C.E. Murphy - Coyote Dreams

Blue mountain broke apart beneath me and I fell a hundred miles, all the way back into my apartment. I was just about to hit my body at terminal velocity when I felt myself jerk, as if wings had spread, and popped back into myself just a little more gently than I’d expected. My shoulders ached. I pressed on one, trying to work the pain away, and encountered slight resistance and the fluttered offense of a man-handled bird. I even thought I heard an undignified squack of dismay, and looked up to find Gary gaping at me without the slightest apology.

“You got—it’s gone now—you had a—you had wings, Jo.”

“What, like an angel?” I slid my hand down my shoulder, half expecting to encounter angel wings.

He pushed his mouth out in exasperation. “Around your head, you crazy dame.”

Right where the raven had snagged me. I could feel its presence on my shoulder, claws dug in for purchase. It had no weight, just a peculiar thereness I couldn’t otherwise identify. “Gary, can you feel that tortoise?”

Gary drew himself up, mock dignity almost hiding the amused twinkle in his gray eyes. “Lady, I ain’t sure that’s the kinda question a nice girl asks an old man.”

“Gary!” I couldn’t get enough exasperation into my voice. It came out sounding like laughter. Gary let the twinkle overtake dignity and gave me a wicked smirk.

“I guess I kinda can,” he allowed, “if I think about it. I got kind of a sense of havin’ somebody watchin’ my back, like maybe I got that big ol’ shell keepin’ me safe. Why?”

I rolled my shoulder, seeing if I could dislodge the faint sense of having a bird clinging to it. I couldn’t. In fact, it hung on harder, so I stopped that nonsense. Well, I tried, anyway. I found myself still shifting around a bit, getting used to the idea of having somebody—or something—watching over me. “I think it worked.”

“That’s good, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like your spirit quest. Or the one I dreamed about. I had another…” I hesitated, frowning. “Dream, I guess. I didn’t think I was asleep.”

“You didn’t fall over,” Gary supplied helpfully. “What’d you dream?”

I shook my head and got to my feet, stretching out some of the stiffness of sitting still. “I dreamed about meeting my dad and me out in a desert someplace. I don’t know where. And I saw Big Coyote in the dream. He was giving me a choice of some kind, but then the raven grabbed me—the little me—and then—”

“Raven?” Gary turned my drum toward me so I could see the raven sheltering the rattlesnake and the wolf under its wings. I stared at the rich dye job and pressed my lips together, nodding. “Think somebody knew somethin’ you didn’t?”

“I don’t know, Gary.” I couldn’t even decide if I hoped the answer was yes or no. I’d had that drum since I was fifteen. The idea that somebody’d seen the potential for what I might become that long ago, without me ever knowing anything about it, made me both sad and nervous. “I don’t know,” I said again. “That didn’t exactly go like I thought it was going to.”

“Nothin’ ever does,” Gary said, far too cheerfully. “That’s how life is, Jo. You gotta run with the punches.”

I smiled. “You’re mixing your metaphors, old man.” Gary sniffed. “Mix a few words up and she starts callin’ me old. How you like that?” he asked of no one in particular, before shaking off his snit and adding, “So you got yourself a little spiritual protection goin’ on. That gonna be any use?”

“Honestly?” I dropped into the couch. “I have no idea.”

“Oh, good.” Gary put my drum aside, folding his hands behind his head. “I always like it when you got a nice solid game plan.”

I grinned despite myself and leaned against his rib cage, feeling like a big cat demanding attention. Reminded, I straightened before I got comfortable. “The world ended again. I forgot. The raven distracted me.”

“That s’posed to make sense?”

I gritted my teeth impatiently and tried once more, explaining the second part of the dream I’d had. “It was kind of like the vision at the dance club. The world—some world—came to an end and I couldn’t stop it.”

“Some world?”

“It wasn’t this one. It was like the Lower World, except not. I mean…” I screwed up my face. “Everything was blue. Everything . The first one was all kind of primary colors. So it was like the second one was more real, more like this, than the first, kind of. If that makes sense.” I was pretty sure it didn’t.

Gary harrumphed. “If they’re gettin’ realer, I guess that kinda gives us an idea of what we’re up against, don’t it?”

I leaned against his side again. “You always sound so cheerful about things like that. ’Hey, Gary, I saw the world ending.’ ’Great!’ I don’t know why you stick around in the face of that, but I’m glad you do.”

Gary put his arm over my shoulders and wrapped it over my collarbone to squeeze me, dropping a kiss on the top of my head. “How many times I gotta tell you, you’re the most interesting thing—”

“That’s happened to you since Annie died, I know.” I smiled. “I just think you must be crazy, the way you run with all this and just kind of let it come without freaking out.”

“Darlin’, you get to be my age, and you start figurin’ there’s two ways to take the world. One’s like it ain’t never gonna change and you’re not gonna, either. The other’s ta keep right on believing in six impossible things before breakfast. Guess I’d just rather do that.”

“Is that what Annie would’ve done, too?” I closed my eyes, inhaling the old man’s mellow scent. “I wish I’d met her.”

“Me, too. She woulda liked you, Jo. You woulda liked her.”

“I’d like anybody who could stay married to you for forty-eight years.”

“Harrumph.” Gary gave me another squeeze to let me know he didn’t mean it. “Always thought she was the practical one,” he said after a moment. I turned my cheek toward his chest, eyes still closed as I listened. “She was a nurse, didja know?”

“I think you told me,” I said with a nod. I felt Gary nod, too, pride coming into his voice.

“She said it was in case I never came back from the war, so she’d have somethin’ to do. I always thought it was so she could work with the little ones without bringin’ ’em home to remind me of what she couldn’t give me. Damn fool woman never did understand.” Sorrow mixed with pride by the end of his words and I squirmed around to put my arm over his chest and hug him.

“How come you didn’t adopt? I think you would’ve made a fantastic dad.” Gary had mentioned once, in passing, that Annie couldn’t have children. He didn’t know I’d seen more than that in a moment of revelation, seen the illness that had nearly claimed his wife’s life and had taken her ability to bear children instead. It was one of those things there was no less-than-awkward way to confess: sorry, Gary, but I accidentally spied on your history a couple days after we met .

Gary chuckled. “Annie was the breadwinner then. Me, I was wanderin’ around playin’ the trumpet at jazz clubs and drinkin’ too much. Guess we never thought we fit the right mold to adopt.”

I sat up, an incredulous smile blooming over my face. “Trumpet? You? Were you any good?”

“I was all right,” Gary said with such deprecation I suspected he’d been a lot better than all right. “Brought in enough spare cash to take Annie on some nice vacations.”

“You still play?”

Gary made a noise that sounded suspiciously like pshaw . I poked him in the ribs, grinning. “You do, don’t you? How come I don’t know this? What other secrets are you keeping?”