The Fifth Sacred Thing (30 page)

She lay still, letting the shine settle within her, and then she laid her hands on Bird’s back, and suddenly three of them were massaging him from behind, digging their skilled fingers into the sore muscles, pouring heat into the hurting places and spreading warmth through him, down to the root where Holybear was sucking the pain out of him, sucking and spitting and sucking again, until Bird could feel in his body again the promise of power and release, and the promise rose up in him, and the hands were all over him, carrying that promise into every nerve ending and cell so they vibrated together, so his body became one sounding chord that spilled hope out over the flesh that pressed against him and shuddered in response to his pleasure.

The dance went on until each had been healed and renewed. The skylight in the ritual room was beginning to glow blue with dawn light when they pulled blankets from the corner, curled up in a pile, and fell asleep.

Down below, alone in her room, Maya dreamed of Johanna and Rio. They were on the coast, where a still lagoon of water pooled behind a sandstone
rock shaped like a whale. On the other side of the rock the waves foamed and sucked and pounded, but here the water was still, and they were sheltered from the wind. They lay naked on dunes of white sand, sliding down from time to time to dip into water so cold it turned Maya’s belly fish white, gave a blue cast to Johanna’s dark skin. The rock seemed full of faces, stone brows and deep-set eyes and straight chiseled lips, spirits stern but benevolent.

All day they watched the sun make a track across the sky. At night they lit a fire at their campsite and ate beans and rice, which Maya had left to soak in the morning. They watched the sparks flare and die into gray ash. The fire was alive, as the rock was alive, and Maya could feel the great life beating and breathing and pulsing through all of them and everything around them. She wanted to embrace it. She wanted the touch of rock and fire and tree roots on her naked skin, to peel herself open and be touched deeper. No one spoke, but she thought they all felt the same. They did not need to speak to one another about these things. She loved them; she wanted them to touch her like the night air did. The moon rose out of the river and turned their skin silver.

10

“O
n a hilltop reached by a spiral path, on an island in the middle of a lake, in the middle of a woods, nine old women guard the city with their magic,” Maya said, panting a bit as they climbed the hill. “Sounds like a story, doesn’t it?”

“Why did they pick this place?” Madrone asked.

“They wanted to be in the center of the city but somehow removed from it. They wanted seclusion for
listening
and
dreaming
, but without isolation.”

“You’d think they’d also have wanted a gondola, or even an elevator,” Madrone said. She was breathing heavily herself, and that worried her. Really, by now she should be recovered enough to keep pace easily with Maya. Maybe she needed to start doing some more regular exercise. Running. Dancing, maybe. Bird trailed behind, trying to hide his struggle to keep up.

“Ah, well, they’re purists,” Maya said. “And it makes for a better story. ‘Early one morning, up the hill’—let’s see, what verb best describes it—‘crept? climbed? staggered? three pilgrims.…’ ”

“The lame, the halt, and the blind.” Madrone completed the phrase.

“I’m not lame,” Bird said. At the tension in his voice, the two women stopped and watched him come toward them. His face was grim with suppressed pain.

“All right,” Madrone said. “You can be the halt, whatever that is.”

“Whatever it is,” Maya said, “it’s a good idea. Let’s rest for a minute.”

They paused, looking down at the blue glint of water through treetops. Bird caught up to them, and Madrone moved behind him to dig practiced fingers into the sore muscles at the small of his back, where his uneven gait put stress on the spine.

“Ow,
mierda
, you’re hurting me,” he complained.

“Hush up, child. This is good for you.”

“I’m fine, Madrone. Leave me alone.”

“You’re not fine, Bird.”

“I am. I’m a lot better than I was.”

“You’re worse,” Madrone said. “What did Sam say?”

Bird simply compressed his lips.

“Well?”

“He wants to cut me up and put me back together again his way. Break the bones in my leg and hip and reset them.”

“Sam can be a bit overbearing, but he’s very conservative about surgery. If he says you need it, you probably do,” Madrone said.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, in a tone that indicated he wouldn’t.

Madrone exchanged a glance with Maya. “Let me work on your hip,” she said, patting his ass gently. “Bend over, boy.”

“Fuck you!” He whirled on her, such rage in his voice that she and Maya both stepped away. Madrone blinked back tears.

Something was struggling to the surface of his memory, as hard as he struggled to push it back. There were the gray walls again, and the steel bars—but he couldn’t, didn’t want to remember the rest of it, not here on this hill with Maya and Madrone both looking at him in that way. He was already sweating, and Madrone was about to cry.

“Shit,
cariño
, I’m sorry,” he said, coming over and putting his arms around her. “It was just those particular words.…”

“Another bad memory?” Madrone murmured.

He nodded.

“I’m sorry I keep hurting you,” she whispered.

“Not your fault,” he said, kissing her eyes. “And no, I don’t need to talk about it. I really don’t.”

“Okay, Bird.”

He held her tightly for a moment. She was a shield against the pain that flooded him suddenly, not with memories but with physical sensation. He wanted to vomit, but he fought the urge.

She could feel him shaking.

“You’re okay,” she murmured. “Estás bien. Estás aquí, conmigo y con Maya. Estás seguro.”

She continued saying soothing things in Spanish until his breathing steadied. Spanish always comforted him; maybe they’d do better if she stopped speaking English to him altogether, but her Spanish voice was only one of her voices, and anyway, she couldn’t shelter him from the memories forever, only help to steady him through.

“It’s hard to believe,” Maya said, “that this is the very place where I first met Rio. Look—see that spot on the bank over there, where the lawn comes down to the water? It was my first day in San Francisco, after I ran away from home, at the beginning of what we called the Summer of Love. Over eighty years ago. I’d hitchhiked up from LA and spent the night in some crash pad overrun with roaches, and by that I mean bugs.” She grimaced. “Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. First thing in the morning, I headed for the
park, where whole tribes of flower children were dancing and drumming and generating clouds of marijuana smoke on Hippie Hill. They intimidated me. I was afraid they’d find out I wasn’t as cool as I looked. So I made my way to the edge of the lake, where I sat trying to convince myself that I was on a spiritual quest, not just scared and lonely. Rio rowed up to me in a stolen boat and carried me off. Within ten minutes we were fucking, possibly under this very tree.”

“He was a fast mover, old
Tío
Rio,” Bird said, smiling.

“In those days, we got right down to business. When it was over, he looked at me and said, ‘Let’s spend the rest of our lives together. What’s your name?’ ”

“How romantic,” Madrone said.

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Half and half.”

“The odd thing was that we did,” Maya said. “Spend the rest of our lives together, that is—except for a couple of decades here and there. Funny how long those years seemed then, and how short they seem now. Are you rested? Because we still have quite a climb.”

At the top, the path broadened out into a small meadow. A clear pool stood on one side, and to the north a series of low domes rose above the ground. They were shingled with wood, and the sun glinted on the glass skylights on their tops. Near the entrance of the largest dome was a small circular depression, lined with a bank of turf that curved around three sides like a green bench. A low stone table stood in the center.

The door opened and a woman stepped out. Her face was as lined as Maya’s, her silver hair pulled neatly back into a knot at the nape of her neck, her eyes narrow and curved as eucalyptus leaves. She wore a flowing silk tunic, peacock blue trimmed with lavender, over a pair of black sweat pants.

“Lily,” Maya said. “Lily Fong. How many years has it been?”

“Not as long as that,” Lily said, clasping Maya’s hand. “I saw you, Maya, just a month or two ago, on the Day of the Reaper. That was a powerful story you told.”

“Why didn’t you come forward?” Maya asked. “You would have been honored if we’d known you were there.”

“That’s why I took care that you didn’t know. It’s a dreary business, being a living legend.”

“Tell me about it,” Maya said.

Lily smiled. “Why don’t you come and join Defense Council, Maya? You qualify.”

“I can’t stand going to meetings anymore,” Maya said. “It destroys my concentration. But this is Madrone, whom you know. And my grandson, Bird. We’ve come to confer with the Council.”

“Sit down,” Lily said, waving them over to the sunken table. “So you are Bird. Yes, we have been waiting for you. The Council has sent me to talk with you.”

“Can’t we talk to the whole group at once?” Maya asked.

Lily shook her head. “Today I am the ears and mouth of the Nine. The others have their own work to do, and they too find that meetings disturb their concentration. Sit down. I’ll bring some tea.”

She reentered the dome and emerged a few moments later with a laden tray. They sat on the green bank around the stone table, and Lily handed them cups and served them tea from a porcelain pot carved with birds and leopards.

“This is beautiful,” Maya said. “It’s a museum piece.”

“Yes, the museum is kind to us with their treasures. And they enjoy being used.” She turned to Bird. “So you are the one who has returned from the Southlands, of whom the Voices have spoken. What news do you bring us?”

“Not good news, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid. Just take your time and tell your story.”

She listened attentively as he spoke, interrupting from time to time with questions.

“So that’s where it stands,” he said. “As far as I know, the preparations for an invasion are well under way.”

“You’ve answered a number of questions,” Lily said, “and raised others. The epidemics, for example.”

“Apparently, down south they’re either still cooking the damn bugs up or they’ve got so many running loose it’s hard to survive without the antidotes. I suspect that last one was an attempt to weaken us, soften us up before they try to come in. But I don’t know for sure. I know it’s one way they control people in the Southlands. You work for the Stewards, or you don’t get access to the medicines. Or water.”

“We’ve suspected an attack was brewing for some time,” Lily said. “We’ve
dreamed
it. But we don’t know when it will come.”

“I don’t know either,” Bird said.

“How much do they know about us?”

Bird stared for a moment at the embossed design on his cup, tracing the outline of a glazed leopard. It was beautiful and fierce and fragile, like a lot of things. “They think the North is a hotbed of powerful Witches, each of us at Satan’s beck and call. They’re afraid of our magic, which is probably what’s kept them away all this time. Aside from that, they don’t seem to know much, from what I could tell. Which, bear in mind, was sort of from a limited perspective. If I can believe what I remember, I didn’t tell them anything. But to be honest,
Dona
Lily, I don’t know if I can believe what I remember, or if what I remember is all of what I did.”

“And that troubles you greatly,” she said.

“Of course.”

“If you had told them the truth, if you had said to them, ‘Our city is defended by nine old women who
listen
and
dream,’
would they have believed you?”

Bird laughed. “No.”

“So don’t torment yourself. Perhaps what you told them does not matter.”