Water and Stone (28 page)

The Triple Six was too quiet without her men around.

Though she broke the law she kept her promise and buried Rancher and Billy on the south quarter of their beloved ranch. Anyway, who would know they were buried there? No one but her and the migrant workers she hired to dig the holes and to cover them up again... to build the coffins and to carry them to the burial ground.

It broke her heart to see them lying in those plywood boxes so still and solemn, their bodies shattered, and their lives ripped from them way too soon. It was her fault... if she had stayed where she belonged none of it would have happened... if she'd done what she knew needed doing and sent Evalena packing Rancher and Billy would be alive today.

Church had vanished again. She knew he had the piedra in his possession and like her he was loath to give it up. He would die first. Even if she suspected that she knew his whereabouts and could go to him and entreat him to let it go she knew he would fight her over it perhaps even to the death.

She wished she would've had the strength to destroy the stone while she had the opportunity... but something told her that would have been impossible. Still, she might have taken a ship to the deepest part of the ocean and dropped the cursed thing overboard or perhaps journeyed to a volcano and heaved the piedra into the cauldron where it could trouble no one again, at least until the world was remade.

The willpower simply wasn’t there. She was trapped up in the desire to possess the stone just like everyone... even giving it to Church had taken all her strength... after she handed it over all she wanted to do was to follow him and retrieve it once again, to get down upon her knees and beg him to give it back.

She still felt its pull. Luckily, Church hadn’t told her where he'd been or where he was going but she could sometimes hear the piedra singing early in the morning as it once did while it was buried beneath the Five Angels sycamore tree for so many years. Listening, though, she realized the sound was not in her ears but in her head. Of course it'd always been in her head.

She wanted to go home... not the pretty little valley of the monarchs where she lived in Mexico but to her real home... her island home, the place where she'd grown up. She missed the ocean breezes, the warm winters, not too hot summers, and all the fresh fruit that used to grow in the backyard on so many trees she had never been able to count them all.

She'd heard it was easier to legally travel to Cuba now though without proper identification and citizenship papers she had doubts she'd make it. Besides, there were probably still people waiting for her on the island who held no affection in their hearts and her homecoming would be a short-lived affair.

That was where Evalena went. Yani had no way of knowing it with any certainty other than the feeling in her heart. The island was the only remaining link between Africa and America, the place where Evalena could find succor and people that loved her.

Evalena would be back in Texas sooner rather than later, however, and their reunion wouldn't be a happy one. She'd caught Evalena unawares that night when she had the girl in her sights but missed... it would have been better to finish her then but she failed. The next time they met the girl would be ready.

The hacienda was too large and unnaturally quiet. She'd auctioned off the livestock and fired the staff after Rancher and Billy died telling them she needed the time alone but in truth her body was beginning to change in ways she didn't wish anyone else to witness... not yet.

Evalena had cursed her... she knew it. The girl had powers that eclipsed both time and space. Wherever she was, Evalena had begun sending out malevolent waves of energy that wrecked havoc upon Yani.

She told herself she didn’t believe in such nonsense but it did no good. Age was rapidly catching up to her... in truth, though she was well over seventy something in her constitution had always kept her mind and body as young as a teenager. As the years rolled by she had come to believe she'd always stay that way. It was for other people to grow old, not for her.

Now, when she looked into a mirror, an old withered hag gazed back at her. She always wondered if the aging process which had heretofore spared her its wrath might one day begin but she never realized it would happen so quickly... a month ago she was still as young and fresh as she was at fifteen.

Now, her teeth had begun to fall out, her hair was streaked with gray, and her face was lined with a million crevasses reflecting the reality of the hard dry earth in northern Texas with each wrinkle growing deeper by the day. Her joints ached with arthritis and she could hardly walk across the room without gasping for breath.

Would the piedra help to mitigate the symptoms? She wasn’t sure, nor did she have any idea where Church had taken it. She did know that unless her son returned to the Triple Six soon, she would die of old age without having the chance to say goodbye.

Still, death didn't trouble her as much as it might have a year ago. She was ready for it... perhaps she even welcomed it. The world and its constant moil weighed on her a little heavier with each passing year. Sometimes it seemed as if her whole life was one long struggle to get back to somewhere that she knew didn't exist and perhaps never had.

Rancher and Church were her only family... with one dead and the other gone to keep going seemed pointless. Still, she could think of better ways to die... old age didn't suit her at all.

Her longest journey of the day was a trudge to the mail box each morning. After the deaths of Rancher and Billy she'd applied for a visa to travel to Cuba using forged documents... the identification papers of Lorraine Ford. It was a calculated risk. Without any official birth certificate of her own much less any proof of citizenship Yani knew she wouldn't be granted a visa... the only thing she might expect was arrest and deportation.

Each morning she searched through the piles of envelopes for the one from the Cuban Interest Section in Washington D.C. informing her that her application had been received and her request granted. She knew she could make the trip on her own if she was still young and strong but now it would be all but impossible.

It was a long shot but the only chance she had... unless she found Evalena and either convinced her to lift the curse—or more likely to kill her—she would continue to age... the way things were going Yani gave herself a month, maybe less, before she succumbed to death.

The lady at the travel agency in Guthrie had advised her to fly to Mexico and from there take a flight to Cuba. Yani needed a passport, however, and without any real identification she had no way of procuring one. Even if she did, the time it would take to process the document might find her dead.

She did have Lorraine's state-issued identification card that she found filed away in one of Rancher's many desk drawers. Though the woman was larger, their faces were passably similar and Yani thought that if the picture was not examined too closely she could get away with using it.

Though it was the beginning of spring the summer heat had arrived early. She found it strange that high temperatures had never bothered her during all the years she spent working yet now that she did nothing but laze about all day and night the heat threatened to boil her blood and caused her to become dizzy and unsteady on her feet.

Of course the mail delivery person didn't arrive until the middle of the afternoon... the hottest part of the day. Still, her anticipation of going to Cuba was such that each day no matter the heat Yani made the sojourn to the road. One day, when she had nearly passed out making the short walk and was just about given up any hope, the letter was waiting for her... it was in an official-looking envelope which she tore open with trembling fingers. It was short and simple.

Dear Ms. Ford,

You are hereby granted a visa to visit Cuba. Congratulations. Please find enclosed any documents needed.

She read the letter over twice to make sure it was really happening and then tottered back into the hacienda to make arrangements for a flight to Cuba. Once on the island she could consider how she would confront Evalena but for now the logistics of just getting there occupied her attention.

Once again she wished she still had the piedra in her possession. It might give her a slight edge over Evalena... without it, she probably didn’t stand a chance at defeating the girl.

After talking to the girl at the travel agency she discovered that the only flight to the island originated in Miami so she made reservations both for that flight and the one to Cuba... she wasn’t sure what she would do or say when she found Evalena but she would think of something.

It bothered him that he couldn’t find a body.

It wasn’t that he was ghoulish about it but he had to know she was gone, that the evil she represented had been once and for all wiped off the face of the earth. Though it was possible Evalena had been blown to bits in the explosion he expected to at least see blood and gore strewn throughout the cellar. The damage was horrific yet the only thing he seemed to have killed was the chabola.

Before tossing the dynamite into the cellar he made sure to brace the only possible escape portal with a stout timber which oddly was still in place. She couldn’t have gone up the stairs... he would have spotted her, and there simply wasn’t time. He narrowly managed to dodge the blast himself and he had a head start.

Had he merely been hallucinating how Evalena called out to him from down below the chabola? He'd noticed lately that his mind, though as clear as glass, was also apt to mistake illusion for reality.

It was dangerous to even be inside the chabola... the structure was leaning to one side and obviously unstable and each time a timber creaked he expected the ruins to cave in upon him trapping him in the rubble. Still, he had to know. If she was alive she'd be coming after him if not for revenge at least for the stone. He fooled her once but it wouldn’t be so easy the next time they met.

Evening was pressing in on him by the time he finished his fruitless search. Whatever had caused the spider infestation had apparently vanished along with Evalena... the webs were in tatters and Church couldn't see even one spider remaining. He jumped when the words sounded in the gathering darkness as he walked back to the pickup truck.

"The spiders were drawn to her. Now that she's gone, they've left too."

He recognized the voice and when he turned to confirm for himself who was speaking Lorraine was by his side, ethereal and as beautiful as moonlight.

"You aren’t real. You're dead."

He felt like he was killing her all over again, as if he was telling he something she didn't know herself. She laughed the same laugh he'd grown used to in Mexico during his long stay inside the cave of the monarchs. The sound was like musical wind chimes blowing in a gentle breeze.

"Oh, my darling boy... of course I'm dead. Otherwise I couldn't be here with you now. Listen to me carefully, Church. This isn't over yet. We missed our chance but that doesn’t mean there'll not be other opportunities."

"Maybe she's gone for good, Lorraine. I must've frightened her pretty good with that dynamite."

"You know better than that, Church. Evalena will never be satisfied until she has the stone in her possession."

"I don’t understand how she got away, Lorraine."

"The world is far stranger than you know, Church. With her eye Evalena sees things other living beings cannot. Even though she was trapped in that cellar she managed to dream her way out of there."

"But how do you know all this, Lorraine? Are you a witch too?"

"No, my sweet Church... I'm not a witch. But I was touched by Evalena's magic... a single grain of sand froze my heart. When that event occurred I acquired part of her knowledge—I became something of a wraith, neither in this world nor the next—but there are still things hidden from me."

"Tell me what to do, Lorraine. I'm lost."

"Oh my sweetie... I only wish I could. I exist yet I do not... I don't expect you to understand me but listen... the stone that Evalena yearns after has great powers... when I died in your world I awoke in its domain. That's how I'm able to communicate with you."

"But I see you right in front of me, Lorraine. I hear your voice in my ears. You must exist."

"I exist only in your mind, Church... I'm but a series of electrical impulses permeating the atmosphere. Then again, maybe that's all I've ever been. I've found a home in you. I see that now. Because of your close proximity with the stone you're more sensitive to my vibrations than you might otherwise have been."

"Am I the only one who can see you, Lorraine?"

"I don't know, Church. But I do know that when Evalena fled she did so under great duress. Her fear was such that she might have ended up anywhere. You were within seconds of annihilating her, at least from the present."

"Do you mean that Evalena vanished into time?"

"No, not exactly, though to say so wouldn't be all together incorrect either... I mean that our vision of death is short sighted. What we think of as an ending is but a continuation of a process that's been going on since the beginning."

"The beginning of what, Lorraine?"

"Why, the beginning of the human race, Church."

"If Evalena knows that death is but a continuation, why is she frightened of it?"

"Evalena fears death but not for the same reasons normal people might. Death for her is more of an inconvenience. She understands the homogeneity of energy... that everything we know is composed of elemental forces outside the domain of our senses."

"But I see the world all around me, Lorraine. I know the difference between what's real and what an illusion is."

"Do you really, Church? What we see and hear are but representations of that primal power. Many people mistake those forces for god or the divine but in point of fact the world is made up of lines—for lack of a better word—along which this original energy rides. Evalena has the ability to tap into that power... her eye lends her the ability to see those lines... if she's able to gather herself, as she must have done at the last moment when facing her death... she's able to ride those streams of energy much like anyone else might walk across a room."

"So how do we find her, Lorraine?"

"We go to her. She went home to the island where she lived for many long years. Being American you cannot travel to that isle easily yet you are an intelligent boy. You'll find a way."

"My mother and my aunt are from Cuba... is that where she went?"

"Yes... and remember... you have what Evalena desires. She'll use all her powers to regain the stone. Use that to your advantage, Church. Tell her what she wants to hear and she'll believe you despite her mistrust. Take your time in going to find Evalena. You've done well to stay alive for so long, Church. If you hurry in doing what you must do, you will not only fail in your objective, but you'll die in the bargain. Small steps, my boy, will lead to greatness."

"Wait... don’t go, Lorraine... I need you."

He was talking to the night. Had she been there at all? As he thought about it he already knew everything she told him. Living under the same roof as Evalena had been much more of a learning experience than he heretofore considered.

That altar of hers... he remembered seeing it for the first time when he ventured into her room when one of his marbles rolled under her door. The whole room smelled of something dead, like the time an injured raccoon had crawled under the front stoop of the chabola and died.

The skull stared at him like it had eyes. The red candle wax leaking down its nose reminded him of blood. The tiny bones nestled around the base of the skull had once been the tips somebody's fingers... he didn’t know how he knew it but he did.

He wondered why he wasn’t afraid of that altar. Instead, he felt a sort of affinity for its horror... a closeness to death which he didn't fully understand. When Evalena walked into the room and saw him staring at the montage of bones and skull, feathers and blood red wax, she didn't scold him the way he thought she might. Instead, she grinned, nodded her head, and walked back out of the room, as if she knew he was establishing some sort of rapport with the monstrosity.

Perhaps—unwittingly—he was.

He wondered if he should've simply given the stone to Evalena. After all, it belonged to her, not to him. Or so she claimed... but Tia was a liar as well as a thief. She was as assuredly the night as his mother was the day.

Tia had made him a promise. Had he brought her the stone, he would die yet his mother would live. Now, however, they all might well be doomed. He wondered about his father and his brother... if they were still alive. He longed to see them again yet he suspected their time together had passed them by.

The monarchs of Mexico were still roosting in their hidden forest... that would be his destination too. Until he had gathered enough power to confront his Tia it was useless to try.

Something about that magical valley called out to him in ways the dusty Texas landscape had never done. Though he spent all his time alone in the high mountains surrounding the village of Angangueo he never felt as lonely as he did in Guthrie surrounded by people.

What was it Lorraine was saying? Something about small steps... he'd come this far so there was no sense in hurrying now. Jumping into the old and battered pickup truck he pointed it south and stepped upon the gas pedal.