“Have you thought more of our bargain?” she asked. “What you would like in return for the help you gave me?”
“Sí. We want you to be our friend.”
Bettina laughed and shook her head. “We are already friends.”
“We want to be friends forever.”
“That is not something friends bargain over,” Bettina told them.
“That is all we want.”
“Nothing more.”
“¡Nada,nada, nada!”
“But you have this already,” Bettina said.
“Then we are content.”
“Here in the forest of your heart.”
“Where we have our beautiful home.”
“La casa del cadejos.”
“We are content.”
Now that she had finished the house for los cadejos, Bettina began to search for her father in earnest. She journeyed in ever widening circles, sometimes accompanied by los cadejos, more often alone. She spoke to the spirits, tracked every hawk she saw, but there was no word, no sign of either Papa or his peyoteros. One afternoon, coming on to the sunset and many miles from her bosque del corazón, she heard a quiet weeping. When she turned in the direction from which she thought the sound was coming, she dislodged a pebble and there was immediate silence. She waited, listening.
“¡Hola!” she called after a moment. “Who is there?”
Still there was silence.
“Do not be frightened. I am Bettina San Miguel. A simple curandera.”
“¿Verdaderos? “
It was a woman’s voice, soft, anxious.
“Truly,” Bettina assured her. “Are you hurt? Can I help you?”
Another silence followed, then a fearful, “Por favor.”
Following the sound of the woman’s voice, Bettina found her on the far side of a jumble of boulders, pressed up against the red stone, her eyes wide with fear. She seemed to be a Native woman, long of feature with dark braids hanging down either side of her face. She was dressed in a simple cotton shift, bare-legged and barefoot. She shivered and pressed closer to the boulders when Bettina moved towards her.
“Oh, no,” Bettina said when she saw the ugly gash on the woman’s leg. “What happened to you?”
“Coyote.”
Bettina blinked in surprise. “I have never heard of a coyote attacking a person before.”
“I... I was not a person when he attacked…”
“h…”
The woman began to tremble as Bettina approached, jerking when Bettina sat down and drew the woman’s leg onto her lap.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said in a soothing voice. “I can mend this.”
She looked over at the woman, her smile faltering for a moment. The woman’s features had changed, nose and jaw extending into a long snout, a hare’s long ears hanging where the braids had been. But there was still much human about her, as well. It was only the unexpected odd combination of animal and human features that had startled Bettina.
“What is your name?” she asked as she gently probed the woman’s calf with her brujería, hands resting on either side of the wound, gently stroking the skin.
“Chuhwi.”
Of course, Bettina thought. What else but “jackrabbit” in the language of the Tohono O’odham.
“Close your eyes, Chuhwi,” she said, “and lie still for a moment. This shouldn’t take long.”
The gash was not nearly so bad as it looked. The bones weren’t broken, which would greatly speed her ability to heal the wound.
“Will… will it hurt?”
“Not even for a moment.”
As she concentrated on repairing the damage, Bettina marveled again on how much she had wasted this healing talent of hers with potions and charms. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to heal truly degenerative diseases—cancers and their like—but there were still many people with lesser complaints that she could ease.
As she promised, it didn’t take long. Chuhwi regarded her with awe when it was done, running her fingers over and over the raised tissue of the scars.
“Try not to run on it for awhile,” Bettina told her.
Chuhwi nodded. She was at ease now, her only sign of nervousness what Bettina assumed was a habitual twitch of her nose.
“You were in the shape of a rabbit when the coyote caught you?” she asked.
“You should have seen his face when I became a woman. I would have laughed if it hadn’t hurt so much.”
Bettina smiled. Somewhere a coyote was telling an impossible story to his companions, none of whom would believe him.
“You’re the one looking for your father,” Chuhwi said.
“Sí. Do you have word of him?”
“No, it’s just… now that I have met you, I don’t understand why you are looking for him.”
“Es mi papá.”
“But surely you would understand why he would leave?”
Bettina shook her head.
“ Considerelo,” Chuhwi said. Think about it. “He is an ancient spirit who has fallen in love with a mortal woman and raised a family with her. Year by year, she ages, yet he remains forever unchanged. When they finally die, when even the children of his grandchild’s children dies, he will still be here, alive, unchanged. It hurts less to go away. The family can remember him as a man. And he, he can lose himself in another skin until finally the pain has faded to no more than a dull ache in his memory.”
Bettina could only stare at the woman.
“Such spirits will swear never to fall in love again,” Chuhwi went on, “but they always do. It is our nature. The flame of life burns so bright in humans, if brief. How can we ignore it?”
Bettina thought of her wolf. She knew that, circumstances being how they were, there would be many times when they would be apart. But if he were to simply walk away from her, disappear the way her papá had vanished, it would break her heart. A tightness grew in her chest. As it must have broken Mama’s heart.
“Is it better to have the brief time together,” Chuhwi said, “or to have none at all? Which hurts more? I don’t know. But there are many young men I cherish in my memory, and though I promise myself differently, I know there will be more.”
Bettina was unable to speak. How could she not have realized this before? Papa must have tried to bring Mama into la epoca del mito, to extend her life the way Abuela’s had been extended, the way her own would probably be. But even such extended lives were no more than brief moments in the lifetime of an immortal, and Mama… she had always been too devout. She would never have gone into la epoca del mito, with Papa. She might have been able to accept a being such as him into her world, but she would never have stepped outside of her world into his.
How things must have changed when they moved closer to town. When they exchanged the dirt floor for linoleum and wood. When they could ride in a bus or a car, instead of walk. Their two worlds had collided and the impact had eventually driven them apart. Mama to her faith and the church, Papa to his beloved desert.
Oh, mi lobo, she thought, fingering the milagro that hung from the thong around her neck. How will it be with us?
Bettina camped that night with Chuhwi, leaving her the next morning when she was sure that her patient could manage on her own. Returning to her basque del corazon, she sat outside the lean-to she had built for her cadejos and stared at the distant height of Baboquivari Peak. She was still sitting there late in the afternoon when los cadejos came ambling out of the desert and gathered around her. Most of them flopped on the dirt close by, but two of them lay down on either side of her and rested their heads on her knees. Bet-tina ruffled their short rainbow fur.