Robert Charrette - Find your own truth

YouVe taught others to use magic. Teach me. Teach me how to save Janice." The old man turned around. "Why not?"

"Coyote knows all, sees all," the shaman said "Tells little."

"Like you," Sam observed.

"Hey hey, pup. Sing a sour song and you jinx the magic. Sky ain't gonna change color to suit you. A shaman is what he is because he is what he is. Ya gotta know to do, and do to know. Got that?"

"Sure," Sam replied dubiously. Clear as mud. The last two days had been full of exercises in frustration. The old man had led him deeper into the wilderness, hauling packs when they left the Hummer behind. Most of the time, Sam's questions and comments fell on deaf ears. The old man only spoke when he wished, and then half the time he spouted nonsense commentaries on life or nature. The other half was split between totally incomprehensible monologues in a language Sam guessed was his native Ute dialect and almost equally incomprehensible orders. So far Sam had listened to how the wind made pifion trees sigh, observed ants scurry about their business, smelled and compared the scents of yucca leaves and flowers, and watched buzzards wheel in the canyon updrafts. Time and again, he had gathered a variety of plant materials and animal remains, only to have the shaman leave them behind the next time they stopped. He felt more like he, or his patience, was being tested rather than taught.

They had climbed a long series of switchbacks up a bluff and were now making their way across a gradually sloping mesa top. On the way up, Howling Coyote had taken a detour and led Sam out on a precarious spur of rock. The stretch of plain that ran to distant mountains left Sam in awe. The prairie seemed to go on for a hundred kilometers. The shaman had tugged Sam around to face south and pointed to a series of peaks in that direction.

"See. It ain't me," Howling Coyote had said. "He's still sleeping."

Sam hadn't understood what the old man meant, and said so.

"The Ute, pup. He's still sleeping," was all the shaman would say on the subject.

They came to a place where a wide circular depression was marked by stone walls. In sharp contrast to the dusty soil and sparse vegetation elsewhere, the grass here was bright and green within the hole. Traces of ditches, some with stones, could be seen through the stunted trees. "Thirsty, pup?"

"Yes," Sam replied honestly. His lips were dry, and even his lungs felt seared by the dry air.

The shaman sat on the wall and dangled his feet over the edge into the depression. There was perhaps two centimeters clearance between the soles of his feet and the earth. "Ah, nice and cool,", he said. "Have a drink if you're thirsty.''

Sam looked at the grassy depression toward which the old man gestured. He could see no sign of water. Just grass. The shaman swung his feet back up, with a heave rising to his feet and padding off down a path between the fragrant pinon. Sam was shocked to see Howling Coyote leave damp footprints. He hurried after.

' 'What did you do back there?'' "Hey hey, pup. I didn't do nothing. The old ones iuilt all around here. 'Anasazi"s the name you Anglos stuck on them. They built that lake for irrigation before Whites ever walked the land hereabouts."

"But your footprints," Sam protested. "You left wet footprints as though your feet had been in water. There wasn't any water in that lake bed. How did you do that?"

The shaman laughed. "I didn't do nothing. Just experienced the lake and the wisdom of the old ones. What did you experience?"

Nothing, Sam thought. Aloud he said, "I don't know."

"Some shaman. Gotta see the past if you're gonna face the future."

Without any further explanation, Howling Coyote led Sam through the tangled, dark trees. Near sunset they came out at the rim of a forested canyon. The rock face fell away beneath them for a dozen meters of sheer drop. The far rim looked as Sam imagined the side on which he stood must appear. Trees and brush grew on all the surfaces that offered the least foothold, only succumbing when the rocks were nearly vertical. In niches where the sandstone of the cliff had caved away, someone the old ones? had built clusters of structures. After silently contemplating the vista for a few minutes, Howling Coyote led Sam back from the edge to a grove of pinon trees that were taller "and broader than their immediate neighbors. It took Sam a moment to realize that each of the larger trees stood within a slightly raised area.

Before he could ask a question the shaman took his arm and dragged him deeper into the grove, where a few piles of stone marked the outlines of a building made of many small rooms. No wall was higher than a meter. There was a wide clearing to one side, in the middle of which yawned a dark, rectangular hole. Two logs and the first rung of the ladder they supported poked out of the hole into the failing sunlight. "A kiva. Be warmer to spend the night in there," the sha 184

Robert N. Charrette man said, and disappeared down the ladder. Though Sam felt the air already turning chill, he didn't find the thought of climbing down into darkness inviting. While he stood indecisive, a chant and faint wisps of smoke began to come from the hole.

He rises, to the sky. He rises, seeking light. He rises, toward the power. To the sky, he rises.

Dusk lay on the mesa; a cool breeze arose, rustling through the pinon and caressing the twisted mesquite logs. An owl called, distant and plaintive, and the faint chitter of a hunting bat skittered across Sam's ears. Other hunters would be about. Sam looked at the hole. Where the kiva had seemed to offer only darkness and mystery, it now promised light and warmth and the only companionship on the mesa.

Howling Coyote might be a little odd, but the human companionship he offered was something Sam couldn't long go without. The old shaman was also Sam's only hope for Janice, and Sam was not about to abandon that hope after chasing it so long. For all of Howling Coyote's eccentricity, Sam felt somehow that the shaman was trying to help him. If only he could figure out what the old man was driving at. One thing was certain: Sam wouldn't get anywhere by freezing himself to death alone in the night.

He walked to the ladder rising from the kiva and, coughing a little from the smoke, descended into the earth.

Pain.

Wind howls like a hungry wolf. Fire burns, destroying implacably. Faces are filled with pain, and rage, and fear, and death.

Pain.

His mother, crying and protective. His father, defiant and impotent. Oliver, his brother, torn away by the raging waves of the mob, to surface in impossibly distant places. And Janice…

Pain.

Running. Hiding. The dark shadow against the dark night comes hunting, circling ever closer, until an eerie, keening howl pierces the darkness and sends the shadow away. The sound stays in his head, piercing his peace and bringing…

Pain.

"Hey hey, pup. Is it Dog?"

Sam started awake, dream fragments fleeing from him to be swallowed in swirling mists. Even though he was unsure of what they were, he was more than happy to see them go.

Howling Coyote shook his shoulder. "You were chasing something. Talking to Dog?"

Sam shook his still muddled head. He didn't want to remember, but he knew he hadn't been visiting that pleasant green place where Dog dwelled. "Just a dream. Nothing important.",

"Hey hey, pup. You're dumb even for an Anglo. Dreams are important. They touch on the otherworld, the places where the totems live."

"Dreams are fragments of leftover data. They're just the brain recorrelating information, subconscious data processing."

The old man looked at Sam out the corner of his eye. "Ya sure, Anglo?"

"It's scientifically proven."

"Ya really are dumb. This is a magic world now. Science don't know everything."