15

“Thank God in His infinite mercy,” her father repeated himself. “We have been reunited! How often I have prayed for this day. Come to me, dear child. Dear child!” Cabeza de Vaca opened his arms as he walked toward her. He was dressed as a well-to-do Spaniard, in an embroidered cotton shirt and leather pants, with strong well-made sandals but without the helmet or metal armor of a conquistador. His white beard had been trimmed not long ago although his long white hair flowed freely about his shoulders, having escaped its leather tie. His clothes were stained, as though he had also been walking for miles in the hot desert. Across his shoulder he carried a flat leather bag.

“Teresa, I have looked for you! Oh, so long! You cannot know the countless weeks and months and years I have spent thinking of you and praying for you,” her father spoke in his usual voluble fashion. “After those godless colonists turned against me, my own misguided men took me back to Spain, a prisoner in the hold of the ship. A prisoner! Fortunately, the King rallied to my side. After I was vindicated and released, I immediately sailed back to Vera Cruz and took a horse to Mexico City. I am done, finished, with the southern provinces and their ungrateful inhabitants. I rode like a madman to the Governor’s house only to find that you were gone and the house deserted. Imagine my feelings! I began to walk north. I knew, yes, somehow I knew I would find you. The Redeemer would help me find you. I had faith, and my faith kept me strong and brought me to you and you to me.”

Her father was very close now. Teresa could see the spittle on his beard. She stood up painfully and took a step back into the mesquite tree.

Her father stopped. “Teresa, what is wrong?”

“The boy is sick.” She hesitated.

“Sick? You have a sick child? Let me see,” her father demanded.

“Stay away!”

“Teresa,” her father chided. He held up his hands, palms out. Then he put them together in a gesture of prayer. “Perhaps I can help. I am a healer, after all.”

Teresa felt dizzy. It was true. Her father was a healer. She had seen how he had taken the arrowhead from the man’s chest, how the man had jumped up the next day completely well. She had seen many other healings as well. Now her father said that he had been looking for her all these months and years. In one soft corner of her hard heart, she had dreamed of this.

“I can see what has happened,” her father said briskly. “You are suffering from lack of water and food. You are not thinking clearly. Unfortunately, I used up my own water and food some time ago.” He thumped his flat leather bag. “But I recently passed a sizable group of prickly pear cactus. I am afraid the fruits are past their prime. Still, a few are left, juicy and red. I meant to stop and eat them myself. Then I decided—I felt it in the depths of my soul—that something was leading me this way. Let’s go there now. Come, come, you can carry the boy.”

Teresa bent down and touched Pomo. He was so hot under the cotton shirt. His chest lifted as he breathed in and out with a rasping sound. She cradled him in her arms and picked him up, staggering to her feet. She stepped back again, away from her father.

“Oh, my dearest,” he said. “I am so sorry. What has happened to you? You must drink and eat. You must come with me.”

Cabeza de Vaca smiled, his teeth still good, his smile so tender that Teresa felt faint. She felt as though her ribs were being squeezed. Her father nodded. “Put the boy on the horse and we will walk there together to the ripe, red prickly pear fruit.” Her father turned to Horse and started. “Why, poor animal! He needs nourishment, too. He looks about to expire.”

From the corner of her eye, Teresa saw Horse, his head hanging down. She wasn’t sure if he knew what was happening. What choice do we have? Teresa thought. If her father were not telling the truth, if there were no prickly pear fruit, then they would all die. But they would die for certain if they stayed here. The boy was so hot. He needed to drink and eat.

“Don’t touch him,” she warned her father. “Don’t come any closer.”

She went to the horse and lifted Pomo onto his back. This was difficult because her arms felt so heavy, and her hands trembled. The limp boy almost slid off again, and she had to hold him there, leaning and trembling against the animal’s flank. The gelding jerked and flattened his ears.

It’s not far, she told the horse. We have to walk, just a bit.

“Let me help,” Cabeza de Vaca said and reached out his hand.

Don’t let him, Horse exclaimed suddenly.

“No,” Teresa murmured.

Her father scowled. “That’s enough,” he scolded. “I have been patient. But my patience has a limit. I am your father! You are my daughter! We are together again after so many years, and you will behave appropriately.”

“No,” Teresa meant to say.

But “Yes,” she said instead because she wanted it so much.

Her father’s hand seemed to close around Pomo’s arm. He reached up with his other hand as if to shift the boy into a better, more secure position. He patted Horse’s neck. He stroked the fine fur. “Very good,” he said. Then he led them to the field of prickly pears.

The food revived her, the red pulp filling her with strength and sweetness. She swallowed and the wetness soothed her throat. The fear gnawing in her chest lessened. She was not going to die. She was going to live. Eagerly, she picked an entire cactus clean, eating one, two, three, four of the oblong purple-red fruits, hardly bothering to scrape away the thorns, sucking and spitting out the tiny black seeds. Once she felt stronger, she still wanted to eat. She didn’t want to stop.

But she forced herself to turn to the horse and boy, lifting Pomo down and taking him to a patch of shade under a jojoba bush. Automatically, she checked the bush for nuts. A few remained. After settling the boy’s limbs, trying to make him comfortable, she went back to the prickly pears and gathered a dozen more fruit, this time trimming off their thorns with a stick and cutting the fruits in half. She gave these to Horse, holding them on her palm like an apple and coaxing him to eat. He resisted the first bite. But after a nibble, tasting the juice, he gobbled down every one, seeds and all, and she had to go back for more. She put this pile on the ground so the horse could feed himself.

For the boy, she squeezed the oblong shapes and let the red liquid dribble into his mouth. Pomo swallowed convulsively and coughed. She squeezed another fruit and another, her hands stained and slimy, until she managed to get a fair amount of juice down his throat and into his stomach.

Then she rested and ate more fruit herself, each one a miracle. She stripped the jojoba nuts from the bush and knotted them into Pomo’s cotton shirt, along with the tinderbox. She picked more fruit, half for her and the boy, half for the horse. All the while, her father watched and smiled.

“Excellent,” he encouraged her occasionally. “Yes, that’s right. Very good.”

Teresa noticed that he didn’t eat anything himself. He wasn’t thirsty or hungry. She hadn’t embraced him yet. That impulse had passed. She still felt the longing—to be safe again in her father’s strong arms. But she knew these arms were not really strong, and they certainly were not safe. Perhaps it would be like embracing smoke and air. Perhaps Plague could only give the appearance of form.

The fruit had cleared her mind. She had known all along. This could not be her father. She had made a terrible mistake.

Now Cabeza de Vaca stood next to Horse. In his hand, he held a rope that was looped and knotted around the horse’s neck. Teresa didn’t know when this had happened, when the shape-shifter had created the appearance of a rope that hadn’t been there before. She tried to speak to the gelding, but the animal would not listen or answer. His head hung down. His thoughts were muddy, still focused on eating.

Her father looked at her happily. “The fruit is good for you,” he said. “But it is not enough. I know of a spring a league away. Put the boy on the horse. We should go while you have the strength to walk.”

“You can’t have the boy,” Teresa said.

Cabeza de Vaca laughed. “I already have him. You gave him the sarampión yourself. Remember? You still had the rash, a lovely sprinkle, on your stomach and thighs. I have only waited for the child to become feverish, the first symptom. In a few days, he will have the rash, too. By then, we will have found someone else, another traveler in the desert.”

“He was the one you wanted to go with you into the village,” Teresa agreed dully. “You will use him to carry the disease.”

“He brings it like a gift. I don’t need you any longer. In fact, I have no use for you since you no longer carry my little present. Still, you can come with us. I like the company of humans. I like this form, and I can tell you stories, all kinds of stories.” Her father laughed again, in a good mood. He kept one hand on the rope and used the other to rub the gelding’s neck. The animal shuddered but did not move away.

But this was another trick. Because Teresa knew that Plague did need her. “What if I don’t put the boy on the horse?” she asked. “I don’t think you can actually do that on your own. I think you are only smoke and air.”

Her father shrugged, conceding the point. “Then the boy will die, without water, without more food. You will both die here.”

“What if we find this spring ourselves, a league away?”

“You might find it alone,” her father nodded, “if you go in the right direction. But you are too weak to carry the boy. Only the horse can do that. And I have the horse. You let me have him.”

Horse? Teresa tried again. The gelding blew out his breath and when Teresa glimpsed into his mind, she saw what he saw: not her father, Cabeza de Vaca, but a plain-featured, stub-fingered, stocky Spaniard. It was his old master who held the end of his rope, the man who had trained and groomed him through so many battles and journeys, a man not yet driven mad with grief.

Kro-oak! A raven flapped to the jojoba bush, the branches dipping under its weight. The black head cocked. The dark eye stared. The bird wanted them to leave so it could eat the remaining scraps of fruit. Kro-aaak, the raven cawed, and Teresa’s mind cleared just a little more.

“Stupid bird,” her father sounded displeased.

Pomo was muttering, “I don’t want a tortilla! I don’t like that!” The little boy pouted, his poor lips cracked and dry. “We are going to a fiesta,” he announced, his eyes glittering before he fell back, neck loose and face slack. Teresa decided. They couldn’t stay here. She would put the boy on the horse, and they would go to the spring where she would find a way to escape.

“Good girl,” her father praised and pretended to give Pomo a gentle touch as he led the horse north.

He talked all the way. Teresa remembered this. Her father had also chattered incessantly, the words pouring out of his mouth and covering her like a shower of petals, like drops of rain, like a dust storm. It was all she could hear, her father’s words, all she could see, all she knew. Because this was Plague and not really her father, he talked now of disease: pustules, fevers, and chills.

He told her about sarampión. The epidemic of measles had come from the south, swept through the Governor’s province and then stopped as people stopped traveling. Commonly the victim had a cough, a runny nose, and an aversion to food. In a week, you would be feverish, and in a few more days, you would have the rash, starting at the hairline and running down the body. Four days before the rash appeared, and four days afterward, a person with sarampión could carry it to someone else. You could give the disease away as you give away a cake or a shawl or a rose. Only, in this case, the person giving the gift also got to keep it, at least for a while.

“How can you give away disease?” Teresa asked.

Her father nodded. A good question. “With a touch,” Plague said, “with a sigh, with a sneeze. With a song, with a prayer!” He made a little leap, capering in the gravel and sand.

You died of sarampión when the disease crept into your lungs, filling them with water. You died of fever, especially when you were young, for young children had the most magnificent fevers. You died if you were hungry or sick from some other disease. You died most painfully if your ears began to hurt. More than half the people in the Governor’s province had died. More than half the people ahead would die.

“My hard heart protected me,” Teresa said, not really to her father but to herself. “Like the Spanish. They have a protection.”

Her father nodded. “The Spanish have already survived the sarampión. It will not visit you twice.”

“And Pomo?” Teresa held her breath, afraid of the answer.

Plague changed the subject, telling her instead about viruela, his favorite disease. “This will interest you,” he assured her, “for your father knew the man who brought viruela to New Spain. Years before he was made captain of the expedition to La Florida, Pánfilo de Narváez came with Hernán Cortés and the first conquistadors. In his ship, a black man suffered with smallpox, the sores not yet formed although the man groaned from a headache that seemed to cleave his skull in two and he screamed at the sensation of a knife stabbing his back. He had dreams, too, the wonderful, bloody, extraordinary dreams of viruela. Then he felt better, and he went out into this New World, and from him the pestilence spread like light from the sun. The Aztecs called it hueyzahuatl. The sores start in the throat and mouth and travel down the face over the body, pimpling, blistering, leaking pus. The skin looks scalded! Some people begin to bleed from every opening—their mouth, their eyes . . .”

Teresa sighed as her father chattered on in his loud voice. He might have been telling her about his childhood in Seville. “And for all this time, these people can give the disease to others, for weeks and weeks, until they die or they recover. Many do recover, perhaps a little pockmarked, perhaps very marked, perhaps blind in one eye.”

Walking next to the conquistador, Teresa felt so tired. She could barely keep up even though they were not moving fast, even though Horse plodded slowly through the heat and thorny plants, his breathing harsh. The horizon shimmered with mirages. Anxiously, she kept checking Pomo, who was still extraordinarily hot. The boy moaned in his sleep, his face pressed to the horse’s neck.

“How far is the spring?” Teresa asked.

“Not far,” her father said.

“Pánfilo de Narváez . . .” Teresa remembered, trying to keep alert, to watch and think. “He abandoned my father. He took the best rowers, the best boat. ‘Save yourselves!’ he cried. ‘I cannot help you!’”

“Yes, that one was quite a fellow.”

“There were prophecies,” Teresa recited. “There was magic. My father heard the sound of tambourines. In a place called the Bay of Horses, the men killed their mounts and used the flesh to make leather thongs and water bottles. From manes and tails, they braided ropes and rigging. They built five barges and sailed along the coast. Some went mad and jumped into the water.”

“Bravo!” her father praised. “Your memory is fantastic.”

“Finally, in another terrible storm, a wave took my father’s boat and threw it onto a sandy shore, juego de herradura.”

“As far as a horseshoe can be tossed,” her father said.

“And he is dead now, isn’t he?”

“Pánfilo de Narváez? Yes, he died at sea in that rickety barge and all his best rowers with him. One by one they died until he was left alone, the only one left.”

“No, my father,” Teresa hissed impatiently. The effort hurt her throat, but she continued, “That’s how you can use his form, because he is dead like my mother, like Fray Tomás and the pregnant woman.”

But Plague waved a languid hand. “Hush. Don’t alarm yourself. I told you that death is not necessary, although it is often the case, as often as not. I can go anywhere the disease has gone before me. I know everyone I have ever touched. I knew your father early, when he was a child in Seville, when he had a bad case of sarampión. And then later a light case of viruela, very light. Then, naturally, he caught the tabardillo from all those lice in his clothes on that second trip back to Spain.”

“The second trip?”

“As I have already explained to you. After the colonists rebelled against him, they threw him into chains and took him back to the King. Can you imagine? The famous hidalgo in chains. His own men testified against him. I don’t know how he survived the shame. He never ceases to amaze me. You know, he is an old man now. In truth, he was not so young when he first came to the New World.”

The horse snorted, raising his head.

“The animal smells water,” Cabeza de Vaca said. “The spring is very close. God has given us this grace and mercy! Blessed Redeemer, thank you!” And Plague knelt mockingly in the sand and gravel, like her father, but not her father.