . . I read . . .”

“Please do not be embarrassed. I am on the team that posted the story—”

“You’re that Oliver?” he asked. I nodded.

I had read the chant so many times I had memorized it; Alan focused on the book. We began. It took a few seconds, but we felt the cadence, and quickly synchronized our voices. Alan’s tenor and my baritone harmonized, and reverberated. At the end of the chant, Alan looked up, and then grabbed my hand. I nodded. I had already seen the vortex form in the center of the kiva.

However, he had broken both his concentration and mine, and the vortex disappeared.

“It’s real,” he whispered. “I knew it. You really are a shaman!” He leaned toward me and kissed my cheek.

“Oh, shit! I’m sorry!” he said, and pulled away.

“Please do not be sorry,” I said. It took only an instant to close the book and set it aside. I put my arms around him and pulled him toward me. “Please do not be sorry,” I said, again, and kissed his cheek. He trembled in my arms, so I released him quickly. Funny reaction. He blushed when I “caught” him reading a gay web site; but his kiss seemed both instinctive and sincere. Wonder . . . He interrupted my thoughts.

“It’s nearly 6:00; you can’t drive back to Window Rock, now. Will you stay the night?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I’d like to try the chant again, tomorrow, before or after the kiva is open to tourists. Is there a motel—”

Alan interrupted. “Not one you’d want to stay at; besides, I’d like you to sleep—I mean stay—with me.” He was blushing, again.

I thanked him. “May we stop somewhere for supper—”

“My nephew and his boyf . . .uh, his friend live with me. I have to feed them. It’s not too late to throw something together.”

It was easy to convince Alan to pick up take-out, which included both Navajo and Tex-Mex tacos, as well as burritos, refried beans, and rice.

Alan led the way into his home. I was still kicking dust from my boots when a little tornado ran into the room and slammed into Alan. “Tex-Mex! I smell Tex-Mex! Oh, who is that?”

A teen walked into the room a little more sedately. “Hi, Uncle Alan.” He waited, but raised his eyebrow in question.

“Boys, this is Oliver, adopted into Salt Clan, and a shaman. He’s here to do some work at the kiva, and will be staying with us for several days. It was his idea to bring home the food.”

I didn’t want to correct Alan in front of the boys, so I let it slide that I was a shaman. Maybe I could clarify that, later. It didn’t help my plans when the older boy spoke.

“My name is Jacob Whitedeer,” the older boy said. “In kiva, I am Nastas. This is my friend, Ethan Cooper. He has not yet been admitted to kiva, but his nickname is Hok’ee. I think that will become his true name, as well.”

“I’m very happy to meet you, Jacob also Nastas. I am Gaagii, raven.”

“Raven is your spirit guide? Raven is a trickster and a thief!”

I laughed, and then realized Jacob didn’t think it was funny. “I don’t have a spirit guide. They said my name was for my hair. I’d like to talk more, but I believe your boyfriend is going to starve to death if he’s not fed.”

Jacob stared at me, and then nodded his head. “Yes. We need to talk, and Ethan does need his supper.

“Nourishment,” Ethan said. “Require nourishment.” He imitated a robot in both voice and his movements, but that didn’t keep him from being the first at table.

It was hard for Alan to ask, but I encouraged him, and eventually he did so. “Will you sleep with me? I can make up a bed in the guest room if you’d rather . . .?”

“Alan, being your guest is an honor; sleeping with you is a greater honor. We worked together in harmony in the kiva. I would like to explore that harmony, further.”

He blushed. Alan’s really cute when he blushes, and he does it a lot. “Thank you, Oliver. And thank you for sharing your true name with the boys. You honor them. My true name is Ata’halne.”

He who interrupts, I thought, and managed to keep a grin from my face.

I had enjoyed sex with TomTom for several weeks. It was beautiful. But TomTom was a boy, and I was always afraid, somewhere deep in my mind that I would hurt him. There was none of that with Alan. He was not only my age, he was also strong and sturdy. Our sex was “athletic,” in a word. We took nearly an hour, an hour of grasping, groping, and wrestling before we reached a decision on who was going to be top and who was going to be bottom. In the end, it didn’t matter. We looked at one another, eye-to-eye. We reached a peak of ecstasy together. We came at the same instant.

Barrone

“Oliver said he was afraid of hurting TomTom because he was a boy. Are you afraid of hurting me? Are there things you won’t do because you’re afraid you’ll hurt me?” Rudy asked. He and Alexis had cuddled after sex and before sleep. Their voices were low.

Alexis hugged Rudy. “Rudy, forever-beloved, it’s not the sex but the love. If I need a workout, many tweens here could give me one. Yes, even when just hugging you, I have to be conscious of my strength and your size. But I’m not afraid. If there’s anything we’re not doing now, we’ll be able to do it when you become a tween—in another seventy years or so, I’d guess.”

Rudy nodded. “Someday, I want to meet TomTom. Please?”

“When Master Criticus says you may create a gate, we will try to reach him. I cannot promise we will succeed,” Alexis said.

Hok’ee’s Story

The next evening, Alexis continued reading Oliver Linden’s story from the Book of Heroes.

“I’ve learned some of the language of the People; besides, there’s this web site that has the translations of names on it. ‘Hok’ee’ means abandoned. Why does he have that name?”

Jacob and I were alone for the first time since we had met. I took the opportunity to ask this, even though I was afraid of how he might react. Jacob did not disappoint me. He reacted in an intelligent, rational, and caring way.

“He knows what the name means, and we talked about it. Yes, he was abandoned, as are nearly a third of all children of our family—what you call a tribe, but which we call a nation.” Jacob looked at me. His eyes bored into mine.

“Jacob, brother, please do not let semantics come between us. I have only a few words of your language; you know both English and Navajo. If you agree to help me understand, I promise not to jump to conclusions before asking you.”

Jacob nodded, as if he truly understood the commitment I had made. “Ethan was born to __________. But that clan does not accept the current definition of . . .” Jacob hesitated, but then said firmly, “ . . . love. Ethan and I found one another a few months ago.

“I was walking home from school, when I heard a ruckus in an alley. Normally, I would have ignored it, but I heard a voice call for help.” Jacob shuddered. “It was a boy’s voice, a soprano voice from a boy who hadn’t passed puberty. And, it was not only in my ears, but also in my mind.

“I felt a pull toward the voice, and followed it. I saw a boy being held face down in the alley. His pants had been pulled down, and an older boy was kneeling over him. The older boy’s pants were unzipped, and his penis was erect. It was pretty obvious what was intended.

“I don’t know why—I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now—why I knew I had to do something.

“I pushed the rapist away from the boy. There was an unpleasant confrontation. And, there was something else: I felt a presence that gave me courage. It was enough that when the rapist and his friends realized I wasn’t going to back down, they cowered, and slunk away.

“The boy was Ethan. We have been together since then. When he is older, Alan will adopt him and he will become my brother. When he is old enough, I think he will become my lover.”

At Kiva

Alan and Jacob shared the book; I relied on my memory. We began the chant. The high tenor of the boy’s voice added to the harmony Alan and I had established earlier. The vortex formed. It was small and insubstantial, but it seemed stronger than before. It faded quickly after the chant ended.

“Alan,” I said, breaking the silence that had fallen. “You’ll have to decide this, but, it seems to me that the harmony of our three voices made the vortex stronger. What might happen if we added Ethan’s soprano? Does he have to be an initiate?”

Rather than answer me, Alan looked to Jacob. “Is he mature enough for initiation? Is he mature enough to keep a great secret, one that may mean the life of our people?”

Jacob didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Especially if you tell him how important it is, especially if you tell him how much you trust him, he is not only mature enough, but strong enough. I know this, for I know his spirit. But, I don’t know his spirit guide, and he does not either, for he has not completed a vision quest.

“I think,” Jacob continued, “that he and Gaagii both need to undergo vision quest.”

Rudy had taken the place of Petrus as Alexis’s pillow. A couple of the younger boys yawned. “Shall I continue, tomorrow?” Alexis asked.

“No! It’s just getting good,” Rudy replied. The others echoed this.

“Oliver did not write about the vision quest, or what spirit guide showed itself to Ethan. Those were secret. He did write that he saw Raven, who assured him that he would help Oliver be clever, but not a trickster or a thief.

Oliver Linden’s Story—Continued

I asked Raven how he could be other than true to his nature. He told me that he wasn’t accustomed to being challenged, but that he was also not accustomed to bonding with a bilagaana and an adult, at that. We seemed to come to an understanding.

“You are said to be a trickster, like Coyote,” I said.

“I am called that,” Raven replied. “Tell me, again, why you were adopted by the People.”

“I brought them a book that told of their magic and warned of a possible future,” I said. “I was adopted not as a reward, but to ensure that I would keep their secrets. Also, I think, so that I would continue to help explore the magic.”

“You tell the truth,” Raven said. “Oh yes,” he continued, perhaps in response to my feeling of disbelief in his ability to assess the truth. “Raven can lie; but Raven can also see what is a lie and what is truth.

“Your brother, Joe, said that he would give you something insubstantial. Have you discovered what that is?” Raven cocked his head and looked at me through only his right eye.

“A reason for living, and my name,” I said. “Before I came here, I was content to be a translator, creating nothing, but only repeating what others had said. Now, I find that I can use what I learned to help my family—my Dine family. I know I am part of that family because of my name—which is also yours,” I reminded him.

After the ceremonies were over, Jacob and I found ourselves alone.

“I understand how I got my name: for my hair, although someone may have been a fore-seer, since Raven became my spirit guide” I said. “I understand why you named Ethan, Hok’ee. But your name, it means ‘curved like foxtail grass.’ How did you get that?”

Jacob grinned. “Do you really want to know?”

“Well, yes, unless it would break a confidence or embarrass you,” I said.

“Only if you’ll have sex with me,” he said. He had dropped the grin. His voice was firm, without any quaver or hesitation. “I am adult, you know that.”

“What about Ethan?” I asked. “And Alan?”

“Ethan is still too young,” he said. “We cuddle. That’s all. And Alan? Alan lost his boyfriend nearly a year ago when he moved to California. He’s been alone since then. You broke him from his shell. Oh yes, I know you two—you’re really noisy, you know—and this is a small house! Anyway, he will think it’s a good thing.”

Barrone

“Well?” Chandler demanded. “Why did he have that name?”

“Do you really want to know?” Alexis asked.

“Yes,” Chandler said. “But only if you’ll share.”

“Hmmm. A pretty high price. Okay. It was his penis. It was curved upward just perfectly to hit the prostate of any boy he had sex with that way.”

“Wow,” Ethan said. His eyes were wide. “I wonder if there’s a spell—”

“You are not to put a spell on anyone’s penis!” Alexis said. “Especially your own.

“At least, not before talking to me.”

Oliver Linden’s Story (Continued)

There were eight of us. Jim Chee and his husband, Johnny Dashee had brought TomTom and Casey. I got a smile from Casey, and when I held out my arms, a hug. It was a good hug, and I think there was a promise of more that I read in his eyes. Oh, how I wished for the powers of empathy that I had read about in the book!

Joe Leaphorn had brought Adam and his new boyfriend—one of TomTom’s cousins from next door; however, they were too young to participate, and waited outside under the eyes of one of Alan’s co-workers.

The signs at the kiva told the tourists that it was “closed for a religious ceremony.” Alan let us in before dawn. We carried the bundles of clothing Jim Chee and TomTom had created. After Alan locked the doors, we opened the bundles. They contained moccasins, breechclouts, bands to hold back hair and to be tied to arms. Other bands, with bells tied to them, were for ankles and wrists. All were decorated with intricate, beaded designs. That’s what had taken Jim and TomTom two weeks to do.

Ethan got a stiffy—that’s what he called it—and giggled when Jacob helped him into the breechclout. Alan moved as if to quiet them, until Johnny said that their bond would strengthen the magic, and, besides, Johnny said, he got a stiffy, too, every time he put on a breechclout. That brought more giggles to Ethan, and grins to us all.

There’s little I can tell about the ceremony. Johnny was the Eastern Drum; Casey, Jim, and Tommy completed the drum circle. The chant was read by Alan, Jacob, Ethan, Joe, and me. Joe’s basso profundo rattled our teeth, and made the vortex even more palpable than we could have imagined.

Our success opened the door to further experimentation. After several attempts, we succeeded in contacting the shaman from Phillip’s world. He told us what happened after Phillip left and about the flower that reached Johnny Two-Horses. He told us what he and Johnny had talked about after Phillip and Argon had been transported to World. TomTom told him about Phillip’s adventure, and promised to try to send a copy of the translation to the shaman. The shamans talked about what was happening to their culture and the climate. They pledged mutual support. I cannot say more about that, though.

Barrone

“Oliver’s task at this place and time had been accomplished and he left soon after. TomTom and he continued to write to one another. TomTom and Casey did become boyfriends.”

“Did they go to another world?” Petrus asked.

“There are some stories I cannot tell,” Alexis said. There was no teasing, no humor in his voice. The boys understood. All but Petrus, that is.

Petrus gasped. “Then they did!”

“Think what you will; and think the most happy of things,” Alexis said. “That, and no more will I tell you.”

The next morning, Rudy was reading an old scroll, while Marty and Chandler renewed the magic in the lasers that illuminated the lab. When they finished, they sat on either side of Rudy.

“How did you learn the spell?” Chandler asked Rudy.

“The books—the ones Marty was translating,” Rudy replied. “The ones from the other Earth. Remember, this was my laboratory, some 5,000 years ago. The books were here. Marty—you had taught me the alphabet, remember? But you were more interested in the journal. I translated the grimoire.”

“Are the books still here? May I see them?” Rudy asked.

Marty unsealed the compartment in the workbench where the books had been hidden for centuries. “I haven’t looked at these since we came back,” he said. “After you’ve examined them, perhaps Andy should see them.”