Mom, I'm Bulletproof

Chapter 14: Origin Story, part 4

What happens next comes to Amy only in hazy, dreamlike phases. Even though it's happening to her in the present, it feels like pondering long-forgotten memories.

She's on her back, and someone has a hold of her ankles, pulling her along the desert floor...

A light is shining in her face, not the sun, but a bluish electric light...

Strong hands gently rubbing a cool, wet substance on her right arm...

Deep voices singing in an unrecognizable language all around her...

A scratchy rock, almost like a piece of coral, being pressed against her forehead...

* * * *

She is no longer Amy. She is a point of view, blasting over the land at high speed. She sees a city in the distance and, in the space of less than a second, she's there, inside the city, flitting about from one person to the next, seeing life through thousands, millions of other people's eyes. So much happens and so much information is absorbed in the spaces between seconds and milliseconds that time starts to lose meaning.

She blasts onward, from town to town, city to city, population to population, absorbing the lives, minds, memories, intellects, feelings, hopes, disappointments, and dreams of millions of people of all walks of life, as the beats between seconds widen and widen, until she only exists in between seconds, instead of moving from one to the next.

Then it's gone. All the emotion and heartache and experience of an entire population that she just drew into herself suddenly floods out of her. She just gained the intimate closeness of millions of individual souls at once, and, in an instant, she lost them all. She missed them, all her new friends.

* * * *

Opening her eyelids is painful, and requires enormous physical strain and mental concentration. She doesn't bother trying to move the rest of her body.

"Rest now," Lev says. "You've been through a lot, but you still have a long way to go."

She wants to thank Lev, but all the movement she can manage is to blink at him. He smiles and nods, clearly getting the message.

Then it occurs to Amy that she does not remember a man named Lev.

* * * *

Amy rests on a slab of red rock, carved and smoothed out over the years into a makeshift bed. It should be uncomfortable, she knows, lying on rock, but it somehow seems perfectly contoured for her, and she felt like she could rest there forever.

Her skin still felt hot, but no longer burning. She could tell her lips were cracked and chapped, no doubt another side effect from two days alone in the desert.

Her clothes had been removed, but in a caring, respectful way, not in some sleazy sexual way. She is now dressed in a simple white robe that keeps her arms revealed but covers her legs down to her ankles and bare feet.

Amy gazes at the red rock ceiling above her. This was some sort of cave, she knows, but is it underground, or maybe carved into a cliff side somewhere? It didn't matter. It felt like home.

* * * *

Lev came by every so often to check on her and give her a few words of gentle encouragement. Amy doesn't actually know him, but it's more like she senses who he is – that he is a healer, a leader, and a teacher. He's like the combination of the best grandfather and doctor a person could imagine. Amy isn't sure of what's happening to her, but she knows she is comfortable and content.

After sleeping for a few hours, Amy wakes to find Lev and his men standing in a circle around her. She tries to speak, but still can't summon the strength to move her lips.

"It's all right," Lev says to her. "It's time for the next round of ritual. Stay calm and let yourself be one with the land."

She does as he says, although somewhere in the fuzziness of her mind she wonders how long she's been in this cave.

* * * *

More time passes. Amy drifts in and out of sleep. From time to time Lev and his men, all wearing their matching grey, loose-fitting clothes, circle around Amy, humming relaxing-sounding notes to themselves, and speaking in a language, or possibly languages, that Amy doesn't find familiar.

In time, Amy summons up enough strength to turn her head to the side, she can see now that an I.V. has been set up next to her. She figures this is what's been keeping her sustained, despite the lack of food and water for some time.

After more bouts of sleep, Amy is finally able to open her mouth and wet her lips with her tongue. Lev calmly feeds her water and chicken soup broth. It's the best meal she's ever had.

"I don't know if you remember me introducing myself," he says,"but my name is Lev. These men and women are my family in spirit. We arethe Warrior-Shamans of the Mojave."

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Next: Not even a scratch.