She should dig her heels into the poor tired mule and killherself outrunning death, but instead she says, “Take us to the other side.”
The coyote cocks his head. “You will be in the land of thedead. Do you realize that?”
“All right. So we will cross the land of the dead. And wewill come out the other side. If we can do that, you have to let her live.”
The coyote smiles open-mouthed. Here is a game he knows howto win. He trots ahead, dragging a tail of thorn and goldenrod, then waits atthe riverside for them to climb astride his back. He is a towering creature—hishead comes to her chest—but somehow they both mount comfortably, Ana and herbaby, swinging bare legs over his hoary sides. When he swims across the riverand Ana is submerged, she feels coldness but not wet. After months in thedesert, shivering is unfamiliar and magnificent.
◊
Sylvie’s sickness was only a cough at first, a smallscuttling sound that whistled when she slept at night. From the dust, said oneof the other women at the labor camp. There was too much dust. So Ana fashioneda little mask from twine and cloth to protect her baby’s lungs.
While summer wore on and Ana got sunburnt and hollow-eyedand strong, Sylvie got weak. Her breathing grew shallow and red tendrils ofsnot cobwebbed in her throat. When she cried, Ana couldn’t always make herstop. For hours she would pace the dirt floor with her face buried in Sylvie’scurls, promising someone—was it Sylvie? Maybe it was herself—“We will notalways live here, mi querida. One day we will go north. We will be safeand happy, and the grass will sparkle green.”
And all through those long ember-colored nights, the creatureskulked past their shack on tawny, bone-thin legs. How did she never guess whathe wanted?
◊
Ana thought the land of the dead would be empty, but it isfull to bursting. With gods’ turquoise bones, with small grimacing golemsfashioned from maize, with temples so black and shimmering that she can’t quitemake herself look at them. The coyote plods along ceaselessly, nose to theground and tail flung high. Up through the ash-colored landscape they go,snaking around heaps of coal and green-eyed idols. At last they reach ahilltop. The coyote lets them off his back and they look out, standingside-by-side on the precipice.
“First there are mountains,” says the coyote.
◊
The mountains are towers of red stone, close to one anotheras twins in a womb. They shudder and palpitate, and beneath her feet Ana canfeel their joined heartbeat. Kissing the crown of Sylvie’s head, she sets outdown the narrow canyon path which divides the peaks. The coyote trots at herside, silent save for the soft scrape of his tail on the sand.
“They are not only mountains,” says the coyote.
She bristles at the leer in his words. “What are they,then?”
“They are the remains of some ancient storm that sentboulders hurtling down over the gods, and beneath the land of the dead theirroots still wrap around the wrists of gladiators.”
He says those words like they are memorized; probably he hassaid them before, to someone else, perhaps someone whose baby also coughed andconvulsed for three long summer months. To Ana they sound suspiciously likepoetry, and she will not heed them. She climbs over the outcropping of rock,steadying herself with one hand and cupping Sylvie’s scrawny tailbone with theother. Closer now, she sees how the mountains bow toward each other in slight,almost imperceptible flinches of movement. Where she steps might not be whereher foot lands.
“I can’t cross this,” she tells the coyote.
“Then you will live here, among the ashes and the golems. Nofurther than most of the dead have ever gotten,” says the coyote.
“But I am not dying.”
“Then your living spirit will be meat for somethingravenous,” says the coyote.
She wishes he would say what he means: he is hungry, andintent on devouring her. He has been licking his chops outside their shack formonths, and Ana wonders now if it was not only Sylvie that he was after. Eyeingthe mountains distrustfully, she crouches down low and shelters Sylvie’s headin the crook of her arm. Slowly, she crawls forward. When the rocks shift oncemore, her hand is crushed between two boulders. Ana fears a lash of pain, butshe only feels the solid weight of stone all around her. Prying her hand out ofthe crevice, she finds her fingers crumpled and covered in blood. Still shefeels no pain. She can be hurt and unhurt here, torn and yet still standinglike a barren stalk of corn after the harvest.
She stiffens. Says, “It doesn’t hurt a bit.”
The coyote looks on disapprovingly as she wades deeper intothe mountains. He seems displeased that she has not conceded defeat, but shecan tell already that he is patient. Earlier, he said that he has a thorn inhis paw but cannot pry it out, for his teeth are made of briars and he lodges anew complaint in his foot whenever he tries to remove the old one. That is tosay, he told her slyly, he is well-practiced in shoving the same boulders upthe same old hill. Ana doesn’t guess he’ll congratulate her when she reachesthe other side of the mountains. He doesn’t. He lowers himself down to a crouchand they mount again, Ana wrapping bruise-mottled arms around Sylvie, tanglingher fingers in the coyote’s wild thatch of fur.
“Many others did this before you, better than you,” says thecoyote. “And they never made it out alive.”
“Lead us further down,” says Ana, and he obeys.
◊
Sylvie’s father was Ana’s husband for a year and a half, fromthe morning of the Catholic service in the ramshackle camp chapel to the nightwhen he snuck out of bed and fled a pile of gambling debts. Ana never saw somuch money in her life as the amount that the lenders wanted from him. No oneever had any cash at the labor camp, so they
