Bone Dance

“Oh,” I said weakly. “Well, of course.”

“I’m glad you think so,” said Frances. “But you could be a little more help to the rest of us.”

“What’s the use of having a god in the machine if you don’t holler for it to come out now and then? Sher, if the Hoodoo Engineers are more than a communal living experiment — are they?”

“Finish your sentence,” she said harshly.

“Can they mess with the weather?”

“It’s slow.”

“And can you ask the loa for favors, and do they deliver?”

“Santos, Sparrow, what—”

“Will they, for instance, provide a well-timed, incredibly melodramatic wind storm in the right place, if asked nicely?”

Sher was still staring at me, but Theo whistled, and said, “Far out! You could maybe even make it work. Except — how much time do we have?”

“A whole day,” Sher said dryly.

“Bummer. I couldn’t mount a windmill up there that fast without a dozen people. And you’d be able to see it from Ego, anyway.”

“So we need a really small windmill,” I said.

Theo shook his head. “Then you lose vane area. You’d need a tornado—”

“If we’re asking anyway, why not ask big? Let me think.” I rubbed at my forehead with both hands. “If — if we got the wind… we’d want an eggbeater turbine, the kind with the spin around the vertical axis, and we’d have to mount it… Chango, we’d have to build it first, because I don’t know where we’d find one.”

“New Brighton, Hopkins, or Saint Louis Park,” Frances said.

“What?” said Theo and I, more or less in unison.

“Honeywell was building Darrieus turbines for the Army, to power mountain listening posts. The eggbeaters, right? Carbon fiber and plastic, and small, to avoid flyover detection. I can tell you where the plants were. Better yet, I can show you.”

I looked at Theo. “We’ve had an eggbeater turbine in the neighborhood all this time?”

“Somebody might have already hauled ’em away,” Theo said reluctantly.

“If we’d known about ’em, we would have. Can you make it work?”

“If we can find one,” he said. “If I can get it mounted… Sher, does it mess with the symbolism if I borrow some stuff from the Underbridge?”

“Hurrah for Tom Swift and his chums,” said Frances. “Now, what about Worecski?”

“I don’t know. That’s not my specialty.” I turned to Sher. “What do you use to contain a spirit?”

Sher thought about it. “A govi. A soul jar. People who think they’re under hoodoo attack have the houngan bottle their spirit and keep it safe for ’em. I think it’s bullshit.”

“Well, you know my views on the subject.”

She flushed. “Thanks.”

“No, my views are that I haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on, so I’ll try whatever anyone else thinks will work.”

“I don’t know if it’ll work. I don’t know if we have time to make one. Shit—”

I put out my hand and touched hers. “Oh, come on. Maybe I’ll be reincarnated.”

“I hope not,” she snapped, and stalked off across the town circle.

“I’d better get going,” said Theo. “I have to start gathering up gear. Can you spare Frances to help me hunt down the turbine?”

“Wait a minute,” I said, startled. “We haven’t—”

“Yeah, we have. Sher’s gone to do the research for her part. I have to go do mine. I mean, it sounds like we’re short on time.”

“Theo, if… Look, something’s going to go wrong. Maybe everything. You stand to lose a lot if any of the pieces fall on you. I think you should stay out of it.”

“I’ve already lost a lot.” His good-looking face had a set, hard look that I hoped wasn’t permanent. “I want a chance to get it back.”

“This may not be any chance at all.”

“You want to do it instead?”

He had me. And he knew it; I saw it in his eyes. “This is not The Magnificent Seven, Theo. This is real life.”

“Is it? You make it sound like A Fistful of Dollars. Go ahead. Tell me you’re go

I had to drop my eyes from his. “I can’t. I don’t know how to be in two places at once.”

“So you need me to do the work in the Gilded West. Somebody’s got to, and I know how.”

Of course; it needed doing. Theo, who didn’t seem to have a religion, had always lived by the principles of this one.

“Just… ye gods, Theo, just stay away from Ego.”

“I’ll try,” he said. Then he clasped my hand quickly and headed off in the direction Sher had gone.

Which left Frances. “What shall I do, boss?”

“Help Theo find a turbine, I guess.”

“And then?”

“Come back here.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

I didn’t, either. “Why the hell do people have friends?” I burst out.

She didn’t misunderstand the sentiment. “As I’m sure Theo would say, it’s a bummer, man. But you can’t keep us from our future any more than we can keep you from yours. Place your troops.”

I sighed. “I’d feel better, actually, if you could stick to Theo. He’ll need help with the installation, and if he gets in any trouble—” I shrugged. “He’s not exactly John Wayne.”

“Luckily for you, neither am I; John Wayne was an actor. All right, I’ll be pit bull for Theo. Which means, I think, that this is good — pardon me, au revoir.”

“You won’t be back?”

“We’ll send word if we find the turbine. But if we do, I think we’d best go straight into town with it.”

She stood gravely in front of me for a moment; then, lightly, she put her arms around me and let go again. She looked to the sky and said fiercely, “And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day.”

Then she left.

It was Saint John’s Eve; it was my birthday; it was, whether I was prepared or not, whether I liked it or not, the day of my introduction to the master of my head, my mait-tete, my patron in the system.

I was lying blindfolded in a room, not my own. I hadn’t had anything to eat all day. I was wearing white. I knew that because I’d put it on myself, on Sherrea’s instructions. I knew about electronics. I knew nothing about the soul. I could only follow instructions.

Outside, the drums were playing, and had been for an hour.

I heard footsteps, several, and felt hands on my shoulders and under my knees. Whose hands? Oh, little gods, big gods, whose hands were they, that I was giving myself into? I could pull away, I could yank off the blindfold, I could say no. Sherrea hadn’t lied to me this morning: I could say no.

I jammed the syllable back down my throat until it was less than a whimper, only a tautness between my lungs and mouth. I was lifted up and carried outdoors, into the hot, windless air and the endless chirring of crickets. The drums wrapped around me like fla

My attendants set me on my bare feet suddenly, with a bang, and I staggered. I was on grass. I smelled candle wax and burning wood and people. I was held by my upper arms on both sides and drawn forward, and gripped and drawn forward again. I was being passed, I realized, down a double row of hands.

They weren’t strangers. None of the people who participated, who moved me from this point to the next one, would be strange to me. Josh would be here, whose hands had held my life and not dropped it, and given it back to me for free. Kris might have just passed me on, dirt under her stubby nails, teeth flashing in a firelit grin. LeRoy, who had picked me up broken and delivered me here, and Mags, who had fed and clothed me. These were the people who had lifted and carried me from the old condition of my mind to the current one. I could trust them to move me safely one more time.

Even under the blindfold, the light had grown strong. I heard the shook-canvas sound of the bonfire. A small pressure on my shoulders urged me to my knees, and finally full-length, facedown, on the grass. Above me, but not far, as if she might be kneeling, I heard Sherrea’s voice. It was the voice of a kick-ass bruja. My friend Sherrea looked like a waif, and sounded like a governess turned gun moll. She cried when I hurt. She was gone. This was a bruja.