I take one last look around me, then start down the hill toward Coyote's fire.
7
Sophie awoke in a tangle of sheets. She stared up at a familiar ceiling then slowly turned her head to look at her bedside clock. The hour hand was creeping up on four. Relief flooded her.
I'm back, she thought.
She wasn't sure how it had happened, but somewhere in between leaving Grandmother Toad and starring down towards Coyote's fire, she'd managed to escape the desert dream. She lay there listening to the siren that had woken her, heard it pass her block and continue on. Sitting up, she fluffed her pillow, then lay down once more.
No more following the sound of a flute, she told herself no matter how intriguing it might be.
Her eyelids grew heavy. Closing her eyes, she let herself drift off. Wait until she told Jeck, she thought. The desert she'd found herself in had been even stranger than the fens where she and Jeck had first met— if such a thing was possible. But when she fell asleep, she by passed Mr. Truepenny's shop and found herself scrambling down a desert incline to where a mesquite fire sent its flickering shadows along a dry wash.
8
"Little cousin," Coyote says after we've been sitting together in silence for some time. "What are you doing here?"
I can't believe I'm back here again. I would never have let myself go back to sleep if I'd thought this would happen. Still, I can't stay awake forever. That being the case, if every time I dream I'm going to find myself back here instead of in Mabon; I might as well deal with it now. But I'm not happy about it.
"I don t know," I tell him.
Coyote nods his head. He sits on his haunches, on the far side of the campfire. The pale light from the coals makes his eyes glitter and seem to be of two different colors: one brown, one blue. Except for his ears, his silhouette against the deep starry backdrop behind him belongs to a young man, long black hair braided and falling down either side of his head, body wrapped in a blanket. But the ears are those of the desert wolf whose name he bears: tall and pointed, lips quivering as they sort through the sounds drifting in from the night around them.
Wind in the mesquite. Tiny scurrying paws on the sand of the dry wash. Owl wings beating like a quickened breath. A sudden squeal. Silence. The sound of wings again, rising now. From further away, the soft grunting of javalinas feeding on prickly pear cacti.
When Coyote turns his head, a muzzle is added to his silhouette and there can be no pretending that he is other than what he is a piece of myth set loose from old stories and come to add to the puzzle of my being here.
"So tell me," he says, a touch of amusement in his voice. "With your wise eyes so dark with secrets insights lying thick about you like a cloak... what do you know?"
I can't tell if he's making fun of me or not.
"My name's Sophie," I tell him. "That's supposed to mean wisdom, but I don't feel very wise at the moment."
"Only fools think they're wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can."
"I'm barely managing that."
"And yet you're here. You're alive. You breathe. You speak. Presumably, you think. You feel. The dead would give a great deal to be allowed so much."
"Look," I say. "All I know is that I stepped through a door in another dream and ended up here. I followed this Kokopelli's flute-playing and Grandmother Toad told me I have to stay here unless I either discover some secret need inside me that can be answered by the desert, or one of you help me find my way back."
"Kokopelli," Coyote says. "And Grandmother Toad. Such notable company to find oneself in."
Now I know he's mocking me, but I don't think it's meant to be malicious. It's just his way. Besides, I find that I don't really care.
"Can you help me?" I ask.
"Can I help? I'm not sure. Will I help? I'll do my best. Never let it be said that I turned my back on a friend of both the flute-player and Nokomis."
"Who?"
"The Grandmother has many names— as does anyone who lives long enough. They catch on our clothes and get all snarled up in a tangle until sometimes even we can't remember who we are anymore."
"You're confusing me."
"But not deliberately so," Coyote says. "Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference."
I give him a blank look.
"Besides," he adds, "it was a joke. We always know who we are; what we sometimes forget are the appellations by which we come to be known. There are, you see, so many of them."
"I just want to get out of this place."
Coyote nods. "I must say, I have to admire anyone with such a strong sense of purpose. No messing about, straight to the point. It's refreshing, really. You wouldn't have a cigarette, would you?"
"Sorry, I don't smoke."
It's hard to believe that this is the same person who sat in silence across the fire from me for the better part of an hour before he even said hello. I wonder if archetypal spirits can be schizophrenic. Then I think, just being an archetype must make you schizophrenic. Imagine if your whole existence depended on how people remember you.
"I gave it up myself," Coyote says. Then he proceeds to open up a rolling paper, sprinkle tobacco onto it and roll himself a cigarette. He lights it with a twig from the fire, then blows a contented wreath of smoke up into the air where it twists and spins before it joins the rising column of smoke from the burning mesquite.
I'm beginning to realize that my companion's not exactly the most truthful person I'm going to meet in my life. I just hope he's more reliable when it comes to getting a job done or I'm going to be stuck in this desert for a very long time.
"So where do we start?" I ask.
"With metaphor?"
"What?"
"The use of one thing to explain another," Coyote says patiently.
"I know what it means. I just don't get your point."
"I thought we were trying to find your secret need."
I shake my head. "I don't have any secret needs."
"Are you sure?"
"I..."
"Are you sexually repressed?"
I can't believe I'm having this conversation.
"What's that got to do with anything?"
Coyote flicks the ash from the end of his cigarette. "It's this whole flute-player business," he says. "It's riddled with sexual innuendo, don't you see? He's a fertility symbol, now, very mythopoetic and all, but it wasn't always that way. Used to be a trader, a travelling merchant, hup-two-three. That hunched back was actually his pack of trading goods, the flute his way of approaching a settlement, tootle-toot-toot, it's only me, no danger, except if you were some nubile young thing. Had a woman in every town, you know— they didn't call him Koke the Poke for nothing. The years go by and suddenly our randy little friend finds himself elevated to minor deity status, gets all serious, kachina material, don't you know? Becomes a kind of erotic muse, if you will."
"But—"
"Ah, yes," Coyote says. "The metaphorical bit." He grinds his cigarette out and tosses the butt into the fire. "Your following the sound of his flute—his particular flute, if you get my meaning— and well, I won't say he's irresistible, but if one were to be suffering for a certain particular need, it might be quite difficult not to be drawn, willy-nilly, after him."
"What are you saying? That all I have to do is have sex here, and I get to leave?"
"No, no, no, no. Nothing so crass. Nothing so obvious. At this point it's all conjecture. We're simply exploring possibilities, some more delightful than others." He pauses and gives me a considering look. "You're not a nun, are you? You haven't taken one of those absurd vows that cut you off from what might otherwise be a full and healthy human existence?"