Bewere the Night (52 page)

Only Inés suspected more. She could hardly tell anyone it was
nagualismo
, though, even if she admitted to being a
nagual
herself. And so she had gone south, into Mexico, returning as an illegal immigrant, to hunt the coyote who ran on both two legs and four.

They snapped and feinted at one another, El Rojo using his greater speed and agility. But that was a dangerous game for him to play, especially on his own; when coyotes hunted larger prey, they did so in packs, and his was dead. That was why he had ambushed her—and as if he remembered that at the same moment, El Rojo turned and ran.

Inés followed. It might be enough to have killed the others, or it might not. If he could share his
nagualismo
with anyone, it wouldn’t take him long to be back in business. But it wasn’t pragmatism that drove her; it was the memory of Javier’s funeral, and his sister’s grief. And her own devastated face, staring back at her from the mirror.

The beast wanted his blood.

And the beast was stupid, forgetting she wasn’t the only predator out here tonight. The shotgun blast clipped her right hip, a few of the pellets raking bloody tracks into her fur. El Rojo had lured her back toward the motorcycles, and the agent with the gun. That man didn’t know she was a friend. Inés roared, and leaped out of range.

Bleeding, trembling with exhaustion even the
teopatli
couldn’t erase, she prayed, as she’d once prayed to the spirit of the day on which she was born. Alone in the desert, hallucinating and exhausted, bleeding from the tongue in the old manner, she’d begged the spirit to come—and the jaguar had answered.

El Rojo was creeping up behind her, not quite silent enough. Inés waited, paws braced against the rocky dirt. Closer. And closer.

When he leapt, she twisted to meet him, with all the speed and power of the jaguar.

One massive paw slammed him to the side. El Rojo yelped, but it cut off as her jaws found his neck. With a single bite, she severed his spinal cord, and his went limp in the dust.

Panting, she stood over the of her prey. Not far away, she heard the second engine start up again, and the crunching rush of the motorcycles driving away. The wounded agent was well enough to ride, then, and they’d given up the chase.

For now.

Inés licked her spotted fur clean as best she could. Then, wearily, strength fading again, she padded back along her own trail to her clothes and the tin of
teopatli
. Changing back to human form brought all her previous exhaustion and then some crashing down; she could barely persuade herself to get dressed. The only thing that moved her was the knowledge that sixteen frightened migrants waited in the darkness, knowing only what they heard: motorcycles and guns, coyotes and the roar of a jaguar. She hoped they hadn’t run.

They hadn’t. It would have been suicide, in desert territory none of them knew at all. Miguel stood up as Inés approached, and a few others followed suit, including the mother Inés had failed to protect from El Rojo.

The silence stretched out. She hadn’t thought this far ahead, to what she would tell the migrants. Lack of energy made her blunt. “They’re dead. The coyotes.”

One of the other women whimpered. Inés stood, only half-listening, as a babble of questions and fear broke out. She didn’t come out of her daze until Miguel drew close and said, “Do you know where we were going?”

The Tohono O’odham reservation, probably, where El Rojo would have had some means for them to continue onward. Inés didn’t know what that would have been. But she knew some of the Indians protected migrants, and sent them along to others who could help.

Miguel saw it in her eyes. “You’ll have to lead us, then.”

Inés opened her mouth to answer him, then stopped. She had climbed the fence with these people; she had paid a coyote and gone into the desert, just like the rest of them, and that made them kin. Here in the middle of the wilderness, she could not say to Miguel,
I’m an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol. I don’t do
coyotaje.
I arrest those who do.

She would take them to the reservation, of course; it was that, or abandon them here to die. But when they arrived, she would have to hand them over, to be deported back to Mexico.

Her gaze fell on the young mother, with her infant daughter. Eduardo had been the same age when their mother carried him across the border. He was eleven when they deported him, with no memory of the “home” they were sending him back to; Mamá, caught in the same raid, had gone with him. Inés, born in the United States, had stayed, and lost her family for years.

She’d joined the patrol to fight drug smuggling, to end violence, not to hunt people who only wanted work and a better life. Sneaking across the desert, risking death every step of the way, was no kind of answer—but they had no other. And Inés could not tell these frightened, hopeful men and women and children that the dream was not for them.

“We’ll rest for an hour,” she said. “Then I’ll take you someplace safe.”

SWEAR NOT BY THE MOON

RENEE CARTER HALL

The wolf watches us from the far corner of the enclosure as the girl fumbles with her keys to let me inside. I don’t bother to call to him; his hearing isn’t as good as it used to be, and besides, he won’t come near until we’re alone.

In the brochure, they called the enclosure an “enriched personal habitat,” but it’s really more of a pen, a section of grass and trees fenced with chain link. They’ve tried to make the grounds look something like a forest, but the effect is too neatly trimmed to be convincing. Instead, it looks more like a park—or a zoo.

The only thing that’s wild here is him.

In the nearest corner, a three-sided wooden shelter shades two stainless steel bowls. One holds fresh water, changed every hour—a touch I appreciate—and the other is half-filled with a pile of pink beef scraps.

I watch two flies buzz around the meat. It doesn’t look like he’s touched it at all.

I sigh and turn back to the girl, who has already closed the gate behind me. “Has he eaten anything today?”

She glances at his chart. “No, sir, not today. They tried giving him venison this morning like you asked, but he didn’t eat any of it.”

“Was it cold?”

Even with the chain link separating us, she blanches under my gaze, and I look away briefly to make her more comfortable. I know, then, that she has no
faol
blood in her. “I don’t know,” she says.

I try to keep my voice gentle. “He won’t eat it unless it’s warm.”

She jerks a nod. “I’ll make a note, sir.”

I don’t doubt that she will. They love notes at this place: charts and paperwork and orders typed in all caps. But I wonder if they ever bother to read any of them. One shift ends, another one starts, and you might as well have never said anything in the first place.

If it’s frustrating for me, I can only imagine what it’s like for him. At least I can still speak.

“Thank you,” I tell her, though I’m not really sure what I’m thanking her for. “I’ll find you if we need anything else.”

She locks the gate and hurries away. I wonder how long she’ll keep working here.

I double-check that the gate is closed securely, then sit down on the wooden bench under one of the trees. The wolf whines softly as he rises and comes to me. He is thinner than the last time I saw him, and his gait is stiff-legged. If he hasn’t been eating, he likely hasn’t gotten many pills down for his arthritis, either. He thrusts his muzzle against my hands, and I stroke his silver head lightly, respectfully.

“Hi, Dad,” I whisper.

I remember the first time I saw him in wolfshape. He told me not to be afraid, but still, watching the full-grimace of the change was terrifying to a ten-year-old. It reminded me of the horror movies where you think you’re approaching a loved one from behind, until they turn around and the music shrieks and you realize you’re seeing the monster instead.

But at the end of it, he wasn’t a monster. He was a strong, healthy gray wolf, lean muscle, lush pelt, white teeth. As a man, he had always seemed to me somehow smaller, weaker than the other fathers I saw—although I hated to admit that, even to myself—but as a wolf, he was powerful, he was fierce, and I felt I was seeing his true self for the first time. It was disorienting and wonderful.

As a wolf, I turned out to mirror him in miniature, a fact that pleased me immensely.

He taught me what it meant to be
faol
, to carry a wildness within you. The wolf is always there in your mind, even in human shape, just as the human side of you still lingers in wolfshape. In form, you are one or the other. But in your mind, you are neither, and both. And it is so much simpler, and so much more complicated, than that sounds.

There were no large packs near our home, but he took me to the others within our range. I saw them bare their throats and bellies to him, saw them lick his muzzle. The wolf in me knew what that meant without being told, and the boy in me nearly burst with pride.

Two females ran with that group, both with silver coats and sweet voices, but while they fawned over my father, he never took any special notice of them that I could see. My mother had been gone almost since I could remember, and I asked my father once why I couldn’t have one of these for a mother.

He smiled. “The wolf wants to make things easy,” he said at last, “but the man knows it isn’t that simple. As a wolf, I could. As a man . . . ” He didn’t finish, and, sensing something in his silence, I never asked him about it again.

Those were star-filled nights, summer-sweet, and like all children, I never imagined they would end.

“Dad,” I say now, “you have to eat something. I know it’s not what you’re used to . . . ”

He looks up, his golden eyes cloudy. I can’t read his expression, can’t tell if he’s pleading with me or simply struggling to focus.

“For me, okay? Just a little. I’ll bring some liver next time.” For one crazy moment I wonder if I could smuggle something alive in here—a calf or a lamb or even a rabbit. He needs hot meat, blood meat, but I don’t know if he even has the strength left to make a kill.

The wolf, in the end, is greedy. Bit by bit, year by year, it grows in the mind. Some happily take to the woods for good, as far from humans as they can get. Others hold out as long as they can, until they can no longer change back to human form. Born as men,
faol
die as wolves.

He always swore he would know when that time came. Sometimes he talked of getting to the national park a few hours’ drive away. Sometimes he talked about the gun in his nightstand drawer.

That day when I went to his house, when I hadn’t heard from him and he wasn’t answering the phone, I didn’t know what I would find. And so when I saw him lying in wolfshape in front of the old recliner, the TV still tuned to the baseball game, I was glad. Even when his eyes met mine and I could somehow taste the sorrow and defeat that hung about him—even then, I was glad.

I glance back at the gate, but there’s no sign of the girl or anyone else. I take my clothes off, carefully arranging them on the bench so they won’t get dirty or wrinkled. The change comes swiftly and easily.

I tuck my tail, lower my ears, whine, and lick his muzzle. His eyes brighten, and his tail lifts a little higher.

I long to run, to play the way we used to. But I don’t know if he can keep up, and I won’t make him feel weak if he can’t. In the end, we settle in a patch of shade, with tiny ants tickling our paw-pads. I breathe in his scent, and it makes me feel little again, safe again. He dozes, and I wonder what he dreams about. If he remembers me, is it as a wolf-pup, or his son?

My human mind whispers that I can’t stay much longer. I lick his ear gently to wake him up, and as he stretches stiffly and yawns, I get an idea. Tail high, ears up, I trot to his dish. Just as I lower my head to the meat, he growls, and I look up to see him standing with his lips pulled back from yellowed teeth. Instinct has won out over stubbornness.

I back off, allowing him his place. He eats most of the meat, then steps aside, and I finish. The taste of it makes me shudder—I’m used to meat either cooked or fresh, not raw and sun-stale—but I force myself to swallow. Afterward, we wash the juices from each other’s faces, just as we used to wash the blood away after a kill.

He whines as I walk back to the bench. I want to stay with him; I want to leave.

The change back to human form is a bit like pushing a wheeled cart over a threshold—a little more force, more of a jolt than the slip into wolfshape. Right now it is still as effortless as breathing, but I know it will gradually get more difficult. And then, one day . . . 

I try not to think about it.

He lies down and rests his chin on his paws, watching as I get dressed. Does he still remember how it felt to tuck in a shirt, pull up a zipper, buckle a belt? Or has the wolf-mind carried those memories away, buried them in the scent of dead leaves and the dreams of moon-dappled deer? I don’t even know how many words he still understands, but I speak anyway, if only for myself. I speak the words that I couldn’t say out loud to the man, the ones I can say only now, to the wolf.