Teresa of the New World

by Sharman Apt Russell

  The jaguar dropped the rabbit and grunted. Hunh! Hunh!

  His back legs tensed. He would not attack the horse, who pawed at the air with hooves that could break ribs and crush a spine. But he was ready to spring at Teresa, launching himself against her chest and biting her neck.

  He grunted again. Hunh! Hunh!

  No, Teresa cried. Stop!

  The jaguar froze.

  Don’t hurt me, Teresa babbled. You can have the rabbit. Leave us alone.

  No words, no image came from the animal. But Teresa could feel its shock. The green-yellow eyes blazed and seemed to get bigger, bigger, brighter, and then dimmer.

  Dimmer. And then they were gone. The jaguar was gone.

  Teresa waved her stick, which flared anew.

  A small boy lay on the ground.

  8

  The horse backed away, ears pointed forward at the child. Horse seemed as amazed as Teresa, and his hooves danced on the grass and dirt, ready to lash out if necessary. Teresa sat down, the ashes of the campfire blowing around her.

  After a while, she realized she should do something for the boy, who had been gasping and crying for some time now. Standing and coming closer in the gray light of dawn, she saw that the child’s eyes were closed and he seemed half-conscious. His face scrunched in anguished weeping. His fists knotted at his chest as he lay curled on the ground, no danger to anyone, helpless as a baby. His dark hair was fine, cut short at the ears. He was, Teresa guessed, four or five years old.

  She touched him cautiously. The boy moaned. She shook his shoulders, trying to wake him, ready to spring back if he should turn into a jaguar again. But he only curled more tightly into a ball, moving his head against his thighs. Now Teresa tried to lift the child, hoping to break through his dazed sleep. He was heavier than she thought, and he still did not wake although he struggled, thrashing and flailing his arms and legs. She dragged him onto her bed of grass and then moved away to a safe distance.

  From that place, she watched and waited as the sky brightened into shades of blue with a low wispy fog over the maize fields, a color like the inside of certain shells, luminous and pearl-white. Eventually the boy stopped making crying noises and slept more deeply, his long lashes dark against his cheek.

  What is he? Teresa asked the horse, who watched with her.

  I don’t know. I have heard . . . Horse hesitated and then continued in a defensive tone as if afraid she would not believe him: I have heard of tribes in the south who have medicine men who can turn into animals. I have heard of shape-shifters, always from the south, jaguar-men. But I never believed those stories.

  You never saw anything like this before? You never met anyone?

  Not me, the horse nickered. My master did, someone who saw a Mayan slave . . . The animal bent his head, hungry, unsettled, torn between talking and grazing.

  Go on, Teresa prompted.

  My master had a friend who said he speared a Mayan slave just as she was turning into an animal. She died and became human again. But my master didn’t believe him either. How can an animal also be a human? How can a human also be an animal?

  The horse tore at the grass and refused to speak again. Teresa watched the little boy as the birds began their morning chorus, all together in a burst of chatter and call and musical sound, and as the sun rose higher, burning away the fog. She retrieved the rabbit from the ground, skinned and skewered the body, and built up a fire to roast her breakfast. Briefly she left the child to get water from the nearby stream, where she drank and filled a gourd. When she let some of its contents dribble into the boy’s mouth, he sputtered and swallowed, sputtered and swallowed, and still did not wake. Not even the smell of cooking meat roused him.

  Teresa studied the boy—the clear brown skin, flat nose, full lips, and dark lashes on a rounded cheek. He did not look sick or starved. But he did look uncomfortable, his face twitching and his hands clenched into fists. Occasionally he sighed or grimaced. He did not seem happy to be in his human skin. He did not even look fully human.

  Or maybe it was only that Teresa had never spent much time with children. She had never played with other girls and boys, not since leaving her baby sister. She had spent her childhood traveling with her father and three other men, and then she had begun her work in the Governor’s kitchen under the eye of the cook and assistant cook and assistants to the assistant cook. No one had thought of her as a child there or treated her like one. No one brought babies or children into the kitchen, for the housekeeper would not allow it.

  Teresa picked at the meat on the rabbit bones. She felt nervous. It was mid-morning, past time to go. Today she was going to ride the horse. Today they would travel many leagues. The need to hurry built like a pressure in her chest. She needed to find the wise woman. The wise woman wanted her, waited for her.

  Perhaps she and the horse should simply leave the boy here. She would give him the rest of the rabbit. There was water nearby. He could always hunt his own food. Perhaps that was for the best.

  The horse came and nudged her from behind. Leave him here, the gelding advised. That’s for the best.

  He’s too young, Teresa heard herself argue back. He can’t take care of himself.

  He was doing fine last night, Horse said.

  But something is wrong now, Teresa worried. He’s not waking up.

  I don’t like his smell, the horse complained. I don’t like jaguars.

  They waited all that day. Sometimes the boy roused enough to drink a little water or the soup Teresa made and kept warm. Even then, he never opened his eyes and only muttered gibberish she could not understand. Sometimes she caught Spanish-sounding words. Sometimes he rambled in another language, perhaps Mayan, a tongue from the south. That night, she and the horse took turns resting and keeping guard. This time, she did not fall asleep.

  The next morning, when the boy opened his eyes and spoke, it was only to scream loudly for his mother. “Mamá, Mamá, Mamá!”

  “Be quiet,” Teresa tried to shush him. Her voice came out rusty and strange, hardly intelligible. Drawing back, she realized this was the first time she had spoken out loud in eight years, since her father had left her in the courtyard of the Governor’s house, since the turtle had kept moving across the sky and the world did not end.

  The boy shrieked more vehemently. He wanted his Mamá! He wanted to go home!

  “Where is your home?” Teresa tried asking. She wanted to slap him. She wondered if that would help or make things worse.

  “Mamá! Mamá!” the boy yelled, a stream of tears welling up in his eyes and running down his cheeks. His nose streamed with a flow of mucus. “Mamá!” He drummed his hands on the ground and kicked his feet. “Mamá!” His back arched in a tantrum he seemed unable to control, as if a Bad Spirit were shaking him from the inside.

  Teresa watched, appalled. The horse grazed.

  The boy began weeping all over again. How could such a small body hold so much water? He cried, awake now, until he couldn’t cry anymore, until he and Teresa were both exhausted. At some point, she had taken him onto her lap. She was stroking his hair, saying “Shush, shush” over and over. His dark head burrowed into her breasts, and he fitted himself against her stomach. “It’s all right,” Teresa promised, not knowing why but believing it herself at the moment. “It’s all right. You’re all right now.”

  “Ma . . . a . . . ma,” the boy whispered and began to hiccup. Hic, hic, hic. The jerky movement of his body looked painful. Hic, hic, hic.

  “Make it stop,” he said plaintively in Spanish.

  The horse had come close again, breathing down Teresa’s neck.

  Teresa was at a loss. How did anyone stop the hiccups? She jiggled the boy tentatively. “Giddy-up,” she said. “Giddy-up, giddy-up.” She bounced the child up and down on her lap. He coughed, whimpered, and sighed, the saddest sound Teresa had ever heard. His fingers gripped her breasts too tightly.

  You did not groom me today, the horse said.

  The s
un shone pleasantly in the blue sky. Soon, Teresa thought, it would get too hot and they would need to move into the shade. “Giddy-up,” she whispered with her new rough voice into the boy’s ear. “Imagine you are riding a bay mare. You are on your way to a wonderful fiesta.”

  “A fiesta?” the child repeated. Hic, hic, hic. His chest heaved.

  “A fiesta with wonderful food,” Teresa promised.

  “I’m hungry,” the boy said. “I want some, hic, food!”

  9

  Teresa called him Boy although she knew he must have his own name, a Mayan one, at least, given to him by his mother and father. But Boy seemed easiest for now, and the boy seemed to agree. He didn’t want to talk about the past. He gnawed ferociously on the leftover rabbit bones and then wanted something more. Teresa searched through her saddlebag and found a remaining slender squash that she had gathered earlier from a field.

  The child made a face. “I like meat.”

  “I can see that,” Teresa said. “Try this, and we’ll get more meat, too.”

  Could the boy control his change into the jaguar, she wondered, or did that happen without warning? Did it happen when he was hungry?

  Now the boy took such small bites of the vegetable that he looked like a mouse, nibbling delicately, his nose wrinkling with distaste. His teeth were white and strong, bigger, perhaps, than other children’s teeth.

  “Do you like fish?” Teresa asked, trying not to smile. She knew he would.

  She cut away the rope halter from the gelding’s muzzle. Then she unbraided the rope and made a misshapen and rough net, which she hoped would hold a trout for long enough to throw it on the bank. She and the boy walked down to pools that looked promising and got lucky at the second hole, where a fish drowsed unwary in the shadows. Teresa scooped it up as the tail flapped, and the trout almost slipped away until the net caught its nose again. Shouting with excitement, Teresa threw the entire thing into the air, and then the fish was in a bush, still flapping. The boy ran to club it with a rock.

  “Good!” Teresa praised.

  The boy danced, stomping his feet and lifting his chubby arms. With his chest puffed out, he grinned down at the fish. “We caught you,” he said, and that was so obvious that Teresa almost smiled again.

  It took much longer to catch a second fish. The net broke. The boy got bored and began to play a game in which he thrashed the yellow flowers on the bank with a stick, knocking off their petals and yelling in Spanish, “Get to work! Get to work!”

  He must have seen such hidalgos and slave hunters, Teresa thought, in the place where he had lived before, perhaps in the silver mines or a garrison at some Spanish outpost. She doubted his parents had been slaves themselves in these mines. The child seemed too healthy, without scars and without a brand. More likely, they had been servants like herself, working in the kitchen, where there was lots of extra food. How had they managed to keep the boy’s secret? Was his mother a jaguar-woman, too, and his father a jaguar-man, shape-shifters and shamans? And where were those parents now? Were they still alive? Teresa suspected not. She didn’t think a mother would willingly leave a child so young and foolish and inexperienced.

  “Be quiet,” she ordered, without much success. At first, the boy would stop, and then in a few minutes, he would be bored again and thrashing flowers and yelling and dancing.

  “This is not good for hunting,” Teresa grumbled. “Come here now. Help me with this.” She listened critically to her words. Yes, she still sounded rusty, her throat muscles stiff, her mouth awkward. Even so, the child understood and came to squat beside her. With two hands, she reached into a dark place where water had eroded the root-tangled bank. When she felt the ridged back of something slimy, she let the broken net spread, entangling the fish. The boy leaned over to see better, his hair brushing her cheek.

  Suddenly, too close to her ear, Teresa heard a shriek and then water was in her nose. The boy had fallen in! He wailed and splashed, but Teresa kept her balance and kept hold of the fish, knowing that the pool wasn’t very deep. The fish sailed up and plopped a good distance away on the dirt. Satisfied, she jumped into the water and grabbed the boy and held him up so he wouldn’t drown. Then, without thinking, she made him laugh by tickling his stomach. His lips stretched wide and his dark eyes crinkled, and this made Teresa laugh back and soon they were both laughing and splashing so much that all the fish here were well warned and hidden. Teresa didn’t mind. They could always walk farther down the stream. They could always find another pool.

  She couldn’t remember when she had laughed like this before. Of course, the cooks and the assistant cooks had laughed in the kitchen, telling jokes about the balding Fray Tomás and sometimes, more quietly, about the housekeeper. She had also seen girls giggling at chapel, whispering and poking when they should have been quiet. Once she had heard the housekeeper laugh genuinely at a handsome male gardener clowning for an extra pastry. And Fray Tomás often chuckled at something he said to himself or to his God or that his God said to him.

  The memories sobered her, and she made the boy get out of the water, returning to the campfire with two fish to eat and two to save for later in the day. Teresa cooked these until the skins were burnt and wrapped them in wet leaves. Then she filled the leather bag with watercress. It was already afternoon. She was ready to continue the journey north to find the wise woman.

  But Horse wouldn’t let the boy ride him. Never, the horse said. That’s how jaguars do it. They jump on a horse’s back, rake his flesh, and bite his neck. It doesn’t take long. You bleed to death. Hell on your back! Ridden by the Devil! Your cries of agony resound in your ears.

  Teresa could only suppose that the horse’s master had talked like this, too.

  No, she said firmly. I don’t think so. He is not going to turn back into a jaguar. He is human now. Aren’t you? she turned to the boy and asked. The child only stared and said nothing, so that Teresa understood the boy was like her father and the housekeeper and Fray Tomás and everyone else. He couldn’t hear them speaking, horse to human, human to horse.

  Never, Horse repeated. I was raised in the sweet perfume of the sweetest city in Spain. I have fought in foreign wars and sailed across the sea and slept in the stable of the Viceroy of Mexico City. I don’t carry Mayan slaves.

  For emphasis, the horse moved forward, reached out, and nipped the boy on the upper arm. The boy screamed. Horse! Teresa was shocked. The horse neighed and trounced away. The boy kept screaming until his soft chocolate-brown face turned purple. The skin on his arm had been broken, and a few drops of blood slid to the ground. But when Teresa tried to look at the bite, the child gnashed his teeth, and she jumped back.

  “Ma . . . Ma! Ma . . . Ma! Mamá!”

  So they were back to that.

  Horse chuckled.

  Teresa wondered how everything had slipped so quickly out of control.

  When the boy calmed down—and that took some time—the horse agreed to walk beside them as they continued north. He would not carry them. He would only accompany them. Teresa felt tired in a different way from the tiredness of chopping vegetables and making tortillas and sweeping floors all day. Life was much easier when you lived alone and had no one but yourself. That’s how it had been in the Governor’s kitchen. Surrounded by people, she had still been alone, blessedly alone, never having to soothe and argue, pet and cajole, talk and convince.

  Slowly, slowly, slowly, they followed the path to the next village as the boy ambled along on his short legs. Climbing a bit higher, they left the fields and orchards behind, with stunted pine trees now lining the way, mixed with oak and needled juniper. Teresa thought that she would never reach the wise woman at this rate. She was worse off now than before she had met Horse.

  The yellowing sun had begun to drop and they only had a few hours more of light, when she felt eyes again on her skin and sensed an intelligence watching her from the branches of a rough-barked tree. She stopped, swiveled, and stared.

  Horse
felt it, too. He was also surprised. So it wasn’t the jaguar-boy, he said.

  “What do you want? Get out of here!” Teresa called out. The tangle of scrub oak and grass and juniper revealed nothing. They were the only three travelers on the path that stretched before and behind them.

  Teresa tried again. “Who are you? What do you want?” But whoever had found them did not want to be found.

  Let’s go, Teresa said to the horse. “We have to hurry!” she scolded the boy.

  Now the horse went ahead because he could smell water and scent out their next campsite. The boy walked in the middle, a prudent distance from the horse’s back hooves, and Teresa brought up the rear, her skin crawling and senses alert. When they passed a fork in the trail, the horse wanted to take it to the valley below with its village and fields. But Teresa told him to keep climbing on the path that took them north, and soon they came to a spring edged with green grass and small blue flowers. As she and the boy ate a supper of wrapped fish, the horse grazed. No one spoke much. Without further discussion, she and the horse took turns guarding the fire.

  The next morning, they started out again, climbing again, the way steeper now as it angled up the mountain slope. Almost immediately, the boy complained that his legs were tired. Teresa said his legs couldn’t be tired so soon. They were barely out of camp. But the boy said his legs were tired, very tired, and he couldn’t walk another step.

  The horse stopped. What? Teresa snapped. Then she also felt eyes—the watcher, the person or animal or thing. She also turned to study the trees behind them, the space between bushes. It’s still here, Horse said.