“How could you live in the otherworld for as long as Steve has,” Santana said as they were driving back home, “and not know it? How can you hang around with spirits—”
“Cousins,” Thomas interrupted. “And he’s the one who told us she was ma’inawo. He just seems to be learning more about them now, and about where he’s been living.”
“Whatever. It was weird how she could take the shape of a fox or an antelope, and more often, she was something in between,” she said.
Thomas had also had trouble wrapping his head around the rapid transformations. Fox to antelope to the strange hybrid of woman and both animals she’d become at the end, sitting right across the table from them with a cocky grin and her eyes glittering in the setting sun.
“And how could he live there and not know it was the otherworld?” Santana added.
Thomas shrugged. “Well, we didn’t know it was the dreamlands either, until he told us.”
“Yeah, only we just got there. We have an excuse. He’s been living there for ages.”
“You heard what Steve told us. He never really thought about it, even though he’s been living there for forty years.”
“Forty years!” Santana said.
“I know, but—”
“There’s coasting, and then there’s sticking your head in the sand. Does he ever look in the mirror? He looks way young for a guy who’s got to be pushing seventy.”
Thomas made a noncommittal sound. If Steve really had been deliberately trying to ignore what was around him, Thomas could empathize with the man. He knew from experience that pretending something wasn’t real, or at least not talking about it with anybody, was the easier route to take.
“You’re taking this really well,” Santana said.
“Hm?”
“For a guy who wants nothing to do with the old traditions.”
Thomas sighed. “Why does everybody have to harp on that?”
“Because it’s true?”
She tilted her head and gave him a sweet smile, eyebrows lifted.
“You forget,” he said. “Just like you, I can see things other people can’t. It’s happened my whole life. So why should this surprise me?”
Santana shrugged. She sat there in the shotgun seat, feet up, arms wrapped around her knees.
“Mom always warns us to be careful around spirits,” she said, “but Calico didn’t seem particularly dangerous.”
“We don’t really know much about her. And that doesn’t mean the other spirits aren’t.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
Thomas thought that might be the end of it, that she’d turn the radio back on again. Which would suit him because all of this had given him a lot to think about.
“What kinds of things have you seen?” she asked instead.
He thought about that for a moment.
“Nothing like today,” he told her. “It’s usually more subtle—catching something out of the corner of my eye, or how the prickly pear by the trading post are always in different positions every morning.”
“You mean, like they moved during the night?”
He nodded.
“Cool.”
He smiled. “And you?”
“All kinds of stuff,” she said. “Sometimes when I’m sunning with Naya out on the rocks behind the house I hear voices, but there’s no one around. And she doesn’t hear them. When we’re dancing it can feel like there are other—invisible—dancers moving in time with us. Or I might just be walking around the rez and I’ll see somebody with a kind of animal aura. Not like Calico, actually changing into something else—more like the ghostly impression of a lizard or a bird’s head just floating above their heads, or maybe nested in their hair.”
Thomas gave another nod. He’d experienced all of that and more. He thought about the ghost raven from this morning—how strangely independent it had been of its host—but decided not to mention it.
“What are we going to tell Mom,” Santana asked, “about today?”
Thomas shot her a defeated glance. “You ever had any luck lying to her?”
Santana sighed. She dropped her feet to the floor and slumped in her seat.
“So we tell her everything,” she said.
“Don’t see as we have much choice.”
Santana sighed again. “Why did I know you were going to say that?”