Teresa of the New World

by Sharman Apt Russell

  I remember you, the jaguar said. You are the human who spoke to me before, when I changed back.

  Change back now, Teresa ordered. I want to see the boy.

  The jaguar crouched lower and opened his mouth in a snarl, so that Teresa could see his pointed teeth. His blocky head and wide nose made him look imperious, like a king. I am no longer the boy, he snarled. I am myself, me. I am hungry, and I will eat you.

  No! Teresa said. She made herself speak calmly, firmly. I am the boy’s friend. I take care of him.

  I am no longer the boy, the jaguar repeated. He huffed in a series of angry hunh! hunh! hunh! The boy no longer needs you. The boy is better off with me. We will never change back again. We will eat you and drink you and sleep in the cave.

  Teresa stiffened. She called again—not to the jaguar, but to the child. Remember the fish we caught together? Remember how good it tasted? Remember how we laughed and laughed? Change back now and we will fish here in this pond and then we will build a fire and sleep and go back to the horse. Remember how the horse let you ride him?

  The jaguar wrinkled his flat nose. I like fish, he said. But there are no fish in this pond. I don’t smell any fish, only frogs and insects.

  Then we will catch a rabbit, Teresa said. We will roast it for supper. I’ll tell you a story about a fiesta. A beautiful fiesta with lots of food.

  A fiesta? the jaguar faltered.

  A party with music and jugglers and chocolate and tortillas. You remember eating tortillas? You remember dancing! You remember being human.

  I don’t! The jaguar sat back on his haunches and moved his head back and forth. He opened his mouth to gather in more scent from the air. He didn’t know what to do. Hunh. Hunh. He huffed.

  You remember your mother, Teresa said firmly. You remember your Mamá. What happened to her? Where is she?

  Teresa found herself entering the jaguar’s mind more forcefully than she had ever entered the mind of the horse or any other animal. She wanted to know more about the boy, how he shape-shifted and why. She wanted to know what had happened to his mother and father. Her curiosity and fear formed an edge that she used to move deep into the animal’s thoughts.

  There she felt a whirling and a turning. She was staring out of yellow eyes. She saw the flutter of the cottonwood tree. She saw the shifting shadows along the rock walls. She saw a human girl standing by the pond, a human girl colored in shades of gray, each shade distinct. Even in the dimming sunset, she could see perfectly—the sharp detail of the girl’s stained clothes, her hair coming loose and unbraided, the four tattoos on each cheek.

  The vertical pupil of her eye widened to take in more light.

  Teresa knew now what the jaguar knew. He was not like other animals, for he flickered in and out of existence whenever the boy changed, and even in this, he was new and different—he was a mistake. A Mayan shaman did not enter the Jaguar God until adolescence. But the boy had changed early because the power was strong in him and because his parents did not have their village to guide them and because the rituals had not been done correctly. If they had not been taken north by the Spanish, they would have known what herbs to use and what ceremonies to perform. The boy would have grown old enough to control the jaguar, and the Jaguar God would have taught him how to change and when. Now it was too late.

  What do you mean? Teresa asked the animal even as she looked through his yellow eyes.

  I am here now. I won’t go back.

  And you want what? Teresa pressed.

  I want life! I want to be!

  But while you live, what happens to the boy? Where is he?

  The jaguar gave a mental shrug. He sleeps. He sleeps inside me safe and well.

  Teresa thought about that. She looked out at the jaguar’s world, the prey on the bank of the pond—a human girl easily caught and killed, a delicious girl filled with blood, her flesh nourishing. She saw the fluttering cottonwood leaves, and she had the urge to bat them with her paw although she knew this was silly, for they were too high up. She scanned the rock cliffs. A falcon watched anxiously from its nest. She lifted her nose and opened her mouth and breathed in.

  Her senses exploded. Now she could smell what the jaguar could smell, intoxicating odors deeper and richer than anything she had experienced before, layers of smell she could read like Fray Tomás had read the words in her father’s book: the wet decay of leaves; the urine of a coyote; the death fear of a mouse; the sweet cloy of the datura flower opening to attract the night moth; the poison in the flower’s petals and leaves; water and mud and insects and toads; lizards that should be eaten only if necessary; the wind carrying the smell of other animals; the wind itself; and the girl, of course, always the girl with her juicy flesh. The girl smelled incredibly good.

  Teresa felt the world, immediate and joyous, pressing on her senses. There was no doubt what she should do. She should crouch and spring and eat the girl. That would give her more life, more of this world!

  I understand, she said to the jaguar. You would have the boy sleep forever so you can live in his place. You are not willing to share this life with him.

  He is not willing to share with me, the jaguar protested. The shamans would have me come out once a month, roaming the forest for a single night. They would have me under the boy’s control, under their control, ready to do their bidding to protect the village. They would have me retreat meekly like a rabbit or mouse whenever they command.

  That’s how it should be, Teresa said.

  But that is not how it is, the jaguar replied. I have come early, and I am stronger than the boy. I am stronger than you. I will have my life.

  Wait! Teresa said. She reached out for the boy. She tried to wake him, to concentrate on his face, to make him hear her. You remember your father, she insisted. You remember your mother. You lived with them among the Spanish hidalgos and slave hunters. You remember them.

  The jaguar shook his head and the long length of his body as if trying to shake off a spray of water.

  But he did remember. His father and mother had been slaves, although not in the silver mines, branded, overworked, and soon dead. They had been the personal slaves of a Spanish alcalde mayor, the main official in a small town, a man who treated them well and who let their little boy run freely in the house and barracks making friends with everyone from household cook to captain himself. The boy had been happy, tossed into the air by his father, cuddled and fed by his mother. Even the slave hunters had petted him, letting him play with their whips and swords, the swords so heavy he could barely lift them.

  One day, his father had seen that his son had the shaman’s power. His father was not surprised, for his father’s uncle had had the power, too. So his father had taken him behind the barn and made him drink a bitter liquid and had cut his hand so that blood dripped freely into a cup. His mother watched and cried because she was afraid. His mother’s mother also had entered the Jaguar God once a month, roaming the forest near their village and keeping the village safe from other animals—but that was in a place where people understood such things. His mother had cried, “They will think it is witchcraft!” and his father had held his son close. “We will protect him,” he said.

  Yes, Teresa urged, that is your real life.

  The jaguar growled, remembering. But they didn’t protect him, the jaguar hissed through yellow teeth. The rituals didn’t work. They were not done correctly in a circle of shamans. I came too soon, and I am too strong. His mother and father died. Even the slave hunters died. There is nothing left for him in the human world.

  The jaguar remembered, and Teresa remembered. The Indians in that area had risen up as they sometimes did, tired of the iron fists of the conquistadors, with their new rules and new religion. Perhaps these Opatas had found some special power. Perhaps they were led by a man or woman who claimed a magic they believed could overthrow the magic of the Spanish, the pitiless magic of sarampión and viruela, and so they had stormed the town of the alcalde mayor. Without do
ubt, that man had been terribly shocked, for he thought himself a benevolent ruler. His men of arms were also shocked, cut down as they slept, stabbed in the heart with a stone knife or smashed on the head with a heavy rock. The Mayan slaves had also been killed. They meant nothing to the Indians here. They were foreigners just as much as the Spanish.

  The boy had seen everything. He had woken in the night needing to urinate, and he had gone out alone without waking his mother, exploring alone as he sometimes did around the barracks and barn, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He saw the shadows of shadows creeping into the compound. He heard cries and curses as the Spanish woke and fought and died. He saw the alcalde mayor dragged out from his house into the dirt yard, near the fruit trees. The Opatas slit his throat and let the blood water the trees. They dragged out the alcalde mayor’s family, his wife and teenage daughters, and all the servants and slaves, and they slit their throats, too, and let their blood water the trees.

  When the boy heard his mother screaming, just before she died, he ran from his hiding place near some barrels of grain. The blood-spattered men saw him. “Another one!” they shouted to each other and threw his dead mother on the ground next to his dead father. With jokes and terrifying smiles, they came for him.

  But they were not smiling when he changed. They drew back then, and some of them ran away. The jaguar wanted to chase those men. He almost rushed forward, almost lashed out biting and clawing. But he was bewildered and full of a wild mourning, and he ran away instead, fleeing the bodies on the ground. He lived as a jaguar for many days, until Teresa found him and spoke to him.

  You brought the boy back, the jaguar accused her.

  And I will bring him back again, Teresa insisted. She understood that if she waited any longer, she would be seduced by the smells of the jaguar’s world, by his hunger and anticipation of the girl’s flesh—flesh that was her own, she reminded herself. She had to leave the jaguar’s mind, and she had to take the boy with her. Wake up, she said, and reached out.

  Teresa knew now what the jaguar knew, everything that had happened before the boy’s change, and so she knew the boy’s name, what his mother and father had called him, all their love in that single word. “Pomo!” she cried. “Pomo, wake up!”

  13

  The boy complained as Teresa bathed his face with water from the pond. He pushed his head against her stomach, and she held him tightly. She didn’t know how much he remembered from being a jaguar and running from Plague, or how much he remembered of that night when his mother and father were killed. She didn’t know how to talk to him about his parents, and so she didn’t. She only held him and made a soothing noise.

  After a while, he sneezed and drew away. “I’m hungry,” he said.

  Darkness had settled into the canyon, and briefly Teresa wished for the jaguar’s eyes so she could see well enough to hunt and gather. That was impossible now, and they would have to go without food. “I know,” she told the boy. “The morning will be better.”

  In the morning, she found a packrat’s nest, with a packrat inside that they roasted for breakfast. The rat also had a cache of pine nuts, and they added these to the stringy meat. Afterward Teresa reknotted the tinderbox in her cotton shirt.

  “We’ll eat again soon,” she promised as they walked up the canyon. The large trumpet-shaped datura flowers, white and lavender, were still open, exuding their rich scent. She pointed these out to the boy and warned him they were poisonous, every flower, leaf, and root, causing hallucinations and death. He nodded without interest.

  “Did you already know that?” Teresa asked.

  The boy shrugged—no. It seemed he knew little from his time as a jaguar. He is truly asleep, Teresa thought, and wondered if there were rituals that would help him. Perhaps the shamans of his people would know how to keep the boy awake when he entered the Jaguar God. Perhaps the wise woman at the Opata village would know what to do to help the boy control the animal. The boy’s jaguar—Pomo’s jaguar, Teresa corrected herself—had come too early and was too strong for a child. She couldn’t let him change back again.

  “You must not change back,” she scolded as they reached the trail she had made coming down into the canyon. The boy looked at her, surprised by her tone. “Pomo,” she said more gently, “the animal in you is too strong for you. You must not take that shape.” The boy shrugged, confused, then stubborn. He would not talk about it.

  They climbed slowly, for his legs were short, and he was also careless, starting rock slides that threatened Teresa until she learned to climb beside and not below him. “I’m hungry,” the boy said again at the top.

  An hour later, they saw a circle of vultures dipping and soaring in the blue sky. The carrion that attracted the scavengers was in the direction they traveled, and they detoured through a patch of thorn bushes. Closer to the carcass, Teresa could smell that the deer was badly rotted. Still, she wondered if she could find some good meat somewhere before remembering she had no knife or even the flinted rock she had made earlier. She had no way to separate good meat from bad. Pomo suggested grabbing a leg and wrenching it from its socket. But then they would have to stop and build a fire, Teresa explained, and the rotten flesh might make them sick. She was in a hurry to get back to the meadow. For a moment, she paused, watching the vultures stab and tear, jealous of their sharp beaks.

  “No,” she said regretfully. “We’ll find something else later on.”

  Next they were lucky when their detour brought them by a field of prickly pear, its oblong fruit ripe and red, not yet discovered by a family of peccary or the long-nosed coati. This was a very satisfying lunch, with Teresa scraping away the fine prickles and giving first one fruit to Pomo then one for herself. They alternated like this through half the plants, spitting out the tiny black seeds and savoring the pulp until their stomachs were overfull. Before moving on, Teresa took off her cotton shirt and tied it into a gathering bag she could carry. The rest of the fruit would make a good supper.

  They walked all day, past the vista of jumbled hills and into the forest of pine trees and scrub brush. Toward the end Teresa had to force the boy, pushing and prodding with her sore hands and sarcastic tongue while he whined and complained. His legs were tired. His stomach hurt. He wanted to rest. He wanted to stop.

  “Stop and I’ll leave you,” Teresa threatened. Pomo began to cry, and so she came back and carried him the last bit, crouching under the low pine branches, seeing the jaguar’s tracks as well as her own from the day before. The boy felt like a sack of rocks. The gathering bag of fruit hung awkwardly across her chest. She felt as though every root and stone were trying to trip her. They neared the meadow by the path just as the sun was setting again, and Teresa found herself praying to Fray Tomás and Jesus and the wise woman all together. What if Horse had decided not to wait? What would they do if the animal wasn’t there?

  The western sky blazed with color, the remnant of a thunderstorm lit by the sun’s last rays, billowing white clouds edged in pink. Shafts of light pointed to the earth like fingers of an outstretched hand as Teresa staggered from the forest into the meadow, too tired to look for Plague or other dangers. She let the boy slide to the ground and called for Horse, and then out loud, “Horse, Horse!”

  As always, the boy said he was hungry. Teresa told him to sit at the edge of shadow where the forest and meadow met. Again she used a stone to rub off the thorns of the prickly pear fruit, which was good for their thirst as well as their hunger. She knew she had to be patient. The horse might be away drinking or exploring. He might be gone for hours or even days. Or he might come ambling up the path any minute, for it was almost dark.

  So! Horse grumped, as she petted his face and neck.

  I found the boy, Teresa stated the obvious. And you look well rested and fed. She paused. Has there been any sign of him?

  No, the horse still sounded annoyed. But there have been others intruding into my peace of mind. A hunting party. A trading party. A pack of noisy chatt
ering women looking for something. I spent half my time hiding in bushes like a drunken foolscap.

  We need a knife, Teresa spoke absently, thinking of the trading party.

  There will be knives in the village. But you have nothing to offer for them, the horse reminded her.

  Teresa shook her head and looked around for Pomo, who was sitting where she had left him, half-asleep, his face smeared with red juice. She was certain that if they went into the village, they would find Plague suddenly walking beside them. If they approached a trading party, they would find Plague again among them. She couldn’t be near people now. But—Teresa almost growled—she wasn’t willing to wander the rest of her life without speaking or seeing another human being.

  Plague will come back, Horse interrupted her thoughts, blowing thoughtful bubbles from his nostrils. He will come back for the boy. One victim is better than nothing.

  Appalled, Teresa stared at the gelding and then turned in all directions, scanning the meadow and forest and path. Of course, Horse was right. She should have seen this herself. If she had left the boy sleeping in the Jaguar God, at least he would be protected from disease. She had brought Pomo back only so Plague could take him!

  She had to find the wise woman first. Not just for her own questions, but for Pomo, too. She had to find someone who could help them.

  Let’s go now, she exclaimed. Let’s get out of here.

  The day is over, Horse neighed.

  There is a moon tonight, Teresa said, a full moon. Let’s go when it rises. Let’s see if you can outrun Plague.

  To outrun Plague! Teresa challenged the horse. He had fought in many important battles. He had crossed the ocean. He was a hidalgo’s mount, a member of his captain’s army. This would be a great opportunity, a test, a deed, something he could boast about the rest of his life. To outrun Plague. This would ensure him a place of glory!