Teresa of the New World Read online

  “No, no,” the woman smiled and then made a sound again. “I am near my time. I want to be in my house.”

  Teresa had to wonder why the woman was not in her house now. The woman seemed to understand. “I’ve been gathering herbs for the birth. I misjudged and the pains have come.” Her face twisted. “Please, take me home!”

  Unwillingly, Teresa felt sorry for her—and curious. She had never seen a pregnant woman so close. She knew nothing about birthing. Also it seemed they must have left the sarampión behind. This woman, at least, didn’t fear them.

  “Can you ride a horse?” she asked, looking doubtfully at the huge belly.

  “Oh, yes,” the woman fluttered her hands. “I am fine, for the moment. I can ride, and the boy can ride with me.”

  Her dark eyes lingered on Boy, who leaned against Teresa’s leg. Teresa turned to speak with Horse. Would he let the woman ride him?

  But the gelding had backed away, his ears pointed forward.

  She is not what she says, the horse said to Teresa.

  “I can ride,” the woman was saying out loud. “The boy and I can ride, and you can lead us. The path is steep.”

  Teresa felt an absence and an alarm, for the boy was no longer leaning against her. She looked down and around, and he was gone! But no, he had only moved away, too, a little distance into the meadow. He also stared suspiciously at the woman.

  He knows, the horse said. He can tell. She is a shape-shifter like him.

  Like him! Teresa was startled. She is a jaguar?

  No, the horse hesitated. Not that. Something else.

  The pregnant woman waddled closer. The horse and boy kept moving out of her reach. The boy skirted toward the brushy pine trees, while the horse went in the opposite direction back down the path. Teresa stayed where she was, blocking the woman’s approach.

  “What is it?” the woman wailed. Her eyes were wet, her face contorted. “Why won’t you help me?”

  “Who are you really?” Teresa rapped out.

  The woman gave another cry and dropped to her knees. “Please,” she begged. “I must get to the village. Please!”

  Teresa could sense it herself now. Very slightly, the woman’s shape was wrong. And there was something familiar about that wrongness. Teresa had had this bad feeling before. They all had. The curls of black smoke. The black wall of fear.

  “Stay away!” she said, her voice shaking. What could she do? She had lost the knife. How could she defend herself or the boy? Teresa looked over at the child, who watched the scene tensely, ready to run. That was good, at least. The boy had his own means of escape. If he were frightened enough, if he were in danger, would he make the change?

  On her knees, the pregnant woman lifted her hands in frustration. “Oh!” she half-snarled, half-groaned. Then she grew smoky. She thinned. She blackened. She lengthened. She rearranged herself, swirling into a new shape. Her stomach shrank. Her skin lightened, and her hair fell away. She was bald. Her eyes were blue. His eyes were blue, a pale watery color like evening light. Her leather skirt softened and expanded until it covered his body in a brown woolen cloth, the robes of a monk. The monk knelt in prayer and raised his hands, a gesture of supplication and welcome.

  “Teresa,” Fray Tomás said. “Help me. Take me to the village.”

  Teresa wanted to weep, something she had not done since her father left her. She wanted to throw her arms around the friar. He wasn’t dead after all. No matter how she had behaved toward him, no matter that she refused to speak or listen, no matter her glares and hard heart, no matter how much she denied him, he had remained her friend. Always kind, always patient. He had watched over her in the Governor’s house. How she missed him. How she loved him. She only realized it now.

  “Walk with me to the village,” Fray Tomás said. “You and the boy. We will go down the steep path together.”

  Teresa felt even more confused. “But why?” she stammered.

  The monk shook his head affectionately, as he had done in the past. “To save their souls, of course. To bring them to Christ. We must meet them with kindness, as they have so often met us lost in the wilderness.”

  The words irritated Teresa. Her father had also said that—to her and in his report to the King of Spain. What did it mean really? She didn’t care about saving the souls of the villagers or anyone else. She didn’t care about bringing them to Christ. Of course, Fray Tomás cared about that because he was a monk. Fray Tomás had loved the bleeding heart of Christ and the whitewashed adobe chapel and the comfort of Mass and the boys and girls he had taught to read. Fray Tomás had surely gone to Heaven after he died, and Teresa didn’t begrudge him that. The monk was with his beloved Christ now.

  The monk was dead. Teresa remembered his body in the chapel, the black blood leaking from his nose and mouth. In her vision, she had seen his soul slip away, a yellow sheen. This was not Fray Tomás.

  Get on my back, the horse urged. I’ll take you away!

  Teresa looked for the boy, who had moved even closer to the line of pine trees, far from the monk but also far from the horse.

  “Let us get the boy.” Fray Tomás rose from his knees and adjusted his woolen robe. “We will walk together.”

  “No,” Teresa shouted as the man took a step toward the child. “Get away from him!”

  The horse lifted his front legs and drummed his hooves on the ground.

  “Teresa, what is wrong with you?” the friar asked with a deep disappointment in his voice. He lifted a pale hand to brush his bald head and then let the hand drop. He stared at her sorrowfully. “What have I done to offend you?”

  “What are you really?” Teresa asked, not expecting an answer. She glanced at the boy and spoke to him urgently, hoping he was old enough to understand. “If you have to run, run. Do what you have to do.”

  “Oh!” The monk theatrically shook his fists. “I must get to the village.” He shifted again. He grew smoky, disappearing and reappearing. He became tall and short and tall and short and tall and short and stopped when he was average height, and completely naked. His wide shoulders and chest were those of a man who had once been strong and well muscled, but now his collar bones stuck out like two jutting stones. His ribs looked like the parts of a musical instrument. His stomach curved inward like a hollow bowl. His arms and legs were spiky branches, his gray face hollowed, his hair a wispy cloud. Teresa could see the sores that covered his scalp. They covered his face, too, and ran down the length of his body—rashes, welts, leaking pustules. There was no way to know his race, Spanish or Indian, Mayan or Opata. His eyes glittered. His hands shook.

  He was Plague.

  His voice sounded harsh from the lesions in his throat and the weakening of his windpipe. “You know who I am,” he said and grinned, his mouth bloody. “Take me to the village!” he commanded.

  Teresa found her own voice, “Go!”

  The boy turned into the line of pine trees and disappeared.

  12

  Teresa saw the boy blur as he moved. She thought she saw the flick of a tail and heard the rustle of fur through low-hanging branches. She knew the jaguar would soon be flying through the pine and scrub-brush forest, twisting around trees, humping up slopes, skidding down inclines. She strained to see into the shadows. He was gone. He was safe.

  She turned back to where Plague stood before her. He was gone, too.

  What happened? she asked the horse.

  He disappeared, the horse answered.

  The boy, you mean?

  No, the shape-shifter. The old man.

  “Plague,” Teresa said out loud.

  She was not afraid of Plague. Her hard heart protected her. Plague could not harm her, but he could harm many others. The housekeeper seemed to be next to Teresa now, whispering in her ear. The housekeeper was no fool. Her family had kept themselves alive by serving the cruel Aztecs and then the cruel Spanish. They bowed to their masters, but they kept their eyes and ears open, watching and listening. The housekeepe
r had been smart and practical. She sized up the situation, explaining it to Teresa: Horse and Boy and Teresa had left the villages of sarampión behind, with Plague harrying and driving them as fast as they could go. This far north, people were not yet suffering from the most recent epidemic, not yet dying, not yet grieving. Of course, Plague had wanted to walk with Teresa and Boy into this new village below. Because Plague needed a human being at his side. He needed someone to bring the disease, the way the Spanish had brought it when they came to the New World.

  Teresa saw again the hares running from bush to bush into the hunter’s hand. And she saw, too, that if they did what Plague wanted, he would leave them alone. She and Horse could go into the village with Plague, and then Plague would stay behind with the suffering and dying people. He would have what he wanted. She would be free of him. She remembered the song: Sarampión toca la puerta. Viruela dice: ¿Quién es? Y Escarlatina contesta: Aquí estamos los tres. Measles knocks at the door. Smallpox asks, Who’s there? And Scarlet Fever replies, All three of us are here!

  She shook her head. She had walked with a healer. Men and women jumped up, saying they felt completely well. Even the man with an arrowhead in his chest had risen from his grass mat saying he felt strong and well, while his wife and children looked relieved. They celebrated with yellow tea, dancing under the river of stars, singing and laughing. Her father had looked on, smiling at his daughter. Whatever else he had been, her father had been a healer.

  She had to find the boy. Teresa felt a small sense of victory. The boy was safe. And Plague was gone for the moment. His trick had failed.

  Teresa examined the ground where the boy had been and soon saw what she was looking for. Paw prints. The front heel pads as wide as her hand, the toes in a curve, the claws retracted. Crouching, she began to follow the prints into the trees.

  What are you doing? Horse called from behind. Where are you going?

  The horse sounded anxious, and Teresa came back out. I have to get the boy, she explained.

  That is crazy, the horse said. That is supremely ridiculous and beyond the realm of common sense. That animal is many miles away.

  Then I’ll have to walk many miles, Teresa replied.

  He’ll turn around and eat you! The horse snorted to show his full displeasure and swished his tail back and forth.

  No, he won’t, Teresa said. Of course, he won’t.

  But she wasn’t completely sure about that.

  Plop, plop. The horse defecated, filling the air with an acrid but not unpleasant odor. Perhaps he had no choice in the matter, or perhaps he wanted to make a point. Teresa came forward into the meadow and stroked Horse’s muzzle. She did this automatically as she whispered, you can’t come with me. It’s too brushy. You have to wait here.

  I don’t want to wait. The horse whinnied, perhaps thinking of his first master.

  Yes, yes, but look at this nice grass, this tall sweet grass. Find a place to rest, away from the path. Don’t let people see you. Go find water, and then return here. Wait for me here.

  He might come back.

  Plague can’t hurt you, Teresa said. I am counting on you, she crooned as she stroked the fine fur and scratched the skin between the horse’s ears. I may be gone a long time. When I come back with the boy, we will talk about what to do next.

  He will eat you for supper, the horse predicted, and you will cry out for me in heartrending tones.

  At first the tracks were not hard to follow in the soft dirt under the pine and oak, places where the jaguar had pushed with his back feet in a hurry to get away, where his toes dug into the earth and disturbed the debris of needles and leaves. Soon, though, Teresa had to bend and squirm through the low branches, weaving through the resinous trees and skirting the occasional prickly pear or sharp-tipped yucca—just as the jaguar had skirted them as he ran from the frightening scene in the meadow. As she followed the prints, she breathed in the sharp smell of pine sap and the decaying litter of the forest floor. She had to watch carefully the ever-changing but ever-the-same patterns on the ground: dirt, stone, leaf, needle, and there, a slight indentation, the curve of a heel pad. She heard a jay’s squawk and the rustle of mice.

  Slowly, the circle of her thoughts wound down. So many questions and decisions to make. Why had Plague chosen them? How could she find the wise woman and her village? How could she enter the wise woman’s village without bringing along Plague? Slowly, those concerns drifted away. She only had to follow these tracks, these marks in the ground. She only had to move through the trees like an animal herself, hunting another animal.

  After half a league, the prints left the shelter of stunted pine, and the jaguar was running down a rocky slope across boulders of granite encrusted with yellow lichen. Sometimes Teresa could not find a mark for long stretches, and she had to rely on her intuition, her sense of where the big cat would go. Sometimes she had to backtrack, and for a while she was afraid she had lost him completely and was completely lost herself. Scanning the ground and then the horizon, she stood on an overlook from where she could see an expanse of canyons and jumbled hills covered with juniper and thorn bush. The village and its green and yellow fields were already behind her. Where was the boy in this rolling stretch of land? Teresa felt like cursing, as she had often heard women in the kitchen curse when they cut a finger or ruined a dish.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on an image of the boy’s face: the rounded cheeks, the long dark eyelashes, the grin that sometimes made her grin because—because he looked so pleased with himself, so ridiculously smug. She concentrated on his giggle and the way he had preened in his crown of yellow daisies. She called out to him. Then she plodded back up the slope, turned to her right, and found another track, a fresh print that led to another and another.

  The jaguar was moving into the canyon below. Scrambling up a boulder, Teresa stretched her back and squinted and peered. Against a distant rock cliff, the edge of something showed green, the top of a cottonwood with the bright leaves of summer. A cottonwood tree meant water, likely a spring. The jaguar was going there to drink.

  Teresa gathered her energy for the descent, down the steep crumbly slope. Her stomach rumbled. They had not yet stopped for lunch when Plague had tried to trick them in the meadow. Now it was many hours later, late afternoon, and her body wanted food. She envied the horse, grazing on tall sweet grass as he waited. She felt a little sorry for herself: tired and hungry and thirsty. Stumbling on rocks, slipping on gravel, she fell twice, starting small avalanches in the loose stone and scraping her hands. For some sections, she went down on her buttocks, half-sliding and hoping not to slide into the needles of a cholla cactus. More than ever, she was grateful for her sturdy yucca sandals, given to her as part of a servant’s “pay” for working in the Governor’s kitchen. The rest of her pay was a leather skirt, a cotton shirt, all the food she could eat, and a place to sleep. It hadn’t been such a bad bargain, she realized. Certainly she had grown used to eating a meal every few hours, whenever she wanted, and as much as she wanted. At this moment, she would give almost anything for a tortilla and bowl of stew. Or slices of cantaloupe. A piece of bread baked fresh for the Governor every morning. Porridge. Eggs. A turkey wing.

  Teresa blew on her stinging bleeding hands and half-fell to the bottom of the long slope. For a while, she stood with rubbery legs in the sandy arroyo. Without much hope, she looked around for berries or roots or a small animal to kill. There was nothing to eat, nothing at all. But there were more tracks farther down the canyon, very clear in the white sand. The jaguar had come this way, too. The boy was nearby.

  Keeeeen. Screeeeee. A pair of falcons screamed at her angrily. The low sandstone cliffs of the box canyon were pockmarked with the caves and white-smeared holes where these birds nested. Off and on as she walked, she saw the prints of the big cat. But she didn’t really need to look for them now. She knew where he was going.

  The canyon walls narrowed, the shadows deepened, and the sun had dropped close
to setting by the time she reached the spring. The world ended here in a half-circle of red rock, the colors burnished and striated, orange and brown and cinnamon. Above these towers, the azure sky darkened with the coming twilight. Below, the water of the pond reflected perfectly the shape of the cottonwood tree, the leaves of the tree rustling and swaying in a breeze, the green leaves a promise of everything good. Grass grew around the edges of the pond, along with wildflowers, yellow and white and red, dotting the ground like stars in the sky.

  As soon as she saw that blue water and great overarching tree, Teresa’s weariness fell away like a tossed blanket. Her feet weren’t so bruised and sore. Her scraped hands hurt less. Even her hard heart seemed to lift and soar. She stared, puzzled at her reaction, and then she knew—this is how she had always imagined Heaven. Whenever Fray Tomás spoke of Paradise, whenever he praised Eden and its joys, this is what she saw.

  The air felt freshly cool on her face as she went to drink from the shallow pool, then to stand on the bank and look searchingly about, scanning the nearby rock, alert for that pattern of the jaguar’s spots, the black and gold fur. Likely he was resting in one of these darkened alcoves, resting and waiting for her. Perhaps he was scared, remembering Plague. It’s time to wake up, she thought. Time to come back. She called out, “Boy! Boy!”

  A panting noise answered. Hunh, hunh, hunh.

  Teresa startled and turned. Across the green grass, from a shadowed cave in the red rock, the jaguar appeared, coughed, and stared. Bending his body and head lower to the ground, he inched toward her, his muscled legs tensed. His mottled coat glowed in the dimming light. His long tail flickered back and forth without a sound, and his big round eyes watched her intently, focused on her alone. She was all that mattered to him.

  Sit still, he said. Don’t move. Don’t be afraid.

  And Teresa was still, fascinated by those amber eyes, so intent, so focused.

  This is your destiny, the jaguar said.

  No, Teresa thought. Blinked and shook herself. It was not her destiny at all. Stop it, she said to the jaguar. Stop that. The animal paused, but only slightly. One paw lifted and moved back down and the next paw lifted, all so silently, bringing him forward, closer to her.