Her wolf couldn’t look at her. His gaze went off, into the desert night.
“And I can’t stay here with you,” he said finally. “This body…”
“Gives you responsibilities back in the Kickaha Mountains. I know.”
She knew he was bound by the promise he’d made to the manitou who had given him the body he now wore.
“What will become of us?” el lobo asked.
Bettina sighed. Could there even be an “us”? So much lay between them, differences that could push them ever further apart. But there was as much to draw them together, if they were willing to work at spanning the distances.
“No lo se,” she said. She really didn’t know.
“Sometimes it seems that the whole of our lives are bound to the debts we owe to others.”
Bettina nodded. “But what kind of life would it be to always live alone?”
“An unhappy one.”
“Sí.”
“So we accept our debts and obligations.” He paused a heartbeat, then asked, “And los cadejos. Have they spoken more of the bargain you made with them?”
Bettina shook her head. “No. But I can feel them inside me, distant and weary. And something else. The sensation of wings unfolding in my chest.”
Just speaking of it woke a flutter in her chest, a rustle of feathers that only she could hear.
“You never knew?” her wolf asked.
“No seas tonto. That I was so much like Papa that I could take to the skies as a hawk, just as he and his peyoteros do? How could I have known? This is something else I must come to terms with.”
“But it doesn’t frighten you?”
“Claro. But only a little.”
“Wise, lucky, and brave.”
Bettina smiled. “I never felt brave.”
“Bravery is acting in spite of your fears.”
“I suppose.” She hesitated a moment, she added, “The Gentry are dead—the Glasduine killed them.”
Just saying it aloud made her shiver again, knowing all too well how they had died. But she left it at that and he didn’t ask for more details. Having seen what the Glasduine was capable of, he would know that they had died hard.
“I thought as much,” her wolf said. “And I can’t deny that I wondered if I would survive their death.”
“How could you not? You are your own being now.”
“I don’t always feel that way,” he told her. “Mostly I feel as though everything I am is merely made up of the borrowed and discarded parts of others.”
He spoke matter-of-factly, without a trace of self-pity, but it made Bet-tina’s heart go out to him.
“It must be strange,” she said. “But, even those of us with less extraordinary origins—aren’t we all pieces of those who came before us? We carry the bloodlines of our ancestors and we form our beliefs from what we learn from others as much as from what we experience ourselves. What is important is who we become—despite our origins as much as because of them.”
“You see? Yet another wise response.”
“I would punch you,” she told him, “except it would hurt me more.”
Her wolf made a sympathetic sound and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned gratefully against him, savoring the comfort of his body’s warmth, the strength that the muscled arm represented.
“Have I earned my kiss yet, do you think?” he asked.
“Porlo menos,” Bettina said. “Many times over.”
She lifted her head and their lips met. When they finally came up for air, her wolf sighed.
“What will we do with ourselves?” he whispered.
“Shh,” Bettina told him.
Before he could speak, she kissed him again.
20
They returned to the wet misery of Newford and the ice storm on the following day. El lobo, supporting Tommy for the short trek back, walked beside Bettina, the others following in a ragged line behind. When they finally crossed back over from la epoca del mito, they found Sunday and Zulema waiting for them in the woods behind Kellygnow. The Creek sisters were eager to depart, wasting little time in packing Tommy into the bed of the pickup, fussing over him with auntly concern. They offered lifts to whoever wished to come with them, which Hunter, Ellie, and Miki accepted.
Before the pickup pulled away, Aunt Nancy approached Bettina and her wolf. She knelt for a moment, reaching into her seemingly bottomless backpack to take out two small items. Her sisters remained near the pickup, neither friendly nor unfriendly, studying Bettina and her wolf with measuring gazes, but the others drew near as Aunt Nancy spoke.
“You will always find honor and welcome at our fires,” she told Bettina and her wolf, offering them the gifts she held. “Both of you.”
She gave them small sacks—squares of red cloth, closed with a twist and tied with a leather thong. From the smell of tobacco and sweetgrass that rose from hers, Bettina knew Aunt Nancy was honoring them with this. She held hers lightly in the open palm of her hand so that even its small weight and touch wouldn’t chafe her tender skin. Her hands were healing, but even with her brujería, it was a slow process.
“I was angry at first,” Aunt Nancy said to el lobo, “when I knew Shishòdewe was dead and you were walking around in his body. But it’s plain to me now that you could have had nothing to do with his death. I know that you will honor his gift to you and remain true to his obligations.”
El lobo lifted the red sack to his lips and kissed it before placing it the pocket of his jacket. He inclined his head to her but said nothing.
Bettina winced as the cloth of her jeans rubbed against her hand, but she reached into her pocket all the same, hoping for and finding one of the mila-gros she used for her amuletos. She always seemed to have one or another in her pocket, absently tucked away in the process of making the charms. She looked at the one she’d found before she gave it to Aunt Nancy and smiled.
“Back home,” she said, “we pin these to the robes of los santos when we ask for their intercession. If I was seeking their help, this would represent the burns on my hands, but por abora… I’d like to think it represents the helping hand we offered each other.”
The milagro was in the shape of a small silver hand.
“I will weave it into a beadwork collar,” Aunt Nancy told her, “and whenever I wear it, I will remember you and what we did.”
Bettina nodded. As Aunt Nancy turned away, Bettina looked over to the pickup to see Tommy waving at her from the litter of blankets on which he lay in the bed of the truck. Bettina waved back. When she returned her attention to the others once more, Hunter and Miki murmured their goodbyes, then retreated to the pickup where they climbed into the back with Tommy. But Ellie came over and gave them each a hug.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked Bettina.
“Of course,” she said. “Will you?”
“I don’t know. With all that’s happened… it’s a lot to digest.”
“You don’t have to use the brujería” Bettina told her. “Except as you always have—in your art.”
“I suppose. But it makes you think. Why do I have it? Where did it come from? Am I a sculptor because of it?”
Bettina shook her head. “Brujería doesn’t make you need to create; it only makes what you create that much more true.”