“Miguel can’t return. He’s dead.”
“The old ones sometimes brought the dead to life!” Her eyes flashed, and then she lowered her gaze self-consciously. “I will ask. They will know, m’ijo,” she muttered.
“They would not bring back Miguel, your son, even if he agreed to it. He will be a spent dream, attempting to survive within a dying body.”
“So . . . it might be done!” his mother exclaimed. The fire was in her eyes again and he felt the temptation that burned strong behind it.
“Sarita, do not ask this.”
“I will have you back! I will, or—”
“Or what—or you’ll die? Do it now! Come home with me!”
“I am not ready for this bleak surrender!”
“Madre, you don’t listen.”
“Come back, then, and make me hear you,” she cried. “Come back and teach me what I would not learn.”
Miguel sighed. She was using words to bend him, as she always had. It had never been easy to win an argument with her. Sarita had been his teacher, his patient master, and it was hard for him now not to respond as a student. He leaned heavily against the trunk of the tree and turned his attention to the great, glittering sphere that floated above the horizon, welcoming certain dreams and abandoning others.
“Your dream is fading already,” Sarita pressed on, following his gaze. “Such a tragedy. Your sons are not strong enough without you; your apprentices are weak and selfish.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sarita. They are happier than they used to be. The world is happier.” He turned back to her with a look of contentment.
“Who gave birth to you?” she snapped. “Who taught you, and trained you, and prepared you to seduce Mother Earth herself?”
“Tu, Mamá,” he answered quietly. He knew what was coming. It would be hard to say no to her, as it had been hard to say no to the rest of her kind. She counted on that.
“Obey your mother. Time is running out, and I will not return without you.”
“And I ask you to join me, Sarita. There is nothing left for you but physical suffering. I would spare you that.”
“Do not paint me as a victim!”
Miguel regarded her thoughtfully. She was not a victim. She was a woman who abhorred the ravages of age and would not willingly face the end alone. They had collaborated for fifty years now, like two children inventing games—games, in this case, that changed the dreams of human beings. In his absence, there would be no one like her left in the world . . . but did she understand the price his body would pay to come back? Could she imagine the extent of his physical pain? Something stirred in him, and he felt the force of his love begin to shift the dream. He looked into his mother’s eyes and spoke to her, choosing his words carefully.
“If this body lives, Madre, it will need my presence; but it will also need something of the old structure.”
“Was it not I who taught you about the human form?”
“There’s no form left—no belief system.”
“Such things can be retrieved!”
“Who was Miguel, Sarita? How can he be recovered, when there is no answer to that question? There are only memories to point the way. Memories lie, and the lies change with every telling. Memories may give direction, but never truth.”
“They will give me you!”
Miguel looked at his mother, a vision of shifting moods and remembered phrases. She seemed real, warm, and so sweetly unassuming in her nightgown and slippers that he was tempted to change the conversation to everyday things. He wanted to tease her again, to make her laugh as he used to. He wanted to hear her calling him to breakfast, or casually gossiping about people he didn’t know. He wanted to feel her fingertips on his forehead, over his heart, as she gave him her usual morning blessing. This was not an ordinary encounter, however. She had found him somewhere between life and death. She had found him because life had laid a path for her . . . and now, instead of yielding to this fragile dream, she was attempting to manage it.
What could he offer her as consolation for a lost son? How could he calm her fears as he once did? She was fighting him, and it appeared she would not stop. She seemed set for battle, even as she stood unsteadily before him, an old woman in a cotton gown and slippers. She would be the warrior, frail as she was, until it became obvious that there were no more wars to fight. What she hoped to win he could not say, but she was plainly determined.
Miguel offered her a smile. “You have a shopping bag, I see. Was it your intention to put me in it?”
“I might have!”
“It appears to be full already.”
“Here!” she exclaimed, her voice raspy from all the talk. He noticed her renewed enthusiasm and let her talk. “I brought the usual tools of our trade! Perhaps we can do ceremony together . . . just as we used to. Prepare yourself, m’ijo. Make yourself pure, and bring the forces of life toward our task.”
Miguel did nothing. He watched his mother patiently as she bent over her bag of treasures, one hand resting on his knee and his eyes shining with a curious light. He had been a shaman once and knew what was coming. The time was over for tricks, but how could he tell her that? The dream was over for Miguel, the main character of his story, but she would not listen. She would insist on having her son returned to her, even if he was a faintest copy of the truth, living within the most tenuous form.
Sarita began lifting items out of her shopping bag with pride and newfound enthusiasm. Could it be that she and her playmate of old were to invent yet another new game? Could fortune be on her side again? She felt the nearness of her ancestors and smiled. Out of the heavy bag she pulled a small drum and stood it on the ground, carefully placing a stick wrapped in ceremonial red ribbon on top of it. From a tiny pouch she shook out a collection of Aztec shards and lined them up neatly on the skin of the drum, adding to the arrangement a glorious eagle feather. That done, she stacked three gourds at the base of the drum, along with a pot containing charcoal and frankincense. Satisfied that she had laid the groundwork for all that was to come, she reached into the bag for her precious icons, and one by one she placed them on the limb of the tree.
“Now! We start with the Son of the Virgin, of course!” She balanced a small figurine of Jesus on the broad limb of the tree. It was a clay piece, daintily sculpted, showing the Lord holding a lamb. Next, she brought out the Virgin Mary, arms opened in an ascension pose. “There. Mother and Son united,” Sarita said with satisfaction, then muttered a prayer.
Miguel watched in silence as she finished her prayer and hesitated, apparently unsure what to do next. Pursing her lips, she leaned over the bag again. After a few seconds of rummaging noisily, she straightened up, a brass statue of the Buddha sitting heavily in both her hands. She looked at her son, as if expecting a challenge.
“And why not?” she asked. “Is he so proud that he cannot come to the aid of a fellow teacher?”
“He is not proud, although he has good reason to be,” said Miguel calmly, nodding his head toward the lights that flickered above him. “His message still moves the dream of humanity.”
“Precisely so!” The old woman lifted the statue onto the tree, wedging it in the joint of two limbs. Closing her eyes, she mumbled another prayer, presumably to the ultimate bodhisattva himself. With another sigh of satisfaction, she reached into the bag again. This time she found a more delicate statue, wrapped in a silk cloth. It was a Chinese goddess, represented beautifully in pale jade. After a few seconds