Shaman Winter

by Rudolfo Anaya

  “We’ve been at this for a long time?” Sonny pondered.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s getting closer,” Sonny whispered, feeling a worry in the gut, like a llano whirlwind enveloping a person in its fury even though the person had crossed his fingers and held up the sign to fend off the evil in the dust devil. Raven’s evil could not be turned away as easily.

  Under his shirt the Zia medallion sat on his chest like an ancient heart beating its own rhythm. Sonny had tried to return the medallion to Tamara, and she had refused it, calling Sonny the new Raven. Sonny and Raven, the flip sides of the medallion, the light of the sun on one side, chaos of darkness on the other. Yin and yang brothers engaged in eternal battle, growing older and wiser, until the resolution of their struggle acquired cosmic proportions.

  Sonny rubbed his forehead to clear his thoughts.

  “You okay?” Lorenza asked.

  “Sometimes I feel like getting rid of the medallion—”

  “You can’t. The Zia sun symbol is the most life-affirming sign we have,” Lorenza said. “If you give up, Raven takes over.”

  Yeah, Sonny knew. A responsibility had been given to him, and a lot depended on what he did.

  He flipped through the pages until he found the date he was looking for. “Here it is. Fifteen ninety-eight, the year Oñate entered New México. Don Juan de Oñate, born 1552 in Zacatecas, México. Fought the Chichimecs, spent twenty years as a soldier, married Isabel Cortés Tolosa, a descendant of Hernán Cortés. She died in the 1580s. Some say he led the colonization to escape the sadness of her death.”

  “Fifteen ninety-eight, date of origins …” She nodded.

  Sonny trusted Lorenza implicitly; he respected her powers. She had taken him into his guardian world of spirits where he found his coyote spirit.

  “Owl Woman, bathed in the river of the garden …”

  “She keeps the Calendar of Dreams, the bowl. Could you recognize it if you saw it?”

  “Yup. I held it in my hands, clear as daylight.”

  “We know when we disrupt a person’s dream we cause psychological injury. But each person’s dream is connected to the collective dream, and so to kill one dreamer threatens us all. The dream is history—it is continuous. The dream contains the past and future. Raven knows he can cause incredible harm.”

  “And he picked me.”

  “You’re point man,” she replied softly.

  Her voice was vibrant with a knowledge he would never find in the books before him.

  “Some Pueblo legends say that even at the time of creation, a germ existed in the ear of corn. Some evil planted there by sorcerers. The corn that feeds us carries a germ—another way of saying we all come to earth with a positive and negative energy.”

  “The same plus and minus that vibrate through the universe,” Sonny said. “Soul energy, don Eliseo says. One part seeks clarity, the other wants to return to chaos. Each one of us reflects the universe.”

  “Time and space curve and come around, everything in the universe reappears somewhere, sometime. The dream curves. Raven, the sorcerer, plots the path. He can enter the dream and destroy the dreamer.”

  “Bang, and I’m gone. What can the books tell us?” he asked, thumping the book in front of him.

  “Names, a map of your past. Your genealogy.”

  “I’m just part of everyone who ever came up the Río Grande. Puro mestizo.”

  “Let’s see if Andres Vaca’s DNA is in you,” Lorenza said, and flipped the page.

  “Okay.” Sonny took up a pen.

  He wrote “Notes” across the top of the first notebook page. He read, then summarized:

  —The Oñate expedition starts north for the interior province of New Mexico in early 1598. Six months on the trail. 200 soldiers and their families. Founded the first Spanish town near San Juan de los Caballeros, August 11, 1598. “Ciudad de Nuestro Padre San Francisco.” Called San Gabriel or San Juan Bautista. Completed the church by Sept. 7, 1598. Great rejoicing. The men played “Los Cristianos y los Moros,” a mock battle between the Catholic Spaniards and the Moors.

  Sonny paused. “I haven’t taken notes since I was in college.” He laughed at his effort.

  “We need the list of names of those soldiers. The muster roll,” Lorenza said. She stood and went to the shelf to browse through the titles.

  Sonny continued making notes.

  —1519, Hernán Cortez (or Cortés) calls the New World Nueva España. He destroys Mexico City, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán.

  —1528, Cabeza de Vaca shipwrecked with the Narvaez expedition off the coast of Texas. Wanders lost through the region for 8 years.

  Wonder if this Cabeza de Vaca is one of my long-ago relatives, Sonny mused. C de Vaca was a New Mexican family name he knew. In high school he had dated Tillie C de Baca. Cabeza de Vaca meant “Head of a Cow.” Cow man. Cowboy.

  He took off his hat and placed it on the table. He hadn’t been riding since he sold his mare. He was no cowboy, but a drugstore cowboy. Puro pedo.

  —1539, Fray Marcos de Niza and the black man Estevan enter Arizona and New Mexico.

  —1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado leaves Compostela with 300 men, 5 Franciscan friars, and Indian allies in search of Niza’s Seven Cities of Cibola. A man called the Turk tells them stories of La Gran Quivira, so Coronado goes to Kansas. Destroys two pueblos.

  —1546, gold found in Zacatecas.

  —1581, Fray Agustín Rodríguez leads party into New Mexico. He and Fray López remain in the Tiguex Pueblo of Puaray.

  —1582, Antonio de Espejo leads expedition into Arizona and New Mexico. Kills 16 Indians at Puaray.

  Not beginning to look good for those who don’t write history, Sonny thought. Owl Woman. Can her Calendar of Dreams make a difference? What had the Bringer of Curses done with the shiny black bowl that held the symbols?

  —1590, de Sosa’s illegal expedition. The king of Spain doesn’t want adventurers screwing up the Indians.

  —1593, ’94, de Bonilla’s illegal expedition.

  Then Oñate came along. Sonny read Villagrá’s Canto XIV carefully. How el Río del Norte was discovered, and how the expedition stopped there in what is now El Paso to rest and take possession of the province of New Mexico. Oñate spoke to his assembled troops and to the Indians:

  And because I wish to take possession of the land today, the day of the Ascension of our Lord, which is counted thirty days in the month of April of this present year of one thousand five hundred and ninety-eight, through the person of Juan Perez de Donís, Notary of his Majesty and Secretary of the journey …

  Sonny skipped a few lines.

  I say that in the voice and in the name of the most Christian King Don Felipe, our lord, only defender and protector of the Holy Mother Church and its true son, and for the crown of Castile and of the kings who of his glorious stock may reign in it, and for the aforesaid my government I take and seize: once, twice and three times; one, two and three times; one, two and three times, and all those which I can and ought, the Royal tenancy and possession, actual, civil, and criminal, at this aforesaid River of the North.…

  And on it went. Taking possession of everything. The arrogance! Oñate had pounded the ground with a staff and taken the land, mountains, desert, rivers. Everything! And the scribe wrote it down, thus creating history. History was a map the newcomer laid over the land.

  Took everything “which are now founded in the said kingdoms and provinces of New Mexico, and those neighboring to them.…”

  Took the whole present-day damn Southwest, all of northern México. Took the whole enchilada!

  Just like that, he raised his staff and pounded the earth, and what awe must have filled the assembly. For they could look north and imagine the provinces of New Mexico, a rich land, theirs for the taking.

  The Indians, too, must have been in awe, for if they understood the translator, they must have wondered at the gall and greed of this man, saying he could possess the earth
by merely pounding on it.

  No, the earth did not belong to one person or one tribe. The earth was the mother for all to have and use.

  So the man who could write history could take the land, and Lordy, Lordy, Sonny thought, the Spaniards were consummate notetakers if they were anything. They documented everything. History belonged to those who wrote it.

  Sonny drew back from reading and rubbed his eyes. Six prior expeditions and only Oñate’s made a go of it. But, Lord, how he punished the Indians at Acoma.

  “Blood and violence,” he whispered.

  “Raven’s work,” Lorenza said, and slipped a book in front of Sonny. “Bancroft’s book has a list of the names in the Oñate expedition. Under the Vs.”

  There it was, the name of Andres Vaca! Listed as a single man and a soldier with five years’ experience, he owned his horse, “una legua que se llama Estrella,” a breastplate, and his own sword.

  “I don’t believe it,” Sonny whispered. How could he have dreamed a man he knew nothing of? He had never read, or looked at, this book before.

  “It’s there,” Lorenza whispered.

  Sonny scanned the rest of the list. In the Cs he spotted Roberto Cantú, a family man and scholar from México. He dropped to the Os.

  Teniente General Cristóbal de Oñate

  Capitán General Don Juan de Oñate

  Juan de Ortega

  Ortiz

  And below the Os, the Ps.

  Segundo Paladín

  Simón de Paz

  Juan de Pedraza

  Alférez Pereyra

  Simón Perez

  Capitán Pinero

  Alférez Francisco de Posa y Peñalosa

  Antonio Pájaro

  Sonny drew a breath and looked up at Lorenza. “Antonio Pájaro. That’s one of Raven’s aliases. Damn!”

  Anthony Pájaro was the name Raven had used in the summer to gather the anti-WIPP people around his cause. When that didn’t work, he tried to dynamite the WIPP truck. According to the manifest in the book, he had been with the Oñate expedition.

  Raven, the Bringer of Curses, moved back and forth in time, sowing destruction. He was a sorcerer who had existed since the beginning of time, an evil brujo who could fly!

  As the Bringer of Curses he had taken Owl Woman. He was destroying Sonny’s past. But why had he taken the Romeros’ daughter, Consuelo?

  “He wrote his name in the history book! It’s not possible,” Sonny said. “Somebody’s playing games.”

  “Raven likes games, remember,” Lorenza said.

  “He can’t just go back and change history!” Sonny complained.

  “He has,” Lorenza said, and pointed at the book. Bancroft. One of the premier historians of the West. If the historian’s list written years ago could be changed, anything was possible.

  4

  “Are you going to read all these?” Lorenza asked as she finished loading the pile of books into the van.

  “Keeps me busy while you drive,” Sonny replied, carefully stacking the books on the counter. He could position his chair behind the counter, read, and take notes as Lorenza drove. A traveling library. What would the Bard say of this?

  “I’m hungry for books,” he added. “Will they provide clues?”

  “In this case they verified what don Eliseo believes, Raven can enter your dreams, change the history books. He’s tying you up.”

  “Not only me. You said if he can get to me, he also gets at a lot of other people. The collective dream, like ripples spreading outward from the center of his destruction …”

  They both knew what was at stake. “Where to?” she asked.

  “Santa Fé. It’s the only lead we have.”

  “Vamos,” Lorenza said, and headed toward I-25.

  Sonny felt frustrated, unsure of his direction. Finding Raven listed as Antonio Pájaro on the list of names that entered New Mexico with Oñate in 1598 was enough to rattle anyone. Antonio Pájaro, a soldier in the Oñate expedition, had been watching Sonny, alias Andres Vaca, during the march from Nueva Viscaya in México to the banks of the Río Grande at El Paso. When Owl Woman appeared, he made his move.

  If they dug deeper, Sonny surmised, they would find Raven using one of his many aliases throughout the history of New Mexico.

  And why hold Owl Woman captive? Because she was the first grandmother, the only one who could interpret the Calendar of Dreams.

  “Do you think Raven’s center is now in Santa Fé?” Lorenza asked.

  “I don’t think so. He likes ’Burque too much. Wants to be near me. But he’s following some kind of historic pattern.”

  He had been scanning through Fray Angelico Chávez’s New Mexico Families, tracing the Romero history back to the eighteenth century, where it became entwined with the Bacas through marriage. Eugenio Baca (the name was now spelled with a B) married Maria Romero. Sonny made notes, sketching a tree trunk to illustrate his genealogy. It would take a lot of diligent research and time to do a good job and construct the entire family tree. This would have to do for now.

  If Owl Woman was grandmother number one, who were two, three, and four? And would they appear in different centuries? Would all be New Mexicans?

  “He appears in every lifetime,” he mumbled.

  “Yes,” Lorenza answered. “So do you.”

  “Historical events,” Sonny whispered, making a note in the notebook. He comes to create chaos where history turns, at those hinges of time when things can go one way or another.

  Hinge of time. He should be home writing poetry. Maybe that’s all he ever wanted to do. Teach school, write poetry, marry Rita, raise a family. Until he met Raven.

  In his next set of notes he began an outline of the history of New Mexico. As the van rocked back and forth, his notes were scrawled. Scrawled history. Jagged maps. The first expeditions of the Spaniards into the vast, unknown territory of el norte. La Nueva México.

  —Don Eliseo teaches us this corridor of the Río Grande is a sacred region. He knows the teachings of the Hopis, Navajos, Pueblos. This region is sacred space held together by prayer. That’s why the ancient ones settled here. It’s all in the origin prayers of the Pueblo Indians and their neighbors. In 1598 a medieval Catholicism was brought here by the Spaniards, adding the Cristo, Maria, and the santos to the sacred, a circle that holds together, provides harmony. Self is also a circle, so is family, community, earth, universe. Raven seeks to destroy the sacred circle. When the last of the sacred prayers and ceremonies are removed from this region we call our home, our center, it collapses—

  He sat back and read what he had written, surprised he could put his thoughts into words. Then he read the paragraph to Lorenza.

  “Muy bien.” She looked at him in the rearview mirror.

  The first migrants onto the land were the Anasazis, the ancient people, ancestors of the Pueblo Indians. They had described the sacred mountains, rivers, springs, hills, caves. Sonny drew a map of the pueblos that existed before the coming of the Spaniards.

  Sonny looked up from his notes. “Owl Woman came from the pueblos.”

  “It’s a connection most Nuevos Mexicanos have.”

  “Los abuelos, grandparents. Don Eliseo is like an abuelo to me.”

  “He is a kind man. Wise in the old ways.”

  Sonny could see her face in the mirror. Her dark eyes glanced at him, then back at the road. She was a very attractive woman. Her black hair flowed around her shoulders, framing a warm tan face with high cheekbones, arched eyebrows, full lips. When she smiled, she licked her teeth with the tip of her tongue. But the most attractive thing about her were her eyes. They held mysteries.

  Now as Sonny looked at her, he remembered how physically attracted he had been to her when she performed the ceremony that took him into the world of his coyote spirit. He had responded to her as a woman. Hormones moved in his blood, sweet fragrances touched his nostrils. The attraction was something both had learned to keep in check.

  Lord, if I didn’t have R
ita, I’d proposition her. Sonny smiled, and the thought made him feel good. For months he hadn’t been interested in the world around him. He clung to Rita because she brought love and food. Women and food came together. Why not? His mother’s rich milk was the first food he tasted on earth. She was a good cook; she always saw to it that he and Armando ate well. Later in life he discovered sex, and eating seemed to come with it. He often felt aroused when he ate with Rita, perhaps because they often ate in bed together. Food and sex.

  He would marry her, they would eat many meals together, and children would be born not only of sperm and ovum, but also from beans, tortillas, chile verde in the summer, red chile enchiladas, huevos con papas fritas, meat stew. Red chile smothering ham and turkey for Thanksgiving, natillas for dessert, biscochitos for Christmas, lenten food for Semana Santa. Children conceived embodied the food of the people, the food of the season. To make love was to eat, to eat was to make love.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “You’re always hungry.” Lorenza smiled.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know a lot about you, Sonny Baca.”

  “I’d better watch my thoughts.”

  “Watch your dreams. Rita says you eat everything she serves.”

  “She’s a good cook.”

  “She’s also a very good dish.” Lorenza was teasing.

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “I’ll feed you as soon as we get to Santa.” She winked in the mirror. “Not as good as Rita’s, I’m sure. What about the Romeros?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be of much help. He’s the mayor of Santa Fé, a millionaire. I think it’s a kidnap/ransom thing. Anyway, no sense in going hungry to the job.”

  “You’re right about that. Roberto Mondragon used to have a restaurant near the plaza. I’ll look for it.”

  “Bueno.”

  He looked out at the barren landscape, the rolling hills tawny in the winter, dotted with juniper trees, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rising blue over Santa Fé, the high peaks covered with blue clouds that presaged a storm. To the west the clouds also gathered around the Jemez peaks. The kachina spirits of rain and snow gathering on the mountains. The place was sacred, divine with the light of the sun that made the hills glow with a biblical light of redemption.