Coyote's Daughter Page 4

  I checked my watch. My parents weren't due home for another hour. If I was fast, they'd never know how far from home I'd come.

  "I can stay for a little bit, yes."

  He gestured to the ground. "Please have a seat." He dropped down, completely comfortable in the shade of the old tree.

  I sat cross-legged, and wished for something to rest my back against. Jack plopped his head in my lap. All of his doubts about the strange place had melted away.

  I pulled the sandwiches out from my backpack and set up Jack's water. "Do you want a sandwich?" I held one out to Ash. He shook his head quickly. "No. No thank you. Please go ahead and eat, and I will tell you a story."

  I shrugged, and unwrapped a sandwich for myself and one for Jack, and alternated bites for me with tearing off a bite for him.

  "In this village once lived a girl named Yellow Corn Maiden. She went out to gather nuts with others from the village, and disappeared for a year. When she came back she had a baby boy with her, but told no one the name of the father, nor where she had been. The entire village scorned her, and piled trash and dirt outside her house. She carried the boy child with her everywhere, and could often be seen whispering to him as she ground meal for their dinner. She could feed him only mashed gruel, not having the foods to make the fine wafer bread given to the other children his age.

  "Because of the villager's disdain for her, she could find no hunter willing to exchange deer meat for her ground meal, and struggled to trap rabbits and other small animals. The thin broths she made from her infrequent catches kept the boy alive in the harsh winter, but each year the woman grew thinner and thinner, until at last, when the boy had grown to seven summers old, she died.

  "The boy buried Yellow Corn Maiden, his mother, alone, and when the four days had passed, on his own held the Ceremony-of-Not-Returning."

  At that point I had to interrupt. "I'm sorry, what ceremony?"

  Ash looked surprised to be stopped mid-story. "Four days after a death, it is needful to tell the dead person they must not return, must stay dead." He shook his head. "Otherwise, the dead person may come back to their homes and families, and cause great harm, even if they do not mean to create trouble."

  I thought about zombies, and he continued.

  "The boy continued to live in his mother's house. By that time he had learned to snare rabbits, and kept himself alive, but his life was a mean, miserable existence.

  "He tried to make friends with the other children, but they had learned the prejudice of their parents, and none would speak to him, save to shout insults and throw rocks. They never let him play the ball game or throw sticks with them, and he sat on the sidelines and glared at them all."

  I wanted to stop him again and ask to explain those games, and how did you play them, then decided it would be best to look them up online at home or ask Dad, rather than interrupt him again.

  "Before long he decided to travel south. His mother long ago told him a powerful sorcerer in the far south had fathered him, and waited to teach his son all of his magic. If any in the village responded to his decision to leave, they only mocked him. No one noticed when he left. By the time anyone thought to check on his home it had been abandoned to the wild for many weeks.

  "Seasons passed, and the village forgot the sad boy and his mother. The children he had played with had become adults with children of their own, when he reappeared in the middle of the square. He had grown straight and strong, with many parrot feathers, and much pinang."

  Ash looked at me, and sighed. "Magic. Or the power to do magic. If you do not have pinang, it does not matter how much training you have, the power of the earth will not be lent you. If you have much pinang and no training for many years, and nothing to feed yourself on but bitterness and hate, it can become twisted.

  "No one saw the taint in Yellow Corn Man, for that is who he would be called now, for many more seasons. He grew in the town's respect, and traded his skills at prayers and spells for meat and corn. Disregarded by all were the days when the town scorned him and his mother. All but him.

  "The disaster started after the leaves fell one year. Though the winter fell no colder than usual, all of the old and the young of the villagers grew sick. Yellow Corn Man tended each of the ill ones and they seemed to improve for a short time, but always the afflicted ones would die in the night.

  "The entire village could see the cost of his long vigils to help the sick, for after each death Yellow Corn Man became older, a little more bent, a bit more wrinkled. Many piled loud praise upon him for pouring all of his magic into the sick ones in an attempt to save them. The families of those who died did not join the praise. A vague feeling of wrongness surrounded each death, and the families whispered of it to each other. Most refused to listen to them, saying their words came from their bereavement, and not reason.

  "No one spoke aloud until the death of a certain small girl. Her mother, who had no small amount of pinang herself, took the body into a back room, and let the moonlight rest full upon on it. She cried out, and all came to see what had so startled her. The mother discovered the girl's body to be no more than cornhusks tied together into a doll.

  "Understanding burst upon them like cold rain. While Yellow Corn Man had pretended to care for the sick ones, he had stolen them away, changed them into huge black birds, and left husk dolls disguised with magic to look like each person. The enchanted husk doll would then appear to die, and the families of the victims would never know their loved ones were missing, not dead. The magic he used must have been powerful, for all could see the effort of using it drained the life from the sorcerer.

  "From then on people did not let Yellow Corn Man in, but their children sickened anyway, and after the children died, their families always found a husk doll instead of a body.

  "The disaster picked up speed like rocks rolling down a mountainside. Yellow Corn Man, now called Shriveled Corn Man, no longer bothered waiting for people to fall sick, or with the disguised cornhusk dolls. Not just the old or the young now, but anyone could be taken, and their family would wake to find their beds empty.

  "In vain the remaining townspeople went to plead with the sorcerer, but he would not come out of his house to hear them. One by one, the people disappeared, until the last few survivors went elsewhere to try to escape Shriveled Corn Man's anger."

  Ash stopped and I let out my breath. "Did they get away? Did he chase them?"

  "I do not know." He looked troubled. "I hope they escaped, but I fear they did not."

  "Thank you for telling me the story. I enjoyed it a lot."

  Ash looked at me blankly and frowned. "That is the story of this place. You asked where the people were, and I told you. Shriveled Corn Man took them. We don't know where, or what he will do to them, or if they are still alive, but that is where the people went."

  "Oh." When I'm not sure what to say, my first reaction is to chatter, so there's no awkward silence, but this left me speechless. I'd always thought people just said that, but now I knew you could actually lose the ability to speak.

  "That's terrible." A good story, sure, but real? Happening now? Ash either had played a joke on me, or we had hit a language barrier without noticing, and he meant this story happened about the people who had lived here, long ago.

  Yes, that made sense. Just the local legend about this place, and Ash said it wrong. Now that I thought about the story as a legend, this would be the sort of thing Dad liked to know about.

  The thought of Dad made me check my watch. "Ash, I've got to go. I'm going to be late getting home, and then I'll be in trouble." I looked around the deserted town again, and tried to reestablish my bearings.

  "Can you take me back to the main path? I think I can get there on my own, but I'm not sure."

  Ash stood and started off the way we had come. I woke up Jack and repacked our bags, then scrambled to catch up. Ash did not speak the entire way back, carefully stepping between the split cottonwood to get back to the main trail.
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  I joined him there, panting a bit. "Thank you. I don't want to get in trouble; my parents might not let me walk again if I'm late."

  Ash's expression cleared. "Then it is best you left now. You can get home from here?"

  "Yes, we'll be fine. Thank you again." Jack and I started down the path.

  "Will you be at the river tomorrow?" He called out from behind us.

  I stopped. He sounded as lonely as me. I turned back to him. "Yes, we'll be there." I smiled at him. "Have a good evening." And then kept walking home.

  At dinner that night I tried to tell Dad the story of Shriveled Corn Man, but I think I got a lot of the details wrong. He looked interested, but I didn't think he paid a lot of attention. When I finished he said, "Intriguing. I haven't heard that particular tale. Where did you say you read it?"

  I sighed. "Dad, I told you. I didn't read it. Ash told it to me. He said that's what happened to the town he lives in, and that's why there aren't any people there."

  Mom isn't usually interested in old stories, but that made her take notice. "You went to his house?"

  "Only to his neighborhood. I didn't go inside, we sat under a tree and talked, and he told me the story." I thought about it for a minute. "I'd like to see the inside of one of the houses, though. They're like the ones we saw at the museum, but real, and person-sized."

  Mom looked blank.

  "Remember the local history museum? The houses with the ladders, and the holes cut into flat roofs? Like that, but big. I liked it."

  I grabbed another roll and started to butter it.

  Dad spoke up. "Honey, are you talking about a block of houses in that style, like a new development with some of those architectural elements?"

  Dad really hates those brand-new housing developments. He can't understand why anyone would pay so much for a house, but not have enough room between your house and the neighbor's to be able to stretch your arms out.

  "No." I shook my head and finished my bite of roll. "Not like that. A whole group of houses, and they all looked like the ones in the museum. Not lined up straight on a street, or anything, but sort of bunched up around an open area. They didn't look new to me."

  Dad frowned. "I don't think there are any original Pueblo villages in Albuquerque. Maybe you found a new reenactment area, like the one we saw at Williamsburg that summer."

  I shook my head again, but slower this time. I remembered the visit to the Colonial Era reenactment town, and it bustled full of actors and visitors. "I don't think that's right either. I didn't see any other people, just these buildings, and everything looked old and a little run down."

  After dinner Dad pulled up a map on the computer, and even though I could follow the canal up to the Bosque, I couldn't find the side trail Ash and I had taken to get to his home.

  "It should be about here." I circled a spot on the map with my finger. "But there's too many houses. We walked down a path, and I couldn't see any houses, just fields and empty land for most of the walk. All of this area has too many buildings in it."

  Dad looked a little worried. "Maybe there were more houses than you remembered, or you've forgotten how to find the trail. Either way, it's a bit of a mystery, and I'm not sure I want you going out there again."

  "But Dad," I sputtered, "that's not fair!"

  "We'll talk it over later. I want to think about this for a bit, and ask around."

  Before he shut down the computer I took a good look at the screen. I could see nothing on the map that fit with what I had seen. Nothing at all. Not just in the area I thought we had gone, but nowhere throughout our entire section of the city, certainly not within range of an afternoon's walk. I shivered a little. The map must be wrong; I knew where we had gone.

  I went to bed and thought of the empty town, and Ash's story. Big black birds filled my dreams again. The coyote leapt and bounded, scattering the birds, but not hurting them. I laughed, and he stalked over to where I stood.

  "Well, it's a dream. So I guess there's no point to being frightened of you here, right?"

  He made several short barking noises.

  I looked at him. "You're laughing at me, aren't you?"

  As I spoke, he stopped with one short bark, and stepped closer. He shifted his weight and twitched, as if his skin became loose over his body, his fur turned to water. It swirled over his body, and the coyote stretched and twisted, like someone getting out of bed, and putting on a robe.

  When the transformation was finished, a short man sat on the ground in front of me dressed in a vest and tattered pants. The same man I had seen at the window, and at the museum, and in my other dreams.

  "Girl child, you need to learn what to be frightened of, and what not to be." His smooth, silky voice startled me. I had expected it to be gruff, like a dog's bark, but he wouldn't be out of place at a formal ball or a courtroom.

  He stood up. "And what is real, and what isn't." And with that he lunged forward and pushed me backwards, and I fell over a cliff edge that hadn't been there before, and as I fell I looked down on Ash's empty village, and it never got any closer, even though I fell for a thousand years.

  Chapter Five

  Waking up, even too early and in the dark, relieved me. Enough with the weird dreams. I padded to the kitchen to make a cup of cocoa and decided to go back to my room and write. Sometimes getting things onto paper forces them to make sense. But when I looked over everything I'd written, and it still didn't come together.

  I drifted off at my desk and jumped about a foot when Mom tapped on my door.

  "Come on, sleepyhead. Breakfast is ready."

  This time I had finished with breakfast and wearing real clothes when the knock at the front door came. Mark and Amy stood there again with a tall blonde woman behind them.

  "Hi, I'm Mark and Amy's mom."

  "I remember you. You brought oatmeal raisin cookies. They were really good."

  She laughed at me. "You have to let the raisins soak in milk overnight before you bake them. That's the secret.'

  Amy and Mark looked mortified, and I shot them the "yeah, parents, they're embarrassing, but what can we do?" shrug.

  "Are your parents home?"

  "Sure." My mind raced. What did she want? I hadn't done anything bad enough to make her ask for my folks, had I?

  Mom and Dad came out to the courtyard, all smiles.

  "We're going to the waterpark today, and I wondered if Maggie would like to go with us."

  I sagged with relief.

  The twins' mom continued. "I wouldn't want my kids going off with someone I hadn't talked with, so I thought I'd drop by and ask, rather than send the kids over for me."

  My parents didn't wait to talk about it. "Of course. Maggie, you don't have other plans, do you?"

  A waterpark. Finally a chance to go swimming. It wouldn't be the ocean, but it sounded wonderful.

  "Nope!"

  "Then it's settled. We'll come by and pick you up in about an hour, okay?"

  I raced through the house and dug out my swimsuit and flip-flops. Mom had just given me spending money when we heard the car pull up in front of the house.

  "Bye!" I shouted over my shoulder as I ran out.

  I had a blast at the waterpark. All three of us stayed in until our fingers and toes turned to prunes. Mark and Amy's mom lay on a lounge chair under an umbrella and read. Every so often she'd look up, count heads, and then go back to her book. Amy and I raced doing laps, and Mark swam beneath us and tried to pull us under.

  At lunchtime we piled around her lounge chair and got fruit and sandwiches out of the cooler.

  Late afternoon came, and we dragged ourselves home, exhausted.

  I could barely keep my head up over dinner, and Mom and Dad smiled when I announced I had to get ready for bed early. Not until I saw the necklace tossed on my desk did I remember I had told Ash I would meet him by the river.

  All the fun of the day evaporated and left a tight ball of guilt.

  I went to sleep, and the dre
ams waited for me. The old woman and the man stood in the open square of Ash's village by the big tree. They were arguing, and didn't notice me for a few minutes. Braver than I'd ever be in real life, I walked over to them and waited.

  "How can you be so sure?" The old woman drew her hand down in a sharp cutting motion. "If we are wrong about this, a great many people will suffer."

  The old man noticed me first, and shot a quick smile that seemed a little too toothy. He raised a hand to stop the woman, and pointed at me.

  "Well, you arrived here again. I suppose that is something." The woman sounded bitter.

  "I'm sorry I didn't meet up with Ash today. I didn't know it was important."

  She got the same exasperated look that Mom gets when I've said something stupid. "You promised something, and then did not do it. Oh, you might not have said the actual words 'I promise' but you spoke an intention aloud. You spoke your word, gave your word. And then you broke it."

  I looked at the ground, and dragged my foot in the dirt to make lines. Even in the dream I was in my tennis shoes. It was a silly thing to notice.

  She continued, "The young man is in trouble and needs your help. And you failed him."

  They started to walk away, and I took a step after them.

  "Wait. Please." Another step, then two more. "Please, I need to ask you something."

  They turned, the woman's eyebrows raised high in expectation.

  "Is this real? I mean, are you real, outside of my dream? This isn't just my own mind making stuff up, is it?"

  The man answered for them both. "If we were part of your own mind, would you not expect us to answer that we were real? How would you ever know?" He grinned, and again the sheer number of his teeth struck me.

  "Besides, the answer to your question is both yes and no, so it does not do you any good, does it?"

  They turned and walked away, and this time I didn't chase them. "He needs you child. Don't abandon him now." She turned her back on me and walked away, straight and stately as a queen, with her long hair spilling behind her.

  The man sat in the dust and shook his head. He made a rippling shudder, and his body flowed until it became a coyote's. His silence cut worse than the old woman's words. He never spoke, and loped out of the village without even so much as a glance back at me.