The Lady in Blue

by Javier Sierra

  “You said on behalf of the embassy?”

  Linda Meyers’s smile brightened the office.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Jennifer! It was an international call! I didn’t have all day. I needed an answer quickly! The director finally spoke with me and was very helpful.”

  “You got to talk with the director of the National Library?”

  “Sure. But when I mentioned the Lady in Blue he became a little reserved, even suspicious. As if I were asking about a taboo subject.”

  Jennifer nodded.

  “That surprised me. Then he quickly confessed that they’d had funding problems in maintaining documents relevant to this subject. But he told me that he clearly remembered having seen the name of Friar Esteban de Perea in those papers. Can you imagine my surprise? He established the fact that Perea was a Catholic in the Order of Saint Francis and one of the religious governors of New Mexico. It was the proof I was looking for. Your man, the friar who appears in your dreams, did indeed exist!”

  “So then . . . then . . .” Jennifer took a deep breath.

  “So what you’re dreaming about is not just a product of your imagination! The dates are accurate! The director of the library did not even hesitate: he told me that Friar Esteban de Perea arrived in New Mexico in 1629 in order to investigate the apparitions of a sort of blue lady. Of the Virgin or the like.”

  “And that’s all he said, nothing else?”

  “It was hardly so easy. We talked for almost forty minutes. He was very surprised that I had called him with an interest in precisely this material. He even asked me if I knew of a book called the Memorial written by Benavides.”

  “Benavides?” Jennifer was startled. “The same Benavides who turns up so often in my dreams?”

  “So it seems, Jennifer. Have you heard anything about this book?”

  Her patient shrugged her shoulders.

  “I said the same thing. That I had never heard a word about him before. The thing that struck me most was how the director seemed to know about everything I was explaining to him.”

  “Really?”

  “She must be a very well known subject in Spain, this Lady in Blue. That definitely surprised me!”

  “And did he tell you anything else? Something that might turn out to be useful to my therapy?”

  “No, but I gave him my number and address so that he can call or write me if he finds anything.” And then, lowering her voice, she said, “Me, who thought the Spaniards were careless about their heritage!”

  Jennifer stared at Linda Meyers, a serious look on her face.

  “What now, Doctor?”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Lacking physiological explanations, and with no psychic disturbances, only one route of exploration still remains open to us if we want to know what’s happening to you: regressive hypnosis.”

  The face of Dr. Meyers’s patient quickly passed behind a dark cloud. She stood up and shook her head from side to side, uttering a series of adamant refusals.

  “No, no. Nothing of the sort. Absolutely not hypnosis!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I won’t have anything to do with hypnosis, Doctor,” Jennifer insisted. “I have thought about it.”

  “Hypnosis is a harmless treatment. It won’t cause you any pain, and it’s the only thing that will let us delve into your subconscious so that we can find the cause of your visions. It’s very likely that the roots of your dreams lie in—”

  “I already know what hypnosis is, Doctor!” her patient protested. “I just don’t want to submit to any sort of treatment that agitates my mind.”

  “I’m sorry, but your mind is already agitated. What I’m trying to do is to bring some order to it, and thereby bring these dreams to an end. Don’t you realize? The dreams you’re experiencing have some kind of historical basis, perhaps a question of genetic memory. Genetic memory!” she repeated, as if she herself had to hear it twice. “It’s not something accepted by traditional psychology, but it could perhaps apply to your case.”

  “That’s enough, Doctor! I have no intention of being hypnotized.”

  “It’s all right, Jennifer. Calm down.”

  Meyers walked over to her patient and gently led her to the leather couch next to her office window.

  “Of course, we won’t undertake any treatment against your wishes,” she promised. “But let me ask you something: this phobia about hypnosis, does it have something to do with the work you told me about, for the Department of Defense?”

  Jennifer nodded as she poured herself a glass of water. That whole period made her uncomfortable, and not just the hypnosis related to her work in Italy, but her dreams. She wanted them to disappear.

  “It’s national security, Doctor Meyers,” she said after emptying the glass. “As you know, I’m not permitted to tell you about that. It’s classified material.”

  • • •

  The one concrete thing Dr. Meyers extracted from her patient that noon session was the story of her new dream. Paradoxically, Friar Esteban de Perea did not appear in this one; two other friars did. They were the men chosen by the Inquisitor, sent to the large settlement at Cueloce to investigate the strange interest the Jumano tribe had taken in the religion of the people from far away.

  FORTY-TWO

  GRAN QUIVIRA

  AUGUST 1629

  The young warrior Masipa and the beautiful Ankti found the August nights very much to their liking. For two weeks Sakmo’s daughter had been slipping outdoors secretly, climbing to the roof at midnight, and stretching out beside her young kéketl to gaze at the stars.

  Masipa was fearless. His father had been the shepherd of one of the nine families in the village and the meadows had trained him to confront darkness, its wolves and its spirits. Ankti was different. No one had taught her those things. For Sakmo, his twelve-year-old daughter was a treasure he had to protect from the brutal tales of the plains. Which is why Masipa left her in the dark, only revealing a few things at a time.

  “Where are you taking me tonight?” she asked.

  “To watch Hotomkam set,” he answered. “It will be going away in a while, and the autumn stars will take its place. I want us to wish him farewell together.”

  “How do you know when Hotomkan is leaving?”

  “Because Ponóchona the star disappeared two nights ago behind the horizon,” he said with all the certainty of an astronomer, referring to the descent of the constellation Sirius. The two young fugitives had abandoned the village. When they had come close to the Canyon of the Serpent, they felt an indescribable freedom and power at that hour as they looked once again toward the sky.

  And yet that night they would not find sufficient time to become accustomed to the darkness. Something unexpected and subtle electrified the body of the young warrior, making him more alert.

  “What happened?”

  Ankti could see that her companion was standing very still.

  “Don’t move!” he whispered. “I saw something . . .”

  “An animal?”

  “No, can you feel how the wind has come to a stop?”

  “Yes . . . ,” she agreed, and held on to his arm.

  “It must be the Woman of the Desert.”

  “The Lady in Blue?”

  “It always happens when she is nearby.”

  Masipa’s confidence imparted a touch of serenity to the terrified Ankti. The young falcon listened intently to the silence.

  “But there is no light . . . ,” she whispered.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Should we go and tell the elders?”

  “And how do we explain what we are doing here?”

  The young woman was quiet. The evening was silent only for another second before a strange humming noise moved toward them from the south, advancing slowly. The whole desert quivered with its vibrations. It was as if a plague of locusts were flying nervously in and out of the branches of a juniper, waiting for the best moment to desce
nd upon them.

  “Don’t move now. She is over there.”

  Hidden in the darkness, the two adolescents moved cautiously closer to the source of the sound.

  “How strange,” Masipa whispered. “It is utterly dark.”

  “Maybe . . .”

  Ankti did not finish the sentence. When the two of them were a mere ten steps away from the tree, a torrent of light fell on it, paralyzing them with surprise. The humming noise instantly stopped, and the fiery cascade of light came to life, tracing short circles around the edges of the bush, as if it were looking for something, or someone.

  Holding their breath, the two young people took in the scene. It all took place in seconds. The light, which seemed like a living thing, finished its descent from the sky. It withdrew into itself but as it lost strength and size, its last flames took on a human dimension. At first there was the outline of a head, and then out of the final sparks of light came the shape of arms, the waist, a long tunic, and finally legs and feet. The fugitives fell on their knees, astonished, as if the prodigy deserved a great act of veneration.

  Then they heard her voice.

  “May you both be welcome.”

  It was the Lady.

  Her voice sounded just as the warriors had described it: the strange combination of thunder, birdsong, and the breath of the wind.

  Neither Masipa nor Ankti was able to respond.

  “I have come to you because I know that the warriors have already arrived with the men I asked for.”

  The young Jumano lifted his eyes to the woman of light and tried to say something. But he could not.

  “The plan is close to fulfillment,” she went on. “The lords of heaven, those who tell me about what you do, and who bring me here each time, have said that your hearts are now ready to house the seed of the Truth.”

  The seed of the Truth? The men in the sky? What sort of code was that? The woman’s odd diction was adjusting to the rhythm of the Jumanos’ language little by little, like water finding its way to a riverbed.

  “I am the herald of a new time.” She now spoke with greater fluidity. “They sent me to tell you about the arrival of a different world. The lords who have sent me have been watching you for a long time. They have the ability to live among you, because they look like humans, although their essence is immortal. They are angels. Men of flesh and blood who broke bread with Abraham, who fought with Jacob, who spoke with Moses.”

  Ankti and Masipa shrugged their shoulders. They had no idea what this woman was talking about. But then they remembered the stories their grandparents had told them about the creation of the world, stories that in turn had been inherited from the Anasazi (the ancients) and the Hopi (the peaceful ones). Ankti and Masipa knew that humanity was born in the time of the First World, a time that ended in a great catastrophe of fire, and that gave way to two other worlds. Their grandparents told them that there was a “third world,” in Kasskara, when the gods warred among themselves for control of the human race. The Kachinas, beings who look like humans but who came from beyond the stars, fought one on one. Afterward, they rarely let themselves be seen, and when they did, they were always disguised as men and women of flesh and blood. And they swore they would return only at the end of the Fourth World, or at the beginning of the Fifth, to warn men of the crisis that was drawing near.

  Was the woman of the desert one of them? Did she come to warn them about the end of the world?

  “Listen to me,” the woman said. “I want to give you something for the white men you will encounter. It will be proof of my visit. Tell them that the Mother of the Sky is with them, and that she commands them to spread the water of eternal life among you.”

  “Why among us?” Ankti managed to ask.

  “Remember: the water of eternal life.”

  “But why us?” Ankti repeated.

  “Because your heart is pure, Ankti.”

  The visitor lifted her hands, brought them together at chest level, and disappeared in the middle of a sudden, whirling dust storm. The humming ceased, and darkness returned to rule over the plain. The sparks of fire that had imparted a human shape to the woman had been extinguished, leaving no trace behind.

  Ankti and Masipa embraced, frightened. An object unlike anything they had ever seen before glittered at their feet. The lady had left it there for them.

  FORTY-THREE

  ROME

  It was nine o’clock at night in Rome and noon in Los Angeles when Albert Ferrell handed Father Baldi the records on the “dreamer” Luigi Corso sent to the New Mexico of 1629. The file mentioned one Jennifer Narody, a North American, thirty-four years old, lieutenant in the U.S. Army, resident of Washington, D.C., whose mental flights, fed by the sounds of Focus 27, ended in several alterations to her personality. “She is the one her family calls the ‘Great Dreamer.’ Weird, isn’t it?” Ferrell said quietly.

  The report contained one final, laconic annotation, written by hand in red ink, which deeply disturbed Giuseppe Baldi. “Abandoned the project Friday, March 29, 1991. Suffered severe anxiety attacks, along with sleep deprivation. Returned to the United States April 2 on the express recommendation of the Ospedale Generale di Zona ‘Cristo Re’ in Rome.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  MADRID

  Did you warn Father Tejada about our visit?”

  José Luis Martín was driving fast, his eyes fixed on the highway. It was eight o’clock, and at that hour of the morning very little traffic was heading out of Madrid. Although he was still groggy, Carlos was enjoying the spring landscape that was opening up before them. Somosierra, the mountain north of Madrid, loomed ahead, wearing its last coat of snow for the year.

  “Father Tejada?” the journalist mumbled, in need of some strong coffee. “No, I never spoke with him. I left a message telling him that we would arrive in Bilbao this afternoon.”

  “You told him that this was a police interrogation?”

  “Good Lord, no! The police are your business.”

  “Good, Carlitos. It’s much better that way.”

  Carlos shifted his legs under the glove compartment of José Luis’s Renault-19, making himself as comfortable as possible.

  “José Luis,” he said, beginning to awaken. “I’ve given a lot of thought to that phone call from the National Library.”

  “So have I.”

  “So you must have the same doubts I do.”

  “Such as?”

  “Okay, there’s something I just can’t fathom: if whoever pulled off this heist are professionals, which seems certain, why did they make that call from the library? To give themselves away?”

  Martín’s hand was cupping the stick shift like a professional.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s entirely possible that the number was falsely inserted into the system by a computer.”

  “Okay, but then why is it that the number belongs to the one person implicated in the Ágreda case?”

  “Mere chance.”

  “But you don’t believe in that,” Carlos protested.

  “True.”

  The laconic cop lifted a cigarette to his lips and depressed the lighter in its socket.

  “Do you know how long the conversation lasted?”

  “Less than forty seconds.”

  “Not very long, right?”

  “More than enough time to tell someone the operation was a success.”

  “I thought something like that myself.”

  “I would definitely prefer that when we speak to Father Tejado, we don’t tell him we’re investigating a robbery.”

  Carlos gave his friend a look of surprise but didn’t say a word.

  “Let’s act as if we don’t know anything. I expect that, if he’s involved, he’ll end up revealing it himself.”

  “You give the orders on this trip. I’m just along for the ride.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  GRAN QUIVIRA

  The next day, Ankti and Masipa doubted whether they ought to carry out
their strange task. They knew that if they brought the lady’s gift to the elders, they would have a great amount of explaining to do. For that reason, they preferred to wait for the most discreet moment to complete their mission. Just before midday, as Friar Juan de Salas left the house of the warriors in order to perform his necessities in camp, the two youngsters raced out to meet him.

  They caught up with him in front of the oak cross that the Owaqtl women had jammed in the ground the day of his arrival in Gran Quivira.

  “Father . . . ,” Ankti said as she pushed her hair away from her face, “can you talk to us for a moment?”

  Friar Juan spun around and looked at them. The two young Jumanos were offering him something wrapped in dried leaves of corn. They seemed indecisive, even perhaps afraid.

  “What do you need, my children?” he said with a smile.

  “Well, Father . . . last night, near the Canyon of the Serpent, we saw something.”

  “What was that?”

  “The Woman of the Desert.”

  Friar Juan suddenly forgot his prior urgency.

  “The Woman of the Desert? The Lady in Blue?”

  The two nodded in unison.

  “And only you saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “Well”—Masipa hesitated for a second—“that is why we wanted to see you, Father. She said that you and the other man who accompanied you were to spread the water of eternal life among us.”

  Friar Salas’s legs grew weak.

  “The water of eternal life?” He looked at the two closely. “Do you know what that means?”

  Out of confusion, Ankti and Masipa took a step back.

  “No.”

  “Of course not. How could you?”

  “Father,” the young kéketl interrupted. “The woman also gave us this for you. She wanted you to take it to remind you of the Blue Woman’s visitations.”

  Friar Juan was trembling as his eyes regarded the small bundle of corn leaves that Masipa was holding out to him. He took it and opened it quickly.

  “But . . . Good Lord!” he blurted out in Spanish. “Where did you get this?”