The Fifth Sacred Thing Read Free Page B

admiration became wearying at her age.
    The terminus was a tall sculptural tower forged out of the metal scavenged from the old microwave tower that had once crowned the hill. It shimmered with soft metallic hues, raising extended arms in welcome, the great windspinner on its top tracing moving mandalas with its blades as it generated power.
    A figure emerged from the tower’s entrance and waved at Maya. At last, Madrone. The way she moved, her gait as she walked briskly over to where Maya waited, brought Johanna vividly alive again for a moment. Johanna had also liked flowing pantaloons and elaborately draped blouses and overtunics, in those same colors, maroons and purples and deep blues. There wasn’t a lot else of Johanna visible in Madrone, just that hint of Africa in the exuberance of her hair and a touch of chocolate under the bronze of her skin. And when Madrone turned, to regard Maya with one eyebrow raised and her lips pursed, shifting her basket of offerings from her right hip to her left, she was Johanna incarnate, and maybe more than that. Maya could, in fact, remember that expression on Johanna’s mother’s face, who had gotten it from some great-grandmother of her own, and so on back to the beginning of time, that first ancestress whose mitochondria swam in the cells of us all.
    “Are you all right, Maya?” Madrone asked. “Did you walk up that hill?”
    “I still have the use of my legs.”
    “And you still don’t have any sense. You know I would never have let you try that alone.”
    “Let me? What makes you think you could stop me?” Maya said.
    “Well, for one thing, I outweigh you.”
    “That doesn’t count for much. I’m old but tough.”
    “Hmph. An old nut is the hardest to crack.”
    “What are you implying?”
    “Nada, madrina
. Not a thing.”
    Madrone appraised Maya with a healer’s eye. The old woman could have passed for the Crone, the Reaper, herself: her skin, pale as cake flour, protected from the sun by a broad straw hat, her hair a wispy silver corona around the spiderweb wrinkles of her face. Her lips were a thin line, firm and determined, her jaw somewhat square, her brown eyes still clear and luminous. She wore a long black dress and leaned heavily on her silver-handled stick. She did, however, look tough, Madrone admitted, or, more accurately, vital. Amazing, really, that she had survived to such an age, through such times, her wits still sharp as cheddar.
    “What are you looking at?” Maya asked.
    “You,
abuelita
. You lookin’ good.”
    “Now don’t you
‘ita’
me. I’m not little, and I’m not your grandmother.”
    “It’s a term of affection, not size. As you well know. And as for exactly what we are to each other, I don’t know of a word that covers the case.”
    “You don’t know a word that means ‘the daughter of the child one of my lovers had by my other lover when my back was turned’?” Maya asked innocently. “There isn’t something in Spanish for that?”
    “Better settle for
madrina
. It covers a multitude of sins. Are you really okay?”
    “Better than you. How much sleep did you get, anyway?”
    “Don’t ask.”
    Maya’s voice softened. “How did it go?”
    “We lost Consuelo.”
    “No.”
    “I can’t talk about it now, I’ll start to cry.”
    Maya placed a hand on Madrone’s shoulder. She pressed it against her cheek, taking comfort. A single blast of a conch rang out, wavering on the air.
    “Half an hour warning,” Maya said. “Where do you want to go?”
    The upper slopes of the hill were dotted with shrines to Goddesses and Gods, ancestors and spirits. Some were elaborately sculpted and painted, some as simple as an offering basket under a tree. They encompassed an eclectic mixture of traditions. A cairn of memorial stones crowned a green mound dedicated to the Earth Goddess, who could be called Gaia, or Tonantzin, or simply
Madre Tierra
, Mother Earth. Kuan Yin had a shrine and so did Kali and Buddha and many