The Fifth Sacred Thing (27 page)

“What’s that?”

“I want to know what the hell happened to you.”

Madrone sighed and shifted in her chair, wondering where to begin. Yes, they were right, she wasn’t well yet. The very thought of explaining made her tired.

“I think I can say something about that,” Lou said. “Am I wrong, or did you drop your shields and absorb the virus from the González girl?”

Madrone nodded. “Yeah, I did.”

“Now, psychic healing is not my forte,” Sam said, “but I do know that that is not one of the approved techniques.”

“For a reason,” Aviva said. “It’s extremely dangerous.”

“I noticed,” Madrone said.

“Why didn’t you discuss what you were going to do?” Lou said. “We could have given you some backup.”

“You didn’t even cast a circle,” Aviva said.

“I didn’t plan it,” Madrone said. “I just saw the possibility and grabbed it. I was afraid to wait and talk about it—afraid the probabilities might shift again if I waited even a second.”

“The probabilities nearly shifted you out,” Rick said.

“I know.”

“If you had done the same work with a circle behind you, maybe you wouldn’t have gone nearly over the edge,” Aviva said.

“Maybe,” Madrone said. “But maybe there’s just a price that has to be paid for certain kinds of work.”

“Well, don’t pay it again,” Sam said. “Once is enough.”

“It was worth it,” Madrone said. “I changed the
aumakua
, or, if you prefer, the morphic field that generated the disease. As you pointed out, Sam, the epidemic is over.”

“I’m glad of that,” Sam said. “But I for one would like to keep you alive and around until you get to be an old crock like me. In my judgment, that’s what we need from you: not martyrdom, survival.”

“That’s high on my list of priorities,” Madrone said. She was angry now, which was better than feeling humiliated. “Believe it or not, I’ve never wanted to be a martyr.”

“Then stop acting as if it were your personal, unique, and lone responsibility to save the life of every dying person in this watershed,” Sam said. “Your first responsibility is to heal yourself. You aren’t worth a pot of piss to anyone else if you can’t do that.”

Madrone looked away from him. He was right, they were all right, but she hated,
hated
, to be fussed at. “Are you done with the lecture, Sam?”

“Take it to heart.”

“I will, Sam. I’ll be good. I’ll go home and rest up and lie in the sun. And I won’t do anything dramatic.”

“Not without consulting the rest of us first,” Lou said. “We care about you, Madrone.”

Madrone slipped through the side passage into the back garden. Bird was digging in the herb bed, wearing Sandy’s jeans and his favorite blue shirt. If she stood where she was, and squinted her eyes, she could make believe for a moment that it was Sandy. Bird’s arms were darker and his hair tightly curled, not long and straight and black. But if he held still, if he didn’t move … she shook her head and cleared her eyes, feeling for a moment as if she had been caught in what the Sisters would call a sin.

To atone for her thoughts, she went over to Bird, touched his shoulder, and kissed him lightly on the ear. She felt sore inside from the Council meeting. Couldn’t anyone say, “Nice work, Madrone. Thanks for saving our asses”? But of course people did say that, all day long, burning candles on her doorstep, leaving baskets of fruit and tiresome bunches of flowers. Maybe she did want to be a martyr after all, or a saint, like the Three Martyred Sisters of Guadalupe, tortured to death by the Cartel back in the nineties. She remembered their shrine, on the main road where she played near the clinic where
her mother always seemed to be busy, too busy, healing. Until the soldiers came. But that was so long ago that now she could hardly remember her mother’s face separate from the picture she kept on her ancestor altar. Suddenly Madrone wanted to cry, for her mother, for Sandy; she wanted Bird to notice her distress and hold her against his shoulder, like Sandy would have done. But he was absorbed in his own work, and it wasn’t really fair to bitch and scream and work out her own bad mood on him.

Instead she asked, in a carefully neutral voice, what he was doing.

“Moving the comfrey,” he said. “It’s taking over the whole bed here. I thought I’d move it back into the shade.”

Madrone stiffened. “That’s Sandy’s comfrey. He planted it there. He wanted it there.”

“I’m sure he did,” Bird said. “Now I want it somewhere else.”

They had planted it there together, making love on the bare earth, singing healing chants under a crescent moon. She had spread his ashes under it. Now its roots were dangling, its leaves drooping like a desecration.

“You should ask me before you go messing around with the garden,” Madrone said.

They were going to fight, Bird realized. He had felt it building for days, and he had hoped it wouldn’t happen, but the tension was there, like a cold current under the hot storms of their passion. Funny, how when they could open to each other they were so good together; they rang like a pure-forged bell, and the sweet overtones would stay with him for days. But now the sound clanged harshly. He didn’t want to fight with her, but he also didn’t want to, couldn’t, open, couldn’t let her in to walk through his patchwork memories. They were too raw; he hadn’t yet been able to sort them out for himself. She was waiting for his answer, with the look on her face that he hated, because it made him feel like an interloper, someone who had no right to be in this place. And it was his home too, damn it!

“Well, pardon me,” he said. “I wasn’t aware that I needed your personal permission.”

“It’s Sandy’s garden. He took care of it.”

“Yeah. Well, now I’m taking care of it. Sandy is dead.”

“That’s no reason to—to rub him out. Like he never existed.”

“Madrone.
¡Por Diosa!
What the fuck is wrong with you?”

She was aware that she had left reason behind, that she was pushing him away when what she really wanted and needed was to draw him close. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“I want you to have some respect for him, that’s all. For what he wanted. You can’t just come back and make all these changes. It’s too soon.”

Bird took a long, deep breath. He felt she was shoving him back into
shadows where he had no face and no memory. “I’m trying to be useful,” he said quietly. “I can’t stand feeling like a ghost. I just want to put my hands in the earth.”

Madrone’s eyes were filled with tears. “You’re always wearing his clothes,” she said, knowing she was being unfair. I gave him those clothes myself, and now I want to rip them off his back. But I love him too. What’s wrong with me?

They stared at each other. Calmly, deliberately, Bird stripped off Sandy’s shirt. He unzipped his pants and stepped out of them, leaving them in a heap on the ground. He could think of a hundred things to say to her, but he bit down on all of them. Naked and silent, he turned and walked away.

Madrone put the comfrey back into its hole and patted the dirt down around it. Its leaves still hung down like dead things. Burying her face in the discarded shirt, she lay on the ground and wept.

Maya was sitting reading in the common room when Bird clumped his heavy way naked up the back stairs and came in, covered with sweat, looking grim. “You want to talk about it?” she asked.

He shook his head. He didn’t want to talk. He could hear Madrone crying in the garden and he almost wanted to go back, make it up, comfort her, but his leg hurt and the stairs seemed a barrier that stretched for miles. Maybe his leg was getting worse. He could walk on it all right, but going upstairs was hard and going downstairs more painful yet. He didn’t want to think about it.

At that moment, they heard a commotion below. The front door opened and slammed, and footsteps came up the stairs.

“We’re here! We’re home!”

They were back from the Delta, Manzanita and Sage and Holybear. Nita ran in first, her wild hair swarming around her, and grabbed Maya in a big hug. Sage and Holybear followed, carrying big baskets of vegetables and fruits, which they set down on the table.

“Where’s Bird?” Sage called. “Is he really real?”

Then they were hugging him and Maya and somehow they were all wrapped up together, just holding each other in a sweet stillness.

In the silence, they could hear Madrone sobbing outside. Bird was crying too, and Maya felt tears in her own eyes. Sandy should have been here for this reunion. There were so many who should have been here. The room felt thick with ghosts.

At last they pulled apart, to look at one another. Nita, who could never remain sad for long, was grinning. She was short, and Bird looked down at her, seeing mostly hair, an electrified brown cloud curling and crackling out to its tips. There were a few more lines surrounding her round brown eyes. Otherwise she hadn’t changed at all.

Holybear was swathed in some gauzy pink fabric. His skin was far too pale to withstand the sun in these days of diminished ozone, and he had to cover up carefully. He removed the large straw hat that shaded his face, revealing a mass of fuzzy red hair that added another several inches to his already considerable height. Peering out over a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses, he observed Bird.

“It is you,” he said. “
¡Quémilagro!
We thought for sure you were dead!”

“No such luck, man,” Bird said, smiling and pounding him on the back.

“Madrone sent us word on the Net, so we wrapped up our experiments as soon as we could,” Sage said. “
Diosa
, it’s good to see you!”

“You too,” Bird said. “You look as good as ever.” With her hazel-brown eyes and the afternoon light glinting in hints of gold in her hair, she reminded Bird of wheat standing in a field. Her skin was tanned almost darker than her hair, and Maya frowned.

“You’re too dark,” she said. “Don’t you know better than to go in the sun uncovered? You’ll get skin cancer.”

Sage just grinned. “I bathe in aloe vera every night.”

Bird’s leg was hurting badly. With no clothing to screen him, they could clearly see the clench of muscles that kept his awkward balance.

“You’re hurt,” Nita said.

He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“I’ve got an herb for you,” Sage said, moving to the stove to take the kettle and fill it with water. “It’ll help relax those muscles.”

“I said I’m fine.”

For a moment, an awkward tension hung in the air. Holybear broke it by removing his sunglasses altogether, to gaze at Bird with frank appreciation, and some envy.

“You dark, dark men,” he said. “Would that I could run around naked and virile.”

“Are you worried about your virility?” Sage asked. “Would you like a candid assessment?”

“Are you asking for a demonstration?” Holybear countered.

“Forget it. Where’s Madrone?” Nita asked.

“Did we interrupt something?” Holybear asked.

“Just a fight,” Bird said.

“Ah,” said Holybear. “Madrone?”

“It’s been two weeks,” Bird said. “The honeymoon’s over.”

“You want to talk about it?” Sage asked.

He shrugged. “I think I want to put some clothes on. I’m getting cold.” He turned to Holybear. “Got anything I can borrow?”

“Come, brother.” Holybear rose to his feet and took Bird by the arm. “We go play dress-up.”

As soon as they were gone, Nita turned to Maya. “What happened to him?”

“He hasn’t talked about it.”

“He needs to talk. It’s all stewing around inside, like something fermenting into vinegar.”

“I know that. You know that. Any four-year-old child that’d grown up in this house you’d think would know that. Ah, well, maybe he’ll get around to it now that you’re all here.”

Nita frowned. “I think I’ll go down and see Madrone.” She left out the back door, running lightly down the back stairs.

Sage breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief and sank down on the couch. “Praise the Goddess,” she said. “Nita’s got a new set of problems to manage. Now maybe I’ll get some peace.”