AFTER EVERYONE WHO WANTED HEALING WAS FINISHED, I took my place on the wooden bench. Kitiar scanned my body. “I know what you want,” he said, and laughed. “But remember, it is dangerous—if you believe in Death, if you believe in danger!” Then he camayed a mist of alcohol across me and began working with the branches. His chanting took me away from myself. I began to see geometric images that twisted themselves into other images, patterns merged to form flowers and animals, I felt cold and had the sensation that I had been transported into a dank cave. Suddenly I heard a shrill scream, then a flutter of wings, and I felt a wind blow over me. I realized that my eyes were closed. Opening them, I saw a huge bat hovering above me, its eyes peering down at me, its flapping wings fanning me. I screamed. The bat flew off.
 

Then Kitiar was helping me sit up. “I’m just an old shaman,” he said. “Yet I can tell you that you must not be afraid. If you want to shapeshift, you have to have courage. Ask yourself: What do I fear?”

“You said it was dangerous.”

“If you believe in danger...you must drop that belief.”

“There is no danger?”

“Depends on how you look at it, doesn’t it? In any case, it is the biggest problem you gringos have. You’re obsessed with avoiding risks. I see it every time you bring people here. They always ask about the dangers—snakes, alligators, spiders, jaguars. We Shuar welcome death as our birth into another world.”

“I agree—in principle. It’s the actuality of the thing I have difficulty with.”

“What is it you fear about the shapeshift?”

“That I won’t be able to return,” I blurted out.

“And what’s wrong with that?” He took a drink of trago and handed me the bottle. “I’ll show you,” he continued. “it’s my time, you know. I must leave all this work to you and others.”

“What are you saying?” I felt anxious over all his talk of leaving. He had said he would become a bat. I had seen enough not doubt him. So, what did he mean about leaving?

“You’ll see. You’ve already seen it, in fact. My last lesson for you is one of courage. You must not have fear. Take risks.”

Major John Perkins