Coyote Dreams

subconscious do all the work. I put my hands on the steering wheel and let intellect unfold creases of memory I was too drained to deny.

The advantage of being a new soul, Coyote’d told me not that long ago, was I didn’t have the burdens of past lives to weigh me down. The disadvantage was I didn’t have the experiences, either. I had thirteen short years of existence behind me when we first met, and in all that time I’d never really belonged anywhere. Maybe someone with a little more history would have felt the weight of smart choices and understood that shamanic gifts weren’t for personal gain. I’d known that on an intellectual level at thirteen, but I wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass, and Coyote knew it.

The bitch of the thing was there wasn’t much choice about whether I’d have those powers or not. I’d been built that way by a Maker I wasn’t quite convinced existed, but Grandfather Sky and Mother Earth didn’t care if I believed in them or not. They believed in me. That was all that mattered. So Coyote’d been stuck teaching a kid who’d use her powers in all the wrong ways if she’d known she had them. In his position, I’d have kept me in the dark, too.

I’d like to think I’d have grown into learning the truth. In retrospect it was clear other people did—the drum that lay at home on my dresser was proof of that. It’d been a gift when I turned fifteen. Maybe it’d been a sign that the elders saw that I was finally coming into myself.

But then I met Lucas, and everything went to hell.

I leaned forward, putting my forehead on Petite’s steering wheel, my eyes closed. I didn’t let myself think of him by name, not since he’d hightailed it back to his mother’s people in Canada when I told him I was pregnant. The First Boy. That was how I thought of him. It was safer that way, as if he was a symbol more than a person. School had just started and he was new, newer than even me, visiting his father and cousins in North Carolina. Even now, almost thirteen years later, when he came to mind I still thought he was beautiful, with broad cheekbones and a white smile. I’d hoped going to bed with him would make him like me, or make me fit in better. It hadn’t worked, though it’d lost me the only best friend I’d ever had.

I wasn’t dumb enough to pretend not to know what a missed period meant, under the circumstances. Lucas had left at Christmastime, maybe as he’d always intended. It certainly gave him a legitimate excuse to be far away from Qualla Boundary before it became obvious I was pregnant. It didn’t really matter: I hadn’t told anybody but him and my friend Sara, and still haven’t. The father’s name is left unknown on the birth certificate, and that was probably as much the reason for Morrison’s concern as my lousy phrasing yesterday morning. Part of me wanted to get out of the car and go find Morrison and tell him right then that it hadn’t been rape, just a stupid mistake, but I knew I’d never do that. I hadn’t even told my father I was pregnant, just let it become obvious as time went on. He never asked.

Other people did, but I’d learned that stiff-spined solitude by then, and didn’t answer. The only two people I’d ever admitted my pregnancy to out loud were Lucas and Sara, and I’d lost them both. I didn’t know how to break that silence anymore, even if I wanted to.

I’d thought Coyote’d stopped visiting my dreams around then. Sitting there in Petite, the steering wheel making a dent in my forehead, it was finally clear he hadn’t stopped visiting. I’d stopped answering. He’d taught me shields back then, just like he’d had to teach me all over again, and that was a lesson I’d learned by God well. I’d kept them up so well for more than twelve years it’d taken almost dying in order to bring them down again. By then I was so set against the whole idea of a mystical world I don’t think he stood a chance. Getting back inside my head, or helping me to, in order to access the dreamworld training he’d given me more than a decade earlier would have required at least a smidgen of willingness on my part. I’d been about as willing to listen as a man might be eager to walk to the gallows. And, frankly, if I’d been my spirit guide at that point, I’d have been tempted to throw in the towel and let me figure it out by my own damned self. Coyote was a better person, so to speak, than I was.

Some of it had made it through, anyway. Healing came naturally to me, even as I fought it. I’d pulled out gimmicks that felt instinctive, and now could remember they’d been learned and figured out. I was torn between relief and disappointment. Being able to do what I did on instinct really seemed like it meant I was supposed to be doing those things. There was nothing like a little predestination to make a girl feel like she’s got a place in the world. On the other hand, having studied with Coyote, in however esoteric a fashion, made sense in a way that I was much happier with. Being able to do something because I’d studied it fit much more nicely into my rational world than the uncomfortable idea I’d become part of a massive sportswear campaign and could Just Do It.

I spread my fingers and thunked the heel of my hands against Petite’s steering wheel. Part of my mind was demanding, so why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he at least try? Blaming Coyote for my shortcomings was much easier than taking responsibility for them myself. The truth was, I just couldn’t imagine me listening six months ago. I couldn’t fathom a better way to get me to dig my heels in and refuse any of what was happening to me than saying, “Hey, you liked it when you were fifteen.” I was nothing if not contrary. Even the slightest hint that we’d been there, done that, would’ve slammed me back into my shell. I wasn’t sure even the gods could’ve pulled me out of that one, and they’d been running rampant around Seattle at the time. Better to treat me like the sulky, snotty rank beginner I’d grown up into than try to pick up where we’d left off.

I wished I could tell Coyote I was sorry, and that I remembered now, and even that I understood.

Instead I whispered a promise to him that I’d do my best, and let Petite take me to Northwest Hospital.

Wednesday, July 6, 10:29 p.m.

It was well after visiting hours when I got to the hospital. Odds were good that I could slip in under the forgiveness is easier to get than permission axiom, which had worked for me in the past. On the other hand, seven months earlier, I’d wrapped light around myself until it bounced away and pretended I wasn’t there. People who’d been looking straight at me frowned in confusion, then slowly walked away. I hadn’t known then how I’d done it. I remembered now, and part of me wanted to see if I could replicate it.

Part of me also thought, a bit grimly, that it would be a good way to find out if the sleep demon was triggering to any external magic I did, or just attempts at healing. I wasn’t strictly sure the light trick was external, but it was far more external than visiting my garden and the realms accessible from there to find Coyote.

My heart spasmed again and I got out of the car, hoping that moving and taking deliberate deep breaths would help me get through the impulse to burst into tears.

My reflection, highlighted by a streetlamp in a night-dark window, caught my eye before I got to the main entrance. Light bounced around me, warping and weaving in smooth glass, like I’d been stretched out of shape. I stopped, watching my distorted self. Disappearing had come from far within me back in January, anger and desperation pushing me to use my power for something other than healing. Choosing to use it in a different way.

Choice. My reflection’s lips parted with the word, though I didn’t say it out loud. I felt out of focus, staring at a corner of glass, listening to a running patter that went on in the back of my mind: c’mon, baby, you can do it. This is what the magic’s there for, right? Shamanism’s about choosing different paths, so you just have to choose to embrace it, Joanne. Choose to use it. You know you can do it. I knew the cajoling rhythm: it was what I used with Petite when I needed just a little more out of her. I honestly couldn’t remember ever using it on myself to encourage a little more out of the gifts I’d been granted, much less encouraging the power itself. I’d paid for that, too, and so had others. Without really thinking about it, I walked forward to put my fingertips against my reflection’s, looking at myself without seeing.

For two weeks I’d been running helter-skelter, looking for answers and quick fixes and a crash course in using the powers that had grown up inside me. I’d drummed and gone in and out of my body until it was halfway natural, and I’d faced up to being stuck with magical talent. All of a sudden I wasn’t sure that facing up was the same as accepting.

An evil spirit had told me that I might very well have to struggle every single day to accept what I was and what I could do. I’d let myself forget about that, because, hey, evil spirits. Standing there staring through my reflection in the dark, I wondered if the message had been right, even if the bearer had used it to confound me. I could not imagine there’d come a day when I was happy or comfortable being a shaman. The idea that my natural skepticism would eventually give up the fight seemed ludicrous.

It also seemed inevitable. How long could I keep not quite believing in my own gifts? How long was I going to wince when somebody like Mark wanted to know about them? I wasn’t even letting him judge for himself whether I was nuts or not. I was doing the job for him, putting it out there so he couldn’t reject me first.

That was uncomfortably like another one of those introspective thoughts I never enjoyed having. I finally