Free Jemez Spring by Rudolfo Anaya Page B

into the face of a rock, a sign etched so deep that it became the center of the universe, the point around which the Earth rotated, the mother spinning in a dance of joy, dressing herself in various hues, a colorful costume for each season, but always swirling to a dance that could be measured by the movement of the stars at night, the moon, planets, the sun.
    It was like this in medieval pictures Sonny had seen of the Garden of Eden. In the center was the sacred spring, with four rivers flowing from the garden in the sacred directions. The garden was the mandala of primal imagination.
    Sonny had heard the story from don Eliseo, and he from the old people of the pueblos, they who kept the ancient knowledge.
    There is a secret, they said, a glyph carved on a huge boulder that fell from the sky. Long ago it fell to earth. The sign on the stone will tell how time begin, how it will end, the story of earth, the story of man and woman. We came from the belly of the mother, we walked on the skin of our mother, always nurtured by her seed and animals, the fish, the deer. If you find this stone that fell from the sky, you will know how one time moves into the next, to give birth, to create the spirit of life .
    The Zia Stone. The secret we sought.
    What is the secret? he asked the old man.
    The secret is that there is a secret, the old man said. We need that hidden knowledge to keep us searching. We don’t know everything there is to know of the creation. There is one eternal question: Whence came we? Why? Even if we rose from the mud of ancient lakes, the ooze, the hidden waters, the question remains. What spirit penetrated the mud to create the first cells, a throbbing of life that millennia later would raise its arms to the sun, praising the light of creation? That is our human history, the seeking after the light.
    Sonny turned and looked at Naomi. She smiled, glided toward him like a snake, making no sound on the sand.
    â€œThanks for saving me, Sonny.”
    â€œI didn’t save you,” he replied. Something in the way she walked or the way she said “thanks for saving me” angered him. How in the hell was he to know she was here?
    â€œYeah, well you never know what those guys would have done to an innocent girl like me.”
    Sonny stood and wiped sand from his pants. He looked at Naomi. Innocent? Not by a long shot. But good looking? Lordy, yes. She smiled. Her pearl teeth had been cared for by a very good dentist, a very expensive one.
    â€œYou did save me. I’m all yours.”
    â€œLook, I don’t know what games you’re playing, but I didn’t save you. The guys were just having a little fun.”
    â€œThey play rough. But don’t listen to them. They carry on all that old-fashioned stuff, painting up like they’re going to war. I told them I didn’t want any part of it.”
    â€œSo why are you here?”
    â€œBecause of you,” she said, reaching out and brushing sand from his cheek. “You’re part of the game.”
    Her voice was husky, her dark eyes shining. He could smell her body perfume, sage and a sweet cologne magnified by the excitement of what had just happened, sand and sweat and the pungent green of junipers whose spring juices were already rising.
    â€œRemember me?” she said. “Did you forget me?”
    No, he hadn’t forgotten her. A man doesn’t forget a woman like Naomi, even if the liaison was only one night filled with the impulse of youth.
    â€œWe made love.”
    But that was long ago, ten years ago, he was still at the university, had beers on Friday nights with a couple of guys from the pueblo. In the fall they invited him to go hunting, and that October full-moon night they got some good pot and peyote buds, and some of the pretty girls from the pueblo showed up, high up where the aspen exulted in their brilliant yellows, transparent in the light of the moon, and the girls were as transparent as flesh can