Over the next ten years, Akiki kept a watchful eye over Yohana, training him in the ways of shamanism.
In that time, Yohana had grown into a determined boy who refused to quit any task once started. This determination had caused Yohana to develop a reputation for mischief.
One incident, which became known as the great fruit disaster, solidified his reputation as a master of mischief. The event occurred during the Furaha fruit's bloom, the sweetest fruit in existence. The fruit was about the size of a pumpkin, oval shaped, and had an outside texture of a dragon fruit.
While the Foragers were high in the trees, plucking off pieces of fruit and dropping them down into the waiting baskets below, Patricia, now a young lady of twelve years of age, sat on a branch nearest to the Furaha fruit.
Patricia had grown tall at about one hundred and seventy-five centimeters, and her hair was braided with intricate designs and ornate with beads.
Down below her, the village children threw spears and shot arrows, trying to knock down the fruit.
Almamy, now fourteen years of age, pushed to the front of the group. Sipho pushed everyone back.
"Give him some room."
Almamy had grown to be quite muscular and was much taller than all the other kids around him, with Sipho being a close second. Almamy aimed his spear. The village kids were chanting words of the encouragement. Sipho shushed them.
"Quiet. He must focus."
Almamy launched the spear. The razor-sharp tip grazed the skin of the Furaha fruit. The village kids cheered him on. Almamy was the son of the warrior chief and was spoiled by everyone because of it. The was also two years older than the other kids around him. This age gap between him and the other children, though small, made him their elder.
Naturally, they all looked up to him. He was their de facto leader, and they idolized him.
Patricia's heart raced at the sight of him. So much so that she could feel it beating through her chest. Like most of the girls in the village, she had a huge crush on him. Almost to the point of obsession.
She smiled as he nearly knocked down the fruit. —Ugh. You almost had it.
Then she imagined him knocking down the fruit and feeding her a big piece of it. Her body temperature rose a degree or two.
Without warning, the branch she was sitting on rattled, scaring her back to reality. She held on to the branch like her life depended on it.
Yohana, now a boy of ten years, was standing on the branch behind her. He had a headband covering the crystal lodged in his forehead. He was a pipsqueak compared to the other kids. Very thin at eighteen kilograms, and barely one hundred and fifty centimeters from head to toe.
Patricia looked at him with an angry scowl on her face, tight-lipped.
"Are you mjinga?! (a word that means stupid or idiot) You could have killed me!" she snapped. "What are you even doing here? You are supposed to be in training, you slacker."
"Why is everyone after that fruit?" he asked.
Patricia rolled her eyes. "Unlike you, it is special."
Yohana looked up at the fruit, then back at Patricia.
"How can some fruit be special? Can you make medicine from it? Can it make your face pretty?"
Patricia hit him on the top of his head.
"Don't you know anything?" she said with the smugness of a preteen who knows everything about everything.
"That is the fruit of warriors. Anyone who eats of the Furaha will be instantly filled with joy and happiness. Once every generation when it blooms, a young warrior would try to knock it down and prove his worth. No one has grabbed it in four generations. Anyone who does so will receive a great honor."
Before she could finish her sentence, Yohana was already halfway up the tree headed for the Furaha fruit.
"Get down from there!" she barked, "You are not a warrior."
"Nice of you to care, but I will be OK."
"I am not concerned about you! As the village's future griot, it is my job to make sure I use my knowledge and wisdom to guide pebble brains like you."
"That is honey sweet of you, Patricia. How about after I get it, we can eat it together in my honor?"
Patricia gasped, then tightened her face. She was beyond offended at the notion of her sharing a meal with Yohana and not her one true love, her future husband, Almamy.
She already had their wedding planned, their outfits picked out, the menu prepared, and the list of music prearranged.
A small hand grabbed a hold of the branch, and Maisiko raised herself up. Maisiko, a girl of eight years— though she appeared to be younger, often mistaken for five years. She stood a meager one hundred and twelve centimeters, no bigger than a river swan. Thick, bushy, free-flowing hair bounced every time she moved.
Her left arm was retracted back, clinched close to her chest— a symptom of the stroke she suffered as a child. She had a small wooden shield painted green, brown, and red strapped to her back.
Do not be fooled, she uses her small, adorable appearance to catch her enemies off guard; at least she would if she had any enemies.
"He is going after the fruit, isn't he?" she asked.
"Go get the medical tent ready," Patricia said with such an apathetic tone, it was clear this was a usual occurrence.
Maisiko scoffed. "No way I will be missing this."
Patricia scowled at her, and Maisiko put on a nervous smile.
Yohana climbed to the very top of the tree, but the Furaha fruit was still too far out of reach. He analyzed his surroundings until an idea hit him…
—Those vines should work perfectly.
Yohana snatched down some loose vines, tied them around a branch, and created a makeshift slingshot. After securing the vine around his waist, he settled himself in.
He walked backward. The vine stretched until the tension reached its max.
Maisiko grabbed Patricia's hand. "There he goes."
POW! He went flying. His cheeks flapped in the wind. He screamed with enjoyment. It was much faster than he had calculated, but his aim was spot on. Now the fruit was just within arm's reach.
He pulled out his stone knife from his waistband and SLICE! He cut the Furaha fruit loose at its stem. It fell toward the ground and SWOOP!
A parrot monkey, a scarlet, blue and yellow monkey with extra skin around the ribs stretched out like wings, glided in and intercepted the fruit.
"Hey! Get back here, you thief," Yohana screamed out.
Yohana chased after the parrot monkey. He jumped from branch to branch, keeping pace with the elusive primate. He lunged off the last branch and grabbed a hold of the parrot monkey's thin legs.
"Got you!"
This added weight knocked the parrot monkey off balance.
It lost control, and they crashed into an orange tree.
The Furaha fruit slipped out of the parrot monkey's scaly hands and bounced off the tree. The fruit plummeted toward the ground.
"My fruit!"
Yohana pushed off the trunk of the tree, like an Olympic swimmer pushing off the ends of the pool to increase momentum.
This force knocked all the oranges off the tree. Patricia turned her head just in time to see the oranges barrel toward her. One after the other, they smacked her in the face.
Yohana dived after the fruit. He crashed down through the bushes. A hard fall, but the porcupine he landed on softened the blow.
—Porcupine?
"Ow, ow, ow, owe!"
Yohana quickly hopped out of the bushes, plucking porcupine quills out of his bottom. He also had a few cuts and scrapes along his arms and legs that stung like bee stings. But he was too focused to worry about that now. He looked anxiously around for the Furaha fruit.
—Please do not tell me I lost it.
After a quick scan of the bushes, he spotted it. Luckily, it was still intact, nestled between the long thorns of a pepper berry bush. He ran toward it; too excited for words, just gargled sounds. After picking it up, he held it over his head like a trophy. Victorious!
It wasn't until his adrenaline fell, that he really took the time to look at his surroundings.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head. His dazzling smile quickly turned dim. Sleeping all around him was a herd of forest bulls: orange fur, twice the size of regular cattle, horns as long as Yohana, bulging muscles, and a ferociously nasty temper.
It was at that moment that Patricia stormed out of the bushes, still wiping orange juice pulp from her face. She carried Maisiko on her back as she often does.
"Wjinga!" she screamed at him.
Yohana signaled her to be quiet, flailing his arms around.
"Do not dare tell me to be quiet," she rebuked.
She took another step forward and heard a crunch, followed by a "MOO."
Patricia hesitantly looked down and started praying to the ancestors. Her foot was standing on the tail of the dominant forest bull! She looked to the side, and the bull was staring her right in the face. Its snout just centimeters from her cheek. She could feel the warm air from its nostrils hit her in the face.
Yohana, Maisiko, and Patricia streaked through the jungle. A herd of forest bulls chasing after them, tearing apart the jungle, knocking the foragers out of the trees.
Forest bulls possess solid builds and unlimited stamina.
Once they build up momentum, nothing can slow them down. They will run through anything standing in their way.
"They are heading toward the village," Patricia shouted. "We have to stop them before they destroy everything."
"I will never let that happen," Yohana said without a trace of doubt in his voice.
Yohana, Maisiko, and Patricia were slowing down. For some reason, they were finding it difficult to move their feet. The ground beneath them became unstable. Their steps became increasingly sluggish. Yohana looked down and realized they were in deep trouble.
"Quicksand!"
But this was not normal quicksand. It was sentient and feeds on living organisms.
"That means we are in the forbidden zone. We will be in so much trouble once the elders find out what you have done Yohana," Patricia shouted.
"You are right as always, Patricia. Getting in trouble would be the worst thing that could happen to us right now. How fortunate for us, we will be dead long before they find out."
Maisiko snickered at Yohana's quip, but quickly straightened her face when she felt Patricia's death glare.
The sand crawled up their legs, slowly yanking them down to be digested. They struggled to break free, and the more they struggled, the tighter the grip of the sand became.
In the distance, Yohana's keen ears could hear the rumble of a thousand hooves stampeding across the jungle floor.
—This is bad.
The forest bulls were closing in on them. The sand was squeezing the life out of them.
Yohana inhaled deeply. He had to calculate quickly. Unlike with the Furaha Fruit, he had no room for error. His mind went to work, analyzing the situation. Potential scenarios flashed inside his mind until he landed on the most favorable outcome.
— Got it!
With his distinctive look of determination, he calmed himself down…
—Relax.
He stopped his breathing…
—Relax.
He slowed his heart rate until his pulse was undetectable.
Yohana exhibited all the signs of dead prey. The sand slowly released its death grip to conserve energy.
Yohana seized the moment. By rapidly kicking his legs back and forth, he propelled himself upward and grabbed a hanging vine dangling from a branch.
He pulled on the vine as hard as he could, bending the branch, increasing the tension. Yohana then grabbed Patricia and Maisiko and together they were catapulted into the tree. They broke free of the sand's hold and narrowly missed the forest bull stampede.
The forest bull herd rammed their big, bulky bodies against the trees. As they ran, they uprooted every plant, bush, and tree they came across.
Yohana, Maisiko, and Patricia jumped from tree to tree, branch to branch. The trees collapsed behind them like dominoes. They reached the last tree at the edge of the jungle.
"What is your brilliant plan now? Have us jump down and break every bone in our body?" Patricia smugly questioned.
"Give him grace, Patricia. He would never come up with a plan that stupid, right, Yohana?"
Yohana looked back at Maisiko. He smiled and gave her a thumbs up. When he turned back around, sweat trickled down his face. —Thanks a lot, Maisiko. Now I need a new plan.
A flock of parrot monkeys glided in and went after the Furaha fruit. Yohana held on tightly to the fruit, with the parrot monkeys climbing all over him, trying to nudge the fruit from his grip.
"Just give it to them!" Patricia urged him.
"Never!" he shouted back as he flailed his arms around, trying to shoo away the parrot monkeys.
He stepped on a branch, and SNAP! It broke, causing the three of them to plummet toward the ground. The parrot monkeys glided away to safety. Yohana and Maisiko both landed on top of Patricia. With a groan, she pushed them off her.
They picked themselves up off the ground and dusted themselves off. Behind them, a steep cliff overlooking the village. In front of them, a mesh of broken trees and debris. For a moment, the pain they felt from the fall was just enough to make them forget they were about to be impaled. However, the rumble of hooves rampaging toward them quickly refreshed their memories.
"Now what do we do?" Patricia groaned.
Maisiko took off her shield and raised it above her head.
"Fight to the death!"
She lunged forward, only to be yanked back by Patricia.
Patricia pushed Yohana to the front line. "Do some shaman magic."
"I do not do 'magic,'" he snarled. "I manipulate the spiritual energy and matter around me."
Patricia rolled her eyes. "Just say you are useless and spare us the details."
The forest bull herd crashed through the trees and charged right at them at fifty kilometers per hour.
Patricia pulled Yohana and Maisiko behind her. She picked up a rock twice the size of her hand and threw it at the dominant bull. It shattered on the bull's muscular head.
They took a collective step back. A piece of the cliff broke off behind them. There was nowhere to go. They were already at the very edge of the cliff. Any further, and they would have fallen right off.
Yohana stepped out from behind Patricia to face the rampaging forest bulls. He held out his hand to signal 'stop'. He closed his eyes. With a tremble in his voice, he meagerly uttered out…
"Stop…"
The forest bulls continued their stampede. Maisiko and Patricia clung tightly to him.
"More," an unknown female voice called out to him.
"Stop," he yelled, this time in a more forceful voice.
"Good boy. Now, give me more," the unknown voice whispered more forcefully to him.
"Stop!" he shouted.
A faint wave of visible blueish energy scattered across the landscape. When Yohana opened his eyes, the dominant bull's horns were just a hair's breadth away from impaling both eye sockets.
The herd seemed to be in a state of confusion. They looked around, not sure how they got this far out of the jungle. The insignificant humans in front of them didn't appear to be any sort of credible threat.
One thing that appeared certain was that their anger seemed to have been quashed in an instant. They didn't even give so much as a moo as they turned back around and lumbered back into the jungle.
Yohana looked down at his hands in disbelief. —Did I just wipe away the memory of the forest bulls? A high-level technique even the most skilled shamans are afraid of using. I must tell Akiki… But then again…
Apart from being incredibly difficult and risky to use, it was forbidden. The tenets of shamanism only permitted its use in situations where a loss of life was inevitable.
—Seeing as the only two options were falling off a cliff or being impaled by mad, aggressive cows, there is no way he can be mad at me.
With the mental conundrum of his mind's own design resolved, he celebrated. He mockingly danced around Patricia.
Yohana had every right to be excited. Ecstatic even. After years of trying, he had finally breached a new level in his development. Even if he wasn't sure how he did it.
After all, the spiritual arts will not allow itself to be wielded by any two-bit conjurer. The spirits choose the wielder. This was the confirmation he needed…
–Now I am one step closer to my goal. I will become a king shaman.
But his celebration was short-lived. Patricia grabbed him by the ear and gave it a twist.
"You two are chaos in human form."
"Chaos!?" he questioned; a bit offended. "That is a little strong, is it not?"
"Look around!" she screamed down at him.
Yohana scanned the landscape. It looked as if a hurricane and tornado had joined forces and did a waltz around the jungle.
Angry foragers encroached on them. The stampede left them covered in pieces of fruit, debris, and animal fur.
Yohana could feel the animosity in their glares. He knew he had to ease the tension.
"I said strong. Not inaccurate."
He let out a nervous chuckle. Well, he succeeded in making them angrier.
Seeing they were getting nowhere with this angry mob, Maisiko pulled off her shield, and it grew to twice its original size. She laid the shield down to where half of it was hanging off the side of cliff.
They hopped on and rode it down the cliff side like a sled.
Yohana and Maiskio were enjoying the ride down. Patricia, on the other hand, was screaming at the top of her lungs as they dodged jagged rock formations. They reached the bottom after about thirty seconds.
Yohana nervously looked around for the fruit. Patricia was holding her chest, trying to catch her breath.
"How can you still be looking for that fruit? You should kiss the ground we almost died."
Maisiko jumped up. "Seriously! We must go again."
Patricia and Yohana looked back at her when…
SPLAT! The fruit landed on top of Yohana's head, splitting down the middle, dripping juice all over him.