Gray Magic

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Gray Magic Page 23

by Sarah Dreher


  Stoner drew back against the wall, reluctant to go on.

  Siyamtiwa turned and motioned to her. There was reassurance in her eyes.

  Now it was as if she were being carried along by the tunnel itself, or the tunnel was moving past her while she stood still. She was aware of motion, but not of causing motion.

  The glow of Siyamtiwa's candle grew brighter.

  The tunnel walls were white, like whitewashed rock. Cracks in the paint came toward her slowly, resolved themselves suddenly into strange symbols, and sped past.

  She wasn't afraid any more. But she was light-headed, dizzy from the motion of the walls. She closed her eyes for a moment...

  ...and opened-them in bright sunlight.

  They were outside the tunnel. Cliffs rose steeply on all sides, layered in gray and red and yellow, high into the far blue sky, high enough to touch the sun. The ground beneath her feet was sandstone dust. Tufts of coarse grass broke through the packed earth. A river, choked with mud, rolled by sluggishly. She heard the sound of quick running water and looked up to see, beyond the river, a waterfall as fine and clear as spun glass. Trees and brush grew around the base of the falls. The water collected in terraced pools and reflected the blue of the sky. The air was silver-pure.

  "It's beautiful," she said in awe, and turned to Siyamtiwa.

  There was no one there.

  "Grandmother?"

  The only sounds were the fall of water and the river's low, sucking murmur. "Grandmother! Siyamtiwa!"

  Still no answer.

  Don't panic, she told herself. She's probably hiding to test you. Sit and be calm, and she'll show up sooner or later.

  She found a flat rock, warmed by the sun, and eased herself down on her back. The light and warmth were good after the darkness.

  If I have to be lost for the rest of my life, this is as good a place as any.

  In the distance someone began to playa wooden flute. The bright, hollow notes rose into the air like a larks. Relaxing, feeling the sun, she watched questions float through her mind—where am I, how did it get light, what's happening, why?—and released them.

  Something nudged her arm.

  She opened her eyes.

  And found herself staring into the gentle face of a little burro.

  ''Well, hi, there."

  The donkey turned and walked away, then stopped, looked back.

  It wanted her to follow.

  She hesitated. She was already lost enough without...

  The little gray animal trotted back to where she sat, lowered its head, and pressed its forehead lightly against her face. Its fur was soft and dusty, its eyes round and gentle. It made little snuffing noises deep in its throat.

  Come, it said.

  She got up and let it lead her. Over powdery, pebbly ground, along the river's edge, past cottonwoods and willows, along the canyon walls where fossils of trilobites lay embedded shoulder-high in ancient rocks.

  They came at last to a sandy area, stripped of vegetation, a cleared circle.

  This is as far as I'm allowed, the donkey said. You have to go to the center alone.

  Will you wait for me?

  The animal shook its head.

  Then I won't go.

  You'll see me again. Go.

  She took a step into the circle. When she looked back the burro was gone.

  The ground inside the circle rose slightly, too gradually to see, but her feet could read the change. When the rising stopped, she knew she had come to the Place.

  Now what?

  A movement on the ground, at the corner of her eye, caught her attention. She knelt.

  A small brown spider scurried busily back and forth among the sand and pebbles. It stopped and looked up at her, its black eyes seeing through to her mind. Then it backed slowly into a tiny hole, a hole that seemed to go straight down forever.

  It came back out into the sun. Then returned to the darkness.

  Three times it repeated the dancelike movement. Then it was gone.

  She stared down at the tiny hole, puzzling.

  And suddenly she knew, the knowledge slipping into her head, that this—spot—was the center of the world, the beginning of it all, the Place of Emergence.

  She was filled with a sudden joy, and awe, so complete, so deep it lifted her out of herself and she thought she could soar with eagles and dance on the air. She spread her arms to welcome the sun.

  A red-tailed hawk flying overhead dropped a single feather. It landed in her outstretched hand.

  "That looks pretty good," Siyamtiwa said.

  Stoner blinked in confusion. She was back in the night, in the pueblo room, the burial robe stretched across her lap. The rip was closed. She looked up.

  Siyamtiwa nodded. "Pretty good," she repeated.

  "Did you see what happened?"

  "You bet. You sewed that real good."

  "No, I mean..."

  ''When old Masau sees that, he's gonna think he got one hot chick old lady, eh?"

  Stoner ran her hand through her hair, front to back. "You mean we've just been sitting here, like this, since... Did you put peyote or something in the tea?"

  "No phoney-baloney loco plants. We made a little magic, you and me. I think maybe you're gonna be okay."

  Oh, boy, here we go. Dancing down the line between illusion and reality. Life on the terminator. Did we travel, or didn't we? What's behind the door, the lady or the tiger?

  "Look what you got there," Siyamtiwa said, pointing to Stoner's chest.

  She looked down and saw the deerskin pouch that hung around her neck. She pulled it open, peeked inside. Corn meal. A long strand of hair from a burro's tail. The wing-feather of a red-tailed hawk.

  "That's your medicine bag," Siyamtiwa said. "Protects you, like Grandmother Hermione's good magic. Burro and hawk give you presents. They're your Power Animals, gonna look after you. When you need spirit, you can call on burro spirit and hawk spirit." She chuckled. "Burro. If you asked me, I'd guess Brother Wolverine was your spirit animal, all the time grumbling and looking for fights."

  "I thought you had to go out in the desert and fast to find your totem," Stoner said. "I thought you had to be half dead or something."

  ''Well,''Siyamtiwa said, "that's a good way, but takes a long time,"

  Great. I've just been treated to the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of a vision quest.

  Siyamtiwa laughed. "That's pretty funny. Reader's Digest."

  "Don't read my mind," Stoner said irritably. "It's rude."

  The old woman thought that over. "You got a point there. Big surprise for me. You teach me something." She sucked meditatively at a tooth. "This Larch Begay, this powaqa, you better watch out. Maybe he can read your thoughts, too, find out things you don't want him to know."

  "It's entirely likely," Stoner said.

  "So we better mix him up. You know how to make a cloud come around you?"

  "Of course I don't know how to make a cloud come around me."

  "Think about cloud," Siyamtiwa said.

  She thought about a cloud.

  "Now put him in that corner over there."

  She looked at the corner and thought 'cloud'. The edges of the shadows took on a slightly weakened look.

  "Good. Think harder."

  She thought harder. The corner turned foggy, smeared. The fog coalesced into a cloud.

  "Now make him come over here to you."

  Cloud she thought, come.

  Nothing happened. Come on, cloud. Good cloud. Here, boy. The cloud seemed to move forward a little.

  Come on boy. Go for a walk?

  "Crazy woman," Siyamtiwa said. "You call a cloud, not a dog."

  "I've never called a cloud before."

  ''Watch me." She stood up, hands on hips, and glared fiercely into the corner.

  COME! The unspoken word filled the room.

  The cloud drifted forward and hovered just beyond Stoner's reach. She was surprised the dishes and furniture and bottles an
d bits of crystal, everything that wasn't nailed down, didn't come with it.

  "Now," Siyamtiwa said, "you call the rest of the way."

  She cleared her throat and thought of herself as a magnet, or a vacuum, pulling the cloud forward. She closed her eyes and waited.

  The air around her face turned cooler. She opened her eyes. The room was filled with a swirling fog. "Hey, I did it."

  Siyamtiwa nodded. "You said it. We got enough cloud in here to make the desert bloom."

  "How do I get rid of it?"

  "Release him. Tell him to go."

  Stoner broke contact between her mind and the cloud. It receded, disappeared. "That was fun. What else can I do?"

  Siyamtiwa shook her head in amusement. "That's enough for tonight. You gotta be careful how you use that stuff. Could do a lot of damage."

  "Yeah," Stoner said gleefully.

  Siyamtiwa frowned. "Am I gonna have to worry about you?"

  "No, but there have been a few people in my life I'd really like to scare."

  "You wait, maybe I teach you some real scary stuff." Siyamtiwa yawned and stretched. "Go now. We got a lot to do tomorrow."

  "Like what?"

  "Like you learn right attitude about this stuff. "

  "I'll be all right, really. I just feel kind of fired up."

  "You're getting some power, Green-eyes. Makes you feel like that. But remember your animal spirit, use your Power that way."

  "Okay."

  "Now go to bed. You're gonna use me up in one day."

  "Siyamtiwa?"

  "Hoh."

  ''Why won't you call me by my real name?"

  "Because we do an Indian thing here. I use Indian name. When it is done, I will call you by your White name. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  She strode across the plaza, past the point where the kiva had been but of course wasn't now. The air had the heavy, unmoving feel of three a.m. As she approached the door to her hide-away, she realized she was exhausted. The rush of excited energy drained from her like water through sand.

  She wished she had taken the time to fashion some kind of bed. She dreaded the hard ground beneath her body. The lumpy pillow of her knapsack. She glanced back toward Siyamtiwa's room, but her window was dark. Oh, well what's one more sleepless night?

  She lit the candle. In the center of the room lay a rough bed of juniper branches covered with soft animal hide. She stretched out on it. The fit was perfect, indentations for her hips, extra height for her head and shoulders.

  Siyamtiwa must have made it while she was-wherever she had been.

  She luxuriated in the springiness, and the sharp, fresh odor of forests. A woven blanket lay beside her. She pulled it over her and blew out the candle and fell asleep.

  So deeply asleep she didn't see the paling of the darkness, the fading of the stars...

  ...or the large gray coyote that circled the plaza and sniffed dark doorways. It stopped outside hers and stood for a moment, listening to her deep breathing. The hairs along its backbone rose. Its silver eyes glowed. Then, sensing the coming light, it turned and trotted away from the Village-That-Has-Forgotten-Its-Name.

  ELEVEN

  Grandmother Eagle perched on the top rung of the kiva ladder. “Where's your Green-eyes this morning, old woman? Sleeping her life away?"

  Siyamtiwa went on with her sweeping. "She brings wood and water."

  "Is that so?" Eagle spread her wings and admired the shadows they cast on the packed earth. "I flew over the wood place, and the spring. No Two-leg there, only some Fog People."

  The old woman smiled to herself.

  Kwahu furrowed her brow and thought hard. "You taught her the Cloud game?"

  "I did," Siyamtiwa said.

  "Foolish old woman!" Eagle thrashed her wings. "You teach our tricks to the Whites? Aren't they bad enough when we can see them?"

  "This one is all right."

  Kwahu touched the tiny oil sacs at the base of her feathers with her beak and stroked the oil along her wings. She starts to like the Anglo, she thought to herself. This is dangerous. She glanced secretly at the old woman. Tired old grandmother. It would be good for her to end this now, before her old heart has to break.

  "I hear you," Siyamtiwa said over the rustle of her sweeping. "You waste your time on me. Save it for our Skinwalker."

  "This thing is hopeless," Eagle said.

  "Not so hopeless. Already she has a Power Animal."

  “Which one?"

  "The little wild horse of the canyons."

  Eagle threw back her head and laughed so hard she nearly fell from her perch. "Some Power Animal. All Brother Burro knows is to plod along and look sad."

  Siyamtiwa stopped sweeping and glared at the bird. "I have enough to concern myself with, Kwahu. Must I hear your complaints as well? Maybe you try to defeat what we do here. Maybe you make a treaty with the Skinwalker, eh?"

  Grandmother Eagle clacked her beak in anger. "My people make no more treaties with Two-legs. Never again."

  “Well, it's a mixed-up world," Siyamtiwa said thoughtfully. "I trust this one. The Spirits sent her, and my heart tells me she is okay."

  "You better be right." She paused for dramatic effect. "The Begay has found Pikyachvi Mesa."

  Siyamtiwa drew in her breath sharply. "The cave? The bundle?"

  "He knows it is there, but it hides from him. He is angry and impatient. Already he has sent the ransom note to the trading post, making his demands. Tomorrow I think he will begin to hurt the White woman."

  Siyamtiwa looked up at the sky, where the sun was beginning to slide toward the Sacred Mountains. "This thing is supposed to happen in four days. Tomorrow is not four days."

  "The man is White." Eagle cocked her head and looked at Siyamtiwa sympathetically. “We may be in for hard times, Grandmother."

  The old woman set her jaw. "I don't give up. Neither does my young friend. This much I know." She dismissed Kwahu with a wave of her hand. "Go. Rest. I will need you tonight."

  The eagle flapped her wings and rose steadily into the air. Siyamtiwa watched her thoughtfully.

  Tomorrow.

  She went to the section of broken wall overlooking the spring. She could see Green-eyes below, playing with her cloud, sending it away and calling it back, wrapping it around herself, tossing it in the air.

  Siyamtiwa shook her head. Foolish pahana, magic is not a toy. It is a serious, deadly business.

  Then she smiled, remembering how—in her long-ago young time—she had played with each new trick until she tired of it. But there had been time, then, to play with magic. She had a lifetime, many lifetimes ahead before she would need to test herself.

  Oh, Granddaughter, I wish you had more than this old bag of bones to help you.

  She folded her arms and wondered what to do.

  * * *

  “PA-HA-NA!"

  The call rolled down the mesa side and caught her at the edge of the spring. She looked up, squinting against the sun. The cloud dissipated as she withdrew her attention.

  "Here, Grandmother." She lifted the clay water jug and trudged up the path to where the old woman stood. "I filled the jars. I'll start on the wood..."

  Siyamtiwa cut her off with an impatient gesture. "No more work. . We got to take a trip."

  "But..."

  "Don't argue. We got a lot to do and not much time. Tomorrow you face the powaqa."

  Stoner felt a sudden rush of apprehension. "Tomorrow? That isn't four days. How can I be ready?"

  "The ransom note has been delivered. If you don't go there tomorrow, it will be bad for your friend."

  She turned on her heel and strode toward the plaza.

  Stoner trotted after her. "Grandmother, what happens if I don't do this right?"

  "Maybe you die."

  Well, that's wonderful. Very encouraging. You really know how to cheer a person up. "And Gwen?"

  "Maybe she dies, too. Maybe the pahana Perkins dies. Maybe all the women die. You oughta think abo
ut that. "

  "I think about it," Stoner said irritably. "This isn't exactly a picnic for me, you know."

  Siyamtiwa walked on ahead of her, not speaking. The tattered blanket trailed in her wake.

  I could get out now, slip away while she's not looking. Go back to Spirit Wells, let the police handle this. For all I know, Gwen's been found by now and the whole incident's closed. For all I know, there never was a Ya, Ya sickness, just virus and superstition. For all I know...

  "For all you know," Siyamtiwa tossed over her shoulder, "the sun will not set tonight."

  "Stop reading my mind."

  Siyamtiwa gave a sharp laugh. "You think so loud, I'd have to be deaf not to hear you." She stopped at the entrance to Stoner's room. "You go in there now. Travel back to the place you went yesterday. I will meet you there."

  "What do you mean, travel back? I didn’t..."

  Siyamtiwa didn't answer.

  Siyamtiwa was gone.

  Stoner kicked at the dirt floor of her cubicle. Mystics. Do this, do that, travel here, travel there, make clouds. But do they tell you how to do all this wonderful stuff? Hell, no. They're too busy with important things, like talking to eagles and making kivas appear and disappear, and reading your mind. "Reading someone's mind," she grumbled to herself, "is an invasion of privacy. A violation of guaranteed Constitutional rights." She kicked another clod of dirt. "Do you hear that, old woman? You violate my Constitutional rights."

  "I hear you." Siyamtiwa's voice drifted across the plaza. "Constitution is for White man. Got nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with you, either, woman. Travel."

  Stoner leaned out the door. "1 don't know how," she called.

  Siyamtiwa stood in her own doorway, a shadow against the dark. "How come you knew yesterday, and you don't know today?"

  "You did that yesterday."

  "And you gotta do it today." She stepped back into the shadows and disappeared.

  Okay, Stoner thought, I'll give it a try. You'll see how far I get.

  She crossed the plaza to the kiva entrance.

  The ground closed. The ladder melted away into air.

  All right, damn it. I'll do it your way.

  She went back to her room, sat in the center of the floor, and closed her eyes.

 

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