Charles De Lint - The Ivory and the Horn

"I would have remembered it if we'd ever met," she said.

"I didn't say we'd actually met."

"Now you've got me all curious."

"Maybe we should leave it a mystery."

"Don't you dare," Sophie said. "You have to tell me now."

"I'd rather show you than tell you," Max said. "Just give me a moment."

He went up a set of stairs over by the kitchen area that Sophie hadn't noticed earlier. Once he was gone, she wandered about the large downstairs room to give the statues a closer look. The resemblances were uncanny. It wasn't so much that he'd captured the exact details of her dream's desert fauna as that his sculptures contained an overall sense of the same spirit; they captured the elemental, inherent truth rather than recognizable renderings. She was crouched beside a table, peering at a statue of a desert woodrat with human hands, when Max returned with a small painting in hand.

"This is where I first saw you," he said.

Sophie had to smile. She remembered the painting. Jilly had done it years ago: a portrait of Wendy, LaDonna and her, sitting on the back steps of a Yoors Street music club, Wendy and LaDonna scruffy as always, bookending Sophie in a pleated skirt and silk blouse, the three of them caught in the circle of light cast by a nearby streetlight. Jilly had called it TheThree Muses Pause to Reconsider Their Night.

"This was Peter's," Max said. "He loved this painting and kept it hanging in his office by his desk. The idea of the Muses having a girl's night out on the town appealed to the whimsical side of his nature. I'd forgotten all about it until I was up there the other day looking for some papers."

"I haven't thought of that painting in years," Sophie told him. "You know Jilly actually made us sit for it at night on those very steps— at least for her initial sketches, which were far more detailed than they had any need to be. I think she did them that way just to see how long we'd actually put up with sitting there."

"And how long did you sit?"

"I don't know. A few hours, I suppose. But it seemed like weeks. Is this your work?" she added, pointing to the statutes.

Max nodded.

"I just love them," she said. "You don't show in Newford, do you? I mean, I would have remembered these if I'd seen them before."

"I used to ship all my work back to the galleries in Arizona where I first started to sell. But I haven't done any sculpting for a few years now."

"Why not? They're so good."

Max shrugged. "Different priorities. It's funny how it works, how we define ourselves. I used to think of myself as a sculptor first— everything else came second. Then when the eighties arrived, I came out and thought of myself as gay first, and only then as a sculptor. Now I define myself as an AIDS activist before anything else. Most of my time these days is taken up in editing a newsletter that deals with alternative therapies for those with HIV."

Sophie thought of the book she'd seen lying on one of the tables when she was looking at the sculptures. Staying Healthy With HIV by David Baker and Richard Copeland.

"Your friend Peter," she said. "Did he die of AIDS?"

"Actually, you don't die of AIDS," Max said. "AIDS destroys your immune system and it's some other illness that kills you— something your body would have been able to deal with otherwise." He gave her a sad smile. "But no. Ironically, I was the one who tested positive for HIV. Peter had leukemia. It had been in remission for a couple of years but just before we went to the desert it came back and we had to go through it all again: the chemo treatments and the sleepless nights, the stomach cramps and awful rashes. I was sure that he'd pulled through once more, but then he died a week after we returned."

Max ran his finger along the sloped back of a statue of a horned owl whose human features seemed to echo Max's own, "I think Peter had a premonition that he was going to die, and that was why he was so insistent we visit the desert one more time. He had a spiritual awakening there after one of his bouts with the disease and afterwards, he always considered the desert as the homeground for everything he held most dear." Max smiled, remembering. "We met because of these statues. He would have moved there, except for his job. Instead, I moved here."

Sophie got a strange feeling as Max spoke of Peter's love for the desert.

"Remember we talked about dreams at the opening?" she said.

Max nodded. "Serial dreams— what a lovely conceit."

"What I was telling you wasn't something I made up. And ever since that night I've been dreaming of a desert— a desert filled up with these." Sophie included all of the statuary with a vague wave of her hand. "Except in my desert they aren't statues; they're real."

"Real."

"I know it sounds completely bizarre, but it's true. My dreams are true. I mean, they're not so much dreams as me visiting some other place."

Max gave her an odd look. "Whenever someone talked about what an imagination I must have to do such work, Peter would always insist that it was all based on reality— it was just a reality that most people couldn't see into."

"And are they?"

"I..." Max looked away from her to the statues. He lay his hand on the back of the owl-man again, fingers rediscovering the contours they had pulled from the clay. "I should show you Peter's office," he said when he finally looked up.

He led her up to the second floor which was laid out in a more traditional style, a hallway with doors leading off from it, two on one side, three on the other. Max opened the door at the head of the stairs and ushered her in ahead of him.

"I haven't been able to deal with any of this yet," he said. "What to keep... what not..."

A large desk stood by the window, covered with books, papers and a small computer, but Sophie didn't notice any of that at first. Her attention was caught and trapped by the rooms' other furnishings: the framed photographs of the desert and leather-skinned drums that hung on the walls; a cabinet holding kachina figures, a medicine flute, rattles, fetishes and other artifacts; the array of Max's sculptures that peered at her from every corner of the room. She turned slowly on the spot, taking it all in, until her gaze settled on the familiar face of one of the sculptures.

"Coyote," she said softly.

Max spoke up from the doorway. "Careful. You know what they say about him."

Sophie shook her head.

"Don't attract his attention."

"Why?" Sophie asked, turning to look at Max. "Is he malevolent? Or dangerous?"

"By, all accounts, no. He just doesn't think things through before he takes action. But while he usually emerges intact from his misadventures, his companions aren't always quite so lucky. Spending time with Coyote is like opening your life to disorder."

Sophie smiled. "That sounds like Coyote, all right."

Her gaze went back to the cabinet and the medicine flute that lay on its second shelf between two kachinas. One was the Storyteller, her comical features the color of red clay; the other was Kokopelli. The medicine flute itself was similar to the one that Geordie had traded away, only much more beautifully crafted. But then everything in this room had a resonance of communion with more than the naked eye could see— a sense of the sacred.

"Did Peter play the flute?" she asked.

"The one in the cabinet?"

"Mmm."

"Only in the desert. It has next to no volume, but a haunting tone."

Sophie nodded. "I know."

"He'd play that flute and his drums and rattles. He'd go to sweats and drumming nights when we were down there. I used to tease him about trying to be an Indian, but he said that the Red Road was open to anyone who walked it with respect."

"The Red Road?"

"Native spiritual beliefs. I went with him sometimes, but I never really felt comfortable." He touched the nearest statue, an intricate depiction of a prickly pear spirit. "I love the desert, too, but I've never been much of a joiner."