Changer (Athanor)

by Jane Lindskold

  He is finishing his first sopa with honey when the outer door opens admitting first Mrs. Martinez the Elder, then the man he had first seen methodically skinning his yearling daughter.

  Swallowing a surge of rage along with the remnants of his coffee, the Changer attempts to see than man for who he is, rather then for what he represents.

  What he sees is a tall, lean man with skin browned as much by exposure to the elements as by genetics. Like his mother and his wife, he is dark-haired and dark-eyed, but unlike them he is thin as a rail. A drooping mustache conceals his upper lip, a marked contrast to his hair, which bristles short enough to suggest military influence. He is clad as the Changer had seen him before, in heavy, worn jeans and a blue work shirt.

  Having turned the man back into a person, the Changer is able to smile politely, rise, and offer his hand.

  “Mr. Martinez, my name is John Anderson.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Anderson,” Martinez says, gesturing for him to sit and motioning for his wife to refill the coffee and sopaipilla plate. “My mother says that you have business with me.”

  The flavor of Spanish is less noticeable in his voice, but present nonetheless. His body language is of a man who is accustomed to being obeyed. The Changer knows that nothing but directness will answer.

  Nodding thanks at the younger Mrs. Martinez for his newly filled coffee cup, he forgoes another sopaipilla.

  “Two days ago, you and your son killed a bunch of coyotes.”

  Mr. Martinez starts. Coyotes are not on the bounty list in New Mexico, but neither are they protected. Still, technically, he should have a proper hunting license before taking one.

  “So you say,” he replies guardedly.

  “So I know,” the Changer counters. “Two females, one older than the other. There were also five pups gigged from a den.”

  “They are vermin,” Martinez says. “They were troubling my calves.”

  “They were not. You were paid to kill them and to sell their pelts to someone. I’ll leave you alone if you tell me what you know about the buyer.”

  “Leave me alone?” Martinez says angrily. “What can you do?”

  “Report you for suspected violations—a hunting license, perhaps.” The Changer pauses, lets the predator look out of his blue Anglo eyes. “Perhaps for some hiring irregularities.”

  Martinez meets the challenge in the Changer’s eyes like a sheepdog facing off against a prowling wolf. Again, the Changer accepts that he likes these people. No matter what they have done, they were only tools in others’ hands.

  The men glower at each other for a long moment, the tension broken when the elder Mrs. Martinez pulls out a chair and takes a seat at the table. She speaks in rapid idiomatic Spanish:

  “He knows, Diego. Give him his answer. You know little enough, and I did not like that blond witch.”

  The word she uses for “witch” is “bruja,” a term far more derogatory than “curandera,” which also can mean witch. The distinction is not as clean-cut as black or white magic, but there is something similar.

  Allowing mild puzzlement to color his features, the Changer reaches for one of the cooling sopaipillas. Squeezing honey onto it from a bottle shaped like a bear, he looks at it.

  “Must be tough making a living on honey and a few head of beef cattle,” he muses. “Nice to get paid well for a few hours’ easy work.”

  Martinez stiffens, but a mercenary glint enters his dark eyes. Knowing now that the man can be bribed, the Changer reaches for his wallet. The navy-and-white nylon isn’t very impressive, but its bulge is promising. Resolving not to let Martinez learn that most of the bills are ones, the Changer sets the wallet down and covers it with his hand.

  “I’ve taken you from your work. Certainly, I can pay you for your time. What is a rancher’s hourly wage these days?”

  He knows from his brief ventures into the general store and the used car lot that money is not worth what it once was, but those same ventures have given him an idea of current values.

  “Perhaps twenty dollars?” he says, pulling out a crisp bill.

  Martinez snorts and drizzles honey on a sopa.

  “Thirty?”

  Martinez doesn’t pause in his chewing.

  “Forty?”

  Martinez seems prepared to continue stonewalling, but his mother leans forward.

  “Diego, the gringo is being fair with you. Don’t forget that he can cause trouble for Juanito’s cousins. Your greed makes a fool of you.”

  Diego Martinez continues to chew, but the Changer does not add another bill to the pile. Instead, he scoots his chair back a few inches as if preparing to rise.

  “Diego!” the elder Mrs. Martinez snaps, “Tell the gringo about the gringa bruja or I will tell him myself. Then I will take the money and visit my sister in Chimayo and beg her to pray with me for your soul.”

  “Very well,” Martinez says in English, although it is unclear whether the words are intended for the Changer or for his mother. “I will tell what I know.

  “Three days ago, a blond woman came here to the ranch looking to buy coyote pelts. I told her I had none. She was disappointed and told me she had seen several coyotes in my fields. She thought I would have hunted them.

  “When I told her no, she asked if I would get those coyotes for her. I asked her why she didn’t go to a furrier. She said that she had a particular fancy for these coyotes. When she offered me two thousand dollars in cash for the skins—and said that she would take care of the tanning—I agreed.”

  His shrug is eloquent. It seems to say, “Who would not take advantage of such insanity?”

  The Changer feels bile surge in his throat. He swallows, maintaining his calm with an effort.

  “She wanted the pups as well?” he asks.

  Martinez nods. “She said if there were pups, she wanted them, too. They are easy enough to kill, so we did.”

  “Did she give you a name or phone number?”

  “Both.” Martinez glances at the pile of money on the table, but a soft hiss from his mother warns him to keep speaking. “They may be by the telephone.”

  At his unspoken command, his wife exits, returning a moment later with a piece of paper torn from an envelope. Written on it in a neat, feminine hand is “Lil Prima” followed by a number.

  “She said to call her when we went out for the coyotes,” Martinez continued, “and when we were coming down to the road, she was waiting there in her car. We gave her the skins then.”

  The Changer nods and hands a fifty to the elder Mrs. Martinez.

  “Gracias,” he says, and continues in Spanish, “You may wish indeed to pray for your son. That woman is very wicked. The holy shrine at Chimayo may be needed to counteract her power.”

  The older woman gasps and crumples the money tightly in her hand. “What should we do if she comes here again?”

  “I don’t think that she will,” the Changer says, reverting to English and rising from his chair. He nods politely to his hosts. “If she does, you may tell her that I came asking after her. That will divert her attention from you.”

  He leaves then, bowing slightly to the ladies and shaking Martinez’s hand. Tonight, he knows, they will call in a priest to bless the house. The elder Mrs. Martinez will go to Chimayo and pray fervently for protection. None of this will make a difference; nothing, really, will matter.

  Just as Lil Prima has what she had come for—the deaths of his family and, she may hope, of him—so he has what he came for. The unnatural element he and his kind represent will have touched the Martinez’s lives briefly, and now it will depart, leaving them richer by $2,090, and a story for around the fire.

  Driving to where he has hidden his daughter, he parks the car outside of the barbed wire that encloses the field and climbs the hill. First he pockets what of his caches he had left. Then he turns his attention to his daughter.

  She is invisible within her burrow and remains silent when he sticks in his hand. Unlike man
y young creatures, she has already learned prudence.

  He locates her by the warmth of her quivering body. Grabbing her solidly by the scruff of her neck, he pulls her out. She tries to bite him then, and he permits the liberty. At the car, he stuffs her into the large cardboard carton he had picked up in Mountainair and straps the lid down with packing tape.

  Almost immediately, the car becomes redolent with the odor of coyote urine, but he has lined the box with enough discarded newspaper to soak up the wetness. The stench he can live with.

  He breathes into the air holes he has cut into the top, hoping that she will get some of his familiar scent.

  “You won’t need to stay in there for more than a few hours, little one,” he says softly, “but I think a car ride would terrify you more than being shut in a box. We’re going to see some old friends of mine… some very old friends.”

  She quiets then, although whether from fear or comfort he cannot be sure. Dumping more newspaper on the passenger seat, he straps the box into place. Then he gets in on the driver’s side and turns them in the direction of Albuquerque.

  The drive takes several hours, traveling mostly north and west. The road takes them through mountains and farmlands, through little towns that make Mountainair seem a major metropolis, and finally down through the Tijeras Pass and into the edges of Albuquerque.

  A few miles’ travel shows him that the city has grown considerably since the last time he tried to take a vehicle through it. After getting lost on unfamiliar roads and making several U-turns, he locates a cheap roadside motel.

  The woman at the front desk doesn’t ask about pets, and he does not volunteer any information. The Changer figures that they’ll both be happier that way. In the room, he lets his daughter out of her soiled box and she promptly scoots under the table by the window—this being the closest to cover she can find, since the bed is built on a platform.

  Taking pity on her, the Changer drapes a few towels over the edges and eventually her panicked breathing slows. Although feeding her so soon might be a mistake, he also knows that she is a growing child, so he calls room service and orders roast beef sandwiches and fries.

  After he has tossed a sandwich and half the fries under the towel-hung table, he considers what to do next.

  He needs to call the King, but he does not care to meet with him in this rather makeshift human guise. “John Anderson” was good enough for what he needed to do then, but not for the confrontation he plans.

  Pulling the drapes shut and locking the door, the Changer removes his clothing. He has dwelled in New Mexico for a good many years now—although at least fifty have passed since he maintained a human identity. Doubtless he could use that form again and excite little or no comment. Even if he met with associates from those days, they would simply shake their heads and muse how much like Pablo that young man looked.

  Still, he has not thrived by being incautious. Even though animals do not share the annoying human habit of keeping records, he has regularly reshaped his animal forms; to be less careful with humans would be foolish.

  In any case, Pablo de Silva had his own history, a history he does not care to live again. A new form would be pleasant.

  New Mexico offers him a delightful palette from which to work. The region is home to several groups of Native Americans, each with its own physical characteristics. There are also the Spanish—both those descended from the conquistadors and those of Mexican ancestry. And there are the Anglos, blond, brunette, or red-haired, with eyes of blue, or green, or hazel. Finally, there are a smattering of those of Asian or African descent. None of these groups is uncommon, so, effectively, he has the entire human race at his command.

  His initial rush of delight at the possibilities ebbs as he considers his needs. He will need to keep this identity once his paperwork is issued, so he will need an appearance that is not overly noticeable. Dark hair, then, and skin that is neither too dark nor too fair. He considers what he has seen during his travels and begins sculpting.

  The human male he creates is about six feet in height. Since the Changer will require physical presence when he is this man, he gives himself a strong build, muscular but lean. The features he blends are taken from a variety of cultures. No one looking at him would be able to precisely place his heritage, but he could, with a shift of body language, pass for Hispanic, Anglo, or any of the local tribes.

  Once the basics are completed, he works on the superficial details. First, hair: black as he had decided earlier, long, falling to the middle of his back. This last is vanity; having had a fur coat for so long, he feels ugly as a bare-skinned human. He reluctantly forgoes facial hair, deciding it might make him too noticeable, but permits himself slightly heavier than average body hair.

  Hair completed, he shades his eyes light brown, almost a coyote yellow. The lines he etches in around them permit either menace or strength to be telegraphed with the faintest motion.

  Finished, he surveys himself from head to toe, decides that he has precisely what he desires—a human male of strength and subtle power, who, despite these qualities, could vanish into a New Mexican crowd with minimal effort. After memorizing the form, as a final safeguard he designs alterations to the features and fingerprints. This way, if pursued, he can make subtle shifts that will protect his legal identity.

  He showers and dons his now-ill-fitting clothing, then phones a number he has committed to memory.

  “Pendragon Productions,” a female voice says.

  “I want to speak to Arthur or Eddie,” the Changer says, his voice deep and just slightly gravelly.

  “May I say who is calling?”

  “Yes.”

  There is silence on the other end of the line as the receptionist tries to decide how to deal with this, then the line goes mute as she transfers the call.

  “Pendragon Productions, Arthur speaking,” says a baritone male voice.

  “Arthur, this is the Changer.”

  “Changer? I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

  “I know that, but I’m going to call my dues. Last I checked, I had about thirty years credit to draw on.”

  “At least,” Arthur agrees. “Fly on over. I’m at the same place as I was for the last Lustrum Review.”

  “Can’t. I’m traveling with my daughter, and she doesn’t shift.”

  “Hm.” There are many unasked questions in that grunt, but Arthur is, if nothing else, politic. “Since you’ve phoned, I’m assuming that you’re somewhere I can send a car.”

  “That’s right.” The Changer gives the address. “And make certain that it’s someone who won’t ask questions. I’m not in a mood to make idle banter.”

  “I’ll send Vera.”

  “Good.”

  “It will be about a half hour or forty-five minutes before someone can reach you.”

  “Fine.”

  “Then I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Looking forward to the meeting with pleasure,” Arthur replies.

  “Right.”

  The Changer hangs up the phone and quickly resumes the John Anderson form. The latest shift has made him ravenous, and the she-pup is going to be hungry when she wakes up. He also needs another box. Somehow, he doesn’t care to transport a box that smells quite so strongly of frightened coyote.

  3

  Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato.

  (If it isn’t true, it is a happy invention.)

  —Italian proverb

  New Mexico calls itself the Land of Enchantment, and that is reason enough for a man who insists on calling himself Arthur Pendragon to set up residence there. He would have preferred the more eccentric, art-oriented cities of Santa Fe or Taos, but those cities lack major airports, a serious inconvenience for one who, in his position as king, must often travel.

  Although part of his reason for residing in New Mexico is that it permits him to relive a persona he made famous in England, he actually likes New Mexico better than England. The British Isles’ foggy softnes
s had been enjoyable at first, but the brilliant sunlight and wide-open spaces of New Mexico’s high-altitude grasslands remind him of the first land he remembers (as far as he knows, the land that gave him birth) and of several in which he had lived thereafter. No, modern New Mexico might not be ancient Sumer or Egypt, but there is a pleasant sense of homecoming nonetheless.

  Realities of the modern world being what they are, he will need to relocate within the next fifty or so years, but for now he has found a home. Perhaps next he will return to the Middle East, have altered the reddish gold hair and piercing blue eyes of this incarnation, shave the curly beard, relinquish the cultured British accent, and resume the burly-chested, dark-maned figure that had been his as Gilgamesh the Wrestler, the first king, one whose epic is the oldest recorded in human history.

  For a moment, he wistfully wishes that he were one of those like the Changer who are not bound by human form. He would like to remain in one place, lazy decades stretching into centuries. However, he suspects that such might make him hidebound and dull. The need continually to outwit the humans who have spread over the world has kept him fresh and alive.

  The Changer, though, no one would ever accuse that one of stagnating. Although he isn’t like the satyrs, jackalopes, and yetis—the ones for whom modern science is a danger they do not dare confront—the Changer is in many ways wilder than those denizens of the untamed, isolated lands.

  Wolf, coyote, raven, great cat: the Changer lives as a wild creature, rears his wild children, and reluctantly slouches into the meetings held every five years. Sometimes, he doesn’t even bother to assume a human shape. Last Lustrum Review, he had perched on the doorway, dark-winged battle-bird, croaking an occasional “Nevermore” to those points on which he disagreed. Review finished, he vanished into the wilds once more.

  He does live as a human from time to time, but those occasions rarely last more than a few decades. Then he returns to areas far from humans and dwells as a wild thing for decades.