Ivory and the Horn (39 page)

“For the only way you can leave in such a case,” the woman goes on, “is if you accompany another seeker when their own journeying is done.”

“That… that doesn’t seem fair.”

The woman nods. “There is much unfairness—even in the spirit realms. But obstacles are set before us in order that they may be overcome.” She gives me a considering look. “Perhaps you are simply unaware of what you came seeking?”

She makes a question of it.

“I heard this flute,” I say. “That’s what I followed to get here.” “Ah.”

I wait, but she doesn’t expand beyond that one enigmatic utterance.

“Could you maybe give me a little more to go on than that?” I ask.

“You are an artist?” she asks.

The question surprises me, but I nod.

“Kokopelli,” she says, “the flute-player you heard. He is known for his—” she hesitates for a moment. “—inspirational qualities.”

“I’m not looking for ideas,” I tell her. “I have more ideas than I know what to do with. The only thing I’m ever looking for is the time to put them into practice.”

“Kokopelli or Coyote,” she says. “One of them is responsible for your being here.”

“Can they help me get back?”

“Where either of them is concerned, anything is possible.”

There’s something about the way she tells me this that seems to add an unspoken “when hell freezes over,” and that makes me feel even more uneasy.

“Can you tell me where I might find them?”

The woman shrugs. “Kokopelli is only found when he wishes to be, but Coyote—Coyote is always near. Look for him to be cadging a cigarette, or warming his toes by a fire.”

She starts to turn away, but pauses when I call after her.

“Wait!” I say. “You can’t just leave me here.”

“I’m sorry,” she tells me, and she really does seem sorry. “But I have duties that require my attention. I came upon you only by chance and already I have stayed too long.”

“Can’t I just come along with you?”

“I’m afraid that would be impossible.”

There’s nothing mean about the way she says it, but I can tell right away that the question is definitely not open to further discussion.

“Will you come back when you’re done?” I ask.

I’m desperate. I don’t want to be here on my own anymore, especially not with night falling.

“I can’t make you a promise of that,” she says, “but I will try. In the meantime, you would do better to look within yourself, to see if hidden somewhere within you is some secret need that might have brought you to this place.”

As she starts to turn away again, I think to ask her what her name is.

“Since I am Grandmother to so many here,” she says, “that would be as good a name as any. You may call me Grandmother Toad.”

“My name’s Sophie.”

“I know, little sister.”

She’s walking away as she speaks. I jump to my feet and follow after her, into the dusk that’s settling in between the cacti and mesquite trees, but like everyone else I’ve met here, she’s got the trick of disappearing down pat. She steps into a shadow and she’s gone.

A vast emptiness settles inside me after she’s left me. The night is full of strange sounds, snuffing and rustles and weird cries in the distance that appear to be coming closer.

“Grandmother,” I call softly.

I wonder, how did she know my name?

“Grandmother?”

There’s no reply.

“Grandmother!”

I run to the top of another ridge, one from which I can see the last flood of light spraying up from the sunset. There’s no sign, no trace at all of the Indian woman, but as I turn away, I see the flickering light of a campflre, burning there, below me in a dry wash. A figure sits in front of it. The sound of the flute is still distant, so I make the educated guess that it isn’t Kokopelli hanging out down there. Grandmother’s words return to my mind:

Look for him to be cadging a cigarette, or warming his toes by a fire.

I take one last look around me, then start down the hill toward Coyote’s fire.

7

Sophie awoke in a tangle of sheets. She stared up at a familiar ceiling, then slowly turned her head to look at her bedside clock. The hour hand was creeping up on four. Relief flooded her.

I’m back, she thought.

She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somewhere in between leaving Grandmother Toad and starting down towards Coyote’s fire, she’d managed to escape the desert dream. She lay there listening to the siren that had woken her, heard it pass her block and continue on. Sitting up, she fluffed her pillow, then lay down once more.

No more following the sound of a flute, she told herself, no matter how intriguing it might be.

Her eyelids grew heavy. Closing her eyes, she let herself drift off. Wait until she told Jeck, she thought. The desert she’d found herself in had been even stranger than the fens where she and Jeck had first met—if such a thing was possible. But when she fell asleep she bypassed Mr. Truepenny’s shop and found herself scrambling down a desert incline to where a mesquite fire sent its flickering shadows along a dry wash.

8

“Little cousin,” Coyote says after we’ve been sitting together in silence for some time. “What are you doing here?”

I can’t believe I’m back here again. I would never have let myself go back to sleep if I’d thought this would happen. Still, I can’t stay awake forever. That being the case, if every time I dream I’m going to find myself back here instead of in Mabon, I might as well deal with it now. But I’m not happy about it.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

Coyote nods his head. He sits on his haunches, on the far side of the campfire. The pale light from the coals makes his eyes glitter and seem to be of two different colors: one brown, one blue. Except for his ears, his silhouette against the deep starry backdrop behind him belongs to a young man, long black hair braided and falling down either side of his head, body wrapped in a blanket. But the ears are those of the desert wolf whose name he bears: tall and pointed, lips quivering as they sort through the sounds drifting in from the night around them.

Wind in the mesquite. Tiny scurrying paws on the sand of the dry wash. Owl wings beating like a quickened breath. A sudden squeal. Silence. The sound of wings again, rising now. From further away, the soft grunting of javalinas feeding on prickly pear cacti.

When Coyote turns his head, a muzzle is added to his silhouette and there can be no pretending that he is other than what he is: a piece of myth set loose from old stories and come to add to the puzzle of my being here.

“So tell me,” he says, a touch of amusement in his voice. “With your wise eyes so dark with secrets and insights lying thick about you like a cloak… what
do
you know?”

I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me or not.

“My name’s Sophie,” I tell him. “That’s supposed to mean wisdom, but I don’t feel very wise at the moment.”

“Only fools think they’re wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can.”

“I’m barely managing that.”

“And yet you’re here. You’re alive. You breathe. You speak. Presumably, you think. You feel. The dead would give a great deal to be allowed so much.”

“Look,” I say. “All I know is that I stepped through a door in another dream and ended up here. I followed this Kokopelli’s flute-playing and Grandmother Toad told me I have to stay here unless I either discover some secret need inside me that can be answered by the desert, or one of you help me find my way back.”

“Kokopelli,” Coyote says. “And Grandmother Toad. Such notable company to find oneself in.”

Now I know he’s mocking me, but I don’t think it’s meant to be malicious. It’s just his way. Besides, I find that I don’t really care.

“Can you help me?” I ask.

“Can I help? I’m not sure. Will I help? I’ll do my best. Never let it be said that I turned my back on a friend of both the flute-player and Nokomis.”

“Who?”

“The Grandmother has many names—as does anyone who lives long enough. They catch on our clothes and get all snarled up in a tangle until sometimes even we can’t remember who we are anymore.”

“You’re confusing me.”

“But not deliberately so,” Coyote says. “Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.”

I give him a blank look.

“Besides,” he adds, “it was a joke. We always know who we are; what we sometimes forget are the appellations by which we come to be known. There are, you see, so many of them.”

“I just want to get out of this place.”

Coyote nods. “I must say, I have to admire anyone with such a strong sense of purpose. No messing about, straight to the point. It’s refreshing, really. You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?”

“Sorry, I don’t smoke.”

It’s hard to believe that this is the same person who sat in silence across the fire from me for the better part of an hour before he even said hello. I wonder if archetypal spirits can be schizophrenic. Then I think, just being an archetype must make you schizophrenic. Imagine if your whole existence depended on how people remember you.

“I gave it up myself,” Coyote says. Then he proceeds to open up a rolling paper, sprinkle tobacco onto it and roll himself a cigarette. He lights it with a twig from the fire, then blows a contented wreath of smoke up into the air where it twists and spins before it joins the rising column of smoke from the burning mesquite.

I’m beginning to realize that my companion’s not exactly the most truthful person I’m going to meet in my life. I just hope he’s more reliable when it comes to getting a job done or I’m going to be stuck in this desert for a very long time.

“So where do we start?” I ask.

“With metaphor?”

“What?”

“The use of one thing to explain another,” Coyote says patiently.

“I know what it means. I just don’t get your point.”

“I thought we were trying to find your secret need.”

I shake my head. “I don’t
have
any secret needs.” •

“Are you sure?”

“Are you sexually repressed?”

I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.

“What’s that got to do with
anything?”

Coyote flicks the ash from the end of his cigarette. “It’s this whole flute-player business,” he says. “It’s riddled with sexual innuendo, don’t you see? He’s a fertility symbol, now, very mythopoetic and all, but it wasn’t always that way. Used to be a trader, a travelling merchant, hup-two-three. That hunched back was actually his pack of trading goods, the flute his way of approaching a settlement,
tootle-toot-toot,
it’s only me, no danger, except if you were some nubile young thing. Had a woman in every town, you know—they didn’t call him Koke the Poke for nothing. The years go by and suddenly our randy little friend finds himself elevated to minor deity status, gets all serious, kachina material, don’t you know? Becomes a kind of erotic muse, if you will.”

“But—”

“Ah, yes,” Coyote says. “The metaphorical bit.” He grinds his cigarette out and tosses the butt into the fire. “Your following the sound of his flute—
his
particular flute, if you get my meaning—and well, I won’t say he’s irresistible, but if one were to be suffering for a certain particular
need,
it might be quite difficult
not
to be drawn, willy-nilly, after him.”

“What are you saying? That all I have to do is have sex here, and I get to leave?”

“No, no, no, no. Nothing so crass. Nothing so obvious. At this point it’s all conjecture. We’re simply exploring possibilities, some more delightful than others.” He pauses and gives me a considering look. “You’re not a nun, are you? You haven’t taken one of those absurd vows that cut you off from what might otherwise be a full and healthy human existence?”

“I don’t know about nuns,” I tell him, “but I’m outta here.”

I stand up, expecting him to make some sort of protest, but he just looks at me, curiously, and starts to roll another cigarette. I don’t really want to go out into the desert night on my own, but I don’t want to sit here and listen to his lunacy either. ~

“I thought you were going to help me,” I say finally.

“I am, little cousin. I will.”

He lights his cigarette and then pointedly waits for me to sit down again.

“Weil, you haven’t been much help so far,” I say.

“Oh, right,” he says, laying a hand theatrically across his brow. “Kill the messenger, why don’t you.”

I lean closer to the fire and take a good long look at him. “Is there
any
relevance to anything you have to say?” I ask.

“You brought up Kokopelli. You’re the one who followed the music of his randy little flute. You can’t blame me for any of that. If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

He cups his hands around those big coyote ears of his and leans forward as well. I try to keep a straight face, but all I can do is fall back on the ground and laugh.

“I was beginning to think you didn’t have any sort of a sense of humor at all,” he says when I finally catch my breath.

“It’s not that. I just want to get away from here. When I dream, I want to go to Mabon—to where / want to go.”

“Mabon?” Coyote says. “Mabon’s yours? Oh, I love Mabon. The first time I ever heard the Sex Pistols was in Mabon. That was years ago now, but I couldn’t believe how great they were.”

Whereupon he launches into a version of “My Way” that’s so off-key and out of time that it makes the version Sid Vicious did sound closer to Ol‘ Blue Eyes than I might ever have thought possible. From the hills around us, four-legged coyote voices take up the song, and soon the night is filled with this horrible caterwauling that’s so loud it’s making my teeth ache. All I want to do is bury my head or scream.

“Great place, Mabon,” he says when he finally breaks off and the noise from his accompanists fades away.

Wonderful, I think. Not only am I stuck with him here, but now I find out that if I ever do get out of this desert, I could run into him again in my own dreaming place.