“He’s still at the cop shop,” Aylissa said. “I heard Tina talking to him and they’re pretty pissed off about him trying to scam them.”
Sadie didn’t let her face give away what she was thinking. Reggie wasn’t even home. That figured. She didn’t even get to slice him up a little and rip him off before she disappeared.
“The cops were pulling up to house when I went by,” she said.
Aylissa gave her a surprised look. “They’re taking Tina in as well?”
Sadie shook her head. “Doubt it. I’m pretty sure they’re looking for me. I think I’m in a lot of trouble.”
Aylissa frowned. “Why would you be in trouble? Reggie’s the one who dumped you in the desert and then made up all these lies about you being kidnapped.”
“It’s what I did after,” Sadie said. She glanced up a nearby saguaro where a solitary crow sat, watching. “The cops are looking for me and probably other people are too.”
“We won’t tell on you,” Gabriela said, her face solemn. “We’ll pretend like we didn’t see you.”
Riley and Aylissa nodded in solidarity.
“I’d tell you more,” Sadie said, “but the less you know, the less they can try to pull you down with me.”
“Like that’s ever stopped the cops before,” Aylissa said.
Sadie shrugged.
“So what are you going to do?” Aylissa asked. “Where can you go?”
“I don’t know. Do you have any money?”
Aylissa dug into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a wad of bills. She offered them to Sadie, who reached out and took the bills, riffling through them.
“There’s got to be over a hundred dollars here,” she said. “Where did you get it?”
“Reggie’s wallet—not all at once. A few bucks here, a few bucks there.”
“Sweet.”
Sadie counted out twenty dollars and tried to hand the rest back to Aylissa, who put up her hands and shook her head.
“No. Take it,” Sadie said, holding it out. “I appreciate having some money, but you guys might need some too, depending on what happens with Reggie and Tina. Social Services might finally figure out their scam and then you’ll need a stake.”
“This stuff you did,” Aylissa said as she took the cash and repocketed it. “You’re a minor. Can’t you just say you’re sorry you messed up? They’ve gotta cut you some slack if you tell them about Reggie ditching you out in the middle of nowhere.”
The world doesn’t work like that, Sadie wanted to say, but she didn’t have the heart, especially around the little ones.
“That’s a good idea,” she said instead. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Her gaze drifted to the saguaro where the crow had been perching. There were four of them on it now, one on the very top, the others scattered on the big cactus’s arms.
Right. Apologize. Like Manny and his creepy buddies would even listen or care.
“I should go,” she said.
“Let us know, once you find a place to stay,” Aylissa said. “I’ve got another email addy Reggie hasn’t cracked. Same name, but it’s with Yahoo.”
Sadie nodded.
She doubted it would happen. The next time Aylissa or the kids would hear about her, she’d be on the news. Going to jail. Or her body being found after she’d been ripped apart by birds.
Everything felt tight and awkward inside her, like her skin was shrinking, or her body was bloating. She needed to let something out—whatever it was when the blade of her knife pierced her skin and the blood came welling up. She needed to let it out now.
“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t let Reggie…” Turn you into something like me, she thought, but she didn’t finish. She knew their stories, what they’d been through, what they’d lost, their struggles coming through the system. They were stronger than her, even little Riley and Gabriela. They wouldn’t put up with Reggie’s shit for as long as she had. Hell, Aylissa had pulled a kitchen knife on some perv in her last placement.
When it came to the four of them, Sadie knew that she was the weak one.
“Here,” Aylissa said, handing her a fresh bottle of water.
“Thanks.”
For a moment, Sadie thought they were going to hug. She didn’t know if she wanted it or if it would make her explode.
“See ya round,” she said before anyone could step closer.
She walked away. The familiar sound of wings came to her ears as the crows lifted from the big saguaro to follow, but she ignored them. She gripped the utility knife in her pocket. They could go screw themselves. Everybody could go screw themselves.
But she needed to do something before she frayed away into little Sadie pieces and was blown away by the wind.
Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
At least she wouldn’t be able to feel anything anymore.
54
Marisa Grant
Marisa was following Leah into Aggie’s room when Leah simply vanished. Here, then gone faster than a blink.
Marisa stopped dead. She felt like a hole suddenly opened in her chest and a piece of her stomach dropped to the floor. Her senses were overloading on the chemical smells, the stark walls, the array of monitoring equipment. All of it battered away at her, circling around the sudden emptiness inside her.
“No!” she cried and lunged forward.
A hand landed on her shoulder, stopping her. “Don’t,” Gonzalo said. “This is the business of medicine men now.”
She turned her head toward him. “But—”
“They can do something,” the crow man told her. “We can only make it worse.”
She let him pull her toward the window, still inside the room, but out of the way. Two more of the dark-haired crow men filled the door, effectively blocking any entrance. By the bed, Morago circled around Aggie’s floating body until he reached Diego’s side. When he touched the other man’s arm, Diego’s head and shoulders reappeared from the otherworld.
He looked from Morago to Aggie.
“Did you find any sign of her?” Morago asked.
Diego shook his head. He reached out to touch Aggie, but Morago pushed his hand away. “Leah did that and she disappeared,” he said.
“Disappeared?”
The shaman nodded. “As soon as she touched her.”
Aggie’s floating body turned enough to pull various tubes and monitors out. A klaxon of alarms began beeping in discordance with one another.
“I need to get in there,” Marisa heard the doctor say.
The tall crow men continued to block his entrance. “There’s nothing you can do,” one of them told the doctor. His tone was similar to how Gonzalo had spoken to her.
Morago and Diego were studying Aggie’s body, ignoring the cacophony of sound. “It makes no sense,” Diego said. “If her spirit is gone, her body should be done. But it still functions, even without the five-fingered beings’ medicine.”
“And you didn’t see Leah on the other side, a moment before I called you back?”
“I was drawn to the last place I saw Aggie. Neither she nor the woman were there, but others were. Consuela and her dog. Calico, Reuben Little Tree, that boy who works for him, and Steve Cole. And that hollow man from the other side of the rez.”
“Sammy Swift Grass?”
Diego nodded. “Steve appeared to be unconscious, with his head on Calico’s lap and Thomas kneeling beside them, waving a little black feather in Steve’s face.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Unless he was trying to use his medicine to revive Steve.” Diego frowned. “I could sense Aggie nearby, as strongly as I can sense you standing in front of me, but I couldn’t see her.”
“Perhaps she’s in a deeper echo of that mountain,” Morago said. “The dreamlands get twisty, the farther in you go.”
“I suppose,” Diego said, “though I’m not entirely convinced that’s the case here. She seemed so present.”
Listening to them, M
arisa felt as though she’d stepped into some surreal foreign film where, although the actors were speaking English, she still felt she needed subtitles. Simple though the conversation was, every word felt obscure and out of place, especially with the distracting sound of the beeping. She didn’t know most of the people they were talking about, and it seemed to her that nobody was focusing on the actual problem at hand.
“What about Leah?” she asked. “Can’t you follow where she’s gone?” Her gaze went from Diego to the shaman. “And if your magic’s so much better than what the hospital can do, why aren’t you reviving Aggie?”
Whose body continued to turn in a slow circle three feet above the bed.
“She’s right,” Diego told Morago. “Enough talking. I’ll follow Leah and you do what you can for Aggie.”
Morago caught Diego’s arm again as the mountain lion man stood up and reached for Aggie. “You don’t know where she’s gone. What if neither of you can make your way back?”
Diego pulled free of Morago’s grip. “This is my fault for giving Aggie bad advice in the first place,” he said. “So it’s up to me to fix it.”
He reached out again and this time Morago didn’t stop him. Marisa held her breath, but when Diego did make contact with Aggie’s body nothing happened. His grip stopped her circling motion and that was all.
Marisa’s heart sank. “Now what do we do?” she asked.
Diego let go and Aggie slowly began to turn again.
“Now we wait,” he said. “Whatever comes next is in the hands of the thunders.”
“The who?” Marisa asked.
“The great spirits.”
Marisa sighed and looked away to the window. Crows were still perched in a line along the outer sill, with more wheeling in the sky beyond. She let her back take a slow slide down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. This trip had turned into a complete disaster. Alan should never have talked Leah into coming out here. And what was she supposed to tell him and their friends back home? Yeah, Leah just vanished—no, I mean literally—and I haven’t seen her since.
She shook her head. They couldn’t just wait around for some spirits to sit up and take notice. With all of Morago and Diego’s magic, and the ability to step between worlds, there had to be something they could do.
“And if nothing happens?” she asked.
For a long moment she didn’t think anyone was going to answer. Then Diego looked at her.
“Something always happens,” he said.
55
Steve
It’s so weird. The woman’s just lying there face up, like she’s laid out in an invisible floating coffin, arms folded across her chest. Then her features come into view and I almost jump off the edge to get to her.
Si’tala grabs my arm. “You can’t fly,” she says.
“But that’s my friend Aggie.”
“I know.”
“You said we’re in my mind,” I tell her. “Well, in my mind I can fly.”
“We’re not just in your mind,” she says. “We’re in a part of the otherworld that echoes your mind. The laws of physics still apply here.”
I point out toward Aggie. “Oh yeah? Then how come she’s floating?”
And that doesn’t even start to address the question of what the hell Aggie’s doing here, when she’s supposed to be in the hospital. I look closer and see that under her folded hands, Aggie’s blouse is red with blood. This is making my head start to hurt again.
“Well?” I ask.
When I tear my gaze away from Aggie to see why Si’tala isn’t answering me, I find the raven woman staring up into the sky. It takes me a moment to figure out what she’s looking at, but finally, I see that there’s a speck up there. I assume it’s a bird until I realize that it’s another body dropping rapidly toward us.
My first thought is, where the hell is it falling from? My second is, if it hits this mountaintop, it’s going to make a horrible mess. It sure as hell won’t survive—if whoever the hell it is isn’t already dead.
If we’re in my mind, shouldn’t I be able to do something? Will it to stop and float gently down to where Si’tala and I are standing? Maybe float out there beside Aggie?
But I can’t do a damned thing.
I remember what Si’tala told me.
We’re not just in your mind. We’re in a part of the otherworld that echoes your mind. The laws of physics still apply here.
I might as well try to catch the moon between my fingers for all the help I can be.
I put my hands on Si’tala’s shoulders. “Do something,” I tell her.
She regards me calmly. “Do what?”
“I don’t know. You’re the ma’inawo. Make some magic.”
She studies me for a long moment that seems even longer because all I can think of is that poor bugger dropping out of the sky.
“Fine,” she finally says.
I stumble back from her as a pair of enormous wings explode from her back. Loose feathers cloud the air all around us. Then she throws herself off the mountaintop. A slow turn brings her below Aggie’s floating body before she darts up, heading on a trajectory that will take her directly into the path of the other body that’s plummeting down.
With everything I’ve experienced these past couple of days, this is still an amazing sight. My chest goes tight with emotions that I can’t begin to articulate.
This is what angels look like, I realize, as I watch her rise higher and higher on those sunlit wings.
56
Thomas
“Have you always been wound so tight?” the raven woman asked Calico.
“Shut up,” Thomas said before Calico could respond.
Gordo rumbled a low growl, but when Thomas glanced at the dog, he saw its displeasure was once again directed at Consuela and no one else. The dog was panting lightly.
“Fine,” Consuela said, frowning at the dog. “I was just making conversation.”
Thomas hadn’t spent much time in her company, but he already knew that was anything but the case. Consuela was what Jerry Two Hawks referred to as a shit-disturber when he was calling out the ringleaders of the kids getting into trouble around the rez.
“Please be quiet,” Thomas said to her. “I’m trying to concentrate here.”
Bringing her stupid shadow sister out of Steve.
Which was a ridiculous thing to even be thinking of, especially when he had no clue what he was doing. Use his will. Yeah, if that were so effective, he could just will himself right off the rez, not to some godforsaken mountaintop in the middle of the otherworld.
“Fine,” Consuela said again.
She stalked off to where Sammy sat near the edge of the plateau, staring off into the endless sky with a dull expression on his features.
Calico touched Thomas’s arm. “Ignore them. You can do this.”
He looked from her earnest features to Reuben, who nodded in agreement.
“Medicine’s medicine,” he said. “If Morago thinks you’ve got it in you, then you need to believe that and find a way to pull it out.”
“It will be easier to do here,” Calico said. “Everything is magnified in the dreamlands. This is where your ancestors first found their connections to their medicine.”
Easier? That depended on your definition of the word. Because nothing was easy when you didn’t have a clue about what you were doing.
Thomas turned his focus back to Steve, trying to muster the same optimism Reuben and Calico seemed to have. He studied Steve’s face, looking for something in the slack features that would let him see Steve the way he saw people with ma’inawo blood walking around the rez—how the ghosts of their animal aspects settled on their shoulders, or rose up from behind their heads. Not that he thought Steve had an animal aspect—the man wasn’t even Kikimi—but maybe if he looked hard enough, he’d find some way into understanding the riddle of how the damn bird had entered him, and where they were now.
He held the crow feather up in
front of Steve’s face and moved it slowly back and forth. There was something familiar about the motion, and it took him a moment to realize it reminded him of the swaying steps of his sisters when they danced. That called up the memory of the first time he’d seen Santana coaching Naya in the arroyo behind their house. Santana had seemed so self-assured. Later that same day, he’d asked her where she’d learned the steps because he couldn’t remember her ever taking lessons from anyone.
“I didn’t need to take lessons,” she told him. “The steps were already in here.” She laid a hand on her chest. “Auntie told me all I had to do was reach inside myself because all Corn Eyes women know how to dance. Naya saw what I meant right away.”
Maybe it would work for him, too. If he was born with shaman’s eyes, then maybe all he had to do was reach inside himself and…what?
See with those shaman’s eyes, he supposed. Consuela was certainly convinced he could. As was his dead Aunt Lucy, who wasn’t dead in the otherworld.
The trouble was, he didn’t know what he was looking for.
Studying Steve’s face, trying to access something he didn’t quite understand, the only thing that felt real was the slow back and forth motion of the crow’s feather.
Odd, he thought, that Si’tala had put a crow feather in his pocket with the medicine to wake him up instead of one of Consuela’s raven feathers. But maybe she did it because the lives of the crows of Yellowrock Canyon were so entwined in the lives of the Corn Eyes and White Horse families.
There were always crows around the house, lanky dark-haired men with their avian aspects floating on their shoulders. You’d see them on the cliffs and up in the arroyos, stopping by the porch to pass a few words, lending a hand with the heavier chores. Or the black-winged birds themselves, visiting with Auntie, perching on cacti and the roofs of the outbuildings, filling the air with their raucous songs.
When Thomas thought of crows, he thought of stories. There was an endless tangle of stories about them in the Painted Lands, but Thomas’s favourites were the ones narrated by Old Man Crow, who lived half in the canyons and half in the spiritworld. The kids at the community center loved them too. Telling stories was one of the main things Thomas did with the kids. He got most of his from Auntie, though he’d also learned a few from Reuben and Petey Jojoba.
The Wind in His Heart Page 32