Through his shivering, sweat-drenched agony, the shaman managed to nod.
‘It is done,’ he rasped, his breathing ragged. ‘He is brought back … from the Shadow Forest, back … into the world … of the living. He must rest … for a long time … but he will live.’
The woman turned to blaze a glance of awestruck wonder over her shoulder, staring for a moment at the man called Lightning Bird.
‘I felt what you did, brother, I felt it all right. My whole body, my soul is on fire, Lightning Bird, on fire with your energy!’ She turned her attention to the road again but continued to speak. ‘That was the light against the darkness,’ she whispered, cracks of bright flame shining their writhing brightness through gaps in the mummy wrap of jaded cynicism in which she was so tightly cocooned. ‘Fuck yeah … that was the light against the darkness.’
‘I’m not done yet,’ Lightning Bird groaned, shivering as if overcome by hypothermia. ‘There is still William, and Zakaria. Child, another tree, please,’ he said, looking at Daekwon, who nodded, wide-eyed, and retrieved another tree.
This time the shaman placed his right hand on the tiger’s blood-soaked flank, with his left fingers again dug in the soil of the bonsai pot, and once in position he began to chant. As he did this, the woman pulled into a scrapyard, rumbling over the uneven ground and gravel, and drove to the rear of the lot, backing into a space between two stacks of half-crushed vehicle hulks. The attendant at the gate, a grizzled Hispanic man in a grubby uniform, watched dispassionately, chewing mechanically on a stick of gum. Once the furniture truck was parked, he quietly locked the gate, trudged over to the electromagnetic crane, climbed in, and used the machine to begin piling compressed hulks on top of the truck, burying it under a pile of twisted, rusty steel.
‘I hope y’all kids went to the bathroom before we left,’ the woman muttered, transfixing the teenagers with a withering gaze, ‘coz we gon’ be here a while. A long while.’
‘Is Jun,’ asked Chloe, her voice tremulous with fear and anxiety, ‘my friend, Jun, is gonna be—’
‘Your boy will be fine,’ she snapped. ‘You fuckin’ blind, girl? My friend just gave your friend his life back … and if the energy he used to do that means that one a’ those two dies,’ she continued, pointing at William and Zakaria, ‘then I’m gon’ be pissed. I’m gon’ be real pissed.’
Chloe’s mercurial temper flared up with the fury of a slick of gasoline kissed by a naked flame, the abrupt inferno searing away her trauma and fear with its hungry flames.
‘We didn’t ask to get involved in this, this … whatever the fuck insane shit is going on, lady!’ she yelled. ‘And it’s you people, it’s your fault my friend got shot in the first place! Don’t tell me that you’re gonna get pissed with us, fucking don’t! That’s fucking bullshit! It’s your fault that all of this is happening, not ours! We’re just, just innocent fucking bystanders!’
‘Nobody in this world is just an “innocent bystander”, kid, nobody,’ the woman growled. ‘Y’all are mixed up in shit y’all don’t know the first goddamn thing about. Fuckin’ First Worlders, thinkin’ y’all are innocent victims. Ha! That’s rich, that’s real rich, when y’all are eyeball-deep in blood! Every single a’ y’all got blood on your hands, whether you acknowledge that shit or not. Don’t get in my face you lil’ bitch, coz you don’t know a fuckin’ speck a’ jackshit about nothin’!’
‘Hey!’ Daekwon shouted, his voice loud and sharp like an unexpected gunshot. ‘S-, stop, just stop! Stop arguing, dammit! We all s-, stuck here together now, l-, l-, like it or not. So p-, please can we just stop fightin’, please!’
Lightning Bird, meanwhile, was completely absorbed in his singing, chanting, whispering and muttering, oblivious to the unfolding argument. As the ritual grew more intense, though, neither the woman nor the teenagers could maintain their focus on fighting, and they stopped, staring in awe as the shaman’s hands shone in the gloom. The old bonsai tree started to wither, crumpling into itself as its rich green leaves abruptly turned brown and dropped in swathes from its gnarled, rapidly cracking branches. The tiger’s bloody fur, meanwhile, began to curl and smoke, with tiny tongues of flame sprouting and hissing and dying in spans of half-seconds. Once more the healing process rocked the entire structure of the van with a pulsing, almost tempest-like force, and again, when the tree finally died and the soil in the pot became dry, lifeless dust, Lightning Bird collapsed against the side of the truck. This time, though, his symptoms of extreme fatigue were worse; soaked with sweat, he was convulsing and frothing at the mouth, his eyes stark white and rolled back in their sockets. A long, wordless wail oozed from his chattering jaw, and his spine arched backwards, almost to the point of snapping.
The woman scrambled into the back and knelt down next to him, squeezing one of his trembling hands in hers, and stroking his wet forehead and perspiration-soaked hair with her other.
‘It’s gon’ be all right,’ she whispered, ‘don’t worry brother, you gon’ be all right. Just rest, just rest now. I’ll take care a’ things from here. You can’t afford to do that again, you just rest up now.’ She breathed out a long sigh and then looked at Zakaria, who had slipped into unconsciousness. ‘Looks like I’ll have to do what I can with a field dressing for now. Won’t be the first goddamned time I’ve had to pull shrapnel out a’ somebody,’ she murmured, retrieving a first aid kit from her combat jacket.
While she retrieved the items she needed from the kit the teens huddled together around Jun, who was still unconscious, but breathing in regular intervals at a steady, healthy rhythm. Daekwon placed a ginger finger
