by Alaya Dawn Johnson
IT WAS DARK when the girl arrived, at last. She had come from far away—never mind how—and she had arrived too late—never mind why. But she was here now, with dandelion seed–hair, wild and dusty from days on the high and twisting roads that cut through the valleys and low hills covered in cactus and mesquite and the occasional flowering agave. She walked through the sleeping town slowly, the soles of her shoes scraping the broken cobblestones of the main road. A passing dog barked a question at her, sniffed, and cocked his head in recognition.
Been a while, he seemed to say.
The girl nodded and winced. “Too long,” she whispered, because of the night and the quiet but also because the words had burned to embers in her mouth, and she was afraid that if she spoke too loudly they might go out forever.
She continued past the dog and the sleeping turkey hens and the low houses with their open porches and swinging hammocks, illuminated only by the silver light of a gibbous moon. It smelled still of woodsmoke from the fires that had heated the evening meal; it smelled of dust and dry grass and the muddy creek that passed just in front of the church. Home, she mouthed silently, and tasted its tiny spark.
She made her way to the church. The large wooden front doors were closed, but she knew the side entrance would be unlocked for the townspeople who sought religious solace after sundown. She walked around the old eighteenth-century building familiar in its cared-for decay, and ducked under the low-hanging lintel of the doorway. Someone else had left it open. Inside, half-burned candles flickered against the vaulted ceiling of the nave. They had been left in front of the figure of San Antonio Abad, that kindly white man with his shepherd’s crook and matted beard. There were carnations by the candles and little papers folded by his feet—prayers and supplications for the lost.
“You came back.”
The girl recognized the voice; she didn’t flinch or turn around. It was a ghost; it was her sister; it was the only person who could have felt her return to this place that had once been their home.
“He hasn’t returned?” the first asked.
The second girl took a step closer. The girl with words like dry tinder in her mouth, with dusty dandelion hair—she didn’t turn around.
“You know he hasn’t. You can feel it, can’t you?”
“Feel what?”
“The pressure.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the dandelion girl, though she did know.
“You’ve been gone too long,” said the other, and her voice was as long and twisty as a valley wind. “They found a coyote in the decline by the path up to the sacred well. An hour from town, Jaila.” That was her name, the dandelion-hair girl, the girl whose words were slowly going out.
“It could have just been an animal. Any old coyote, dead in a ravine.”
“With a patch of orange fur at its throat. With a scar by its eye and a knife in its ribs.”
Jaila closed her eyes and swayed. “What did they do with it?” she asked after a moment.
“Nothing. Left it there to rot. It’s just an animal, after all.”
“Just an animal.”
“Everyone suspects and no one will say. He hasn’t come back.”
“Who? The flowers here? The candles?”
“I was waiting— I didn’t want to go alone—” The second girl stopped abruptly. In the distance a dog barked, then two more, and they woke the roosters who started crowing to one another, louder and louder, just to see who would win.
“Ursula,” whispered Jaila, and the din smothered the hot, dangerous flame of the name—because that was her name, the other girl. She had a rope of black hair down to her waist and a huipil embroidered with feathers, and a wide, happy nose, the better to keep the wind in it. Ursula had always been friends with the wind—the only one as good at following a trail was the boy both of them loved.
And he wasn’t here to help them now.
Jaila put her hands in front of her mouth; her fingers seemed to glow where they touched her lips.
“What happened to you?” asked Ursula.
Jaila thought. Her gaze shifted from Ursula’s face to the shadowy murals tucked into the cupula of the church to the serene image of the saint standing in his niche. She had belonged to this place once; it had been familiar and kind to her. She had dreamed herself here so many nights. Was this another dream? How had she found herself, at last, upon the road? And if it were a dream, why was she still too late?
“I tried,” Jaila said.
Ursula frowned. “I needed you, little sister.”
“I tried!” And this time Jaila’s voice was a roar that burned her lips and singed the little hairs beneath Ursula’s windy nose. She quieted the flame again; she hoarded the embers. “They wouldn’t let me.”
“And now? How did you get away?”
They stared at one another, Ursula expectant, and Jaila distracted, confused by the question. She was here, the dirt in her sandals was the dirt in her hair, and it was like no other dirt in the world. And yet, she couldn’t remember . . .
Very near them, just behind the church, or just by Jaila’s elbow, a coyote yipped. The dogs whimpered and quieted. Ursula gripped Jaila’s hand. They ran outside to the open plaza in front of the church.
“Was that—” Jaila started, but Ursula broke away.
“Brother!” Ursula roared. “Vete a la chingada, hermano, is that you?” The wind blew down from the hills, blew down the howl of a coyote, distant now, and brushed against the church bell so that it rang just once. The world was still; the world held its breath; the world waited, as the two girls waited, for what that bell had rung into existence.
Now, behind Ursula, muddy tracks crossed the broken cobblestones, heading away from the gate. They had not been there a moment before. Jaila bent down and touched one of their crumbling edges.
“Coyote,” she whispered.
Ursula knelt beside her and sniffed. “The woods. The track to the sacred well. He’s still out there. We have to find him.”
“I can’t,” Jaila said. “I’ve only been there once. They don’t like it when I go.”
“We won’t go to the well, just around it. But he’s out there, Jaila! You won’t abandon him again, will you?” And Jaila heard, unspoken, all the holes that they had ripped in each other’s lives when she left.
Jaila nodded. Her lips were burning, her tongue was a twisted wick dipped in the oil of conflicting vocabularies and aspectual grammars. Maybe Ursula understood. She just took Jaila by the hand and led her away from the church toward the creek. They followed it silently until the town dropped away behind them. They climbed the hill and entered the path through the woods, dark and forbidding—darkened and forbidden.