Living the Dream (11 page)

“That’s ALL Julia saw,” Aunt Evalina protested. “People on welfare, drunks, junkies, broken people barely surviving.”

Aunt Bonita said very quietly, “I worry that just barely surviving is all our people got left. Bringing Cody back, seeing the reservation through her eyes -it’s not an uplifting sight.”

“Were we wrong to fetch her?” Aunt Evalina asked unhappily.

Aunt Bonita’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “No, she’s our only chance…” Her voice trailed away.

“But—” prompted Aunt Jeannie.

“We got a glimmer of hope.” Aunt Bonita said huskily. “That don’t mean we’ll get what we pray for.”

I suddenly needed some space. Shimmering out through the trailer, I stood shivering under the stars, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard.

I hadn’t been keen for Cody to go with the aunts, as you know. But when they invited Cody to stay with them, I had sensed that their concern was genuine. I still believed that. At the motel Aunt Bonita seemed convinced Cody was in some kind of imminent danger. Now it looked as if concern for their niece wasn’t the only reason they’d wanted to spring Cody from the children’s home. It almost seemed like they needed her to do something for
them
. Why else would Aunt Bonita say she was their only chance?

Apart from the murmur of voices inside the trailer, everything was silent. I looked up at the stars and felt like little Navajo children must have felt through the centuries: so much awesome beauty casually scattered across the dark. What was it even for? I felt a pang, wishing Reuben was with me to share this sight.

I remembered a story Aunt Jeannie had told Cody on the road about Coyote the trickster. The animals were fed up with not being able to see after dark, so the Holy People agreed to set lights in the sky by night as well as by day. First they created a moon from a large pearly shell. Then they got to work on the constellations, searching the riverbed for thousands of smooth, shiny pebbles. They’d intended to arrange the stones to form shimmery, cosmic-type pictures, but they couldn’t agree on a final design. Coyote listened to the Holy People arguing for a while, then totally lost patience and flung the remaining stars up into the sky just anyhow! That’s why some stars make patterns and others are like, completely random.

As I gazed up at the starlit sky, praying that Reuben was safe, every single tiny hair rose up on the back of my neck. I’d been alone. Now, suddenly, I wasn’t. Ghostly voices rose and fell on the desert wind in an ancient chant I’d heard before:

House made of dawn

House made of evening

House built of pollen

In beauty may I walk

Beauty above me

Beauty below me

Beauty behind me

In beauty may I walk…

In that moment, my mind suddenly connected up the dots.
Hozho
, the Navajo Blessing Way, where animals, humans and divine beings coexisted in harmony, was the exact same world the Creation angels dreamed into being! I looked back at the trailer in its sea of rusting household appliances, and for the first time I really grasped what the Navajo - what humans - had lost.

I felt that sighing, golden breath, as if Ambriel had just been waiting for me to understand.

Inside the trailer someone started to scream.

Chapter Fourteen

C
ody’s aunts weren’t the most cuddly human beings on the planet, but they were totally brilliant in a crisis. They stayed absolutely cool and calm as Cody screamed and screamed and screamed like she was on some high scary ledge all alone. When someone’s in the grip of night terrors, they’re completely beyond your reach, deaf and blind to everything but their fear.

Aunt Evalina filled hot-water bottles and put them under Cody’s covers. (Cody’s tiny room was suddenly as clammy as an underground cellar.) Aunt Bonita burned strong-smelling herbs, wafting healing fumes around the tiny room. Aunt Jeannie stroked Cody’s forehead, chanting softly in Navajo.

While the aunts worked flat out to heal Cody on the human plane, I steadily pushed up the Light levels. It felt good: three humans and an angel working side by side to defeat the Dark Agencies, each of us doing what we did best.

I’d immediately known who was behind it. I knew the moment I walked in. The suddenly clammy air, the pulsing terror you could almost taste, the stomach-turning smell that was worse than bad drains. They might as well have spray-painted the walls on their way out: PODS RULE.

I was furious with myself. If I’d followed basic cosmic protection procedure as soon as we arrived, they wouldn’t have got within miles.
Great guardian angel you are
, I thought. But this wasn’t the time to beat myself up.

As the Light levels crept up, together with the herbs and chanting, the toxic vibes slowly diminished. Cody’s body temperature improved, and her screaming died to a whimper. Her eyelids flickered as she murmured something I couldn’t catch, then, instead of waking, she slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

While she slept, I did what I should have done from the start. I ran outside and wove a shimmery net of angelic protection symbols around the trailer. Then I went back inside and boosted the Light levels so high Aunt Bonita’s prayer plants literally grew six centimetres overnight!

I was overdoing it and I didn’t care. I’d promised the Agency to take care of Cody and I’d let her down. I should have been on it a hundred per cent, but I’d let myself get distracted by my own personal worries. It wouldn’t happen again. Next time the PODS came (and I had no doubt there would be a next time) I’d be ready.

Meanwhile I had some serious thinking to do. For the first time since I started angel school I took Mr Allbright’s advice and actually used my notebook, noting anything that puzzled me to mull over later.

At the top of the first page I wrote:

Aunts! Why did they bring Cody back to the Rez
.

Underneath I wrote:

PODS !
They
tried to keep Cody and her rellies apart. Why?

Finally I scribbled:

What has Cody got to do with Ambriel’s dreams?

I closed my notebook, hugging it in my arms, as if that would magically transform these riddles into answers. I had no clue why this vulnerable girl was causing so much cosmic excitement, but I was determined to find out.

Next day Cody showed no sign of remembering what had happened. She actually seemed in an unusually relaxed mood, possibly due to all our combined efforts. Her face even had some colour.

She pitched in to help her aunts put a brunch together from the left-over party food. For the first time I saw her eat with genuine enjoyment. “I remember this bread!” she said, surprised. “I used to love it. What’s it called again?”

“Navajo Kneeldown bread!” Aunt Jeannie sounded pleased. “It was your dad’s favourite too when he was a little boy.”

After the meal the aunts took Cody for a walk through the canyon. Cody kept stopping to gaze about her. So did I. You know when you meet someone who is utterly and unreasonably beautiful? There’s no one thing you can put your finger on, but they totally blow you away. The canyon was like that. The light, the air scented with plants I couldn’t identify, the glowing pink and red colours in the sandstone.

I saw Cody suddenly let out her breath. It was like, here, in her father’s land, she could finally breathe. The aunts let her take it all in in her own way, occasionally telling her names of plants: Indian paintbrush, larkspur, sagebrush, showing her how to recognise coyote tracks.

At the same time they were subtly feeding Cody titbits of Navajo info. I don’t know about Cody, but I couldn’t always tell if the aunts were describing an actual event in history, a long ago family memory or some old legend. I’m not sure if they even saw a difference.

“Everything Mother Earth has to give us is right here in Navajoland,” Aunt Jeannie said, beaming at Cody. “Canyons, forests, lakes and deserts, rivers, sun, wind and snow. She gives us medicine and food and she shares her sacred teachings.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t understand how the Earth can teach you anything,” Cody said shyly.

Aunt Bonita frowned. “You don’t understand because you still don’t believe the Earth is alive.”

The aunts had brought along large canvas bags. As they walked and talked, they stopped to collect leaves. “See how we never take more than a few leaves from each plant?” Aunt Evalina said. “Then they’ll come again next year.”

“Our people eat a lot of wild food,” Aunt Jeannie chipped in. “Corn silk, wild onions, bee weed. We grow our own corn. We don’t go to the supermarket more than we have to.”

“My mom practically has a panic attack every time she sees the supermarket bill,” said Cody. “She’s like, ‘How is that possible? We bought like, FIVE items!’”

“How is your mom?” Aunt Bonita sounded casual as she tipped back her head to look at the cloudless sky. “You weren’t on the phone this morning above five minutes.”

“She didn’t want to run up your bill,” Cody said quickly. “She’s fine. She’ll be home in no time!” There was no home for Julia or Cody since Elliot had kicked Cody out, but no one liked to say this aloud.

Aunt Evalina suddenly smacked herself on the side of the head. “Bonita, I forgot to tell you! Nettie called. She needs to borrow the truck. She says let her know when it’s fixed and she won’t need to keep it more than a week.”

Aunt Bonita just said placidly, “OK.”

Cody looked shocked. “You’re letting someone use the truck for a whole week! What if you need to go somewhere?”

Aunt Evalina smiled. “When someone needs something, we give it; that’s the Navajo way.”

“The old way,” Jeannie corrected. “Times are changing.”

Aunt Bonita stopped to examine a clump of flowering plants. They looked like miniature sunflowers, tiny enough to plant round a doll’s house. Their sharp-edged grey leaves bristled with tiny hairs. Cody’s aunt bent stiff knees to look closer. She clicked her tongue. “These are flowering way too early. I doubt they’ll come up again next year.” Aunt Bonita hunted around until she found a sturdy stick. She began digging around the roots of one of the plants, which hadn’t yet come into bud.

“I’m gonna plant this one where I can keep an eye on it. It might take, it might not.” She pulled a wad of clean tissues from her pocket. “Run to the creek and give these a good soaking,” she told Cody.

She carefully lifted out the plant with its tiny hairy rootball. I sent the plant a zap of angelic energy to help it survive the move. (I’d become a LOT more eco-minded thanks to Ambriel.)

Cody came back with the sodden tissues. “I don’t get it!” She sounded almost accusing. “It’s not
your
fault if they die. You can’t look after like, every single plant in Ghost Canyon.”

Aunt Bonita was wrapping the damp tissues around the roots. “True,” she agreed, brushing dirt off her knees, “but I can try to save this one. We should be heading back,” she told her sisters. “Jim said he might be over to pick up the truck.”

On the way back Cody kept turning round to gaze back the way they’d come. There was something new in her eyes, a light that hadn’t been there before.

Back in the trailer Aunt Bonita told Cody to wash the grit out of the leaves they’d gathered on their walk, then she threw the washed leaves into a pan of boiling water, leaving them to simmer. A powerful herbal smell gradually filled the trailer.

“Is that for supper?” Cody asked doubtfully.

Aunt Bonita gave her witchy laugh. “I’m making a herb tea. If you drink it every day, it should settle your stomach.”

Cody tentatively touched the plant in its damp tissue. “I never thought about it before. If everyone just took care of their own little patch of dirt, the Earth would be OK, wouldn’t it?”

I saw the aunts exchange startled glances behind her back.

Aunt Bonita said gruffly, “It’d be a start.”

Chapter Fifteen

I
‘d never seen Cody so happy as she was on that walk. When Earl Brokeshoulder rang to say he’d found her a suitable pony, she looked like she’d died and gone to Heaven!