by Sarah Dreher
Siyamtiwa nearly smiled, but her self-control defeated her facial muscles. “Good,” she said. “Placate. Good thing to do with Elders. What you want from me?”
“I guess I’m here to… well, to help Aunt Hermione. What do you think I should do next?”
“Questions,”Siyamtiwa said. “You ever stop to think maybe you have some answers?”
Stoner was embarrassed with herself. Helpless dependence had never been an attractive quality to her, especially when she was the helpless one, and now here she was...
She forced herself to think.
Assuming her intention had been to find a way to help Aunt Hermione, and she had ended up here, then this must be the way to help Aunt Hermione.
“You gotta make a Journey,” Siyamtiwa said impatiently. “Find her soul. Bring it back.”
“Find her soul?”
“Not the whole thing. Part that got lost, went away.”
“Why would her soul do that?”
“What’a you ask me for? None of my business.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Stoner said.
Siyamtiwa shook her head. “You wear me down. Make me old before my time.”
Despite her anxiety, she really had to laugh at that one. Here was the oldest person she’d ever met in her life, or probably ever would. The time for “old before my time” had long passed. She said as much.
“Yep, I’m pretty old, I guess. Too old for this, that’s for sure.”
“What I mean is...well, you’ve probably picked up a lot of wisdom over the years.”
“You bet,” Siyamtiwa said.
“So you should be doing something more, more elevated than this.”
“Like what?”
“Like solving the big problems of life or something.”
“Uh-huh.” The old woman plucked a bit of straw from beside the path and chewed on it. “I did that kinda thing for a while. Nobody wanted to hear. And when they did hear, they ignored. Not much of an ‘elevated’ thing to do.”
“But I want to hear,” Stoner said eagerly. “I have a problem and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I can use all the advice I can get.”
“Gonna be a long day,” Siyamtiwa said, shaking her head. She looked tired.
“Would you like to sit down?”
The old woman raised one eyebrow. “It’s okay for you to sit? I thought maybe you had somethin’ wrong with your behind.”
Non-Ordinary Reality or not, Stoner blushed a very Ordinary blush.
Siyamtiwa made a stern face. “You call me here, you say I’m old, you don’t offer me a seat. Good manners you got.”
“For Pete’s sake, just sit down!”
The old woman folded her legs under her and dropped to the ground.
Stoner sat beside her.
“I didn’t call you,” she said peevishly.
“You called me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Sometimes you call, you don’t even know it. How many times you go out and there’s the one person you needed to see, and maybe you didn’t even know it until that moment. How’d that person know to be there if you didn’t call?”
“You’re right,” Stoner said. “It’s going to be a long day.”
Siyamtiwa produced three brightly-colored stones from somewhere in her clothes and tossed them on the ground. She frowned and picked them up and tossed them again. With a nod of satisfaction, she looked up. “What you wanta know?”
Stoner felt that helplessness again. “I don’t even know what I need to know,” she said.
“Okay.” Siyamtiwa tossed the stones. “We start with big picture. You Whites like the Big Picture, but you always gotta have it explained.”
“Yes, we do. It’s a genetic defect.”
“First thing you gotta understand,” Siyamtiwa went on, “is about the old guys, the Grandparents. Grandmother Earth, she’s in charge of all the little hard things, the stuff you call atoms, stuff like that.”
Stoner nodded.
“Now, Grandfather Sky, he’s in charge of the spaces between the hard stuff. When Grandmother Earth and Grandfather Sky get together, they make what you call ‘things.’ You still with me?”
“Still with you.”
“‘Course, this is only my opinion. Someone else might tell you somethin’ else.”
“It works for me,” Stoner said.
“But you know what’s missing? Something that makes everythin’ move around and come together and fall apart, all that.”
“I know. Physics.”
Siyamtiwa just looked at her.
“God?” she asked in a smaller voice.
“Great Spirit,” Siyamtiwa said. “Bigger than Physics God, bigger than White God, bigger than The Grandparents. Knows everythin’. Does everythin’. Without Great Spirit, nothin’ lives, nothin’ changes, nothin’. You want an orange?”
“Sure.” She didn’t, really, but this time she was determined to see where Siyamtiwa got it.
The orange appeared in Siyamtiwa’s hand. She passed it to Stoner. “This is Non-Ordinary Reality,” she said. “You gotta stop lookin’ for Ordinary stuff.” She produced a second orange and peeled it, thrusting her chin in Stoner’s direction. “Eat.”
Stoner tried a bite. It was delicious. “We don’t get fruit like this back in Ordinary Reality,” she said.
“You bet. That place, everything kinda washed out. Like someone sprayed gray paint on it. Doesn’t seem real. How do you like my story about the Gods?”
“I like it,” Stoner said.
“Pretty, huh?”
“Very pretty.”
Siyamtiwa nodded soberly. “That’s what matters. Nobody knows anythin’ for sure, so you see somethin’ pretty, makes you happy, might as well believe that.”
Stoner nodded her agreement.
“What good’s walking around with a long face, nothin’ means anything, Other World one big joke, only one way to look at it? Believe everythin’, then you never wrong and never right and you have a good time.”
They finished their oranges at leisure, in silence. Siyamtiwa licked the last of the juice from her fingers, then tossed the peels to Burro. By the time he grabbed them from the air, they’d turned into an apple.
Stoner laughed with surprise and delight.
“Magic. Small stuff. That trick done by a professional,” Siyamtiwa said. “Don’t attempt at home.” She produced a pipe and lit it. “Grandparents,” she puffed out a few small clouds of smoke. It smelled of a thousand things: burning wood and incense and flowers and hay and rain and orchards in bloom and freshly mowed grass and... “You get in trouble, you go to their children for advice.”
“Their children?”
Siyamtiwa waved her arm. “All around you. Everywhere. Great Spirit’s in all the kids of the Grandparents. Even the bad ones. In rocks and plants and animals. Especially animals. They know a lot. Rocks only know maybe one thing. They’re real slow. Don’t have energy for a lot of ideas, but the one thing they know is very, very old. Stood the test of time.”
“What’s the one thing?”
“Different for each one. So, you wanta know somethin’ old, you ask that question, see who answers.”
“How will I know that?”
“They’ll get your attention. Maybe make a big color so you can’t miss ’em. Maybe trip you up or climb in your shoe. Maybe fall on your head. You’d notice that, I bet.” She blew out another cloud of fragrant smoke. “But you be careful not to waste rock’s energy, takes ’em a long time to get it back. Couple hundred years, sometimes.”
Stoner thought of all the people she knew who were always asking questions of crystals. She mentioned it.
“Crystals are different. Long time ago, they figured out how to take energy from your question, use it to send back the answer. That’s why they make themselves sparkly. So you’ll take them home and feed them your energy.”
Stoner was appalled. “You mean all these crystals we have around are actua
lly draining our energy?”
“Don’t need much. You get it back in first five seconds of sleep. That too much to pay for truth? Or you just wanta go around all filled up all the time knowing nothing? White man’s way?”
“Of course not.”
“So you pay out a little of that spirit energy you got too much of, anyway. Good investment.”
“All right.” But she was still disappointed. She’d hoped for more specific help.
Siyamtiwa sensed her frustration. “I’ll tell you somethin’. Get you started.”
Stoner looked at her eagerly.
“You gotta find a piece of the old gypsy’s soul. Teeny little chunk that got chopped off, ’cause whatever was goin’ on, it didn’t want no part of it. So it went away. You gotta walk around, call to it. When you find it, you bring it home.”
“That’s all? It’s that easy?”
Siyamtiwa blew smoke in four directions before she answered. “Well, sometimes it don’t wanta come. And sometimes someone took it and they don’t wanta give it back. Then you have to work things out.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Convince ’em. Or trade somethin’ for it. Sometimes you gotta fight.” Stoner buried her face in her hands. “I can’t do this. I really can’t.” She choked back tears.
The old woman blew fragrant, comforting smoke around her.
“I don’t know how to find lost pieces of people. I don’t know how to argue and fight with… with… whatever...” She glanced up helplessly.
Siyamtiwa’s look was gentle. “That’s okay, Green Eyes. You’ll do all right.”
It was the nicest thing the old woman had ever said to her. It frightened her. She probably thought Stoner was doomed, and was being kind to her out of compassion.
Her companion gave an impatient grunt.
“You’re reading my mind, aren’t you?”
“Kinda hard not to. It’s pretty loud.”
Stoner poked the ground impatiently with one finger. “I hate that. It’s so, so rude. ”
“Well, you gotta be careful how you use it,” Siyamtiwa said placidly, obviously not giving a damn about the moral and social implications of eavesdropping on personal thoughts. “You ought to try it. Get that old Gypsy to teach you.”
“No, thanks. I have enough trouble with her poking around in my thoughts.”
“Then get her to show you how to keep them to yourself.”
Stoner looked at her. “I can do that? Block them so no one can read them?”
“Yep. Anything you can do, you can not do.” The old woman frowned musingly. “Or is it other way around?”
Burro made a snuffling, attention-getting sound.
She reached out and wrapped her hand around his ear. It was very soft.
He blew breath toward her, then shook his head and took a step backward.
“Don’t you like that?” she asked him.
Burro nodded deeply, tossing his mane. He took another step and turned his head toward the water.
“Do you want a drink?”
He pawed the dirt with one foot, then walked deliberately away from her. He looked around, stared at her, and put the thought in her head to follow.
Follow.
“Time to go,” Siyamtiwa said.
She got up and took a few steps and waited for Siyamtiwa to catch up.
The Hopi woman just stood looking after her.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Siyamtiwa shook her head. “This not my Journey. I only came to say hello.”
Stoner felt a sinking in her stomach. For a minute there, with her old friend along for a guide, it seemed almost possible. But now…
“I’m not your only old friend,” Siyamtiwa said.
Stoner glanced toward Burro, who hung his head and looked hurt and sad.
She felt a pang of guilt and pity, and went to put her arm around his neck. “I’m sorry,” she murmured into his ear “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You better learn how to hear him,” Siyamtiwa said. “You do what he says. That animal volunteered for this.” She dropped her voice and muttered, “Musta been drunk.”
“I’m sorry,” Stoner said again, half to Burro and half to Siyamtiwa.
Burro made a sound like chuckling.
“He’s a good Burro and he knows you,” Siyamtiwa said. “A good Power Animal even if he’s not very pretty.”
“He’s pretty enough,” Stoner said defensively, and squeezed Burro’s neck tighter. “As pretty as that bunch you hang out with.”
“Crow?” Siyamtiwa laughed. “That’s one funny-looking animal, all right. Works pretty good, though, when you gotta see a long way.” She looked as if she was beginning to fade. “I gotta go now. You wore me out. Next time you come, don’t forget those twelve virgins.”
“But where am I going to get twelve—”
Siyamtiwa was gone.
When the drums called her back, that was all she remembered. That and a few flashes of landscape—a wide desert with dim violet mountains in the distance, a river through a jungle, a dim and icy place where glacial floes punctured a black sky, the streets of a strange but familiar town. She knew there was more, but it stayed out of reach.
“I guess I just had the scenic tour,” she said to Elizabeth, a little apologetically, when she had finished telling her about the Journey.
“You met your Power Animal and a spirit who taught you how to listen to Spirit. Sounds like a good day’s work to me.” She smiled. “Especially for a non-believer Journeying under protest.”
Yes, when she thought about it, it wasn’t bad at that. Against her better judgment, she felt proud of herself. “What do you think of Siyamtiwa’s explanation of the universe. Pretty wild, huh?”
“I think,” Elizabeth said, “your spirit guide wouldn’t tell you something you’re not capable of believing for yourself.”
“I still don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You know as much as you need to know. The spirits can tell you the rest.” She reviewed the notes she’d made of her own Journey. “My guide did have one suggestion for you. Eat lightly in the morning, and get yourself a bracelet of wooden beads and rawhide.”
“I don’t know if I can. Tomorrow’s the last day of the full moon. Aunt Hermione thinks we should go then.”
“I know. Well, do your best. That’s all anybody expects. We’ll be all set for you here, a little after noon. I’ve put aside the afternoon, in case this takes a while.”
Takes a while? She couldn’t imagine doing what needed to be done, and doing it well, in a dozen years. “I don’t suppose you know where I can get twelve virgins.”
“Any particular kind of virgins?”
“Virgin virgins.”
The Shaman laughed. “I couldn’t even find twelve Virgos, but I think I can come up with a partridge in a pear tree for you.”
“Thank you very much,” Stoner said wryly.
Elizabeth put her pen and notebook aside and stood up. “I hate to rush you, but I have to take another trip today.”
“You really do a lot of Journeying in a day, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said. “This one’s all the way to the supermarket.”
Hermione decided she had maybe twenty-four hours left in her. She hoped it’d be enough. The moon would soon begin to wane. Already she could feel herself waning.
She lay on her bed, unable to move, falling asleep for a few seconds here and there. But she couldn’t stay asleep. Her muscles quivered as if they’d been touched by electricity. She could feel it building up, the tension, the need to release it. But shaking her legs, or stretching them, even trying to startle her own body didn’t help. There was nothing she could do but lie there until it became unbearable. Then her whole being would jerk like a puppet, and there’d be quiet in her body for a few minutes.
It didn’t even help to walk around. Not that she could. She’d think about it, and think about it, all the time knowing she did
n’t have the energy to move. Sooner or later the compulsion to use the bathroom would override her lethargy, but as soon as she lay back down on the bed the electricity would start to build again.
How long will it be before I go completely out of my mind? she wondered. She was tempted to let go now. To let her mind spin out, just to make it stop.
Cutter linked his mind to hers and felt that tension in his own body. He knew it like a first cousin. It came from days of crouching in a water-filled foxhole with the rain pouring down and the explosions so loud and so near that you got in the habit of checking to see if you were alive every few minutes.
Sometimes, even listening for your heart or touching your skin looking for warmth, you couldn’t really tell whether you were alive or dead. A few of the guys would take out their knives and cut themselves, just to see the blood. You wouldn’t see blood if you were dead.
Sometimes you’d just think back through your life, remembering everything you’d ever done until you were pretty sure you’d never done anything horrible enough to send you here. But then you couldn’t be certain you remembered everything.
Sticking yourself with a knife was better.
He didn’t do much of that, though. Only when he really had to, when he couldn’t convince himself any other way. And only when it mattered. Most of the time it didn’t matter. Dead or alive, it was all about the same. He was here, and the jungle was here, and the Beast was here. Death was all around, whether it was in you or not.
And it was in all of them, even the ones who survived, even the ones who came home with whole bodies. For the rest of their lives, they’d carry Death inside them like a cancer.
So his name wasn’t Cutter because of cutting. Not like some of the guys, who gave themselves nicknames like talismans, who thought they could keep themselves safe by taking what was inside and carrying it out in the open. If that had been the case, he’d have called himself ‘Death.’
His name was Cutter because that was his name. He’d had a first name, too, at one time, but he couldn’t remember it. It had scared him, the first time he tried to remember his name but couldn’t. But it didn’t scare him any more. It didn’t matter. Now he was just Cutter.
Something touched her hand and she opened her eyes. Stoner sat beside her on the bed, looking down at her.
