“Some tribes,” Auntie told him once, “only tell stories in the winter.”
“Why do we tell them all year round?” he’d asked.
She’d rapped his head with a knuckle. “Because the skulls of Kikimi children are so thick they need the repetition to actually learn something from them.”
And his skull was thick. Everyone said that these stories were learning stories. That however implausible or arcane they might seem at first, if you understood the stories, you had the tools to live a good life. He remembered a favourite: “The Girl with a Heart of Stone.”
* * *
Old Man Crow found a girl named Anna Long Ears weeping by a dry wash in the moonlight because she’d been born with a stone for a heart and had been told she would never be able to love.
Old Man Crow took Anna to see various ma’inawo and spirit guides, whose imparted wisdom fell upon her deaf ears. Finally, just as the dawn was breaking from behind the eastern mountains, Old Man Crow reached into her chest.
“See,” he said. “Your heart’s not a stone. It’s an egg.”
Anna stared wide-eyed at the object that rested in Old Man Crow’s palm. She reached out a hand to touch it, but before her fingers could make contact, Old Man Crow took his hand away and put it back in her chest.
Her gaze was haunted when she lifted it to meet his.
“An egg’s no better than a stone,” she told him. “It still won’t let me love.”
Old Man Crow laughed. “No,” he said. “At least not until you let it hatch.”
“How am I supposed to—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Look inside yourself. What do you see?”
“I…I…”
Then her eyes went wide again as the egg in her chest cracked and a cactus wren pushed its way out, small but full-grown. It fluttered its wings before it wormed its way up her throat and burst from between her lips to fly around and around her head, filling the air with its cheerful song until it finally winged away.
Old Man Crow plucked a small brown feather from her lips and held it out to her.
“Everything we need,” he said, “to walk large and fulfill our potential can be found within ourselves. The trick is, no one ever looks for it there.”
Anna took the feather from him. She was still dazed from her experience, but her smile grew wide, then wider. Inside her chest where the bird had hatched, her heart beat a strong pulse like a hoofbeat on the desert floor.
“Make a medicine bag and keep that feather in it,” Old Man Crow told her. “Whenever you begin to forget, you can take it out and be reminded of who you are.”
* * *
Thomas stilled the motion of the crow feather he held between his thumb and forefinger and gave it a closer look.
Was this why Si’tala had secreted the crow feather in his pocket? To remind him of this story as well as to awaken his feelings for the tribe and their lands?
“Do you know the thing about time?” he asked his companions without looking away from the feather. “How it’s all supposed to happen at once—past, present and future?”
“Sure,” Calico said, “though I don’t know who can actually hold it all in their head at once.”
“I’m not sure that I believe it,” Reuben said. “It doesn’t make any logical sense.”
Since when did anything? Thomas thought, but Reuben’s words made him look up. His gaze went to Calico. “So is it true or not?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“I don’t suppose it does,” he said.
He looked back at the feather, then closed his eyes. Maybe he had a rock in his chest instead of a heart, just like Anna Long Ears thought she did—something that disconnected him from his heritage. Maybe he didn’t. But he could still use the story as a guide to visualize what he’d been told about looking inside himself. Except if he was going to imagine anything, he wasn’t going to imagine a rock, but an egg. And inside that egg was the bird that was his shaman sight. All he had to do was let it crack open and fly out.
He pictured the egg. Pale blue, with darker speckles of various shades of brown. The bird inside was tapping away at it with its beak, a slow heartbeat rhythm that reminded him of Auntie’s steady breathing when her gaze was caught on something beyond the horizon that only she could see. It was the shuffle-stomp of his sisters’ dancing, following the slow and steady sound that the drummers beat from their instruments.
The egg finally cracked and he could see the bird within as it pushed its head out of the hole it had made. No cactus wren, like Anna Long Ears’ had been, but a tiny perfect crow, cousin to its Yellowrock Canyon kin. He visualized it wiggling its way up his throat. He was doing such a good job visualizing it that he imagined he could actually feel its movement inside him.
Suddenly it was impossible to breathe. His airway was blocked. As he lifted his free hand to his throat, he heard a voice inside his head and could almost picture the tall, brown-skinned man speaking to him. Everything we need to walk large and fulfill our potential can be found within ourselves. The trick is, no one ever looks for it there.
It was the voice of Old Man Crow, rough and croaking, the way Auntie made it sound when she was telling one of her stories about him.
Thomas knew without a doubt that the bird he felt was his shaman’s eyes crawling up his throat.
No way.
He started to massage his throat to loosen the blockage, but suddenly his mouth was full of feathers. He coughed and the little black crow flew out from between his lips.
“What the hell?” he heard Reuben say.
No kidding, Thomas thought, except he couldn’t answer.
His eyes were closed, but he could see right through the lids.
He could see…he could see so far…so deep…
The endless sky grabbed his gaze and sent it spiraling off into ever more intense blues. He felt as though he could see right around the world. Right out of the world.
He was connected to everything. He was a part of the sky above and around him. He was just as big, just as blue. The wind was his voice and it sang a thousand thousand songs. He had roots that grew from his veins, from his nerves, from his bones. Roots that went deep into the rock below, slithering and sliding through tiny crevices, reaching for the heart of the world.
The immensity of the experience threatened to envelop him, making it almost impossible to remember who he was, as a separate entity from everything else.
If this was how Morago saw the world, he had no idea how the man could function.
But suddenly, like the unexpected gift of a spectacular sunset, he could see exactly how Morago could be connected to everything and still go about his business.
That gift of understanding was enough to bring him back into himself.
With an effort, he turned his shaman’s gaze to Steve’s face and saw a whole other world inside the man’s head. Implausible though it was, in there was a mountaintop like this one, with another Steve standing on it. That Steve had his head tilted back, all his attention focused on a woman who looked like just Consuela, except with big black wings and she was carrying off a white woman.
No, not Consuela. That had to be Si’tala in a mostly human form, doing Consuela’s bidding. Remembering the runaround he’d been taken on today, he felt for whoever her newest victim was.
This stopped now.
He reached out with the force of his will and pulled the raven woman back. He ducked aside as the ghost raven came tumbling out of Steve, eyes blazing, beak open and screeching, though he still couldn’t hear a sound she made. She caught her balance and rose high in the air. Thomas stood up, putting himself between Steve, Calico and Reuben and the bird as it came flying back.
He could feel the winds gather protectively around him. The sky was a pattern of medicine power, awaiting his word. He was rooted deep into the mountain under his feet, immovable.
“These three are under my protection!” he called, holding the crow’s feathe
r up. “You have no power over any of us!” The words appeared to have no effect and Thomas braced himself for some kind of ghostly impact, but Si’tala turned at the last moment of her plunging descent and flew off.
Thomas tracked her until she disappeared from sight, then tracked her further through his connection to the sky and winds.
“How’s Steve?” he asked, keeping his gaze fixed on where Si’tala had disappeared.
“There’s no change,” Calico replied.
Reuben was looking at Thomas. “Who were you talking to?” he wanted to know.
Thomas finally turned and fixed his shaman’s gaze on Steve.
There was nothing to see. He could no longer look inside the man, and his deep connection to the earth and sky washed away.
“No,” he murmured. He wasn’t done. Though he’d pulled Si’tala out of Steve, he hadn’t brought Steve back.
But the medicine was gone. He was just Thomas Corn Eyes again, a young man holding this small crow feather between his fingers, standing on a desolate mountaintop with a sense of deep loss rising up inside him.
He started when Reuben put a hand on his shoulder. “Thomas? What just happened?”
“You didn’t see the ghost raven?”
Reuben shook his head.
“I managed to pull it out of Steve,” Thomas told him, “but the medicine’s gone and I don’t know how to bring him back.”
Calico gently moved Steve’s head from her lap to the ground and stood up. “Then I guess we do this my way,” she said and started to walk across the plateau to where Consuela stood over Sammy.
57
Sadie
Crows followed Sadie through the neighbourhood all the way to Mission Street, but by the time she got to the busy intersection, she could only spot a pair of them. If one of the two was Manny, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t particularly care, either. Of more concern was the police car approaching from the middle of the next block.
Crap.
She was shaky now, her grip on the knife handle so tight that it was leaving an imprint on her palm. She needed to let the pain out, but she couldn’t do it in public. Some do-gooder would try to “help” her because people could never mind their own goddamn business. But she was enough on edge that any cop looking at her would assume she was a junkie.
She turned her back to the street, hood still up, and feigned great interest in the window of the used bookstore on the corner. The cruiser went by at a crawl, but she could tell from watching its reflection in the window that the cop was like the ones back at the 66 Bandas’ clubhouse. He cruised right by without even a glance in her direction. She was still invisible to anybody who wanted to hurt her. But just in case, she waited until the cruiser had gone a few blocks before she crossed to the other side of the street.
She slipped into a little grocery store down the block and managed to snag a bottle of water from a box at the rear of the store without getting caught. She thought maybe the young guy behind the counter saw her do it, but then felt sorry for her and let her get away with it. Loser. But she was grateful to finally have some more water. She’d finished the bottle that Aylissa had given her ages ago.
As soon as she was outside, she twisted the top off and glugged half the bottle. The water wasn’t particularly cold, but even so, it tasted better than anything she could remember, and it helped ease her anxiety a little.
She still had a ways to go, and by the time she reached the Ghost Mall—what everybody called this abandoned shopping center on the far east side—she was really dragging her feet. It was all boarded up and covered with gang signs and graffiti. The parking lot was a dumping ground for junked cars and trucks, old fridges and stoves, and every kind of trash, all of it vying with the weeds, cacti and scrub that had grown up through the pavement.
The bandas had shut the place down, back in the day. There’d been so much vandalism and violence both inside the mall and out in the parking lot that the owners had finally closed up and moved farther north. A chain-link fence had been erected, but that hadn’t stopped people from getting in. Sadie squeezed through a hole that had been cut in it. Farther along, she could see where somebody had driven a vehicle right through, following one of its original access roads.
Gangs had partied and squatted in the mall itself—mostly the Southside Posse, but also the Kings and some of Los Primos Locos from the west side. It was also a place where they’d once come to settle their differences, gladiator-style. But then something happened—ghosts had chased them off, older kids liked to tell the younger ones in the schoolyard—and superstitions were so strong that now everyone avoided the place. Dummies.
Still, Sadie watched for a long moment, a tickle of fear in her stomach—but what better place to hide? This was the last place the cops or anybody else would come. When she was satisfied no one was around, she crossed the parking lot, weaving a path around the buckled pavement and junk. Nobody was going to find her here.
The pair of crows that had been following her flew overhead to land on the roof of the shopping center.
Except for them.
She gave the birds the finger before going in through the front door, glass crunching underfoot as she stepped over its metal frame. It didn’t smell nearly as bad as she’d thought it would, probably because the heat of the summer had burned away any hint of damp. Something scurried away, running deeper into the mall. A packrat, most likely. Nothing for her to worry about unless it could change into one of Aggie White Horse’s animal people.
She walked down one of the corridors, feeling so tight and swollen by now that she surely must look like a balloon girl. It didn’t matter that her reflection in the marble walls between stores showed the skinny kid she actually was. She knew what the pain and anxiety building up inside was doing to her.
It took her a while before she finally found an old clothing store that wasn’t too trashed. Any merchandise had long since vanished, but the clothing racks remained, scattered haphazardly about like skeletal reminders of their original purpose. Dim light came in from a filthy skylight above the front of the store, its glass so encrusted with dust and dirt, it made the sky beyond look brown.
The inside of Sadie’s skin was itchy now, as though hundreds of tiny mites were moving through her flesh. She made her way around the store’s cash counter and slid down to the floor. Pulling the utility knife from her pocket, she thumbed the blade out and pressed its sharp edge against her forearm. She closed her eyes for a moment, allowing anticipation to build before she made the first cut.
She opened her eyes to watch the blood well up and drip down her arm, taking with it all the ugliness that had built up inside her since the last time she’d been able to ease the pressure. It oozed slowly, escaping the cut like a sigh. The world around her dissolved away and she was alone in the safe place where she was in control, nobody else.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She lifted her gaze. Manny stood at the end of the counter, looking down at her like she was a piece of dirt. She’d never even heard his approach.
“Fuck off,” she told him, her voice tired.
He pushed his long hair back and shuddered. “Kid, why would you do that to yourself?”
Even in the dim light she saw the concern in his eyes, but she was too zoned out to muster the energy to be pissed off.
“Seriously,” Manny said. “Have a little more respect for your body.”
“If we’re going for serious, you seriously need to fuck off.”
He didn’t answer. His gaze was locked on her bloody arm. Or maybe it was all the scarring that held his attention. Sadie couldn’t really tell. She didn’t much care, either, but her anxiety levels were lower now, so it didn’t wind her up.
“Please,” she said, thinking maybe politeness would work. “You should just go.”
He shook his head. “I can’t leave you like this.”
Sadie stared at him until he finally lifted his gaze from her arm to meet her eyes
.
“Look,” she said. “I’m broken. Do you understand what that means? I’m not a good person. I’m never going to be a good person. People are always trying to fix someone like me. Ruby, Steve, Aggie. Now you. But we can’t be fixed.”
“But Aggie—”
“Means well. You all mean well. But I have to tell you, I kind of wish Aggie would just fucking die because then you and your crow men could kill me and everybody’s problems are solved.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Sadie could feel a new wave of anxiety building up inside her. Could feel herself swelling, her skin getting tight, even though she’d just made a cut and let it all out. This had never happened before. There was always a decent respite.
“You need to go,” she said.
“So you can keep cutting yourself?”
“Why do you even fucking care?” She waited a beat, then added, “I think I liked you better when you didn’t give a shit.”
She held his gaze until he finally turned away. Closing her eyes, she listened to him leave. When he reached the hall the sound of footsteps changed to a sudden flap of wings. She took the utility knife and made a second cut across the one she’d made earlier. The relief was immediate. She took a rag from her pocket, found a clean spot in amongst the dried blood on it, and used it to soak up the blood.
Leaning her head against the wall, she looked up, half-expecting to see a crow watching her through the dirty skylight.
There was nothing there.
She closed her eyes. Thumbing the knife blade in and out, she let the emptiness that grew inside wash through her, numbing any need to think or feel.
The Wind in His Heart Page 33