Ch. 2: The Pajé's Warning

The night after Kurumim's offering, Aruã could not sleep. He lay in his rede at the far end of the maloca, his old bones aching with a knowledge that had nothing to do with the damp or his seventy winters. The feathered headdress that hung above him seemed to stir in breaths of air too slight to feel, the macaw feathers whispering against each other, passing secrets he already understood.

He rose without sound, his movements practiced across decades of predawn rituals. The villagers did not wake. The old woman who snored like a frog continued her amphibian music. Tainá turned in her hammock, murmuring something to a dream-son, her hand reaching for emptiness.

Aruã walked to the river not because he chose to, but because the forest chose for him. His feet found paths his grandmother's grandmother had walked, paths that remembered the moccasins of shamans before the village had a name. The moon was nearly full still, waning by the smallest margin, a silver that held more gold tonight, more warmth.

He found the boy where he knew he would.

Kurumim sat on his root, his thin shoulders curved inward, his face lifted to the sky like a flower seeking rain. The moonlight lay on him with intention, Aruã saw, with something almost like touch. The old pajé had spent his life learning to see what others could not—the spirits in stones, the intentions in wind, the memories that water carried—and what he saw now made his breath catch in his throat.

The boy was not merely bathed in moonlight. He was speaking with it, his dark eyes holding a conversation that needed no words, the light pooling in his gaze and being returned, transformed, made into something more human and more strange.

Aruã did not announce himself. He went to the river‘s edge, to a stone worn smooth not by any boy’s bones but by his own, by years of sitting in this exact place to drink ayahuasca and travel to the spirit world. He lowered himself with the creaking dignity of old age, his feathers settling around him, his white hair catching the moon's glow until he seemed himself a spirit, a bridge between what walked and what watched.

Kurumim turned, unsurprised. Children who spoke with moons were rarely surprised by shamans.

“Pajé Aruã,” the boy said, and his voice was the same soft wonder he used for everything, for ants and birds and fireflies, for his mother and for silver light. “Did Jaci call you too?”

“Jaci calls no one,” Aruã said, and his voice was low and steady, the voice of earth and root and things that did not hurry. “She listens. She waits. She rewards what she finds worthy. This is her way, older than my grandmother‘s grandmother’s knowing.”

Kurumim considered this, his small face serious in a way that belonged to children who thought deeply about things others rushed past. “I gave her tapioca,” he said. “She was warm afterward. Not cold like people say.”

“People say many things about the moon,” Aruã agreed. He reached into his pouch, found the small gourd of water he carried, drank slowly to give himself time. The river moved past, carrying the world‘s stories, and he listened to its voice as he had learned to do before he was Kurumim’s age. “They say she is distant. They say she is cruel, pulling the tides, changing the women's blood. They say she watches but does not care.” He set the gourd down, his weathered hands steady despite his years. “But the old stories know better. The old stories remember.”

“What stories?” Kurumim asked, and his eyes were wide, eager, the darkness in them shot through with silver reflection.

Aruã was quiet for a moment, gathering the words as one gathers firewood, choosing each piece with care. The night deepened around them, the frogs and insects weaving their endless patterns, the fireflies dancing their green-gold language above the water. When he spoke, his voice changed, became the voice of story itself, the voice that had spoken these words before he was born and would speak them after his bones had fed the forest.

“Long before your mother's mother was born, before the village had its name, before the river found its path to the sea, there was a child much like you. Curious as a river otter. Kind as rain. This child, whose name the forest has swallowed, loved to walk at night and speak to what others could not see. To the shadows between trees. To the eyes that gleamed in the darkness. To the moon, most of all, who was lonely in her silver watching.”

Kurumim had drawn closer without seeming to move, his small body leaning toward the old man's voice as plants lean toward light.

“The child brought gifts,” Aruã continued. “Flowers that opened only at night. Fish caught with bare hands. Songs learned from birds and given back differently, made into something new. And the moon, who had watched for ten thousand years without being seen, who had listened without being heard, she began to change. Her light grew warmer. Her watching grew softer. She began to hope, and hope is dangerous for spirits who have known only distance.”

“What happened?” Kurumim whispered.

Aruã‘s voice dropped further, became almost the river’s own murmur. “The moon gave the child a gift in return. She offered to make them part of her light, to lift them from the heavy world of mud and blood and ending, to make them eternal and silver and safe. The child, who loved only to give, said yes. Who would not say yes to the moon?”

He paused, letting the night fill the space his words left behind. A fish jumped, silver in the moonlight, returning to darkness with a small sound of completion.

“But the moon is not of the earth, little curumim. Her gifts are not our gifts. Her time is not our time. The child became light, yes, but light without hands to touch, without mouth to speak, without heart to feel the ordinary love of mothers and mornings. They wander still, some say, a silver shimmer on certain nights, beautiful and alone, reaching for warmth they can no longer hold.”

Kurumim's face had gone still, not frightened but thinking, working through the story as he worked through the tapioca his mother made—slowly, thoroughly, extracting what sweetness and sustenance it contained.

“I would not want to be only light,” he said finally. “I like tapioca too much. I like Mãe's hands in my hair. I like the way the river smells in morning, all fish and new day.”

Aruã felt something loosen in his chest, a knot he had not known he carried. “Then you must be cautious, Kurumim. The moon's attention is a gift beyond price, but gifts from spirits are like river currents—stronger than they appear, carrying you places you did not choose to go. She has noticed you. She has warmed to you. This is precious and perilous, both together, like fire that cooks and fire that burns.”

He reached out, placed one old hand on the boy‘s thin shoulder. The bones beneath his palm were delicate, fragile, the architecture of a life still building itself. He felt the moon’s mark there, a vibration almost too slight to notice, a frequency that made his shaman's senses hum with recognition and warning.

“Do not refuse her,” he said. “That would be ungrateful, and ungratitude is a poison that turns all gifts to ash. But do not seek her too eagerly. Do not offer everything. Keep something back for the earth, for the mud and the blood, for the tapioca and your mother's hands. The spirits reward kindness, yes, but their rewards reshape the rewarded. Remember the child who became only light.”

Kurumim looked up at the moon, and Aruã saw the silver in his eyes deepen, become almost liquid, almost luminous. “Jaci is not cruel,” the boy said, and there was no argument in it, only statement, only faith. “She was happy when I gave her tapioca. She hummed.”

“Happy,” Aruã repeated, tasting the word as if it were new to his tongue. “Yes. I believe she was. But happiness in spirits is not like happiness in children, Kurumim. It is older. It wants different things. The moon has been alone since before the first seed split, before the first bird called. Her happiness may reach for you as a river reaches for the sea, not meaning harm but carrying everything before it.”

The boy was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was smaller, but not afraid, never afraid in the way Aruã had hoped to hear. “I will be careful, pajé. I will not forget the river's smell. I will not forget Mãe.”

“See that you do not,” Aruã said, and his voice carried the weight of visions he had never spoken, of dreams that came to him in ayahuasca trances, of a child becoming plant, becoming gift, becoming forever in the forest‘s keeping. He had seen Kurumim in those visions, had known since the boy’s birth that this small soul carried a destiny larger than any single life. But the telling was not his to give. The forest would speak in its own time, the moon in hers. He could only warn, could only sit by rivers and tell old stories and hope the child would remember tapioca and mother's hands when the silver called most sweetly.

They sat together in silence then, the old man and the young boy, two points on the same line of forest knowing, separated by decades but joined by moonlight and river sound and the ancient patience of those who watch and wait. The fireflies danced around them, indifferent to human time, carrying their green messages from grass to air to water.

When Kurumim finally stirred, his small body unfolding from the root with the grace of a fern uncurling, he turned to Aruã with something in his face that the old pajé could not read—a knowledge, perhaps, or an acceptance, or simply the seven-year-old's capacity to hold wonder and ordinary love in equal measure.

“Goodnight, pajé,” the boy said. “Thank you for the story. I will remember.”

“Go with the forest, little curumim,” Aruã replied. “Let the earth hold your feet as you walk.”

He watched the boy disappear into the darkness between trees, his small form silver-edged for a moment, then gone, swallowed by the forest‘s own night. Aruã remained, his old bones settling into the stone’s memory, his eyes on the moon who watched from her impossible distance.

“Be gentle,” he whispered to her, to Jaci, to the spirit he had honored all his life. “He is so small. He is so kind. Do not take him all.”

The moon gave no answer, or gave an answer too subtle for even his trained senses, a pulse of light that might have been heartbeat or might have been imagination.

He was still sitting there, still watching, when Tainá found him.

She came without sound, her bare feet knowing the path her son walked too often, her long black hair loose down her back, catching what light the forest allowed. She stopped at the river‘s edge, seeing the old shaman where she had expected her son, and her face went through transformations Aruã could trace with his eyes closed—relief, confusion, then the settling of fear she had carried since Kurumim’s birth, since the night she dreamed of moons and seeds and a child who was no longer quite a child.

“Pajé,” she said, and her voice was soft but carried, the voice of mothers who speak through exhaustion and love and the constant calculation of dangers their children cannot see.

“Tainá,” he answered. “Sit. The river is warm tonight, and the stones remember old conversations.”

She came, lowering herself with less grace than age demanded but more than grief allowed, settling on the bank's edge where Kurumim often placed his feet in the water. Her hands found each other, twisted, untwisted, the fingers of a woman who worked constantly, who shaped manioc and wove reeds and held a son who wandered too far.

“You spoke with him,” she said. Not a question.

“I told him the old story. The child who became light.”

Tainá‘s breath caught, became something sharp and held before she released it slowly, controlled, the breathing of a woman who had learned to master her fears for her child’s sake. “He will not listen. He never listens to warnings about the moon. He says she is his friend.”

“She may be,” Aruã said carefully. “Friendship between human and spirit is not impossible. Rare, precious, dangerous—but not impossible.” He turned to face her, his weathered features softening with a compassion he had learned across decades of village sorrows. “Your son has a pure heart, Tainá. The forest knows this. The moon knows this. Such purity draws attention, draws love, draws… Wanting.”

“She wants him.” Tainá's voice broke on the last word, became something younger, something closer to the girl she had been before motherhood thickened her, before love became indistinguishable from fear. “I have felt it since his first word, since he looked at the sky and smiled at what I could not see. She wants to take him from me, from the earth, from tapioca and morning and growing old.”

Aruã did not deny it. He had learned that denial was a cruelty when people spoke truths they had carried in silence too long. “The moon wants what all spirits want,” he said. “Connection. Remembrance. To be part of the living world and not merely its watcher. Kurumim offers this. His kindness is a bridge she has never crossed.”

“Then stop him,” Tainá said, and her hands reached for the old man's, gripped with surprising strength. “Tell him he must not go to the river. Tell him the moon is dangerous, that she will hurt him. He will listen to you. He respects the pajé.”

“And if I tell him this, and he believes me, and he turns from the moon?” Aruã asked gently. “What then? The spirits do not forget rejection, Tainá. The moon, most of all, who has known only distance—she would feel this as pain, as the first pain in ten thousand years. She might turn cold. She might withdraw her light from the river, from the tides, from the women's blood, from the seeds that need silver to grow. Or she might reach more desperately, more powerfully, finding ways that warnings cannot block.”

Tainá‘s grip loosened, fell away. She looked at the river, at the moon’s reflection there, at the two versions of the same impossible light. “Then what can I do? I am his mother. I am supposed to protect him. I am supposed to keep him safe in my hammock, in my maloca, in my arms where nothing can reach him.”

“You can love him,” Aruã said, and the simplicity of the words carried all the complexity of his years, all the visions and losses and small triumphs of shaman life. “You can make the tapioca that grounds him. You can speak his name in morning light, when the moon‘s power wanes. You can be the earth that holds him when the silver calls most sweetly. This is what mothers have always done, Tainá. This is the oldest magic, older than my feathers, older than the moon’s first watching.”

“But it will not be enough,” Tainá whispered. “I know it will not be enough. I have seen his eyes when he speaks of her. I have heard the humming that follows him home. Something is coming, pajé. Something is already here.”

Aruã was silent. The river answered for him, its endless hushing that was almost speech, almost comfort, almost the sound of time itself moving toward moments that could not be avoided, only met with whatever grace had been gathered.

“Prepare yourself,” he said finally. “Not with fear—that would poison what time remains. But with readiness. With openness. The forest has plans for your son that I have seen but do not fully understand. He will not be lost, Tainá. This I believe, though belief is all I have. He will not be lost, but he will be changed. The kindness he gives so freely will return to him transformed, and through him, transform the world.”

Tainá wept then, silently, the tears moving down her face like the river moved to the sea, inevitable, patient, carrying something from one place to another without ever truly belonging to either. Aruã did not touch her. Some griefs needed to be held alone, needed the privacy of moonlight and water sound and the distant watching of a spirit who saw everything and could intervene in nothing.

When her breathing steadied, she spoke one more time. “Will he suffer?”

“Not as you fear,” Aruã said, and he spoke the truth as he believed it, the truth of visions that came fragmented and partial, showing feeling states more than events. “He will be… Completed. Made into what his kindness has prepared him to be. There will be no pain in the transformation, only peace, only the gentle closing of one way of being and the opening of another.”

“And I will lose my little curumim,” Tainá said.

“You will lose this version, yes. But you will gain—” Aruã stopped, the vision shifting, becoming clearer for a moment, showing him something he had not seen before. “You will gain a connection that no death can break. That no distance can diminish. You will walk in the forest and find him waiting. You will taste sweetness and hear his voice. This I have seen, Tainá. This I promise, as much as any old man can promise anything.”

She sat with this, absorbing it as Kurumim absorbed stories, slowly, thoroughly, finding what sustenance it contained. When she rose, her movements were heavier than before, but something in her face had settled, some decision made in the space between fear and love where mothers lived their deepest lives.

“Then I will make tapioca tomorrow,” she said. “And the day after. As long as he can eat it, I will make it. And I will hold him when he returns from the river, and I will speak his name in morning light, and I will be the earth that holds him.”

“Yes,” Aruã said. “This. Only this. And it will be enough, Tainá. In ways you cannot yet see, it will be more than enough.”

She left him then, walking back through the forest to the maloca where her son slept, where she would check his hammock, press her hand to his chest to feel his breathing, memorize the shape of his face in darkness. Aruã remained, alone with moon and river and the weight of old stories told and untold.

He looked up at Jaci, silver and watching, and he spoke one more time, his voice barely above the river's murmur, carrying no command, only request, only the humility of one who had served spirits all his life and knew their power.

“Be gentle,” he said again. “For the mother‘s sake, if not the child’s. She loves him in the old way, the human way, the way that breaks and breaks and somehow continues. Honor this love. Let it be part of what comes.”

The moonlight seemed to soften, or perhaps that was only his aging eyes, his wish becoming perception. He rose with the creaking that was now his body, his feathers settling, his white hair catching silver.

He walked home through the forest‘s night, and behind him the river continued its endless story, and above the moon continued her endless watching, and somewhere in between, a boy dreamed of humming and warmth, of being seen and seeing, of a connection that would soon deepen beyond any warning, any story, any mother’s holding, into something the forest had prepared since before the first human voice spoke the moon's name into darkness.