“There’s always a price,” Aunt Nancy said.
Bettina nodded. She thought of los cadejos. They hadn’t even named theirs yet.
“Some pay in coin more dear than others,” she said.
She looked at the slope of Miki’s back as she continued to weep, silent now. Then past her to where Hunter and her wolf were freeing Donal’s body.
“My sympathies lie with the living,” Aunt Nancy said. “And the innocent.”
“You’re tougher than I am,” Bettina told her.
Aunt Nancy shook her head. “No, I’m just older. I’ve seen that much more of the hurt we do to each other.”
19
It took them over an hour to free Donal’s body from the wreckage of the dead saguaro. Without el lobo’s exceptional strength, it would have taken them much longer, for the saguaro ribs that pierced the body were resilient and hard to break. It was a grisly, unhappy task, but they finally pulled the body free and were able to lay it out on the flat stone where Ellie had worked on the mask. Hunter fetched more water and Miki carefully washed Donal’s face and hands. Her tears were gone, but Bettina could see that the heartbreak remained.
Later, they sat in a half-circle around the body, all except for Tommy, • who was propped up against another stone close at hand, cushioned on a thin mattress of dried grasses that Ellie and Hunter had gathered lower down in the ; canyon. He had to lay on his side because of the long furrows the Glasduine had torn across his back. Bettina had worked on them again, ignoring her own pain when she had to lay her hands directly onto the wounds. All that remained now of the furrows were thick, red welts that were still very tender. While Tommy tried to remain alert and follow their conversations, he kept drifting in and out of consciousness. But at least when he closed his eyes now, it was because he was sleeping.
Aunt Nancy lit a smudgestick and set it on the stone by Donal’s head.
“I always thought I was the strong one,” Miki said after a moment, rocking back on her heels.
She reached out and brushed the hair back from Donal’s brow. When she sat back again, Ellie put her arm around her shoulders.
“But I see now,” Miki went on, “that a lot of that was Donal looking out for me that let me be strong. For so many years, he kept all the bad things in the world at bay.”
“He wasn’t an evil person,” Bettina said. “Misguided, yes, but—”
“Oh, please,” Miki told her. “He was a bloody, self-centered bastard. Look at what he did. We could all be dead.” Her voice went quieter. “But he was still my brother.”
“What he did was wrong,” Bettina agreed, “but in the end, he allowed us to banish the creature.”
Miki shook her head. “I don’t know that it makes up for it. I always knew he was bitter, but I never knew he was carrying such venom around inside him.”
“None of us did,” Ellie said.
“But we should have. We should have paid more attention to all those tirades of his. We should have gotten him help.”
Ellie shook her head. “Even if we’d known, he wouldn’t have let us.”
“But we still could have tried.”
Ellie sighed. “You’re right. We should have tried.”
“I don’t excuse your brother,” Aunt Nancy said after they’d all fallen silent, “but consider this. If all the darkness each of us carries within us, all our angers and unhappiness and bad moments were pulled out of us and given shape, we would all create monsters.”
“But it’s not something we’d do on purpose,” Miki said.
“I doubt he meant for it to turn out as it did,” Aunt Nancy told her.
Later still, el lobo carried the body up to a small cave he’d found set high above the water line for when the floods came. The trail leading up to it was better suited for goats, but except for Tommy, they all made the trek up. They sealed the opening with boulders and rocks, everyone pitching in. When they were done, Ellie took a sharp rock and scratched a picture on the face of the stone above the cave. It looked like a rough cartoon of a donkey or a horse to Bettina.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s Eeyore,” Ellie said, her eyes welling with tears.
“What’s an ee-yore?”
Miki began to cry again when Ellie explained.
Bettina wasn’t strong enough to attempt to guide them all out by the direct route she and her wolf had taken to get here, and no one was up to the long trek it would take otherwise, so they made a rough camp out of the canyon, higher up on the west side. El lobo carried Tommy up while Ellie, Hunter, and Miki scavenged wood to fuel their fire. They came back with lengths of mesquite and ironwood and they soon had a small fire to hold back the night. For food they had to share a few biscuits and some beef jerky that Aunt Nancy pulled out of her seemingly bottomless backpack, along with a packet of tea.
“It’s the first thing you learn when you go into the bush,” she said. “You never go without provisions.”
She also had a small tin cup in there which they all shared for the tea.
There was little conversation. One by one, they turned in until only Aunt Nancy, Bettina, and her wolf remained awake. They let the fire die down. A three-quarter moon rose after a time, its appearance welcomed by a chorus of coyotes, yipping in the distance. The moonlight let them see the towering heights of the Baboquivari Mountains, far to the west.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Aunt Nancy said. “If you’d like to go for a walk, I can watch over things here.”
Bettina smiled at the older woman’s subtlety. She liked Aunt Nancy, with her mix of toughness and kindness, and the mysteries lying so thick around her. If Bettina looked at her a certain way, she could see Aunt Nancy’s spider shadow, that echo of the shape she’d been wearing when she first attacked the Glasduine. And then, recalling the spider, Bettina felt a whisper of wings stretching in her own chest.
She remembered how those shadows had spoken to each other just before the final assault on the creature, known each other. That was another mystery Bettina would like to explore further, but now was not the time. She was too drained from the ordeal, distracted by the constant burn of the pain in her hands and the presence of her wolf, sitting so close to her that she could feel his body warmth.
“A walk would be nice,” she said, rising to her feet.
El lobo hesitated, until she smiled at him, then he rose, too.
They walked along the lip of the canyon, easily marking their path, for they both had keen night sight, the one because of her brujería, the other because of his own otherworldly heritage. Bettina wanted to hold her wolf’s hand, but even that much pressure on her palms would be too much. So she slipped her arm into the crook of his.
There was much still unsaid between them, but for now they allowed an affectionate silence and each other’s company to suffice. The desert night stirred around them, crowded with spirits, tranquil and resonant. After a while Bettina had to sit down. Her heart was full, but her energy level was lower than she could ever remember it being before.
“Y bien,” Bettina said. “This was an awkward and unpleasant way to come back home, but I’m still glad to be here.”
“I would like to know it better,” her wolf said, “but…”
His voice trailed off.
“I’m not going back,” Bettina said, her voice soft. “Not to stay. Only to collect my things.”