Olikea traded away an ivory bracelet for a large brass knife in a sheath ornamented with mother-of-pearl and amber. The handle of the knife was made of a dark hardwood. I questioned the value of such a knife as tool or weapon, for I doubted that it would hold an edge. That did not seem to be Olikea’s concern. It came with a very long belt of white leather. This she fastened carefully about Soldier’s Boy’s middle so that the strap rode atop his belly and emphasized the swell of it. The knife, nearly as long as my forearm, hung grandly at his hip. Olikea grinned her satisfaction and then hurried us away from the smith’s tent.
Women laughed and chattered, men with bangles in their ears and braids down their backs stalked past us, and small children in all manner of garb raced from stall to stall. The atmosphere reminded me of a carnival.
A bronze-skinned woman in a long red tunic accosted us. She carried a tray of small glasses filled with exotic liquors in bright colors. I smelled anise, mint, and juniper, but more penetrating by far was the scent of strong alcohol. Olikea waved her grandly aside. I wondered if the woman’s skin coloring was natural or a cosmetic. I looked at the backs of my now-dappled hands and wondered why that should matter. I myself was now buried deeply within dapples and fat and overshadowed by my other self. How could I ever again expect to tell anything about another person by looking at her body?
I was pondering this when I abruptly realized I had retreated into a literally “senseless” state. I was no longer hearing, seeing, or smelling the market. I had become an entity of pure thought, a being wrapped in a body but deprived of its apparatus. I was suddenly drowning, smothered by flesh. My awareness leapt and struggled like a stranded fish, and then abruptly meshed with Soldier’s Boy again. I felt air on my skin and I longed to take deep gasping breaths of the cool stuff. A thousand scents—smoke, spices, sweat, cooking fish—rode the air. I devoured the sensory information. I could see and I joyously beheld the moving crowd of brightly clad folk, the noon light glittering on the bright and glistening sea, and even the shell-strewn path we followed. I was like a prisoner granted a glimpse of the outside world again.
I suddenly perceived that was exactly what I was. I was trapped in a body that was no longer mine, and only by sharing Soldier’s Boy’s awareness could I sense anything.
I feared I was losing myself in him. I should tear myself away, I thought, but could not bear the sensation of solitary confinement in his body. With a sinking heart, I knew I was becoming resigned to my subordinate existence. I was losing the will to fight him.
I looked through his eyes in a daze of despair, looked out at his world as a passenger looks out of the window of a carriage. I could not control where I was carried nor what I saw. I became passive with hopelessness.
We passed the deserted husks of two stalls. At the third, Olikea stopped.
Waist-high stone walls defined the space. It was a generous area, the size of a cottage. Long poles of bleached white driftwood supported a brightly colored awning. The tasseled edges hung down, flapping in the ocean breeze. Soldier’s Boy had to stoop to enter. “Let me be the speaker here,” Olikea warned him in an undertone.
“I shall speak whenever I decide to,” he rejoined gruffly. He looked about at the displayed merchandise, his fascination tinged with horror that gave way to dim recognition. Here were the tools and pharmacopoeias of the shaman’s trade. Bundles of feathers, strings of teeth, and dried herbs on the stalk swung in the open breeze, suspended from the poles. Cleft crystals sparkled and chimes tinkled. Nameless bits of dried animal organs occupied a row of fat ocher pots. Tightly stoppered glass vials of oil jostled against polished stones in an array of colors and sizes.
A plank shelf held a succession of copper bowls brimming with trade items. The first held necklaces made from snake vertebrae. Olikea lifted one and the strand moved sinuously. She gave a small shudder and dropped it back in the bowl.
The next bowl held an assortment of shriveled mushroom caps. “For dream-walking,” she noted aloud, proud of her knowledge.
Tightly crinkled green-black dried leaves filled the next copper bowl. They looked like leather to me, like dried lizard skin. Olikea started to stir them with a finger, then paused uncertainly, her hand hovering over the bowl.
“Dried seaweed. To strengthen the blood of a Great One after the exertions of his magic.” The woman’s voice was as desiccated as her wares. She came tottering out of a curtained nook at the back of her stall.
She was a Speck, but so old that her dappling had faded to a faint watermark on her skin. Her hair was very white and so thin that I could see her pink scalp through the tendrils of it. Age had spotted her scalp and her dark eyes were filmy. Both her ears were pierced with many holes, and in them she wore small earrings of jade and pearl. With both hands she grasped the broad head of a white walking stick. It looked like it had been fashioned from one bone, but I could not think what animal would have bones of that size.