"I don't know about nuns," I tell him, "but I'm outta here."
I stand up, expecting him to make some sort of protest, but he just looks at me, curiously, and starts to roll another cigarette. I don't really want to go out into the desert night on my own, but I don't want to sit here and listen to his lunacy either.
"I thought you were going to help me," I say finally.
"I am, little cousin. I will."
He lights his cigarette and then pointedly, waits for me to sit down again.
"Well, you haven't been much help so far," I say.
"Oh, right." he says, laying a hand theatrically across his brow. "Kill the messenger, why don't you."
I lean closer to the fire and take a good long look at him. "Is there any relevance to anything you have to say?" I ask.
"You brought up Kokopelli. You're the one who followed the music of his randy little flute. You can't blame me for any of that. If you've got a better idea, I'm all ears."
He cups his hands around those big coyote ears of his and leans forward as well. I try to keep a straight face, but all I can do is fall back on the ground and laugh.
"I was beginning to think you didn't have any sort of a sense of humor at all," he says when I finally catch my breath.
"It's not that. I just want to get away from here. When I dream, I want to go to Mabon— to where I want to go."
"Mabon?" Coyote says. "Mabon's yours? Oh, I love Mabon. The first time I ever heard the Sex Pistols was in Mabon. That was years ago now, but I couldn't believe how great they were."
Whereupon he launches into a version of "My Way" that's so off-key and out of time that it makes the version Sid Vicious did sound closer to Ol' Blue Eyes than I might ever have thought possible. From the hills around us, four-legged coyote voices take up the song, and soon the night is filled with this horrible caterwauling that's so loud it's making my teeth ache. All I want to do is bury my head or scream.
"Great place, Mabon," he says when he finally breaks off and the noise from his accompanists fades away.
Wonderful, I think. Not only am l stuck with him here, but now I find out that if I ever do get out of this desert, I could run into him again in my own dreaming place.
9
"I've got to figure out a way to sleep without dreaming," Sophie told Jilly.
They were taking a break from helping out at a bazaar for St. Vincent's Home for the Aged, drinking tea and sharing a bag of potato chips on the back steps of the old stone building. The sun was shining brightly, and it made Sophie's eyes ache. She hadn't slept at all last night in protest of how she felt Coyote was wasting her time.
"Still visiting the desert every night?" Jilly asked around a mouthful of chips.
Sophie gave her a mournful nod. "Pretty much. Unless I don't go to sleep."
"But I thought you liked the desert?" Jilly said. "You came back from that vacation in New Mexico just raving about how great it was, how you were going to move down there, how we were all crazy not to think of doing the same."
"This is different. All I want to do is give it up."
Jilly shook her head. "I'm envious of the way you get to go places when you dream. I would never want to give it up."
"You haven't met Coyote."
"Coyote was your favorite subject when you got back."
Sophie sighed. It was true. She'd become enamored with the Trickster figure on her vacation and had even named her last studio after a painting she'd bought in Santa Fe: Five Coyotes Singing.
"This Coyote's not the same," she said. "He's not all noble and mystical and, oh I don't know, mischievous, I suppose, in a sweet sort or a way. He's more like the souvenirs in the airport gift shop— fun if you're in the right mood, but sort of tacky at the same time. And definitely not very helpful. The only agenda he pursues with any real enthusiasm is trying to convince me to have sex with him."
Jilly raised her eyebrows. "Isn't that getting kind of kinky? I mean, how would you even do it?"
"Oh please. He's not a coyote all of the time. Mostly he's a man." Sophie frowned. "Mind you, even then he'll have the odd bit of coyote about him: ears, mostly. Sometimes a muzzle. Sometimes a tail."
Jilly reached for the chip bag, but it was empty. She shook out the last few crumbs and licked them from her palm, then crumpled the bag and stuck it in the pocket of her jacket.
"What am l going to do?" Sophie said.
"Beats me," Jilly said. "We should go back inside. Geordie's going to think we deserted him."
"You're not being any help at all."
"If it were up to me," Jilly said, "I'd join you in a minute. But it isn't. Or at least, we've yet to find a way to make it possible."
"He's going to drive me mad."
"Maybe you should give him a taste of his own medicine," Jilly said. "You know, act just as loony."
Sophie laughed. "Only you would think of that. And only you could pull it off. I wish there was some way to bring you over. Then I could just watch the two of you drive each other mad."
"You could always just sleep with him."
"I've been tempted— and not simply because I think it'd drive him away. He's really quite attractive, and he can be very... persuasive."
"But," Jilly said.
"But I feel as though it'd be like eating the fruit in fairyland— if I give in to him, then I'll never be able to get away."
10
So every night when I dream, I come to the desert and Coyote and I go looking for my way out. And every night's a trial. My night-nerves are shot. I'm always on edge because I never know what's going to happen next, what he's going to want to discuss, when or if he's going to put a move on me. We never do find Kokopelli, but that's not the worst of it. The worst thing is that I'm actually getting used to this: to Coyote and his mad carrying-on. Not only used to it, but enjoying it. No matter how much Coyote exasperates me, I can't stay mad at him.
And my desert time's not all bad by any means. When Coyote's being good company, you couldn't ask for a better friend. The desert spirits aren't shy around him, either. The aunts and uncles, which are what he calls the saguaro, tell us stories, or sing songs, or sometimes just gossip. All those strange madonna-faced spirits drop by to visit us, in ones and twos and threes. Women with fox-ears or antlers. Bobcat and coati spirits. Cottontails, jack rabbits and pronghorns. Vultures and grouse and hawks. Snakes and scorpions and lizards. Smoke-tree ghosts and tiny fairy-duster sprites. Twisty cholla spirits, starburst yucca bogles and mesquite dryads draped in cloaks made of a thousand perfectly shaped miniature leaves.
The mind boggles at their Variety and number. They come in every shape and size, but they all have that madonna resemblance, even the males. They're all that strange mix of human with beast or plant. And they all have their own stories and songs and dances to share.
So it's not all bad. But Kokopelli's flute-playing is always there, sometimes only audible when I'm very still, a Pied Piper covenant that I don't remember agreeing to, but it keeps me here. And it's that loss of choice that won't let me ever completely relax. The knowledge that I'm here, not because I want to be, but because I have to be.
One night coyote and I are lying on a hilltop looking up at the stars. The aunts and uncles are murmuring all around us, a kind of wordless chant like a lullaby. A black-crested phainopepla is perched on my knee, strange little Botticelli features studying mine in between groomings. Coyote is smoking a cigarette, but it doesn't smell like tobacco— more like piñon. A dryad was sitting on an outcrop nearby, her skin the gorgeous green of her palo verde tree, but she's drifted away now.