THE GAIA WEBSTERS
300 years after The Fall, after Peak Oil and the rise and fall of corporatocracy, the people of the former United States have formed a more perfect union where they live in relative harmony, caring for one another and the land, helped out in part by the legendary soothsayer healers. In the Arizona territory, Gloria Stone lives a good life as the town healer until the governor’s man arrives in town and demands she return with him to the governor’s place. When she refuses, many of the townspeople contract a mysterious illness. As Gloria heals one person after another, something shatters within her. One day she attempts to heal a man and instead kills him. She runs for her life until she stumbles into a cave and begins to uncover the truth of her forgotten past and the genesis of her remarkable healing abilities.
Earthy, sensuous, and provocative, The Gaia Websters challenges our assumptions about technology, humanity, community, love, and family.
This new edition contains an afterword by the author.
Also by Kim Antieau
Novels
The Blue Tail
Broken Moon
Church of the Old Mermaids
Coyote Cowgirl
Deathmark
The Fish Wife
The Jigsaw Woman
Mercy, Unbound
Ruby’s Imagine
Nonfiction
Counting on Wildflowers: An Entanglement
The Salmon Mysteries: A Guidebook to a
Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries
Short Stories
Trudging to Eden
The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales
Chapbook
Blossoms
Blog
www.kimantieau.com
The Gaia Websters
Kim Antieau
Published by Green Snake Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright (c) 2011 by Kim Antieau
Originally published by ROC in 1997
Cover image by Katherine Prairie Stock
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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The Gaia Websters
Kim Antieau
1
I AM A soothsayer.
I admit this freely now despite all that I have learned. Or perhaps because of it.
In ancient times, it was said that a soothsayer was someone who claimed to foretell events, a prophet, or seer, someone who could calm or relieve pain.
I have never foretold any event. I do not see myself as a prophet or seer.
I have calmed and relieved the pain of many. I have also caused pain to many.
Perhaps this truthsaying, this story of mine, will calm or relieve the pain of some.
Perhaps not.
But it is all I know.
TEN YEARS EARLIER, I awoke in a cave with no memory. I picked my name from the graffiti on the rock. The stone read: Sarah, Susan, Constance, Virginia, Bobby, Gloria. I chose Gloria. I liked the shape of the G, how it curved around into itself and then back out again. Like me in and out of that cave.
Although I did not remember anything about myself when I awakened, I quickly realized I must have been a healer. As I walked around the woods near the cave, I recognized too many plants and knew too much about their healing properties to be a casual student. Then I passed a little girl with bloody knees on my way into the town nearest the cave. We were both astonished to see the gravel cuts disappear when I touched her as I picked the stones out of her skin. She thanked me but ran away quickly. I turned and headed for another community, a ball of fear forming in my stomach.
I made the Washington Territory my home for a time. I worked as a healer, disguising my hands-on healing abilities as best I could. One year, I journeyed to the Arizona Territory. I got through immigration easily and was awestruck by the desert. All the prickly vegetation and seemingly stark landscape made me feel as though I had found a kindred land. I offered my services to the town of Coyote Creek and had been happily ensconced there until the day the man from the governor tried to follow me up Black Mountain to my home.
He kept tripping and falling on his way up the hill, pricking himself with every cactus that came within yards of the path. I hurried over the ridge to lose him. Cosmo stood on the trail watching the man, his head cocked in what I took to be an expression of puzzlement.
“Woman!” the governor’s man called.
Cosmo’s low growl carried up the hill to me. He did not like the man either.
“Gloria Stone!” the man screamed. “Get this mangy dog away from me!”
“Coyote, you idiot,” I murmured, and hurried on. I could see my small house tucked into the next ridge, surrounded by saguaro and juniper.
“If the governor wants you, he will have you!” The man’s whiny voice reverberated up to me.
I stopped. Who did he think he was? If the governor “wanted me,” he would “have me”? I should go down and take his shoes and make him walk back barefoot. Or maybe I should rip off his clothes and let Cosmo chew him all over.
No. Too much trouble. I had had a long day, and I was tired.
Then I heard the sound of scree rolling and the man’s cry as he tumbled down the hill like the useless little weed he was.
Cosmo yelped.
“I’m coming,” I grumbled.
Lucky for the man, a magnificent saguaro had stopped his descent, and he now lay sprawled against it.
Cosmo waited on the trail until we met. Then he followed me to the saguaro and the injured man whose face and hands were bloody from the prickly pear he had rolled into.
“This is your fault!” he said.
Cosmo yelped. The man shut his mouth.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Primer,” he answered. “I’m from the governor.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I reluctantly knelt and felt his legs.
“Stop that,” he said. “You are to come with me at once. That hurts!”
“It ought to hurt,” I said. He had a bad sprain.
I did not have any herbs or lotions to apply to distract him from my hands-on healing.
“I can fix it if you’ll shut up and let me,” I said. I had to have his permission; it was an ethical thing with me. “If not, I can leave you here with Cosmo. He’s not a vegetarian. Or a scavenger. He kills his meals.”
The man grunted and nodded assent. I put my hands on his left ankle.
“Listen,” I whispered. Dazed, he looked away from my hands and up at my face. Some. Thing. Was wrong. I connected. Felt dizzy. Could not sense. Then a little. Peculiar.
My hands moved slowly over the torn muscles. Something was different. I could not find. Him. Then suddenly, his muscles healed quickly.
“There,” I said, moving back onto my heels and away from him. My dizziness disappeared. “I guess it was just bruised.” I scratched Cosmo’s neck.
The man touched his ankle. “It feels fine. You are a soothsayer.”
He got up and dusted himself off.
“No,” I said, “just your local health-care provider.”
“Will you come with me now?” he asked.
“I’ve relayed this message to the governor before. I’m too busy. This community needs me. Maybe if things slow down in the summer.” I started up the trail again. The huge old saguaro waved at me with both arms.
“Summer! That’s next year!”
“You better get down the hill before dark,” I said, without looking back. I suspected he feared the dark. “Do you want Cosmo to take you?”
“No! I know the way.” I heard the stones rolling under his feet again as he started down. He would be lucky if he did not break anything before he reached the village.
Cosmo ran up beside me.
“I wonder why the governor sent someone like him to get me?” I said, as we went over the ridge again.
I reached the low twisted juniper which signaled level ground and my home just as the sun was going down over the mountains, changing the land from gold to rose. Cosmo yelped and went to run with the dusk, as was his habit. He ran straight toward the receding light. To hurry it on, I often wondered, or to try and catch the curtain of light and pull it back? Either way, he had fun.
Once inside my house, I kicked off my shoes and walked across the cool stones to the table in the middle of the large airy room which was my kitchen and living room. A vase of fresh flowers stood alongside my covered dinner and a glass of lemonade. I took off the ceramic lid and steam rose from rice, beans, and vegetable burritos. The smell of cilantro filled me with anticipation. I picked up the plate, flatware, and lemonade and went outside to watch the sunset.
This was my payment for staying in Coyote Creek: this house which they cleaned and kept up; my clothes, which I got to choose; and three meals or more a day, mostly cooked by Millie and brought up to me by a variety of people. In exchange, I was supposed to keep the inhabitants healthy, or at least to heal them when they fell ill.
I sat on the gravelly Arizona dirt. Cosmo howled in the distance. For a moment, I imagined I could feel the ground beneath his padded paws. “Go, Cosmo!” I called and laughed. I stared into the bloody light, noting but not really focusing on the hills, rocks, cacti, junipers, and Joshua trees which surrounded me. A kind of jumble of disparate struggle in this desert, so silent and still. I longed for this spot all day as the people came to me. I touched them, healed their bodies, and sometimes their spirits, and did not feel touched by them or connected to them. I was more comfortable with scorpions, rattlesnakes, and coyotes than I was with people. However, the scorpions and rattlesnakes did not feed and clothe me.
I gulped the lemonade. My face puckered in sourness. It was just the way I liked it: only a touch of honey.
Coyote Creek was a nice community. Arizona Territory was well organized. Most people had enough food and shelter. Trading with other territories went well, and the governor seemed to be good at keeping out plagues and other undesirables. The communities in Washington had been more isolated and paranoid toward outsiders like me.
The governor here was relatively new. His mother had died a few years back. Soon after her death he had started sending out messages that he wanted me to come to the Grand Canyon and meet with him. Thus far I had successfully avoided our meeting. I suspected he wanted to see me because he believed, like everyone else, that I was a soothsayer.
He was wrong. I had heard all the stories: soothsayers were extraordinary healers, inheriting their abilities from a long line of illustrious healers. They had great compassion, wisdom, and empathy. I had no lineage of great healers that I remembered; I certainly was not compassionate or wise. Supposedly soothsayers could not lie. They were always “truth sayers.” Although I did not do it very often, I could lie quite easily and convincingly. No, I was not a soothsayer. I just had the heat or energy or whatever it was in my fingers to put disease at ease.
I finished off the burrito as the rose sky was replaced by a gray one. Now Cosmo would be indistinguishable from anything around him. A gray ghost. This was his time of day: the between and betwixt time. Magic time. I smiled. What would our good Reverend Thomas Church think about my magical musings? He had already asked me if I was a witch. Was he preparing a bonfire in my honor? The Rev made me nervous. Or else the supposed comeback of Christian churches made me nervous. Rumors were circulating that some congregations were using soothsayers as their latest scapegoats, accusing them of being the devil or witches, or worse, tech violators.
Of course, I really did not know Church well enough to judge him, even if I had found him snooping around my clinic more than once. I did not know how he felt about soothsayers or healers or anything. I hoped he would not cause any problem so that everything could remain the same. I liked the town and this piece of land where my house sat and Cosmo and I roamed.
The land was not mine, of course, but it felt like home.
“Of course this land is home,” my friend Kara told me once. “When a woman bleeds on a piece of land, she becomes a part of it and it a part of her.”
I did not tell her I did not bleed. In the ten years since coming out of the cave, I had never menstruated. I did not know my age. Judging from the other women I had met, I was somewhere between thirty and fifty, so maybe I had already gone through the ’pause.
One day Cosmo and I were roughhousing outside and my wrist got caught on his incisor and started bleeding. I watched in fascination as the red dripped onto the beige ground. Color. Life. After a time, Cosmo whined and I covered the wound with my other hand so I would not bleed to death. A moment later, not even a scar remained as a reminder. But I knew. I was now a part of this land, and it was a part of me. I liked the feeling.
It was dark, and I was reminiscing too much.
I went inside to the bedroom where I fell asleep to the sound of coyotes serenading the rising moon.
Later I half awakened to milk light and the smell of something feral or musky.
“Cosmo?” I whispered, turning into sleep again.
I felt lips on my earlobe, warm breath on my neck.
“Benjamin.” Kara’s brother, fresh from the desert night.
He caressed my back and shoulders, kissed the back of my knees, massaged my calves, put my toes in his mouth: first one and then the others. Sleepily, I turned over and held out my arms to him. He was a shadow leaning down to put his mouth over mine.
“I thought you were Cosmo,” I whispered.
“He kisses you like this?”
“I never have seen the two of you together.”
He laughed, leaning his head back just as Cosmo did when he howled at the moon. Benjamin’s hair slipped over his shoulders and brushed my cheek. “I guess you’ve found me out.”
I pulled him down against me. “I don’t care who you are. You smell good, and I’m awake.”
BENJAMIN WAS GONE when I awakened. I went outside. Cosmo lay near the door, his fur blushing with dawn. All was touched with pink and gold, nothing in shadow yet everything partially black. I sat next to Cosmo, and he put his muzzle on my bare thigh.
“Good morning to you, too,” I said.
A rabbit ran out in front of us. Cosmo twitched but let the animal pass. I laughed. Cosmo had been my friend for five years or more, since I came to Coyote Creek. I found him in the desert tangled in an old trap with its rusty teeth embedded in his leg. Broken bones were easy to fix; systemic illnesses were more difficult. After I relieved him of his steel accessory, I carried him to the house. I lay with my hands on him all night. I fingered old barbed wire scars on his flanks and the extra toes on his front paws. Through that night, Cosmo watched me, his breath shallow. Then around dawn, he shook himself, got off the bed, and went outside. He returned to the house a day or two later and stayed. Coyote Creek was known for its proliferation of coyotes—thus the name—so Cosmo was even welcome in town. Of course, basically, anything I did was tolerated. Thus far.
Now I kissed the top of Cosmo’s head and got up and went inside. I put on shoes and slung a towel over my naked body. Cosmo and I raced to the stream below my house. Surprisingly, it still ran strong even though it was autumn. Usually the sun sweated it all away by this time, but the summer had been mild. A few aspen grew near the banks of the stream. I threw my towel over a low branch of one and dipped my right foot into the clear shallow water. Not too cold. Cosmo chased a blue dragonfly away from the river as I squatted and splashed water over me.
I was just about to reach up and wash Benjamin out of me when I noticed Reverend Church standing on the other side of the stream watching me. He was good-looking: blond, green-eyed, with a slight build.
I stood and put my hands on my hips.
“Gee, Church, if you wanted to see me naked, I could have arranged a more convenient location.”
He had the good graces to blush.
“I was on my way up the hill.”
“Yeah, well, the path is that way,” I said, pointing to my right. A cool breeze shivered across my breasts, puckering my nipples. Great, I was becoming the religious pervert’s wet dream.
“I got lost,” he said, looking at his feet. “I need to talk with you, but I’ll wait until you’re dressed.”
“That’s right,” I said, stepping out of the water and reaching for my towel. “Your religion thinks the human body is dirty.” I patted myself dry, then wrapped a towel around me and put on my shoes. I was annoyed that this man could actually embarrass me. I was not naturally modest.
“I’m afraid you are repeating ancient rumors,” Church said. “We have nothing against the human body. God made it in his image.”
“In his image?” I shook my head. It was too early for a thealogical discussion. “Listen, if you want to talk with me, wait until I get to town.”
“I thought you might be too busy there.”
“Never too busy for you.” I smiled and walked away. Two irritating men in less than twenty-four hours. These were not good omens.
When I reached my house, the sunlight was full on it. I went inside, got dressed, and ate a bowl of granola with raisins, nuts, and soy milk. Cosmo yelped once when he returned from dragonfly chasing and once when Church came up the path.
I stepped outside. The sky was azure, not a cloud anywhere, unless I counted Church, who stood away from Cosmo with his hands folded in front of him.
“Cos,” I said, snapping my fingers. Cosmo relaxed and moved off to the side. I hurried down the trail.
“We can talk on the way,” I said. Maybe now I would ask him why he kept hanging around the clinic. A few days earlier, when I caught him alone in my clinic, he had been holding a bottle of dried rosemary and peering closely at it. I had stood silently until he turned and saw me, blinked rapidly, and set down the bottle.
That was when he asked me if I was a witch.
The question sent a thrill of fear through me. “Define witch,” I said.
He nodded, as if my answer satisfied him, and then he left.
Now he matched strides with me. “I wanted to talk to you about the man from Governor Duncan, Mr. Primer,” he said. Cosmo whined behind us.
“He was here last night,” I said. “What about it?”
The Rev deftly stepped over scree and around a prickly pear that reached for him.
Overhead, a turkey vulture roamed.
“We’re concerned he could create problems for the town,” he said.
I glanced over at him. “We?”
“Yes. The town council. Didn’t you know I’m on it now?”
I shook my head. I recalled no election.
“Santana Janis resigned, and I was appointed by the council to fill her seat until the next general election.”
“I’ve got to start going to those meetings again,” I said. “How can Primer cause problems? He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“No. He’s staying in the refectory.”
“Then he’s your problem. You gave him a place to stay.”
The path curved around and there was Coyote Creek comfortably slouching into the desert. Cosmo sprinted ahead of us, joining other gray ghosts for a run along the ridge. From here, the town seemed little more than a bunch of wooden shacks, some with tin roofs catching the morning sun. Coyote Creek probably looked the way it had three hundred years ago, except now no automobiles roamed the streets, no jet planes left their marks in the sky overhead.
“The council gave him a place to stay,” Church said. “It is our obligation to the governor.”
“What’s this got to do with me?” I asked. A goat bleated below. Cosmo yelped. I hoped the goat had a place to hide.
“He’s here for you,” Church said.
We got to level ground via a path around the shady back of Millie’s Café. Herb, Millie’s husband, waved as he dumped scraps onto the compost pile.
“You going to the dance over at Freedom?” Herb called.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Maybe someone will get me drunk, and I can take advantage of them.”
Herb laughed. Church and I went single file down the tiny alley between the two buildings. I swung the wooden door open, and we stepped into sunlight and onto Coyote Creek’s dusty main street. A park of gambel oaks supposedly planted soon after The Fall shaded part of the street. Today several children rolled under the trees together, each trying to wrestle a ball from another. What a wonderful way to first encounter the bodies of other people, to know what they feel and smell like. I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering Benjamin pressed up against me in the night.
“There’s a dance?” Church asked.
I opened my eyes. “Is dancing against your religion?”
“You really are very intolerant,” he said evenly. “You know nothing about us.”
I looked at him. He was right. I remembered no encounter with people of his religion, yet something about him made me uneasy. Perhaps in that vast unremembered part of my past a Christian or two lurked.
“I apologize,” I said. “I just don’t like people following me or watching me bathe. It kind of gets on my nerves. It would be like me say . . . watching you flagellate yourself, or whatever it is you do in church.”
The Rev smiled. The expression did not quite reach his eyes, which looked at me intently.
“Why don’t you come to church sometime and see?” he said. “As far as this Mr. Primer from the governor goes, the council would like to speak with you.”
“Anytime, at my clinic. Now, I’ve got to get to work.”
He nodded, and we parted. I walked a couple of doors down to my cozy little place of business: a little cottage set back from the street. I kicked off my shoes to walk on the bare stone path that curved through the courtyard to the wooden door of the clinic. Cosmo lay alongside the walkway, panting. Apparently the goat had made good its escape. I pulled on the antler that was the door handle and went inside.
As always, I was greeted with a melding of aromas; this morning lavender and rosemary distinguished themselves. A pot of rose hip tea awaited on the rickety table off to the side of my examining table. A piece of corn bread slathered with butter lay next to it. I grinned and sat at the table. As I bit into the corn bread, I looked around the room lined with shelves of herbs, roots, barks, tinctures, and potions. Sometimes life was grand.
I treated a child with breathing problems by laying my hands on her chest and giving her mother mullein tea to take home with her. Later, someone came in with a sprained ankle. A tick infection. A touch of depression. A cold. I helped each with a little smoke and mirrors, laying on of hands, and a story or two.
At lunch, Millie dropped off roasted prickly pear and a light stew of corn, pinto beans, rice, spices, and herbs. I went outside, sat, and leaned against the palm tree in the clinic courtyard.
Georgia came up the walk and sat with me. She reveled in chokeberry cobbler while I chewed vegetables. When I put down my empty bowl and looked at the older woman, she grinned as if she knew what I was going to say. I said nothing.
She laughed. “I told you you need to come to all the council meetings. I’m just mayor. I can’t control everything! Church is persistent.”
“He’s a religious kook. How could you?”
“It’s harvest and party time. No one wanted the job. And he’s really a nice man.”
I shook my head. “Then the seat should have been left empty. He does not represent this community.”
“He is part of this community,” Georgia said. “Why don’t you like him?”
“It was religions like his that caused so much havoc after The Fall,” I said.
“That was a long time ago,” she said. “Besides, don’t they blame soothsayers for The Fall?”
I glanced at her. “I’m not—”
“You’re not a soothsayer. Yes, we’ve all heard it before. Why don’t you just go visit the governor?”
“The council wants me to go? You may never see me again.”
Georgia laughed. “You believe all that rubbish about governors kidnapping soothsayers for their own sinister use? Please.”
“No. I believe they probably offer the healers the easy life so they never want to go back to their communities.”
“Hah!” Georgia said. “You couldn’t get it much easier than you have it here.”
“Except I probably wouldn’t have to put up with religious radicals snooping around the clinic.”
“Gloria, what are you talking about?”
“I came back from lunch one day, and Church was in the clinic handling my stuff.”
“I’ve gone in the clinic when you’re out dozens of times and handled your stuff! I’ve even used some of it! Why don’t you take me out and hang me?”
“That’s different.”
“What’s different is he unnerves you.” She stood. I reached my hand out, and she pulled me up. “Which reminds me. We’re having a special open meeting this afternoon. Weapons and technology violation.”
“Who?”
“Stempler Jones.”
I shook my head. “So we’ll break up his gun again. What’s the technology?”
“A fuel-burning generator.”
“Stupid jerk. I suppose he says it’s a collector’s item.”
Georgia nodded.
“Then fill the fuel tank with cement.”
“That’s not very authentic,” Georgia said, imitating Stempler’s drawl. “Besides, cement-making is outlawed in some territories, and generators are lawful in some.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Not fuel-burning generators. And he can just move to one of those places if he doesn’t like the rules here.”
“My feelings exactly.”
She leaned over and kissed me on the lips and patted my butt. “I hope you come to the meeting. Church will be there. Maybe you should just have sex with him and ease the tension a bit. It worked with us.” She laughed and left the courtyard.
“He doesn’t believe in sex!” I called.
Benjamin passed Georgia as she left. I smiled. He was so beautiful he took my breath away each time I saw him. His shiny black hair was pulled back into a braid now, and his face was all gorgeous brown angles. He kissed my lips.
“Who doesn’t believe in sex?” he asked. He pulled me down onto the ground under the tree.
“The Reverend Thomas Church.”
“Oh? He seems fairly normal to me.”
“Why did you leave before I woke up?”
“I was there, watching the sunset.”
“Cosmo was there.”
Benjamin kissed me. “Remember last night, you discovered the ancient Native secret of shape-shifting. You’ve heard of werewolves. I’m your werecoyote.”
I turned around and straddled his lap and linked my hands behind his neck. “As if you didn’t have anything better to do than follow me around all day and chase butterflies and goats.”
“We’re soul mates,” he said. “You just don’t believe it.”
I moved off him. He kissed my neck. “Someday you’re going to have to believe in something.”
I brushed away his kiss and stood. I was becoming tired of everyone telling me what I had to do.
“I have to go back to work,” I said.
“I came to see if you wanted to quit early and go to Freedom. The best festival food is the first food. Kara and Grandma Macha are cooking.”
“I want to go to the tech meeting, and then we can leave.”
He stood. “I’ll meet you after. Right now I think I’ll run with the other coyotes.”
WE SAT UNDER the tallest oak for the meeting. Children played behind us. I sat near the back, glancing around for Cosmo. Stempler Jones talked endlessly. Several people looked longingly at the meeting hall behind the oak. It would be hot and stuffy, but the discomfort level would keep discussion short and to the point.
“Under the Constitution of these here United States,” he said, “I am entitled to bear arms.”
“Please don’t bare anything,” someone called out. “We’ve seen enough of your old white body.”
Everyone laughed, except Stempler.
“Mr. Jones,” Georgia said, “if that is your final argument, you don’t have a leg to stand on, so to speak. We haven’t been these here United States for centuries, and we do not live under the rule of that Constitution.”
Millie leaned toward me and whispered. “Quoting the Constitution as a legal argument is as bad as quoting the Bible.”
I nodded and glanced over at Thomas Church. He caught my gaze. We looked at each other for a moment before he turned his attention to Stempler.
“Mr. Jones, you can’t honestly say you wish to return us to the tyranny of war and consumption,” Church said.
“I just want my rifle! The gophers are driving me crazy!”
Several people gasped. Overhead a hawk screamed. I looked up. Something twitched for freedom in the raptor’s claws.
Herb cleared his throat, glanced at Georgia next to him, and said, “You’ve been shooting gophers?”
Stempler hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
“Did you eat them?” Jeri asked. She was another council member, along with Herb, Church, Doris Canyon, and Maria Rio.
Stempler shook his head. “I didn’t hit nothing but dirt.”
Everyone laughed again, and the tension evaporated.
“You know the rules,” Georgia said. “Anyone need more discussion?” She looked around. “All right. Let’s take a hammer to the rifle.”
“Wait a minute!” Stempler cried. “Why isn’t a hammer bad technology?”
I groaned, along with several others, and plopped backward onto the ground. Stempler could have us here for hours arguing over what was acceptable technology and what was not.
“Stempler,” Millie said, “I am tired of you trying to throw us back into the dark ages. You have a right to your views and opinions, but we’ve made our laws, and we’ve all agreed to live by them. You never come to the technology review meetings and say your piece then.”
I sat up and saw Primer standing at the periphery of the group, kitty-corner to me. He nodded when he looked at me. I tried to smile but grimaced instead.
“My family lived on this land long before you or any of your laws existed!” Stempler said.
Doris rolled her eyes. Her family had lived on the land centuries before Stempler’s family crossed the pond and settled where they were not wanted. I hoped this meeting would not degenerate into us against them, or who was here first, second, and last.
“Stempler, either you destroy the gun, or we will,” Herb said. “Now let’s discuss the generator.”
I got up, stretched, and walked across the street and sat on Millie’s porch. A breeze brought the smell of piñon with it; it also carried away Stempler’s argument about the generator. Church glanced over at me and smiled. It was a coconspirato-rial smile: we both knew Stempler lived to create problems. I gave him a quick smile.
Just then Stempler picked up his rifle and smashed it against the ground. It cracked easily and fell to pieces, its usefulness long ago ended. Georgia called the meeting to an end. People got up and stretched. Some walked away. Primer went to Church and the other council members. As they talked, several glanced over at me.
Cosmo came and nudged me. I jumped up. “Great timing. Let’s go!”
By the time I reached my house, Cosmo had disappeared. Benjamin waited inside for a little afternoon delight. Afterward, I slipped on a skirt, and then we headed for Freedom, the village around the mountain and down the hill from Coyote Creek: Benjamin and Kara’s home.
We smelled and heard the celebration just before we reached the village. The small adobe and wooden houses were scattered here and there, some semicircling a large open area where picnic tables were now piled high with food. Off to the side, several men and women sat around a huge drum practicing for the evening of ritual and dancing. A short distance from them was a pile of wood and brush for the bonfire.
“Ria, honey!” Kara came up and embraced me. “We could use your help! You’re such a good cook.”
She giggled at the joke and led me to one of the huge underground ovens. Macha, Kara’s maternal grandmother, nodded a hello and handed me a winnow tray.
Kara poured seeds and dropped hot coals into it.
“Now, shake, honey. Not you—the tray.” Then she and Grandmother Macha turned to more important things. I had been given the no-brain job. Benjamin waved and left me shaking.
At sunset, we said prayers to the directions and chanted blessings to all. Then we ate. I consumed my roasted seeds, cactus fruit, wild rice and herbs, and piñon nuts. I sucked on sweet yucca and got string in my teeth and then went on to corn and beans with chilies, shortcake, paper bread, baked corn mush wrapped in corn husks, squash, and chokeberry cobbler. All washed down with sweet water and a dry wine.
The fire was lit, and the drumming began. Several elders told stories. The men danced, and then the children, and then the women. My body throbbed with the desert: the food, water, wine, and music. The whole night seemed to undulate with desire. The fire shook the shadows. Moans of ecstasy came from all directions.
Georgia whispered in my ear, “You wanna get laid?”
I laughed, turned my mouth to hers, and opened it to her tongue.
When the kiss ended, I said, “I’ve got a previous engagement.” Benjamin now danced with the men, dressed only in a loincloth. The muscles in his butt and thighs bulged and relaxed, bulged and relaxed as he moved.
Georgia kissed my ear.
“I don’t know what you see in the opposite sex. Look me up later if you can’t get any satisfaction.” She waved and left.
Millie and Herb came over.
“It’s going to be one of those nights!” Millie said, shaking her hips. “When can we dance?”
“Soon, I think.”
Millie sat next to me on the bench and elbowed my side. “Guess who’s here?”
I shrugged. She raised her eyebrows and looked to her left. I followed her gaze. Reverend Church stood with his hands in his pockets, his face bathed in firelight.
I groaned.
“Is it true his religion frowns on lovemaking?” Millie asked.
“That’s what I heard,” I said, taking a sip of wine—or whatever it was Kara had poured into my glass. “Though the good Rev says I’m ignorant, or intolerant, of his religion.”
Herb sat on my other side. “I’ll tell you this much: he has his eye on you. He’s always watching and asking about you.”
Millie said, “The Rev has a crush on the soothsayer. Watch out!”
“I’m not a—”
“You’re not a soothsayer. Yeah, yeah,” they both said at once.
“You’re drunk, and we’re not,” Herb said, standing again. “Millie, my love, let’s go catch up.”
In the background of the drumming, I thought I heard coyotes howl on the ridge. I looked behind me, but all was black.
Benjamin’s dance ended, and he wove through the people to find me. Without a word, we walked away from the circle and houses and went under the ridge where the coyotes howled. My skirt became our bed as I opened to him. He whispered something in my ear, but I heard nothing except the drums and the coyotes. Or maybe he was the drumbeat. All seemed dreamy and unreal, magical and perfect.
When our bodies stopped undulating, Benjamin sucked the sweat from my earlobe and went back to the dance. I curled up on the warm desert floor and fell to sleep.
The drumbeat tattooed numbers and letters in a line across the inside of my brain. Someone screamed.
My eyes snapped open.
A shadow covered me. I did not recognize the scent.
“Are you all right?”
Church.
“You’re blocking my light,” I said, sitting up. My heart raced.
Church stepped to the side of me. I could see the fire and dancers again.
“May I sit?”
“It’s a free territory.” I tried to breathe deeply. My heart slowed.
“I thought I heard you scream.” He sat next to me but not close.
“I didn’t scream. You must have heard the coyotes. I fell asleep and had a peculiar dream. I don’t usually dream.”
“Oh.”
“Oh? Have I given you another indication that I’m evil incarnate?”
“Why do you suspect everything I say?” he asked, watching the festivities.
“Because you seem to be following me everywhere.”
“Perhaps I’m trying to convert you.”
“Well, don’t. I do not look at the world the way you do. We are not evil because we came onto this Earth through our mother’s vagina.”
“You do have a way of saying things,” he said. “I am just trying to be a spiritual advisor to the community. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“We are each our own spiritual advisor,” I said. “And we have elders who conduct the rituals and blessings. We don’t need you. Advise your own people, whoever they are.”
“I make you angry,” Church said.
“And I make you nervous,” I said.
His jaw clenched. I had not touched him yet, but I suddenly knew Millie was right: the good Reverend was attracted to me. Fascination with the abomination?
The wine pulsed through my veins, dancing with the drumbeats. I was not going to let this man spoil the celebrations. It was a night of sensual pleasures.
“Rev, you know what this dance is about, don’t you?”
“A celebration of the harvest in preparation for winter.”
“Yes, the harvest and each other. We honor the Earth, our Mother. It is a time of lovemaking, drinking, and eating. Can’t you feel it in the rhythm?” I leaned close to him so he could feel the warmth of my body. It was nasty of me. I should have stopped. He leaned a bit closer to me, against his will, I was certain, and our arm hair meshed.
He shifted away, and I laughed, my annoyance with him suddenly gone.
“Sorry, Church, I was feeling a little wicked. You bring that out in me. Come on. You want to dance? No sex. Just a little rhythm.” I hopped up and reached a hand out to him. If we were going to live in the same town, I supposed I would have to learn to get along with him.
He gripped my hand and I suddenly saw a part of him, like a piece of shattered mirror, and reflected in that shard was a fragment of me. For a moment, I felt as if I were sinking into him.
I quickly pulled him up and immediately released his hand.
When we got back to the others, I purposely lost Church in the crowd. It was one thing for him to be sexually attracted to me, another to have me as a part of his internal structure, his story, or whatever it was I saw or felt when we touched. He made me a little dizzy. Or maybe the wine did.
I stumbled to Kara’s house. I tripped around in the darkness until I found her couch, upon which I fell to sleep.
2
THINGS SEEMED TO settle down again after the celebration. Primer went to Phoenix for a couple of weeks, so I did not have to worry about him lurking around. The weather cooled. I forgot about the number dream and Church’s peculiar handshake until he came to the clinic a few days later with a young woman.
“Hello, Gloria,” Church said. “This is Angel Woodbury.” She was blond and sweet-looking, maybe twenty years old. She smiled and held out her right arm. A small second-degree burn bubbled near her wrist. She glanced at the Reverend. “She burned it on the oven door in the church,” he said.
“I’m not very coordinated,” she said quietly.
“Don’t you have any aloe at the church, Rev? You don’t need me for this.”
Angel looked disappointed. I smiled and went to the windowsill and got a small aloe plant.
“Okay, Monsieur or Madam Aloe, I ask for your help with this little angel.” I broke off a piece of the plant, squeezed the unbroken end, and gently spread the clear gel across the burn.
Angel smiled. “That feels cool.”
I handed her the plant. “Put this in the window of your kitchen, just in case you need it again.”
“Thank you. It was nice meeting you. Reverend Church speaks very highly of you.”
“I’m sure he does,” I said, glancing at Church.
She gave Church a radiant smile.
“I’ll catch up with you,” he told her.
She nodded and left the clinic.
“Why didn’t you heal her?” he asked.
“What are you talking about? The aloe will help her.”
He held out his right palm. “On the way to Freedom the other night, I fell and scraped my hand. After you touched me, the cuts were gone. You healed it.”
Was that why I had glimpsed part of him? I had been healing him and had not realized it. The thought flashed through my brain that he had had Angel burn herself on purpose so he could catch me in the act of healing. I shook my head; that was ridiculous. I was too paranoid.
The clinic felt suddenly stuffy. I went outside and sat on the porch. Church followed.
“You have a tremendous gift.” He sat next to me.
“Church, it was dark. How could you see? You probably just heal quickly.”
He held out his hand again. Not a mark on it.
“Maybe your god did it,” I said.
“He does have a hand in everything.”
“Was that a joke?” I asked. “A hand in everything?”
Church frowned and then smiled. “No.”
“Why do you always call God a he?” I asked. “How do you know God isn’t a she?”
“I suppose historically we have called God a he because he was portrayed as such in the Bible.”
“Do you see God as a he up in the heaven orchestrating our every move while humans—men—are at the top of the hierarchal heap here on Earth?”
“No,” Church said. “Personally. I don’t think of God that way. Is that why you don’t like me? That old dominion over nature argument? I don’t believe in that. We are guardians of the Earth and should treasure it and its creatures.”
“Her and her creatures, thank you very much.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I have heard that soothsayers heal by laying on hands.”
“Have you also heard that in some communities the church has tried to hunt down soothsayers to get rid of them?”
He looked at me. “No. Why would they do that?”
“You tell me.”
Now he stared at me.
“Where’s Angel from?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Down south where I grew up. Everyone thinks we’ll get married.”
“Congratulations.”
He shook his head. “She’s very young. I believe in the sanctity of marriage, and I want to make certain she’s the one I can truly give myself to for the rest of my life.” He stood.
Cosmo ran up to me and licked my face, a coyote’s French kiss.
“You mean you don’t know if you can love her the rest of your life?” I asked, looking up at him. “Or you don’t know if you can practice monogamy?”
He looked at me. “Both.”
I shook my head. “You’re entitled to your beliefs, Rev, but monogamy was basically practiced first when men virtually owned women and secondly when sexually transmitted diseases were killing millions. It’s outdated now, in my opinion.”
Church squatted so he was level with me again. “Haven’t you ever loved anyone enough that you wanted to be only with that person forever?”
Cosmo. But he was not a person. If I let anyone else stay around for long enough, I was sure they would discover who I really was—and then leave. I did not allow anyone too close for very long. Maybe in the time before I remembered I had loved someone that way.
“That is a very personal question,” I said.
Church laughed. I had not heard him laugh before. He sounded so normal I was thrown a little off-balance.
“The few discussions we have had are always very personal.”
I slapped my thighs. “You’ve got me there. But, right now, I’ve got a date with Cos.”
We both stood.
“Why don’t you stop by the church this Sunday?”
“My church is under the great blue sky and on the desert floor running with Cosmo or making love or eating sweet, sweet yucca. And I don’t just go to my church on Sunday.”
“That sounds nice,” Church said quietly.
“Besides, I’m going on my rounds this Sunday,” I said. “Every month or so, I go out in the country and see if anybody needs any healing.”
“Then I’ll talk to you when you return.”
I watched him leave and realized I looked forward to seeing him again.
“That’s all I need,” I said, and went back into the clinic.
I COULD HAVE taken the town solar buggy, but I was not going too far out this time. We walked, Benjamin and I, each with a small backpack filled with salves, ointments, and herbs as well as our food and water. The desert was pleasantly cool and flat. We avoided rocks and any crevices and made enough noise to let the rattlesnakes know we were coming. We were silent the first part of the morning. In the distance, Bear Butte rose. Beneath it, presently unseen, was the Eden settlement. They were without a full-time healer, although a nearby medicine woman stopped on the months I did not come.
“I heard this spring there is going to be a gathering in Red Bluffs,” Benjamin said. A horny toad dashed in front of us. Ahead, a roadrunner stopped, looked at us, then raced away. Benjamin had once said I was like a roadrunner: you could not tell from my tracks whether I was coming or going. In some societies, the roadrunner was considered magical, so I took his observation as a compliment, whether it was meant to be one or not.
“What kind of gathering?” I asked. Benjamin never told a story all at once.
“Soothsayers and other healers.”
“Uh-huh.” Our feet crunched over the earth; the sound made me hungry for popcorn.
“Just thought you’d like to know. I believe it’s May first.”
“Sorry. I’m usually making mad passionate love that day.”
“Maybe it was spring equinox,” he said.
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll go.”
“I’m leaving pretty soon for the dances at de Chelly. Do you want to come?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“It’d be nice if we could spend a few weeks together.”
“You’re the wanderer,” I said.
“In what universe?”
I glanced at him. He looked away.
An hour or so later, we reached Eden. Sandstone-and-mud houses nestled up close to the butte, whose shadow shielded them from the midday sun.
The dog barked once until she recognized me. Then she ran to us, wagging her little butt until she nearly turned herself around. Paula followed, extending a hand to both of us.
“We’re so glad you’re here,” she said. “I’ve got kind of an emergency if you wouldn’t mind starting right away.”
“Of course not,” I said.
She escorted us to the quarantine house on the edge of town.
“We have a new family,” she said. “Tricia and Timothy Booth and their two girls. All of them are ill. We’re not certain whether it’s contagious or not. We’ve taken the necessary precautions.”
I nodded. When we reached the house, I went in alone. The single room was bright, the walls painted white—the one house in town with washable walls. A man sat in a rocking chair looking out the window. A woman sat near him on the floor, her head on his knee. He gently stroked her hair. Two children, probably seven and ten years old, lay on two of the four cots.
“Don’t get up,” I said quietly to the couple. “Let me tend to the children first.”
They nodded and did not watch me go to their children.
I knelt on the floor between the cots and looked at each child. Then I felt their pulses. The older child was the sickest.
“Hello,” she whispered.
“Hi, darlin’,” I said. “I’m here to help you if that’s all right?”
She nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Lizbeth.”
“Okay, honey.” This time I used no smoke and mirrors. I put my hands on Lizbeth’s head. Immediately, I felt a connection and saw a huge blinding white light. I tried to close it, or fill it, but I could only jump beyond it.
“All right, Lizbeth,” I said. “There was once a little girl who was as bright as the sun and as quick as a roadrunner. She never liked to be still. She was born with invisible wings on her feet.” I moved my hands to her chest. “No one saw the wings, but everyone knew they were there because she was so fast. And never still. One day, she came across a castle fortress with an invisible monster in it. She didn’t know about the monster, and she thought the castle was very beautiful. But the monster attacked her.” I touched her abdomen. “She was very fast and never still, so she made her escape. He had hurt her badly, but she ran back to her village and told everyone about the invisible monster. No one ever went near the castle again. The little girl saved all the villagers, and she got all better.” I held her legs and then her feet.
“Is that true?” she asked.
“All true,” I said. I laid my hands on her chest again. “She still runs to this day.”
Lizbeth closed her eyes. Inside, almost all was healed.
I kissed her nose. “Now for your sister.” I turned around. The smaller girl smiled.
“You are magic,” she said.
I laughed. “So are you. May I help you?”
She nodded. “My name is Amy.”
I put my hands on her head; they seemed huge compared to Amy’s tiny skull. We connected. The white light pulsed.
“Ah, Amy, the beloved. You are the fairy child. Did you know that?”
“No,” she said, her voice surprised and excited.
I smiled. Unlike adults, children did not seem to become hypnotized when I healed them, or perhaps they were just more verbal in their hypnotized states.
“Yes! Long ago, fairies traveled freely between their world and this.” I put my hands on her chest. “Then some got lost and could not find their way home. Soon they forgot they were fairy folk. But one little girl—maybe you’re that girl—she did not forget. She still travels between both worlds because”—I went down to her legs and feet—“because she knows both worlds are one.”
“So it’s okay?” Amy asked.
“Yes, sweetheart, it’s okay. But I want you to sleep now.” I reached out one hand and held it over Lizbeth’s eyes and then the other over Amy’s. “Sleep.”
They would be out for hours while their bodies continued healing.
I went to the parents.
“They’ll be fine. Now may I help you?” The man, Timothy Booth, nodded lethargically. The woman, Tricia, scooted back while I stood in front of Timothy and put my hands on his shoulders. For a moment, the white light was all, eating him and coming after me. I breathed deeply to quell my panic and went beyond the light again. I found no story. I moved my hands over the man. When I finished, I dropped my hands to the woman’s head. With her, I saw lights and heard laughter. So I laughed. And then I felt a field of Queen Anne’s lace. Tricia ran and ran, laughing through this memory at the sound the flowers made snapping against her legs.
When I was finished, the parents were totally changed. Their lethargy was gone; their faces had color.
“You need to sleep, too,” I said, “but I’d like to ask you a few questions first, if that would be all right.”
The three of us went outside. Paula and Benjamin greeted us.
“You look much better,” Paula said to the couple.
“I feel a thousand times better,” Timothy said.
“I don’t really know what was wrong with you,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Can you tell me when it started?”
Timothy said, “The girls got lost near a restricted area a few days before we got here. At least we think it was only a few days.”
“Weren’t there signs? A fence?” I asked.
“There was a fence,” Tricia said, “but it had breaks in it. Naturally, the kids found it interesting.”
“Was there anyone else around?” Benjamin asked.
Timothy shook his head. “Not at this one. It wasn’t immigration. Maybe a toxic dump. We went in after the girls and then—” He stopped and frowned. “We don’t remember what happened after that. In fact, we sort of came awake near Eden, which was our destination.”
“But we don’t remember how we got here,” Tricia said.
“Go get some rest,” I said.
The couple nodded and went back inside.
“Come on,” Paula said. “Let’s feed you two.”
Paula took us to a tall juniper. Benjamin and I sat beneath it while one of the teenagers served us pumpkin and zucchini soup with bread covered in seed butter. I looked off to where we had come from. The intense sunlight which overwhelmed the landscape with blue sky had dimmed, and the desert seemed more dimensional, softer, with the horizon shifting from beige to red to purple. The community itself was late-afternoon quiet.
Paula came and sat with us. “I’ll send someone to the governor,” she said, “and have them repair the fence in that restricted area. I imagine the Booths must have stumbled into some toxic waste or something, don’t you?”
I shrugged. I hoped I had fixed whatever was wrong with them, but I was not sure. It had been an unusual experience, almost like healing their bodies without touching their minds.
“Well, if it happened near a restricted area, it’s the governor’s responsibility,” Paula said. “He’ll take care of it.”
Benjamin said, “The only thing that will really fix it is time.”
“We’re lucky,” Paula said. “I heard near Santa Fe, stuff is leaking into the groundwater.”
“And people like Stempler Jones are nostalgic for those times,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s not really like that,” Benjamin said. “He just wants his toys.”
“Anyone else need my services?” I asked Paula.
“Sure,” Paula said. “We’ll set up the clinic in my house since the quarantine house is occupied.”
I drank the rest of the soup. “Don’t forget to destroy their clothes or any other objects the Booths had with them in the restricted area, just in case it is contagious.”
“Of course,” Paula said. “You look a little tired. Are you sure you want to see people today?”
“I’m fine. I’ll start seeing people in an hour.”
Paula got up. “I’ll take care of it.”
When she left, a bluebird perched on the juniper began singing. I leaned against Benjamin.
“I am a little tired,” I said, closing my eyes.
The next thing I knew the number and letter sequence was flashing on and off in my sparse dream landscape. Someone screamed.
I opened my eyes and lifted my head from Benjamin’s shoulder. My heart raced.
“What is it?” he asked.
The bluebird still sang; the village was still quiet. I must have dozed only for a few minutes.
“Nothing,” I said as I sat up. “Do you dream?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever dream of numbers or letters?”
He brushed a strand of hair off my face. “I don’t think so. Usually I dream of running in the desert or sitting on the mesa top, howling at the moon.” He grinned.
I looked out in the desert again. The purple horizon had changed. Storm clouds were moving across the Earth. Even from here I could see the shadows the clouds cast. A zigzag of lightning joined the sky and Earth for a shattering moment.
I slowly stood. “Come on, love. Let’s go heal these people.”
I had only a few cases. One was chronic. I had healed her before, but it did not always take if the body’s own systems were unable to kick in, or if it was time for someone to die. People, animals, trees all died. I could not stop the process.