Simana’s Diaries

Simana’s Diaries – 17 – The Call

The

call did not come to Simana as a voice. Calls rarely came as voices anyway; a voice was merely the crudest form of a call.

That night, the sky was as high as it should be. The stars were in their rightful places, but the space between them was too wide open. It was as if the sky were trying to hide the absence of something; but no matter how much it covered it up, a trickle still seeped through.

When

Simana noticed this, she did nothing at first. She didn’t reach for the drum, nor did she light the fire. She stepped in front of the beech tree. She simply stood there…

This was no ordinary tree; it never had been. Its roots stretched into a darkness where no one knew where they ended in the earth; its branches reached so high that one could not even ask on which level of the sky they ended. The tree seemed to stand still where it was, but in reality, it was connecting one place to another at every moment.

Simana placed her hand on its trunk. The tree wasn’t cold. Nor was it warm. It felt more like the skin of something that remembered.

Just then, three voices came from the sky. Each from a different being. But they all said the same thing:

“Simana… The sky is waiting for you.

But there is no sky. So what will you climb toward?”

And the sky cracked open… It was the opening of a nine-layered void,

each layer containing an emotion, a fear, a forgetting…

An eagle flew overhead. It was upside down. Its feathers hung downward, its talons reaching toward the sky. And then the eagle’s voice came:

“Simana, you were born because people have forgotten something…

Simana couldn’t open her mouth. It was as if something had been pulled from within her, leaving behind a slight but unsettling emptiness.

The

earth melted, time dried up, the sound dissolved. Simana knelt down. She took the drum in her hands. She held the mallet. The deer antler was cold but familiar. It was like the bone of spirits.

The

first beat was soft. The second beat listened to the echo of the first. With the third beat, the world relaxed just as it should. She closed her eyes. She held her breath. She was no longer here. There was only sound.

And then, the first hymn poured from his lips:

O sky! O nine-layered void!

O god whose name I have forgotten!

I am Simana, I came from beneath the stone.

From the place where

wounded birds lie,

I walked toward you, memorizing the

deer’s prayers.

I have no

wings, but I have a dream.

The

wind does not carry my voice.

I am the one who reminds you of the wind.

I’m not calling you

with my drum.

I ask you:

Where are you?

If

you’re here, why are you silent?

If you’re

not here, why are you still being waited for?

O sky! I will see into your very core.

I’ll peel away

layer by layer what you’ve hidden.

I will walk toward you not with prayers, but with questions.

I am Simana. The unanswered prayer of souls!

She fell

silent. She gently set the mallet down on the ground. She did not open her eyes. For her eyes were now turned toward the heavens.

A tremor began—first in the stone, then in the earth, then in her heart.

Nothing had answered. But it had listened. Simana knew this…

And then she heard a whisper:

“Simana has been called…”

But who had called her? The spirits? Or something else she didn’t yet know the name of? And a single word fell into Simana’s heart. Just one word. But with that word, she could shatter the heavens:

“Who?”