Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“The oldest in this family,” Abuela said.

Bettina frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I had another family before. A husband and two beautiful boys.”

“What happened to them?”

“Mexican soldiers killed them. They killed everyone in our village. They thought we were Apache.”

Bettina frowned. When had the Mexican army fought the Apache? She tried to recall the history lessons in school that she never really paid much attention to.

“But that must have been…”

“A very long time ago, sí. I am much older than I look, nieta. I escaped only because I was in the bajada when they came, gathering medicines. When I returned to our village…” She looked out across the Panteon Nacional, away to the mountains, her dark eyes unreadable. “I had many graves to dig that day.”

“That’s so horrible.”

Abuela nodded. “It was a terrible time.”

“Do you ever…” Bettina hesitated, then went on. “At this time of year, do you ever want to go back… to be there for when their spirits return…”

Abuela touched a hand to Bettina’s cheek. “I go every year,” she said. She moved her hand and laid it between her breasts. “Here. In my heart.”

“Next year I will burn candles for them,” Bettina said.

“They would like that,” Abuela told her. “But now, come, chica. We have work to do.”

They were not alone in their task. Other curanderas walked in the immense acreage of the Panteon Nacional as they did, following a winding path through the graves, pausing wherever a spirit still lingered.

“Es el hora de ir, mi encanto uno,” they would say. It is time to go, my loved one.

And they would wait until the spirit understood and drifted away, then move on themselves. It was close to dusk when Abuela and Bettina started back for the gates of the cemetery. As they drew near to Tio Gerardo’s grave once more, Bettina spotted a little black dog with a white patch over his left eye, sitting on the grave. It was looking at them, expectant, tongue lolling.

“Look,” Bettina said. “What a funny-looking dog, with that patch on his eye.”

She turned to find Abuela standing still, regarding the dog with an expression Bettina had never seen before, a strange mix of sadness, surprise, and fear. That last emotion woke a shiver up Bettina’s spine. She had never seen her grandmother show fear of anything.

“What is it, Abuela?” she asked, her voice hushed.

“His name is Pedrito,” Abuela replied. “He was my dog when I was a little girl.”

Bettina couldn’t imagine her abuela as a little girl. Then she realized what Abuela had just said. If the dog had been hers when she was a little girl…

“You mean he looks like your Pedrito,” she said. Because that dog on Tio Gerardo’s grave was no spirit animal, no ghost. It was a living, breathing creature, of that she was sure.

“No,” Abuela said. “It is him. I would know him anywhere. We were inseparable for years. He went away when I was only a little younger than you are now.”

“Went away. You mean he died?”

Bettina couldn’t take her gaze from the dog. He reminded her a little of her cadejos, without their outrageous coloring and goat’s feet. But he had their lolling smile and obvious good nature.

“No, he didn’t die,” Abuela said. “He simply ran off one day and we never saw him again.”

As if that had been his cue, the dog jumped to his feet. He barked at them, once, twice, a third time, then scampered off through the graves until he was lost to their view.

“What… what does it mean, Abuela?” Bettina asked. “You seemed almost frightened…”

Abuela smiled. “Frightened? Of Pedrito? ¡No probable! But seeing him there on Gerardo’s grave certainly startled me.”

“Papa says we must be careful of dogs,” Bettina said. As she spoke, she could feel los cadejos stir inside her. “That they can open doors into other worlds.”

“Sí,” Abuela agreed. “But they can close them as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Come, we should join the others. Your mama will be thinking that we have wandered off into the mountains.”

Bettina let herself be led out of the Panteon Nacional, back to her frb’s house. Once they were outside the cemetery, she kept an eye out for the little black dog with the white patch over his eye, but he didn’t make a reappearance. By the time she did see him again, it was too late to undo the damage he had done.

The next night, Bettina was home in her own bed. Tomorrow was Sunday and she’d promised Mama that she would go with her to early mass, so she hadn’t stayed up as late as she normally did. But it was now close to midnight and she still couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t sure why, since she was tired enough. Perhaps it was having stayed up so late the past few nights in Nogales, or the stirring of los cadejos who sometimes woke an inexplicable restlessness in her. Perhaps it was only the change in the air pressure. The skies had been heavily overcast all day, the air thick with the promise of a thunderstorm that had yet to come. So far it remained on the horizon, lightning flickering above the mountains accompanied by the faint rumble of distant thunder. Occasionally, the clouds above released a scattering of fat raindrops that were quickly absorbed into the ground. So far, that was all.

After a while she got up and sat by the window, looking out at the darkness that lay beyond the spill of their yard light. As she watched, another splatter of rain ran across the yard, spitting up dust as it hit the ground and was then swallowed by the thirsty dirt. The grumbling thunder sounded closer.

She was about to return to her bed when she saw movement at that place where the darkness of the desert came up to meet the farthest spread of the yard light’s illumination. She leaned closer, expecting to see a coyote, hunting cats, perhaps, or a scavenging javelina. But it was the dog who stepped into the light and sat down in the dust. The little black dog with the white patch over his eye that she’d last seen by Tio Gerardo’s grave. He was ignoring the raindrops, all of his attention focused on their house.

Bien, she thought. This time I will have a closer look at you.

But before she could dress and leave her room, her abuela came walking around the side of the house. The dog waited for her as she approached him, his head cocked to one side, pink tongue hanging from the side of his mouth.

Bettina sat still. An uncomfortable feeling of guilt rose in her, as though she’d planned to sit here and spy on her grandmother, but she couldn’t turn away now. The dog bounced to his feet as Abuela drew near to him, then bounded away into the darkness. Abuela appeared to hesitate for a moment, then followed him out into the desert.

Where was she going, following that dog? It seemed so strange, especially remembering that unfamiliar trace of fear in Abuela’s features when they’d first come upon the little dog in the Panteon Nacional.

At her window, Bettina pressed closer to the glass. It was no use. Beyond the range of the yard light, the darkness was simply too profound. The glass fogged a little from her breath. Suddenly lightning flashed close by, illuminating the yard and the desert beyond. She had a glimpse of tall saguaro, clusters of prickly pear and cholla, her abuela ’s back, some distance from the house now, then the light was gone. She jumped as a thunderclap boomed directly overhead, pulse quickening.

The rain followed almost immediately, great sheets of it that came down so hard that even the backyard was no longer visible. It was as she finally turned from the window that the sensation came to her, as abruptly as the flick of a light switch. One moment she was aware of her abuela ’s presence in the world, the connection that stretched between them, a thousand colored threads of experience and memory all twisted together into the braid that was their relationship. Then it was gone. Cut clean and sudden as though it had never existed. Abuela was no longer in the world. No longer in la epoca del mito. No longer in anyplace that Bettina knew.