12

“Hasta mañana,” Sonny said, and walked out.

Sure he was fishing, but he knew Raven would take the bait. Time and again Raven played games, drawing Sonny out, positioning him. Well, it was time to play games back.

Sonny walked through the crowd outside to get to his truck. He tried Rita on his cell phone, but there was no answer. They were still out shopping. He had to see Lorenza Villa, he thought. He called her, and yes, she was free. He drove across the new Alameda bridge to Corrales.

The balloon fiesta board wants to save the festival, and I want to catch Raven, Sonny thought, but the whole thing was a bigger game. The FBI knew about Raven, but agent Mike and his sidekick Eddie weren’t talking. And what would Raven have against Mario Secco?

Lorenza opened the door and greeted Sonny. “Buenos días, Elfego. Come in.”

“Buenos,” he answered, and entered. “Thanks for taking the time.”

“Rita told me everything,” she said as she led him to the kitchen. “The fiesta has turned tragic.”

She was barefooted. A cotton huipil molded to the soft contours of her body. She motioned to a chair. “Would you like some coffee? Or tea?”

“Café, gracias,” he replied, and as she served him coffee, he told her about going to see Veronica’s body. “There’s no doubt. She was murdered.”

“By Raven.”

“Yes. Why did I see the body falling? As if I knew that she had been killed?”

“Your vision told you Raven had returned.”

“And the coyotes?”

“Your nagual.”

My nagual, he thought. I find the coyotes, I run with them. Is she saying I am of them?

Coyotes? He had seen them as a kid, and once in a while on the range. One summer he had worked a ranch with a friend near Cabezon, and he ran into one. His rancher friend took a shot at the coyote, but it got away.

Ranchers hated coyotes. Poisoned them, shot at them. Still, they survived.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“The coyote is your guardian animal,” she replied.

He stood and walked to the window that faced east. The river bosque was brilliant with October sunlight. Clear, Indian summer days, a time of harvest. The fruit stands were piled with apples, chile, red ristras, pumpkins.

In the northern Sangre de Cristos, the aspens were already gold, shimmering with light. Woodpiles grew around the houses of the pueblos. In high forests the elk were mating, the bulls bugleing, and people were getting ready to go hunting. People were storing food, preserving jellies and jams, the sweets of the harvest.

The nights were cool now, not yet freezing but brisk, and the scent of piñon logs burning in fireplaces permeated the valley. It should be a time of peace, a time of home, a time of storytelling. But it wasn’t.

In the city of el Duque de Alburquerque, there was only one thing missing from the scene: hot-air balloons flowering in the crisp, October sky.

“Qué piensas?” Lorenza asked.

She had been watching Sonny. As he stood there, looking out the window, she felt his intensity. He sniffed the air like a coyote that enters new territory. Someone had entered his territory; he was in trouble. Raven’s return threatened Sonny’s life.

“Thinking about the coyotes.” He turned to face her. “I heard a lot of stories when I was a kid. From my abuelos. Old people from the nearby farms would come to visit, and they told the stories. Brujas changing to owls, coyotes, birds. As a kid, I believed everything.”

“And as a man you put away childish things,” she said.

“Why change into the animal form?”

“It’s a way to enter the world of spirits.”

He raised an eyebrow. “The world of spirits?”

“The soul can travel in many forms. This is just one way. You must learn it because it is Raven’s method. He is working through his nagual, so must you. Later you will learn to use your dreams …” Her voice trailed.

He partly understood what she meant. He had to meet Raven on his own terms.

“Use my dreams?” He was puzzled.

“Yes. To create your own dream,” she replied. “But now Raven calls the shots. You see, the world of nature is our world. We think entering this age of technology erases the past. It doesn’t. Our nature is linked to that of our ancestors, to their beliefs. The surface changes for us, but we know that beneath the surface lies the true world, the world of spirits.”

“A world I entered during the ceremony.”

“Yes. You found your soul.”

Sonny nodded. “Don Eliseo always reminds me of those stories I heard as a child. My abuelos believed in the world of spirits. It was all around them. They were staunch Catholics, and they didn’t want to give the stories of the witches too much credence, but they believed.”

He paused and looked deep into her eyes, the eyes that fascinated him because he couldn’t make them focus to meet his stare. Shaman eyes. One eye, the eye of an owl.

“Going into that vision, meeting the coyotes … I didn’t think it could be done.” He shook his head.

“It’s as old as the Aztecs. Moctezuma Ilhuicamina sent forty of his brujos, that’s the word the Spanish friars used to describe the shamans, to the underworld. They went as jaguars, eagles, birds, other creatures of the earth. They returned to tell their king that the Aztec empire was doomed.”

She paused and poured him a fresh cup of coffee.

The same battle don Eliseo saw taking place, Sonny pondered. It was older and bigger than simple witchcraft games. It involved civilizations. A way of life was ending, a new one was coming into being.

“The Spaniards destroyed the temples. Paganism and the worship of idols, they called the old religion. They saw the skulls of the ancestors on the temple walls and made up stories that the Aztecs were cannibals who sacrificed people. That served their purpose, which was to control the people with a new religion.”

“So the experts write that the Aztecs did sacrifice.”

“Those people worshiped their ancestors. Just like today, one of the most important holidays is el Día de los Muertos. People go to the cemeteries to be with those who have died. They set up altars, they take food, they have a fiesta. It’s a form of remembering the ancestors and celebrating the good they did on earth. Long ago the celebrations lasted longer. The skulls of the ancestors were taken from their chambers where they were kept; they were lovingly cleaned and placed along the temple walls. What the Spaniards called idolatry were days of prayer and remembrance. Days of thanksgiving to the ancestors.”

“And the Spaniards got it assbackward,” Sonny said.

“They needed to invent stories of idolatry to tear down the temples and impose their religion. Conquerors everywhere have always done this to people they conquer. They make them pagans or subhuman, and they call their beliefs superstitions. They rationalize destruction.”

“Yeah, look around you,” Sonny mused.

“I was in Mexico on Día de los Muertos. I saw how the people celebrated and honored their ancestors. The more traditional the Indian tribe, the more they understand this connection to the ancestors, and the honor due to them.”

“We honor them, too, don’t we,” Sonny whispered.

Sonny thought of masses for the dead his mother offered at church for his father. The altar she kept at home with the statue of la Virgen de Guadalupe, the Mexican virgin, and statues of the saints. And there on the altar, amid the statues and the burning votive candles, the photographs of her family.

He thought of his father and how almost daily the man was in his thoughts. Even el Bisabuelo, Elfego Baca, the great-grandfather he had never known, was a spirit guiding his life. Yes, he honored them, for their work, for the history, for the traditions and beliefs they had passed down.

“The conquering Spaniards had to make something evil out of the indigenous beliefs,” Lorenza said. “So they killed the priests and destroyed the temples. They built their churches on the sites of the old temples, but the people kept their beliefs. Long after most of the Aztec civilization was destroyed, the people knew they moved in and out of the world of spirits.”

“And the curanderas helped.”

Lorenza smiled. “That’s our work. To take people to that world. People go on having soul-troubles, and our work is to help.”

She echoed don Eliseo’s thoughts, told stories just like the old man and his friends. They whispered their stories around the fire on summer evenings when they sat out to enjoy the cool of night. She could be their daughter. They trusted her; they knew she was one of the few who sought the old indigenous ways.

“My mother used to say I had a guardian angel,” he said, “but now I learn I also have a guardian animal? Do you have a nagual?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What?”

“It is best not to speak about it.”

“Why?”

“It takes its power away.”

“It really does protect you?”

“Yes.”

“From what?”

“The evil forces.”

“Forces?”

“The struggle has always been between a harmonious universe and one which collapses into complete chaos. Put another way, it’s the struggle between good and evil. All resides in our souls, so the energy of evil brujos works to defeat us.”

“And this is made clear in the world of spirits,” Sonny said.

She nodded. “But we’ve lost so much of the knowledge of our ancestors.”

“It’s not just losing traditions,” Sonny said. “It’s losing a kind of inner knowledge. I see that inner harmony at work in don Eliseo, and I wonder why can’t we all acquire the wisdom he has.”

“Because we live surrounded by those who don’t believe in the old knowledge. The world is full of doubt, and people no longer communicate with their souls. People come here and feel this place is spiritual, but they don’t go deeper. They stop at the gate.”

That’s what don Eliseo often said, Sonny thought. The Río Grande valley was the meeting ground of spiritual ways. Hispanos and Mexicanos had learned the Pueblo ways, but the Indian religion had gone underground under the persecution of the Spanish friars. The pursuit of the Franciscans to convert and baptize the Indians was relentless, and the civil authority backing them was as vicious. The esoteric knowledge had been driven underground.

With the coming of the Anglo Americans, the Nuevo Mexicanos did the same. The ceremonies of the church remained in the open, but the deeper beliefs and folk remedies, the stories of the brujos, went underground.

Other communities had gone secret. The conversos, those Jews who converted to Christianity and came to Nueva España to avoid the Holy Office of the Inquisition, had also kept their traditions secret.

The Pueblos went into the kiva and learned the hard way they had to protect the knowledge that anthropologists might misuse.

“A lot of people in hiding,” Sonny said.

“A lot of knowledge,” Lorenza replied. “We have so much to offer each other. Ways to care for the soul. The ways of our ancestors.”

“And fewer and fewer believe in the soul,” Sonny mused. “Like me. Have I lost my soul?”

“You had lost the way of knowledge of your ancestors,” Lorenza replied. “You remember the stories of your abuelos, but you lost belief in them. Then Gloria’s spirit came to haunt you, and you realized you needed help. You’ve begun your journey.”

“I can’t do it alone,” Sonny said, admitting for the first time that there were some things he didn’t know.

“Everyone needs a guide. Women have passed the knowledge down generation to generation. Now we have so few who can keep the brujos in check.”

“Part of what you do is keep Raven, and those like him, in check?”

“It’s what we all should be doing. Raven represents a very destructive evil.”

“Yes,” Sonny murmured.

He leaned back in the chair, admiring Lorenza’s fine-chiseled face, the Indian cheekbones, the flare of her nostrils, the light brown skin. Her brown eyes. Her inner beauty shone on her face, as it did with Rita, don Eliseo, others he loved. A truly positive spirit radiated from within.

“Will I see the coyotes again?” he asked.

“Of course,” she replied. “Are you ready?”

“Raven tried to kill me. I need to find him.”

“You need to prepare,” she said. “Come.” She led him into the small consultation room at the back of the house where she had performed the limpieza.

She closed the door. “Unbutton your shirt,” she commanded. Sonny did as he was told, exposing the Zia medallion, a piece of the sun burning on his chest.

“Tamara said it’s the only protection I have against Raven,” he explained.

“It can be,” she said. “But it needs to be blessed. Raven had possession of the Zia symbol on the medallion, and he was using it to carry out his destruction. You must do good work with it. It will fill you with light. Take the medallion and place it at the altar.”

He took the medallion from around his neck and walked to the altar and laid it at the foot of the statue of la Virgen de Guadalupe. The gold burned his hand and he was startled. He returned to sit next to Lorenza. She pulled her chair close to his, their knees touched. She reached out and held his hands. Her hands were warm, enveloping. Her fragrance was a mixture of the incense and herbs she used in her healing, and the wax of the candle that burned at the altar.

“Finding Raven can be dangerous,” she said.

“More dangerous if I don’t.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and looked out the window toward the river bosque. She appeared irritated for a moment.

“Is anything wrong?” Sonny asked.

“No, it’s just that I’ve had so little time to prepare you. You know Raven has special powers.”

Sonny nodded. “Don Eliseo calls him a brujo.”

“Yes, a very dangerous brujo. A sorcerer. He draws people into his cult and will not let them go.”

“Veronica was one of them,” Sonny said.

“Yes, the women killed Gloria, but they don’t have his power. He controls them. Raven lives in the world of darkness. He wants people under his control.”

“How do you know so much about him?” Sonny asked.

She leaned back. Sonny didn’t know the world of the brujos. He had met his guardian spirits, but now he was threatened by his ancient enemy. Now he needed the coyotes, the guardian spirits who could take him into the world of spirits and give him the power to fight Raven. Sonny was awakening from a long sleep.

“Brujo is the Spanish word for witch,” she said. “But that really doesn’t describe Raven. He’s more than a brujo.” She paused. “Those of us who guide people in search of their souls know about Raven. He has the power of his nagual.”

“Raven can become a raven?”

“Yes.”

“Then all I need is a raven trap,” Sonny joked.

She looked into Sonny’s bright, mischievous eyes and laughed. Sonny did have the spirit of coyote. That was good. He was a trickster caught in a dangerous and tangled web, and he didn’t know what it held for him, but he could still laugh. He had the spirit to learn and survive.

“Yes, a raven trap,” Lorenza said. “His nagual makes him very powerful, and the only way you can stop him is to learn to use the power of the coyotes.”

“Why the coyotes?”

“For now it seems that is the energy calling to you. There are other ways, but this is expedient. For now.”

“And later?”

“Later you travel through your dreams, later still through moments of meditation, until you can at will step from one world to the next.”

“So I’m just beginning,” he said. “Okay, let’s do it. My abuelo used to tell me, ‘Whenever you’re in trouble, maybe you have a problem you have to think about, go to the river. Go to that safe place where the coyotes live.’ Maybe he knew the coyotes would help me.”

“They will help,” she said. She took his hand again. “Tell me more about those river coyotes.”

“I spent summers with my abuelos. There was an oxbow at the river. The river curved in and out, like a horseshoe. The water was calm, deep. I could fish there, go swimming. I would sit still, and even though the family of coyotes could smell me, would know I was there, they didn’t run away. They had their den under the huge roots of the alamo. The cubs played in the shade …”

“How many?”

“Four. Male, female, two cubs.”

“The four you saw in your vision.”

“Yes. I can see them now.”

The vision suddenly appeared, so clear it overwhelmed him. Did it have something to do with Lorenza’s touch? Was she hypnotizing him and taking him into his past?

“You are there now?”

“I can see it clearly …”

She stood and moved to the tape player, turned it on, and the drumming began. “Lie here, on the floor,” she said. “On your side.”

He obeyed, and she lay next to him, along his back.

“Are you sure this—” he started to say but she cut in.

“Do as I say,” she whispered. “Listen to the drumming.”

He could feel her warmth, hear her steady breathing.

“Keep the image of the pond clear.… You will enter there.… Sing your song.”

He closed his eyes and began to sing, softly, barely audible, to the beat of the drum. He saw his grandfather’s farm, the adobe house, so cool in the summer, the fields of alfalfa being mowed and packed by the men, the summer drone of cicadas, the scattering grasshoppers as he ran through the grass, the call of birds in the orchard, the pungency of the chile verde his grandmother roasted for the noonday meal.

So much of his childhood was smell, touch, sound, dreams. When did the senses of the child leave off and the dreams begin? Life then had been like a vibration, a steady pulse droning with a strange energy, like a low current of electricity passing through his body.

He felt it all again, so clearly that he felt he could reach out and touch the burst of sunflowers along the irrigation ditch as he ran toward the river, could feel the whip of the wild grasses, the fragrance of the yellow clusters of flowers on the Russian olive trees, the warmth of salty sweat trickling down his cheeks, along the back of his neck.

The river was serene, peaceful. The canopy of the cottonwoods was the underworld of his childhood. He had fallen back to childhood, and there on the damp bank of the pond sat the four coyotes. Two grown ones and two large cubs. It was a family.

He stepped into the middle of their circle. The coyotes stood around him, east, north, west, south. Quiet sentries marking the sacred directions, and he at the center. Their energy flowed to him, filling him with lightness, exuberation. He was running, close to the ground, close to the scents of the other animals, running with the coyotes, free, flying.

He saw a different kind of forest: the Sandia Mountains’ pine tree forest where he had first found Raven’s compound. The vision dissolved, and the forest became a jungle, people running. Thunderous gunfire filled the air, as did the sound of mortars. He saw a dark shadow rising from the trees, and suddenly helicopters swarmed overhead. People were dying. They disappeared into the smoke of the battle.

“The homeless,” Sonny muttered. There was nothing he could do to save the brown-skinned people being slaughtered.

“Raven!” Sonny heard himself shout. He was challenging Raven to come out in the open.

A large moving van appeared. At first he thought it had something to do with the homeless, and then he saw the top of the van open and Raven’s dark balloon rise into the sky.

“Ah,” Sonny heard himself whisper.

The pounding drum told him it was time to go deeper.

“Go deeper,” the voice said. “Go deeper …”

He found Gloria. Her body wasn’t cold from death as he had seen her that day in June, but warm, inviting, as she had been the night she gave herself to him.

She put her arm around him, drew him near.

“Gloria,” he whispered. Finally she was there in front of him! She had haunted his dreams and waking hours, driving him relentlessly. She wanted revenge for her murder, and she was using Sonny.

The coyotes tugged at him, forcing him to look closely at the woman in his arms. It wasn’t Gloria holding him, it was her spirit. He had followed the coyotes into the world of spirits. They had brought him here so he could be released from her.

“Release me,” he said, and she was gone. A luminous light moved away from him and he stood alone, gasping for breath. He felt a tremendous surge of energy as the light moved away from him, moved toward the setting sun.

“I’m free,” he sobbed. “I’m free …”

The drumming was so low now he could barely hear it. He felt Lorenza rise, heard her praying; then the eagle feather passed across his closed eyes, and he felt the stir of air. She clapped loudly, four times, and gently touched her hands to his eyes.

“Open your eyes. Open them very slowly. Use the coyotes to return to this world …”

He turned from the world of spirits and ran with the coyotes. Ran low to the ground, like them, sniffing as he went, flying as he went.

“Breathe in, deep, then out, slowly. Open your eyes slowly,” she said, giving careful instructions, and the glare of the world returned.

He was lying on the floor, Lorenza sitting beside him.

“Feels like I’ve been smoking pot.” He smiled. “Or peyote.” He had done the medicine with don Eliseo once. “I thought you were Gloria …”

She smiled. “You called her name. What did you see?”

Sonny told her his vision.

“You are free of Gloria’s spirit,” she said. “And now we know the guardian spirits will help. Great news, Sonny Baca.”

She smiled and walked out of the room. Sonny stood and looked around him. The reality of the room felt so mundane compared to the trip he had just taken. And why could he take such a trip without smoking grass or chewing peyote? Was it that easy to call on the guardian spirits and go to the world of spirits? Or had Lorenza given him something in his coffee?

She returned with two cups of tea and offered one to Sonny. He took it and sipped, enjoying the aroma, the soft, warm liquid silky on his tongue. He was thirsty.

“Do you put something in the drinks?” he asked.

She laughed. “It’s all in you, Sonny, all in you.”

“I can call the coyotes?”

“Any time,” she said.

“Great medicine.”

“It is. Powerful stuff.”

“Too bad more people don’t know about this.” He smiled. “We’d be tripping to the world of spirits all the time.”

“No,” she cautioned. “It has a very serious purpose.”

“I thought Coyote was a trickster.”

“He is, but that doesn’t mean he’s around just to pull pranks. Coyote is an old trickster. Sometimes he forgets and turns to beguiling the young women he meets in the bars along Fourth Street. Drink and dance and take them to bed. They love his ways and words of honey.”

“That sounds familiar,” Sonny muttered, his face growing red.

She laughed. “You’re learning. The journey into the world of spirits can be full of danger. At first you don’t understand what you see. You took the form of the coyote in the vision and had a very pleasant trip.”

“I feel great.”

“Ah, good.”

“And you?” he asked.

He sipped the tea and looked into her clear eyes. She was attractive, alone, and he knew he pleased her.

“My role is only to guide you,” she said. “The journey is dangerous. A lot of spirits live in that underworld, a lot of ghosts live in your unconscious. Right now the goal is to get you in touch with your guardians, your source of power.”

“I felt like I was flying.”

She laughed. “Brujos fly.”

“Me?”

She nodded.

“I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there. Yes, it was being there. And the other things I saw?”

“They are signs. Think carefully on them. They are signs.”

“Gracias por todo,” he said. “And the Zia medallion?”

“It’s been blessed by your guardian spirits. It is yours to wear. Now it will protect you.”

He went to the altar and retrieved the Zia medallion. For a moment he hesitated, thinking this is what would bring Raven to him, then he slipped it around his neck.

He went to her and gave her an abrazo, feeling again, momentarily, the warmth of her body. “Gracias,” he said again, then quickly walked out of the house, not daring to look back.

“Ve con Dios, los santos, y tu nagual,” she whispered.