Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [69]
In Zuni, dreamers are said to accompany their dreams outside their dreaming bodies. Some Zuni believe that the dreamer’s breath leaves the body to accompany the dream, like a sigh chaperoning another sigh, as together dream and breath move away from the sleeper to experience the fantastic narrative world beyond. Others believe that the mind, not the breath, goes forth from the sleeping person to become the dream’s wandering mate. Both are valid—sa tse ’makwi allu’a, the dreamer’s mind leaving its flesh to range the darkness of night, and an pinanne allu’a, wherein this dangerous privilege is performed by the dreamer’s spiritual “air.” Either way, Zuni traditions about death and dying, about concepts regarding the loss of rational mind, are inevitably nourished whenever the sleeping person begins to dream.
Mary knew that night was the most fearsome time in Zuni. She knew this not because Zuni pueblo stretched like a dream of unruined land south of Gallup, but because the thing she remembered best about her uncle Clifford was his obsessive love of Zuni culture, Zuni spiritual beliefs, anything from the four-cornered world of Zuni. Like any novice who manages to teach himself about another culture, he reveled in it and talked about it to anyone who would listen. After the war tore part of his mind away, what he understood about Zuni and retained in his fragmented memory—that Kachina Village was where the dead lived, witches among them carrying on the matriarchy, for instance—he shared excitedly with his brother Russell’s kids, before he was shipped off to the ward.
—Listen up, you might learn something, he said with winning enthusiasm. He hinted that by telling them about Zuni, he was guiding them into a secret society. That each bit of lore he offered was, as the Zuni themselves would say, precious mi’le, and would serve them well in their lives in unexpected ways.
His nephews, naturally, laughed behind his back, but Mary sensed that there was maybe something true and valuable in all this Zuni stuff their nutty uncle was telling them, something not to be forgotten or taken for granted. She was reminded of this when she awakened from a dream about a witch in the form of a dripping doll who was pursuing her into a field of sharp-leaved cornstalks, until finally she could run no more. When she looked down, she saw that her legs had grown into a single limb rooted in the soil, and realized that the witch who was chasing her was none other than Mary herself. Or else a nameless girl who looked like Mary. She woke in terror, remembering the two theories of how a person dreamed.
Had her breath or her mind left her body when she had this nightmare? She might have insisted both had wandered into that field of razory corn with her dreaming self. However freaky, her nightmare came as no surprise. Chasing herself into a cornfield where she took root—wasn’t this the most thinly veiled dream she ever had?
Rising in the dark, she made her way across the room to the kitchenette where, still half asleep, she lit the gas burner for tea. The circle of flame put her in mind of a wreath shimmering on the stovetop, the wreath in turn becoming a fiery martyr’s crown. But who was the martyr if not Marcos? Not a good thing. Not what she wanted.
Water from the faucet half filled the saucepan; Franny owned no kettle. After placing the pan on the burner, she glanced down at her body, her breasts, the tuft of hair where her thighs met, her naked feet, and wondered why anybody would bother to make love with such flesh. But he did, sweetly, just as she adored his strong body. He’d been over earlier this evening, after dinner in town. They had undressed each other and, kissing, collapsed onto the braided rug. Marcos skinned his knees in the precious