"Don't be scared!" I call after it. "I won't hurt you."
But the desert lies silent around me, except for the sound of the flute, I thought I caught a glimpse of the player an hour or so ago. I was cresting a hill and saw far ahead of me a small hunched shape disappear down into the arroyo. It looked like one of those pictographs you sometimes see in Hopi or Navajo art— a little hunchbacked man with hair like dreadlocks, playing a flute. I called after him at the time, but he never reappeared.
I hate this feeling of helplessness I have at the moment of having to react rather than do, of having to wait for answers to come to me rather than seek them out on my own. I've walked for hours, but I can't help thinking how, realistically, all that effort was only killing time. I haven t gotten anywhere, I haven't learned anything new. I'm no further ahead than I was when I first stepped through that door and found myself here. I'm thirstier, I've got the beginning of a sunburn, and that about sums it up.
The air starts to cool as the sun goes down. I take my blouse off my head and put it back on, but it doesn't help much against the growing chill. I hear something rustle in the brush on the other side of the rocks where I'm sitting, and I almost can't be bothered turning my head to see what made the noise. But I look around all the same, and then I sit very still, hoping that the Indian woman I find regarding me won't be startled off like every other creature I've met since the owl gave me her cryptic advice.
The woman is taller than I am, but that's not saying much; at just over five feet tall, I'm smaller than almost everyone I meet. Her features have a pinched, almost foxlike cast about them, and she wears her hair in two long braids into which have been woven feathers and beads and cowrie shells. She's barefoot, which strikes me as odd, since this isn't exactly the most friendly terrain I've ever had to traverse. Her buckskin dress is almost a creamy white, decorated with intricate, beadwork and stitching, and she's wearing a blanket over her shoulders like a shawl, the colors of which reflect the surrounding landscape— the browns and the tans, deep shadows and burnt siennas— only they're much more vibrant.
"Don't run off on me," I say, pitching my voice low and trying to seem as unthreatening as possible.
The woman smiles. She has a smile that transforms her face; it starts on her lips and in her dark eyes, but then the whole of her solemn copper-colored features fall easily into well-worn creases of good humor. I realize that hers is the first face I've seen in this place that didn't look as though it had been rendered by a Florentine painter at the height of the Italian Renaissance. She seems indisputably of this place, as though she was birthed from the cacti and the dry hills.
"Why do you think I would do that?" she asks. Her voice is melodious and sweet.
"So far, everybody else has"
"Perhaps you confuse them."
I have to laugh. "I confuse them? Oh please."
The woman shrugs. "This is a place of spirits, a land where totem may be found, spirits consulted, lessons learned, futures explored. Those who walk its hills for these reasons have had no easy task in coming here."
"I could show them this door I found," I start to joke, but I let my voice trail off. The crease lines of her humor are still there on her face, but they're in repose. She looks too serious for jokes right now.
"You have come looking for nothing," she goes on, "so your presence is a source of agitation."
"It's not something l planned," I assure her. "If you'll show me the way out, I'll be more than happy to go. Really."
The woman shook her head. "There is no way out— except by acquiring that which you came seeking."
"But I didn't come looking for anything."
"That presents a problem."
I don't like the way this conversation is going.
"For the only way you can leave in such a case," the woman goes on, "is if you accompany another seeker when their own journeying is done."
"That... that doesn't seem fair?"
The woman nods, "There is much unfairness— even in the spirit realms. But obstacles are set before us in order that they may be overcome." She gives me a considering look. "Perhaps you are simply unaware of what you came seeking."
She makes a question of it.
"I heard this flute," I say. "That's what I followed to get here."
"Ah."
I wait, but she doesn't expand beyond that one enigmatic utterance.
"Could you maybe give me a little more to go on than that?" I ask.
"You are an artist?" she asks.
The question surprises me, but I nod.
"Kokopelli," she says, "the flute-player you heard. He is known for his—" she hesitates for a moment. "— inspirational qualities."
"I'm not looking for ideas," I tell her. "I have more ideas than I know what to do with. The only thing I'm ever looking for is the time to put them into practice."
"Kokopelli or Coyote," she says. "One of them is responsible for your being here."
"Can they help me get back?"
"Where either of them is concerned, anything is possible."
There's something about the way she tells me this that seems to add an unspoken "when hell freezes over," and that makes me feel even more uneasy.
"Can you tell me where I might find them?"
The woman shrugs. "Kokopelli is only found when he wishes to be, but Coyote— Coyote is always near. Look for him to be cadging a cigarette, or warming his toes by a fire."
She starts to turn away, but pauses when I call after her.
"Wait!" I say. "You can't just leave me here."
"I'm sorry," she tells me, and she really does seem sorry. "But I have duties that require my attention. I came upon you only by chance and already I have stayed too long."
"Can't I just come along with you?"
"I'm afraid that would be impossible?"
There's nothing mean about the way she says it, but I can tell right away that the question is definitely not open to further discussion.
"Will you come back when you're done?" I ask.
I'm desperate. I don't want to be here on my own anymore, especially not with night falling.
"I can't make you a promise of that," she says, "but I will try. In the meantime, you would do better to look within yourself, to see if hidden somewhere within you is some secret need that might have brought you to this place."
As she starts to turn away again, I think to ask her what her name is.
"Since I am Grandmother to so many here," she says, "that would be as good a name as any. You may call me Grandmother Toad."
"My name's Sophie."
"I know, little sister."
She's walking away as she speaks. I jump to my feet and follow after her, into the dusk that's settling in between the cacti and mesquite trees, but like everyone else I've met here, she's got the trick of disappering down pat. She steps into a shadow and she's gone.
A vast emptiness settles inside me after she's left me. The night is full of strange sounds, snuffling and rustles and weird cries in the distance that appear to be coming closer.
"Grandmother," I call softly.
I wonder, how did she know my name?
"Grandmother?"
There's no reply.
"Grandmother!"
I run to the top of another ridge, one from which I can see the last flood of light spraying up from the sunset. There's no sign, no trace at all of the Indian woman, but as I turn away, I see the flickering light of a campfire, burning there, below me in a dry wash. A figure sits in front of it. The sound of the flute is still distant so I make the educated guess that it isn't Kokopelli hanging out down there. Grandmother's words return to my mind:
Look for him to be cadging a cigarette, or warming his toes by a fire.