"Sometimes", she said, "what one mistakes for spirits are in fact men, traveling in spirit form." "I've never met such," Nuala told her.

Nuala might not have, but when she was younger, Bettina had. Many of them had been related to her by blood. Her father and her uncles and their friends, Indios all, would gather together in the desert in a similar fashion as los lobos did in the yard outside the house here. Squatting in a circle, sharing a canteen, smoking their cigarettes, sometimes calling up the spirit of the mescal, swallowing the small buttons that they'd harested from the dome-shaped cacti in New Mexico and Texas. Peyoteros, Abuela called them.

At first, Bettina had thought it was a tribal designation - like Yaqui, Apache, Tohono O'odham- but then Abuela had explained how they followed another road into the mystery from the one she and her abuela followed, that the peyote buttons they ate, the mescal tea they drank, was how they stepped into la epoca del mito. Bettina decided they were still a tribe, only connected to each other by their visions rather than their genes.

They drove to Ali Cukson-Little Tucson, a Papago village just a fraction of the size of the sprawling metropolis of Tucson some fifty miles away- and then up into the Baboquivari Mountains, a special permit on the dashboard of Ban's pickup since neither Abuela nor Bettina were tribal members. Above the white wake of dust stirred up by their wheels flew turkey vultures and Harris hawks. Coyotes watched them from the ridges, roadrunners darted accros the road in front of them, and a bobcat was startled into immobility by the unfamiliar presence of the turck before it faded away in to the brush.

At the end of their road they came to a canyon that held an abandoned stone cabin with a flood-water field, the latter overgrown now with mesquite, catlaw, creekside desert olives, and wild chile bushes. Ban parked the pick up truck and they stepped out to stare up at the cliffs rising hundreds of feet above them. Bettina hoped for a glimpse of a coatimundi, the raccoonlike animal that Ban had told her could sometimes be found here. This canyon, he told her, was one of the few places in the States where it could be found- it and the five-stripped sparrow. But neither made an appearance today. there -was only a crested caracara, floating high up on a thermal, long necked and long-tailed against the bright blue of the desert sky.

Shouldering backpacks, the started up the canyon on a narrow trail leading hrough the dnese undergrowth, flushing quail, startling the Mexican jays and phainopelplas. Further up the canyon they walked among the Mexican blue oak, mulbettry and the enormous jojoba that prospered here int he more humid narrows. They passed by puddles of standing water in the otherwise dry wah, continuing to follw it until a white-necked raven flew by with a laughing cry. Ban watched its flight for a long moment.

"A guide?" Abuela said.
Ban smiled and nodded, then led them away from the creekbed, up a steep slope, leaving the shade behind. It was hotter out in the sun, walking along the exposed slope. The bajada here was all thorn and spine as they wound their way between ocotillo, cholla, prickly pear, barrel, and saguaro cacti. But if the way grew harder, the view became ever more spectacular. They could follow the paths of all the drainages that led down from the estern slopes to emby into Wamuli wash. To the east, the sharp peak of Rock Drawn in at the Middel roase to its awesome height. They rested there for a while, drinking from their canteens, rendered silent by the panorama- even Abuela, who almost always had something to say. Finally they turned their backs on the view and climbed the last stretch to the cliffs. When they reached the thornier scrub at their base, they were a thousand feet above the desert floor, with the cliffs rising up behind them another thousand feet.

This part of their trip had been simple, if arduous, but finding I'itoi's cave was another matter entirely. They spent a half-hour searching, finding only only small overhands and caves- nothing like what I'itoi's cave should be.
"You have been here before?" Abuela asked Ban when they finally took a break.
He nodded. "But only that one time with Papa and he led us right to the cave. I thought I'd have no trouble finding it, but everything seems different today..." He shrugged.
"Y bien," Abuela said. "I've not come this far to give up now"
Bettina's heart sank. What had been an adventure this morning had lust much of its luster by now. She was hot and tired, scratched, and more than a little frustrated that the entrace to the cave remained so eluseve. Usually a foray into the desert with her abuela was a much more relaxed affair-rambles rather than such formidable treks. For the past half hour she'd been more than ready to head back down the forty-five-degree slope to where thy planeed to camp in the canyon.
The white -necked raven they'd seen earlier flew by once more, still laughing at them, Bettina decided- but its presence made Ban smile.
"I remember something," he said. "There were white streaks on the cliffs and my father led us past them".

They turned back, following the base of the cliffs, more eastward this time, in the direction of Rock Drawn in at the Middle. They found the streaks, stark against the darker rock, but dusk fell and it seemed they had to give up. Finally, Bettina thought, but then she caught the flash of the sun's last rays on a crevice in the rock, just on the other side of a large jojoba bush.

"There," she said, pointing.


The sun dropped out of sight, but Ban had marked the spot. In the deepening twilight they made their way to the tall slit in the rock. It began at waist height so they had to step up to it, then awkwardly squeeze sideways through the narrow opening.

"Wait," Ban said once they were inside.

Bettina could hear him rustling about in his backpack. He struck a match, lighting a candle, and her eyes went wide with delight. The candlelight pushed the darkness back from the opening of the cave where they stood, illuminating a tangle of offerings that hung from the ceiling above them: rosary beads, ribbons, chains with milagros and rings wound into their links, shoelaces, belts, scarves. On the floor were small statues of terra-cotta and unfired clay--oddly proportioned toads, lizards, dogs, birds--jars of saguaro cactus syrup and preserved jams, a single shoe, dried bunches of marigolds, the red flowers of desert honeysuckles, and pink fairy clusters. In little niches in the walls people had stuck bullets and shotgun cartridges, cigarettes, chewing gum and hard candy, hair barrettes, medallions and coins, Mexican pesos, American pennies, even an English pound.

The offerings reminded Bettina of a story one of the O'odham elders had told late one night around a campfire during the saguaro fruit harvest. "When you visit I'itoi," he said, "you have to leave him something, whatever you have--a cigarette, a coin, a bracelet." Then he told of a group who had visited the cave once. One of them was a Protestant priest who wouldn't leave anything because what harm could come to him, a priest? When it was time to go, he turned around, following the voices of his companions. But the darkness deepened and the cave mouth shrank until it was far too small for him to climb back through.

"Leave him something, Father!" his companions called.

But still he hesitated. The opening kept shrinking until finally he took his hymn book out of his pocket and laid it on the floor of the cave. A strong gust of air blew him towards the tiny hole of daylight and the next thing he knew, he was tumbling out into the scrub where his companions were anxiously awaiting him.

She'd repeated that story to Ban and her grandmother on the hike up the canyon.

"I remember that," Ban said. "Only it was a nun in the version I heard and she left behind her rosary."

Bettina reachd into her own pocket, looking for what she would leave. All she had was some smooth pebbles she'd picked up on their climb and a piece of candy. She doubted I'itoi would need any more stones, no matter how pretty they were with their turquoise and quartz veining, so it would have to be the candy. She hoped it would be enough.

It was hard to judge the size of the cave. As their eyes grew accustomed to the poor light, they were able to see about twenty feet ahead of where they stood, but the cave obviously went farther than that. Bettina thought of the spiraling designs of the O'odham basketweavers, how they were said to twin a much larger spiral that lay here under the Baboquivaris. She pictured its corkscrew shape, the slow coils tunneling through the rocks below her feet. In her mind, the spiral went on forever, as though she stood on the edge of a door leading into Abuela's epoca del mito, with I'itoi's lair at once only a step away and immeasurably distant.

Though the air was musky and cool, she felt a sudden flush of heat. The weight of the cliffs above pressed down on her. The slight draft that came from deeper in the cave felt like I'itoi's breath on her face. I'itoi breathing. I'itoi the Creator.

She had to put a hand out against the wall for balance, suddenly dizzy. The darkness spun and fell away. She closed her eyes and slid down to her knees.

"Abuela!" she hard herself cry, her voice coming to her as if from a far distance.

But when she knelt, it was on tough gravel and sand, not the floor of the cave, and an impossibly bright light flared red-orange against her eyelids. Opening her eyes, she blinked at the sudden, stark sunlight. She was no longer in the cave, but out on the scrub slopes of the bajada, a great-aunt of a saguaro rearing tall above her, signaling some slow semaphore to her relatives on a distant slope.

Bettina's pulse quickened with panic. What had happened to the night? Where was the cave? Where were Ban and her abuela?

Then she realized what must have happened and she grew more anxious still. Somehow she had crossed over to myth time, alone, without Abuela to help her back to the world she'd inadvertently left behind. She could be anywhen. In the ancient past when the Anasazi were first building their cliff-side dwelling, north, in slickrock country, or in some unimaginable future when human beings no longer walked the world at all.

She might never find her way back home. Everyone said la epoca del mito was a dangerous place to visit-especially for the inexperienced. Even her father, one of the few times he'd talked to her of what he called men's business, had told her he never traveled into the mysteries on his own. He went in the company of his peyoteros with Mescal to show them the way and then bring them back home when their visiting was done.

"Abuela," she called, her voice no more than a hoarse whisper, her throat tight and dry with fear. "Papa."

She wanted to be brave, but courage fled, the harder she tried to grasp it. Turning, she searched for the opening of the cave once more, but the sun glared on the towering cliffs, washing away detail in a sheen of shimmering heat waves and light. Nothing looked quite the same anyway. The coloring of the rocks. The feel of the slope underfoot. The intense blue of the sky.

The vegetation was different, too–some of the saguaro were taller than she remembered, others smaller. The prickly pear grew in changed patterns. There were no jojoba bushes close to the cliff itself.

"Por favor," she said, meaning to address the spirits of this place, to beg their indulgence and ask for guidance, but then she heard something odd.

She sat up straighter, head cocked to listen. The sound she heard was singing, a singing that seemed to be a mix of high-pitched children's voices and coyote yips. It came from just over the next rise where a flush of prickly pear clustered at the base of another tall saguaro, the same piece of nonsensical verse repeated over and over with an innocent exuberance that pulled a smile from her tight lips:

No somos los lobos
no somos los perros
somos los cadejos
cadejos verdaderos

Fearful still, but too curious now to be cautious, she clambered up the slope to peek over the other side of the ridge. Her smile broadened into a delighted grin and all fear fell away when she saw the improbable singers.

They were dogs, a small pack of gamboling, dancing, warbling beats, not one of them taller than her knee in height; six, perhaps seven--it was hard to count, they moved so quickly. That they could sing was surprising enough, but their colors were what took her breath away. Their short fur was the startling hue of Mexican folk art: a mottled rainbow of bright blues and yellows, lime greens, deep pinks, purples, and oranges. A child's palette that filled her gaze with the same potency that a particularly hot chile salsa brought to the roof of the mouth–almost painful in its intensity, yet ever so pleasurable all the same. What would such fur feel like? she couldn't help but wonder. Soft, or stiff like a terrier's?

Because there was something of a bull terrier in the shape of their heads, long and rounded like a bullet. But they weren't quite as barrel-chested. Looking more closely, she saw that instead of dog's paws, they had the feet of goats. The sound of their little hooves on the rocks as they danced added a counterpoint rhythm to their song.

Clickity-clackity-click.
We are not wolves, we are not dogs.
Clickity-click.
We are cadejos.
Clackity-click.
Cadejos, truly.
Clickity-clackity . . .

She started to stand, wanting to go down, to join them and make a joyful noise. To be a cadeja, to their cadejos, whatever a cadejo might be. It didn't really matter. She could be happy to paint her skin a dozen bright colors and dance in the sun with them.

"I wouldn't go down there," a voice said.

Startled, she slipped a few steps back down her side of the slope and turned to see a roadrunner lolling on a nearby rock. She looked around, but there was no one nearby who could have spoken unless it was an invisible spirit.

She shivered at the thought and returned her attention to the roadrunner. It was lying with its back to the sun, tail drooped, wings spread wide, the speckled feathers lifted on its back and crest to expose a "solar panel" of jet black underfeathers and skin. Bettina had seen them do this before, absorbing heat from the sun, but usually this was only in the winter when their body temperature dropped overnight. The birds used the sun's energy to warm themselves up, rather than increasing their metabolic rate the way hummingbirds or poorwills might, reducing their caloric needs by as much as forty percent–the equivalent to her skipping breakfast or lunch. In the winter, when food was in short supply for the birds, it was an efficient way to heat their bodies. She shook her head. Why was she thinking such things? She wasn't in school, or learning lessons while out hiking with her abuela. She looked again past the sunning roadrunner, out over the rough scrub of the bajada. Singing dogs were one thing–especially when they seemed so full of fun–but she wasn't sure she was really prepared for invisible spirits.

"¿Quién habló?" she asked, pitching her voice low so that it wouldn't carry to the strange dogs cavorting on the other side of the ridge. Who spoke?

The roadrunner cleared its throat.

"Are you always this rude?" it asked when it saw it had her attention.

Bettina regarded the bird for a long moment. The dogs should have prepared her for this. This was la epoca del mito, after all. The place where, according to Abuela, what passed as folktales in their world were no more than matter-of-fact occurences.

"Perdona," she said finally. I'm sorry.
"I should think so. What would your grandmother say?"
"My grandmother?"
"¡Claro! Everyone in this place has heard of her: Dorotea Muñoz, la curandera de pequeños misterios."
"How do you know her?"
"Let's say we have shared certain . . . intimacies."
Bettina's eyes widened. "But you . . . you're a bird."
"Is that what you see?"

As Bettina began to nod, the roadrunner folded up its short, rounded wings and rose onto its feet. A heat wave traveled the length of its speckled black and white plummage, heightening the greenish iridescent cast the feathers already held. Bettina found her gaze caught by the bright blue around its eyes where the heat wave shimmered the strongest. The intensity of those blue feathers brught a return of the vertigo she'd suffered in I'itoi's cave, and she had to close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, the roadrunner was gone.

A small, dark-skinned man sat in its place.
"¡Dios mio!" Bettina managed to squeeze from a suddenly dry mouth.

In any other circumstance, she would have given him no more than a passing glance. He was short in stature, certainly shorter than herself, but otherwise he could have been any middle-aged O'odham on the rez. Scuffed cowboy boots, worn blue jeans, white cotton shirt, baseball cap. But his eyes were almost black, with bird-bright highlights and circles of blue shadow, his face long and lean, especially his nose. There was a roadrunner speckling of black and white in his dark brown hair, and he carried enough weight around his waist to give him the body shape of a bird.

"Where did you come from?" Bettina asked, though she already knew.
The man smiled. "Where did any of us come from?"
"That's not an answer."
"Perhaps not. But I believe the most important questions only lead to more questions."
"Now you sound like mi abuela." Bettina said.
"A fine woman. You must give her my regards."
"Who shall I say is sending them?"
"Tadai."
"You mean Tadai Namkam? ¿Como un apodo?"
"No, not a nickname. Just Tadai, nothing more . . ."

Bettina shook her head. Tadia was simply the O'odham word for roadrunner. It was as if Bettina were to call herself Chehia. Girl. Then she found herself wondering if her present experience was like Ban's meeting with the coyote that had given him his tribal name. Perhaps now she'd be called Tadai Nankam. It was all very confusing. But one thing her fifteen-year-old wisdom told her:

"That's not a regular name," she told him.
"And yet it's the only one I have," Tadai said.
Bettina gave him a considering look. "¿Es verdad?"
"Mas o menos." More or less.
Aha. But she decided not to press him on it. She was more interested in the singing dogs.
"Why did you warn me away from the dogs?" she asked, hoping to get a straightforward answer for a change.
"Not dogs," Tadai said. "Cadejos. Weren't you listening to their song?"
Which had now stopped, Bettina realized. She hoped her conversation with Tadai hadn't driven them away. She tried to listen for some sound on the other side of the ridge. A click of goatish hooves on stone. A murmur of song. There was nothing.
"They seemed like such fun," she said, not even trying to hide her disappointment.
Tadai nodded. "But they are dangerous. Cadejos are the children of volcanoes. How can they not be dangerous with such powerful entities as parents?"
"I've never heard of them before."
"In your world they were invisible . . . and mostly forgotten."
"But why are they dangerous?"
"Bien. For one thing, they are doorways and can pull you between worlds."
"Is that how I got here? Did the cadejos bring me?"
Tadai gave her a tired look. "Either that, or you were sent here by someone weary of your endless questions."
"Now who's being rude?"
"Me perdona. But you are a most conversational child."
Again the child business.
"I'm almost sixteen."
"Ah." As though that explained everything.
"In the old days I'd be maried now, with children."
Tadai shook his head. "Children having children. What a sad world you come from."

Bettina decided she had listened long enough to this sort of talk. It was bad enough that Ban ignored her, without complete strangers voicing their opinions on how young she was. She stood up and with great dignity carefully brushed the dirt from her jeans.

"Where are you going?" Tadai asked as she started up the slope.
"Home," she told him without turning. "If you haven't scared them off with all your talking. I'm going to ask los cadejos to send me home."
"But–"
Bettina paused to look back at him. "You're the one who said that they're doorways between worlds."
Tadai scrambled to catch up to her.
"Si," he said. "But you don't necessarily get to choose which world they will send you into."
Bettina wasn't interested in listening to him anymore. She quickly gained the top of the ridge and was half walking, half sliding down its far slope before Tadai could stop her. The cadejos were below, sprawled out in repose like a pack of javelinas.
"¡Por favor!" she called to them. "Send me back home."
They rose in a wave of color, yipping and laughing, blue and green and bright pink tails wagging, and surrounded her as she came the rest of the way down the slope, arms pinwheeling to keep her balance.

"¿Donde esta tu casa?" one of them cried. Where is your home?
"¡Tu casa, tu casa, tu casa!" the others took up.
"¡Que suerte! Tienes una casa." How lucky. You have a home.
"¡Tu casa, tu casa, tu casa!"
"Somos los homeless."
"No tenemos casa."
"Verdaderos, verdaderos."
"¡Somos los cadejos!"

They ran around and around her as they yipped and barked and made a bewildering noise. Bettina grew dizzy as she turned around herself, trying to focus on one of them long enough to make herself understood. But the cadejos danced around her like so many spinning carousel animals, with her at their hub, unable to move, while they were always in motion, Catherine-wheeling finally into a blur of color and sound.

"Bettina!" she heard Tadai call.
She tried to see where he was, but there were always cadejos in front of her, yapping, chattering, laughing. The vertigo rose up again, a huge dark swell of it, and this time she didn't fight it. At least it would take her away from the blur of motion and their voices. Except the dogs leapt up at her now, not attacking, not even playing, but jumping at her all the same, little cloven hooves scattering dirt behind them, and into her chest they went, swallowed into her skin, and she could still hear their voices as she tumbled towards unconsciousness, only now they were echoing inside her head.
As everything went black, Tadai reached the place where she'd been standing.
"And sometimes they make you into a doorway," he said, but he was alone on the bajada now, Bettina and cadejos, both gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Bettina's spirit rose up from the darkness to find a hundred faces peering down at her, all of them spinning and turning like the carousel of cadejos had earlier. But slowly they resolved into two faces, Ban's and her grandmother's.

"Chica, Chica," Abuela said. "You've made us so worried. I thought my heart would stop when you disappeared the way you did."

Ban put his arm around her shouldres and helped her sit up whens he couldn't quite manage it on her own. The sudden movement made her head spin once more, but the vertigo quickly ebbed. Candlelight filled her sight, flickering on the offerings stuck into the cave's wall niches and hanging from its roof. When she saw them she realized that they were still in I'itoi's cave. So it had all been a strange dream. Except . . .

"I . . . I disappeared . . .?"
"Si," Ban said. "One moment you were here, the next you were gone."
"I thought it was a dream . . ."
"What did you see?" her abuela asked.
Bettina didn't answer for a long moment. She felt surprisingly clear-headed and was enjoying the sensation of being so close to Ban. See? she wanted to say to him. Does this feel like a child you hold in your arms?
"Bettina?" Abuela said.
Bettina sighed and looked at her grandmother.
"I met Tadai," she said.
"A roadrunner?"
"No. Yes. At first. Then he became a man. He said he knew you, Abuela. That you had been lovers."
Abuela's eyebrows rose. "Did he now."
Bettina could feel herself blushing. "Well, he said you had shared intimacies."
"I see."
"And that I should give you his regards."
"Very thoughtful of him."
"Do you know him?"
Her grandmother smiled. "I know a rather short, shape-shifting curandero whose imagination often gets the better of him. Did he . . . harm you in any way?"
Bettina shook her head. "Why didn't you come for me?" she asked. "I called to you."
"I know," Abuela said. "I heard you. But, chica, la epoca del mito, it is a large place with many layers of time and myth laid one upon the other. It could have taken me many weeks to find you. I thought it better to wait a few minutes first, to see if you could return on your own."
"A few minutes?"
Ban laughed. "Time moves to its own rhythm in that place," he said. "Half a day there can be but a minute here. You were gone no more than a few moments."
"It felt like it was at least an hour. . . ."
"It is a confusing place," Ban agreed, "especially at first. But come, let's get you outside. You'll feel better under the open sky."
He and Abuela started to help her out through the cave opening, but she made them wait until she could dig into her pocket and leave behind a piece of candy for I'itoi. Outside, the night lay dark upon the bajada, a hundred thousand stars peering down on them from the clear sky overhead. But there was no moon. And Ban was right. She did feel better now that she was out of the cave. More herself. More inside her own skin.

"We'll camp here tonight," Ban said, "and make our descent in the morning."
"Si," Abuela said. "Tonight you will rest."
"But I'm feeling much better."
"Bueno. Still, humor your old grandmother. Tell us, what else did you see?"
So while her grandmother and Ban readied the camp, Bettina sat on a blanket and related the whole of her adventure, from when she first heard los cadejos singing, to when they leapt into her chest and brought her back to I'itoi's cave.

"Cadejitos, Ban murmured thoughtfully.
Bettina corrected him. "Cadejos. That's what they called themselves."
They had been small and cute, but somehow the diminuitive felt disrespectful.
Ban smiled. "Still, I've never heard of such creatures."
"I have," Abuela said. "In Guatemala. But I know little more about them than what Tadai told you."

As they continued to talk, Ban brought out the food Loleta had sent along with them. He didn't build a campfire, but rather took a small Coleman stove from his pack on which he heated the beans and shredded meat that his mother had cooked earlier. Garnishing them with diced tomato and cilantro, he rolled them up in soft tortillas. Bettina liked watching his hands move, shadowy shapes in the faint glow cast by the stove. He rolled two tortillas for each of them which they washed down with cups of one of Abuela's herbal teas.

Though insisting she wasn't at all tired, at Abuela's request, Bettina lay down after they'd eaten. She shifted about until the jut of her hip and shoulder settled into the small depressions Ban had shown her to dig. It was more comfortable than she'd thought it would be, lying there with a blanket pulled around her against the chill of the desert night. She heard Ban settle down as well, but her grandmother sat up, a small shadow against the starred sky, saguaro uncles and aunts rising up on the slope behind her.

"Did you know this would happen to me, Abuela?" she asked.
She couldn't see her move, but she could feel her grandmother's gaze find her.
"I brought you here to introduce you to los pequeños misterios," Abuela said after a moment. "The spirits you must come to know for your medicina to be potent. But I had not thought they would take you away. I always meant to accompany you on your first visit to that othe realm."
"So those cadejos," Bettina said. "They're to be my guardian spirits?"
Her abuela made a tching noise in the back of her throat. "¿Quien sabe? They are a mystery to me."
"But–"
"Sleep now, chica. We will speak of this again in the morning. Tonight you need your rest.
Bettina thought it would be impossible to sleep, but when she laid her head down once more, weariness rose up like a swell of dark clouds.
"Ahorita," she heard a small cadejo voice whisper deep in her mind, just before she fell asleep. "Tenemos una casa."
Now we have a home . . .

pg. 153

"Still there have always been stories of los perros misteriosos among our people. A dog is never simply what we think we see. He keeps us safe from the wolf and coyote, but dep in su corazon he is a wolf, a coyote. He is the one that can walk between the worlds, who leads us in the end to Mictlan."
Bettina shivered at the mention of the land of the dead. It could seem to close on a night so dark, with her father telling his spooky stories.
Her father smiled at her reaction. He lowered his vice dramatically "Only the dog may go into the underworld and return. He leads us there, but he can also lead us into the other worlds, just as your cadejos. He is descended from the clown dog of the old dogs, as you know, fickle and unpredictable."
Bettina remembered that story from another night of story telling.
"La Maravilla," she said.
"Si. When he comes for us, we know we have no choice. We must follow where he leads."
"Now I'm scared," Bettina said. "Did los cadejos come to take me back to Mictlan?"
"No, no, chiquita. But all dogs are spirits. They carry potent brujeria, so we must always be careful in our dealings with them. Death is the gift we offer to the world in thanks for the life it has given to us, but no one should seek it out."
"All dogs?"
Her father shrugged. "You will know them when you see them, los perros misteriosos. And remember, they bring the little deaths, too: sleep, dreams, change, the step from this world into la epoca del mito. You don't need to be afraid of them, but you should respect them."
"I will try, Papa."

from "Forests of the Heart"
written by Charles De Lint
© 2000