Chapter 13 2004 #2
The chief snapped his fingers in front of my face, startling me from the thought and bringing me back to the moment.
In Somali, he said, “Returning your voice is not magic.”
His voice was not what I expected. It was high-pitched, almost like a child’s, and singsongy, the sort of voice you might expect from a leprechaun or Rumpelstiltskin.
He smiled, revealing a row of large yellow teeth with at least two missing. “But we will let the cuckoos believe that it is.” He nodded toward the house, where Boodo and the others stood watching, and gave me a wink.
I wasn’t sure what to think about that. I didn’t consider Profe, Boodo, her daughters, or Astur cuckoos, yet I very much liked the idea of the chief and I being in on a secret together.
So I pantomimed locking my lips and throwing away the key, which made him laugh, a surprising sound like Christmas bells.
He scratched his chest beneath his tunic.
“To get your voice back,” he said, “all you need is to listen to what I tell you.”
His deep-black eyes continued to peer into the back of my brain.
“Can you do that?”
I nodded and strained my ears so I wouldn’t miss a word.
“Good. Now watch and listen.”
I did both with great intention.
“Watch and listen,” he repeated, the words warbly and light like water flowing over pebbles in a stream.
“When I tell you to close your eyes, do so. Understand?”
I squeezed my eyes tight.
“Not now!” he said sharply, causing my heart to skip a beat as I snapped them back open.
“Only when I tell you,” he said, his voice returning to its melodic chirp. “And not tight. Close them like you do when you are tired and it’s time to sleep.”
His own eyes appeared to get heavy, the lids hooding until they were halfway closed, and mine responded as if my muscles were tied to his.
“Take a deep, slow breath in.”
I pulled the brittle air little by little into my lungs.
“And as you release it, I want you to close your eyes.”
I did as he asked, suddenly tired despite not feeling the least bit sleepy the moment before.
“As I said, this is not magic. You are awake. If you were not awake, you would not hear me. But you do hear me, don’t you?”
I nodded. It was a strange sensation. My eyes were closed, and my thoughts were detached and floating, sort of like they were the moment before I fell asleep. Yet I was keenly aware of everything he was saying.
I sensed him leaning in, then felt the gentle pressure of his cool palm on my forehead. The skin was dry, and I could feel rough patches on the tips of his fingers.
“Keeping your eyes closed, I want you to look up toward my hand.”
I lifted my eyes upward beneath my lids.
“Up, up, up,” he encouraged.
I forced my eyeballs higher.
“Up toward the sky.”
I strained for the stars and imagined the moon above us.
“You will feel pressure.”
I felt it, the same feeling I had each time I fought back tears when I didn’t want to cry.
“The more you look up, the more the pressure will build.”
Vaguely, I was aware of him taking hold of my right wrist with the hand not on my head, his bony fingers wrapping around it, but my focus was on looking up and the immense force forming behind my eyes.
“Your lids are very heavy, so heavy it feels as if they are made of concrete.”
He was right, the weight so much they were immovable.
“And your eyelashes are glued tight.”
They had sealed together like the flap of an envelope closed fast with glue.
“You cannot open them, and the more you try, the more they lock tight.”
My heart ticked up, terrified that not only would I not be able to talk but that I would also no longer be able to see.
Sensing my panic, he said gently, “You’re okay. As I said, this is not magic.”
He was wrong. His power was very strong. With a few words and the touch of his hand, he had rendered me sightless, unable to open my eyes.
“I have no real power over you. The power of each of us comes from within.”
His words did not soothe me. No matter how I tried, I could not pry my lids apart.
“When I count down from three, you will be released, and your eyes will open.”
With barely a pause, he said, “Three, two, one.” His palm lifted from my forehead, and his fingers opened from around my wrist, and just like that, my eyes blinked open with no effort at all.
I stared at him, my breath puffing rapidly in the cold air.
He sat stone-still just as he’d been when we started.
I felt on the verge of tears, upset that, despite what he’d said, he had wielded his power so effortlessly over me.
“Close your eyes again,” he said, “and place your hand over your mark.” He nodded toward my nevus.
Still upset but unsure what to do about it, I did as he asked, cupping my hand over my right eye and tentatively closing my eyes again.
“Feel its warmth.”
Strangely, though my nevus had always been the same temperature as the rest of my skin, heat pulsed beneath my hand.
“It has energy that emanates from within.”
Dull but certain, I could feel it, a warm throb like the thrum of a heart.
“In each of us there burns a spirit flame, a deep belief in oneself that must be nurtured and never allowed to go out.”
Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump . . .
The nevus beat as if it had a life of its own.
“And so long as it exists, we exist and cannot be destroyed.”
Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump . . .
The pulse matched the cadence of his voice.
“The power of each of us comes from within,” he repeated. “For you, tadpole, from the moment of your conception, your spirit flame burned so bright it could not be contained.”
It sounded similar to what Profe and Boodo had always said about my nevus, that there was something within me that, from the start, needed to get out.
But hearing the chief say it, a mystical, powerful stranger, made the words more meaningful.
And though I didn’t know it sitting on the dock in that moment, those tiny seeds of hope, planted in my young mind, would take root deep in my soul, where they would germinate in the fertile, receptive soil to grow into something remarkable.
“The mind is the greatness, and the body simply a means it uses to run faster, jump higher, shoot straighter, sing, roar, or do anything you set it to do. The head rules, and if you learn to truly understand that and trust it, you will understand everything.”
The thrum behind my hand quickened until it beat fast as a hummingbird’s wings, and I pressed my hand against it.
“A body can be broken by another, but never the mind.”
I thought of Bart and the twins and how my mind had detached in those terrifying moments as if innately recognizing its need to separate from the physical to be saved.
I was still thinking about it when he said, “It’s time now to open your eyes, and when you do, we will never speak of this again. Three, two, one.”
My eyes blinked open, and I looked around, surprised. I was on the dock, shivering from the cold, and my nevus was exactly as it had always been, a lifeless, lumpy patch, the exact temperature as the rest of me.
Yet . . . Something had changed. I felt it, something undeniably altered.
The chief sat across from me, still again as a gargoyle, except for the thinnest smile quirking at the corner of his ancient lips.
Thank you, I said in my head.
His left brow arched, and as if that small gesture was a switch, the second heartbeat returned, so light that, had I not just been made aware of it, I might not have noticed.
Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump . . .
The inner life force I did not know I possessed until that moment, surfacing.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice bright and clear as a bell.