Shaman Winter (2 page)

In the previous novel,
Rio Grande Fall
, Sonny is injured. I choose to have him in a wheelchair because the person who is physically handicapped has also been one of my themes. So often we think of “getting well” as only a physical challenge. But getting well also involves the psyche. Both body and soul seek a harmonious existence.

Traditional healing practices and modern medicine, both help. Exploring dreams and what they tell us also helps. Someday we may come to a more total and unified way of understanding ourselves. In the meantime we seek meaning not only in ordinary reality but also in dreams. The challenges of life require this unified approach.

I want to thank the University of New Mexico Press for reissuing the four Sonny Baca novels. The kind and professional efforts of UNM Press ensures that my work and that of many of our writers will remain in print.

—Rudolfo Anaya

P
ART
1

T
HE
S
HAMAN
D
REAMS

1

Sonny awakened with a cry tearing from his throat. “Aaaowl W'oooman!”

He reached for her, feeling she was within his reach, just beyond the luminous light of the doorway, but the dream was already fading.

“Híjola,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes and struggling to sit up. A dream, but it seemed so real.

He shivered. His bedroom was cold.

He looked around, half expecting to see the desert scene of the dream; instead, he was enveloped in the soft aura of a December dawn flooding through his window. He had startled Chica. She peered from the blankets where she lay snuggled, looking at him with an understanding expression.

“Qué pasa?” her seal-like eyes seemed to ask.

“It's okay, Chica, just a dream,” he said, petted her, and lay back into his pillow.

Chica was the red dachshund that had appeared in the neighborhood. Don Eliseo, Sonny's neighbor, took her in and fed her, but she insisted on making her home with Sonny.

“She's lost,” the old man said. “I fed her, but she keeps coming to your door.”

“Let her stay,” Sonny said. Don Eliseo had set up a box for her to sleep in, but every night she jumped on the bed and burrowed beneath the blankets.

Sonny reached for the notebook on the bed stand. During the past few months his dreams had been very real, and don Eliseo had suggested that he record them. The old man was teaching Sonny how to construct his dreams.

“A person can actually be in charge of their dreams,” the old man said.

Sonny doubted him at first. Dreams were supposed to be incoherent, random images that came out of nowhere. Symbols that needed to be interpreted. How could one order one's dreams?

“When you enter the dream, you leave this world,” don Eliseo replied. “The two worlds are connected by a luminous door. You are the master of your life in this world, so you can be the master of your dreams.”

Sonny followed his instructions, and he had become adept at it. Dreams that used to come as jumbled images now came as stories that somehow Sonny began to manipulate even as he dreamed.

“Let's see,” he whispered, wetting the tip of the pencil with his tongue, and then began to record the dream.

In the dream I was a Spanish soldier named Andres Vaca. I was with Oñate on the banks of the Río Grande just before he started his march into New Mexico in 1598 …

He paused and saw himself again, standing on the sandy banks of the river, staring across the slow-moving, muddy waters. To the north lay the unknown province, that huge expanse of land the earlier Spanish explorers referred to as La Nueva México.

Oñate's expedition had come north from Mexico to the banks of the Río Bravo, as it was called on some of the early maps, near a place called El Paso del Norte. From the valley of San Bartolomé in Nueva Viscaya, they had traveled, journeying north to the promised land, la tierra adentro, the land of Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, and the other earlier Spanish explorers. Behind them lay the desert of Chihuahua.

Andres stood looking north, Sonny wrote, wearing a white shirt and black pantaloons and the helmet and breastplate of a soldier. For the soldiers and families who had come with don Juan, this was more than a new adventure, it was a chance for a new life. They realized there were many more dangers to be faced as they crossed the desert called la Jornada del Muerto, but the explorers were eager and expectant.

The vision of what La Nueva México promised was a constant inducement for the weary members of the expedition. For the men the possibility of finding gold meant they could be hidalgos, hijos de algo. They could acquire land and a proper title, something they could never hope for in Spain or México. Yes, the life of a landed gentleman was worth risking one's life for. Even the adelantado Oñate dreamed of finding rich mines to rival those of Zacatecas.

On the other hand, the goal of the Franciscan friars who accompanied the expedition was to save pagan souls, the souls of the many Indian tribes described by Cabeza de Vaca, Fray Niza, and Coronado. Already the friars had been busy preparing the natives of the region for baptism.

Andres sniffed the clean desert air and smiled. Let the friars do their work—he had other things on his mind. Behind him, in the camp, he heard the sounds of the men preparing for the wedding ceremony. A smile lingered on his lips and lit his brown eyes. This evening he would marry a young woman, the one the tribe called Owl Woman. The friars would baptize her, give her a Christian name, and she and Andres would be married. He felt rejuvenated in his purpose for going north. Now he would have a wife by his side, and he would raise a family in those unknown lands.

Sons and daughters to populate the land. Sons and daughters to build villages and make peace with the Pueblo Indians of the north. He had had enough of the gold-induced carnage that had swept over México like a plague. He was a soldier, and he had done his share of murdering, but an apparition had come to him one day on the field of battle. A woman dressed in blue appeared and told him to go north to meet his destiny. He was to put away the sword and become a farmer. Andres resisted the apparition's words, and the next day he was wounded in battle. Near death's door he again saw the woman, and she repeated her message: Go north into the new land, put away your sword, and turn to the earth for your sustenance.

He had heard the stories of the great Coronado, and he knew that in the northern mountains lay meadows where cattle and sheep would thrive. Fields of corn and vineyards would fill the valleys. The woman's voice induced these images, and Andres Vaca said, Yes, I will follow this path. It is meant to be.

The horses in the remuda whinnied. Perhaps they sensed a desert coyote moving in the sandhills. A cool breeze drifted across the river, and on the branches of a cottonwood tree a large raven landed.

“In the dream I was Andres Vaca,” Sonny said to Chica.

Don Eliseo had said, “Dreams are a journey into the world of spirits. Since it is your journey, you must construct the dream. Do not be at the mercy of other forces that come to tamper with your dream. With practice, it may be that someday you may become master of your dream. Many are masters of this material world and learn to manipulate it to their desire. But few become masters of their dreams.”

The old man knows about dreams, Sonny thought and returned to his notes.

Someone approached Andres Vaca.

Buenas tardes, Capitán Vaca, the man called.

Buenas tardes, General, Andres Vaca replied, turning to greet Juan Pérez de Oñate, the newly appointed governor of New Mexico.

Forgive me for interrupting your reverie, Andres, Oñate said, addressing the young man informally.

Not at all, Andres Vaca replied. In my contemplation I was merely enjoying these last moments as a single man.

Oñate smiled. You are marrying an exceptional woman. With her at your side, I am sure destiny will treat you kindly.

I was looking to the north and imagining the great adventure that awaits us, Andres replied.

Yes, Oñate said. On an evening like this I also am filled with the desire to see the northern mountains. Following the Great River of the North, this Río Bravo, we will find a mountain range called the Sangre de Cristo. There in those valleys we will settle.

Andres nodded.

The journey has been long and difficult, Oñate continued. Now we stand on the banks of this river, the same river described by Coronado. To the north lies the province of La Nueva México. Land that His Royal Highness has commanded us to conquer and settle. We are to pacify and Christianize los indios. The Crusaders who saved Jerusalem from the heathen Muslim could not have had a greater purpose.

The Spaniards' relationship to God was imbued with such a purpose. With the help of God only a century before, they had driven the Moors out of Spain, driven out the Jews, and in the few decades that followed, they had conquered the New World. Surely there was divine intervention in those historical events. The finger of God stirring the history of man. This faith in divine guidance had become part of the Spanish character, a driving force that pushed them recklessly and ruthlessly across the New World.

The Spanish crown now claimed the lands from Tierra del Fuego to this newly established interior province of New Mexico. Riches beyond the imagination flowed to Spain, and the crown thanked God. This belief that God approved their right to reap the rewards of ancient civilizations and to save the souls of los indios had become the manifest destiny of Spain.

This land to the north has been called the kingdom of the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola, Oñate continued. I feel in my blood the gold and silver mines of Cíbola will make us all rich beyond expectation. And just as important, thousands of native souls will be baptized and saved.

He turned to look at Andres. The young woman you marry will be the first native baptized. All bodes well for our adventure.

I am glad you are pleased, Andres replied.

He knew other Spanish soldiers had taken Indian women for their wives in Mexico, but the love affair that had developed between Andres and the Indian girl was a surprise to all. The woman was not an Aztec princess, she had no rich father or uncles to provide a dowry; she was a native of the new region, a people the Spaniards had just met.

Yes, I am pleased, Oñate said. You are one of my finest soldiers, Andres, and if you permit me to say, you have been like a son to me. I have been able to confide in you while we waited for the expedition to be under way, and you have been loyal.

You do me an honor, Andres replied. My loyalty and my love for you are as deep as my vision to settle in La Nueva México.

Oñate smiled and placed his hand on Andres's shoulder.

It is our vision that brings us to this land, Andres. You are the first of many who will marry the Indian women. I suppose if we could bring more of our women from Spain, it would be different, but if we are to survive, we need to raise families. We need sons who will make good soldiers. And we need to be mindful of our purpose, to baptize the natives. As Father Bartolomé de las Casas has pointed out in his treatises, the Indians do have souls.

I never doubted that, Andres replied, thinking that in thousands of masses he had attended as a good Catholic, he had never felt his soul come alive as it did when he was with Owl Woman.

The captain general nodded. We also will need farmers. Men who can feed our colony. This is the beginning, and it is a stroke of luck. You gain a wife, and I cement friendly relations with these people. Our caravans returning to México with the gold of La Nueva México will have a friendly outpost here.

They were interrupted by someone hurrying toward them and calling Andres. They turned to see a soldier, one of the guards stationed at the Indian camp.

Someone has stolen the girl, he cried in Castilian Spanish.

Qué dices? Oñate responded.

It's true, General. Owl Woman is gone!

Worry clouded Andres's forehead. He realized why he had shivered in the river breeze. Evil was in the air, something that had haunted him in the tranquil village of Alburquerque in Spain long before he had decided to sail to the New World. Even in the pristine desert, at the edge of this new province to the north, the evil presence had finally caught up with him.

Stolen the woman? Oñate questioned. He looked at Andres. It's a game. Perhaps some of your friends have stolen the bride as is the custom. Or perhaps it's part of the Indian ceremony of marriage?

No! the soldier replied. The Indian women came out of the jacal where they had been all day with the girl. They were crying in the most terrible way, and when I went into the hut, the girl wasn't there! The fear in the eyes of the women assures me it's no joke.

We must go quickly, Oñate commanded, and he and Andres hurried after the guard toward the Indian camp.

In his heart, Andres felt his dreams collapsing.

The expedition from Nueva Viscaya had come this far. Here they were met by a friendly tribe of Indians, men who appeared with bows, long hair cut to resemble little Milan caps, and colored with red paint. Manxo, they said, greeting the Spaniards in peace.

Here, while the expedition rested and reorganized itself for the final trek northward, Capitán Andres Vaca had fallen in love with a young woman of the tribe. He had admired the beauty of the Aztec women in México-Tenochtitlán, and like the other soldiers he had bedded with his share. But he had never felt the certainty of true love.

That's what he had felt when he saw the young woman the elders called Owl Woman. He had gone with Oñate to negotiate with the Indians; Owl Woman sat with the chiefs and the shaman. It was clear that even at her young age she was their equal. They turned to her for advice, and she interpreted for them. She had returned Andres's gaze, letting him know that she was interested in him.

He was surprised at the affection he felt, and more surprised when he realized she was returning the interest. But he knew the young woman was special. She was the daughter of a shaman, and she had been sent to the land of the Aztecs to study. While in México-Tenochtitlán, she had learned the language of the Spaniards. The elders treated her with great respect, for about her were whispered the stories of a special destiny.