The thin linens began to chafe Daniel’s knees, and he shifted uncomfortably, tensing at the soreness that soured his bones. Two hours’ worth of walking on rippled dirt and muddy stones radiated up his legs in a current of dull pain. He longed to lie prone on the soft rug beneath him, squeeze out all the sourness until his body dried up, shriveled by the heat of the sun. The treatment here was entirely unexpected. He had solely trudged on through the wet woods in the hopes of resting on a tartan couch, supported by velvety pillows as he reveled in the wonder of exotic smells and sights, letting the sight of Marshall and his smug, barely apologetic smiles vanish with a plume of heady smoke. “The company is tight this year, we could only afford to promote those who worked above and beyond…” The man knew only how to apply salt, not ointment. As Daniel left the office he did not miss the sounds of Joseph excitedly calling his wife with good news. Joseph, with a smile as smug as Marshall’s, eyes wet and unblinking and dull.
Daniel was reminded, uncomfortably, of the medicine man’s blind assistant.
His grey eyes had stared right past Daniel as he politely offered the thin linen clothes, focusing on some dim point he could nearly feel tingling on his eyebrows. Unnerved, he had snatched the clothes away almost rudely. They were bundled with rough twine that scraped his fingers, and Daniel could not help but scoff at this little touch that only reminded him more of the silliness of this venture. Out of every place he could have traveled to, he chose this obscure little temple with the shriveled medicine man and his assistant with clear-colored eyes. He should be finding his peace on a beach back home, where sand was warm and pliant against his feet, not sparse and rough on a rickety wooden floor.
The medicine man was now perched, crow-like, upon his cracked stool. Daniel chanced a peek at him, and received a reproachful look in return – “Aren’t you listening to me?” Dutifully, Daniel closed his eyes and focused once more on his legs, throbbing with the methodical pain only stony streets could deliver. The little temple he had slaved to discover lay much too far away from the roads for any car to safely navigate. Instead he relied on the words of unhelpful merchants he had encountered by the roadside. “Merchants” was perhaps too kind of a term - it was too elegant and mystical, spilled over with colors that stung the back of his eyes. These men were more like street vendors, yapping carelessly behind dirt-soiled stands, urging him to pick up some dusty little trinkets that had that simple “exotic” flair about them that Daniel so loathed. He thought of the medicine man’s blind assistant, who wore a raggedy hemp creation on his wrist, who slowly twisted it in contemplation as he stood guard outside the door, waiting for something to happen.
As if he could see something that Daniel could not.
Perhaps he too was thinking of the noisy streets he bought that bracelet from.
The clanging, chatty clamor of the roadside market trembled in Daniel’s ears, filling the hungry silence that leaded down his shoulders and made him more exhausted than he already felt. He sighed and tried to clear his mind. No, feet first... In an attempt to check his progress, he tentatively tried to wriggle his pinky toe. The movement jerked the feeling in his foot back to consciousness, and Daniel struggled not to sigh. It seemed as if the only way to check progress was to halt it. What use was meditation if you couldn’t feel it happening to you? Of course, his wife liked to talk about how her spiritual guide helped her discover her “inner core.” At most, he was surprised that the spiritual guide hadn’t discovered an empty bottle of hair dye in the depths of her soul. Not that she was utterly thoughtless, though. Daniel glanced at his clothes, neatly folded in a clean bundle that stood in stark contrast to his humble, wind-streaked surroundings. On their last anniversary she’d given him a watch so enormous, he could feel its weight nearly shifting the bones in his wrist, slowly stretching his tendons. Here, the sunlight glinted off the ridges of the watch and pricked the corners of Daniel’s eyes. He thought it seemed special, like a little reminder or a faint premonition, and he liked the way it felt.
As if the sun was saying hello.
“You feel like your mind has been stripped of the shell it rests in, peeled back in pieces. Your senses can breathe perfectly through you. Here you can taste the ancient flavor of the soil, feel the green of the earth. Inhale with your thoughts. You can smell the light that rests upon your skin. Touch it…drink it until it fills your lungs with warmth.”
The old man looked so restful in front of him. His eyes were so lightly closed that Daniel could catch the barest glimmer of wet eyesight under the heavy eyelashes. His leathered skin looked oddly dull underneath the afternoon light, tightened in anticipation that Daniel could feel himself....he became aware of the warm splotches across his legs from where the sun filtered through the window, lacy with years of dust and rusted aging. The temple smelled like copper. He felt very cold and pale against the richly colored rug on which he sat uncomfortable, always on the verge of squirming. The rug was soaked with hand-embroidered bells, little droplets ringing on the wide expanse of blue. He could almost taste the metallic song upon the tip of his tongue, and his eardrums trembled with anticipation – he was so close and so cold and the bells kept gently pulling at his skull, sucking in his skin and blackening the nervous breaths in his body, he was so cold and pale he could have puffed into wind, simultaneously pricking the hairs on his arms, yet not entirely there…
A creaking noise choked his little foray to regeneration and all at once the bells exhaled with a sad sigh and Daniel flooded back to the downtrodden temple in the green damp woods across from the laughing street market in a place far from home. He opened his eyes and strangely the room was somehow not the same and the light pricked at his eyes in a different way and left an distorted impression on the negatives of his memory and he thought he had returned into the wrong body but just as quickly he turned and saw the medicine man was gone, his clothes and watch and wallet and other valuables he couldn’t remember had been spirited away by a hunched figure Daniel could see was on a mad dash far away before it vanished behind a cluster of green.
Stunned, Daniel leapt to his bare feet with sand still clinging to the bottoms of his feet and dashed to the door. Outside sat the medicine man’s blind assistant, who seemed utterly unfazed by this turn of events as he gazed distantly at something nobody else could see, slowly turning his little hemp bracelet.
“He took everything,” breathed Daniel, still feeling regeneration tingling at his fingers, shaking in a hot streak of anger. “He was lying, he’s just a thief and I believed him!”
The blind assistant stopped playing with his bracelet with a defeated sigh, and turned towards the agitated sounds that were crowding out his contemplation.
“Yes, you did,” he said quietly. “But don’t you feel so refreshed?”
