Dreams and Visions
 

He had no idea how long it was before his own sense of himself began to coalesce again, but he awakened as if into a larger dream.  Rationally, he knew he was still lying in her arms, his whole being still flooded with something so intense that, like the sun, it hurt to look at it directly.  But the perspective was wrong, as if he had somehow stepped completely outside himself.  There in the moonlight that filtered softly through the branches of the old willow, he saw two people, but they seemed only illusions, tricks of the light.

Instinctively, he knew this vision was fragile, like a lucid dream he could change at will.  But the sheer wonder of it made him want to preserve it, to study it.  He also knew somehow that she was seeing this too, and that she was with him, though he couldn’t say just where she was.  It was almost as if her thoughts were his own.  He wondered if there were words to explain what was happening now, but then he knew he didn’t need them.  He only needed to memorize every detail of this scene.

Gradually, the images began to melt and shift.  He felt as if he were flying, or maybe falling.  The world spun around until suddenly he seemed to be standing on a familiar stretch of el Camino Real, just down river from the San Diego mission.  He could smell the briny waters of the bay and picture the big gates centered in the adobe walls of the old Presidio on the hill, its brass cannons glinting in the polished sunlight.  On the plain at the base of the hill, a patchwork of diligently tended garden plots struggled to push their greenery above the thin rocky sediment that years ago had sent the missionaries east in search of more fertile land.

Someone had started to clear a house-shaped patch of ground nearby, and piles of straw for adobe bricks sat near an open trench and a heap of foundation stones.  Then this scene, too, was gone, replaced by the flat shimmering pools of an estuary that stretched far inland, fed by a river that led up into the distant hills.

Rocky cliffs and bright sun-washed stretches of beach came next, and glittering ocean waves echoing the sharp cry of gaviotas.  Higher up, a hot dusty trail twisted through manzanita and sage.  On his left, a range of sierras arched like the spine of an enormous creature.  He knew the glistening lake at their base was only a mirage, yet somehow it seemed to reach out to him, blurring even his own sense of separation from it, until its silvery luster turned into the soft shady flow of a quiet river that drifted through the willows huddled along its rocky banks.  One ancient boulder assumed the tentative shape of a man.

Then it became the small stone statue of a saint, which, for some reason—probably the book in its hands—he took to be St. Dominic, sitting in the stuccoed alcove of an adobe wall.  To the left, a bit farther down the wall, another rounded arch framed a statue of the Virgin and, to the right, in another alcove, stood the figure of a winged angel.  Though he knew from the sword in its hands that it was probably the archangel Michael, he couldn’t help but notice how angels themselves resembled the harpies of Greek myth.

Above these figures, the wall rose to reveal an open arch centered on a large brass bell.  A scalloped roof line led his eye up to the topmost point, crowned by a white cross.  He realized, slowly, that he was looking at the wall of a mission church from a perspective that shifted, then, to just outside its heavy iron gates.  A cobblestone path led up to the large wooden church doors, half again as tall as a man, but unadorned, except for the big bronze strap hinges.  Carefully tended rose bushes grew amid huge poinsettias with thick dark yellow-green stalks, the topmost leaves spreading out like blood red stars.  An open well framed by a ring of stones stood nearby.

As he turned around, he saw a long dusty road leading down a hillside toward the crescent of a shallow bay whose arms embraced the ocean.  Small boats lay beached side by side, nets drying in the sun.  On a bluff overlooking the bay he saw a few outbuildings, a stable, perhaps, and a blacksmith’s shop.  Maybe even a tannery.  To his right, a green ribbon of trees hugged the riverbank.  Then the scene shifted again, and it was night.

This time, he saw dingy rock walls, green with mold from the moisture and, underfoot, a hard rock floor.  An irregularly shaped opening covered with iron bars let in the light of the full moon, which fell in sharp black and white slashes across the body of a man lying on a pile of hides and matted fleece.  Diego squinted hard.  Outside, past the bars, he could see the ocean and hear the sound of distant surf.  The room itself was very dark except for the moonlight.  He thought he heard someone snoring softly, but someone else was awake as well.  He tried to turn, but his body didn’t seem to respond.  All he saw was darkness.

Then, somehow, without even seeing, he knew that huddled nearby on a mat in a corner, he would find a young boy, probably twelve or thirteen years of age with dark blue eyes, gently arching brows and long lashes, his wavy hair the color of smoky black satin.  Suddenly he looked up, and Diego thought for a moment that the child had actually seen him.  He tried to reach out to the boy, to say something, but then the scene faded and his body suddenly felt cold and stiff, and a trace of nausea rose in his stomach.

He began to see other things now: harnesses hanging on a wall beside pitchforks and other tools, small creatures—probably rats—scurrying around.  Then he heard the clank of iron and the rattling of chains.  In another dimly lit room, a hurricane lamp cast a flickering light against high wooden rafters onto which a pulley assembly had been rigged, a rope left dangling from it.  Sacks of grain, loosely tied bales of straw, a few wooden stalls.  Near the large open entrance, a fire had been lit in what looked like a blacksmith’s forge.  Angle tongs, a bending iron and a hammer lay nearby and, off to the left, a big anvil, a pile of heavy iron rods and a grindstone.

Then he noticed a table on which several other tools had been carefully laid atop a green linen cloth.  But these were not blacksmith’s tools.  They looked almost like pieces of jewelry, ornately cast and polished silver handles flowing into hinged and gracefully twisted shapes.  One of them looked like a delicate pear shaped flower with a threaded bolt for a stem, whose five razor sharp petals curved slightly outward at the other end. Another looked like a spider with long curved blades for legs.  Then he understood what these things were for.

Suddenly, he thought he would throw up, and he felt a terror not entirely his own surge up behind him to surround him like a whirlwind.  It seemed to lift him, but then he felt something else holding him down—chains, ropes, hands?  As the scene shifted again, he saw an altar in front of which stood a man whose head was covered by the hood of a priest’s cassock.  He seemed to be whispering a prayer as his fingers moved over the black beads of a rosary, but it wasn’t a credo or an ave.  On his left hand he wore a gold ring whose flat round surface was deeply etched with the shape of an ornate twisted cross.

On the altar, amid the candles, the altar bells, the chalice, the censer and ciborium, sat a black vase that held the small bare branch of a long dead plant.  Between two twigs the flickering light revealed the gossamer fibers of a spider’s web.  The man at the altar took a small dagger from the sleeve of his cassock and used its tip to pick up a tiny black bit of fuzz, probably an insect, though whether it was alive or dead or just overcome by the heavy bitter smoke from the censer, Diego could not say.

He, too, found that the smoke left him dizzy and even more disoriented than he already was, yet he could only watch in fascination as the priest dropped the tiny insect onto the sticky part of the web.  Then he waited.  Time stood still.

It might have been days or hours or just moments before the small brown spider emerged along its signal thread and moved to inspect its catch.  But it took only a heartbeat for the priest to tear down an edge of the web with the tip of his knife, then wrap both insects in it and lift them up to the flame of the nearest candle where they turned almost instantly into a tiny fireball and then a cinder.  As the man examined the tip of the blade before laying it on the altar, Diego saw something perfectly cold in his soft brown eyes.  Then he felt the eyes turning on him.

As if from a great distance, he heard a woman’s voice calling his name.  Then he realized that unless he could somehow summon the strength—or whatever it took—to locate that sound and to leave this place, he, too, would die here.  The smell of the incense left him nearly unable to breathe.

He felt himself being dragged toward the fire pit, where someone brought an iron rod near his face, its tip glowing red hot in the gusts of air from the bellows whose breath brushed his cheek like a lover’s sigh.  Blood seemed to ooze from between his fingers as, struggling, he grabbed what might have been the blade of a knife.  Then nearby he noticed a small bucket of water in which was reflected a clear round patch of light, like the moon, and something told him that this was of vital importance.  His heart was beating hard, yet he continued to stare at the image until it grew brighter and he could see it more clearly than anything else, nestled like a jewel amid a few billowy clouds on a faded indigo backdrop.

Then other images returned—her breath against his cheek, the sharp blades of grass that poked through the silky wet hair knotted in his fingers.  He opened his eyes to find her looking down anxiously at him, calling his name, caressing his face.  As she ran her hand through his hair, he still wasn’t entirely sure he had come to his senses.  Even now, he thought he might still wake up somewhere else.  Her words came to him as if through several fathoms of ocean.

"Dios mío . . . . are you all right?  The sickness—it is almost past, sí?"

As his head continued to clear, he found himself trying to figure out exactly what had just happened to him.  Had anything he had seen in this vision been real?  Or had it all been just a wild, troubled dream?  Even now he felt it fading quickly, dissolving into the warmth of her arms as she covered him with whatever clothing she could reach.  Gently he touched her cheek, then slid his fingers under the line of hair at the back of her neck to pull her mouth down to his.

She kissed him hard.  Then, as their lips parted, she looked deeply into his eyes, searching.  "How do you feel?" she asked again.

"I love you," he said matter-of-factly, brushing the hair from her cheek.

"That is not what I mean," she insisted.  "You were not supposed to be swept up with me like that, unprepared.  The potion, it must have rubbed off on you when—I mean, I just didn’t realize that— "

"You had never done that before, had you."

She looked down, and even in the pale moonlight he knew she was blushing.  Then the full impact of what they had done finally came to him, and as he gathered her into his arms, he shut his eyes, trying to blink back all the tenderness he felt, thinking he might still be sick with the guilt.

"No, no, of course you hadn’t.  I—oh, God, are you all right?"

"I . . . think so," she said, a smile beginning to tremble on her lips.  Swallowing hard, she added, "I—have never felt this way before.  Like sunlight.  Is this how one is supposed to feel?"

Diego winced.  "I don’t know," he said.

"But . . . you have done this before, no?"

"Well, not exactly—not with . . . not with someone who hadn’t.  I just—I wasn’t thinking."

"But I did do everything right?" she whispered as he stroked the gold hair that lay across her shoulder.  "I thought that everything that was supposed to happen happened."

"None of it should have happened."

"I did do something wrong."  She winced and hid her face in his arm.

"No—not like that."  He turned and lifted himself up on one elbow to look down at her squarely.  "But my dear Señorita—this is not exactly the sort of relationship your hero Quixote would have sought to cultivate with the Lady Dulcinea."

Suddenly a faint smile lit her eyes.  "Sí, he was Catholic," she said.  "It was his only flaw."

Diego laughed in spite of himself, until finally, her giggling, too, faded into a long sigh.

"Oh please do not tell me you think this is a sin," she said as she ran her finger along the line of his shoulder.  "We have honored the gods.  We have embodied for each other the sacred forces that bring forth life.  And by becoming for me the Lord of the Greenwood, you have given me an initiation that was my right as a priestess.   How can this be sinful?"

He shook his head and squinted down at her.  "You are a priestess?"

"And the gods have granted me the vision I sought.  Now I know where Arturo is.  I saw him.  So did you.  Remember?"

Diego frowned and tried to recall the dream that had seemed so vivid only moments ago.  Now it receded like a distant mirage.  Maybe there had been a boy, and certainly there had been a feeling of imminent danger.  But those things seemed far less important now than this more immediate problem.

"Oreana," he began, "it does not matter whether I agree or disagree with your views on what is sinful.  We live in a Catholic country, and no one would approve of this.  I am not the sort of man who could—I simply cannot—take such advantage of a woman and then pretend as if nothing had happened.  This I promise you, even now that the passion of the moment has passed.  In the morning we must tell my father and then— "

Oreana raised her forefinger to her lips.  Then, looking up, she motioned with it as if she had heard something and wanted him to listen for it also.  "Are you quite certain," she said, "that this momentary feeling has passed?"

Looking down into her deep blue eyes, all he could say was, "No."

The faintest traces of early morning light glowed on the eastern horizon, even though stars still shone through the branches of the trees.  She sat beside him now dressed in her white chemise, running her fingers through her hair to comb out the tangles.  She had covered him with the cape and laid his own clothes nearby.  Her face seemed to glow with a light of its own as she reached out to brush the hair from his forehead.

"I have opened the circle," she said.  "We must go.  And we must find something to eat.  I suspect that you are not completely grounded yet.  You still feel a bit lightheaded, no?"

"Grounded?"

"Feeling as if you are truly back in this world.  Food will help."

As he sat up and started to get dressed, he realized she was right.  In fact, he felt almost giddy, like a child on Christmas morning.  And he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted this feeling to subside.  He pulled on his boots, then pulled her into his arms.  She nestled comfortably against him, letting her hand trace the neckline of his shirt.  Then a sobering thought occurred to him.

"I do not want to return to this world if it means losing you," he said, for suddenly he knew that this was precisely what it did mean.

"One cannot live between the worlds," she said, placing her hand over his as it rested on her shoulder.  "One can go there to worship and to work magic, but it is not a place where humans can stay, not for very long, anyway.  Time does funny things there.  Besides, you cannot lose me," she added snuggling closer to him.  "From now on there will always be a link between us, just as there is between blood relatives, since we have shared a ritual of the blood.  You will always be able to find me, just as I found Arturo."

He winced a little, thinking of the blood she had shed, then caressed her jaw line and lifted her face.  The touch of her lips made his teeth ache with desire.  He knew he must have assumed that giving in to this temptation would somehow weaken it, but now, having surrendered, he only wanted more.  "Marry me," he said.

She bit her lip as though the words themselves were painful, then gently caressed his cheek.  "Oh, Diego, you will always be for me the flesh and blood embodiment of everything I worship in this world.  Have we not shared rituals enough?"

"Is it because of this?"  He held up one end of the black mask laying beside him.

She shook her head.  "No, no, it is not that.  But you do not know what you are asking."

"No more than you were willing to give Urbino."

"Unless I have terribly misjudged you, you are not the sort of man Urbino was.  You wouldn’t kill the thing you love in order to possess it."

Diego said nothing for a moment or two, then shook his head, and he suddenly wished he hadn’t brought Urbino into the discussion.  "No, I wouldn’t," he said.  "But I do not see how it would kill you.  I would never— "  Then he got to his feet.

"If I tell you the truth, you may not believe me," she said as she stood up and let him wrap her in the black cape once more.  "Even if you do, it will not change anything."

"Then it will not make anything worse, will it?" he said, trying to keep the anguish out of his voice as he went to the base of the willow tree.  "It has to do with communion, no?"

She watched him carefully as he picked up the sheathed saber and belted it to his side again, then stuck the pistol roughly into the cinturón at his waist.  Then she walked over to him and handed him the mask he had left laying beside her.  "Do you believe in heaven?" she said.

The question surprised him, and for a moment he thought it over.  Then he nodded, "I suppose so.  Though I know that some do not."

"Oh, it is real," she said.  "The Christians themselves have made it real by zealously believing in it all these years.  They and their god created it.  It was a great act of magic.  I know, because I have seen it.  And when they die, they go there."

"Sometimes, perhaps, but not always."

"Oh, it is the same," she said.  "Heaven, hell.  Either way, it is forever.  You can never leave."

"But why would you want to leave paradise?  Where would you go?"

"I would return here, to this world," she said earnestly, glancing around her, "because this, to me—this is paradise.  Here.  Everything and everyone I love is here."

"Reincarnation. . . . ."  He squinted, then arched his brows and shook his head in genuine surprise.  He had heard that in India such beliefs were prevalent, but somehow it had just never occurred to him that witches, too, would take them seriously—though now, of course, they made perfect sense of her remarks to Urbino in the chapel.

"The Christian afterlife is not the only place one can go," she said.  "When my people die, we return to la Señora, the mother of all living.  We stay in the Summerland for a time, to rest and to reflect on our lives, and then she gives us the gift of rebirth.  Into this world."

"This world is hardly a paradise," he said, thinking of Marigál.

"It is what we make of it," she insisted.  "The Christians have made it a hell, or a purgatory at best, full of sin and anguish, temptation and punishment, but it need not be that way.  It is also full of love and joy and fulfillment, if one is willing to create these things."

Diego took her hands.  "At least tell me you love me."

Her eyes softened.  "I would die for you," she said.  "Beyond death, I would even join your church, lock up my spirit forever in your dead, perfect afterlife.  I will—if this is truly what you wish.  Is it?"

He closed his eyes as he felt the breath shuddering out of him, but as he gathered her into his arms, he knew she could tell, even so, how close he was to tears.  "No."  He whispered the word into her hair, then kissed the top of her head.  "No."

"I did not think so," she said, looking up, tears streaming down her own cheeks.

"But is there nothing we can do?  Surely your parents were married in the Church.  Is it not possible simply to treat the ritual as a formality?"

"To speak the words of a sacred vow, knowing that you do not mean them?  After that, my words would have no power at all.  Not even you would believe them.  As for my mother and father, their hands were joined by my grandmother, and by the gods, not by any priest.  There is a ritual, beyond what we have done.  But it is not for the once-born."

"The once-born?"

"Those who live only once.  The Christians."

"I see."  He brushed the tears from her cheeks, then embraced her again, gently, as he finally began to realize how hopeless she thought the situation was.

"My father and mother had been lovers before," she murmured.  "They were fortunate to have found each other again, and to have renewed their love in this life.  It is what we all hope for, to find our loved ones and to know them, and to love them again."  As she spoke, he watched the eastern sky begin to get lighter.  An early morning mist began to cling to the surface of the lake.  Then an odd idea occurred to him.

"Is it possible that we have ever met before?" he said.  "In some other lifetime?"

She looked up at him, wide-eyed, then swallowed hard.  "Why would you ask me this?"

"Is it possible?"

"Sí, it is possible.  But what makes you say this?"

"Well, you did say I had some abilities, didn’t you?  An affinity for certain kinds of . . . teachings?  I simply thought that perhaps— "

"Sí."  She seemed at once to be studying his face intently yet somehow staring through him, or past him.  "Many great heros have been here more than once," she added absently, "even the great Christian heros.  Some are ancient souls.  They know how to find their way back here."

"What are you looking at?" he finally asked her.

"The pattern of energy that surrounds you," she said in the same distant tone.  "I have always known you had great power.  Of course, it is brighter now, but— "

He smiled, only half believing what she said, until he remembered that he himself had seen the energy glowing in her hand when she tried to heal Teresa.  "Do you recognize anything?"

She shook her head.  "I cannot tell.  But why are you asking me these things?  Are you trying to tell me that you would consider— "

"Do you not take converts?"

"Well, of course, sometimes.  A few.  But not very many.  We must be very careful who we train.  Our knowledge is not for everyone, and in the wrong hands it can be very dangerous.  Nor is our path an easy one, Diego.  You would have to study very hard.  And you would have to be absolutely certain, because there is no going back.  Once you are one of us you will always be one of us.  And your God does not easily forgive those who practice the old ways.  One of my aunts was nearly executed once.  Tía Florinda.  It was before I was born, but— "

The eastern sky was beginning to glow pale pink and lavender now, and he knew that very soon the sun would start to rise.  And his spirits had also risen a bit, now that he saw at least one way—albeit a problematic one—into her life.  At least it was his to take or leave.  And at least she really did love him.

He was about to suggest that she go on telling him about her aunt on the way back to the hacienda, since they would be missed before very long, and since he, at least, still had to get some rest to be ready for the dance that evening.  But by then, there was just enough light for him to realize that almost all the blood had drained from her face.  Suddenly, her knees buckled, and she sank into his arms.

"Oreana, what is it?"

"My aunt Florinda," she said, her voice a shaky whisper, "the priest who nearly killed her, oh, Diego, I saw him.  I saw his face.  He looked right at me."

"When?"

"Just a little while ago.  In the chapel.  You saw him, too, remember?  Is this the man who calls himself Eusepio Marigál?"

As he helped her sit down again, Diego tried very hard to make sense of the question.  He guessed that she was alluding to something she had seen in the dream they had shared, but by now he couldn’t remember much of it at all.  An image clung to the edge of his mind like a spider web, but he couldn’t quite bring it into focus.  He frowned and shook his head.  "I do not know."

"We must not go to that dance," she said.  "Neither of us.  We must ride south at once, to the mission where they are holding Arturo.  We need not confront this man at all.  We can be in San Diego before he even realizes we are gone."

"Gone where?"

Though still trembling and pale, Oreana struggled to her feet.  "To the mission."

"Which mission?  Do you know the name of it?"

"Well, no.  But clearly it is south of here."

Diego shook his head.  "South of here is a pretty ambiguous destination," he said.

"It is by the sea," she insisted, "we will know it when we come to it."

"You are tired," he said.  "And so am I.  We will both be better off discussing this after we’ve had some rest, mi Querida."  To his surprise, she only nodded wearily, though her whole body was trembling as she leaned against him.  He put an arm around her and whistled sharply for Tornado.  A moment later, the stallion appeared, with the palomino colt, incredibly enough, trailing behind.

Nonetheless, Diego lifted the tired girl onto the back of his own horse.  Then he paused to tie the black paliacate over his hair and knotted the mask across his face again, finally slipping on the gloves and pulling the black felt hat down over his eyes.

In the east, the warm molten light of the morning sun had finally begun to spill over the jagged horizon.  For a moment, as it gently touched her hair, he thought he saw a kind of halo around her, and she seemed to remind him of someone else, though he couldn’t say exactly who.  Nor did it matter, really, he thought as he swung up behind her.  The only thing that really seemed to matter anymore was the look in her eyes as she looked at him and the warm feel of her body in his arms.  If he still wasn’t entirely grounded, he knew it was only because, for him, she had become the ground.