The poor boy had died the previous night, with sweaty skin that burned and a pitiful wheezing cough that mercifully came to an abrupt end. His mother, To'o had asked Xijam for his assistance, thinking perhaps days earlier, while playing at the edge of the village among the maize swidden, a jami carawa, an animal spirit must have shot phantom arrows at him. They make the skin burn, cause great pain, stop the blood flowing.
"No," the old shaman shook his head. "I have searched his body, there is nothing." Countless times he had treated the sick, like the jaguar he was, extracting phantom arrows from their unbroken skin, clenching his empty jaws shut and then opening them to reveal bits of sharpened reed, sometimes wood splinters; often covered in blood. He spat them out and slipped back int
