The Wind in His Heart

by Charles de Lint

  “Fuck you, pervert!” she yelled as she tried to pull free.

  Manny half smiled in response, but there was no humour in his eyes.

  “We’ll take you anywhere you want,” he said, “except back in there.”

  “But Ruby—”

  “Paid the price for the bargain you made. That can’t be undone.”

  “It was supposed to be Reggie, not her.”

  He let go of her arm and she immediately reached in her pocket for her knife.

  “Looking for this?” Manny asked, holding up the box cutter.

  She lunged for it. “Give that back!”

  Manny eluded her with an easy sidestep and she lost her balance, falling to her knees.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so,” he said.

  Neither of the crow men helped her to her feet. She started cursing them as she got up, but once she was standing, the words dried up. She stared past the crow men to where the gangbangers were now having a confrontation with two members of the tribal police.

  “Oh crap,” Sadie said, ducking her head and turning away.

  “Don’t worry,” Manny said. “They can’t see you. You made a bargain with the witch to keep yourself safe, remember?”

  Sadie dared a glance in the direction of the cops. She recognized Jerry, the one who’d brought her back to the station, as well as the fat man who’d been behind the desk. Jerry’s attention left the gangbangers to look toward them for a moment before he returned to the gangbangers.

  Sadie couldn’t believe it. How cool was this?

  “He really didn’t see us,” she said.

  “He didn’t see you,” Manny corrected her. “He saw us, but we’re not on his radar. Now where do you want to go?”

  “So…what?” she said, ignoring his question. “I’m invisible to anybody who wants to hurt me?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Sadie nodded. “Okay. Then I want to go home.”

  “What’s the address?” Manny asked.

  She told him.

  “I’ll walk her, Xande,” he said to his companion. “You and the boys can follow by air.”

  Xande nodded. He gave Sadie a scowl, then turned and walked toward the dry wash. Sadie watched until he was under the mesquite on the far side before turning back to Manny.

  “What’s his problem?” she asked.

  “You.”

  Sadie frowned. “None of you like me very much, do you?”

  “Is there any reason that we should?”

  “Like I care. But if you’ve got such a hate on, how come you can see me?”

  “We promised Aggie we wouldn’t kill you and we promised Ruby we’d take you to wherever you want to go. We don’t break our word. So whatever spell the witch used doesn’t affect us. We don’t like you, but we won’t harm you.”

  “Huh.”

  “Now let’s get going.”

  He turned from the wash and headed back across the witch’s yard toward the street. Sadie fell in step with him.

  “Can I have my knife back?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll attack me. And since I can’t kill you, I’ll have to cripple you, and that means I’ll have to carry you all the way.”

  “Jesus, sympathetic much?”

  He didn’t respond.

  When they reached the street, Sadie turned for a last look at the witch’s house and tried not to imagine what was happening to Ruby.

  “I wouldn’t try to cut you,” she said.

  “You already did try, but I had your knife.”

  “You grabbed me first.”

  “I’ll grab you again if you don’t start walking.”

  Sadie’s retort died as she heard a weird sound. She turned around again to see what had to be a couple of hundred crows rise up from the mesquite trees along the wash. It was their wings, she realized, as they flew by overhead. The sound of all those wings.

  She shivered and quickly started walking at Manny’s side down the street. She tried not to think of the fact that he was one of them—a man that could change into a crow. Or maybe it was the other way around. It didn’t matter. Either way, it was just too creepy.

  Most of the flock disappeared from sight, but at least twenty or thirty kept pace as Manny led her out of the barrio and onto Mission Street. Some of the birds made lazy circles in the sky above them. Others flew from power line to rooftop to cactus to tree, going only short distances so that they were always in sight.

  51

  Thomas

  Thomas stared in shock as Steve began to collapse, but Reuben and Calico moved quickly, calling his name and bracing him on either side until they could ease him to the ground. Once they had Steve lying prone on the rock, Calico stood up and glared at Consuela, murder in her eyes.

  The big black dog growled a deep threatening sound. Calico quickly bared her teeth, then ignored the dog and turned back to the raven woman. Looking at the three, Thomas realized that Gordo was directing his displeasure at Consuela, not Calico. The dog kept staring at Consuela’s shoulder, as if searching for Si’tala.

  Reuben straightened up as well. “You may be from some old corbae clan,” he said to Consuela, “but that means nothing out here. You’d better fix whatever the hell you’ve done to Steve, or all the mojo you’ve got stored up inside you won’t be enough to stop us from taking you apart. Even that oversized dog of yours is pissed at you right now.”

  “She sent her ghost raven into him,” Thomas said. “It flew right into Steve’s chest before he went down.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Consuela said. “Si’tala has a mind of her own.”

  Reuben looked confused. “I didn’t see any raven.”

  “Steve flinched like he’d been hit,” Calico said, “but I was behind him. I couldn’t see what was happening.”

  “It was her bird attacking him—she calls it Si’tala,” Thomas told them. “Her ghost raven. It’s like…her shadow or something.”

  “She has a mind of her own,” Consuela repeated.

  Thomas nodded. “She likes to blame it for anything she doesn’t want to take responsibility for herself.”

  The raven woman shot him a sour look.

  “I don’t care what the bird is,” Calico said, “and I don’t care what or who’s to blame. Get it out of him—now.”

  “I can’t,” Consuela said. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  Thomas had witnessed Si’tala’s autonomy, such as it was, so he might have felt some sympathy for Consuela if he hadn’t had such a crap day because of her.

  Calico nodded. “Then maybe I’ll start tearing pieces off of you until you start to remember.”

  The raven woman stood taller. “You could try,” she began.

  Gordo suddenly seemed to double in size. He rose and walked stiff-legged toward Consuela until he was directly in front of her, lips curled up, showing teeth. Consuela seemed surprised, but she held up her hands in a placating manner.

  Thomas exchanged a puzzled glance with Calico and Reuben. Why was the woman’s dog taking their side?

  “It wasn’t my doing,” Consuela said to the dog, then she looked up and sighed. “Fine,” she continued. “This is all I know: there are dreamlands within the dreamlands.” She paused and met each of their gazes. Calico nodded for her to continue. “I think my sister has taken your friend into his own inner world. Into his mind.”

  “But why?” Thomas asked.

  “You’ll have to ask her. But to reach them, you’ll need a shaman or dreamwalker.”

  For a moment, no one spoke, then they all turned to Thomas.

  “Don’t look at me,” Thomas said. “I’m no shaman.”

  “Perhaps not yet,” Consuela said. “But you have a shaman’s sight. You might be able to see into your friend’s mind and call them both back to us.”

  “I wouldn’t even know how to start.”

  “Well, I’m no expert,” Reuben said, “
but Morago would probably lay his hands on Steve’s temples and…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know either.”

  “Medicine is a matter of will,” Consuela said. “It’s a conversation between you and the spirits. Anything else—the laying on of hands, burning tobacco or smudge sticks—is merely a focus.”

  “So what do I do?” Thomas asked.

  She shrugged. “What the shamans did in the long ago, before they had their rituals and songs. You make it up. You decide what you want to do, and you will it to happen.”

  Thomas gave a helpless look to the others, but neither Reuben nor Calico had anything to offer.

  Gordo had lain down again, almost the size of a normal large dog at the moment.

  Sammy sat off to the side, a glazed look in his eyes.

  “I guess she’s right,” Reuben finally said. “Shamans didn’t always know how to work their medicine. At some point, they had to learn how to do it, just as Jimmy Cholla had to teach the first dog soldiers how to find their animal shapes. Somebody had to figure it out.”

  “But that somebody’s not me,” Thomas said.

  Reuben shook his head. “You don’t know that. You can’t know it until you try.”

  “I…” Thomas’s voice trailed off. He looked away to where the otherworld mountains marched to the horizon under skies so blue they didn’t seem real. But after the past couple of days, nothing seemed quite real anymore. He turned to Consuela.

  “That feather I gave back to you,” he said. “Do you still have it?”

  52

  Steve

  “You’re awake.”

  I blink my eyes open to find myself lying on some big flat rock with Consuela Mara sitting cross-legged beside me. Her hair falls down to frame her face as she leans over me, peering into my face with interest.

  I can’t see much beyond her features and the huge expanse of blue sky behind her. The air’s thin and the wind blows endlessly, which makes me think we’re still high up in the otherworld mountains. But I also get the sense that only the two of us are here.

  “Where am I?” I ask.

  The question appears to amuse her.

  “I have no idea,” she says. “Somewhere in your mind, I assume.”

  “Somewhere in my…” I shake my head and try to think. The last thing I remember is that damned raven woman sending her ghost bird to attack me.

  Except that’s not quite right.

  The bird didn’t attack me. It went inside me.

  “You’re not Consuela,” I say. I don’t know how I know it, but as soon as the words slip out, I’m sure that I’m right. There’s something different—softer—in her eyes, but she looks enough like Consuela to be her twin.

  I push myself to a sitting position and she scoots back a few feet without getting up.

  “That’s true,” she says. “I’m Si’tala.”

  “Are you related to Consuela?”

  “In a manner of speaking. You could think of me as her shadow sister. Her memory, given what substance it can glean from the medicine of the wind and mountains.”

  Like that makes any sense.

  “So what are we doing here?” I ask instead.

  She smiles. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “I can think of easier ways to get my attention.”

  She nods. “But I can only speak to you in a situation such as this.”

  “Where you fly inside my head.”

  She nods again, then gets a sympathetic look. “What is this place?” she asks. “It seems so desolate.”

  “Depends on your definition. If we’re really inside me, this looks an awful lot like the place I imagine when I’m meditating. I find it restful.”

  She turns her head in a slow half circle, taking in the starkness surrounding us. I don’t have to look. I know what’s here. A flat island of a plateau on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere. No matter what direction you face, there isn’t one damn thing to see except for the endless sky. No other mountains, no other land at all.

  Si’tala finally turns from the view to face me again. She moves closer until there’s maybe a yard between us. Four feet, tops. She looks far more innocent than her sister. Her gaze searches mine.

  Slowly, her face lights up in a radiant smile. “You have nothing to regret,” she says after a moment.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’ve already had this conversation,” she says, “but since you don’t remember, I’m happy to have it again.”

  “You know,” I tell her. “I get that weird-and-mysterious plays big with you ma’inawo, but if you’re hoping for any kind of meaningful conversation, you’re going to have to cut the bullshit. In other words, either say something that makes sense or shut up.”

  I give her a hard stare, but her smile never falters. It’s the real thing. Whatever’s happening here amuses her to no end, which pisses me off just a little more. The worst thing is, I don’t get the sense she’s laughing at me. She’s laughing with me, only I don’t get the joke.

  “Let me start again,” she says. “You see that the world is a much different place than you once assumed it was, correct?”

  I don’t know how she knows that, any more than I understand how a ghost raven can turn into a woman—who’s sitting with me inside my head—in a place I only imagined.

  For the moment, I decide to play along. “How do you know what I see or don’t see?” I ask.

  “Patience. Just answer me—is this true or not?”

  I give her a reluctant nod.

  “Given this new worldview,” she says, “do you allow that you might be unfamiliar with some aspects of it?”

  I wish she’d just get to the point, but I give her another nod.

  “You asked who I was earlier, and I told you I’m Consuela’s shadow sister, but you don’t know what that means, do you?”

  “You said something about being her memory.”

  She claps her hands together like a pleased kindergarten teacher and sits back a little. “When you live long enough, memory can be a burden. Consuela walked the first days, not long after her husband drew the world out of that big fat pot of his. She has more memories than she knows what to do with.”

  “Ohhkay,” I say slowly, but I’m pretty clueless as to what she just said.

  Her eyes twinkle, which tells me she knows how I’m feeling.

  “Every cousin handles the weight of all these memories differently,” she says. “Some live only in the moment—they literally can’t see the past or future anymore. Some are more judicious—they might allow themselves a hundred or so years to hold in their minds. Some go mad.”

  “What about Consuela? Where does she fit in—the latter category?”

  She shakes her head. “Some cousins put their memories into a shadow-self and let it fend for itself, unless they want access to one thing or another that the shadow knows, but they have forgotten.”

  “And you’re her shadow.”

  She nods. “But she hasn’t accessed the memories I hold for a very long time, and I’m becoming my own person. As the years go by, I’m less and less bound to her. One day soon, I’ll find someone to make a body for me from wind and mud, and I won’t be a ghost bird anymore—or a woman who can only talk to someone by entering their mind.”

  “I guess I can see how that would suck.”

  She tilts her head and looks at me thoughtfully, as though trying to decide whether to share an intimate secret. “You may have noticed,” she finally says, “that Consuela is unhappy. For whatever reason, she has kept more bad memories inside herself than good, letting me hold the happier ones. That’s been good for me, but by her very nature, she’s been acquiring more and more bad ones as time goes on. If she gives them to me, I’m likely to become more like her.”

  I take a breath. May as well go the whole dang hog, as my grandmother Sadie used to say. Do I believe everything she’s telling me? After the last couple days, I either have to keep my mind wide op
en or just shoot myself in the head.

  “So why do you want to talk to me?” I ask.

  “I had a premonition,” she says, “when I saw you this morning in Ancestors Canyon. So I had a look at your story—where you came from, where you’re going.”

  “You can do that? You have access to—what? Everything?”

  “Hardly. But when I meet someone, I can follow the patterns of their life. Past, present, future.”

  “What? You can travel through time?”

  She shakes her head. “What most people don’t realize is that all time happens at the same time.”

  “So you’re saying you already know everything we’re talking about right now? You know what’s going to happen because, for you, it’s all happening at the same time.”

  She nods. “Unless you change something in the past.”

  “Wait a minute. How do you change the past when you’re living in the present?”

  “Not the you in the present—the you in the past. It’s happening at the same time. When you change something back then, everything else changes.”

  I scrunch up my shoulders, wishing I could pull my head in like a turtle. “You’re making my brain hurt,” I tell her.

  She gives me a sympathetic smile, but doesn’t say anything.

  Si’tala is trying to be gentle, but I’m dog-tired and cranky. “So when do I die?” I say, unable to keep the edge out of my voice.

  Her eyes widen. “Do you really want the answer to that?”

  “No. I was just being a smart-ass. Look, you’ll have to cut me some slack. These past couple of days haven’t been the best I’ve ever had. It’s all put me on edge, and that makes me mouthy.”

  I think harder about what’s she’s saying, and it hits me. If a person can go back in time…

  “So when you…access…the past,” I say. “You could fix a mistake?”

  She nods. “If you can figure out how. But I should warn you, it rarely works out for the better. Some say that it merely creates another world, so that now there are two of you. One carries on in this world; the other has an entirely different life from that point on in some other world.”