(short fiction by David Sky)

Even though a mirror would be an anachronism for another hundred thousand years, she recognized herself in the still surface of the spring. Her eyes? Yes. She understood somehow that she was looking out from these eyes … I am behind these, then. She saw the hand rise up there on the surface of the pool below her, touching the fullness of her own lips. She wondered if indeed what she was actually lie within the confines of her skull? Inside here, she thought. Inside this head, watching her fingers touch her thick, black hair.

Something was strange? (she giggled uncontrollably) Her mouth made a small, round O, her mind reeled - backwards? I am .. I am backwards? She moved her right hand across the wide line of her chin from left to right …

Backwards?

She looked at her hand then standing from a squat effortlessly and over at the leaves on the branch of a tree overhanging this spring and she saw that both the back of her hand and the leaf had the same spider web pattern. The same?

Backwards?

The same?

Something was very strange - yes?

Her mother’s brother’s boy ran up and squatted at the spring, drinking thirstily. He was much younger than she. She had known him all her fourteen years of life. But she saw him now as if for the first time. Vaguely, she recalled eating the strange mushrooms. Her mother’s brother’s boy stood and wiped his mouth, smiling happily. It occurred to her then that she did not see this smile quite so often now as when he was younger? It was an odd thing to think of followed by a rush of fear like when you see a snake. This is something from the mushrooms -

We have killed a giant snake, her mother’s brothers boy signed, his hands and arms flittering like songs birds in the bushes, taking credit for the kill of the giant snake even though he would not have been near it. He ended his gesticulation with his small, boyish fist pounding his shrunken chest proudly.
He went on to tell her where camp was and that their snake cooked already. It was not lost on her how he almost invited her as if it were his feast. This little one is dominant, she smiled, feeling as though she were looking inside of him.

They were upwind from camp and could not smell the cooking of the sweet, funky snake meat. It occurred to her that soon enough her mother’s brother’s boy would be hunting with the men. Normally the thought of giant snake meat would excite her but her nose shrunk from it as the confident child ran off. She felt a fondness for him that seemed to follow him off toward camp.

She felt no hunger and an odd quiet and a little dizzy like when she had almost died from the fever. She went back to her hand and the leaf, kneeling again and looking closely at from one to the other. She closed her eyes, opening them, closed them again each time trying to see … “it” … whatever it was that she was seeing. She had just seen herself and clearly her hand looked very different from the leaf but … they were also alike? Finally, she had to leave it as a powerful mystery.

In her mind she assigned herself an identity. At once she was separate and the same as even the trees growing around the springs. But there was yet some little seed inside that was “her” and it seemed to lie behind her big, dark eyes. The light seemed much brighter and she wondered at the play of the spring still riled by the boys drinking, its tiny waves sun dappled and glistening. Everything so bright. So sharp and clear and beautiful. She sat then on the soft, green cover surrounding the spring. She understood that she was in a special place. She lay then with the side of her face pressed against the moist, mossy ground. It was cool and made her dreamy feeling. She felt like one of the plants with her roots sinking down and out into the earth until whatever “she was” no longer looked out from behind her eyes but spread out into the earth far and wide until what she was, was nothing and everything at once. Day and night seemed like one complete breath of air, in and out. She felt as if many days and nights passed, breathing in and out, in and out until the earth swelled up within her and she stood suddenly uneasy, looking around. Her sudden fear swelled in her throat and for the first time an anatomically modern human spoke words - breathy utterances naming everything around her, including the leaves of the tree over the spring from her epiphany. It was as if the earth itself were animating her utterances, like some eccentric southern Baptist speaking in tongues. All of it taken together, the earth upon which they walked, she called Ur. Finally, she looked down at her own form in the now still spring and uttered a name for what she was, Awaquii. The wide, dark face with its high check bones smiled - Awaquii. This is my name, she thought. This is the part of myself that is separate from the leaf.

I am Awaquii. I am inside of here. She looked down at her own hand. Yes. Inside. She headed for where the others cooked the snake still not hungry but ravenous with names for things as she passed them. She uttered these names out her mouth, resisting the urge to translate them into their normal, hand and arm communications. She understood that something exactly like her was inside of the things she named - the trees, the plants, the rocks … her new language seeming to bring the world alive in a way it never was before. There was another one like herself inside of her mother’s brother’s boy and when she found him, she put her hand on his thin shoulder and pressed the palm of her other hand against her forehead - Ewah, she spoke in a breathy, heavy voice - Ewah.

She removed her hand and pointed between her eyes, Awaquii. Repeating it several times, Awaquii. She pressed her finger then between his eyes and repeated, Ewah - Ewah.

Ewah, the boy spoke in the same heavy, breathy voice, similarly in pitch.

She smiled and shook her head, hugging him, Ewah, she said. Awaquii he said pushing her away then pointing at her - Awaquii.

Ewah understands, she thought. The effect of the mushrooms was wearing off and she could not quite put her finger on it but she knew that everything was different now. She took Ewah back upon and route and pointed at rocks, plants pushing up from the dirt.

Ewah laughed and laughed. Ewah understands, she thought with great satisfaction.

Ewah caught on easily and much to Awaquii’s surprise, much quicker than the elders. She had names for every member of her tribe, a familial group of twenty seven individuals right now. These names, her own, and Ewah, seemed like some kind of magic to her, like being able to reach out and touch something from a distance? Like having some power over so many of the things around her … they called it, “mouth magic” and no one ever knew the part played in Awaquii’s discovery by the mushrooms, not even Ewah