It’s not that I don’t appreciate the help. I want out of here and I can’t do it on my own. But let’s fix the body first and worry about my head later. I think I can live with the lack of linear thinking and a drop in my math ability, and maybe even the black holes, if it means I don’t have doctors examining the inside of me as thoroughly as they do the outside.
I think of what Joe said, about me having to fix what’s inside, before the Broken Girl can start to mend as well, and now I really don’t know what to do. It was bad enough trying to figure out how I’m supposed to deal with childhood traumas that date back almost thirty years. If boxing them up doesn’t work, then I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. But with all this other business coming up now as well …
I guess I’m really counting on Joe to find a way out of all of this for me.
Joe
MANIDÒ-AKÌ, 1999
It takes me a while to get to Cody’s manidò-tewin, that big old red rock mountain that serves as his heart home. There’s not much grows on it, though the lower canyons and slopes are treed with mountain juniper and pinyon on the north-facing slopes, Douglas fir, limber, and ponderosa pine on the south. I guess that tall lonely mesa top says something about the emptiness in Cody’s life—or the emptiness that was there for so many years. Now, according to Whiskey Jack, he’s got this magpie cousin in his life.
I try to imagine how something like that could have happened—this is Cody, after all, full of piss and vinegar, and set in his ways—then decide it doesn’t matter. All I have to do is think of Cassie and I know that the only thing that matters is that he and his corbæ lady are friends as well as lovers, that they live for each other, as well as with each other. I’ve got no idea as to how they’re making out along those lines, but I do know this. They’re not living here.
Truth is, I don’t see much of anything. No birds, not even a turkey buzzard. Looking up to the mesa that tops this old mountain from where I’m standing here at the edge of the woods, I get the sense that he hasn’t been here for a while. The whole area feels unattended. Makes sense, I guess. With Cody’s loneliness swallowed by his newfound happiness, there’s not so much need for him to be hiding out in this place anymore. The barrenness of these slopes no longer reflects the state of his heart.
I wonder if he’s got him a new manidò-tewin somewhere, or if this one’s going to adjust to the changes in his life. There’s no hard and fast rule as to how it works. But that’s the spiritworld for you. There’s no hard and fast rule to anything here. Anytime you might think you’ve got it all figured out, it’ll just up and change on you. That’s why some folks still call it the Changing Lands.
I leave the woods and start up the lower slopes, picking my way through the pines and dried grass, then across a stretch of loose slides of stone till I get to the canyons. The slope gets steeper here, but after casting around some, I find a switchback path that leads me right up to the mesa.
It’s not as flat up here as it looks from down below. Everywhere you turn there are jumbles of rock, big as cars some of them. There’s also a handful of bristlecone pines growing up here, gnarled, shrublike trees that are hanging on for dear life to the rock and poor soil. I’ve seen some in California and Nevada that are over four thousand years old, but the soft song I’m hearing from these tells me they’re older still.
On the far side of the mesa top I get a view that takes my breath away. Canyons stretch away for as far as I can see, though maybe canyons isn’t the right word. They’re more like all these amphitheaters carved into the edge of a high plateau that just shoots into the distance until the shadows cast by the setting sun make the far end fade away. Some combination of wind erosion and freeze-thaw cycles of the water caught in the cracks of the rock has created a wonderland of freestanding spires and towers that put me in mind of the red rock canyons of southern Utah where they call them hoodoos or goblins.
I stand there, drinking in the view until the sun finally goes down, then I turn around again. The seep I’m looking for is just over on the far side of these raggedy bristlecone pines. When twilight descends and the moon rises, I see the moon’s reflection in its water, just like in the image on Cassie’s card, but there’s no sign of Nokomis. Still, somebody’s been camping here. I’d say Cody, before he hooked up with that new girl of his, but the signs seem too fresh. There’s a bed of juniper and pine boughs gathered from down below, and the remains of a campfire. A little woodpile tucked away under the lip of some nearby rocks.
I use some of that wood to make a small fire and take a tin mug out of my pack. Filling my mug from the seep, I put it on a rock that I’ve set right up against the fire. Once the water’s bubbling, I drop ground coffee into it, stirring with a stick until it gets good and dark. I use the end of my sleeve to hold the handle until it cools down enough from the night air. It’s gotten chilly up here—not real cold, but you’d want a blanket for sleeping, no question.
Funny thing is, I’m not hungry. I’ve been moving hard and fast all day and I should have worked up an appetite, but right now, all I want is this coffee and a smoke. And the stillness that surrounds me. I need a little downtime from the hectic pace I’ve been keeping before I start in on considering my next move. I suppose it was a long shot, thinking I’d find Nokomis here, but that’s the trouble with those cards of Cassie’s and why I’d just as soon never use them. Once you decide what the image means, it makes you forget to consider all the other possibilities that are out there.
Not that I’m blaming Cassie or her cards. I could’ve stopped her from laying them out for me. But this business with Jilly’s just got me too worried and I was making the same mistake everybody does when they’re looking for a quick way out of a problem. But that’s not the way the world works—not here in manidò-akì, and not in the world outside either. There’s a thing I learned a long time ago but keep forgetting on a regular basis and that is, if it can get complicated, it will.
Which probably explains my visitor.
The sun’s long down and I’m on my second cup of coffee when I hear someone approaching. Boots crunching on the red dirt and stones. I think it’s Cody at first and hope he really has taken a liking to corbæ these days, but I don’t have to worry. I recognize the shine of my visitor’s spirit first, and then the shape of his long lean body and features. It’s only Whiskey Jack. He smiles at me as he approaches the fire, moonlight shining in his eyes, and tips a finger against his flat-brimmed hat.
“Are you following me?” I ask.
“Well, if I was,” he says, “you weren’t doing much to hide your trail.”
I don’t have a spare mug, so I offer him the one I’m using, still half full. Jack smiles and takes a contented sip.
“You always did make a good cup,” he says. “Got any smokes to go with this?”
I’ve never met anyone who likes a smoke as much as Jack does but never carries any on him.
“What’s up?” I ask him as I hand him my tobacco pouch. “That puma girl decide she likes somebody better?”
“Like that’d ever happen,” Jack says.
This kind of self-assurance is a canid trait, part of our genetic makeup. We always like to think the world’s going to go our way, doesn’t matter how much we screw up. I mean, look at Cody. He’s the king of denial. He’s been behind some of the most horrendous screwups you’d ever want to hear about, but nothing’s ever his fault. With my corbæ blood, I’ve got it twice as bad as a regular canid—you think the dog boys are full of themselves, you should spend a little time with some of my black-winged cousins—but I’ve also got Cassie to keep me honest.
Jack lights his cigarette with that Zippo of his that he won from Cody and hands me back my pouch.
“So why’d you leave her?” I ask.
“Never hooked up with her,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows.
“Once I saw the trouble we’ve got,” Jack tells me, “I knew I didn’t have the time to go courting anybody,
doesn’t matter how pretty she might be.”
There’s a smile in his voice, but then there’s always a smile in Jack’s voice. It doesn’t matter what the situation.
“What kind of trouble?” I ask.
“That unicorn we put in the ground? It wasn’t the first those wolves killed. From what I heard at Harley’s, they’ve taken down maybe twelve, thirteen of them now.”
I nod, to show I’m listening.
“You know what that means,” Jack says.
“They’ve taken a liking to killing.”
“Exactly.”
He looks off into the night, blows a lungful of smoke into the darkness.
“And I guess that answers the old question about the medicine in their blood,” he adds after a moment. “Dreamers like that, they’d be looking for more variety in their hunts unless there was something really special about killing you a unicorn.”
“Unless they just like a hard run,” I say.
We’ve both heard all the stories, how nothing can lead you on a chase like a unicorn. And then there’s this trick they got where they can step onto a spirit road and it’s like they just vanished on you. I’m pretty good at spotting those roads myself, but it’s something you have to work at and keep up once you do get the knack. Most people can’t make the time.
But Jack’s shaking his head. “Naw, it’s more than that. You know what these dreamers are like. Give ’em a mouthful of any kind of medicine and all they taste is the power, none of the spirit. They’ll be growing strong on that unicorn blood. Strong and fearless.”
I remember the eyes of that pack leader and nod. The only reason she didn’t take us on was that we were unknowns. She was smart enough to want to study us first.
“And that’s where it stands,” Jack says.
I wait a beat, but when he doesn’t go on, I ask, “So what’s that got to do with us?”
He takes a last drag from his cigarette and tosses the butt into the fire. When his gaze lifts to settle on my face, I can see he’s puzzled.
“Aren’t you the one who’s always saying we have to be more responsible?” he asks.
“So what are you saying?” I reply. “You want us to watch out for these unicorns and keep them safe?”
“No, I just want to kill those wolves.”
“Kill them.”
One of my failings, at least so far as most of the other canids are concerned, is that I like to find solutions that aren’t quite so final. I can be as hard as need be when push comes to shove, but I figure violence never really solves anything. You kill someone, then maybe you’ve solved one problem, but you’re carrying the burden of that killing around with you for the rest of your days. Kill enough and there’s no room left inside for your spirit to grow anymore. All you are is a burden, a stunted spirit, going through the motion of living.
“They’re giving us canids a bad name, Joe.”
But that’s not it at all. I can read it in his eyes. Something about that dead unicorn we buried has put a deep cut in Jack’s heart. I know what he’s feeling and I give him a slow nod. When I think of the one time I saw a living one …
“Yeah,” I tell him. “We’ve got to put a stop to it.”
“I don’t get you,” Jack says. “You’re the justice dog. You see a wrong, you set it right. But this …”
“I’ve been distracted.”
“Because of your sister.”
I nod. “I haven’t been thinking straight since that car ran her down. And there’s no one to help her, except maybe Nokomis.”
“Not much chance of that,” a new voice says.
For a minute I think it’s Cody. Then Jack calls out to him, and I realize it’s Nanabozho standing there on the edge of our fire’s light. They’re both coyotes, so the mistake’s easy to make, but Bo’s not as tall as Cody and he’s got those mismatched eyes: the right one’s brown, the left a steel-blue gray. The way he just appeared here without either Jack or me hearing him is what threw me most, but now I realize this manidò-tewin’s got an echo in more than one coyote’s heart.
That’s the thing about a heart home. When it’s yours you can just be there, doesn’t matter where it is. It’s like snapping your fingers. The campsite here’s probably so fresh because he’s been keeping it up.
“Why do you say that?” Jack asks.
Bo comes and sits by the fire. “I was talking to Jolene,” he says, “and she mentioned that Joe here had a friend he wanted us to look in on from time to time.”
“Jilly,” I say.
He nods. “Sweet girl. So I’ve been keeping her some company, when I’m in that part of the Greatwood. She’s the one who told me that the Old Woman already had a look at her.”
“They talked?”
“Not in words,” Bo tells me. “And not so’s Jilly understood. But I did. She was White Buffalo Woman, Joe, and you know what that means. She’s gone back on a buffalo walk for sure and won’t one of us be seeing her anytime soon.”
“But—”
“You pay any attention to the world outside this place?” Bo asks, interrupting me. “It’s gone to hell, no question. You expect,her to worry about some hurting girl when she’s got a whole world hurting on her? Dying even. And it’s not slow but steady anymore, Joe. We’re talking about a roller-coaster slide. I figure the Old Woman had her a look at Jilly and decided there was nothing there the girl couldn’t deal with on her own.”
I’d been afraid of that. Nokomis has been drifting further and further from individual concerns, for all the reasons Bo just made. With the whole world in trouble, dealing with individual problems is just too overwhelming. Tracking her down had been a long shot and maybe, I had to admit, a way for me to avoid making Jilly do what had to be done. Go down into that hurting place inside her and deal with what was waiting for her there on her own. Her friends could stand beside her, hold her hand and offer their support, but only she could do the work.
“What’s so important about her anyway?” Bo asks.
“She’s a friend,” I tell him. That should say it all, and it does. Except …
“I understand that,” Bo says. “But there’s something else going on there, too. She’s got this big burning light in her like I’ve never seen before.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But it means something. She’s in this world for a reason.”
“Everybody’s in this world for a reason,” Jack says, and for once his voice hasn’t got the trace of a smile in it.
I nod. “Except that light tells me that the reason she’s here could make a big difference for more people than either you or I could ever touch.”
“You’ve got to see her for yourself,” Bo tells Jack. “Then you’ll understand.”
Jack looks from him to me.
I try to explain. “She’s like … like …”
I can’t find the words. I look past the fire and for that moment before my night sight kicks in, all I see is darkness. Then one by one, the stars start to appear. The moon, so big and bright it’s almost white.
“She’s like those unicorns,” I tell Jack finally. “Got a fire in her that just makes you feel good to stand beside, warming your soul.”
We fall quiet then. Bo helps himself to my coffee and my tobacco pouch, rolls a smoke for each of us that Jack lights with his Zippo.
“Wasn’t that Cody’s?” Bo asks.
Jack nods. “I won it from him in a card game.” He gives Bo a considering glance. “But since we’re talking about Cody, isn’t this his manidò-tewin?”
“Was,” Bo says. “He’s got a new place now, all sunshine and flowers. Imagine a desert where the saguaro and other cacti are always in bloom and everywhere you walk, the ground’s thick with yellow poppies and pink fairy dusters.”
I smile. “So he’s really in love.”
Bo nods.
“And what about you?” Jack asks.
“Me?” Bo says.
He gets a look, you can tell his gaze has gone inwa
rd, found some past time that maybe he doesn’t want to remember, but he can’t help going back to it, again and again, worrying at it the way you pick at a scab. Keep picking at it and it never gets the chance to heal.
Bo sighs. “Me, I’ve got a use for a lonely place like this now. I’m like the Old Woman in that way, I guess. The more I walk in the outside world, the more it hurts. Can’t get no rest from it except when I’m here.”
Jack turns to me. “You see what I’m talking about here? That’s why we’ve got to stop those wolves. Bad enough they do what they do to themselves and their own world. And maybe we can’t stop it there. But we can stop them from doing it here.”
“Close the dreaming doors on them,” I say, “so they can’t ever come back.”
That’s what I’m good at—must be the crow in me. Opening and closing the doors of the spirit.
But Jack’s shaking his head. I expected as much. He already told me what he thinks we’ve got to do.
“No,” he says. “That won’t be enough for the likes of them. We’ve just got to put them down.”
“Dog gets the sickness,” Bo says, “you can’t let it live.”
I think again about that body we found, the dark glee in the eyes of those wolves, tearing at its flesh, drinking down the hot fire of its blood.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I say. I can’t keep the reluctance from my voice, but I know it’s what we’ve got to do. “She was strong, the one leading that pack. Close a door on her and she’ll just find another way to get in.” I let my gaze settle on Jack’s face. “But how are we going to find them? Manidò-akì’s a big old world. We could be chasing them for the rest of our lives.”
But Jack’s shaking his head again. “We don’t have to find them,” he says. “They’re going to find us. I saw the look in their eyes when we chased them off. They never knew anything like us even existed. I’ll bet you even money they’ll be looking for us, wanting to know how sweet our blood tastes.”
Bo’s features shift from the human who was drinking coffee from my tin mug to the feral grin of a coyote.