Tag Archives: Vodun

The Last Day in Kona, Revisiting Sam, Plus Kukui Nuts and Awa

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Day 6: Hawaii to Molokai

Our last full day here dawned bright and beautiful. The plan was to visit Pu`uhonua O Hōnaunau National Historical Park, the place of refuge. We had visited years ago and thought it was beautiful. There is a restored heiau, ancient fishponds, interesting plants, and more.

Hōnaunau sits on the opposite arm of the bay where we went snorkeling a couple of days ago. There is an easy entry into the water there, and I hoped to snorkel that side of the bay, as we had done before.

Which reminds me of a story that Bob told me that I forgot to relate. One day in ancient times, the shark god took human form and stepped out of the bay at Hōnaunau. He was greeted in a friendly way by the people, and took a wife among them. He lived with them happily, but in the end had to return to the sea. Before he assumed his shark form, he told the people that because of their kindness and hospitality, the bay between the two points would always be a safe place for them to swim; his people (sharks) would not come there. And so it is to this day.

As I was fixing breakfast on our open lanai kitchen, I heard the sound of crashing surf. This is  thousand feet above the ocean, and perhaps four miles away, as the crow flies. I had never heard the surf from the lanai before. I peered out at the sea and I could see the white spume flying up from the bay at Hōnaunau and along the coastline cliffs. We would not be snorkeling today.

However, Hōnaunau is always worth the visit, so after breakfast, we drove down there. Sadly, the park was closed, a ranger standing at the barricade patiently answering the same question over and over and cars wheeling around and heading away. Of course, we had to ask, too. He told us there was a lot of damage from the storm.

What storm? It had been clear and calm the night before. We headed to Two-Step to see what we could see, and the road was covered with sand and rocks. Huge waves were crashing on the rocks, but people were paddling around in large pools that had been left by the water that splashed over the rocky barrier. We walked out on the rocks (not too far) to take pictures, then left.

Wave surge at Two-Step Beach.

Wave surge at Two-Step Beach.

 

View of Hanaunau from Two-Step. You can see the restored heiau on the point.

View of Hanaunau from Two-Step. You can see the restored heiau on the point.

On the way back, I spotted a wonderful tree that looked as though it were melting. I wanted Tom to take pictures. The tree is truly amazing, with aerial roots and twisty white tendrils that looked as though made of wax rivulets from a burning candle. There was a macadamia nut-Kona coffee-fruit store across the road, so we wandered over to look. I asked the shop keeper what kind of tree that was across the road. He looked blank and said, “What tree?” I guess that incredible-looking tree was just same-old, same old to him. (It turned out to be a banyan.)

Is this not an amazing tree?

Is this not an amazing tree?

The shop keeper’s wife asked what we were doing on the Big Island, and I explained I was researching a novel. She said her daughter wanted to write a book, and how did I get published? I said I’d be glad to help her daughter out if she wanted to email me. I don’t think I can help anyone get published, but I can tell her a bit about how the industry works–or doesn’t.

We tried raw macadamias (meh), then roasted and salted (yum!). But the absolute best were chocolate covered with sea salt–to die for. We bought some, needless to say.

I wanted to go see Bob again. I wanted to tell him about my experience with the lei at Kilauwea. I also wanted another healing–this time on my elbow and ankle. My elbow was so sore that day I could barely touch it (don’t know why), and my ankle has arthritis. Also, my hair was beginning to bug me. It is curly, and when it gets longer, it flies around and looks awful. The humidity of Hawaii wasn’t helping any; I might have been walking around under a gray haystack.

Bob was delighted to see us again. He listened to my story with great satisfaction, then told me more tales of his personal encounters. As he was speaking, a lovely Hawaiian lady came in and sat down. Bob talked and snipped, snipped and talked, until finally I said, “my husband is going to kill you if cut any more off.” I was afraid he would just keep on until I had a fashionably bald head (fashionable for young men, but not for ladies my age).

I said he should take the Hawaiian lady next and I would wait for my healing, but she said to go ahead, so we did. It was the same quiet ritual as before. I thanked her for her patience when we were done; I don’t know how long it all took, but where I live, the next customer would have been foaming at the mouth by then.

After the healing, my elbow in particular felt better. Not perfect, but better to the point where I could touch it without pain. I am really indifferent to whether or not I am merely suggestible, so long as the results are there.

Then we headed off to Greenwell Botanical Gardens, as it had been closed the last time we tried to go. It turns out the garden is operated by the Bishop Museum. Ken’s friend Peter was sick that day, so I will have to email him. I selected some books for the grandkids and chatted with Aloha, the lady behind the counter. Tom took off around the garden by himself, and I followed later.

Greenwell is dedicated to growing and preserving native Hawaiian plants. They don’t charge visitors. Tom and I wandered, reading the informative signs, which noted how the Hawaiians used the plants for food, dye, adornment, etc. I collected a list of questions to ask one of the guides. (We had elected to walk around by ourselves for a while.)

Native loulu palms at Greenwell Botanical Gardens. Highly endangered in the wild, although they once formed forests that carpeted the islands.

Native loulu palms at Greenwell Botanical Gardens. Highly endangered in the wild, although they once formed forests that carpeted the islands.

Back at the visitors center, I introduced myself to Jim, a guide with a magnificent white beard and twinkling blue eyes. After I asked a few questions, Jim cocked an eye at me and said, “Where are you from? You seem pretty well-informed.” That made me happy. After doing all this research, I still feel like the greenest newbie.

I won’t bore you with all the questions I had, but I did think what learned from Jim about Kukui trees was interesting. Kukui nuts were used by the Hawaiians as lights, and are also known as candlenut trees. The nuts are full of oil. The Hawaiians stacked them in a vertical row along a straight sliver of wood and ignited the top nut. It would burn for a while, then ignite the nut below it, which would burn in turn. I knew this, but what I wanted to know was if they were edible. In response, Jim found a good nut lying on the ground and cut it open for me. I tried it. It was a lot like the raw macadamia I ate at the store, and I commented it would probably taste better if toasted a bit. Jim said Kukui is sometimes roasted and salted and used as a condiment for poke. But you can’t eat very much of it, or you get the runs. He hastily added that the small amount I had consumed wouldn’t have that effect on me.

If you shop at Trader Joe’s you have seen some of the staff wearing Kukui nut leis. They polish up beautifully.

Koa trees are acacias, but their leaves are a beautiful, long sickle shape. Koa produces a gorgeous hardwood with light and dark streaks, and it appears the population is not endangered. Ancient Hawaiians made short surfboard and canoes out of the wood. I asked about this peculiarly non-acacia type of foliage, and Jim said they put out juvenile leaves that have the typical feathery appearance of acacia, but this new growth falls off and is replaced by the sickle-shaped leaves–which aren’t leaves. They are structures called “phyllodes,” but as they perform the necessary task of photosynthesis, I don’t think us non-scientists need to worry about the difference.

I noticed what looked like a tiny heiau (temple) constructed of lava rock near the visitors center. It was shaped like a four-sided pyramid, with the top flattened to make a small platform. It had an oval stone standing upright on top of it, like a Ku stone. I asked Jim about it, and he said it was built by the men who worked in the garden. It was not a miniature heiau, it was a replica of a district (aha-pu’a’a) marker. I asked if the stone on top was a Ku stone, and he said, no, it was dedicated to Kama-pu’a’a. I don’t yet know how the Hawaiians could tell the difference between one sacred stone and another.

Now seems as good a time as any to tell you about Kama-pu’a’a, the pig god. Kama (if I may be informal) was born on Oahu to parents who were of divine and chiefly ancestry. Kama was born in the shape of a little pig, and he got into all sorts of mischief in this form. In that sense, he is rather like Coyote the Trickster, of Native American tradition. There are many such gods/culture heroes, like Anansi (Africa), Loki (Norse), and Ti Malice (Vodun).

Kama’s human form was that of a stunningly handsome young man. Eventually he moved to Kahiki and married a woman there. But Pele began to beckon him across the ocean with her smoke. Given what happens next, I am not clear why Pele did this, but if you expect legends to make sense, you should probably stick with mathematics. (Not that math makes any sense to me. That’s why I write fantasy.)

Kama returns home to Oahu first, to recruit the assistance of his family in dealing with Pele, whom he knows is a fierce and powerful goddess. His grandparents agree to follow him to Hawaii (hidden in his genitals, which sounds uncomfortable), and Kama turns into one of his other body forms, the humu-humu-nuku-nuku-a’pu’a,a, and swims to the Big Island.

Kama makes his way to Pele’s home at Kilauwea in his human form, which had been enhanced  by his grandparents until there was no more beautiful man in all of Hawaii. He begins to chant at the crater’s edge. 40,000 of Pele’s people come out of her home to see who is chanting, and her sisters see this dazzling young man and desire him. They tell Pele about him because they are under kapu unless Pele frees them, but she is scornful. She tells them he is a hairy pig, and not worthy of them, but they don’t believe her and think she just wants Kama for herself.

Kama didn’t come for the sisters, he came for Pele. He chants to her with alluring words, whereupon she chants back, heaping insult upon insult. Kama is humiliated, and takes it out on his grandparents by slapping them (talk about adding injury to insult). More insults fly, and then Pele sends her lava right to Kama’s feet. A great fight ensues, and Kama’s family helps him. His sister floods Pele’s house, making it unfit to live in. Pele rekindles her fire and begins to chase Kama, who reverts to his pig form. Pele scorches his bristles, causing one of his grandfathers to die of grief, thinking his grandson dead, but Kama lives.

Pele finally chases Kama into the sea, where he assumes his fish form. Pele sends her eager sisters to the shore to entice him with their bodies (I’m being euphemistic here), but he mocks them from the waves. The Pele clan gives it up as a bad job and goes home. Kama resumes his handsome human form and follows. The sisters being as enthusiastic as ever, Pele releases them from the kapu, and Kama makes love to both of them. But he wants Pele, who has assumed the form of an old woman. Undeceived, Kama sweet-talks her into an assignation. They go at it for days, and Pele is in danger of dying. Another sister of Pele, who has a detachable, flying ma’i (Remember what a ma’i is? It’s her lady parts.), dispatches this organ to distract Kama from his piggish behavior with Pele. This is successful, and Kama goes chasing off to the other side of the island. So the dry side of Hawaii is Pele’s, and the wet side is Kama’s, and they continue their love-hate relationship to this day.

Whew. You wouldn’t believe how much detail I eliminated from this story in the interest of not losing my readers!

Then I asked Jim about awa (pronounced ah-vah, and known as kava in much of Polynesia). I knew that awa was cultivated by the ancient Hawaiians as a social drink, sometimes as part of ceremonies. I wanted to know what it tasted like, and what the effects were. (Research, you know). I asked where I could experience this–as long as it was not prepared in the traditional manner. (Traditionally, people–often children–chewed the root and spat into coconut shells. The resulting ickiness was imbibed.)

Jim looked at me and asked, “Have you tried going to a kava bar?”

Well, no, Jim, we hadn’t. It never occurred to me that such places existed.

So next stop, Ma’s Kava, which turned out to be immediately next door to Shear Magic. Ma’s Kava was a teeny space that shared its commercial doings with Qina Girl Floral. There were several small children surging around behind the bar. There was a diminutive bar made of koa, and three little bar stools. Both businesses are operated by a nice young couple, April and Josh. April has a degree from University of Hawaii, and Josh is a Fijiian ex-British Army guy. They served us two coconut shells full of a cloudy, pale, beige-ish liquid. Tom took two sips before deciding that was enough, so Josh gave him a half-cup of nettle tea to take the taste away. The tea, made of stingless nettles, was tasty, comparable to oolong.

It is abundantly clear that awa is not drunk for the taste, which is muddy, with a slight bitter aftertaste. Because I was, after all, doing research, I drank his as well as mine. It really is not intoxicating. After two shells (as they say), I was perfectly clear-headed, but maybe a little livelier than usual. Awa soothes body soreness, is a muscle relaxant, and a mood elevator, according to April. She and Josh showed us an awa root, which was about 12 feet long, twined and tangled. April said the older the root, the more potent the awa. It is extremely tough and has to be pounded a long time before it can be used. The taste differs with the variety, as does the potency. It left us wondering how anyone originally discovered its effects, as without modern equipment, the stuff is hard to make.

April shows us an awa root.

April shows us an awa root.

 

Awa is not regulated like alcohol or marijuana. April said there were kava bars in most areas, but not in every town. Their customers were mostly working men who come in for a shell after work to ease soreness and relax at the end of the day. They had no other customers while we were there–maybe we scared them off. We thanked April and Josh and went back to Camp Aloha.

We had a lovely evening. Joan came out and we offered her some wine and talked and talked. Casey eventually showed up, and more wine was poured. And there was more talking. Eventually, our hosts retired, we cleaned up the lanai kitchen a final time, and so to bed.

But before we begin the journey to Moloka’i, here is a photo of the amazing spider that hung outside the lanai. It had spun a white “X” in the center of its web, and it always sat right in the middle of the X, as you can see. The X consisted of zigzags of thicker white silk. I looked this up, and they don’t know why spiders sometimes do this. One theory was to make the spider look bigger to discourage predators, and you can see that this might indeed be so. It was quite large enough to discourage me.

X marks the spot.

X marks the spot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Adventures with Voodoo

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Most of my urban fantasy novel “The Obsidian Mirror” is loosely rooted in the traditions of North American and meso-American cultures. But I didn’t want to leave out all the other rich traditions of the Americas, and the one I know the most about happens to be Vodún—more commonly called Voodoo (which is a Hollywood invention).

You might ask, why is a nice middle-class white woman who has never lived in the Caribbean interested in Vodún? Excellent question! The answer is: I don’t know. I was just interested. I started reading about Vodún sometime in my early twenties. I can’t remember the names of most of the books I consumed, but the best by far was Wade Davis’ “The Serpent and the Rainbow”—which was not much like the later movie of the same name.

Davis was a Harvard botanist who was encouraged by an older professor to go to Haiti to collect plants that might have psychopharmacological value. Haiti offers a wealth of plants known to have potent effects, mostly toxic, that had never been scientifically analyzed. Haitian mambos and houngans (Vodún priestesses and priests) reportedly used things known as “zombie cucumber” and “zombie powder” to create zombies by raising the dead. Davis was supposed to go and see if these things actually existed outside the realm of the movie theater.

They did, and Davis found them. He also demonstrated that zombies were quite real. Ill-intentioned houngans used a blend of various poisons to put victims into a deathlike sleep, where heartbeat and respiration were slowed to imperceptibility. Bodies in rural Haiti are not embalmed, but buried as quickly as possible to avoid the inevitable rapid decay in a hot, wet climate. The houngan and his helpers would disinter the “corpse” the night of the burial, then allow the victim to partially recuperate. The victim was kept in a state of drugged compliance with the use of poisonous fruit—the “zombie cucumber.”—and used as the houngan’s slave labor.

However, what I principally learned about Vodún is that it is a perfectly legitimate religion—as legitimate as any other. The evil houngans and mambos were a tiny minority of Vodún practitioners. Most were in the business of healing and spiritual comfort, as is any pastor or rabbi. Vodún is a pantheistic religion, with many spirits, or loas, personifying various characteristics. There is an all-powerful single god, Bondye, but he does not interfere in human affairs, so followers of Vodún apeal to the loa, who are much more down-to-earth. Dumballah-Wedo is the father god, personified by the serpent, which is wise and all-knowing. Madame Ezilée represents sexuality and feminine beauty. Baron Samedi­—beloved of Hollywood for his gruesome skull-face and black top hat—is the spirit of sex and resurrection, an interesting combination. He is also a Trickster, like Coyote in the American Southwest or Anansi in Africa, but he is not the gruesome horror that the movies make him out to be. And so on—there’s a quite a lot of loa.

Vodún is a charismatic religion. Worshippers become ecstatic, offering themselves as “horses” for the loa to ride. Observers say it is easy to tell which loa rides each individual by their characteristic behavior. Madame Ezilée is all sensuality and seductiveness. Baron Samedi is a wencher and enjoys smoking and drinking. Afterwards, celebrants are usually exhausted and may not remember what they have been doing while possessed. Ceremonies are usually for benign purposes such as healing, celebrating an occasion–or entertaining tourists.

Well, it gets more complicated, and there are various forms of Vodún, just as there are different flavors of almost any religion. Various traditions came from different African tribes. And of course, it got mixed up with the Catholicism of the French colonizers of Haiti. But it is well established, and practiced more widely than you might think.

How do I know this? Many years ago, I visited New Orleans to attend the annual convention of the American Association of Advertising Agencies. ) I was a public relations executive, but my agency sent me to represent them anyway. I did not decline.) The meeting was held in a hotel right smack dab in middle of the French Quarter. I had never been to the city before, and was determined to see as much as I could during the time I was not attending meetings on “Maximize Your Agency Billings” or “Integrated Communications: Agency of the Future?”

I picked up a little street map of the Quarter to assist me in my ramblings. I quickly noticed the Voodoo Museum and made my way to the spot indicated on the map. There was nothing there but the usual French colonial house fronts turned into shops full of rag dolls, gold-embellished shell jewelry and “Cajun Chewing Gum.” I asked a few people about the museum over the next day or two, and finally someone knew; the museum had moved its location. I went to see it the next day.

It was a gray day, spitting down rain, simultaneously chilly and steamy. I arrived dripping wet in the marble-tiled lobby. The museum was located on the ground floor of an old New Orleans house, built around an open atrium with a garden. The lobby had been the original entry hall of the house. To my left was a reception desk, behind which sat an enormous black man knitting a bright orange and green sweater the size of a circus tent. He was chatting with a tall young white man with long blond hair. They both stopped talking as I approached and the knitting man took my fifty cents admission. In exchange, I got a little map of the museum.

I took the map and stood by the open doors into the atrium. There were exhibits in the garden, but the rain was sheeting down in buckets, so I decided to stay indoors. The young blond man walked over and stood beside me. He didn’t say or do anything, but he made me uncomfortable, and I decided to move into a small room marked “Marie Laveau Room.” It turned out to be a very small room indeed when the man walked in after me. I peered into antiquated and dusty museum cases at the unlit exhibits, usually labeled on yellowing paper in faded typewriter ink, and tried to ignore him. He showed no signs of going away, so I walked out again. He walked out after me.

Feeling quite nervous by this time, I hesitated in the lobby.  Finally the young man spoke.

“Would you like a tour of the museum?” he inquired. He had a slight accent of some sort that I couldn’t place, but he wasn’t from New Orleans.

“Do you work here?” I asked, still suspicious. He nodded. “How much?”

“No charge,” he responded.

“What do you do here?”

He nodded toward a nearby sign that read, “Psychic Readings.” “I do the readings.”

“Are you a practitioner of Voodoo?” I asked, wondering if the young man could tell me more about the exhibits than did the faded labels.

“Vodún,” he corrected me gently. The correct way to say it is ‘Vodún.’ Voodoo is only in the movies. My name is Roland, by the way.” He held out a long-fingered, slender hand. I introduced myself and shook it, still a bit reluctantly.

“Vodún is a world religion, like Christianity, Judaism or Islam,” he went on. “It’s practiced everywhere.”

“Really? I thought it was just in Haiti and New Orleans?”

“No, you can find it anywhere. Even in Israel, where I come from.” Curioser and curioser. We had a good 15-minute discussion about world religions and Vodún, and I decided he was the real goods. He knew a great deal about many different religions, and was not just jiving me. I followed him through the museum, and I had a fantastic time asking questions and learning about Vodún. Occasionally, I would express revulsion at some particularly gruesome exhibit, and Roland would shake his long elf-locks at me.

“That was then,” he said several times. “It’s not like that now.” I could only hope he was right.

At the end of the tour, my confidence in Roland’s essentially benevolent intentions had grown, and I asked him for a reading. He took me to a sheet-draped back room. A small marble-topped table with elaborate wrought-iron legs stood to one side, the kind of table you might see in an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. Its small surface was crowded with greasy Burger King wrappers and a plaster skull with a candle stuck to its dome. Roland clucked and swept the mess off the table, muttering excuses. He left for a few minutes and returned with—to my surprise—a pack of Tarot cards. I didn’t know what to expect, but I hadn’t expected Tarot, which I didn’t associate with Voodoo—excuse me— Vodún. I had never had a Tarot card reading either, and settled down with anticipation.

I don’t remember all the details of what Roland told me, or which cards he turned up, beyond The Empress, which he said was my card. Oddly, it usually turns up in my readings, so I guess he was right. (Not that I have Tarot readings frequently, but I do have an extraordinarily gifted friend who does them for me from time to time.) What I do remember is that he told me I would suffer the normal hurts and losses of life, but I would never undergo tragedy, such as the death of a child. And he also said that I should never, EVER! become involved with the occult. It would be too dangerous for me.

That struck me as odd then, and it still does. I was being warned away from the occult by the practitioner of an occult religion who was telling my fortune through occult divination. In a museum dedicated to the occult.

As I left, Roland gave me a card, where he could be reached at any time. The simple black-and white card had his name and address—which was the Divine Light Christian Mission. And I guess that was the cherry on the top of this particular experience.

I never became involved in the occult, beyond a continuing fascination in learning about it. And I have not—yet—experienced major tragedy, though I have come too close for comfort. But I had to find a way to use Vodún in my novel, and invented a mambo named Mama Labadie who plays a fairly important role in the plot. In the midst of meso-American gods and characters from Native American folktales, Mama Labadie stands out rather conspicuously. But Vodún is as much a part of the Americas as any aboriginal tradition, and if I get the chance to write another book, she may pop up again.

The Prologue & First Two Chapters of “The Obsidian Mirror”

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The Obsidian Mirror

Prologue

Sierra Carter opened her eyes. She was confused. Surely, she shouldn’t be staring at the ceiling? She was looking up at the ceiling without bending her neck backwards, so that meant…she was lying down. With her head in someone’s warm lap. A person’s face swam into her field of vision, upside down and out of focus, and she pulled her head hastily out of the lap and scrambled to her knees.

The lap belonged to a slender yet well-muscled young man who looked as though he might be Latino, with ruddy brown skin and black hair falling into his face. He wore a bright, beaded necklace. His mouth seemed too wide for his rather long face, and his full lips turned up at the corners, making him look as though he were smiling when he was not. Although his features were all slightly odd, like a character sketch where the artist exaggerates for effect, they melded together into an offbeat beauty. He did not have the dark eyes of a Latino, though; his eyes were a bright, feral amber.

He looked at Sierra with concern, frowning slightly. “Are you all right?” he asked. “How do you feel?”

Sierra stared at him, feeling as though she had wandered into some alternate universe. Apparently, she had fainted—a first for her. And just before she had fainted, what had she been doing? Oh, yes. She had been talking to a coyote…

Chapter 1

It took several long moments for it to sink in; she had just been fired. Sierra Carter sat quite still, staring at her manager across the neat stacks of paper on his desk. Mark Charbonneau gazed uncomfortably back at her, clearly wishing he were somewhere else. As she stared at Mark, Sierra’s thoughts spun around like a nightmare carousel. Round and round it whirled, to the tune of “Fired! Fired! Fired!”

Sierra couldn’t think of any reason she should be fired. She worked hard, she was smart, and she was extremely good at what she did, which was public relations. Since joining Black Diamond Semiconductor Corporation, she had successfully launched a number of products and increased media coverage by more than 20 percent. Almost single-handedly, Sierra had established Black Diamond’s proprietary silicon blend as a superior semiconducting material that generated far less heat than conventional materials. She had the facts and figures to prove her achievements on behalf of the corporation. How could they fire her? She wished the carousel in her head would stop spinning to its crazy tune; it made it so hard to think clearly.

Sierra stirred restlessly, and Mark looked even more nervous. He glanced at the box of tissues on his desk (carefully placed there just for the occasion, Sierra thought). He cleared his throat.

“I’m really very sorry,” he said. “You shouldn’t view this as being fired, you know.”

Oh, yeah? Sierra snarled silently. What would you call it?

“It’s really a layoff,’ Mark continued. He was a bland, forty-something man with light brown, thinning hair. He wore dark suits with striped ties Monday through Thursday, and on casual Fridays wore jeans that had been ironed, leaving a sharp crease running the length of each indigo leg.

“There’s been a cutback, you know, and Jenna’s making a 10 percent cut across the whole company. It’s not personal, Sierra,” Mark elaborated. Jenna Simmons was president of Black Diamond Semiconductor. Tough, petite, and photogenic, she was a darling of Wall Street. Rumor had it that Simmons was looking for a political appointment in the next administration. The news portrayed her hobnobbing with the top brass, sponsoring fund-raisers, and having her photo taken with the rich and powerful. Sierra had been responsible for getting some of Jenna’s coverage in the newspapers and on television. But Jenna’s ubiquitous presence on the Internet was largely due to Jenna herself; she was a relentless blogger, Twitterer, Yelper, YouTuber and Facebooker, and she never allowed her staff to “front” for her online presence.

“No, I didn’t know that,” Sierra commented, trying to sound cool and calm. “So was this your decision or Jenna’s?” She was only faintly interested, still trying to recover her equilibrium. But Mark visibly tensed at her question.

“That doesn’t matter, Sierra,” he said. “”But there are a few things that we do need to discuss…”

Sierra listened to Mark talk about severance packages and COBRA and outplacement services, but she barely paid attention. Her heart was racing as swiftly as her brain, trying to make sense of this new personal landscape. I will not cry, she told herself. I will walk out of here with dignity, and then I will find a better job. She forced herself to listen to Mark.

“…a security guard is on his way to walk you out of the building. Standard procedure. Please wait for him.”

Sierra looked at him in disbelief. “You’re going to walk me out of the building under guard?” she asked. This fresh humiliation threatened to breach her precarious calm. She could feel her ears and cheeks burning.

“Really, Sierra, it’s just standard operating procedure,” Mark said. “I’m sending a security officer to escort you. He’ll help you clean out your office.” He handed her a sheaf of papers. “Take this. You can read and sign them later and return them by mail.”

Sierra grabbed the papers without glancing at them and stood up. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she headed for the door of Mark’s office.

“Please wait for Clancy to come and escort you, Sierra,’ Mark said, with an air of disapproval. He steepled the tips of his fingers together as he spoke.

So the security officer in charge of her disgrace was Clancy Forrester. Perfect. She had liked the chief of security’s rangy good looks and had flirted with him on occasion during the four years she had been at BDSC. It had never gone beyond good-natured banter and a few warm glances, but she was still interested. He was intelligent, and they shared a love of nature and outdoor activities. Of course, that was all academic, given the present circumstances. If Clancy hadn’t wanted to date a colleague, he surely wouldn’t be interested in dating a colleague who had been ignominiously fired and perp-walked out of the building.

“I’ll be in my cage––I mean cubicle. Tell him to come get me there.” Sierra walked out, head high, heart quailing. She went back to her desk and shut down the computer. It was tempting to delete her files out of spite, but she resisted. She dug around fruitlessly for a box or bag to carry her few personal possessions. BDSC discouraged the decoration of office space with personal trinkets, but she did have some of her own reference books, hand lotion, a photo of her old cat Silver (now deceased), a small pothos plant in a striped pot, and other odds and ends. She piled these things together on her desk, wondering how she was going to carry them out to her car. She frowned fiercely at her small collection of possessions as if they were personally responsible for the situation. If she had realized that she was frowning, she would have hastily smoothed it away. She’d begun to notice a few lines beginning to gently score her face, tanned from many hours spent hiking and camping. Sierra had a spatter of freckles across her nose and cheeks, inherited from an Irish ancestor, straight, blue-black hair from some long-ago Indian forebear, and warm hazel eyes that spoke of the harmonious coming-together of all the different people who had eventually produced her.

After a few moments of listening to the chorus of “Fired! Fired!” still playing in her head, Sierra dialed the extension of her best friend, who worked at BDSC as a marketing manager.

“Kaylee Shore,” said the voice on the other end of the line, rich and warm, like chocolate mousse.

“Hey, it’s Sierra.”

“Hi, Sierra! Wanna go out and get a couple of drinks? I’m fried for today.”

“Yeah. Actually, I would. I just got fired.” Sierra wondered if that would put her on the persona non grata list with Kaylee. Work friends are sometimes like that, she thought, cringing. There was a moment of silence as Kaylee took this in.

“No way,” she said, finally.

“Way,” Sierra said. “I’ll meet you at, uh, where do you want to meet? I have to wait for the security guard to walk me out of the building. You know, that really frosts me. It’s public humiliation on top of getting canned.”

“Yeah,” said Kaylee. “Look, I’ll meet you at The Lion and Compass. I’ll go now. Just get there when you can.” The Lion and Compass was a favorite watering hole for Silicon Valley’s elite and charged accordingly.

“Mmmm, I just got fired, Kaylee. Maybe I ought to be watching my pennies.”

“My treat,” said Kaylee. “I like the bar there, and you meet a better quality of man. When you actually meet a man,” she added a bit wistfully.

“OK. Thanks. See you there.”

Sierra set the phone down and sighed. She suddenly wished she had spent more time making friends and less time trying to climb the corporate ladder. Her ladder had just evaporated in a puff of smoke, and she had more acquaintances than actual friends, she reflected.

A soft throat-clearing made her look up. A man in the security uniform of Black Diamond Semiconductor stood in the entrance of Sierra’s former cubicle. Clancy looked as uncomfortable as she felt.

“Hi, Clancy,” she said.

“Hi, Sierra,” said Clancy, shifting his six foot-plus frame awkwardly. “I’m here to…help you get your things together.” She noticed for the first time that he was holding a cardboard box. She felt a sudden surge of gratitude for his thoughtfulness, which she squelched viciously. Dumb broad, she told herself. Good-looking guy does some minor nice thing, and suddenly he’s a hero.

Aloud, she said, “Thank you, Clancy. I can use the help.” She took the box and began filling it with her small collection of personal things. Clancy said softly, “Are you OK? What’s going on?”

“Well, I am actually not OK,” Sierra said, with more bitterness than she had intended. “Mark says there’s a 10 percent layoff, and apparently I’m expendable.” She shoved a leather-covered notebook, gold-stamped with the Black Diamond logo, into the box, then reconsidered and flung it into the trash. She missed Clancy’s look of confusion at her words. He said nothing, but helped pack the rest of Sierra’s belongings and picked up the box.

They walked through the warren of cubicles and took the elevator to the ground floor. Sierra flushed as other employees either stared at her or averted their eyes. All the way through the marble and glass lobby, down the sweeping front steps of the main building, around the splashing fountain, out to her car (parked in the hinterlands designated for lowly employees who did not have reserved parking places), Sierra kept wishing she could say something to Clancy about how she really had been doing a good job, that she had improved BDSC’s media coverage by a huge percentage, that she hadn’t been fired because she had done anything wrong. But there was no way to do this without sounding desperate and defensive, so she kept up a line of merry repartee, wondering where her wit had been hiding all her life until this moment. Clancy smiled and laughed once or twice, but didn’t say much. When they reached her car, he deposited the box in her trunk, closed it and turned his jade-green eyes to hers, causing a slight frisson to march down Sierra’s spine, despite her anxieties. He said, “Well, Sierra, I guess this is it. Good luck.” He held out his hand. And she shook it. He had a warm, firm grip.

“Thanks,” she said. He gave her another smile and walked back to the building.

“And that is that,” she said quietly and opened the car door.

Sierra drove straight from the BDSC parking lot to The Lion and Compass. It was Friday afternoon, so the parking lot was jammed full of Beamers, Mercedes, and other high-end luxury cars. She pulled up to the valet parking stand and surrendered her slightly dented Ford, took a ticket from the valet and headed in.

Kaylee’s dark, close-cropped head was easy to spot, as she was easily the tallest woman in the room. She was in the midst of an animated conversation with another woman, and her huge gold hoop earrings were swinging as she gestured and nodded. As usual, Kaylee was wearing a distinctive necklace, a red-orange stone carved into the shape of a heart, hung from a string of amber beads—colors that were set off beautifully by her warm brown skin. When she saw Sierra, she excused herself and steamed over, somehow managing to exude righteous indignation. She threw her arms around Sierra and hugged her fiercely.

“You poor thing! What a crappy thing to happen! Did Mark say why?”

Sierra killed a few moments by waving a waitperson over and ordering a glass of Amador County zinfandel.

“Yeah, he told me,” she finally said. “He said there was a ten-percent layoff across the board. I just happened to be 10 percent of Marketing, I guess.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of a layoff,” Kaylee said, frowning. They were leaning across the table towards each other in an effort to hear over the Friday evening babble in the restaurant’s bar. “I haven’t heard of anyone else being let go. That doesn’t sound right.”

“He said it was a layoff. And they’re giving me a severance package,” Sierra said. “It’s actually a really nice package. Mark specifically said it wasn’t a performance issue and it wasn’t personal.” Her voice held the slight upward swing of a question.

Kaylee sipped her wine and thought for a moment. Her brows knitted in puzzlement. “You know, I did hear something, but I didn’t think too much about it at the time. I wonder if it’s connected somehow.”

“What?” Sierra asked impatiently. “What did you hear?”

“About BDSC hiring an outside agency. Is that something you knew about? I assumed you did, being in PR. I didn’t pay too much attention at the time.”

“Agency? You mean, a public relations agency?” Sierra asked incredulously. Kaylee nodded, earrings flying. Sierra went on, “I haven’t heard a word about it. Why would they hire an outside agency? It’ll cost them a ton of money—way more than they were paying me. That just doesn’t make sense!”

Kaylee spread her hands out and shrugged. “Sorry, doll. That’s what I heard.”

“You don’t happen to remember the name of the agency, do you?” Sierra queried.

Kaylee shook her head. “Nope. I can find out, though.”

Sierra slumped back into her seat. “Yeah. I don’t suppose it matters, but I’d like to find out. I worked for an agency before I came to BDSC, you know. I know a lot about the agencies that handle high tech.”

“You’ve mentioned that before. Called Rapper, or something? I gathered you didn’t like it much.”

“It was called Clapper & Associates. Jack Clapper was the principal. He was pretty successful but decided that to play with the big boys, he had to move the agency to New York. Silicon Valley wasn’t good enough.” Sierra stared moodily at her garnet-dark wine.

“But you didn’t go?”

“No. I was really uncomfortable with Clapper’s business dealings. I thought he was sleazy, and I know he charged clients for more than they were getting. I didn’t like a lot of the clients, for that matter—I was working on some pretty innocent things like disk drives and semiconductors, but a few of the other clients looked like fronts to me. I didn’t want to move to New York anyway.” Sierra sighed, and sipped her wine. It was redolent of wild berries and tasted of summer nights, but she didn’t notice.

“What do you mean by ‘fronts’?” Kaylee asked. “Like, money laundering?”

“Maybe. I never found out. Clapper fired me. That’s two for two. I’m beginning to feel like an albatross,” Sierra concluded gloomily.

“Why’d he fire you? I’ve seen you in action, and that just doesn’t make sense to me,” Kaylee said, a frown bisecting the dark wings of her brow.

Sierra sat and thought. Finally, she said, “You know, I’m not really sure. He told me that I just wasn’t needed in New York, but he took several other people with him who were willing to move. He’s a secretive kind of guy. I asked a lot of questions, and he clearly didn’t like it. If he really was up to something—if some of the clients weren’t legit—maybe he thought I’d expose him or report him—or something.” She shifted in her seat and sighed again. “I wasn’t actually sorry to leave the agency. But I am sorry about BDSC. I liked my job. Mostly.”

Kaylee patted her hand. “I’ll miss you, girl. We’ll need to get together more, now that we won’t be seeing each other every day.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” Sierra said, feeling a bit awkward. “We can still stay in touch.” But she didn’t quite believe it. In Sierra’s experience, people in Silicon Valley were too busy to make friends outside of work. She knew people with spouses and children, but because they were always at work, she wondered how much family life they could possibly be enjoying.

“So, have you thought about what you’re going to do now?” asked Kaylee.

“Erm, no. Not really. I’m still in a state of shock over the whole thing. Find another job, I suppose.”

“Well, I’ll give you a great reference,” Kaylee said. “I thought you did a wonderful job on the XLP-1099 launch. And I enjoyed working with you, too.”

Sierra looked at Kaylee with gratitude. “Thank you,” she said. “You have no idea how much that means to me right now.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to a new and better job!” They clinked their glasses together and sipped.

Kaylee and Sierra talked intensely for a long time, oblivious to the chatter and bustle of the busy restaurant. They talked about everything but work. Sierra realized that in the past, their friendship had been based on their common experience of working at BDSC. Their conversations usually focused on BDSC, the people with whom they worked, the semiconductor business. Now she was discovering that she and Kaylee shared many interests––a love of nature and hiking especially, although Kaylee thought that camping was going too far. Bathroom facilities that included hot showers and excluded quantities of biting insects were one of life’s fundamental requirements, as far as Kaylee was concerned. Sierra, whose mother had died when she was quite young, discovered that her friend had also lost a parent when she was a child. In Kaylee’s case, it was her father, and her mother had raised three children alone.

Eventually, Sierra said, “I think I’d better go home now.” Kaylee, who had settled in for the evening, looked surprised.

“Well, OK. Are you all right to drive?” she asked.

Sierra considered this question carefully. “Yup. But if I stay here, I am most definitely not going to be all right to drive. So I’d better go.”

Kaylee hugged her when Sierra arose from her seat “You take care, OK? Call me.”

“OK!” Sierra caroled as she walked out, twiddling her fingers at Kaylee as she left. A warm, zinfandel-tinted cloud seemed to surround her, keeping the nasty facts of her situation at bay. She retrieved her car from valet parking and headed home. She avoided the freeway, sticking to surface streets, and drove as sedately as possible. As she drove, the warmth of her encounter with Kaylee began to fade, and the many possible consequences of being fired started to clamor for her attention. By the time she reached her townhouse, the pink cloud had dissipated. She missed it.

Sierra lived in a townhouse near downtown Sunnyvale. The commute to and from work was quick. It was also close to the commuter railroad that went from San Jose to San Francisco. She loved taking the train to San Francisco on weekends, roaming around the city by bus, tram and cable car. She even loved the sound of the trains at night. The wail of the horn, the thrumming of the tracks, seemed like a call to adventure as she lay in bed waiting for sleep to come. No adventure had actually happened to her yet, but it was the promise, the possibility, that was exciting.

Sierra parked her car on the street in front of her townhouse. Because Sierra had turned her garage into her silversmithing workshop, her car and her garage had never been formally introduced. Leaving her box of possessions from the office in the trunk, she groped in her purse for the front door key. Her front door light turned on automatically as she approached, illuminating something lying on the doormat.

Sierra blinked down at it, at first thinking that it was a dead bird. She received such tributes on a regular basis from the neighbor’s cat. But it was only a single, large feather. It was a brilliant blue-green and seemed to sparkle in the lamplight. As Sierra bent to pick it up, she heard a chime, like the note of a crystal bell, struck once, shimmering on the warm air. But when she straightened up, feather in her hand, the sound dissipated. She shook her head, unlocked the door, and went in, tucking the sparkling feather into her purse.

Chapter 2

When Sierra unlocked the door, there was a moment of anticipation, as she expected a greeting from her ancient tabby cat, Silver. And a moment of sorrow as she recalled that Silver’s ashes currently resided in a pottery jar on the mantelpiece. But she wasn’t ready for another pet—or the extra expense that went with pet ownership.

She sat down at the kitchen table and looked around her. The tidy kitchen with its granite counters and cobalt blue accents, usually a source of quiet pleasure, only reminded her that she needed to find another source of income to be able to pay the mortgage. She sat quietly in the darkening room. Her mind, like a stubborn moth against a windowpane, repeatedly battered itself against the question of “Why?” There surely had to be employees at BDSC who were less valuable and less productive than Sierra Carter.

Sierra wondered if it really was something personal. She had always wondered where she stood with Jenna Simmons. Sierra had been careful to get as much personal publicity for Jenna as she possibly could, knowing the woman’s appetite for the limelight. But Jenna, who displayed a beautiful grin and sparkling charm in front of a reporter and a camera, was an enigmatic personality when the world wasn’t watching. As outgoing and personable as Jenna seemed to the world, her eyes were always cold. They were odd eyes; most people with blue eyes had depth to them, with rings of darker color and tiny lines radiating out from the pupil like miniature sun flares. Jenna’s irises were a flat, cornflower blue, like the painted eyes of an antique doll. They conveyed no emotion, and Sierra—who was good at reading people—found Jenna impenetrable. Sierra had never known if Jenna was pleased with her performance or not—but as no one else seemed to know what Jenna was thinking, she had refused to fret about it.

Maybe this was all Jenna’s idea, Sierra thought. Jenna took advantage of this layoff to get rid of me. Personally. Does that even make sense?

Eventually, her mind wandered and Sierra found herself thinking about dinner. Her stomach rumbled, and she regretted not stopping for take-out food on the way home. Rummaging in the refrigerator, she found leftovers that weren’t discernibly moldy, heated the food in her microwave, and ate without tasting a thing.

After dinner, Sierra washed the few dishes she had used. Not in the mood for starting an online job search, she sat down again at the kitchen table, enveloped in gloom. Then she remembered the feather she had picked up on her doorstep. Eagerly grasping at something unconnected with BDSC, being fired, or finding another job, Sierra took the feather out of her purse and examined it more closely. It was about four inches long, and the greens and blues were intensely brilliant. The feather sparkled as she turned it in the light as though it were frosted with silver dust. She located a magnifying glass in her odds and ends drawer and looked closely at the fine barbs. Even under magnification, she couldn’t see what made it sparkle. She really didn’t know what to do with it, but it was too pretty to throw away. Finally, she took it upstairs to her bedroom and tucked the feather into a small, carved wooden box where she kept an assortment of random things she liked—colored rocks, a green glass frog, a ruby crystal drop from a chandelier that she had found in an junk shop.

Then she went to her garage workshop. The garage was full of storage boxes, tools and equipment, leaving no room for the car, which took its chances on the driveway outside. Sierra’s secret passion and ambition was to design and make jewelry for a living. As it was, she sold enough at art fairs and the occasional gallery to pay for tools and materials, but it was her public relations work that paid the mortgage. She never mentioned this particular ambition to anyone at BDSC. Anything less than the appearance of complete devotion to BDSC and all its works was decidedly career-limiting. She firmly believed that someday she would make the leap, but in the meantime she took courses in jewelry-making techniques, designed her pieces, and sold them when she could. At least I’m doing something about my dream, she often told herself. It’s not just wishful thinking.

Overnight, a small colony of wispy little spiders had constructed a web between her workbench and a bookcase where she kept her design journals and reference books. Sierra shooed the spiders away from the web and ruthlessly tore it away with a rag. She was sure the spiders were glaring at her from the sidelines as she destroyed their handiwork, but she told them firmly that they were lucky she didn’t squoosh them as well. Spiders gave her the willies, but she tried to avoid killing them, although she drew the line when it came to black widows in her house. Even the most dedicated arachnophile would kill a poisonous spider lurking in one’s lace unmentionables or the cereal cupboard.

Sierra pulled out a package of silver clay and opened it. Inside was a small gray lump that looked exactly like something dropped from a potter’s wheel. Sierra knew that when it was shaped and fired in her kiln, the gray clay would be transformed into pure, shining silver. It was easy and fun to work with, but she used it in her designs sparingly, as it was expensive. She rolled out a flat sheet of the clay. When she had a smooth, even surface, she pressed a small leaf firmly into the clay. Removing the leaf, she examined the impression critically. It was a clear, crisply textured copy of the original.

Humming to herself, she carefully removed the excess clay. She smoothed tiny flaws from its surface with a rubber tool, and put the leaf aside to dry. She planned to fire the leaf in her kiln and set it with garnets to look like berries. It would make an attractive pendant.

Once she set the leaf to dry, Sierra picked up a partially constructed bracelet. She previously had fabricated the settings from sheet silver and flat bezel wire and linked them together with jump rings, soldering the joint of each ring closed. The silver was dulled from the acid bath where she had placed the bracelet after soldering the pieces together. The heat of the torch had blackened the metal; the acid bath removed the black “firescale,” but it also dulled the surface.

Now she began to set the stones, each an irregularly shaped cabochon of turquoise. Using a bezel tool, she folded the silver bezels against each stone, testing the edge with her thumb to assure a good fit. Once the bezel lay smooth and tight against the stone, she burnished the edge until she could no longer feel the edge of the bezel against the stone. The work went quickly, with none of the problems that sometimes arose—too much bezel and not enough stone, or cracking a soldered joint. Each bezel folded sweetly against the turquoise, and the bracelet was soon finished, except for polishing—the final step. She dropped the bracelet into her polishing tumbler to await the next full load.

Sierra abruptly realized she had not thought about being fired once during the past hour or so. In fact, she was feeling distinctly better, for no good reason. It was getting close to her usual bedtime, but she certainly didn’t have to get up early, and she wasn’t tired. She cleaned up her workshop and returned to the kitchen. Feeling somewhat at loose ends, she poured a glass of wine and went to the living room to watch television.

“…against recycling, Mr. Fanshaw?” a sleekly groomed man was asking, peering earnestly into the camera and not at his interview subject. The scene shifted to a round-faced man with a disgruntled expression. With his pursed little lips and frowning brow, Sierra thought he looked like a large baby about to start a tantrum. A tag at the bottom of the screen read “Charles G. Fanshaw, Citizens Against Recycling.”

“It’s an outrage!” the round-faced man said, in an aggrieved tone. “I’m not going to separate my glass from my plastic and my paper from my metal. I’m not a garbage man! The whole idea is an imposition on a free people!”

The camera shifted back to the reporter. “But what about the landfill problem, Mr. Fanshaw? Or the masses of waste twice the size of the continental United States floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?”

Fanshaw sneered. “Have you ever seen this mass of waste in the Pacific Ocean?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course you haven’t. You haven’t ever seen a unicorn or Santa Claus, either! Urban myth, that’s what it is…”

Sierra switched channels, shaking her head. Idiot, she thought. Acting like a baby just because he’s supposed to recycle his trash. I don’t know why I ever watch that channel, anyway. She found another news program and sat back to watch.

“…building several new nuclear power plants over the next five years.” The reporter was a dark-haired woman with enormous blue eyes, fringed with mascara-laden lashes. “We go now to Ted Rasmussen, who is speaking with a representative of the Department of Energy.” The scene changed to show a boyishly tousled young man with a microphone, standing next to a silver-haired man in a dark suit. “Ted Rasmussen here,“ said the young man. “We’re talking with Fred Channing, the DOE’s Assistant Undersecretary for Alternative Fuels. Mr. Channing, you were just saying that these new nuclear power plants will meet our country’s energy needs for decades to come?”

The camera full on him, Channing smiled, revealing gleaming white teeth. “That’s right, Ted!” he replied enthusiastically. “These power plants will free this great country from reliance on foreign oil. Nuclear power is clean, it’s cheap, and it’s safe. The President is very clear about the direction we need to take with energy in the future, Ted…”

Sierra addressed the television aloud, fuming. “What about the nuclear waste, which will be deadly for hundreds of thousands of years? What is wrong with these people? No one seems to be paying attention here. We’ve got a PROBLEM, and no one is doing anything!”

Realizing that watching the news was just adding to her anxiety level, she switched it off and went upstairs to bed. Lying awake in the dark, she tried not to think about getting fired. She tried not to think about looking for a new job. She tried not to think about continents of floating plastic, or about nuclear waste. She tried not to wonder why so many people didn’t seem to see what was happening right in front of their eyes, as the wild places of the earth vanished. She was not entirely successful, but eventually sleep claimed her.

Sierra dreamed about her mother, who had died eight years previously. They were walking together on the beach, and she could smell the salt spray and hear the roar of the waves. Instead of shells and dried-up kelp bladders strewn on the sand, there were treasures––carved stone boxes, mirrors set with jewels, swords with runes etched on their blades. Her mother said, “He sent you an invitation. Did you get it?”

“Invitation?” Sierra was puzzled. “No, I don’t think so. Who sent me an invitation?”

“You have to answer the invitation,” her mother said, patting her on the shoulder as she used to do and kissing Sierra’s cheek. “It’s the polite thing to do.”

“What invitation?” Sierra asked, confused. “Who…?”

But her mother had vanished. Sierra looked down at a green and blue feather in her hand and began to cry. But then she was typing at her computer in her cubicle at BDSC, and she received an email. The email said, “Everything is not what it seems. Or nothing is what it seems. Take your pick.”

But when she woke up, all Sierra remembered was the dream of walking with her mother on the beach, something they had done many times together, and she felt sad. She thought she should call her father soon. He lived in Los Angeles, nearly 500 miles away, and they didn’t see each other as often as she would like. He was retired now, but hated to travel, while she was always preoccupied with work. Yes, she must call him soon. But not to tell him she had been fired. She knew it would worry him.

Sierra washed her face and went through the rest of her morning ritual, which had the benefit of bringing her to full awareness, as she was not a morning person. She went downstairs and stuck bread into the toaster. She shuffled to the front door in her slippers to fetch the newspaper. Opening the door, she was startled to find herself face to face with a man who had just raised his hand to knock. This left him with his fist raised at about Sierra-nose-level, and she ducked instinctively. This maneuver brought her face-to-face with an extremely furry face with a long nose and bright, yellow-amber eyes. Sierra jumped back and moved the door defensively between her and the invaders.

“Oh, sorry, Ma’am,” said the man on her doorstep. “Are you Sierra Carter?” Sierra nodded, noting that he had called her “Ma’am” and not “Miss.” Men had shifted to calling her “Ma’am” a few years ago, and it never failed to annoy her. He was wearing Silicon Valley’s standard bright-young-engineer-going-to-work uniform: jeans, running shoes and polo shirt emblazoned with the graphics from his company’s latest product introduction. What made him distinctive was the fact that he was standing on her normally man-free doorstep, and that he had a largish coyote at the end of a stout rope. “I found your dog a couple of blocks away and thought I’d better bring him back to you.”

“I don’t have a dog,” Sierra said ungraciously. “And anyway, that’s a coyote. I’m surprised he hasn’t bitten your fingers off.” Amazingly, the coyote was sitting quite peacefully by the man’s side. It looked at her with bright eyes and wagged its tail. The wag looked a bit stiff, as though it had been practicing in a mirror.

“Arf,” said the coyote. It didn’t bark. It said, “Arf.” The man didn’t seem to notice this oddity.

“Look, lady, I don’t know what your deal is, but it has a tag with your name on it,” the man said. As he bent to pull the tag forward, Sierra saw that the coyote––was it a dog?––wore a beaded collar, woven with geometric patterns of red, black, yellow and blue that reminded her of Southwestern Indian work. She cautiously bent to inspect the engraving on the silver tag:

“Chaco”

Sierra Carter

111 E. Mary St., Sunnyvale, CA

408-555-7171

Stunned, she didn’t resist as the man thrust the rope into her hand. “OK, I gotta go to work now. You shouldn’t let your dog run loose like that. You’re welcome,” he added bitterly. He turned and strode away. The back of his polo shirt read, “It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Notion!” Another unsolved mystery.

Sierra looked at the animal, which stared back with interest. It was a coyote, no doubt about it––she had seen many of them when she went hiking in the hills. It was the size of a border collie, but with a wild, sharp, un-doggie face. Its fur was thick buff and gray with long, dark guard hairs and a slight ruff around the neck. It was slender, with pricked ears and those amazing bright amber eyes, so different from the warm brown eyes of most dogs.

The coyote stood up and walked calmly through Sierra’s open front door. Sierra followed it and shut the door behind her. Part of her mind was screaming that she had just allowed a large and probably dangerous animal into her house, while another part was explaining in a reasonable tone of voice that the coyote was clearly not vicious, it had a collar on––a very nice collar––and seemed well behaved.

Upon which, her brain screamed, “Why does it have a tag with my name on it?????”

No reasonable answer immediately occurred to her, so Sierra walked into the kitchen and rummaged in a cupboard to find a suitable water bowl, reasoning that if the coyote had been running around Sunnyvale, it was probably looking for food or water. The coyote followed close behind, which did not relieve her misgivings. As she looked for a bowl, it sat on its furry haunches and watched her attentively. She found a heavy stainless steel mixing bowl, filled it with water, and set it on the floor, near the sliding door that led into her back yard. She stepped back and eyed the animal. The coyote rose and walked over to the bowl, claws clicking on her tiled floor. It bent to lap the water once or twice, then lifted its head and stared at her again, drops of water falling from its muzzle. Sierra went to her home office and sat in front of her computer. The coyote followed her.

“Let’s see what Google can find on coyotes,” she said aloud to the coyote. She wished it would stop staring at her with those strange eyes. The eyes followed her every move, as though looking for the best place to start snacking, she thought.

Several minutes into her search, she hadn’t learned anything new about coyotes. The photographs confirmed that the beast sitting next to her was, beyond any shadow of doubt, a coyote. She did find a site dedicated to coyotes with an interesting question from one of the site’s visitors:

“My sister was driving near her home in Utah, and she found what she thought was a dog that had been hit by a car. She put it in the back seat and took it to a vet. The vet said it was a coyote, not a dog, but he fixed it up and she took it home. It seems very gentle and friendly, but I’m worried. Is it dangerous to keep a coyote as a pet?”

The answer was worrisome:

“It is not only dangerous, but illegal to keep a wild animal as a pet. Your sister should not have taken the coyote home. Coyotes are wild animals, and they are not safe to keep as pets. I strongly advise your sister to contact the local animal rescue people and have them relocate the coyote away from human habitation. Coyotes who become used to humans are the most dangerous, as they lose their natural fear of humans, and are likely to attack if they are threatened or think the person has food.”

Sierra did not share this observation with the coyote. It sat there, panting gently, eyes never straying from her. She pushed her chair back from the desk, and the animal leaped to its feet, giving her an adrenaline rush. Sweat broke out on her forehead.

Aloud, she said, “What on earth am I going to do with you?”

“Well,” said the coyote, displaying rows of white teeth that seemed sharper than they should be. “You could start by giving me breakfast.”

Good Versus Evil

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I have spent many hours that might have been more productively spent weeding a garden thinking about the nature of good and evil. Like many of my species, I have questioned why there is evil in the world. (Presumably there is evil in the universe as well, but my experience is limited.)

I was brought up Episcopalian (Catholic Lite). The Judeo-Christian explanation of good and evil makes perfect sense until you start asking questions: “If God is good and all-powerful, why doesn’t He just get rid of the Devil and make everything wonderful?” That’s when Father Cummins would narrow his eyes, purse his lips and croak something like, “The Devil is there to test your faith. Copy this 500 times on the blackboard.” A few more answers like that, and I learned to shut up, which was what Father Cummins wanted in the first place.

I no longer believe in the Devil. Or Santa Claus. Or any number of other things I believed in as a child. But there are things in the world that I can only classify as evil, whether or not there is an actively evil entity behind them. Much of what I perceive as evil is unnatural: murder, kidnapping, cruelty. But there are so many cruelties that occur in nature. What a mother wasp does to nurture her babies is a living hell to the spider she catches. Is it evil if it’s a behavior an animal has naturally evolved to survive? If I were on the receiving end, I don’t think I would have any doubts about it, so maybe it’s all a matter of perspective.

And then there’s deliberate evil, committed with knowledge of the consequences and executed without the excuse of needing to do it to survive. As a child of the 1950s, I believed the brightly illustrated textbooks that told me about the beauty and natural riches of our great nation. Imagine my shock and astonishment when I discovered in my teens there were rivers so polluted that they periodically caught on fire. If you fell into the Potomac, you had to rush to the hospital for treatment because of the sewage in the river.

People were knowingly pouring poisons into the air they and their children breathed and into the water they and their families drank. I found this gobstoppingly unbelievable—and still do. Doesn’t this kind of behavior qualify as evil? Why would anyone in his or her right mind do something like this?

There’s been some progress in curbing various forms of pollution, but there are still those who try to game the rules and get away with it. It seems to be a constant battle to retain clean air and water standards, or to keep endangered animals on the protected species list. (Of course, a lot of them have fallen off the list because they are now extinct.) And don’t get me started on the climate change deniers, or the people who want to build more nuclear power plants. (Chernobyl. Three-Mile Island. Fukushima. Does anyone remember?)

My bemusement over these issues was one reason I wrote “The Obsidian Mirror.” I tried to imagine what would influence people all over the world to deliberately ignore the damage they were causing to the world, the environment, other people, their families, and themselves. It’s a fantasy novel, so the driving evil is the ancient meso-American god Necocyaotl (which means The Obsidian Mirror or The Smoking Mirror in Nahuatl). As the novel is set in present-day Silicon Valley, I devised a modern, technological way that he could disseminate his nefarious influence worldwide. (No spoilers; I’m not going to tell you how he does it.)

In contrast, my heroine Sierra loves nature and likes to hike and camp. She doesn’t want to see the wild places spoiled and destroyed. Not being stupid, Sierra is reluctant to take on an ancient, evil god—but she does.

I tried hard not to get preachy about the environment. There are lots of dramatic clashes between the camps of good and evil and a romantic subplot. And humor. I’m a firm believer that you can’t convince anybody of anything unless you season it well with humor. But the underlying theme of the book is doing the right thing for the world.

Just my little stand against the forces of darkness.

Talking Coyote? Holy Mannegishi!

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Well, I did it. I wrote a novel, titled “The Obsidian Mirror.” And, yes, it WAS on my bucket list. Now I’ve reached the inevitable next stage of writing a book; I’m trying to get it published.

But I get ahead of myself. Maybe I should explain how I came to write a contemporary adult fantasy novel, in the process becoming entangled with a talking coyote and a mannegishi. Bear with me; I will explain.

In January 2007, I finished reading a fantasy novel. I can’t remember which one, but it was a familiar scenario: armored men in cloaks riding horses and fighting each other with swords. There were also elves, dwarves, trolls, wizards—you know what I’m talking about. Not that it was a bad novel; I thoroughly enjoy this kind of story and am a huge “Lord of the Rings” fan. But I found myself wondering why most fantasies seem to be set in a pre-industrial, proto-European world with all the trappings, such as dragons and/or faeries.

Why, I wondered to myself, aren’t more novels based on American archetypes? The rich landscape of Native American tradition, the awfulness and grandeur of the Maya and the Inca, Vodun (you probably call it Voodoo), and folk tales from every region all offer an amazing breadth of ideas and potential for fantasy.

I’m not an expert in these things, but I did pick up an appreciation for Native American culture from my mother, who was an archeologist prior to WWII, specializing in Southwestern Indian cultures. My childhood home included such necessary décor as ancient pots and arrowheads, pre-Columbian art, and a skull named Yorick.

Also—for reasons that I cannot explain—I have always been interested in Vodun and have read several books on the subject, including the amazing non-fiction book “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” by Wade Davis. I had a small adventure in the Voodoo Museum of New Orleans, but that will have to wait for another blog post.

In early 2007, my freelance writing business hit a slow stretch, so I whiled away some of the hours by writing a novel rooted in American archetypes, just to see where it would take me. I went about researching the novel in the most cavalier way possible; I would troll around the Internet until I found something that struck my fancy, and I’d use it. The resulting story contains a mishmash of North American, South American, Caribbean, and Canadian folklore and legend. In some cases, I have attributed supernatural beings to one tribe that rightly belong to another. Well, if C.S. Lewis could do it, so can I.

I set my story in present-day Silicon Valley because this is where I live and work. I made my protagonist, Sierra Carter, a public relations executive because this is what I used to do before I decided I was really more interested in writing than in bugging other writers (journalists) to write about whatever doodad my clients were selling. (Sierra is not me, by the way. She’s much younger and more athletic, and she reads non-fiction more than fiction—so not me.)

In selecting Sierra’s magical companions, I knew I wanted to use Coyotl. The coyote figures in many Native American stories as the Trickster. Like Loki in the Norse myths, or Anansi in West African and Caribbean folklore, Coyote is always playing tricks, and the tricks sometimes turn out quite differently than he intends. Often, he is portrayed as a friend to people, bringing them fire from the gods or solving their problems accidentally when one of his tricks goes wrong.

This, of course, is where the talking coyote comes in. In my story, Coyotl is able to take the form of a ridiculously handsome young man called Chaco. Chaco is sweet, helpful, intelligent, sexy—and a bit unreliable.

The mannegishi is Fred, which is more pronounceable than his real name, Shoemowetochawcawewahcatoe (meaning “High-backed Wolf” in one of the Native American languages). Mannegishis, according to Wikipedia, are “semi-humanoid, being sexdactylous humans with very thin and lanky arms and legs and big heads minus a nose.” A description I read of the Dover Devil, sometimes identified as a mannegishi, mentions greenish skin and large orange eyes. Who could resist? Fred, while lovable, makes Chaco look like the Rock of Gibraltar in the reliability department.

So my characters mutinied, took over the project, and left me swimming in their wake, trying to catch up. Now, five years later, here I am, arms wide, looking for a publisher to love.

Why did it take me five years to finish, you ask? Well, I write for a living. It’s hard to write all day and come home and relax by writing all evening. The other reason is that I have a lot of interests, which is diametrically opposed to being an author like Isaac Asimov, who pretty much hated doing anything but sitting in front of his typewriter. Asimov, undistracted by external interests, wrote 515 books (not counting individual short stories, individual essays, or criticism). I, like Sierra, design and fabricate sterling silver jewelry. I have a close-knit family and circle of friends, and enjoy spending time with them. I like to travel, I sometimes paint in oils, I belong to a cooperative art gallery, I love good wines and food—oh, an endless list of things I enjoy. It’s a miracle I ever finished this book, in fact.

But I did.

Know any good fantasy publishers?