The Wind in His Heart

by Charles de Lint

  You might ask why she didn’t simply step from some cliff and join Walks Alone, meet with him again in whatever place it was that his new Wheel had taken him. But she understood that life is a gift, and it is not up to us to decide when our Wheel ends. Only the thunders know when lives begin and end, and even they answer to a greater Spirit.

  But one day, she thought she was given permission to finally follow her lost love. Her body lay on its sick bed and her spirit floated in the skies above otherworldly mountains. All she had to do was let go, and this she did, only to be returned to her body once more while it healed.

  She understood then that her purpose had not yet run its course. Her Wheel, so tall, so tall, was still turning. She still had years she must endure.

  * * *

  Leah didn’t say anything for a long time. She sat there in Aggie’s studio, her laptop forgotten, hugging herself against the chill that the story had put under her skin. One of the dogs sleeping on the floor by her feet shifted its position and she started at the movement.

  “Are you—are you telling me that was you?” she finally said.

  Aggie’s gaze held hers. “I’m telling you that our stories are easier to relate when we take a step back from them and tell them as though they belong to another.”

  Leah gave a slow nod. “Part of my problem is that I feel like I’m writing this all down for closure, but instead it’s just bringing everything back.”

  “You mean your guilt.”

  Leah gave her another nod.

  “I could tell you it wasn’t your fault,” Aggie said, “but you’re not ready to hear that, although a part of you already knows it. So let me tell you this instead. You can plan the best tale in your head—the perfect way things should go—but the people in your life don’t have your insight, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t follow your plan anyway. In the end, we are each of us alone. We can offer comfort and companionship to each other—do our best to help our friends onto the road that might lead them to hope. But we can’t think or feel for them. We can’t be inside them and change the way they see the world, no matter how much it breaks our heart to watch them fall.”

  Leah sighed. She thought again of the story Aggie had told her, of this immortal woman who had to live forever without her partner.

  “So how do you get over it?” she asked. “The survivor’s guilt.”

  “It’s never really about that. People put their traumas into little boxes in their heads. They try not to think of the bad times, or tell themselves that they’re not supposed to think about them, but it never works. You don’t get strong from ignoring what happened. You get strong through finding the mechanisms to cope.”

  Aggie’s gaze grew distant for a long moment.

  “Everybody deals with it differently,” she said, when she focused on Leah once more. “The one thing I’m sure of is that guilt doesn’t make you strong. You only get strong from talking, living, loving. With other people, yes, but with yourself most of all. That’s what makes you strong.”

  “But how could I not have seen the bad place she was in?”

  “I don’t know,” Aggie told her. “I do know that even if you had known what was happening to your friend, you couldn’t have stopped it. Only she could do that.”

  “So we just let people spiral down to a place from which they can’t return?”

  “Of course not,” Aggie said, a flash of annoyance in her eyes. “We do everything we can to help them. But if they hide their pain so well that we can’t see it, the fault doesn’t lie with us. And if we do see what they’re going through, we can only give them all the love and support we can muster.”

  Her voice softened. “We can’t make them better. We can only stand by them.

  “That is the hard part of having a friend,” she added.

  She looked at her painting, then picked up the brushes from her palette and put them in a jar of turpentine. When she stood up, the three dogs in the little studio all scrambled to their feet.

  “Do you want to take a walk before dinner?” she asked.

  Leah nodded and closed her laptop.

  “Have you ever done a sweat?” Aggie asked as they wandered out of the yard in the direction of the hidden medicine wheel.

  Leah shook her head. The little pack of three dogs that had left the studio with them grew to twice that many. They ranged ahead and followed from behind, panting happily.

  “The world is full of poisons,” Aggie said. “All sorts of bad medicines cloud the air, even here in these canyons, and not even the purest of heart can shield themselves from all of it. A sweat draws the poison from our bodies and lets us walk in beauty again.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Aggie smiled. “It is. I was planning a sweat before the whole business with that girl got in the way.”

  She stopped at the foot of a tall saguaro with a half-dozen arms, which Leah had learned meant it was an old one. A pair of crows perched on the lowest arm.

  “I think we should have another,” she said, her head tilted so that she was looking at the crows. “We’ll need a good-sized lodge, a pile of stones and lots of firewood. Water, too.”

  The crows lifted from the saguaro and flew north. The dogs scattered into the scrub.

  “How can I help?” Leah asked.

  “There’s little for us to do,” Aggie told her. “The crows and dogs will see to it that everything’s prepared.”

  Leah shaded her eyes to watch the two specks that were crows flying off. There was no sign of the dogs anymore.

  “Really?” she said. “Are they all ma’inawo?”

  Aggie slipped her hand into the crook of Leah’s arm and headed back to the house.

  “Some are,” she said. “The ones that aren’t will pass the word along. By tomorrow morning, there will be plenty of helping hands.” She paused to give Leah a glance. “Remember when you first arrived and I said that I didn’t sense you and Marisa coming?”

  Leah nodded.

  “These friends of mine,” Aggie said, “are my eyes and ears beyond my home.”

  “Why didn’t they sense our arrival?”

  “You’ll have to ask the thunders. But I think it’s because you were instrumental in saving my life, back in the otherworld. The spirits like to keep that kind of thing away from us. I gather it’s to stop us from becoming too cocky.”

  Leah tried to imagine what her old self—the person she’d been before she’d ever come to the Painted Lands—would have thought of this conversation. She’d have thought she was being put on, she decided.

  “So you’re an immortal,” she said to Aggie.

  Aggie smiled. “No one’s immortal, except for maybe Cody.”

  “That’s Coyote, right?”

  “It is. But I’ve lived awhile. Stay on here, and the years will stretch out for you.”

  “Because the rez is in the otherworld?”

  “No, but my home is.”

  By the time they got back to the house, a few of the dogs had returned. There was also a handful of tall men waiting for them, all dark-skinned with lean faces and long black hair except for a pair with hair the colour of a yellow rez dog’s fur.

  “I think we’ll need the big pot for dinner tonight,” Aggie said.

  77

  Sadie

  Solitary suited Sadie just fine. Her cell had cement walls and floor, a sink, a toilet, and a bed that was simply a metal platform bolted to the wall. There was no window. The door was a huge steel affair with a slot through which food could be passed. Once a day, she was taken out by two guards into what looked like a glorified dog run and allowed to walk back and forth along its length for an hour.

  She’d lost track of time, but was pretty sure her court date was coming up soon. Her court-appointed lawyer assured her she wouldn’t get much time, and the days she’d already spent here in the Kikimi County Young Offenders Correction Facility would be counted against her sentence. Whoop-de-do.

  With t
he constant fluorescent light turned on overhead, and no window, the only way she could tell time was by the regular routine of breakfast, lunch, walk in the dog run, and dinner. She’d taken up an exercise regime because expending energy on push-ups and sit-ups eased her cravings for her knife and distracted her from wanting to bash her head against the wall until it bled.

  She already hurt all over. Her orange jumpsuit hid a patchwork of bruises, and every time she stretched a muscle she could feel the pain in her cracked ribs. Sometimes it hurt just to breathe.

  The jumpsuit didn’t hide the cut on her temple, her swollen lips, or the blue-black bruises that raccooned her eyes. Those bruises might be going yellow by now, but there was no way to tell. There were no mirrors in solitary.

  There was plenty of time to think.

  Too much time.

  Breakfast was watery lukewarm porridge with maybe three raisins, but no milk or sugar; lunch was stale white bread, usually with a wetish slice of bologna or some other mystery meat, plus an apple or another fruit past its prime; and dinner, a congealed mess of instant potatoes, some sort of flaccid, overcooked vegetable and another gross meat, along with some lumpy pudding-type thing for “dessert.” Sadie had yet to recognize what kind of dinner meat since they all tasted the same, even if they vaguely resembled chicken, beef or pork.

  Tonight’s meat had looked mostly like chicken. It had come served with the usual potato paste and a watery green purée, which she decided had once been broccoli. Her dessert might have been rice pudding, but it looked more like maggot pudding, so it remained untouched.

  After dinner, she’d spent her time lying on the bed staring at the ceiling and then doing a series of sit-ups. She finished her count of fifty before she got on the floor to do a bunch of push-ups.

  Her ribs throbbed with a sharp ache that helped her get past the need to cut herself. There was nothing in her cell that could be used for cutting.

  She got up, and was about to pull down her coveralls to have a pee, when she realized that there was someone sitting on the bed.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  She banged up against the wall beside the toilet, trying to put some distance between herself and the intruder.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “Manny?” she said, suddenly recognizing him.

  His words didn’t register. All she could think was, fuck, the old woman died and now he’s here to kill me. Just when she was actually trying to get her life on track.

  He stood up and seemed taller than ever in the confines of her cell.

  “Who did that to you?” he demanded.

  “What?”

  “Who hurt you?”

  His voice was hard and cold.

  Why should you care? almost popped out of her mouth, but she remembered what Aggie had told her about which spirit a person should feed if they want to be a better person, so she stopped herself and took a deep breath instead.

  “Some girls,” she said. “They were 66Hers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “66 Hermanas,” Sadie said. “The putas that run with the 66 Bandas.” She spat into the toilet bowl. “Turns out the spell the witch put on me had a best-before date. They jumped me in the can after I got into a fight with one of them in the exercise yard.”

  “That’s the problem with an hechicera. Their spells wear off unless you keep them topped up.”

  “Whatever.”

  Manny sighed. “What were you fighting about?”

  “Hey, don’t sigh at me. I was minding my own business. The wannabe ’banger was just testing the new girl. Plus I’m white—not a popular skin colour when most of the kids in here are brown, black or Indians.”

  “Tell me their names.”

  “And you’ll do what?”

  “Teach them some manners.”

  Sadie almost smiled. “Yeah, it doesn’t really work like that in here.”

  “So they can beat you, but you get punished? And that’s okay with you?”

  “Pretty much. I told the guards I started it. I kind of like being in solitary. I’m not really a people person, as you’ve probably noticed.”

  Manny shook his head and sat down again. Sadie perched on the toilet.

  “So why are you here?” she asked. “Is Aggie okay?”

  “I’m not here at her behest. Steve asked me to see you.”

  Oh crap. She remembered the disappointment and anger in Steve’s eyes the last time she’d seen him. “If he wants to tear a piece off of me,” she said, “he’s going to have to wait in line.”

  Manny didn’t respond. He sat there on the bed, staring at her. Waiting.

  “Okay,” Sadie said. “Why did Steve ask you to come see me?”

  “One of the ma’inawo owes him a favour. She has a medicine that could fast track you out of this place.”

  “You mean some kind of magic?”

  Manny nodded. “Something like that.”

  “So what’s the catch?”

  “There’s somebody else he knows who’s also in trouble, and it could help them.”

  Sadie cocked her head. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

  “He wants you to decide which of you gets the benefit of the ma’inawo’s medicine.”

  “You’re serious? Why would he want me to decide? I think I’d be the last person he’d pick.”

  Manny’s stoic features gave none of his own opinions away. “I don’t have an answer for that,” he said.

  “Well, my answer’s easy. Have him help the other person.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because, a—” She managed to clip the “asshole” that wanted to spring from her lips. “—I’m trying to fix my life, and busting out of here is not going to be a big help.”

  “But you’d be free.”

  “Maybe. But Aggie wouldn’t help me.”

  Manny didn’t say anything for another long moment. Sadie thought she saw a hint of a smile in his dark eyes.

  “Is that it?” she asked. “Are we done?”

  “We are. And you just won me five bucks.”

  “What? This was all some stupid game?”

  “No, Morago said that you’d jump at the chance to get out of here.”

  “And you didn’t think I would?”

  He nodded. “Steve and I both said you wouldn’t.” He smiled. “Morago’s down ten dollars.”

  Sadie scanned his face. “Steve said that too? After everything I put him through?”

  Manny nodded. “He sees the best in people.”

  “No shit. Now I feel even worse for what I did to him.”

  Manny shrugged.

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Sadie found herself wishing he’d stay for a while, keep the sudden loneliness at bay.

  “So, five bucks?” she finally said. “That’s a pretty cheap bet.”

  “It’s all I had in my pocket.” He paused, then added, “Tell me the names of the girls who beat you up.”

  But all Sadie would say was, “Tell Steve I’m sorry.”

  Manny tried to wait her out. Finally, he stood up. “I will,” he said.

  And then he was gone.

  Sadie had the pee she’d been holding, then went and lay down on her bed, her arm across her eyes.

  That was weird, she thought, but she was proud of herself for doing the right thing. It was kind of a first for her.

  Maybe Aggie was right. Maybe you got to be a better person by doing better things.

  As she fell asleep, she wondered who was going to get the benefit of the help she’d turned down.

  78

  Ruby

  Like most ma’inawo, Ruby was as comfortable in her animal shape as she was in her human skin. But where most ma’inawo flitted regularly between the two, dog cousins were used to spending long periods of time in their four-legged shape. Ruby was no different, so it was no hardship for her when, after she’d made her bargain with the witch, she
switched to the shape of a red-furred dog and held to it through the weeks that followed.

  She did whatever Abuela told her to do, all except for shifting back to human form.

  It was a small rebellion but it was all she had, so she savoured it.

  She hadn’t expected to still be alive. She’d expected the witch to kill her and harvest her soul as soon as Manny and Xande had taken Sadie away. But apparently Abuela didn’t need a death to fuel her magic.

  “You don’t have to worry,” she’d told Ruby when the door closed behind the corbae and Sadie. “I’m not planning to hurt you. My brujería isn’t like that of the Kikimi witches. I’m as much a curandera as a bruja.”

  Ruby sniffed her disdain. “Healer or witch, your medicine has still been stolen from the thunders. Is that what you plan to do with me? Steal what medicine you can draw out of my soul?”

  “I told you before: I’ve taken nothing from your thunders. Do you think the only medicine in the world comes from your spirit elders?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are naive if you think that.”

  Ruby waved a dismissive hand. “We were here long before you five-fingered beings. The thunders came to our elders and shared their medicine. They didn’t come to you. You don’t even know their names.”

  “We have other gods.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you believe,” Ruby said. “I made this bargain and I will keep my word. Do what you want with me. But I warn you: if what you take from me to work your magic does harm to the land, my pack, or any cousin, there will be consequences. That pair of crow boys who just left will be the least of your worries.”

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  “Says the rattler, mesmerizing her prey before she strikes.”

  Abuela frowned at her. “What do you take me for?”

  “A thief and a monster.”

  “Because I am a bruja?”

  “You’re no bruja. Only an hechicera controls spirits.”

  Abuela’s gaze darkened. “You know nothing about me.”

  “I know you are a five-fingered being and your kind have no magic of your own.”