Coyote's Daughter Page 15

  Fast as our feet could carry us, we ran down the canal. The sun hung low in the sky, and the early evening shadows were long.

  Down the path, down the bank to our street, and we ran into the courtyard where my mother stood, hands on her hips.

  "Miss Maggie! Where have you been?"

  I wrapped my arms around her and thought I would never let go.

  She held me tight. "Maggie. We got home, and you weren't here. No note, no message. I called Mark and Amy's house, but you weren't there either."

  "Mom, I'm sorry I was gone so long."

  She stopped fussing and ruffled my hair. "Well, I guess it's not such a big deal. You're usually pretty good about being home on time, and I guess one late evening in the summer won't hurt."

  One evening? I felt dizzy. I couldn't figure out what she was talking about. Why was she taking me being gone for a week, no, closer to two, so well?

  Mom turned back in towards the house and walked through the gate. "Come on. Your dad and I didn't feel like fighting with dinner, so we ordered in pizza. The delivery boy just brought it, and your dad is setting the table. Something else you'll have to make up for." But she said it with a grin.

  One evening? I looked at the calendar when I came in.

  It was the same day. Everything had happened, and I was just now coming home, and it was the same day.

  Dad pulled out a chair for Mom, and bent to pet Jack who had gone straight to his food bowl, happily crunching away.

  "There you are." His voice turned serious. "You know you had us worried, Miss Maggie."

  "I know, Dad. I'm sorry."

  "So, how was your day? Must have been pretty exciting for you to stay out so late."

  I reached for a steaming slice of pizza, stretching the cheese out from the box to my plate, knowing it would drive my folks crazy.

  "Exciting? You have no idea." I touched the necklace and smiled.

  The End

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  Chapter One

  Chapter One

  Time moved in a dance of days and then the long sleep of winter arrived. My family does not have to sleep through the winter and in truth, we do not. I leave the cave of our home to watch the snow fly across the land at least, oh, once or twice every year. But even with a bear’s coat, winter is best spent curled up and dreaming of friends.

  I woke slowly this year, tangled and trapped in the last of my dreams. They sang in my head, awkward and uncomfortable. Before I opened my eyes I stretched, dragged my arms against the floor using the weight of my body to pull them to their full length, then bent to stretch my legs. A long sleep, even on a well-padded mattress, always leaves me a bit stiff, despite my youth. I breathed deep and the faint tang of smoke coiled onto my tongue. Mother and Father must already be up, I thought.

  I stood, shook myself and padded about the cave. I did not see them anywhere, so decided they must already be out to survey the changes a season can bring. That they had allowed me to sleep in until the afternoon surprised me, an unusual treat. In the months before the sleep, they had taken my training more seriously than ever before. The question of my future had never been in doubt. I would be a healer, as they were, as all in my family had been.

  But two summers before had brought changes to our world and the casual teachings of previous years had been replaced with a landslide of information. Change comes infrequently to our people and our land. I think what happened that year frightened them a little.

  It is odd to think of my parents frightened of anything. When I was very small, I wondered if my father was slower of mind than other people. He says nothing quickly, is not fast with words or easy in conversation. Only as I grew did I realize he speaks nothing without weighing both his words and the reaction of his listener.

  My mother is the sun to his moon. Her hands fly like quick bird wings and her speech runs fast and cheerful. She is beautiful and delicate of feature, but I have seen her hold down patients as they thrash in fever. Through it all she never seems to lose her poise.

  For all my life I have trained to be a healer, a doctor, like them, but I hold a secret tight to my heart. A fear. Fear that I will never truly be able to be like them, never possess the solid kindness of my father, the strength and grace of my mother. Never know, as she seems to, always what to do, what to say.

  And if I failed, people would die. For that is the burden of a healer.

  No. I stopped these bleak thoughts; I would not let my fears burst forth, not on this first day after winter when new leaves would emerge. I pulled back from the fire and mentally began to review my list of chores.

  I walked over to the corner of the cave we designated for storage and reached above my head to check the level of the contents of the dark red and tan woven basket of yucca. In the spring, there would be many patients with aches and pains who called for my parents help and the pith of yucca bark makes a strong tea to help those afflicted with joint stiffness. Besides, the plant is good for washing and I looked forward to a long soak and thorough scrub.

  Then I blinked in surprise. Before me a heavy paw, covered in honey-gold fur and tipped with long, curved nails reached for the woven lid.

  I sighed. I must still not be quite awake, to forget which shape I wore. I lowered my paw and began the shift in my mind.

  I know well how the change appears to others; I have watched my parents shift from one shape to the other. A bear, black and towering, or golden and sleek, stands before you, pauses, then reaches his paws towards the sky, as if to pull down the sun. Then with a movement swift as a hawk, the paws pass in front of the face, down the center of the body and spread to the side. No slower than that, you are faced with a man or woman who seems only to be wearing an elaborate bearskin coat, which can be removed, hung on a peg, like any coat.

  It looks so simple. However, the shift is anything but. As a child I would spend days in bear form, forgetting how to shift into a girl, unable to hold the girl shape in my thoughts and uncomprehending of why I should bother. I have to hold the image clearly in my mind. If I fail, nothing bad happens, I simply would not change. And there is nothing wrong with staying a bear. But a bear’s paw is ill suited for some tasks. Many days, I find it is convenient to have the option of fingers.

  I stood, quieted my mind and thought about being a girl, wrapped myself in that shape, as comfortable as my fur. As my hands flew down my body, the familiar crackling sensation came, like lightning striking. No pain, not exactly, but a tingle that began at the center of my chest and wrapped over my skin. I wondered, as I often do, if this is how snakes feel as they shed from one skin to the next.

  I pushed the hood of my coat back and wrinkled my nose as I ran my fingers through my waist-long black hair. Yes. Definitely time for a bath. I checked the basket, relieved to see the contents full to the lip. I had spent the fall gathering supplies to hang and dry and did not want to spend my first day awake scouting for more plants.

  I filled the clay pot with water from the small spring at the back of the cave and shivered at its chill. I placed the pot next to the banked fire to warm and pulled my fur coat around me tightly. Time to go outside, at least to gather a bit more wood. My parents’ rule is to replace supplies as soon as they are used, preferably beforehand, so we are never caught short, never run out. In an emergency, such a shortage could mean disaster. I know their rules make sense, but sometimes I wish I did not have to bother, could wait until later.

  As I walked to the front of the cave, I frowned. That both of my parents had been gone for so long seemed more than passing odd to me. Usually we spend the first day together, talking over plans for the new sea
son, checking over our home for any repairs that might have become necessary since fall crept into winter.

  Still, I was not worried over much. At sixteen summers, I often felt they fretted over me, kept me closer than needed. Perhaps this was the beginning of the year when they would allow me more freedom, a chance to be on my own. Maybe... I stopped, my hand on the door to the cave. Maybe this year I could bring up the question of when I would be permitted to move into my own quarters. I grinned and opened the seal to the door in the cliff.

  And the smile froze on my face. Flurries of snow drifted across my vision. Unusual, but not unheard of. Weather here is unpredictable. Snow will fall in early summer some years, not at all in others. The wind was what stopped me in my tracks.

  Cold, biting, the wind moaned across the desert. The sound cut me, the howls sobbed, tore at my heart. I fell to my knees at the door and stared at the desert. The dusting of snow lent the land a ghostly aspect. As I knelt, words repeated in my mind, a loop, frozen in place.

  The land is dying.

  * * *

  My parents found me collapsed by the still open door to the cliff. They must have approached from around the side of the cliff even as I came outside, for I do not think I lay long on the ground.

  My father scooped me up into his arms, his fur tickling my face.

  He placed me by the fire and my mother stepped out of her coat with swift movements and placed her hands on my forehead.

  "Bear Girl, what were you thinking?" She gazed at me, her dark brown eyes wide, still checking me for harm.

  "Mother, I am fine, truly." I stilled her hands with mine as they fluttered over me. "I do not know why I fell. I went out to get more firewood and," I stopped, remembering, "the wind. The sound of the wind..." My voice faded, unable to explain what I felt.

  I needed to provide no further explanation. My parents looked at each other and my mother’s lips pressed into a thin line. My father nodded and my mother turned back to me.

  "The wind has blown for days now, we have discovered. Our family did not hear the cry inside our home, the walls are too thick. But when your father and I left this morning, the sound shook us. We have spent the day checking on those who live near us. Many have been stricken by the wind with despair, fever and listlessness. Your father and I do not know what sickness this strange wind brings, but the illness is all around us now."

  My father put his paw on my shoulder. "I am sorry if we seemed angry with you. The sight of you laying motionless by the door, after we had seen so many ill, frightened us." His grip tightened. "Until the wind stops, perhaps you should stay inside."

  I tilted my head to rest my cheek on his paw. "It frightened me too." I straightened and looked up at him. "I think I was overcome by the strangeness, the suddenness. If I am expecting the wind, I do not believe I will fall again. If I am to be a healer, then I can not stay inside and hide."

  My mother bowed her head at my words and the dark wings of her hair curtained her face. "Let us speak more of this later. Your father and I are tired past imagining. This is not a favorable start to a new year." She rose and walked towards her sleeping mat.

  My father started to follow her, then paused a little past me. "Daughter, would you begin to prepare dinner? We can talk more after we rest and eat."

  I stared after them. Whatever they had found outside must have been more terrible than I could imagine, for them to be so affected.

  In baskets that rested on stone ledges I found dried venison and wrinkled red berries. Baskets of ground cornmeal dangled from leather cords, part of father’s ongoing battle to keep the mice out of our pantry. After a clay pot nestled in the ashes by the fire with the meat soaking within, I stirred water into the cornmeal and spread the mixture on a large flat rock. A simple meal, but easy to prepare with what we had on hand. As I waited for the cakes to brown, I gazed into the fire and thought about the strange sobbing wind.

  The flames sparkled, gold and red and orange in turn, reached towards the smoke-hole drilled into the ceiling far above. I watched their dance, felt myself drawn in, my vision blurred by their flickering movement.

  * * *

  Isabel looked out through the gates that led from the small courtyard as she sat carding baskets of wool under the spreading shade of the cottonwood tree. In the fields surrounding the mission, a ragged group of men and women scavenged the dusty field, searching for any ears of corn they could find, no matter how scrawny. By working for the mission, doing service for Fray Alonzo and the glory of the Franciscan Order, the Indians of Santa Catalina avoided paying tribute to the governor. But Isabel wondered if the people of the village truly gained any advantage in the exchange.

  The harvest had been poor for yet another year and Fray Alonzo had resorted to distributing rations after Mass every Sunday.

  A familiar shape trotting through the gates interrupted her worries and brought a deep flush to her cheeks.

  "Tomás!"

  The young dark-haired man from the pueblo flashed a brilliant smile and detoured towards her, covering the ground between them with long easy strides.

  Isabel put the carding combs into the basket of uncarded wool and stood, hastily brushed loose tufts of wool from her skirts and pulled her braids to lay straight down the front of her blouse.

  "Is there anything wrong?"

  He shook his head. "No, nothing for you to worry about. A while back, the Brother asked the cacique to keep an eye on the northern road for him. Some of our people have seen what looks to be a company of Otermín’s men headed this way."

  Isabel frowned. "I wonder why?"

  Tomás no longer smiled. "The old men talk, but..." He trailed off and glanced around. "Now is not the time. Let me deliver my message to the Brother."

  He stepped towards her, eyes bright. "But, first, a reward for the messenger." He bent towards her and stole a kiss, too quickly for her to duck away.

  She pushed him back, laughing. "Stop it! You know you still must talk to my father."

  He heaved a great sigh, but still grinned and she reached forward to toss his braid back over his bare shoulder. "He will be back any day now. The caravan completes the circuit from New Spain every three years; you know it will have to pass through Santa Catalina on the way north to Santa Fe."

  "The caravan is late, the soldiers say." Tómas scowled.

  "Then it’s sure to arrive soon now, be patient," Isabel answered. Her tone sounded light, but her lips pressed together in worry. The journey north from New Spain took a tithe in blood, often enough that a section of the trail was commonly known as Jorñado del Muerto.

  Tomás threw his hands over his head in frustration. "You have said that for a month now. Ah, never mind, everything will work out." He brushed her cheek with his hand, cupped her face so she looked directly into his eyes. "But now I must deliver my message. It would be bad if the governor’s men arrive before me."

  She smiled; relieved the argument was averted and followed him with her eyes as he entered the cool shade of the mission.

  A soft caress against her ankles made her jump and she looked down to discover the fluffy tail of a large black and white cat swishing back and forth from the basket of wool at her feet.

  "Nicco, get out of there!"

  Golden eyes framed in a black mask peered up at her over a perfect pink triangle of nose. He yawned, showing off his sharp white teeth and the ridges going down the matching pink roof of his mouth.

  Isabel sighed and carefully detangled the cat from the basket of wool. Task completed she sat back down on the rough wooden bench, the cat sprawled across her lap.

  Isabel looked out of the courtyard towards the fields. The heat shimmered like flames before her eyes.

  * * *

  The smell of lightly scorched cakes startled me. I flipped them over quickly, burning my fingers, while I wondered what had just happened. A dream? The images of the girl, Isabel, the strange place, all were so clear. They did not have the feel of a dream, rather a memor
y. A memory I could not possibly have. I had sat rigid throughout, not slumped over in sleep. I felt this could not have been a dream, but what it was remained a mystery. I puzzled over the images and sucked my fingers. My parents returned from the section of the cave where their sleeping chamber lay and the concern in their eyes made me resolve to worry about my own small problems later.

  * * *

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