The time soon came too for Xijam to pass on, and like all shamans, he heard the call to walk among the animal spirits. Aji' had once joked that when the time came for Xijam to join them, he would be delighted to find him a jaguar wife, perhaps his own sister, who had a very beautiful pelt and an elegant tail. Xijam chuckled at the thought. Having choked to death on his own swollen tongue, he crawled out of the diseased husk of his former self. Rot had already begun to set in and he looked away, unable to look at his own decaying face. Finally released from the shackles of an aching body wrecked by the wijam-sickness, Xijam walked along the riverbank one last time, singing a beautiful mourning lament he had learnt from Strange Grandfather a long time ago. And in that song, he twisted the wo
