Mask

I dashed out of the house and ran to the bus stop, clumsily arranging the thick scarf around my neck.
I had spent the last few hours stressing and obsessing over my attire. The annual office Christmas party was scheduled for today. An email had been sent yesterday, reminding everybody that the party was at the Four Seasons Hotel. We were all required to look “presentable.” The men were required to wear a coat and a tie. The women had to look just elegant enough without going past a certain invisible line. Not too much, not too little. Just enough.
This is where the ordeal started. I pulled out almost every outfit I owned, every last shoe, everything I could find in my closet. My cousin was on the other side of the video phone watching me as I tried on one outfit after another, approving and disapproving my choices with a clear discernment that I simply didn't have. I had no idea how to dress, what to wear and what not to wear. The subtle rules of this masquerade escaped my mind, I had never been privy to these intricate instructions.
I thought of this while I ran to the bus stop early in the morning. Why did I worry so much about what to wear?  Why was it so important to control how I looked, how others saw me? What was the meaning behind the requirement to look presentable? What did it say about me? What did it say about them?
Through a change in clothes, I would disguise my wild and chaotic nature, I would pretend to be in complete control of my own persona, my actions, my thoughts. I could be as normal and as mature as they were, as they seemed to be, as I assumed they were. There I would be, looking like them, wearing the uniform, part of the group. A question wrapped in a lie, a stumbling fish trying to swim over quickly drying mud.
I was gasping and stepping into the bus stop when I was suddenly greeted by the face of a dirty homeless man. He was so blonde and fair, and he was so happy, so happy I thought the sun had come down to say good morning through his wide open eyes.
"Look, look!" he said cheerfully, “A guy just dropped three thousand dollars in cash!"
I looked down at his hand. Between his dirt encrusted fingers there were rolls and rolls of $100 dollar bills, a package of myriad possibilities squeezed to the size of a fist. As I looked at him again, I saw him turn back into a dull, dirty old man. It was the bills that were shining like gold on his fingers.  
I realized he was probably right. To judge by the amount of bills he was holding, there was probably a good three thousand dollars there, or even more. 
"Put that back! Put that back” I told him, realizing suddenly that his appearance and the money didn’t go together, they would clearly stand out like a sore thumb in this mostly empty street.
He was putting himself in danger by boldly showing this treasure he had just found, this anonymous treasure that had just found him through some unknown random process that had now chosen to include me.
There was an obvious disagreement between his attire and such a large amount of money. Gold and rags, riches and dirt, power and weakness. People would stare, they might call the police, they might beat him up, they would accuse him of having stolen it.
“Please!” I asked again. “Put it away, don’t let anybody see it”.
He looked at me, suddenly realizing I was being serious. He sat on the bench and the smile faded from his face while his eyes were fixed on mine.
“I don’t care about the money.”
The tone of his voice had changed. He was no longer a homeless man, he was now a being detached from society, detached from this planet, detached from his mask. He was a kid, a grown kid who saw the world as a giant playground. He was once again shining brightly, he was the man I had seen first before I noticed his costume. The money in his hand turned into a dull plastic object, with no possible value.
Its only value was the adoration a child gives to a toy when he is playing with it, a gift freely given, a gift easily taken away. Only while playing would the toys shine with life, they would then be forgotten and cast away.
I saw him, my eyes wide open. I listened to him very attentively as he started to narrate his story: he once worked as a contractor, he made a lot of money. He used to live in San Diego, big house, two kids, a wife, a dog. His daughter was making good money now.
“Do you have any children?” he asked me.
“No.” I answered while gazing to see if the bus was coming.
“Do you make good money?”
“I make enough, I guess.” I said, while getting myself ready to board the bus that was now stopping next to me.
“Would you like a hundred dollars?” He said with a mischievous smile.
“No, I am ok,” I said, while slowly walking towards the door of the bus.
“Take it!” he said, “Just one bill!”
“No, thank you!” I said while smiling and walking up to the bus.
I sat next to a nicely dressed lady who was texting with her smart phone. I couldn’t help thinking of this man.
There was a clear disagreement between his shiny golden treasure and his dirty appearance. The mask didn't fit the event, the event cast an unflattering shadow on the mask. A man dressed in rags could not be so lucky, could not get so lucky, could not.
I looked down at what I was wearing, the costume I had worn to pass myself off as one of them, the lucky ones. I adjusted my scarf and slid backwards on the seat. I prepared my face for the masquerade that was waiting. One more among many. One more mask to hide a question I couldn't even begin to answer.

Doodle

Two little Asian girls sat between their older cousin, a slender teenager with cropped silky black hair and a gentle manner. The girls were twins, both with small pink lips, the same silky black hair as their cousin, and smooth delicate skin over soft feminine features.  They looked like idealized dolls you could find in a gift shop, only they wore shorts and t-shirts instead of a colorful kimono. One girl sat by the window of the airplane, the other by the aisle. They looked so sweet and sugary, the way an expectant parent might hope a little girl would be.
The girl sitting by the aisle was overflowing with curiosity. She leaned her little body over the armrest to watch the male airplane attendant talk about the emergency procedure. I made eye contact with her.  She pursed her lips habitually and I imitated the small movement. She perceived what I was doing immediately, though she still looked at me with a bit of caution. She made another habitual shift of her face and I imitated that one as well. She started to smile, now consciously moving her eyebrows and lips and eyes.  Each time she did something I imitated it as best I could. She laughed each time I wiggled my forehead or pursed my lips, when she burst into a brilliant smile, I would laugh as well.
I took the notebook and pen from my large purse and started drawing. I let my hand move, creating swirling psychedelic doodles quickly that shifted across the small lined page. I tore the drawing from the notebook and reached across the narrow carpeted aisle. She opened her hand instinctively. As she saw what was there, her face brightened like a sun moving across a cloudy sky, instantly lighting the world. She seemed to inhale the pen strokes and then without a second thought, held it up for her cousin to see.  He looked through it like water, like there was no paper in front of him with a succession of dots and lines and liquidy flow. His disinterest struck me, it had such an absence of curiosity and interest and I wondered if we all eventually became a muted surface which nothing could touch. 
She looked back and me and smiled. She held up the drawing for her twin to see. Immediately I started working on another doodle, intending it for her sister.  When I looked back at them, the girls had taken out their little notebooks and were drawing. The girl by the window drew on the back of the doodle I had just made.  Every now and then she turned it over to look at what had come through my hand onto the page.
When I was finished with the second drawing I handed it to the girl closest to me.  She opened her hand and accepted it, but didn’t look at it.  She tucked it under the notebook and continued drawing with intense focused attention. I worked on a third doodle.
The airline attendants came through the long, narrow aisle with their trays full of beverages and small packaged peanuts. When I was almost done with the drawing I could sense that the girl by the aisle was attempting to get my attention, we shared no language but I could feel her trying not to look at me in her shy childlike way. The quiet gestures summoned me.  I turned towards her and she held the drawing up over her head and looked at it for a second before abruptly thrusting it towards me. A smile burst onto my face and she squirmed in her seat when she saw my excitement.
The drawing was of an airplane with bubbly clouds and human figures floating among them.  I turned towards her and waited for her to look at me again.  When she did, I nodded with a smile on my face and said, “I like it.”  She cowered again and shrunk into her seat, smiling. 
I worked on the third drawing and when I turned back, I saw that the older cousin had a glue stick in his hand. He helped the girls glue the doodles I had made into their notebooks. Since the girl by the window had drawn on the reverse side of the drawing I originally made, she had to choose which side to put the glue on. I saw them rolling the glue over the psychedelic swirls and dots.
Then the girl close to me fell asleep.

Inside The Flower

The garden opens up to my small hands. With just an infinitesimal gesture the clouds move aside and let the ever-present blue canvas unfold for our eyes, moving into the palette of our entwined dreams. The sun, still a bit weak, greets us with that soft, gentle kiss of warmth that moves up and down my arms in long, lustful strokes.
I move the window aside and flow out like the air. My pink chiffon dress made of fragrant rose petals laps at my legs like a gentle ocean wave upon the shore; calm, so silky in its movements. I am lulled by its touch, aroused, as though the gentle glide of fabric where expert fingers come to explore the shape of my thighs.  Indeed, in that moment it is alive- or it always was and now, moving like the cool breeze, I can finally see it as sentient. 
I catch the eye of a thick-breasted song bird. The tips of his feathers are white and seem to gleam like hot light against the seemingly monotonous brown fluff covering the rest of his body. He turns his head ever-so slightly to a wide-faced white flower, dividing his attention in two. I know he has not lost interest, but rather is pointing me down the path. 
I turn to the bloom, not alone on the bush, yet standing out and rising higher, more full towards the life-giving sun. The white rose is unfurled and its multitude of petals, layers and layers of scented softness like an expert costume from the Bolshevik ballet. I move towards it, my body beginning to vibrate as the air pushes me along, speeding my new discovery. 
Entering the hollow between the white walls I find a comfortable spot on the yellow cushion in its center.  The pollen stains my exposed toes and the bottom hem of my pink dress and I sink deeper into the pollen, knowing its marks will come out in the next rain, or perhaps I can visit the tepid bird bath later when the sun has warmed the few inches of water in the ceramic bowl.
I pull a few of the petals around me for this sacred chamber.  I lay back.  This is my bed, my powdery yellow sanctuary.  Several large stamens sprout from the center.  I reach out and pull one of the thicker ones towards me, it is split in two at the very top, both ends curling dramatically in on themselves.
There is a little bit of privacy while the bees are over by the rosemary bush.  I spread my thin legs and push the stamen inside. The sun comes through the petals, covering me with a warm fuzzy haze. Sinking on the yellow pillow, dust covering me completely now, adrift in a sea of fluff, I can see the blue sky between the cracks of the petals where they don’t quite meet. 
The bees create a continuous drone as they work, I fall into its lullaby as the stamen moves inside me, becoming an explorer of dark places. 

Until The End

The law would not bend to her will.  She wished to reverse time, to stop decay in its path, to find the fountain.  Her bones were made of steel. The taste of metal lingered in her mouth; even after brushing her shiny teeth she could sense the elements and polished earth.
The years since her birth had flown like a blue feather on a hurricane gust. Childhood had at first been painfully slow, but the moment her breasts were upright and singing, the years gathered strength and momentum, rolling faster and faster until she came to the edge and her pulse slowed. She grew out her hair in an attempt to capture what had been.

Now, her white mane long and clean, her hair had become a symbol of the past, like some sort of guiding line attached to a place she could not quite remember. The girl that had been, she had never known her.
She had watched herself from a distance, seeing the movements and thoughts of a skinny girl from an outsider’s perspective. Her dancing and singing was put under scrutiny, not by all those teachers and fellow students, but by the loud voice in her own mind that beat its comments into an ever-present rhythm she confused with the body’s pulse.
Her hair was long now, longer than it had even been.  When naked she could feel the soft ends of her white waves rubbing against the back of her thighs. 

Sprouting life seemed to grow unabated just beyond her fingertips.  The tree outside the window, once a sapling she had planted with her own hands, had grown into a massive fruit bearing vine.  It had pushed its way through the cracks in the house foundation, had climbed up the interior wall in her bedroom and spread along the ceiling. 
There were flocks of bright colored birds perched along the ledges of her roof and in the garden. A once carefully tended plot of vegetables had exploded into a new life form.  The tentacles of squash plants covered the land, expanding outwards, resolutely mounting wooden fences in its path, winding its way over forgotten toys and sun-chairs in the neighbor’s yard. 

She wished she could bend that universal law into a pretzel, making time into a new shape so that she could experience it all again in a different way, perhaps with more clarity, perhaps with more wisdom.
She was old and her bones were metallic.  Little walks around the block towards the park sent sparks through her, sometimes igniting the dried up lawns beside the path.
If only the proliferation of vines and thick weeds and the sun could wait for her, could keep her in their company.  She would like to see it all to the end, every moment of existence before it all went up in a colossal puff of smoke. 
She swung her hips as best she could, leaving a trail of embers on the sidewalk.

Man With No Name

He is a spirit wandering the infinite places between sky and earth. Twisting and changing like cigarette smoke, he rides into the grasslands, white sweeping clouds above that bend from dragon to snake with a brush of the hand. Over the golden plains, mythic in song and lyric, he journeys like the parching wind.
He is a spirit wandering between stone and fire. We read the ashes and learn of his tales. There are no lines of worry crisscrossing his cheeks and skin. Death has no grip on his heart and bones.
He cannot die, he is the sunlight of the wide open west. He cannot die, he is the glittering gold on silty river bottoms and gun smoke wafting. He cannot die, he is the high pitched wail of the twelve o’clock train.
Without name he wanders the wasteland, hopping train tracks and imaginary borders made of blood and tears. Without name, the horizon opens up to him, waiting for a deep breathy kiss. Gunshots and loot, opened graves and old wooden crosses. He cannot die, he is the red rocks of the desert, the biting sand and open grasslands of buffalo.
His bones, made of feathers and air, carry all the wild dreams they have forgotten, lost in the songs of itinerant laborers laying forged metal tracks, lost at the massacres at Wounded Knee and the lynchings decorating every town square in anguished screams of mortal pain.
He is not afraid to die because he cannot die. Horses come to him and he plays with their riders. Men of leather and steel- made up of empty gun chambers and exploding white powder.
He smiles, squinting as they all search the sky for the promise of gold. Their home is the wasteland between earth and clouds, long stretches of nothingness colored by the temporary illusion of places and people and faces and tales. A country of drifters and grifters, tiny senseless cons that always end in battle. They search for treasure, an endless pursuit with countless forking roads that twist abruptly and lead always to murder and more splashes of blood that dry black on the dusty streets of empty towns.
The man with no name swirls between them all, carried by his feather bones. He cannot die, he is the purple light of sunset, the ripple of green meadow grass before a wild storm. Lighting snaps and he speaks.
Both the story and its teller. The fire and the wood. The killer and the killed. A strange whisper among the swaying grasses, an awesome silence among crimson buttes. Hear him cackling among the reeds of a small brook or shrieking over an open field, wings outstretched, prey in sight. See him circling, a ring of dark birds, waiting eagerly for some man or beast to give it's last breath to the indifferent prairie.
Where the curtains are drawn shut, where the towns people have gathered round the gallows, where the undertakers hammer rings against the hush, there you find him. Where wild horses run free, where coyotes lament their folly, where rattlesnakes make threatening music, he is there. In every face, in every street, in every mountain pass, there, there, there.
Death, smiling, the only god. Death looks up from the dug earthen graves. Death, watching closely from yellow flower faces and clouds heavy with rain. He is not afraid- the tight grip of fear which comes over men is absent from his light, wispy essence. The horse carries him on, over the badlands which stretch on and on, inspiring eternity to turn on itself, looking for more places to bloom. Hoof beats match the thump of his blood. They move on, one entity between fire and water, dancing between earth and sky

The Nature Of Pain

Pain demands remedy.  It demands attention, it creates an end.  Ends are found wandering down many paths. 

Little by little I felt like dying.  I drove home up the 15 degree incline that went on for seven miles from the ocean to the mountainous woods.
The late afternoon sun was bright and hit my shoulders, browning them slightly.  The heat came in through the window and he sat next to me, a 200 pound man with the potential for artistic expression and a capacity for miserable effort and run-ins with the law. 
As I began to reach the peak of the oak covered meadow before a curvy 2 mile long descent into wooded Felton, I felt overwhelmed. The man had a multitude of chemical addictions and twenty nine years of pain that needed to be dulled and a father that had just died.
The family would not wait to hold the funeral and as a result, the tattooed addict beside me would never, as my mother said, have closure.  She could see what was coming more than I could, that girl I was with firm round breasts and idealism that had somehow sucked her into a cave full of murky water.
My tattooed addict, sitting in the cushioned chair beside me had a history of minor crimes and outstanding warrants in a few states and credit debt that would haunt him until death.

Each one of his problems fell on my shoulders. I opened my arms to them and held them.
For a time I hoped that they would get better or change or that he would change or that his jail stays would alter him or that visiting the county hospital would at least provide him with methadone or some legal compound, but none of it changed.  He took the methadone and then went to the streets moment later.  Even after the doctors finally approved a physical therapist and a reason was identified for his unbearable back pain, he never stopped mixing and injecting, he never followed through on the recommended exercises. He was in a cave of his own.
He let me carry all his problems. I took him to the appointments and to the streets. I went to work and then handed over my cash to his open hands that were like magnets. I picked up his cigarettes and cringed every moment he stood at the doorway smoking, wasps of pungent odor coming right back towards me, covering my clothes and books with their stench so that one day I would have to throw them all away. 

His problems were my problems. And his problems where too big for me and I wanted it all to end.
I remember saying: “but I haven’t made my mark on the world yet.”  And he agreed.  And so there was no double suicide.
But every day he got worse and I felt the dark cloud grow bigger and thicker and so strong that I could not see light beyond it.  Every day his tolerance grew and he needed a little more black tar.  Every day he needed a little more money.  Every day he sunk deeper and I watched from the edge, teetering on the side, looking in and then beyond. 
I went to work, I went to school.  I brought him money and he took it to the beach flats and got small brown goo wrapped in pieces of plastic. After disappearing into the bathroom for hours and poking in every vein he remembered having he would emerge all sweaty and pink. 
For a precious moment he would be free of pain, he would forget about his dad and the mounting legal problems and his back and the mountain of darkness that hung over our heads. Then time would slip and we would remember and the rattle would begin once again.

La Mujer

　
"The price would be heavy," La Mujer said with a mixture of certainty and skepticism, the black curls clinging to her sweaty, tanned and rough cheeks as she leaned closer to Rose, the young white woman who sat in a wooden chair by the old kitchen table.

La Mujer’s eyes seemed to wax catlike for a moment, glinting yellow with flecks of orange and black as she spoke. Rose trembled despite the heat of the nearby hearth and pulled her handmade shawl tighter around her narrow shoulders. In the next moment, however, she had regained her determination and answered forcefully, thrusting onto the small round table a leather pouch that jangled with the promise of gold and silver.

"I can pay," she said through clenched teeth. Her pale complexion immediately flushed with red undertones and her auburn hair, once neatly combed in a tight bun, had fallen slightly, leaving strands of wavy hair dancing around her temples.

Seeing the young white woman speak with fire, La Mujer threw back her head and laughed for far too long. Just as Rose was wondering if the full-bellied cackling would stop, La Mujer slammed her hands down on the rickety table.

"Gold is fine for me, but I’m not the one who will extract the payment I’m talking about."

The candle between them flickered, coins spilled from the pouch and the younger woman flinched.

"Don’t waste my time," La Mujer spat. "You say it was El Cuervo that took your sister? Nothing from this world can touch him. He has very powerful dark magic. That is what you will need to defeat him, AND THAT comes with a very heavy price."

La Mujer fixed her stare intently upon Rose, looking for something inside those pale blue eyes.

"I understand," the young woman said at last.

"Do you?" La Mujer asked doubtfully.

"I would give my life. I would give anything that was mine to give. My soul? Is that what you want? Take it. What good has it ever done me?" Rose was shaking, now with anger rather than fear. "You say he has dark magick? Then give me darker magick. Do you hear me? Give me the devil himself to ride El Cuervo down and carry him back to hell!"

La Mujer smiled a mirthless grimace. The fire of the hearth cast shadows on the deep etchings around her eyes and cheeks, the light crawled over her scars of battle and the marks of the burning sun. She tapped her finger thoughtfully on the table and regarded the other woman for a moment.

"I know just the thing," she said, scooping up the bag of glittering coins and carrying them to the worn straw mattress in the corner.

When she had stuffed the treasure out of sight she went to the hearth that crackled and burst with licking flames. Using a pointed dagger she kept tucked beneath her stained rope belt, she scratched a large circle into the dirt floor just in front of the flames.

"Bring me that hat," La Mujer commanded, her hand gesturing to a black hat that hung on the wall.

La Mujer kept her eyes on the thick line of the circle as the young woman rose tentatively from the creaky chair. Rose walked quickly to the hat hanging to the left of the wooden door. Beside it a black linen sack dangled from another rusty nail protruding from the adobe.

As the younger woman reached for the hat something moved within the sack. On impulse, she quickly jerked her hand away, hastily snatching the hat.

"The cup too," La Mujer demanded.

"And the pitcher?" the young white woman asked.

"Just the cup."

La Mujer beckoned Rose into the circle and put the hat on the young white woman’s head. Her old, wrinkled hands took the cup and spilled the water onto the floor, emptying it completely outside the circle’s ring. Her eyes closed slightly, taking on a somewhat detached, distant look as she began murmuring something unintelligible.

She took the younger woman’s arm and pressed the pointed dagger into the soft white flesh near the underside of her elbow. Rose stifled a cry as the blood began to flow. La Mujer, still murmuring, swaying gently, caught the warm liquid in the earthen cup. When the cup was nearly full of Rose’s blood, she released her arm and licked the edge of the dagger, then placed it back beneath the rope belt wrapped around her thick waist. The younger woman clapped her white lace handkerchief over the wound and applied pressure, chest heaving, eyes shifting nervously from her arm to the cup.

La Mujer took the hat from Rose’s head. Raising it and the cup high, her murmuring increased to a fever pitch. The walls began to rattle and there was a deep, almost guttural drone that moved through Rose’s ears into her stomach and then out through her limbs.

La Mujer was vibrating softly, then her chest began to convulse, her arms and legs moved spastically in bursts and fits of energy. She held onto the cup, not spilling a drop as her full body heaved with the heat of flowing energy. Just as it seemed the little makeshift cottage held together with crooked nails, crumbling wood and adobe could endure no more La Mujer fell silent and a with a sudden gust the candle and the once roaring flames of the hearth were snuffed out.

There was a momentary darkness and then green flames sprang to life within the hearth. The young white woman gasped as the eerie light revealed a ghostly figure standing in the circle with herself and La Mujer.

"Amara," it whispered tenderly to La Mujer.

"Si, Damon, soy yo." She grinned

"Why have you called me?" The specter rasped.

"Porque carino, la mujer blanca paga su precio." Teeth flashing as her grin widened, she offered the cup to the specter’s lips.

As it drank the form became more material, its colors growing vivid and clear. The green of the flames slowly transformed and within moments, the hearth was restored.

Standing before them was a muscular young man with dark hair and blazing green eyes. His complexion was tanned, like La Mujer herself, but his cheeks were smooth and undamaged by sun and time. His clothing and boots were black leather and his spurs gleamed silver.

La Mujer placed the hat on his head. He flexed his hands and arms and smiled wryly at the young white woman with wide blue eyes.

"So," he said, "how can I be of service?"

"I want you to hunt down the man called El Cuervo."

As she answered she felt her legs buckle. The man in black caught her and steadied her.

"Hmm," he said, "his kind don’t die easy."

La Mujer laughed. "Lucky for her, your kind don’t die so easy either."

He looked the white woman up and down, noticed the purple and white print of her modest dress, the white lace frill along her neckline, the slight disheveled curls at her temples, the wound on her arm.

"What do you want Cuervo for?"

"He has my sister."

"You got a name?"

"Rose Evans"

"And your sister?"

"Grace"

"You just call me Damon." He turned to La Mujer, "Amara, my guns."

La Mujer left the circle and fetched the black linen sack from the wall. Returning, she dipped her hand inside and withdrew two thick rattlesnakes and set them hissing into Damon’s rough, outstretched hands. The snakes coiled eagerly around each of his arms and writhed their way into his empty leather holsters where they transformed into gleaming six guns.

"They will need to feed and you will need to feed. You understand mi querido? Your power and theirs will wane unless you take life. For you, it must be her blood…while she lives. When she is gone…" La Mujer shrugged, looking away into the flames. "But your babies there, they will have to kill, one way or another. The greater the prey, the more powerful they become. Understand? Just like old times."

* * *

Under the moonlight they rode in silence, Rose and Damon side by side. The desert cold was still around them. The stars shone brightly.

After hours of quiet, many miles of desert were spread between them and La Mujer’s adobe hut on the mountainside. The spectral gunman made into flesh by chant and blood inhaled deeply and sighed.

"Smell that night air. There’s something special about the air at night. The stars and moon, the silver light, they change me somehow. Make me new."

Rose nodded silently, looking up at the sky full of light. She stared again at the black horizon, her body full of chill.

She asked, "Are you sure we’re going the right way? I mean," she said hesitantly, "there are no tracks."

"No, no tracks Miss Evans, but I’m sure."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I used to ride with Cuervo’s gang a long time ago. I know where home is, way down past the border, beyond the river in the land of the dead. I know where Cuervo likes to roost. They wouldn’t have gone straight home after taking your sister. They would have gone east a bit first, grabbing more white girls, burning more farms, taking what they needed, having what they wanted… so we’ll meet up with them eventually in the canyon. All the routes home funnel into the canyon. We’ll get there first and wait in the caves."

"You were one of them then?"

"For a while after the war."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"And how did you die? I mean, you are dead?"

"Was dead. Now, thanks to you, not so much. Cuervo’s woman; that’s how I died. I ran off with her and he came gunning for us."

"So you’ll have a chance for revenge," she said.

"Looks that way." They continued in silence for a while before he stopped by a tall lonesome mesquite and dismounted.

"Why are we stopping?" she asked scanning the deserted landscape for explanation. His answer stopped her cold.

"I need to feed."

* * *

Before crossing the Rio Grande they stopped in a small waste of a town. The dust covered buildings were rickety and slap shod. Light and noise roared from the saloon until they entered and then a hush consumed the place and all eyes fell upon the grinning hired gunman and sickly looking young woman. When the shooting started Rose Evans, already pale from blood loss, crouched under a table and covered her ears. When she came to again it was because Damon was pulling her from under the table. He put her on her dainty feet and pressed a decanter of brandy to her lips.

"You need something too," he said and led her to a wooden table where a round man in a vest sat gazing vacantly over a plate of meat and potatoes. A perfect bullet wound in the center of his forehead trickled blood. Damon pushed the corpse from the chair with his boot and gentle guided Rose Evans onto it.

"Eat up," he told her as she stared at the slab of meat.

She covered her mouth to prevent herself from retching and shook her head. The bloody scene came through to her in short bursts and she felt as though the room were spinning. Shoving the chair away from the table, she let it topple as she ran to the street outside and doubled over. It was starting to rain.

Damon joined her, un-tethering the horses and putting the reins of her mare into her trembling hand.

"I’ll be dead won’t I? By the time we meet Cuervo?"

Damon glanced at her and took a swig from the brandy, but said nothing.

"That’s the price," she continued. "You’ll take my life bit by bit and I’ll watch your guns take the lives of strangers. My soul, all that blood, on my soul. I never noticed I had one till now." Her hair was loose and wet and heavy under the weight of rain. Her face was pale, her blue eyes wreathed in shadow. "But you’ll save Grace, won’t you? Get her away from him. If you don’t kill him, at least get her away."

Damon lifted her onto the horse and took another swig before pressing the bottle into her hands. He looked radiant, almost godlike with his black leather clothes collecting moisture and clinging to his muscular frame. The six guns shone like lesser stars. They looked bigger and more menacing than they had in La Mujer’s hut. He swung onto his horse with one graceful leap and urged it forward as the thunder rumbled ominously overhead and a silver rod of lightning tore through the sky behind them.

* * *

They entered a short series of caves and waited. When Cuervo and his minions entered the narrow canyon, their raucous voices echoed through the red earth, stirring Rose Evans from troubled dreams. Damon pressed a finger to his thin, pale lips and they waited for the noise to die down. She drifted in and out of sleep for a while longer, waiting, waiting.

Was it a dream when she watched Damon un-holster one of his guns and let it slither onto the cave floor as a rattlesnake? Not a dream when he took a small drink from the tender wound on her arm? A scream. Then another.

"Vibora! Vibora! Aye!"

Gunshots ricocheting off the cave walls. Damon creeping away. More screams and gunshots. Terrible laughter. She pulled herself up and used the wall to steady herself as she crept towards the noise. The earth quaked and she stumbled to her knees, crawled a while, emerged into the main cavern.

There stood Damon, guns barking hungrily. Something was flying through the cavern screaming. A raven. A rattlesnake brushed against her hand, hissed at her and kept going. Against one wall a line of young women tied together in a train, mouths gagged, eyes wide.

And Grace. Not with the others, but standing among fallen bodies, searching for something, a pistol, pried from dead hands.

"Cuervo! La Mujer envia sus saludos!" Damon shouted with a grin. His gun barked and the bird fell from the air and landed with a heavy thud as a man.

"No!" Grace screamed, aiming the pistol at Damon and firing before running to the fallen man.

Rose stumbled towards her sister and tried to pull her away.

"Grace, Grace, it’s me."

"Rose? You?" Grace’s voice was full of disbelief as she hastily regarded her sister, then shoved her away. "Go home!"

"Grace, I came for you, to save you."

Damon and his guns were finishing the last few men. He seemed illuminated by shadow, if such a thing were possible, taller, more menacing than ever. Lightning flashed beyond the cave mouth.

"To save me? From what? From soaring above the world? From taking what I want when I want it?"

Grace was laughing, tears streaking her cheeks. Her pale hair hung loose over her shoulders as she kneeled to caress the face of the dead man before tugging his jacket off of him.

"I don’t understand." Rose said meekly as she watched her older sister.

"I’m Cuervo’s woman now," Grace said, "that’s all Rose." She continued pulling on the jacket and gently guided the dead man’s arms out of it. Without glancing at her sister she said, "you should have stayed home."

The jacket was covered in glossy black feathers that glistened as another flash of lightning illuminated the cave. Damon now stood silently as Grace slipped a ring from Cuervo’s tepid hand and placed it on her own. She kissed his cold lips, then bowed her head and shrank down.

In the blink of an eye Grace was gone and a raven leapt up screaming. It circled twice over Rose before flapping out of the gaping cave mouth into the canyon.

* * *

Rose awoke again on horseback, Damon’s arms encircling her.

"Grace?" she croaked.

Damon stopped the horse, slid down and lifted her off as well. He laid her gently upon the ground. The thirsty earth had already soaked up the rain, giving off a perfumed scent. It hardly felt moist against Rose’s back. The clouds were scattered like phantoms across the violet sky. The east glowed pink to herald the dawn.

"Grace is gone." Damon told her. "Soon you will be too."

"I know," she rasped through pale lips. "The others? The girls?"

"I cut them loose and pointed them towards the border."

They sat in silence for a time.

"You’ll fade too, won’t you?" Rose asked, her voice weak and brittle.

"By tomorrow night."

"What will you do till then?"

"I’ll say goodbye to La Mujer."

Pink was bleeding into the violet sky, seeping into it like ink from a spilled blotter, highlighting the clouds.

"She’s the one." Rose rasped after a moment. "The woman you stole from Cuervo."

"Yes," he said, his black eyes smiling, full of mischievous delight.

They sat in silence watching the sky slowly brighten. As the sun’s golden crown crested the horizon Rose pulled the soiled handkerchief from the wound on her arm and Damon took his last drink. A brown dove cooed softly in a nearby thicket of mesquite and coyote willow and a small shrew scampered to its den as the desert cast off the night and shone softly into wakefulness, brilliant, golden, and sharp.