Amanita

By Christian Brunner

In the novel Amanita, we meet an innocent young man who is thrown into a world of mystery against his will. Plagued by a disease, his only hope lies in a peculiar woman, who comes to his village to offer him a fascinating but strange path forward. She undertakes hair-raising journeys into other realities and knows ancient secrets told from one generation to the next.
Learning that path is not easy, especially if you are young and there are so many distractions. But fate will catch up with you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387414246

Book preview

The information provided in this book is designed to supply helpful information on the subjects discussed. This book is not meant to be used, nor should it be used, to diagnose or treat any medical condition. For diagnosis or treatment of any medical problem, consult your own physician. The publisher and author are not liable for any damages or negative consequences from any treatment, action, application or preparation, to any person reading or following the information in this book.

Christian Friedrich Brunner

Amanita

© 2022 Christian Friedrich Brunner

Unless otherwise stated, the text and images contained in this book are copyright of the author. No part of this book may be reproduced, republished, or rebroadcast without the permission of the author.

Original title: Fiegenpilz – Eine Shamanische Erfahrung;

2017, Book on Demand Verlag, Norderstedt

Cover and layout: Christian Brunner

Editor: Kristin McLaughlin

ISBN 978-1-387-41424-6

For my grandfather

Map of Austria with the most important stations of Lukas’s journey.

Part One: 

DARKNESS

1

L

ukas had been lying awake in his bed in the tiny attic room for quite some time. Like most every morning, he was up long before everyone else in his parents’ house and staring through the small window at the still dark night sky. Only a silver-blue sliver on the horizon hinted at the coming of a new day. 

Tears rolled down his cheeks. He had come to hate his morning ritual: waking up, opening his eyes, trying to move, realising that it still didn’t work, crying, waiting. He loathed it with all his heart, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Once again, another day was dawning, and nothing would change. His mother would soon come up to his room, fluff the pillows and notice that they were wet from his tears again. And then she would try her hardest to fight back her own tears. Lukas could see in her red eyes that he, once again, reminded her of the eternal sadness of his situation.

Slowly, the room soaked up the morning light, and Lukas could observe the furniture in it. Even though he didn’t have to – he had been lying here for seven years now – he looked around as if he had to check that everything was still in its place. The old desk was still in front of the window, and the desktop reflected the first rays of sunlight, while its front was still in the shade. His grandfather had given it to him for his first day of school. It once belonged to the grammar school in the village his parents attended, and to which his older sister still went. When they closed the school, because the community had erected a new, more modern building further down the valley, they sold the school furniture to those interested. That was how the desk became property of the Berner family. 

The desktop was still full of carvings the boys and girls had cut into the wood for so many years. You could actually tell how old the desk was based on one particular carving in the shape of a heart. In it the name Frantz could still be recognized, the t indicating that the boy cut his name into the desk in the 19th century, for today, Franz is written without the t. The name of the girl has already faded, only the capital S was still visible. Was her name Sophie, like Lukas’s sister and so many other girls in Tyrol?

His grandfather had promised him for years that he would restore the piece. And usually, it was not typical for old Simon Berner, not to make good on his promises. But in Lukas’s case, he must have thought that the boy would probably never sit at the desk anyway. It was one more thing that reminded Lukas of his fate on a daily basis.

Slowly the whole room lit up and the boy could look at the rest of the furniture. Not all of it, though, only those pieces which appeared into his view when rolling his eyes. For the rest, he would have to have been able to move his head.

If his mother hadn’t propped him up in the morning and then moved him here and there during the course of the day, he wouldn’t even have known what his room looked like.

From his current vantage point, as he was lying on his back, he could see the light-blue farmer’s cabinet with its floral ornaments, the wood panelled ceiling and – from the corners of his eyes, a part of the nightstand. His father had simply nailed a larger piece of plywood on top of the nightstand, so that you could safely put a tray with the meals on it. He could see the armchair, in which his mother sat, when she fed her son; his siblings, when they told him about the latest gossip from the school and the village; in which sometimes friends from back when lurked, who, out of embarrassment, didn’t talk much and if so, then only superficial nonsense. Every now and then, Lukas’s father or grandfather came upstairs. Then, they almost drowned in the chair and the only thing the boy would hear from them was the occasional Hmmm. or Yeah, yeah. You couldn’t expect much more communication from those closed-up mountain farmers with their leathery faces. When his grandfather looked at the desk, he occasionally mustered the energy to form a whole sentence, although it was always the same one, Look at the desk boy; I should repair it one of these days.

Lukas’s siblings, Sophie, Mathias, and little Alois came almost every day for a visit, sometimes all together, but most of the time each one separately. Sophie told him about work and Mottl, which is what they called Mathias who was younger by two years, informed Lukas about the new things he had learned at school. It was not the first time that Lukas had heard that, for his older sister had told him the same stories a couple of years ago. And when little Loisl would start going to school, Lukas would surely hear them a third time, whether he wanted or not.

Little Alois only watched his older brother with big eyes. Sometimes Lukas almost felt as if the little boy adored him, which, considering his situation, was beyond Lukas’s comprehension. 

Since Lukas had awoken, he had been hearing the birds outside. Now, however, more and more other noises were being added to the mix. He could make out cars, every now and then a motorbike, driven by people from the village who worked further down the valley or in the next town. The sound of the tractor old Simon took for a ride to a neighbour was already out of range when Lukas heard his siblings leave the house for the school bus. Although, there was no real school bus in this remote valley. Instead, the bus operated by the Austrian Railways running at that time in the morning was always so stuffed full of students, that everyone just called it the school bus. Adults tried to avoid it at all costs and took either the earlier or the later one. 

His mother was the only person in the house he could hear now, and Lukas knew she was preparing his breakfast. If only the tears hadn’t happened again! From her footsteps and the squeaking of the wooden stairs he knew she was coming up. Like every day, she brought him the tray with a cup of coffee and a roll with butter. The only variation was the type of jam she put on the roll. Sometimes it was honey, and on Sundays he got a cake. Maria opened the door with her elbow, a technique she had perfected over the past seven years, and which no longer posed a threat to the cup with coffee or the plate of food. In the early days of Lukas’s disease, this had been quite different.

Good morning, boy. Already awake? Lukas’s mother greeted him, as she did every single morning.

Would she still call him boy in ten or twenty years? Did he actually have to live that long? Could one call that a life, anyway? It must have been hours since he had woken up – more never-ending hours of motionlessness.

Lukas smiled, one of the few gestures his muscles allowed him to do. He could also talk a little, but the sounds were awful, and he was embarrassed by these otherworldly sounds that usually caused curious expressions on the faces of the listeners. But it was agreed upon that when he grinned, it meant yes and when he closed his eyes, it meant no.

His mother’s left hand dug between her son’s neck and the pillow – did she notice the wet spots from the tears? – and propped up his body. She grabbed the pillow with her right hand, shook it out, put it back and took another one from the armchair. Lukas would spend the rest of the day leaning against those pillows.

She pulled back the blanket, something which always made Maria put on a strange professional expression, and which made Lukas close his eyes – the only way he could escape from this, from any, situation. After having checked the catheter, Maria massaged her son’s limp leg muscles, the way she had learned from the hotel masseur, who usually practiced his trade on the wealthy hotel guests for quite a handsome sum. But the man had a big heart and liked the poor boy, so he came over to the farm once a week and massaged him, in his off time and without charge.

Lukas Berner’s eyes stayed shut tight until the moment he heard the toilet being flushed by his mother, after she had poured out the bowl into which the catheter line emptied his urine. This was always so embarrassing. He wanted nothing more than stand up and run away. Yet, he wasn’t even able to move his little finger.

In the past seven years in which he had been lying in his bed without the ability to move, Lukas had developed another method to escape the gloomy day to day routine. He had learned to dream. That wasn’t always easy, however. Because to do that, he had to sleep. And, since he didn’t do anything all day, he was never tired. Yet when he was able to fall asleep, then he could finally dream. Normal dreams, where nothing noteworthy but at the same time the most impossible happened, and everything at the same time. Then there were those dreams that were just simply beautiful. Recently, there were some about women, about love and sex. 

And then there were those dreams that Lukas has had for a few months now, more and more often. There was this cave he could enter – in his dreams he could move – with a large entryway formed like a portal. Roots as thick as the tree trunks wound between moss and lichen covered boulders and disappeared into the clefts forced into the rock. When he walked through the portal, he arrived in a foyer formed by the awesome powers of nature. The hall was lit by a hole in the ceiling, caused by a boulder that fell to the ground. It was still there, lying tranquil since it thundered down tens of thousands of years ago. Its smoothed edges and the few bowl-shaped impressions gave witness to human presence in the cave eons ago. 

Lukas was able to walk upright into the deeper parts of the cave for a while. But it soon became rather narrow, and finally the stalactites forced him to crawl. It became too narrow, and Lukas had to turn around. But most recently he had noticed a light at the end of the tunnel, even though it was just the faintest glimmer. Sometimes he was also able to spot something glittering on the sidewalls of the cave, but whenever he focused on it and tried to touch it, it disappeared and his hands just felt the glum, wet walls of the cave. Out of the corner of his eyes, however, he always had the impression that these were crystals embedded in the rock.

And then there was the dark pine forest around the cave, with the familiar sounds from his early childhood. The songs of the birds and the flapping of their wings when they took off; the humming of the insects; every now and then the crack of a branch when a deer or even a stag walked through the underbrush. It smelled like fertile soil, sweet pollen, tree sap, and mushrooms.

A lynx was also part of these dreams. It accompanied Lukas in a very peculiar way. It always kept its distance, and whenever Lukas stopped to watch it, the animal disappeared. Then again, he heard the lynx roaming around very close. The lynx’s yellow eyes emanated something extremely intimate, as if it invited Lukas to become friends. But so far, the boy hadn’t been able to approach the animal. Like a ghost it withdrew every time Lukas tried to get near.

Unfortunately, noises from downstairs ripped Lukas out of his dreams all too often. When they were normal dreams, he didn’t care. But he had noticed that it was very different with his lynx dreams. When he was able to slowly wake up from them, he felt good and strong. When some loud noise caused his awakening, he felt dizzy, as if in a fog. Once it was so bad that it made him sick. 

There had been another novelty lately. Lukas had been able to dream without sleeping, just based on the monotone sounds around him. For example, when the rain splattered on the roof and against the little window in his attic room. In these instances, he just laid or sat in his bed, propped up, and dreamt of the forest, the smells there, and of his new friend, the lynx. Yes, it was already something like a friendship, even if they had not become that close yet. 

And when the rain drops splashed on the roof and window, he often did not hear when someone came into the room. He knew, though, that his family had become a little worried, because now he was not only unable to move, but had also often become mentally completely absent. 

… bad weather, Lukas! he heard his mother say, but only the last part of the sentence. He had totally missed the beginning, having been with the lynx the whole time.

Lukas, are you even listening? He heard a hint of annoyance in her voice.

Lukas smiled. And closed his eyes.

How should Maria interpret this? A yes smile and a no eyes closed at the same time? All she did was sigh, turn around, and begin to leave the room. At first, Lukas was not aware that he had given an answer that could mean everything or nothing. But when he realised that he had answered his mother, who took care of him with such love and devotion, in a way that she couldn’t understand, he overcame his fear of talking and tried to say something.

Mmmmmu’ghgh’aaaah! was all that escaped from his powerless throat. Maria knew that this meant mother, turned around and looked straight into her son’s eyes. Lukas opened his eyes wide and smiled broadly. There was no mistaking what he meant; Yes, mother, I listened.

Both knew that this was a lie. Both accepted the effort of the other. Lukas that of his mother, to believe her son, and Maria that of her son to make her happy.

But Maria Berner had to leave her son alone because the chores of a mountain farmer were waiting for her. He had only been eleven when he last saw his mother work. But he did remember that she took care of the chickens and the livestock during the time they were in the stables. And the food came out of the kitchen where she spent most of the morning. But there were so many other more interesting things to care about seven years ago. The new tractor, for example, which his father had brought back from Innsbruck, and which stood in the barn, sparkling in its new bright red. Now it was still red but had lost its sparkle. Only that Lukas didn’t know that – he hadn’t seen it since the accident.

‘Interesting’, thought Lukas, ‘there is going to be a storm later today.’ The sun was still shining in the clean blue of the high-alpine sky. Since Lukas was now sitting propped up in his bed, he could not only see the peaks of the rock wall on the other side of the valley, but also the slopes of the mountains. And there he could definitely see the sunshine lighting up the pastures. But this was the extent of Lukas’s horizon. A horizon with a window frame, alpine meadows, rock walls above them, and a little bit of sky. The scene was also a bit skewed, because the old, handmade glass was anything but plain. And there was also this little air bubble in the window. When he sat propped up, everything behind the bubble swirled around it, sometimes it was the rock, the grass, or, when he was especially lucky, a cow. Lukas spent many hours staring at the air bubble in the hope that a bird would fly by exactly there. How wondrous an effect that may have had!

Propped up as he was now, Lukas could also see the floor. It was an old shiplap wood floor, shiny where there had been a lot of foot traffic over the years. The annual exchange of dry summer heat and damp winter cold had forced the boards apart and left clefts between them. Lukas hated these cracks. All kinds of critters lived there, especially spiders. Not that he was generally grossed out by insects, but the spiders crawled into his bed every now and then. Sometimes out of the crevices in the floor, sometimes down from the rafters. Then he would panic and scream. Usually, a family member came by quickly and removed the bug. When his parents or siblings were home, they usually came up quickly to check on him. Only his grandfather took his time. But however fast or slow they came into his room, they always had to first search for the creature. Because Lukas couldn’t show or tell them where it was. 

At the moment, however, Lukas didn’t see any movement in the shadows of the cracks between the floorboards. 

Today was Friday. To be precise, it was probably Friday, because Lukas has counted days ever since he last saw a calendar. He wasn’t entirely sure, though, because you could easily have lost count in seven whole years! Not that it made any difference what day it was, but at least a few more minutes had past just calculating out the day of the week. Weirdly enough, nobody in the family has ever thought of putting a calendar on his desk, in all those years. 

These were some of the ways Lukas Berner has spent his time for the past six years, ten months, and 24 days. With no control over his muscles from the neck down, he lay or sat in his bed in his room in the attic of his parents’ farmhouse in the small mountain farmer hamlet called Wolfskehr in the Kauner Valley in Tyrol, Austria. He slept, cried, looked around, listened, closed his eyes or smiled, ate and drank. Only in his dreams could he move. 

There was one question he mulled over day after day: What sense did his life, so obviously worthless for him and others, make?

2

D

uring his last summer vacation after four years of grade school, and before the next chapter of his life as a middle-schooler in the neighbouring village further down the valley should have started, Lukas helped out making cheese in the alpine hut the Berners owned up there in the mountains. He has done so for a few years now. The hut could only be accessed by foot and was about a five-hour hike away from the farm in the hamlet. When he finally arrived there, sweaty and tired, at the start of the vacation, he usually spent the first night out in the open, weather permitting. This was mostly because it stank awfully in the wooden house, like old and sour milk, the precursor to the famed Tyrolean grey cheese, which the dairy maid Anna produced over the summer. The cheese itself still smelled quite a bit. In any case, the odour was something Lukas had to first get used to.

Like in the summers before, he took his sleeping bag and laid down under the wide eaves of the hut, which were designed to keep the firewood stacked against the wall dry. The amount of wood had already diminished significantly since Anna had opened the hut in spring, for she needed it to fire the kettle in which she made the cheese day and night. So, there was just enough space under the roof for Lukas and his sleeping bag. And, like always, it would be his job to stack the new wood after Hias from the Snow Hollow Farm delivered more of this essential fuel. 

Lukas always slept outside when Hias came to the hut with the firewood. There was only one room, and the dairy maid would shove the boy out of the building whenever this strong lumberjack visited. It was always the same routine. Hias would guide the two mighty Noric horses that pulled the heavy carriage up the mountain and unload the wood. Anna would give him some hearty sausage, bacon, cheese, and some wine.  He would sit at the table in front of the hut, saying nothing while he stared into the distance. After some time had passed, he would put the horses into the stable for the night, brush them, and then disappear into the house.

Lukas loved spending the night outside. When the chirping of the crickets had subsided and – when Hias was visiting – the unfamiliar noises from the hut had died down, it was absolutely quiet in this remote place at 9,000 feet.  Now and then he would hear an owl hooting where the last trees grew. But otherwise – total silence. When Lukas was lying there in complete darkness and stillness, his thoughts ebbed to nothing without him even noticing. When that happened, he always felt the presence of something or someone, that ripped him out of his trancelike state as he listened for any animals crawling around the house. But if that had been the case, the cows in an enclosure next to the hut, or Hias’ horses in the stable, would have warned of an intruder. But there was nothing, and so he laid back down, thinking that he just imagined something. Or at least that was what his young mind told him.

The first task in the morning was milking the cows. This was an easy chore for the stronger Anna; less so for little Lukas. There was a stool – it was an exaggeration to call the contraption that – which had only one leg mounted to the bottom of a small, hard and therefore uncomfortable wooden disc. The leg was sharpened at the end, to stick it into the ground, and you had to sit close enough to the cow’s udder to reach it with your hands, but not under the cow. The only way to stabilize the stool was to ram your head into the side of the animal, which was not a problem as long as the cow held still. But Lukas was so short at that time that he had to stick his head against the softer belly of the cow instead of its tougher side, leading to the animal stepping to the side, sometimes towards the boy, which caused him to fall backwards on the cow patty covered floor. 

After the milking procedure was complete, the cattle were herded out of the corral and onto the lush mountain pastures, where they spent the rest of the day. Then, it was on to making cheese until the evening. 

Every now and then hikers would come by and rest on the roughly shaped benches along the hut’s walls. They were served some hearty dark bread with sausages, bacon, cheese and maybe a pickle. Usually they were tourists, taking a break on their way up to or from the Madatschferner glacier and the more hospitable hiker’s hut there near the peak. 

When there were thunderstorms – which could be violent up there – the hut was particularly cosy. As soon as the dark clouds appeared above the surrounding mountain peaks, Lukas and Anna quickly brought the cattle under the enclosure. A stone wall on the weatherside of the corral protected the animals from the wind, rain, and hail. And as soon as that was done, Lukas ran into the hut to not get too wet or be struck by lightning. 

Three of the four walls of the hut were made out of roughly hewn logs, the clefts between them stuffed with clay. The back of the hut was formed by a natural rock wall, onto which the whole building leaned and was affixed. The only openings were the narrow door, two little windows on either side, and the chimney, fed by the oven pipe. The oven could be fired all night, if need be, and was more than enough to keep the room and the alcove in the back with the two wooden beds warm. The windows were not only small, but they were also divided by a thick cross into four even smaller panels, so that they can brave any weather. On one side of the room was an open fireplace with the large kettle hanging from the centre rafter. Above it was the fume hood, the only part of the hut except the chimney made with brick and mortar. A little door led to a narrow chamber in the construction, where Anna could smoke bacon and sausages. 

The other side of the hut was filled by a table with four chairs, which separated the cheese dairy from the sleeping quarters. Shelves were mounted on each wall from floor to ceiling, many already stacked with wheels of cheese in various stages of ripening. The milk cans and other pantry items were kept outside the hut in a small crevice in the rock wall where it was always cool. 

This was the world in which Lukas passed his summer days. And he was happy with his life.

Towards the end of this summer, it happened. Everyone in the village referred to it as "the incident", partly because nobody really knew what had happened. Nobody was there when the incident occurred, not even Anna, who usually took care of the boy so diligently. But she also had to do her job, the only one she had ever learned. And there were only a few mountain farmers left in Tyrol who produced Gray Cheese and would hire her. She absolutely had to do her job well; she couldn’t leave the bubbling kettle alone to look after the boy, to check on what he was doing. Even when autumn was around the corner and not as much cheese was left to make, the rest of the milk had to be processed in what little time remained. Every single day counted.

This was the best time for Lukas, because he didn’t have to help as much anymore. He could play now. Like on the day when the incident happened.

Lukas had followed a little rivulet down to the timberline, to build a little dam there with the water wheel he had whittled during his hours off. Here, where the first upright pines and firs grew, was enough wood lying around to construct a weir. Also, where the little creek entered the deep, soft soil of the forest after having burbled over the rocky pasture, it formed a very small pond, not even two feet in diameter. This was the perfect place for Lukas’s project. 

Last time Anna saw him upright Lukas was skipping to his chosen spot.

He had already placed some larger rocks and branches at the lower end of the pond and mounted his water wheel, staring at it for quite a while. He was not so much fascinated by the turning of the wheel, as by the motion of the clear water itself when it flowed from the straight surface of the pond through the narrowest part of the weir and finally poured back into its original streambed.  When he looked at it long enough, he realised that the water didn’t simply run flat over the rocks but looked for the lowest place among the stones and there folded into itself like a towel. Yes, it actually looked like that! On either side of the lowest rock the water formed a small wave, a bulge that moved inwards and eventually made contact with the bulge coming from the other side. The two waves wove into each other before they dropped in formless chaos onto the water wheel which Lukas had placed there to get the most impact from the water’s motion. The thin layer of water between the bulges was shaped like a triangle and seemed to flow faster than the rest, as it pushed underneath the wave and then twirled up to form the bulge.

Lucas was so focused on this detail of the flowing water that it sometimes appeared to him not to be moving at all, but frozen like glass. He was so fascinated by this that what was going on around him went completely unnoticed. 

Suddenly something startled him, and he looked around. Was someone there? Had he just heard something? But now, fully conscious again, he could only hear the sounds of the surrounding forest - insects, birds, wind, and water. Where had all these sounds been right before he had heard the noise? He felt strange, but soon put these thoughts aside and was again fixated on the flow of the water. Now it looked like the jelly his mother would sometimes pour over fruit and berries on top of a cake and that enclosed strawberries or pieces of peach like transparent volcanic lava.

Again, he heard something. Lukas was struck with fear. Even though he couldn’t identify the reason, he was afraid like never before. And without being aware of how he did it, he covered the 400 feet uphill to the hut in just seconds, only then daring to turn around and look back.

It was then that he saw himself lying there right next to the weir with his little water wheel. 

What was happening?

The boy’s brain was not able to process what he was seeing. He became sick. Next thing he knew he barged into the hut and yelled at Anna, right in her face. Anna. Help me!

But she just stood there, stirring the cheese in the kettle, as if she hadn’t heard anything. 

Anna! ANNA! he screamed again and again because he had no idea what else he could say.

Anna lifted her head and for a brief moment, as if she had heard something. She shook her head and went back to stirring the cheese. Lukas thundered back out of the hut and looked down to where his little body was still lying next to the rivulet. To his horror, a huge man with a large moustache was now bending over him. And then he lost consciousness and just fell. 

Anna would never forget that evening for the rest of her life. She had always been the calm woman who kept a cool head in the world of extremes that is life in the mountains. But since that day when the Berners’ boy did not come back to the hut by himself, nothing was the same ever again. It would have been so easy to look out of the hut every now and then to check on Lukas. Wasn’t she – the oldest of many siblings whom she helped to raise – well aware that it never was a good sign if you didn’t hear or see anything from the little ones for a while? And why had she simply ignored that sign? For a few Shillings more, which she would earn for an additional wheel of cheese? Had it been worth it? All the self-blame that followed, and the silent allegations in the eyes of the people in the village?

Little Lukas must have been laying on the wet and cold ground next to the rivulet for hours before Anna had finally found him. He was still breathing; his whole little body shook like the aspen leaves. But he did not react to the shaking with which Anna tried to wake him up. Anna carried the limp body up to the hut; it would have been much easier had Lukas been able to wrap his hands around her neck to hold on a little. But there seemed to be no connection between his head and his muscles. She couldn’t even say for sure if there was a connection between her and Lukas, if he actually heard her trying to calm him down. As he was in her arms she looked into his eyes for a moment; it was a sight that tore her from sleep for years to come. Terror was in his eyes; inquisitive incomprehension; the plea that it all wouldn’t be as bad as it seemed to be right now; and at the same time the realisation of a ten-year-old that somehow everything was over now. If only it all had been over for good, right then and there. Both Anna and Lukas had often wished for this thereafter. Anna, however, with a fair amount of guilt at such thoughts.

Anna was in despair. And had her eyes not dried out from the long years of loneliness in the remote High Alps, she would have cried, even sobbed, gut-wrenchingly. Instead, she just bit her lip. She didn’t even dare think about the moment she would have to face Lukas’s family and try to explain what had happened. 

But this moment had to come, as sure as a new day. Tomorrow. For now, all she could do was make sure to survive the night. That meant staying awake and constantly checking his little body for vital signs. Whatever this was, she couldn’t let the boy die. 

This was the way – at the side of Anna, the dairy maid – that Lukas Berner spent the first of infinitely many hours of motionlessness. 

Richard and Maria Berner felt like lightning struck when they heard Anna’s horrible – and very patchy – report of the incident. They were in too much shock to even think, in the slightest, that there may have been some misconduct by Anna. There was only mute gazing into the distance, mouths gaping; sentences, even words were never finished. Nothing was going to be like before was all the faces expressed; the chiselled sun-tanned face of his father; the pale face of his mother with the rosy cheeks; and Anna’s ashen face with the dark rings of the sleepless night under her tired eyes. And the little face of Lukas that seemed to say, Please, oh please, don’t.

The news of the incident spread through the village and beyond like a disease. Little Lukas Berner was…. Well, what was he, actually? Paralyzed? Suddenly severely mentally disabled? Did he have an incurable nervous disease? Was he a danger to the community?

The village doctor sent Lukas to one of his colleagues in the nearest regional hospital. From there they transferred him to the clinic in Innsbruck and to the clinic at the University of Medicine in Vienna. Nobody had an answer. No human, no machine connected to Lucas with knobs and wires could give a reply to the burning question, What is it that had befallen him? The heads of experts shook in silence, the machines that normally discovered everything so diligently were peeping utterly useless. 

This meant, of course, that there were no methods or procedures, which could be applied. And this robbed them of any prospect of a cure. Each new doctor’s visit just destroyed more of what little hope the family still had. Lukas could no longer, despite a completely intact spine, move anything below his first neck vertebra. His brain worked fine, and nothing indicated any known disease. After years of unsuccessful tests and talks and more tests they even asked Lukas if he wanted to have this disease named after him. But he closed his eyes and his mother translated No.

The clinical director of the General Hospital in Vienna was secretly glad at this no. He hoped that whatever it was that the boy had would eventually die with him. And without a name for the illness, his profession would not be plagued forever with this reminder of their inability to diagnose it. This way, his file with the x-ray images, reports, and the records of highly precise machinery, all together often conflicting information, could remain buried in a file cabinet drawer labelled BEN-BES in the bowels of the most advanced hospital in the country. The file hadn’t been touched since those first years after the incident. Science had forgotten Lukas.

3

T

here is going to be a storm later today, his mother had said that morning. And she was probably right, that much was clear to Lukas by now. Above the rock wall he could see from his window, black, rain heavy thunder clouds had moved in, casting dark shadows down the mountainside. Soon, the raindrops would splatter on the roof and against the window, and the time to dream would be here. It had become easier for Lukas to dream when he was lulled in by the drumming of the drops than when he was asleep. He didn’t care that much, because the only things that were important was to be able to move when dreaming, to find the lynx; and to go into the cave. 

Lucas’ mind was taut like a bow sinew in this limp body – in anticipation of the rain and in anticipation of the escape into the world of his dreams. 

Suddenly a jolt went through Lukas’s body as if hit by lightning. This did not cause the slightest movement, but nevertheless, he thought as though he had felt his body for a fraction of a second. It was a sudden insight which travelled through his limbs at light speed. It was a peculiar way of realising something he has never experienced, but the realisation was as strong and as accurate as if he had studied and researched all the details of this sudden bit of knowledge for years. 

Something is going to happen today.

Not the storm, which was practically already here, and he had known of its coming. No, something in his life would change today.

Was he scared? No, all he felt was anxious anticipation.

Or was it all imagination, made up in his mind? Had it started raining already, perhaps, and he had started to dream? Not at all. It only had gotten darker in the valley. But he was as sure that change was coming as he was that one and one made two. 

***

Hello, Simon.

Old Simon Berner was so startled that he almost jumped out of the chair in the inn and spilled his beer. This voice was not unfamiliar, but definitely not expected here and today. 

Ha…Hall…Katherina…you don’t say…what are you doing here? the eighty-two-year-old stammered and was immediately angry with himself because everyone in the room could surely hear his bad conscience. Right in front of him stood Katherina Haller, still gorgeous, even though she, too, has aged – thirty years leave their marks– and yet she was much more vibrant than in those old days when he knew her last. Yes, it was still a bad conscience that plagued Lukas’s grandfather after all those years, even though his wife had long been dead. Didn’t the priest say way back when Until death do you part? Technically, Simon shouldn’t have felt weird any longer when he saw her. And still, the old feeling of guilt came back at once.

Simon had never had an affair with Katherina. He was fifty-two back when she worked as a waitress in the village inn, and she was a young eighteen-year-old and he occasionally smacked her butt when she walked by. Mostly during second breakfast after church on Sunday – which was simply an excuse to have a beer after mass, while the women were home in the kitchen preparing lunch. And since everybody did it, nobody paid attention when Simon did it, too. Perhaps he did it a bit more often than others, but who was counting. And nobody noticed the feeling he had when he did it, a feeling that dried out his throat even today after death had parted him from his wife so long ago. 

This girl was so beautiful back then, and so full of a strange energy. And yes, he had been in his midlife crisis at that time. He had this urge to be young himself once more, free, and attractive enough to seduce young women. And, even past fifty, he was definitely an attractive man. He was a mountain guide, without an ounce of fat on his body, his hair along the temples was already greying, but overall, still thick and strong, and his skin from the endless hours in the sun and the thin air in high altitude tan and leathery. The crow’s feet on the side of his eyes made the well-loved man even more personable. His figure was wiry and his muscles well defined, which was a particularly invigorating sight when climbing behind him. 

There she – Katherine Haller, reason for sleepless nights and desperate thoughts – stood right in front of him, this no longer so well shaped old man, and asked if she could join him. 

Katherina was forty-eight herself but looked more like thirty as she stood there. She was wearing an ankle length, black, sleeveless pipe dress that outlined her well-formed figure, a long silver necklace with a walnut sized piece of turquoise set in silver hanging right in front of her solar plexus, and numerous silver bracelets on both sun-tanned arms. She wore a ring on almost every finger and some in her ears, from which very prominent creoles hung on either side as well. Instead of a purse she wore a small backpack and, probably