Black Dog(3)

“It’s always important,” Alejandro snapped. “All the time.”

Natividad said, “Alright,” in her very meekest tone and slid off the bed. Before she got out her maraña, she drew a pentagram on the glass of the window, for safety and peace, to help calm her brother. But she drew a mandala on the floor, too: a simple crossed circle, just in case Alejandro was right and somebody was looking for them. Unwanted attention just sort of slid off a circle. Mamá had taught her–

Natividad stopped for a second, breathing deliberately. For just a heartbeat, she could almost have believed she really was back with Mamá, out behind the main house, where the great oak reached its heavy branches out over the ring of young limber pines, twenty-seven of them, each with its trunk only a little thicker than her own wrist. She could almost believe she stood amid rich light slanting through the oak leaves, dust motes sparkling in the sunlight pouring down around her.

Mamá had planted those pines when she and Papá had first built their house in Potosi, because there was strength in bending as well as in standing firm. She said Papá and Alejandro could have the rest of the mountain, but the circle was her workshop and she wanted no shadows to fall uninvited beneath the oak or between the pines–

Natividad flinched from that memory. She would not remember the other shadows that had come there, at the end – she refused to remember that. She wanted to remember Mamá the way she had been before, long before, when the pines had been hardly taller than a little girl of five or six or seven. Mamá smiling and happy, teaching Natividad to draw circles in the gritty soil. Circles, and spirals, and mandalas strengthened with their interior crosses. She had said, “Spirals draw attention in, but circles close it out, Natividad. Attention slides off a circle. Remember that, if you ever have to hide. But then, of course you will remember, my beautiful child. You remember everything.” And she had reached out and touched Natividad’s cheek gently with the tips of her fingers. She had been smiling, but she had been sad.

“Hide from what?” Natividad had asked. The sadness worried her. She had not understood it. She remembered that now: the naivety of the child she had been, who understood already that the Pure always had to hide but thought that was just the way the world was and did not understand why that truth should make Mamá sad. Who did not understand yet how carefully Mamá had worked to hide them, their whole family. Or from what.

Or what would happen when they were found.

She would not allow herself to remember. She breathed deeply. Only after she had again locked the past in the past did she go on to borrow Alejandro’s knife, prick her finger, and anchor the mandala with a drop of her blood at each compass point. She did not remember Mamá showing her how to do that – she would not remember, and did not, focusing fiercely on the immediate present. As she closed the circle with the last drop of blood, she murmured aloud, “May this cross guard this room and all within, against the dark and the dead and any who come with ill intent.” And then she added, “And this night let it guard us, too, against ill memory and dark dreams.” Her brothers both looked at her sharply, but Natividad pretended not to notice. The mandala closed with a sharp little shock of magic. She nodded firmly to show them that everything was fine.

“The maraña,” Alejandro reminded her, not commenting on her addition. He watched her, worried. He thought she couldn’t tell when he worried about her, but she always could.

“I know,” said Natividad. She slipped her maraña mágica out of her back pocket and held it up. Folded, it was about the size of a credit card. She snapped it open and spun it across the door from top to bottom. It clung there, a tangled net of light and shadows, trembling like a dew-spangled spider web, insubstantial as a handful of light but ready to confuse the steps of any enemy who tried to cross it. Natividad didn’t dare remind Alejandro about anything in case he thought she was nagging, but she remarked to the air, “If we call out for pizza, we’d better remember to take that down again, or we’ll be waiting a long time.”

Miguel looked up, suddenly alert. “Pizza?”

Natividad made a scornful sound, pretending to be offended. “You and pizza! Anybody would think you’d grown up Gringo.”

“It’s probably genetic,” Miguel said, pretending his dignity had been injured. “It’s not my fault I got the pizza gene and you got the tamale gene. Can we order pizza if we put jalapenos on it? Jalapenos and onions and ham and extra cheese.”