Prose Rory Milhench

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Rory Milhench

Rory grew up in Belfast but moved to Dublin to pursue his Ph.D in History at Trinity College. He graduated in 2015 and has spent much of the subsequent period travelling in Asia, South America and Europe. Rory is currently working on a collection of short stories.

The Shaman

In the desert of a faraway land, between the ridges of arid coast, there were many turquoise bays. It was common for the adults to reach the cliff edges and dive to the bottom of the water, searching for pearls. The children grew up on stories of mystic powers and seers who could delve into the elements and extract profound wisdom.

One common practice of this area was to seek counsel with a learned one, who could help you understand the universe more deeply. It was especially common to visit this Shaman when you turned fifteen. In this society, fifteen was when you were considered an adult, and ready to prepare your mind for more complex endeavours. Girls and boys of this age were sent to the Shaman to learn of their “death day”. This was the time, predicted to the specific day of a month and year, when you would breathe your last breath and the life would pass from your body. It was seen a positive thing to know; if your death day was imminent, it would encourage you to live your life fully with the time you had left. If the Shaman gave you a day that was a long way off, you would feel relaxed, knowing you had ample time to live your life in the way you wished, and your fear of death would vanish. Many teenagers, with still some trepidation, approached the quiet hut of the Shaman and sat for an audience with him. Some left the hut stunned, afraid of the coming months. Others were soothed, understanding then that they would live to an old age, sad perhaps that their own father had managed only fifty years of colourful living. But always the Shaman was able to deliver an accurate prediction, with the later deaths of these adolescents corresponding to the day, month and year he had foreseen. Many people wondered if the Shaman knew his own death day.

But there was one special girl whose visit marked an unusual and revolutionary change in the Shaman. She had come from another village, after hearing of his powers of insight. This girl, named Freya, came to the Shaman and sat before him. His eyes trembled a little, as he tried to gauge the quality of her face. It was a calm face, but it had known much sadness. Freya was trying hard to open herself up to him, so that he could deliver an answer. The Shaman busied his hands with the liquids at his feet. They shared a dark concoction with a sharp taste. He lit the sacred wood and chanted a series of mantras. He rubbed his fingers on the rings of feathers. But no answer came to him. He was like an animal swimming through cloudy waters; he knew that he could continue moving forward, but that he would not see anything. He did not panic. Instead, he took an unusual decision. He asked Freya to tell him the story of where she had come from. This was quite unusual for the Shaman, as normally the teens remained silent in his company. But he could tell she was different; she smelt slightly of the roots that were found over the Great Mountains, and her clothes were swarthier, as if they had been dyed. Freya cleared her throat, steadied her frame and said:

“Where I come from there are many people, who live to enjoy the land. We are not in the city, but live away from it, so that it cannot see us. But a darkness has befallen my people lately. The rivers are empty of fish. The skies above are blackening. The crops have infestations. No more babies are being born. What we once considered permanent is now obviously passing. And so I have come to you, in the hope that I might be delivered an answer.”

The Shaman reclined slightly at her speech and asked her: “You have come to know if your life too shall pass, so that you would know if your community will also perish?” “Yes”, the girl Freya answered. Still the Shaman felt that he could not deliver an answer; out of the mud he could see no light. He pondered for a moment before asking her “Where is this community of yours?” Freya replied “A day and a half away, maybe a day if we catch the light.” The Shaman looked at Freya with a resolute expression and announced to her “I will return to this place with you, and I will deliver my prediction there, so that all the villagers can know it.”

And so it was that the Shaman and the girl Freya travelled the distance over the Great Mountains which flanked the ocean desert. As they approached nightfall they readied a small camp for the night under an escarpment peppered with cedar trees. They resumed their trek early the next morning and as they were approaching Freya’s village a Marshall spotted them and cried to the others “Ring the bells, as if to say, they’re coming.”

The Shaman spent one day and one night at the village and dispensed of his usual airs. Normally he made an effort to seem otherworldly, withdrawn and untouchable to his native villagers, but here he was more of a normal man again, keen to find answers, and happy for himself to be less of a mystery than usual. After spending some time inspecting the area and speaking with the people he summoned Freya for a private audience. He told her: “Your rivers are empty because every man tries to find as much fish as he can for himself, without considering that his neighbour is also hungry. The skies blacken because some of you do not dispose of your waste; you burn it at sundown behind the ridge. The crops fail because you overwork the land, with all your vegetables grown in the same place. There are no more babies being born because the people have lost confidence that this could be a beautiful place, so they have stopped trying to conceive. They have become cautious with life. You have come this way to be apart from the city, but you have kept its competition alive.”

Freya took a moment to absorb the Shaman’s words, before probing a little further. “What are we to do then?” The Shaman replied “You must learn to work together, for the common good of the village. You cannot have one man reign as king of a certain area, with the others below him as subjects.” “But”, Freya countered, “won’t I continually be called upon to help with this or that project, always working, never idle? I am busy enough as it is, working to help my father with his crops, his ailments, the repair of his house.” “The reason”, the Shaman continued in a quiet tone, “that these things damage us is that they are personal trifles. Important as they are for you to do, as his beloved daughter, but wouldn’t it be grander if others wished to involve themselves in these matters too, voluntarily and with keen hearts? Then life might feel different, and not as it does now, when each person hears a different ticking sound in their ear, motoring ahead without looking at the others. Otherwise, to continue in the old way, there are too many items on the list, there is too much to think about. That’s why the small things are such a burden to you. Because they are eternally individual. You must learn a new way.”

And so it was that Freya and her village began a new way of working, with their focus on cooperating on the land they shared. For the Shaman, this episode was a major event in his life. It made him think about his own village and how they lived. Indeed, how he had lived all these years. Wasn’t he to blame, for all those predictions he made about the villagers’ death days? Wasn’t it natural that after they knew this day, they retreated away to protect the time they had left, and no more reached out to the others? And wasn’t it probable that his own village could fall victim to the

same extinctions that threatened Freya’s people? These questions opened a new well of thought in the Shaman’s mind, and important things began to happen as a result. When he returned to his own village he looked upon its inhabitants differently. He could see this truth about them; each person wanted to feel good in his yard, that he was both beside and away from the others. Also, that each person was performing tasks, but without a meaningful end. The Shaman was alarmed as he traversed through the village on his airy walks. He noticed the amount of activity that took place to disguise the fact that nothing was happening. Why is nothing happening wondered the Shaman? He thought long and hard about this difficult question and his thinking reached a shocking finale. He realised that his people had never been taught to create or build anything as more than individuals. There had never been a shared human imagination, built as a great fire, to which all added kindling. Indeed, purpose in his society was established by one’s particular skill, which you were then known by. So the butcher was one who had talent with the cleaver, the hunter the man who could stalk the animals on long prairies and the Shaman himself rose to prominence because he could lay out his nightdreams on the floor and dance his way through them. Social networks became organised around who it was useful to know. “You should speak with such and such” was the common response to the voicing of a problem or gripe. Never had they considered that their defining characteristic could be to be a member of a community that believed X or designed X or adopted X or endorsed X.

It meant each person rose and fell like a wave in the ocean: doomed to action that had no greater consequence than to keep an engine running, without a destination in mind. This, the Shaman, realised, would have to end. He gathered before the village and proclaimed the founding of a new way, so that all could hear. “There is too much outside of us- we are the subject of too many appointments and tests. It is nature that overturns this sacking; we realise that the only object that exists is us. This is what we feel when we stare along the mountain peak. That I must be restored to this, to feel it, as the only thing that could feel it, the sensual being. Once we have all felt this, then we can form a society; full of unique members, who are rid of their disgust for others.”

Soon enough the people in the Shaman’s village began to work together more, and no one came to him to ask of the day he expected them to die.

“So,” the Shaman said to himself out loud, “we are thinking on the eyes of our brothers and sisters, and not just our own.”

And so it was that this encounter with a spirited girl from a neighbouring village led to the prosperity of two unique and charming countryside communities, which were able to live in a way that sustained themselves with laughter and bountiful joy. But, I hear you ask, were these communities real, or do they only find sovereignty within an imagination? This is the very question that the next citizen will come to you with, so you may prepare your answer to this conundrum now.

(Rory Milhench)