The Last Shepherd

6. SEI

| 31 »« 6 s e i That night I dreamed of the Mamu. I was standing on the edge of a cliff, so close that I had to lean back to keep from falling. But I didn’t step away. There was something I needed to see. What, I didn’t know. But I could feel it pulling at the center of my chest, causing my heart to race so that I was not sure if I was excited or scared. Below, the cliff’s broken face fell away to disappear into clouds that hid the world from me. A breeze moved through the clouds, causing them to shift and reveal green trees, the red tops of houses, the white backs of grazing sheep. Then I heard a Basque irrintzina. Oxea told me shepherds used the call to signal to each other across the Pyrenees. “Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-yaaaaa!” The cry came from another cliff, directly across from me. There, the land was different, thick with trees that formed an unbroken wall of green. Out of that wall stepped the Mamu. Like man before he was man. Mountainous and wild. Face cut with scars. Teeth chipped with age. Dark hair matting his body. Tree-limb arms hanging down to end in short, thick fingers. The Mamu never changed. He was the same now as he had been when I was a boy. Time moved around but not through him. He was forever. The Mamu threw back his head and again let loose his irrintzina. It echoed through the chasm between us. And as it died, the Mamu stood motionless, looking at me, waiting for me to answer him with my own irrintzina. | 32« » But I didn’t. Instead I said, “Ez—no.” The Mamu cried again, “Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-yaaaaa.” I cupped my hands to my ears and said, “I don’t believe in you anymore.” The Mamu shook his body as if my words were drops of water that could be thrown off. I yelled, “I don’t want you.” At that, the Mamu turned his head to the side as if confused—as if I was speaking a language he didn’t know. “I’m a man now,” I said. “Go away.” For a moment, the Mamu didn’t move, perhaps hoping I would change my mind. But I didn’t. Finally, the creature’s shoulders slumped; he lowered his massive head, walked back into the wall of trees, and was gone. And I thought: the Mamu was the thing I needed to see and put behind me. A childish thing that a man doesn’t have in his life. And that was what I was now: a man. Sending him away only proved it. I could go. Leave this place. But then something new stepped from the trees. I bit the corner of my lip. Had I failed? Was the Mamu returning? But then I saw that it wasn’t the Mamu who emerged this time but my father. He cupped his hands to his mouth as he called to me. But the wind had picked up, and it blew his words away. I wanted to call back—“Dad, I’m sorry.” But I knew that it was no use. My words, like his, would be lost in the distance between us. Still, my father kept calling. And from the forward nodding of his head, I could see that he was saying three words. But what they were I couldn’t tell. I leaned over the cliff’s edge, trying to hear what he was saying. At my feet, rocks tumbled into the clouds as rain rose. A single drop struck me again and again in the middle of my forehead. The smell of lemons floated over me as I opened my eyes to find Jenny poking her index finger against my skull. “What the hell!” I sat up in bed. “Get your lazy butt up.” Jenny walked over and jerked open the curtains. Sunlight flooded my bedroom. I pulled the bedcovers to my chest. | 33« » “You know I’m naked under here.” “Good for you,” Jenny said. “How’d you get in?” “Door was unlocked,” Jenny said. “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” “Did you also forget that you asked me for a ride into town this morning?” “No . . . I just thought . . . you know . . . after yesterday and all . . .” “It...