An hour later, when she came back out onto the street, she was warm inside and out, her nose still running from the spice in the chili. She tugged on her wool hat, got in behind the wheel, and launched Rocinante's nose downhill, out of the mountains toward the Mecca of the New Age, the town of Sedona.
Chapter Eight
From the journal of Anne Waverly (aka Ana Wakefield)
Sedona had changed, dramatically. Drastically, even. When Anne and Aaron had spent the summer driving from the East Coast to grad school in Berkeley the year before they were married, they had spent a couple of days hiking the red rock cliffs and sleeping beside Oak Creek. She remembered that some of the New Age residents had talked about the recent 'discovery' of metaphysical vortices, the earth's 'power points', but for the most part the town was simply another quiet artists' community, supported by visitors from Flagstaff and Phoenix and a growing population of retirees attracted by the clear air, the cooler summers, and the stunning beauty of the area.
Now the only thing that made her certain it was the same place was the unchanging arrangement of red cliffs, dark with the rain, that looked down on the town. Ana had reckoned that differences would be apparent. The phenomenal growth of New Age ideas over the last twenty years had put Sedona on the map of must-sees for the crystal, aura, and alien-abduction sets. Somehow, though, she had visualized the changes along the lines of longhairs camped along the road selling each other moonstones and tie-dyed T-shirts; she was unprepared for the great clusters of expensive new homes with picture windows looking out on the vortex-bearing rock upthrusts, and for the sprawl of motels, drugstores, and—God!—car dealerships.
Not until the far end of town did Ana begin to recognize a few buildings, and by then she was so put off by this blatant defilement of Anne's past that she drove on through and out of town, heading up the precipitous Oak Creek road that proved blessedly free of the intrusions of civilization. After a few miles, she pulled over into a wide spot, cut the engine, and got out to look around her.
Yes, she thought; this is where we slept, back there above that boulder. We'd been driving for hours and hours in the heat, and we got in at night, and couldn't see a damn thing except by the headlights of Rocinante's predecessor. In the morning Aaron got up and made us coffee on the pump-up campstove, and brought me a cup, and we made love in the zip-together sleeping bags. Afterward, there was a blue jay sitting on that branch there, that very branch (although the tree was smaller then), and it flew away when we began to laugh. Aaron always said that morning was when Abby was conceived, and I never argued with him, even though I knew it was ten days later, on our first night in the apartment in Berkeley.
Cars went by on the road, pickups and delivery trucks from Flagstaff and RVs from Montana, but Ana heard only the wooded silence of that distant day and the familiar low, loving groan of the man who was going to be her husband; it was cold, but she felt only the cool air of an early summer's morning on her face and the faint imprint of a pair of rather poorly made elkskin boots beneath her feet, high elkskin moccasin boots worn by a young woman with long hair, a woman who had not only a full scholarship, but a man who adored her and a life opening up before her.
Ah, Annie, she said to the young woman giggling in the sleeping bag with her man's rough black beard buried in her neck; Annie, it's God's true blessing that we cannot see our future, because we'd never be able to bear it if we had any warning.
The blare of an air horn brought her back to herself, and she looked up to find the red cliffs dim behind low, wet clouds.
She stood for a moment longer to look down at the spot where the tent had been. Good-bye, Annie, she said. Good-bye, Aaron. Enjoy each other. Cherish your daughter. Be grateful for the life you have left.
Despite the cold drizzle, Sedona was bustling with the incongruous life of commerce. On this side of the town, however, it seemed more familiar, a place of galleries and coffeehouses instead of supermarkets and garages, the vehicles at the curbs leaning more toward mud-spattered four-wheel-drives and less to shiny travel trailers. Ana slowed to allow a family in bright, worn anoraks to scuttle across the road in front of her, then pulled into a parking place between a muddy Willy's Jeep with a bumper sticker that declared FRANKLY MY DEAR I DON'T GIVE A DAM and a newish Mercedes with a window sticker showing three almond-eyed aliens. Rocinante's
For the better part of two hours, she wandered up and down the street, in and out of shops, smiling at the locals and talking to the shopkeepers. She bought a delicate blue crystal on a deerskin thong, a pair of thick wool socks made in Ecuador, three slim books on Sedona, and a newspaper, which she took into a small cafe that seemed to cater mostly to scruffy vegetarians rather than the polished tourist classes. She ordered a
The coffee was very good, the whole-wheat crust on the pie less successful, and the news and conversation had more to do with small town politics and economics than with the otherworldly considerations Sedona was known for. True, the couple at the next table was earnestly discussing the miraculous reappearance of a medicine wheel a week after the local parks department had kicked the earlier one apart, scattering the rock design in all directions, but the six people gathered around the table in back of her were involved in a vigorous debate concerning the area south of town around the Chapel of the Holy Cross, and although the New Age books in the bag next to Ana's elbow had told her that the Chapel had been built (all unknowing) on the site of a powerful vortex, the four bearded men and two flannel-shirted women were more interested in the sewage problems involving the houses being constructed in that area and the need for a traffic light where the access road met the highway.
It was very comfortable, this snug little coffeehouse with its woodstove, dark walls, and the amateur paintings of red rock buttes done in a realistic style alternating with visionary depictions of those same rocks psychedelically glowing with the energy of a vortex. The air inside smelled of wet clothing and baked goods and was filled with low music, the clatter of pans in the kitchen, and the hum of voices discussing matters of no earthly interest to her. She felt at home here, just one more aging refugee from the sixties, with no lectures, no papers to read or to write, no Glen watching over her shoulder. All she lacked was a dog to lie across her feet, and she suspected that if she poked her head into the kitchen and asked, she'd even be provided with one of those.
Ana smiled into the dregs of foam in her glass, tipped it back to allow the coffee-stained island of foam to slide slowly down into her mouth, and put it down with a small sigh. She was of an age to know that a person had to take her pleasures when and how they came, and not to grasp after them as they faded. Sitting here had been very pleasant, but it did not, as her grandfather used to say, pay the bills.
The tip Ana left, nearly matching the size of the amount she owed for her
The rain had let up, though low clouds still hid the taller of the surrounding hills. Rocinante was not far away, but she was not about to get back on her mount and ride away, attractive as the thought might be, for five doors down from the cafe lay the Changing Earth Crafts Gallery, the shop that had been her circuitous goal during the entire afternoon.
She started in the direction of the shop that Change ran, glancing in the windows of the intervening shops with no intention of entering any of them until all her attention was seized by a small display of silver jewelry arranged across a length of dark brown velveteen. Most of the pieces were conventional enough—arching dolphins and delicate fairies—but one piece caught her and would not let her go.
It was a crescent moon, but instead of being the usual small wisp of silver, this one was larger around than Ana's thumbnail and had a thickness and texture to it that invited the fingers. And if the new moon shape wasn't enough, calling out from her vision in the desert, above the moon the cord passed through a single red bead that could be the double of the one Ana had in the medicine pouch hanging from Rocinante's mirror, the remnant of Abby's favorite necklace.
Ana smiled at herself, started reluctantly to move on. Then she stopped. An omen was an omen, after all, and who was she to fight it?
The moon necklace cost little more than the weight of the raw silver, and it dropped around her neck as if she had worn it for years. She refused a box, rubbed the satisfying shape between thumb and forefinger, and zipped
