Free Wild Indigo by Sandi Ault Page B

Bone Man. You really hit it right on this time.”
    â€œNo, I mean, there’s something coming for you, Jamaica. It’s out there.”
    â€œOkay, Bone Man,” I said. “I gotta go.”
    He pressed the flats of his palms together and held them to his greasy forehead in a prayerful salute.
    I shifted into reverse, dug into the gravel, and spun my Jeep around, then pointed the nose toward the highway again and paused, waiting for oncoming traffic to pass.
    But Bone Man wasn’t done with me. While I sat watching for an opening in the traffic, he suddenly appeared beside my face, his breath like a feedlot on a warm day. “I guess it’s probably a good thing you have those firearms after all, Jamaica,” he said. “The bones tell me you’re going to need all the protection you can get.” He held up the chicken-bone necklace and rattled it at me, as if to verify the fact.

9
Tecolote
    In the hills above the tiny village of Agua Azuela lived an old bruja named Esperanza. The villagers, mostly Hispanos, called her Tecolote, which meant Owl. They half-feared her, half-revered her, and most of them sought her out as a curandera , or healer, in spite of the fact that they also thought she was a sorceress or witch of some sort.
    The bruja and I had a short but intense history together. The previous spring, Tecolote had approached me in a churchyard—a complete stranger, without benefit of introduction—and demanded I visit her at home. A week later, following the directions she had given me, I climbed the mountain to find her waiting for me, even though I’d never let her know I would come. That first visit, she made me a potion that gave me an unforgettable hallucinatory experience. We had several subsequent and equally peculiar meetings. I’d been writing then about Los Penitentes, an ancient and secretive brotherhood that still practiced ritual flagellation and—some said—crucifixion in the remote high mountain villages of northern New Mexico. A priest I’d consulted in my research had been found dead, his lifeless body roped to a cross. Esperanza seemed tied somehow to the enigma through her associations and her clairvoyant visions, which were shrouded in mystic symbolism. She offered me cryptic clues, then appeared—and disappeared—in public places as I followed those clues. She tendered disconcerting advice that seemed irrelevant, but—when followed—ultimately led me to solve the mystery involving the murder of my friend the priest. That episode left me with an inestimable respect for the mysterious powers of Esperanza de Tecolote.
    As I approached her remote casita now, again without notice, she was waiting expectantly on the portal as she had been the first time. “Mirasol,” she called, waving me forward, “come in. I made tea.” Mirasol was the word for sunflower, a nickname she had given me. This time, I didn’t even bother to ask her how she knew I was coming. “Montaña.” She waved to the wolf. He ran to her. “¿Cómo está? Ven aquí,” she continued as she ambled inside, the wolf right behind her.
    I stooped down to pass through the low doorway of the tiny adobe home and entered her spartan living space. As always, candles were lit in the nicho before the carved santos, and the low adobe hearth was covered with pottery jars and iron pots. The teakettle hissed over the fire, above which was the slab of adobe that was Tecolote’s bed—what the locals called a shepherd’s bed. The only furniture in the one-room house was the cottonwood plank and stick table and two chairs.
    Tecolote held a meaty bone up before Mountain, whispering to him in Spanish as he watched her and drooled. She raised one hand and pointed with two fingers at her eyes. The wolf followed this gesture and looked at her submissively. The wildlife ranger who’d placed Mountain with me for adoption had