Shaman Winter (7 page)

“Do you think—”

“No, I won't need it, amor, but just in case.” He said no more, and they went outside.

“Hey, bro,” Armando greeted Sonny. “You're looking great.” He slapped Sonny on the back. Plumes of frozen breath laced the frigid morning air.

“Feeling great,” Sonny answered. “Pretty chilly.” He shivered.

“Thank you, señor.” Armando winked. “Hey, no wonder you're doing great. Two gorgeous women like these to take care of you. Hello, Rita.” He smiled, giving both her and Lorenza an abrazo.

“I'm not complaining,” Sonny said. He looked at his brother and the thought struck him: If what don Eliseo believed was true, Armando's existence would also be threatened. They were twins. Could history unravel from the past to the present? How many ancestors would disappear? The entire line of Bacas from New Mexico? How many others?

Don Eliseo's interpretation of the dream, not the cold air, made him shiver.

“Hi, wiener dog.” Armando bent to pet Chica, but she growled. “Okay, okay, be nice. I'm not going to eat you.”

“Used-car salesmen aren't her style,” Sonny said.

“Hey, a lot of people don't like us,” Armando replied. “But we play an important role in society. We take used cars off your hands. Now that you've got a van, want to sell your troca?”

Sonny's truck stood parked in the driveway. It looked abandoned, dusty. He really hadn't thought about his truck, but he knew don Eliseo had been starting it each morning to keep the battery alive.

“No,” he answered, thinking one day he was going to drive again.

“Old cowboys never part with their trucks.” Armando smiled and opened the van's side door and pushed the button to let down the wheelchair lift. “This thing runs as smooth as one of those cowgirls at the Fiesta Lounge on Saturday night. An artist was using it, so there's a few tarps and canvases in the back. I can take them out.”

“That's okay,” Sonny said as he drove his chair onto the lift.

“I picked this one because the lift works like a charm, and it's got a counter, like a desk. It's like a little office. Here's the control. Real easy to work. See?”

Sonny took the control Armando handed him. “Elfego Baca rides again,” he said, and sniffed the cold air, identifying the piñon aroma in the morning haze. Some of his neighbors were burning wood in a fireplace or a woodburning stove. Mingled with it was the faint rotting smell of cottonwood leaves.

Weatherman Morgan had predicted a low-pressure weather front approaching from the northwest. There would be snow by nightfall in the Taos mountains, but in the calm before the storm, the fragrances of winter blossomed. The cold morning would give way to a sunny day in the fifties before the front arrived.

“Ready.”

“Vamos,” Lorenza said. She turned, embraced Rita, and whispered, “Take care of yourself, promise?”

“I promise,” Rita replied. She leaned and kissed Sonny. “Cuidado,” she whispered.

“For sure,” he replied, and patted the pistol on his lap.

“You still carrying the old man's pistol around? Have you ever shot anyone?” Armando asked.

When their father had given the pistol to Sonny, Armando had been jealous. He thought it should belong to him, and he tried to talk Sonny out of it, but Sonny wouldn't budge. Armando finally gave up trying to own the pistol. He just wasn't into history like Sonny.

“Not yet,” Sonny replied. He had never fired the pistol at anyone. But Lorenza had.

“Would you?” Armando persisted.

“I guess if I had to save my skin.”

The sunlight glistened on the shiny pistol.

“Hope you don't have to, bro.”

“Me, too.” Sonny handed Chica to Rita and pushed the control buttons that effortlessly and quietly lifted the chair into the van. “Not bad. Gracias.”

“Anytime.” Armando shut the door.

“Be careful!” Rita blew him a kiss.

“Ten-four.” Sonny called back.

Lorenza got into the driver's seat and started the van. She gave a thumbs-up signal and they were off, heading—if don Eliseo was right—to a meeting with Sonny's destiny.

The University of New Mexico campus spread across the hill just east of downtown. Pueblo on the Mesa it was called—a pueblo of learning. The library, a stunning example of New Mexican pueblo-style revival architecture, sat in the middle of campus. The stuccoed walls, vigas, and wood interior gave the sanctuary of books a warm, intimate feeling, something felt as New Mexican in character. Something close to home.

Lorenza parked on the north side in a handicapped zone, thanking the artist who had rented the van before Sonny. He had left a blue handicapped parking sticker on the dash.

“The place looks deserted,” Sonny said as they headed for the door. Only a student or two had crossed the duck pond knoll as they drove in, and the library itself was not buzzing with the usual student activity.

“Christmas break,” Lorenza said. “The students are gone for the holidays.”

“Ah so.” He had lost track of time, spent the nights dreaming and the days analyzing the dreams. But last night's dream had been different. Before he fell asleep, he was thinking of Oñate's entry into New Mexico. The Nuevo Mexicanos were born on that date. The son of Andres Vaca was the firstborn. The river flowing from the Garden of Eden. He hadn't counted on Raven showing up. But Raven wasn't the serpent that brought knowledge; he was the ruler of the land of misty dreams, a land without clear thought, chaos.

At the reception desk Sonny asked for Teresa Marquez, a librarian who had helped him years ago when he was an undergraduate. Since then he had done most of his research and reading at the downtown city library. He was relieved when Teresa appeared, a dark-haired woman with a radiant smile.

“I'm Sonny Baca, this is Lorenza Villa—”

“I know who you are.” She took Sonny's hand. “You're getting to be quite a hero. I've saved the newspaper articles on you.”

“Me in a file?”

“Do you know the writer Ben Chávez? He's been doing research on your great-grandfather, Elfego Baca. He suggested that I keep a file on you. Said you would become as famous as him.”

“I doubt it,” Sonny replied. “By the way, what happens if someone steals my file?” Sonny asked.

“I don't think so,” Teresa replied, turning to greet Lorenza.

Sonny wondered if being in a file was like being in a dream. Raven the sorcerer could enter the file and wreak havoc. Some of the old traditional natives didn't allow their pictures to be taken, believing that witchcraft could be performed on the photo. The soul could be attacked by witches who possessed the picture.

There was a history not even the file could contain, a soul few could know. Sonny had been reading the Osiris myth. Isis had sewn the pieces of Osiris together after he had been dismembered by his brother. A new Osiris had been born. Technology was moving in that direction, the creation of the hologram man. Cloning from a cell. Pure witchcraft.

“So, what can I do for you today?”

Sonny explained what they were after, and Teresa led them into the Anderson Room. One sole person sat at a table, hunched over piles of books at the far end of the room.

“It's all here,” she said, pointing at the shelves lined with well-worn books and files that held the papers Sonny needed. “The Oñate Collection.”

“Can I check out these books?”

“Oh, no, these are special collections. They're not allowed out of the library. But there's dozens of books on Oñate that can be checked out. I can gather some for you if you like, and issue you a library card so you can take them with you.”

“Thanks. That would be a great help.”

“Be back in a while. In the meantime, help yourselves.”

“Where do we start?” Lorenza asked, placing the notebooks and pencils on the table.

“I guess reading anything that has to do with the Oñate expedition,” Sonny said. “Just start digging.”

Lorenza took books from the shelf and spread them on the large oak table.

“When does the history of New Mexico begin?” Sonny asked.

“It begins with those who write history,” Lorenza answered.

“The Spaniards.”

Lorenza shrugged. “The Pueblo Indians were living in the Río Grande valley for thousands of years before the Spaniards came, but they kept no written history.”

“The petroglyphs don't qualify?”

“They're not in the stacks.”

“How about ‘Paso por aquí' inscribed on a rock?”

“History belongs to the conquerors.”

He knew the history of the state, and of the country, had often left out the native view. He picked up the volume in front of him. “Gaspar Perez de Villagrá's
Historia de La Nueva México
, 1610, published in Spain. This man wrote the first epic of the region. Never read this when I was doing my undergraduate work.”

“History also belongs to those who control it,” Lorenza answered. “The Villagrá epic is hardly ever mentioned in textbooks. History is supposed to start at Plymouth Rock.”

She pulled up a chair and glanced over his shoulder.

“Raven is trying to control my history,” Sonny said.

“Yes. And if he can acquire enough control, he can …”

“Destroy me.”

“He's an expert marksman. Why doesn't he just stalk and shoot me?”

“He can no longer kill you that way.”

“Why?”

“It's not your body he wants to get rid of, it's your soul. Your real struggle is in the world of spirits. Raven knows this.”

“But I have the protection of the Zia sign.”

“Yes. So he figures out ways to get to you once and for all. He has killed you in prior lives, and maybe sometimes you got lucky and killed him. But you're caught up in an eternal battle. That's the meaning behind don Eliseo's interpretation of your dream.”

Sonny shook his head. He knew Raven liked to play games. Ancient games. Taking Owl Woman was such a game. Now it was Sonny's move.

“We've been at this for a long time?” Sonny pondered.

“Yes.”

“He's getting closer,” Sonny whispered, feeling a worry in the gut, like a llano whirlwind enveloping a person in its fury even though the person had crossed his fingers and held up the sign to fend off the evil in the dust devil. Raven's evil could not be turned away as easily.

Under his shirt the Zia medallion sat on his chest like an ancient heart beating its own rhythm. Sonny had tried to return the medallion to Tamara, and she had refused it, calling Sonny the new Raven. Sonny and Raven, the flip sides of the medallion, the light of the sun on one side, chaos of darkness on the other. Yin and yang brothers engaged in eternal battle, growing older and wiser, until the resolution of their struggle acquired cosmic proportions.

Sonny rubbed his forehead to clear his thoughts.

“You okay?” Lorenza asked.

“Sometimes I feel like getting rid of the medallion—”

“You can't. The Zia sun symbol is the most life-affirming sign we have,” Lorenza said. “If you give up, Raven takes over.”

Yeah, Sonny knew. A responsibility had been given to him, and a lot depended on what he did.

He flipped through the pages until he found the date he was looking for. “Here it is. Fifteen ninety-eight, the year Oñate entered New México. Don Juan de Oñate, born 1552 in Zacatecas, México. Fought the Chichimecs, spent twenty years as a soldier, married Isabel Cortés Tolosa, a descendant of Hernán Cortés. She died in the 1580s. Some say he led the colonization to escape the sadness of her death.”

“Fifteen ninety-eight, date of origins …” She nodded.

Sonny trusted Lorenza implicitly; he respected her powers. She had taken him into his guardian world of spirits where he found his coyote spirit.

“Owl Woman, bathed in the river of the garden …”

“She keeps the Calendar of Dreams, the bowl. Could you recognize it if you saw it?”

“Yup. I held it in my hands, clear as daylight.”

“We know when we disrupt a person's dream we cause psychological injury. But each person's dream is connected to the collective dream, and so to kill one dreamer threatens us all. The dream is history—it is continuous. The dream contains the past and future. Raven knows he can cause incredible harm.”

“And he picked me.”

“You're point man,” she replied softly.

Her voice was vibrant with a knowledge he would never find in the books before him.

“Some Pueblo legends say that even at the time of creation, a germ existed in the ear of corn. Some evil planted there by sorcerers. The corn that feeds us carries a germ—another way of saying we all come to earth with a positive and negative energy.”

“The same plus and minus that vibrate through the universe,” Sonny said. “Soul energy, don Eliseo says. One part seeks clarity, the other wants to return to chaos. Each one of us reflects the universe.”

“Time and space curve and come around, everything in the universe reappears somewhere, sometime. The dream curves. Raven, the sorcerer, plots the path. He can enter the dream and destroy the dreamer.”

“Bang, and I'm gone. What can the books tell us?” he asked, thumping the book in front of him.

“Names, a map of your past. Your genealogy.”

“I'm just part of everyone who ever came up the Río Grande. Puro mestizo.”

“Let's see if Andres Vaca's DNA is in you,” Lorenza said, and flipped the page.

“Okay.” Sonny took up a pen.

He wrote “Notes” across the top of the first notebook page. He read, then summarized:

—The Oñate expedition starts north for the interior province of New Mexico in early 1598. Six months on the trail. 200 soldiers and their families. Founded the first Spanish town near San Juan de los Caballeros, August 11, 1598. “Ciudad de Nuestro Padre San Francisco.” Called San Gabriel or San Juan Bautista. Completed the church by Sept. 7, 1598. Great rejoicing. The men played “Los Cristianos y los Moros,” a mock battle between the Catholic Spaniards and the Moors.