The Green Memory of Fear

by B. A. Chepaitis

  But he had pain, and he shouldn’t unless he was being wounded and if so, who dared wound him? Someone gave him this pain deliberately. Who?

  He sniffed the air. A soft static scent, like something burning, filled him. Sage, he thought. Burning sage, giving him a headache.

  He uttered an oath and slammed a fist against the hearth. He should be scenting Jaguar. Where was she? He’d tracked her easily enough when she left Toronto, heading toward Manhattan. He’d followed her here, bringing the children, thinking she might choose to meet him in the city where he’d first bound her.

  But she’d stayed only briefly and then moved on, going to her old village in New Mexico. He hadn’t pursued her. Not yet. He could afford to be generous, let her say her goodbyes. But once she arrived there her scent was gone, hidden by whatever tricks those people she called family knew. Now he had a pain, and smelled burning sage.

  He held a hand out for her, wanting to grab her and shake her, throw her off a cliff. If he found her he could do that easily enough, even at this distance. His hand touched nothing. She was gone. Just gone.

  Rage became a song inside him. She was gone and he had pain. If this was her feeble attempt to escape—well, she’d learn not to try again.

  Of course, it might not be her. She had powerful guides. Powerful friends in that old village. Perhaps they worked for her. If so, they’d soon learn the consequences of such stupidity.

  He walked over to his window and peered up at the sky, which was clear and to his eyes showed the edges of the Milky Way in misty relief against the blackness of night. The Planetoids were invisible in the darkness, but he knew her friends were there. He’d find one.

  He tried for a different scent. One that meant something to her. Alex. He sent out a thought to connect them. A thought of Jaguar. Part of her they both knew.

  As he made the connection, he twisted his gaze back down to the earth below him. He’d found something interesting.

  Alex wasn’t on the Planetoid. He was on the home planet, headed for New York.

  Senci smiled.

  Alex was on his way. The children could deal with him. They knew what to do. When they were done, he’d have one less pest to deal with, and Jaguar would see that he meant business, in case she didn’t know it already.

  “Now where is Peter?” he muttered to himself. He went in search of him, and of the girl, to begin the process of reeling in his prey.

  Home Planet—New Mexico, USA

  The sun danced to its accustomed spot on the horizon, glowed gold and then bled its life out over miles of turquoise sky. Jaguar saluted it and walked down the dusty, unpaved road that lead into the canyon and to Jake and One Bird’s village, 13 Streams.

  She’d taken a cab to the top of the road, wanting to walk the rest of the way. She carried only a backpack with some clothes and a bottle of water, and that was heavy enough. She still felt the energy drain of the Greenkeeper, still carried something toxic in her veins. Each step was a burden, even though she walked toward a place she loved.

  Her mother grew up at 13 Streams, and Jaguar lived there until she was five and her grandparents took her to Manhattan, over the objections of Jake and One Bird. They said she was too wild for anything except wilderness, and they were right because ultimately she found the Planetoids—the wildest place of all.

  But when she told herself the truth, Jaguar knew this village was the one place where she could openly be all of who she was, and she’d have to return here again and again to renew herself if she wanted to continue her work. It was the only place that accepted all her disparate heritage.

  One Bird’s father, a Mayan shaman, had settled here after he ran from Guatemala with a price on his head during one of the wars there. Later, well after he died, other Natives showed up and ultimately they laid claim to a swath of land through one of the treaty reparation acts made just before the Serials. Now a few thousand families lived here, some Native and some not, planting their food, holding ceremony, operating businesses.

  They came from many places, especially during the Serials when word got out that One Bird took in strays. City Skins began to show up, leaving urban areas destroyed by murder, by diseases from biobombs and too many bodies piled up in the streets. Others came from reservations, looking for city friends and relatives they were worried about. Then non-Natives from suburbs came, seeking escape from a spiritless world. One Bird took them all in. 13 streams of people, which meant everybody and the unaccountable, mysterious, one more than everyone.

  This was her vision, she told Jaguar. Her work in the world. And Jaguar belonged here, where all those who belonged nowhere else chose to live.

  She rounded the last corner of the road and saw the village just ahead, its adobe houses almost seamless with the land around it, growing out of the rock and sandy soil. As she passed them, people would note her arrival, but nobody would come out to greet her. That would be pushy, rude. Tomorrow, if it seemed right, those who wanted to see her would slowly begin to gather around.

  She came here twice a year at least—once for a sweat to clean out any residual shadow she fielded from her prisoners, and once for the sun ceremonies her grandfather had started here long ago. She supposed this place was as close as either she or her grandfather ever came to having a home. As close as their wandering would allow, because more than anything, the Mertec tradition was one of wandering.

  Their name meant the walking people, those who kept going, those who went up. Going up the land. Going up the rivers. They were, their stories said, attracted to upward motion. Jake often said that explained why she went to the Planetoids.

  The Mertec had lost much of their tribal identity as they followed their wandering tradition and their ways mingled with others, but Jaguar could still spot someone who probably came from her line. A certain fetish on a Zuni necklace. A scratched out image of a jaguar’s open mouth with a hummingbird inside. Knowledge of certain herbs. These told the genetic tale, though there were few full bloods to talk about it.

  If rumors about her father were true, half her blood wasn’t native either. She once overheard an old woman ask her grandmother if she was the little girl that Spaniard left behind. Others whispered about her as the daughter of a cougar man. She was both a motherless and fatherless child.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she muttered under her breath. “Jesus, you’re disgusting.”

  The truth was, she’d always have a home at 13 Streams, and she couldn’t ask for a better one. Even the Planetoids didn’t fully embrace her the way this land, this people did. Here, all her empathic arts were taken as natural, part of the way the world worked. Some people had a talent for healing, some for growing good corn, some for speaking with the spirit world. What was called psi capacities or empathic arts on the Planetoids and the rest of the home planet was called simply medicine here. There was no need to categorize or explain it, and they didn’t understand why anyone would make a fuss about it.

  When she got to Jake and One Bird’s house she stopped, stood and stared at the smooth adobe walls, let herself adjust to the energy. Let the house adjust to hers. Though they were the elders of the village, their house was no different than others except for the glyphs of sun and moon carved in the door. Those glyphs told all.

  What this old couple knew of the spirit world was beyond any naming. Their skills in the empathic arts were so much a part of their being they couldn’t name them as separate from themselves. What they did was who they were, and all of that was good. Jaguar had been infinitely fortunate to learn from them.

  When she felt she’d waited long enough, she opened their door and went inside.

  One Bird was washing dishes at the sink. The radio was on, playing something jazzy and fast, and she sang along, her broad shoulders lifting and falling in rhythm as she worked, her long grey braid swinging back and forth against the back of her brown cotton housedress. Jaguar watched, staying still. One Bird kept at it until all the dishes were clean. Then she
wiped her hands on a towel and turned from the sink, still singing.

  When she saw Jaguar, her mouth clamped shut. The dark eyes in her wrinkled face grew wide. She recited some choice words in Tzutijil, snapped her fingers to turn off the radio.

  “Hello, One Bird,” Jaguar said, leaning a hand on the adobe wall to steady herself.

  “I’ll get Jake,” she said. “Sit down.” She moved past Jaguar and left the house, seeking the old man.

  Jaguar didn’t trust herself to get to the chair. Walking here was as much as she’d reserved energy for. She slid down to the smooth floor and sat, held on to the wall and waited. A river of pain washed from the top of her throat to the bottom of her spine. She ached everywhere, and found it difficult to breathe. The Greenkeeper at work, killing her slowly until she returned to him. And even with all their skills, what could Jake and One Bird do about that?

  She rubbed a hand against the wall, listened to the idle buzzing of a fly in the room. Just under the surface of this wall were the remnants of etchings she’d carved when she first got here after the Killing Times. Jake let her use his penknife to make them, he and One Bird watching her as she cut her grief and rage into images in the walls.

  After a few years here they gave her a bucket of adobe and paint to fill them in, paint them over. By then she was ready to do so. And as she worked, they watched her, saying nothing. They were very good at watching her, and saying nothing.

  Sometimes their silent watchfulness drove her crazy. She wished they’d just say what was on their minds, not leave her guessing if she’d done something wrong or if they were about to pounce on her. Then she realized they were saying what was on their minds. She’d forgotten how to hear anything but screaming since the Killing Times. They were reminding her that quiet still existed in the world. That not all silence was dangerous.

  They were always teaching her something in that way, and all of it was useful. They taught her how to find barriers and clear them with a touch and a breath. They taught her how to cleanse herself after contact, keep herself from eating shadows. They taught her the rituals of thanksgiving, grief and praise. They taught her ways to feed the spirits, hungry for human gifts, for beauty, laughter and tears, love and rage.

  And they taught her which gifts were hers. Chant-shaping. Clear-seeing. Naming truths. The gifts that got her in so much trouble. The gifts that brought her here.

  Jaguar smoothed the wall and thought of Daro, smoothing wood. Pain coursed through her and she stopped her hand. What images would she carve here now?

  She pushed the button at her wrist that released her red glass knife into her hand. She pressed it against the wall but went no further. She had nothing to write on these walls today, and there were better uses for her knife.

  In the Mertec tradition, if you were either filled with grief or about to relinquish your life, you cut your hair. She reached across her shoulder and grabbed at the braid going down her back. She held the knife close to it, not sure what her intent was, perhaps just testing for the feel of it.

  Did she mean to die? Did she have a choice?

  The front door creaked open and slapped shut. She turned, knife and braid still in hand, and saw Jake standing in the entrance, One Bird right behind him.

  “Stop that,” he said.

  She stared at the knife but didn’t move. He walked to her, pressed the button that retracted her weapon, pushed her hand down. He stood over her, his sharp features tight with anger, his arms crossed at his chest, waiting.

  She spread her hands out and stared at them. “Jake,” she said, “I’m in trouble.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can see that.”

  She was dusty and dry as the bones of the earth. She carried the scent of the dead on her and they smelled it. He removed his hat and ran a hand along the dome of his balding head. “You need to lie down,” he said.

  Jaguar thought briefly about arguing, then dismissed the idea. He had something he wanted to accomplish with her, and she had a promise to keep. She pushed herself to standing, steadied herself against the wall.

  “Okay,” she said. “But can we keep it on white man’s time? If I delay, people might die.”

  “It’ll take what it takes,” Jake said. “Go. We’ll be in.”

  She walked out of the kitchen, into the cool, dim light of the hall toward the room that was hers since she was a teenager. She ran her hands against the thick adobe walls, felt how solid they were. They grew out of the earth they stood on and retained the comfort of their mother. As she entered her room, taking the required step down into it, she heard Jake and One Bird talking quietly, each in their own language. That meant it was serious talk. English was for every day.

  The room was sparsely furnished. A mattress on a wood frame close to the floor. An old bureau. A table made of a round slab of a tree, balanced on a stump.

  The two long and narrow windows let in slants of the remaining day’s light at exactly the angle she remembered. She let her hand pass through it, let light play on her skin. Then she went over to the bed and lay down, turned to her right and ran a finger along the wall where she’d carved the outline of the animal that shared its name with her. It was the only carving she hadn’t covered up.

  She was tired, but she couldn’t fall into sleep. Whatever Jake and One Bird had in mind, she hoped it didn’t take too long. She was safe here, protected by a cluster of some of the most powerful empaths you’d find on the planet, but they couldn’t protect Rachel or Alex. Or Alex.

  His name—just saying it—opened a channel of pain in her chest. She breathed herself away from it, afraid of the depth she might fall into, never to find her way out. She could be trapped in this hole in her heart, and if she feared anything, it was being trapped.

  As if she was not trapped already. As if she had any good choices left.

  The sense of someone in the room rather than any sound made her open her eyes. It was One Bird, alone.

  “Where’s Jake?” Jaguar asked.

  “Still pissed off. He’s gotta get over it.”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Don’t worry about it. He don’t know everything. He just thinks he does. Besides, he’s gotta make the offering. We’ll start without him.” One Bird’s soft hand touched her face. “You’re pretty sick. You know that? Full of poison, and someone stealing your breath.”

  “I know.” The sucking sensation in her chest wouldn’t go away.

  “You been having dreams?”

  Jaguar nodded. Dreams where she stood on the mesa and Alex stood with her. Where she stabbed him, and he fell. The inexplicable triumph in his eyes.

  One Bird grunted. She pressed her lips tight together and hummed to herself. Her hands moved over Jaguar’s face.

  “You’re sick from grief, too,” she said, speaking more gently now.

  “From Daro and Clara,” Jaguar whispered, and felt the throbbing of pain.

  “More than that.” One Bird pressed a finger to her jaw. Jaguar winced at the touch.

  “He wants me to become him,” she said. “To—to be his.”

  One Bird shook her head. “Doing what he wants won’t work.”

  “Then maybe if I let him feed off me, he’ll change.”

  “No.”

  “He says—”

  “He lies.”

  Simple, and clear. He lies. Becoming him would save no one, and giving herself to his feeding frenzy wouldn’t change him. She was relieved and disappointed simultaneously. A part of her hoped her sacrifice would somehow redeem what happened to her grandparents, to Daro, to Clara. And in a stolen moment between willing sacrifice and death, she might allow herself to feel love, something he’d taken from her long ago.

  At this thought, a wave of sorrow moved into her and stuck around.

  “There,” One Bird said. “That’s what else you’re grieving. Like a river in you. An old river.”

  A hand moved from her head to her throat. She choked as it tracked the course of
her despair.

  “You don’t understand. I have to—I have to figure out what to do. There’s no time for this.”

  “We have to get the poison out first,” One Bird said patiently. “You’re no good to anybody until we do.”

  Jaguar shook her head. No. This was too much. She couldn’t.

  You have to. Breathe, One Bird commanded. Open.

  Jaguar had years of trusting that voice. She complied. Her awareness lowered through her throat, to her chest, past her heart and into her belly. It lingered there, sensing darkness and—something else. A thin thread connecting back to her heart.

  One Bird began to sing, her hand hovering over Jaguar’s body as her awareness traveled the road of her spine, clearing out cobwebs of fierce guardedness and whatever else she thought kept her safe. Jaguar felt new toxins and old energies breaking up, passing through and out of her as she breathed deeply and slowly.

  Stay open.

  Her awareness moved back up into her head like wind circling inside her, clearing out the dust. Then, back down through her throat and into her chest, to her heart.

  Her heart.

  One Bird’s hand lingered here, letting Jaguar feel what lived there.

  Hurt. It hurts. Can’t breathe.

  Through the pain she sensed One Bird’s impatience. She knew better than to turn her face away from the truth.

  Don’t struggle. Just fall. Let yourself fall.

  She turned to her grief as if she loved it, as if the slow light, resonant and soft, would carry her away away away from herself. But it didn’t. It only turned her back to this trap she called a hole in her heart.

  I don’t want to feel this.

  It’s yours, Jaguar. It’s just you.

  It’s awful.

  One Bird laughed softly.

  No. It’s all there is in the whole world, and it’s you. Own it.