Teresa of the New World Read online

  Yes, it’s even closer.

  The horse’s ears went back.

  The boy whined, “I don’t want to walk!”

  Teresa stared down the path. A black thread of smoke curled through a pine tree. Do you see that? she asked the horse.

  It’s our campfire, the horse said. The smoke uncurled until it rose up into a straight line, a thin black column. The column began to widen, thicker and thicker, filling the path like a solid wall. The solid wall began to move.

  Now they both understood. The wall of black was fear, and fear was moving toward them on the path, gathering speed.

  Teresa couldn’t help herself. She whimpered. The horse squealed and shied, striking out with his hooves, just missing the boy’s head. Terror exploded in Teresa’s chest, paralyzing, then galvanizing her. She grabbed the horse’s brown mane. Take us away! she pleaded. You have to take us away! Even as she spoke, she was reaching with one hand to pick up the boy and throw him onto the horse’s back.

  The horse startled and trembled. But his master had taught him this, too: you didn’t leave your comrades behind. If your master was wounded, you waited for him to mount you. If there were wounded or horseless men on the field, your master waited and helped them mount.

  Yes, Horse snorted, eyes a half-moon of white. Hurry!

  Teresa slung the boy, who was crying and yelling, and then pulled herself up—she didn’t know how. The leather bag bounced hard against her shoulder. She gripped the horse with her knees and entwined her fingers in his mane and flattened her body to cover the child and hold him to the horse. Go, go! she commanded, and the horse turned clumsily, trying not to dislodge her. He lifted his muscled legs and breathed in and ran up the path, away from the wall of fear.

  Teresa concentrated on not falling, on not letting the boy fall.

  10

  They climbed until the path flattened and the horse could breathe more easily. Now he settled into a steady gallop, four beats, four beats, four beats, four beats, thud, thud, thud, thud. Teresa didn’t need to look back. She could feel the black wall of fear behind them moving as fast as they but no faster. What was it? A Bad Spirit? A demon?

  That is what Fray Tomás would say—that this was a fiend from Hell. But why was it chasing them?

  Down the path they galloped, with Teresa’s knees frozen, locked into place. The boy had stopped whimpering. He also gripped the horse’s mane. Finally, after what seemed a long frightening time, the horse had to slow down, and the beat under them changed into a trot, two beats, two beats, thud, thud. Teresa could see the blurred shapes of trees and bushes as they trotted by them. She had never traveled so quickly in her life, and under other circumstances she would have been pleased. She was riding Horse just like she had planned. She was riding a horse, just like her father, like the stories he had told her when she was small. She could feel the animal’s muscles working under her. She was Horse’s second half, part of his power.

  Behind them, fear slowed, too, as if the black wall of smoke were also growing tired. Teresa dared to turn her head and look. The horse was faster than whatever followed them. They were pulling ahead.

  Now they trotted through the narrow streets of a village with houses on either side. The horse slowed even more, almost to a walk. At first, this village also seemed to be empty, desolated by sarampión, its gardens overgrown. But when Teresa looked more closely she saw that the houses were not really abandoned. A man came to a doorway and peered at them. Then Teresa saw a woman walking the street and carrying a basket on her head. Somehow she had survived the disease. Moving out of their way, the woman stared. It wasn’t the horse that surprised her. “A child,” she exclaimed. Another man appeared at her side and also stared at the boy. “It’s a child,” he said in the same tone.

  The village made Teresa nervous, as a second man came out of his house. She knew what had happened. All the children here had died. Let’s go, she urged the horse, and he changed his pace to a canter, three beats, three beats, three beats, thud, thud, thud.

  They ran and walked for hours more. Sometimes fear was close enough to see, and sometimes not. By afternoon, the horse was exhausted and had to drink. Stumbling, shambling, he went off the path toward a stream that Teresa knew was the same stream—farther north and bigger here—that they had stayed by yesterday, its waters rushing to the sea, its movement a kind of magic. It was the same stream where she had laughed and splashed with the boy a lifetime ago, before the wall of fear.

  As she tumbled from the horse’s back, Teresa cried out with pain. Her legs wouldn’t straighten, and she could barely stand. On the ground, the boy also wept with the stiffness in his legs and buttocks.

  I can’t get back on, Teresa told the horse.

  And I can’t carry you further, Horse said. I have to stop.

  Then we stay here, Teresa agreed. She staggered to the boy, half-falling, and stood in front of him, between him and the Bad Spirit or the demon or the witchcraft or whatever this was.

  But fear was gone.

  Neither she nor the horse could feel it any longer. Locusts buzzed in the low twisted pine trees, crickets kept a steady chirping, a few birds called and scolded. The air was filled with the sounds of the forest. Teresa listened. Horse listened. Nothing followed. Nothing was behind them.

  “I’ll go look on the path,” Teresa said out loud.

  “Don’t leave me!” the boy cried from the ground.

  “Stupid. I’m not leaving you,” Teresa reassured him.

  She hobbled back the way they had come, the muscles in her legs protesting every step. Bravely, she looked up and down the trail. It was just a path that people used to walk from one village to the next. Animals used it, too, coyotes and deer, skunks and peccary and mountain lions, even the rare jaguar, trotting here and there on important errands. There was no wall of smoke, no blackness, no curling shadow. The trail, the day, the tracks in the dirt were perfectly ordinary. Soon it would be evening, and she should collect firewood. She should find something for them to eat.

  Had it all been their imagination? Teresa tried to think so.

  But the next morning, fear returned. It waited until the horse had grazed and Teresa and the boy had eaten their breakfast of wild onion and hard currants. It waited until they were back on the path, walking beside the horse, with Teresa still wondering if their pursuer was real.

  And then fear was there. The horse and boy turned, staring behind them. The panic blossomed in their hearts, just as before, just as strong as before. They had to get away! They had to run! Once again Teresa and the boy threw themselves onto the horse’s back, pulling at his mane, fumbling and gasping. This time, Teresa dropped the leather saddlebag that held the food and fishing net, the knife and gourd for water. There was no time to pick it up. At least she had knotted the tinderbox, her most prized possession, into her cotton shirt.

  Go! she told the horse. And fear chased them all that day, down the path, leaving again by late afternoon and returning again the next morning.

  In the next few days, they discovered that if they kept moving forward as quickly as they could without becoming exhausted, then fear would not come too close. Horse began to pace himself, walking briskly most of the morning and afternoon but no longer galloping uphill or down. They rose, ate breakfast, and continued their journey, Teresa and the boy on Horse’s back. They stopped, ate lunch, and traveled again. In the remaining hours, Teresa gathered food, hunting at dusk when the young rabbits came out of their burrows. To skin and gut the animals, she used a rock that she chipped and sharpened until it resembled somewhat the knife they had lost. The path followed the stream, and along its edge she could also gather onions and berries and watercress. Now she had no saddlebag to store them in, and more than once, she scolded herself for leaving it behind.

  Teresa remembered her journey with her father and the hares the hunters had harried from one man to the next. The men had made a sport of it, chasing an animal from bush to bush until the creature ran
straight into a hunter’s hand. In the same way, Teresa and Horse and Boy were being chased and teased from campsite to campsite, bush to bush.

  They experimented.

  If Teresa and the boy did not mount the horse but walked beside him, traveling more slowly than they would otherwise, fear began to gather on the path, sending out curls of black smoke and forming a solid wall. Fear invaded their minds. Fear seemed to fill the dark spaces of the forest. Eventually, the horse would roll his eyes so that the whites showed, and the boy would start crying, and Teresa would be fumbling at the horse’s mane, throwing the boy up and pulling herself awkwardly onto the bony back.

  Sometimes they tried leaving later in the morning or napping longer during their rest at lunch or ending earlier in the day. Then fear would gather, too, and they would ride on, traveling a few more leagues down the path.

  Teresa’s legs and rump were constantly sore now. She had never dreamed riding a horse could be so painful. Horse assured her that her body would eventually adjust to his, and she muttered back: couldn’t it be the other way around? The boy suffered less, lying forward on his stomach and occasionally dropping his head to nap on the gelding’s neck. Each time, Teresa kept him from falling, her knees locked, her arms stretched out at an awkward angle.

  Strangely, though, Horse stopped complaining. He almost seemed to enjoy the regime of walking, grazing, walking, and grazing. This was, after all, what he had been trained to do. More than once, he commented that Teresa and the boy weighed far less than his helmeted, shielded, and armored master.

  They did not enter any more villages. When they met other people on the trail, Teresa could see that the sarampión was still close by, for these men and women were cautious. Well dressed in leather skirts, their breasts painted with designs of red and white, they kept a good distance from the horse and his two passengers. Perhaps they were afraid of illness or perhaps they were like most Indians in New Spain, suspicious of horses and the ones who rode them. Sometimes a woman or man pointed at the boy, and sometimes they averted their eyes.

  Now Teresa was traveling exactly as she had wanted to travel, fast and north, closer every day to the wise woman. She was glad of that, at least. The horse’s “Never” had changed into a grudging acceptance. He was a horse. She was his rider. Patient at first, and then less so, the gelding tried to teach her tricks such as how to shift her weight to his different beats, the trot and the canter, how to mount and dismount gracefully. Teresa followed his instructions as best she could even as she grimaced with the ache of sore muscles and chafed skin. Horse commented on her efforts critically. Clearly she was not born to this skill.

  The boy also seemed to accept the situation and regained a bit of good humor whenever they stopped and ate lunch or camped for the evening. He still liked to play with a stick, swishing off the heads of yellow flowers. He liked to make dams in the stream, where he caught water beetles and minnows, pretending these creatures were Spanish slave hunters and he was their captain giving them orders—to sleep, to eat, to ride out for the day. Then he would release the fish and insects from the dam and scramble to catch them again, splashing in the water, yelling furiously for them to come back.

  Can’t you keep him quiet? Horse muttered more than once. He’s louder than cannon. The horse still didn’t like the boy. He smells of jaguar, the horse said.

  Meanwhile, the boy remembered the bite on his arm. “He’s a bad horse,” the boy told her solemnly as they drank one evening from the rippling stream. “He should be shot.”

  “No, no,” Teresa hushed and looked about. Had Horse overheard? “He’s a good horse! What would we do without him? How would we get away from . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. “He’s a good horse,” she said sternly. “Now you must be quiet so I can catch us something to eat. You play over there. Right there. And be quiet.”

  Teresa stood over the tumbling stream listening to the sound of water rushing to sea, the power of water rushing and tumbling. What are we running from? she asked the water. Perhaps more to the point, where was fear driving them?

  Days passed with the dark wall of smoke always waiting, urging, pushing them forward as fast as they could go. Then one morning, they woke later than usual to a pale cloud-tossed sky, as beautiful a morning as Teresa had ever seen. Somehow they had been allowed to oversleep. Teresa stretched gratefully and the boy chattered over his breakfast of roots and onions while the horse grazed. They walked slowly to the path they had left the night before.

  I don’t feel . . . anything, the horse said as Teresa prepared to lift the boy to sit on his back.

  She stopped. You’re right, she whispered.

  “What is it?” the boy also asked out loud.

  Let’s keep going, Teresa said to the horse. Let’s see what happens.

  “It’s all right,” she said to the boy. “Don’t worry.”

  “What did you say to the horse?” he insisted, and she was not surprised. So he understood about that.

  They traveled all day, meeting one other couple on the path, an anxious-looking man and woman who retreated into the bushes. For lunch, Teresa gathered sour berries, and she and Boy ate the roots left over from breakfast. The horse tore up handfuls of grass. Once the boy had napped, Teresa urged them onward. Let’s see what happens, she said again to the horse. At a fork in the trail, they took the path that went higher, northeast.

  We’ll stop early, Teresa decided. We will see then.

  They waited, expecting the worst. After a while, Teresa tried making another fishing net from the thready leaves of the yucca plants scattered through the scrub pine and oak. She fashioned something small and flimsy but still managed to catch two fish before the net broke. Proud of herself, she spit and roasted the trout with peppery herbs. The white meat greased her lips and flecked the boy’s face.

  After they had eaten, Teresa remembered something Fray Tomás had taught her, and she wove a chain of yellow daisies, putting them on the boy’s head. Then she wove another one for herself. The boy frowned when she placed the leafy crown on his dark hair. But he laughed uproariously at how the yellow petals and green leaves looked on her, half-covering her ears at an angle. “You look like . . .” he giggled, but he couldn’t think of anything similar in his life. No animal or person had ever worn flowers as a hat.

  Teresa remembered something else, something the Moor had done when she was bored or complaining. He had called it a whirligig. She stood up to hold the boy’s hands and showed him how to lean back. Leaning back, too, she twirled him in a dance until they were both dizzy. After they fell to the ground, the boy cuddled against her and she examined the bite on his arm, which was almost healed. As the air darkened, she fanned away the few mosquitoes that came to bother them.

  “Am I a king now?” the boy asked, touching his crown.

  “No,” Teresa said, “but you are special. You have special powers. You will grow up to be an important person.”

  “Tell me a story,” the boy said.

  “I will tell you about a girl with long black hair who could swim through rivers of stone. She moved through the earth as wind moves through the branches of a tree. Once she followed a current of stone all the way to fire . . .”

  11

  The next day, they traveled as usual, the horse out of habit and Teresa because she wanted to find the wise woman. They were so relieved at the absence of fear that no one brought up the subject. Even the boy seemed unwilling to say the obvious, as if that might bring the wall of smoke back, curling behind them on the path.

  Daydreaming about the wise woman, Teresa had even more questions than before. For the first time, she tried to think: where was the wise woman’s village? How far north? What path should they take next? Teresa had thought she would know instinctively how to find that crumbling adobe house—that her vision in the Governor’s barn would tell her where to go. Riding the horse now, she concentrated. She had to work backward through her journey with Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo, A
ndrés Dorantes, and the Moor Esteban. Where had they met the Spanish slave hunters and the captain with stumps of rotting teeth? How many leagues was that from the hill where Teresa had listened to the coyote and owl? The phlox had rung like copper bells. The limestone in the earth had hissed with the sound of waves. Somewhere close, a fang-tooth mountain scratched the sky. In truth, all this had happened so long ago. She had been a child. She hadn’t paid attention to distances and forks in the trail.

  Where the path divided again, the horse stopped and waited for her decision.

  Teresa tried to think—but a sound interrupted her, a human voice high-pitched and female.

  Cautious, Teresa did not dismount. “Who’s there? What’s wrong?”

  Get ready to run, she told the horse as she tightened her hold on the boy.

  The place where they had paused was flat and grassy, a meadow fringed by a row of wind-swept pines growing close together like brush. On the other side of the meadow, the land dropped, with a view that showed a valley of irrigated green and yellow fields. Below, Teresa could see a cluster of houses, part of what she assumed to be a village. The way down to these houses looked steep but well used. The other way continued upward.

  The sounds came from the brushy pine trees. Something in them moved as though an animal were struggling, and then a young woman emerged with scratched arms and twigs in her hair. Her stomach protruded, for she was very pregnant. Red designs patterned her bare breasts, and her leather skirt lifted to show strong legs and sandaled feet. Although she looked and dressed like one of the Indians in this area, she spoke Spanish.

  “Please help me,” she whimpered, holding her stomach. Her dark eyes shone. “Take me to the village.”

  Startled, Teresa lifted the boy down and slid to the ground herself. “Are you ill?” she asked. Where she came from, it was the first question everyone asked.