John spoke to Marguerite, and she translated. “Is the old man gone?”
“Don’t know,” said Grandma. “Things like that don’t die easy. But I’ve never heard of anything coming back alive from inside a coyote.”
The coyote looked, if possible, even more pleased. “My stomach is very dreadful,” it said. “I eat carrion and dung, when I can get it.”
“I don’t think it’ll be back for awhile, at least,” said Grandma. “And if it is, you and John will know how to defeat him. You’ll need a different third, though. I’m too old for this.”
“Thank you,” said Marguerite, and “Thank you,” said John, pronouncing the words slowly and carefully.
“Weren’t nothing,” said Grandma, which was a lie and a half.
After they were gone, Grandma fell backward and just breathed for awhile. The shadows were growing very long. A whole day could not have passed in the ruins of the used-up people, but perhaps time had folded a little oddly too.
She heard the tracks sing, as if there was a train somewhere nearby, but it did not pass this way after all. That was just as well. She did not think she could deal with a god just now.
“Are you dead?” asked the coyote with interest.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” snapped Grandma. “I ain’t dying just yet,” and that may or may not have been a lie. She wasn’t quite sure.
“Then you had better get up,” said the coyote. “And I will walk a little way home with you, just in case you die along the way.”
It took her a long time going home. The coyote walked her nearly all the way, keeping up a string of nonsense, and since she refused to show weakness in front of a coyote, she walked faster than she might have otherwise.
She refilled her water bottle at the last wash, and drank deeply. When she lowered the bottle, the coyote was gone.
“All right, then,” she said. Not being grateful, because you never show gratitude to a coyote. But not being ungrateful, either. Just in case.
She walked until she saw the fence around her garden, and then she stood and looked and thought that perhaps she hadn’t lied to the coyote about dying after all.
She went the last little way and opened the gate.
The cholla-bone girl sat on the back steps, carefully petting Spook-cat. She looked up at Grandma, her face very serious.
“My great-grandmother sent me,” she said.
“I know,” said Grandma wearily. She leaned against the gate-post.
“She says you’re supposed to teach me,” said the girl.
Grandma was silent. Wondering what an old jackalope wife could teach to a girl with bones made of cholla ribs. Wondering if there was anything she knew worth learning, after all.
She thought of the lessons in the desert, and thought that this girl probably knew them all already. They would have been written on the inside of her skin since the day before she was born.
Still, there was one thing she had worth passing on.
“Come on,” said Grandma, pushing herself away from the fence. “We’ll clean out the back room for you. But first, I’ll teach you how to make a really good tomato sandwich.”
About the Author
Ursula Vernon is the author of the Hugo-award winning comic Digger, as well as multiple children’s book series. She writes for adults under the name T. Kingfisher. Her work has won the Nebula, Mythopoeic, Coyotl, and WSFA Awards. She lives in North Carolina. You can find more of her short stories and novels at Tkingfisher.com
Copyright
Published in Apex Magazine Jan 5, 2016 (`Issue 80)
© Ursula Vernon