Shaman Winter (48 page)

Flocks of crows invaded the valley every winter. By day they scavenged in back yards and at the city landfill; by night they roosted in the cottonwoods of the river bosque.

The morning sun had just cleared Sandia Crest, filling the Rio Grande Valley with a golden hue, the same aura that often shines on Jerusalem, a sheen on Temple Mount.

Last night the crescent moon, the Water Carrier moon of the spring equinox, a goddess to lovers of long ago, a bowl moon to New Mexicans, had tipped and spilled its contents, dusting the Sandia Mountain with a thin coat of snow. In the valley the spray had fallen as a holy mist that barely dampened the tired but awakening earth.

Sonny blinked and looked at the east window. He kept the curtains slightly parted so a slice of sunlight landed on his bedroom wall, a crude calendar marking the movement of the seasons, from one solstice to the next.

Just like the sun calendar at Chaco Canyon, don Eliseo once pointed out. Here is the light on December 21, here June 21. In between, sacred space, life unraveling, our days on earth, and in March the spring equinox, time of earth's renewal. Remember, time on the clock means little. It moves in a line. The time that encircles you is the time that provides a center. The soul is like an antenna, gathering the unity of cosmic time.

The old man had been a friend of the Pueblo Indian people, attending many of the dances and ceremonies. Don Eliseo had taught Sonny how to construct his dreams, as one would tell a story or act in a play. Sonny learned he was a dream person, one who could create his dreams and play a role in them.

If I dream a butterfly, I am that butterfly. If I dream a dog dreaming, I am that dog dreaming. If the dog dreams me then I am in that reality and not this.

One had to be master of the dream if he were to understand the message inherent in the dramas that unfolded in the unconscious, that realm so deep in the psyche that only its images gave hints of its geography. The ancients knew this. It was written on the walls of Karnak, etched on the petrogylphs all over the Southwest.

Being an actor in the dream was the only way to stop Raven and his mad plan. Raven was also a dream person. That's why he was dangerous. If he controlled your dream, he could drown you in the chaos that was his nature.

So, dreams had to be opened, as we open our eyes after sleep. Dreams not brought into the light remained gook, troublesome dark stuff, detritus floating in the cosmic waters from which the first consciousness sprang, those first retinal cells responding to light.

But any damn psychologist knows that, Raven had once cursed. He didn't like their ilk peering into his psychic space.

The trick was to participate in your dream as if you were the main actor. A person who could create his own dreams was a brujo, a shaman. Unfortunately, the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century no longer believed in the role of the shaman. Such persons were suspect, labeled witches or druids, shunned, set apart from their fellow human beings, ostracized.

Sonny didn't care about the labels, but he did wonder if he wanted to enter the dream world again. Going into Raven's dream had cost don Eliseo his life. They had gone looking for Rita's unborn child. Sonny believed that Raven had caused Rita's miscarriage. And during the past few months he further convinced himself that Raven somehow kept the soul of Rita's child a prisoner.

He swore he had seen the soul of his unborn child in Raven's nightmare. He was sure the light he saw shining was the soul of Rita's baby. Raven had said as much. For three months all Sonny could think about was how to rescue the unborn child from Raven's dark circle.

He knew the miscarriage had put dread in Rita's heart. They had struggled through the winter, nurturing Rita with the remedies Lorenza prescribed, herbal teas from China, osha from Taos, massages, anything that would ease the loss. And they worked long hours at Rita's restaurant, serving meals to the working people of the North Valley.

In work they found some respite, but at the end of each day Sonny would drive her home, kiss her goodnight, then return alone to his apartment. Rita was still grieving.

He knew she needed time to recuperate.

“I appreciate what you do,” she had told him. “Really. Having you at the cafe is more than … well, it means the world to me. I'm not afraid to be alone at night. It's just something I need to do. Give me time.”

So Sonny waited, and three months later they were both stronger. She laughed and teased him more often. “Any day now,” she had whispered yesterday.

“Any day now,” Sonny muttered, jumping out of bed, hoping a shower would wash away the night's images. He had seen a man drowning in a large tank that resembled a baptistry.

Wish I could just flush bad memories down the toilet, he thought, or wash them away in a hot shower.

But what was engraved in the soul was eternal. And Memoria was a tough old dame. She bedded in the cells of the body and just lay there forever, awakening at the oddest times and flooding the mind with the damnedest memories.

Memoria also lived in the petroglyphs scratched into the volcanic boulders on the West Mesa escarpment. The ancient symbols were the memory of the Anasazi. A few of the Pueblo elders whispered stories. One glyph, they said, was carved on a boulder called the Zia Stone. That sacred symbol was a unifying sign that would reveal the mystery of the universe, the meaning of life. It had been given to the ancestors long ago.

Searching for the Zia Stone, Sonny and don Eliseo had explored ancient Anasazi haunts in the windswept mesas and canyons of the state. Like penitents searching for a holy sign in gothic cathedrals, they sought the glyph that held the answer to life, a unifying theory of the universe.

Learn to enter the dream, don Eliseo said, and Sonny had followed the old man into the dream world. He became a winter shaman, a brujo who could construct his dreams. And to what end? To meet Raven. He was always there, always waiting.

“Revenge,” Sonny whispered, flushing the toilet. “I want my revenge. I will find a way—”

The struggle with Raven had gone on too long. Maybe don Eliseo was wrong. Maybe a well-placed bullet between the eyes would kill the bastard. What the hell is a dream good for if I go there only to meet my shadow?

He showered, toweled himself dry, and shaved. He put on a pair of freshly pressed jeans and a blue cowboy shirt, still thinking of revenge.

Don Eliseo appeared, as he often did when Sonny's thoughts stampeded.

Won't do you any good, the old man said.

You keep saying that, Sonny replied. Why?

When your thoughts are confused Raven has the upper hand.

I can take care of Raven! Sonny retorted. I know what he wants. The Zia medallion. I'll tempt him. Hold it out to him, then shoot him—

Damn it, Sonny! the old man shouted. There you go! You're not thinking straight. You can't kill him with a bullet!

“I'll find a way,” Sonny said aloud, pulling on his well-worn boots.

No time to shine them, he thought, slipping the Zia medallion around his neck, the gold medal engraved with the Sun symbol, an amulet as magical as the precious stone once suspended from Abraham's neck. Mojo power.

The medallion was Sonny's now. There had been no contact with Raven the past three months.

He walked into the kitchen, started the morning coffee, fed Chica, and was pouring himself his first cup when his cell phone rang. Something told him it was no good; still, he answered it.

“Sonny Baca?”

“Yeah.”

“Augie. Augie Martínez, state police.”

Augie, Augememnon Martínez, son of an influential Santa Fe politico who on a cruise of the Greek isles fell in love with a dazzling Greek beauty, brought her home, and took her as his wife. He retired from politics, raised goats in Nambe, sold goat cheese, and years later died, leaving behind his wife and a bunch of kids, restless creatures who fled home as soon as they realized there were oceans to cross.

The mother, too, grew restless, the people of Nambe said, because she missed the sound of the surf, the sun setting on the sea. She took to wandering the hills around Nambe, a gypsy with green eyes, always pushing the herd of goats just over the next hill, until one day she didn't return.

Only Augie remained on the wind-scarred hills of the Española valley. He finished school and joined the state cops, seeking some stability in the corps, or perhaps seeking his mother, who began to appear in the oral tradition of la gente of the Nambe valley as La Llorona, the crying woman. Did she cry for her children or for the sound of the sea?

“I've got a homicide on my hands—”

Sonny filled his cup of coffee and waited. In his dream a body was floating in dark, swirling water.

“Who?”

“The governor—”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Jemez Springs. Someone drowned him in a tub at the Bath House.”

“Why call me?”

“We found black feathers …”

The hair on Sonny's neck prickled. A shiver passed through his body. Don Eliseo was right! He had been too confused to figure it out. Equinox! Raven was back!

“Raven,” he whispered.

“That's what we figure. You haven't heard the news?”

“No,” Sonny answered, turning on the small TV set on the table. The picture slowly solidified into the blurry image of Dick Knipfing reporting from the Jemez Springs plaza.

“We have a big mess on our hands,” Augie continued. “The governor's dead and somebody planted a bomb up on the mountain. It's a weird contraption but the lab boys from Los Alamos say it's radioactive. The shit has hit the fan, Sonny.”

A bomb, and the feds knew Raven was in possession of a plutonium pit. But he had lain low during the past three months. Now he was out of hiding.

“I can't discuss it on the phone. Fucking news media is everywhere. The chief wants you. You know Raven better than anyone else—”

“Where are you now?” Sonny asked.

“I'm in Jemez Springs, interrogating people. The chief wants you to take a look at the bomb.”

Why? Sonny thought. That didn't make sense. Anytime Raven left feathers at the scene of a crime, he was setting a trap. Raven wasn't going to be up on the mountain, he was going to be around the corner. But where?

“Let the Los Alamos boys handle the bomb,” Sonny said.

“They will, but we need you,” Augie insisted.

“Sorry,” Sonny replied, “I don't think Raven would leave the feathers and stick around.” He offed the phone. So Raven was back. And he had planted a bomb. Why on the Jemez mountain?

To get you there, the old man said.

Yeah, Sonny thought. Something big was going down in Jemez Springs. The faces of the reporters on the old TV set looked concerned. The Alburquerque news hounds were hot on the unfolding events.

He rose and went to the window. March was already drawing the first green shoots out of winter's compost, hyacinth borders in pink and deep purple, apricot blossoms, yellow jonquils, the lime-green seeds of the elm trees, sienna-red cottonwood buds, swollen with promise.

Raven lived in the hot compost of the unconscious, because Raven's world was mythic, levels and circles deeper than Dante's inferno, dark epicycles where he composed his stories, images with which he tortured the unwary. To understand Raven one had to go into his world, a world so deep in the psyche a one-eyed man might get lost. That was the rub. The dream that revealed the dark images could liberate, or destroy the dreamer.

There was a saving grace. In the dream world everyone had friends, allies who appeared in all sorts of disguises, bringing messages from that hidden glob of memory that has been passed down since mother nature first conceived of a cell that could gather light.
Primal images
, the psychiatrists called them. Messages in the cells. The trick was to bring those images into the light of day. The dark shadows of the soul had to be birthed into the world. Every man, woman, and child was a creator who could build soul from the psyche's darkness. Every dog?

So he's back and he's planted a bomb on my mountain. Maybe he really is up there. Maybe today's the day we end this struggle that has gone on too long.

He closed his eyes and leaned over the table.

“All I want is to marry Rita, help her at the restaurant. I want to take care of her …”

But deep in his guts revenge seethed. He knew he would be going after Raven. It could be no other way.

He stood at the window, allowing the warm rays of the sun to penetrate him. Cupping his hands he held the light, let it shine as deep into his soul as possible. Then he felt what he hadn't felt since the winter solstice. Something palpable in the light rays, the Lords and Ladies of the Light entering his soul.

“Señores y Señoras de la Luz, bless all of life. Bless the children of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Africa, Colombia, our barrios. Bless the sick, those in prison, those who need food. Bless the dead governor …”

He turned, offering the light in the four sacred directions, scattering the light cupped in his hands and wishing for himself only clarity of soul.

Like most rituals, the prayer had become routine, but today the fingers of light cut to his heart. He heard music, and he trembled. The essence of sunlight passed through his body like an electric current. The brilliant Lords and Ladies of the Light touched him, entered him, and for a moment a clarity beyond the light revealed itself, leaving him dazed.

He looked out the window and squinted.

One eye open.

2

He picked up the dreamcatcher, his weapon of power, the round spider-webbed instrument with a juniper handle. Because of the handle it could be mistaken for a tennis racket, but the netting had a hole in the middle for bad dreams to pass through and disappear. Good dreams were caught in the web and thus retained in the memory of the dreamcatcher's owner.

Don Eliseo had constructed the shaman weapon, and Sonny used it to fight Raven during the winter-solstice dream, a nightmare really, in which he forced himself into Raven's evil circle, the misty chaos where dark, fiendish bird-like demons, or vampires, kept watch, horrendous creatures who had scratched out Chica's eye.