Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  The saints do not answer. No surprise there. I wish I had Doug or my rune can or both with me right about now. I doodle in the dust beyond my knees and try to order my assumptions. Then, on a whim, I take out the vial of attar and twist out the cork.

  “Okay, first things first: do I believe Scrawl?”

  I inhale.

  Dui, says Somebody, which is about as ‘yes’ as you can get in Chinglish.

  For a moment, I imagine it’s the saints, then feel foolish for thinking some painted wooden guys are talking at me. It’s the Whisperers, of course, suddenly speaking perfect Chinglish — and most emphatically, too, I must say.

  I draw another deep breath and ask, “Who besides Lord E would send ninjas to set fire to the pier?”

  Wiwe, say the Whisperers and I sigh. We’re back to verba incognita again.

  “Look,” I say, “ni shi shei? Who the hell are you?”

  Yelamu, Ssaisen, Huimen, Saclan. The names roll out of the mist, then the whisper dies to a murmur, like a stream as you walk away.

  I know these names. These are the names of tribes to which the Spanish gave the name Ohlone for their common language, and Costano, because of where they lived. To my ancestors the many were one. They couldn’t tell the Yelamu from the Ssaisen, or the Tuibun from the Huimen. They were all just Indians — Ohlone. I read these names in a book once, five — maybe six — years ago.

  And then I tried to forget them.

  My suspicions, which I have buried for lo, these many years (having other things to occupy my mind), have been verified. I have been talking to the Ohlone Dolores (or rather, they have been talking to me) in a state of self-imposed cluelessness. As I said, it is my ancestors who put these poor guys in the ground. You can’t blame me for not wanting to think about what they might want from me.

  I have read the history of the Mission in the Micro-Fish archives of the old Diocese, but it lacks a certain perspective and detail, I guess you could say. Like, for example, it doesn’t tell the tales of cruelty, of overwork, of desperate escapes, and the diseases that swept the Ohlone into the grave. The Diocese records count each Ohlone soul won for the Church; the Ohlone counted each soul and family and tribe lost — Tuibun, Tatcan, Rumsen, Chupcan, Chiguan — like lights going out in a neighborhood as households go to sleep. When night came, their world shrank from the forever horizons to the four walls of their mission rooms.

  Five years ago, having read those names and seen those lights go out in my head, I hadn’t wanted to know more. Now I did.

  I went home. I shared what I had found with Firescape and Doug. They went with me to the Wiz to learn more. What I learned was that while the Ohlone had disappeared into the missions (and into the earth) they had risen again, tattered, on the rancherias — lands deeded to them by the new American government, or bequeathed to them by the Californios, the New World Spanish families — they had served.

  I might have breathed easier but for one thing: that last Ohlone, Pedro Alcantara, didn’t know any of this. He had died believing he was the End. For some reason, this bothered me most outrageously. I mean, try to imagine being among aliens and thinking everyone you love is dead and that after you, there’ll be no more them or you or anything. No more family, no more tribe, no more Ohlone.

  Gone. History.

  Pedro Alcantara was an old man when he died — an old, lonely man. A man whose son had run away from the Mission and had never come back. Pedro never knew whether he’d escaped to the east, or had been killed by the soldiers sent to stop the runaways.

  I know what losing folks is like. Losing my parents was the worst. But I gotta believe it’s worse to watch your children die before you. ‘Cause it’s not natural, y’know? It’s just not natural. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about having a little Flannigan with Firescape only to lose him or her.

  I don’t get anything more out of the Whisperers that day, though I try. All I get is the same litany of tribal names. After a while, even that stops.

  Later, Firescape and Doug and I wonder aloud about where Pedro’s son might’ve run away to and what he might’ve found there. And we pray aloud that he made it to wherever he was going. Some of them must have made it or Pedro really would have been The End.

  I glance over at Doug, who is playing with the dust motes in a ruddy sunbeam and checking out a video on the Great Sequoias of the North Coast. Firescape sits just beyond him, squinting into a book of history.

  “Am I being a ditz?” I ask them. “‘Cause this is what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that maybe if I tell the Dolores they weren’t the last, they’ll get it. And that they’ll tell Pedro. And, who knows, maybe that’s all they need to be free. To be able to stop hanging around the Dolores.”

  Doug stops playing with the motes and Firescape turns to look at me.

  Firescape says, “Don’t you s’pose they might already know? I mean, after all, they’ve — y’know — gone on.” Her eyes graze the ceiling. “I thought that meant they knew more than us.”

  Well, there’s an interesting theological quandary.

  “Huh,” I say. “I guess I’ve always thought that way about ghosts — when I’ve thought about ghosts at all, I mean, which isn’t much. But why would they know any more than we do? Or maybe they do know more about some things but not so much about other things. I gotta think there’s some reason the Dolores are still haunting that Mission. Some reason they’re still here.”

  She frowns, wrinkling her delicate nose. “Maybe this Pedro is waiting for his son. Isn’t that what the Whispers call you — son? Maybe Pedro thinks you’re his son.”

  I gotta admit, this is something I’ve given a little thought to myself. It’s a creepy-crawly kind of thought — I mean, having a bunch of haunts think you’re kin. Of course, mi madre y padre being dead, I guess you could say I was already the son of ghosts. But then, mi madre y padre have not, to my knowledge been haunting anything.

  Whoa. Now, that is a scary thought and it raises this horrible spectre (you should pardon the pun) of a building somewhere in the Buena Vista where mi madre y padre are permanent residents.

  I shake myself real hard. No. I can’t believe that. I celebrated them at the Day of the Dead. I laid them to rest myself, with my prayers. Which is something Pedro Alcantara never got to do for his son and which I gotta think there was never anyone to do for poor old Pedro himself.

  “Del?” says Firescape. “What’re you thinking?”

  “That it’s better to be safe than sorry. I want to make sure that Pedro knows he wasn’t the last. And that I’m not his son.”

  Doug’s boughs quiver and I know I’m right.

  “Maybe if I tell the other Dolores they can, like, get a message to Pedro. And...I think maybe we gotta do something to celebrate them. I mean, maybe that’s part of why they’re still here — nobody prayed for them, nobody cared. What do you think?”

  Firescape nods and smiles at me in that way that says she really likes what she sees. “When are you going to do it?”

  “Tomorrow, I guess.”

  Doug’s boughs more than quiver, they wave.

  Firescape gives him a sideways look. “I think maybe you’d better go now.”

  I leap up, full of resolve or beans or something. “You wanna come?”

  She rises and her hair bursts into flame as sunlight strikes it.

  “You’d really let me come? This is part of your vision thing.”

  “You’re my wife,” I say. “What I have is yours. No weird secrets.”

  She grins. “Neon. I’ll get my AK.”

  We set out for Potrero-Taraval with the Sun burning down behind the tall buildings pulling the color out of the sky. I drag Doug in his Radio Flyer, which also carries candles and some incense so we can say prayers properly. I bring my rune can and a battery torch, too, thinking if the Mission is as strong a place as I suspect, I might cast things there I’d never cast somewhere else. Firescape watches everything, casual-like, her AK at her side. Sh
e looks relaxed. She’s not.

  On the way, I think about fires and ghosts and ninjas all in black. The Dolores seemed to know that Scrawl was truth-telling. I wonder if they know who the ninjas belong to.

  The Sun sets while we are traversing The Neutral Zone. A gauzy shabu rises up the walls of the unnatural canyons, and every step of our feet, every squeak of Doug’s wagon comes back at us like the shrieks of demons. I do not like the thoughts I have here. I really got to get more positive.

  We go to call on the Dolores in their rock pile, which I tell Firescape is a memorial to the thousands of Ohlone buried around and about. While she looks on, I sit cross-legged in the chilly, weed-eaten courtyard in the yellow glare of the torch, hoping my cheeks don’t freeze to the stones. I set out and light the candles and the incense and say some prayers for the departed. Then I wait, wondering if I have just sent the Dolores on to the Abhá Kingdom.

  I have not. Out of nowhere comes something like a humongous sigh, and then I hear "Cattaus."

  “But I’m not!” I exclaim. “I’m not your son. I’m Taco Del, merlin to Hismajesty, King of Embarcadero and Keeper of the Fabled Tree of Destiny.” I grab one of Doug’s boughs and squeeze, praying for his assistance. “This Tree, here.”

  Diablo, say the Whisperers, apropos to nothing. They go clammy again.

  I decide I might as well say what I come to say.

  “Pedro? Pedro Alcantara? If you’re in there, or out here, or wherever — I need to tell you something.”

  The shabu over the rock pile shifts ever so slowly, and there is a great silence, like the whole place is holding its breath. I feel light-headed and little sparks fly before my eyes. I begin to think this is significant, then I realize I have been holding my breath. I suck up some air and let my head settle down. Through wonky eyes I see that the rock pile is the same as ever. I determine to deliver my message.

  “Pedro, you gotta know that I’m not your son. I’m muy honored and all if you thought that, but I’m not him. I said some prayers for him just now, though, and for you too, but I don’t know where he is...or was. I also want you to know, Pedro, if you can hear me, that you weren’t the last one — the last of the Ohlone, I mean. There are still Ohlone...somewhere. I don’t know any personally, I don’t think, but I s’pose I might. Well, anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.”

  I wait, but there is no word from the Dolores.

  Great, I think, all these years they yammer at me, then when I finally got something important to say, they clam up.

  I’m a little upset, I gotta admit, and I start to get up to leave when I knock over my rune can. I don’t really feel like casting runes right now, but somehow when the can is in my hand, I turn it upside-down in front of me on the flagstones. Then I lean close, squinting in the lamplight.

  Firescape leaves her guard post and comes to look over my shoulder. The shadows are bizarre and my eyes go wonky before I can even focus on the rune junk. Even so, I can tell this is one of the weirdest castings I’ve ever thrown. The rotting peach pit is circled by general junk; a fly-button from my jeans, a thimble, an acorn, some blue and green glass chips, some pebbles and some raisins that are just as hard. The usual bottle caps and coins are there, and so is the sea gull beak, which is about to clamp down on the fly button. Surrounding all of this is a ring of nails and tacks.

  With a sigh, I chuck the peach pit and sweep the nails aside.

  Firescape’s hand lights on my shoulder. “Are you supposed to do that?” she asks. “I thought the rules of runing said you gotta take what you get, no matter what.”

  Irritation doesn’t tickle; it burns like stomach acid in those funny old commercials.

  “Who said that?” I ask, trying to sound arch.

  “Bags did,” she tells me. “He said a merlin gotta work with available materiel. And that God maybe puts that stuff there for a reason.”

  “God didn’t put that stuff there. Somebody else did.” I think of Scrawl.

  “Does it matter who put it there?” she asks.

  I don’t answer, but just shrug and go back to the runes. Truth is, I feel a little guilty about tossing the pit and the nails, ‘cause Firescape has cited Bags pretty accurately, but it doesn’t change the essential message of the runes, which is that there’s some sort of squeeze play happening here. And if, as I suddenly suspect, that bird beak is still Lord E and that little silver fly button is me — I’m caught between a beak and a hard place.

  The Whisperers choose this time to break their silence again. Wiwe, they tell me, and a chill dribbles down my spine. They have said this word to me before. Now, I decide it’s time to find out what it means.

  Fourteenth: Shaman

  I don’t find Wiwe in any dictionary at the disposal of the Wiz. Even The Fish draws blanks and she has access to multi-lingual databases. Doug seems to be as clueless as I am, which does not inspire confidence.

  Whatever or whoever this Wiwe is, it’s not a good thing, that much I think I get. I file this in the back of my brain and move on to more politically charged matters, such as how I break it to Hismajesty that the runes suggest old Bird Beak (AKA Elvis), whom we have befriended (at my personal say-so) may be planning an attack on us, his noble benefactors.

  I s’pose there’s no way to do it than just do it. To that end, I compose my words (“Majesty, it has come to my attention that the very Potreros we have taken under our wing are about to be sold out by their treacherous Lord.”) and I puff myself up.

  Then I procrastinate. I will sleep on it, I decide. What’s one more day more or less?

  By morning I am glad to be a practicing procrastinator, for I dream. I am in the courtyard of the Mission, then I am in the sanctuary, then I am in a small place full of dense smoke or one helacious helado. Then I am in a place that is all three and none of the above, all at once.

  I am sitting cross-legged on a sandy floor, and a voice says, Shaman. I don’t say anything, and the voice says again, Shaman, and I realize it’s talking to me.

  “I’m not a shaman,” I say, feeling acute shame.

  A hand points out of the smoke, which I can now smell, and directs my attention to the gritty floor beyond my knees.

  “Cast them,” says the Voice, and I realize my rune can is in my hands.

  I spill the rune junk out onto the sand.

  Deja view: I’ve been here before. The stuff lays out just the way it did in the Mission courtyard. Exactly — peach pit and nails and all.

  Okay. I get it.

  The nails form a circle and their points are turned in toward the other junk. The peach pit is in the middle of it all, and I realize this has been so since the first time it turned up.

  Suddenly, my eyes go wonky bigtime and the runes become features on a map. Instead of pebbles and chips of glass, I see land and water and Embar and Potrero. Instead of nails, I see a Threat coming from across the Bay and I see a mysterious, black pit at the middle of it all.

  Shame makes me blush, or would, if I was real. The peach pit wasn’t just a piece of garbage, it was the center of the rune. When I think how many times it turned up in my can and how many times I chucked it overboard, I want to sink through the dream floor and dribble away into the Bay.

  I am no longer so sure about Lord E Lordy. Is he attacking me or flanking me? Is he friend or foe? And what the hell is in that pit?

  Wiwe, the Voice says, on cue.

  This is important; I want to be very sure I understand. I reach my hand out and point to the pit. “Qué es?” I ask.

  Wiwe, says the Voice, again. Carrier away of souls.

  Well, I gotta say, that’s good for a soul-deep chill. Freezing, I break into a sweat. I can feel it creeping, icy on my dream-skin. My voice comes out of my dream-throat like it’s squeezed from a concertina. “Whose...whose souls?”

  Make the world safe from Wiwe.

  Make the world safe?

  “Wiwe carries away souls. Is that what you mean? Did he... carry away the souls of the Ohl
one Dolores?”

  We are here, the Voice informs me.

  “Is Wiwe holding you guys captive? Do you need to be rescued?”

  Make the world safe from Wiwe.

  Are they asking me to rescue them? I take a deep breath.

  “What do I do?”

  Before the dream me can exhale, the place changes again. The walls and ceiling suck in until it’s close and round and I can see it’s made of mud and wood. Someone sits across from me in the sand and a fire burns between us. I can’t see him; he is just a shadow, a form, less than either.

  “When I was a young man,” he says, and his voice is like a sigh, “I dreamed of the Mountain. It told me, ‘You will live to an old age, for nothing can hurt you.’ After this, the Mountain would come to me in times of trouble and tell me I would be alright. I would talk to the power of the Mountain in my dreams and it would answer me.

  “One day, as I traveled, I grew very sick — so sick I was afraid I would die and my spirit would go South. I was afraid the Mountain had forgotten me, for I had forgotten it. As I lay beneath a fir tree dying, a shaman came to me. He said my Mountain had sent him. He put a stick into my hands and said, ‘This is a soul stick. Seize this and look to your power and your soul will cease its journey South.’

  “I grasped the stick and remembered my Mountain and turned my eyes to it. And it was as the shaman said. I became well. Then the shaman told me something else, ‘You are called,’ he said. ‘Your Mountain calls you to become a shaman, like me.’

  “I looked to the Mountain and felt it was so. But I saw that if I were to become a shaman, the Mountain’s power might fail me before my old age and I would die. So I refused. Still, the Mountain kept its promise to keep me safe in times of trouble, and I did not forget it again.

  “Later, after my son was born, the Mountain asked again, ’Will you become a shaman, a healer?’ Again, I refused. I knew the work was dangerous. I dreamed and knew I would die if I became a shaman. I refused the power because I wanted to become an old man. This I did, for the Mountain’s promise was true. But my wife went South before me; my son went before me; my people went before me. And that left only me — an old man.