Mani He

by Joseph Carrabis

Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

part 3

He awoke feeling limp and powerless. The weight of his body hung from his neck. The ground, about a foot beneath his feet, was moving rapidly and he could see enough of what was in front of him to know he was going uphill. Occasionally, he caught a glimpse of great catlike paws silently slapping the earth under him, but he couldn’t turn to see what beast it was. Hot breath coated his back and neck, and he felt a gentle shaking run through him.

Something chewed delicately on his neck and he heard a low, sultry, muffled female voice ask, “You awake now?”

“Uh-huh.”

The grip on his neck released and he fell to the ground. “Hold on while I tidy you up and get your circulation going.” A wet, fleshy rasp gently scraped up his back and bobbed his head from side to side. “What the...” he looked up and screamed.

Mountain Lion leapt back and spun with her back to him, snarling and baring her fangs and claws, her hair raised and her tail poofed. After a few moments, she sniffed the air then turned back to him. “What was it, Mani He? I see nothing.” She approached him quietly, with lidded eyes.

When she was close enough, she sat and stared off into space, as if watching something he couldn’t see, then licked one of her paws. Her head snapped at him suddenly, as if she’d just noticed he was there, and she stretched close enough to kiss him. One paw fell on his leg. Her eyes defocused and she sniffed him, her nose twitching with each breath. She purred, huskily and heavily. “What’d you scream for, child? There’s no one here but us. I might kill you, but before I do that, I’ll love you.” She rasped him lightly with her tongue, starting at his belly and running up his chest.

There was something in her eyes, something in the heat and sweetness of her breath that blurred Tony’s vision.

She licked him again, running her tongue up the inside of his legs. “What is your name, child?”

He felt an erection growing and told himself it was a dream, a bad trip, too much Scotch and not enough water. He shook his head until it cleared. Then he answered: “Mani He. Are you my teacher today?”

Mountain Lion purred and laughed, flashing her teeth and pulling her whiskers back flush against her face. It didn’t make him feel better. “Today and every day, Mani He. Just like everyone else.” She rolled onto her back and stretched, revealing her white furred stomach to him. “Be a dear and give a scratch, would you, love?”

He did and was surprised. The fur was much coarser than he thought it would be.

“Mmmm,” she purred. “We decided to do it this way because we thought it best for you. Not all the lessons at once, you know. You did good, Mani He. If you’d given me your shadow name, I’d’ve killed you.”

“That’d be one hell of a lesson!”

She rolled away from him and stood up, paused and licked her side where it had touched the ground. “A powerful lesson, yes.” She started walking farther into the hills, and he followed. She called over her shoulder, “But this you’d learn anyway, and probably too late; If you continue to live only in shadow, you’ll die.”

* * *

After a day of walking further up the mountain, Mani He sat on a rock and rubbed his thighs and calves.

“What’s wrong, Mani He? Why have you stopped?”

Mani He tried to stand and fell back to the rock. “Mother, I can’t go on. I have to rest. My legs are burning worse than an hour on a StairMaster at max.” He squeezed his thighs with his hands and sighed. “We’ve walked up these trails all day but we don’t seem any higher or deeper than when we started.” He tried to stand again and fell forward with his first step.

Mountain Lion padded back to the rock on which he sat. “You called me ‘Mother.’ Thank you.” She brushed his face with her whiskers then groomed his sweat from them. “What made you call me ‘Mother,’ Mani He?”

“I don’t know. I just came out of me, I guess.”

“Excellent, Mani He. You’ve learned another lesson, child.”

“Then maybe you can carry me like you did this morning?”

Mountain Lion laughed. “You’ve grown far too big for that already, Mani He.” Her eyes widened as she stared at him. Her irises pulled open and wide until he could hardly see them. “Besides, now we do something else.”

Before Mani He could move, Mountain Lion swiped across his belly with her paw. Her claws opened him up in five shreds. He looked down in shock as his stomach and intestines began to spill out.

He screamed and began shoveling his entrails back into his body as the blood drained from him.

“No!” hissed Mountain Lion. She knocked him on his back and rested a paw on each of his arms so he couldn’t move.

“Get off, you dumb bitch!” Tony screamed back. “I’m going to die. You killed me, goddamn you!” He turned his head and saw his stomach and blood sliding down the mountain trail.

“Relax, Mani He. What kind of a mother do you think I am?”

He struggled less, although he wasn’t sure if it was because of lack of blood or what Mountain Lion said. Shortly he stopped. The pain, intolerable at first, was gone. She got off and he looked at his gut. There were no marks, no blood. Nothing. It looked fine. Actually, it looked better. A word from the gym came to him and he fought not to laugh — he looked “ripped.”

“Am I dead?”

“Hardly, child. How do you feel?”

“I feel great.” He patted his abdomen and chest. Next he patted his buttocks and, trying to be demure, ran a hand over his crotch.

“Don’t worry, Mani He. Everything’s where it’s supposed to be.”

“What did you do to me?”

“Do you think you can continue walking now?”

He nodded, surprised at the strength he felt.

“That, little Mani He, is what I did to you. You must remember, none of us will ever harm you. We’re way different from most Two-Legs when it comes to that. What I did may have hurt you, but only because you had to let something out before you could let something in.”

* * *

Again they walked. Grandmother Moon was well up and smiled upon them, lighting the path to help Mani He see where he might trip. “I’m not tired, Mother, just curious. How much farther is it?”

Mountain Lion, who now walked beside him, said, “That depends on you, little one.”

“You mean I can rest if I want to and you won’t cut me?”

“You can do whatever you want, and I’ll make no promises. We walk to the west. Walk far enough, and you’ll find the place where your Red Path and your Blue Path meet, where this life goes into the next. But we also walk to wherever you want to go. You have to decide where you want to go and how far you’re willing to walk to get there.

“I’ll tell you now, though, child. You’ve walked as far as you can as you are. If you want to walk farther, if you feel where you want to go isn’t where you are, you’ll have to let in more of where you want to go.”

“That sounds like a riddle, Mother. Is it a riddle?”

“Only to those who can’t understand it.”

In her eyes, Mani He saw his own reflection and that of Grandmother Moon. He saw himself nod and, as Mountain Lion’s eyes followed him, lay down on his back, his stomach exposed.

“Are you afraid, Mani He?” she asked, her whiskers again brushing him.

“Yes, Mother. A little. I’m a little afraid.”

“It’s okay to be afraid, little one. It’s okay.” Mountain Lion nuzzled her way under him so she made a comfortable cushion and blanket for his back and head. “When you awake, I’ll be gone, Mani He. Another awaits you.”

“I understand, Mother. Thank you.”

She licked his face and her breath covered him like a warm perfume. He closed his eyes and cried out only once, when her claws ripped open his ribs and pulled out his heart.

* * *

Grandfather Sun was high to the south when Mani He awoke. He was on his back, stretched out on what felt like a huge rock. Before moving, he felt for scars and wounds. There were none. He sat up and saw he was on a plain, not a mountain any longer, like a desert with cactus and weathered stone outcroppings everywhere. He started to roll off the rock when a long, heavy, white, brown, and yellow scaled tail knocked him back against the rock.

“Where d’you think you’re going?”

He rolled over. The tail, attached to some kind of crocodile or alligator or gila monster or something, made moving difficult. Whatever it was, it rolled its eyes and yawned as a fly came past. A long, pink tongue, sticky with mucous, whipped out and brought the fly back into the mouth. The creature’s eyes rolled forward and it burped. “Excuse me.” The tongue came back out and licked its right eye. “So, where d’you think you’re going?”

“I’m hungry and thirsty. I wanted to get some food and water.”

“Plenty of flies.” Its tongue whipped another fly back into its mouth.

“No, thank you.” He felt something crawling at his feet. A small lizard waited there, flattened against the rock. “We can only give each other who we are, not even what,” said the creature.

Remembering Moose’s lesson, he asked. “Are you Lizard?”

“Very good, Mani He.”

“May I eat, uh... May I?”

“Enjoy.”

Mani He snatched the lizard and, quickly breaking the neck, swallowed it whole.

“So you’re Lizard?

“Yes, I’m the original.”

“Is it that way with all my teachers?”

Lizard laughed. When he laughed his eyes rolled back and his tongue snapped out flat on the rock. “It’s that way with any teacher, Mani He.” Lizard shifted himself to a warmer part of the rock. “And as soon as you stop thinking you know what you want to learn, everything becomes your teacher. Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.”

“So what are you going to teach me?”

“To be quiet and enjoy a good, warm rock.” Which is how they spent the entire day, dozing on their rock until Grandfather Sun kissed the mountains to the west.

“May I ask you a question, Father?”

“May you not?”

“If this were a dream, would you teachers be Jungian archetypes?”

“Can you dream a dream? Is that the question, little one?” Lizard’s tongue whipped back in and out as a fly buzzed past. He burped and laughed. “You have to answer that for yourself, Mani He. We believe the only limits people have are those they put on themselves.”

Mani He’s head ached. He let the pain go and said, “I’m getting cold, Father. How can we stay warm?”

“Tonight you stay warm the way I do; you crawl under a rock and into the sand.”

Mani He considered the heaviness of the rock and the scratchiness of the sand. “I’m not sure I can do that.”

“You have to be like me. What you have to do is let out the me inside of you.”

“Is this going to be like Mother did last night?” Mani He looked at Lizard’s claws and teeth.

“Sorry, Mani He. This one you’ve got to do yourself. But I’ll give you a hint: Every one of your teachers is.”

“Is what?”

Lizard crawled off the rock and buried himself in the sand.

“Father, don’t leave me here. Help me. Please?”

Lizard’s tail flicked out of the sand and, like someone beckoning with their finger, invited him into the ground.

Mani He cried out, lonely in the cold desert night, “I can’t. I don’t know how.” He didn’t know if Lizard heard him. He sat against the warmest side of the rock and cried.

* * *

“What is wrong, grandchild?”

He opened his eyes, realizing he’d fallen asleep against the rock and was now bathed in moonlight. His body was curled tightly into a ball and still he shivered. Even as he slept, tears covered his face and he whimpered through his dreams. “Father Lizard left me here in the cold. He told me to follow him but I don’t know how.”

“Stand up, Mani He, and walk towards me.”

Without thinking, Mani He stood and walked towards Grandmother Moon. “Will you show me how to stay warm?”

“Quickly, Mani He, how did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Look behind you and see.” She shone bright beams of moonlight on his footprints in the sand.

“Do what? Walk?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know, I just did it.”

“And that’s how you should follow Lizard.”

“I don’t understand.”

Lizard’s tongue lashed out and flicked back a scorpion which was crawling on the rock, “She means you should just do what I do. Don’t think about it. Like walking. You don’t think about walking when you do it. You just do it. Not everything works that way, though. Some lessons are learned by doing, some by thinking, some by feeling, some by seeing, tasting, sniffing, hearing, still others by teaching.”

“I thought you were somewhere in the sand.”

“No. When you didn’t follow, I came back onto this rock, to protect you from other things which might come in the night.”

“I didn’t see you. Were you there all along?”

“Yes, just as soon as you didn’t follow. Your fear blinded your eyes to me. Did you forget Mountain Lion’s lesson?”

Mani He lowered his eyes. “Forgive me?”

“It’s not my lesson to forgive. You’ll have to ask her to forgive her lessons forgotten.”

“Will I see her again?”

Grandmother Moon washed the sand from him with bright light. “I’m sure. Now I must go. Grandfather awaits.”

Mani He waved as Grandmother continued her journey through Great Star Nation. Lizard dropped off the rock and, with a wiggle and a shake, dove under the sand. Mani He jumped as if from a diving board and, wiggling and shaking the best he could, followed Lizard to where the sand was a warm blanket protecting him from the night.

* * *

Proceed to part 4...

Copyright © 2022 by Joseph Carrabis

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