Pressure Points

Myth Retold: La Loba

She is old. Past the moment when age matters and you can tell the years of a woman by the wrinkles in her face and the whiteness of her hair. Her thin frame carries skin like an oversized bag, telling of a youth that bore a strong body. Some would call her a hag and avert their stare as if ashamed of her ugliness, but her eyes mark her; black pupils rimmed gold like the sun setting behind a mountain, plunging it into darkness while the sun lights the heavens on fire.

Legend has it that she lives upon a ridge in the far western edge of the dry land, the last ridge where it is said to be the final crossing place of souls as they pass from this life into the next. The superstitious call her soul stealer, claiming she weaves a dream catcher to snatch up those who would cross over and cage them in the light of her fire. But legend calls her La Loba, Wolf Woman; collector of bones, whose place it is to gather what has been scattered and lost and put it together again, singing it into new life.

Out of the corner of your eye, you may see her, stooped on the horizon, animal skins draped across her shoulders as she searches for her bones. But as soon as you turn to look full on, she disappears from view as the mirage of a desert that holds secrets deep like the roots of a desert plant.

I stumbled upon her once when I was but a child, burgeoning over the cusp of womanhood. My first blood had past and the duties of a woman were pressing on me to take from me the freedom of the wild desert where I would roam among lazy sand dunes and the scrubby brush. My favorite time was spring, just after the rains came and the flowers bloomed brief and beautiful. But it was autumn now and heat dried my skin, making me feel I carried with me a shriveled bag of bones. It seemed as if my whole world had been shattered, like I could never go on so lost from what I was before.  This was my last venture to the desert as my father forbade me from ever going again, saying it only held evil intentions for a young woman wandering alone.

This time, I was determined to spend the night, something I had never prior dared to do. The pack on my back held food for two days and all the tools I would need to survive the desert. My walking stick beat a taboo on the hard ground between shrubs, a warning to rattlesnakes that I shared their breathing space. I neared the western ridge just as the sun set and twilight, that mysterious time when the earth is neither asleep nor awake, had settled hot and dusty over everything.

I like to think that I first saw her then, her body a ghost whisper as she wound up the hill. I think I saw her far before then, though I realize now that I never really saw her because I was never ready to meet her where spirit drinks from the primordial river of wilderness.

She paused and I stared up at her. When she finally spoke, the world had gone dark, though I could see her like it was daytime still.

“My daughter,” she called. Her voice was soft but it beat in my eardrums clear and loud. “I have been waiting for you. Come, now is the time, for I have gathered the last bone.”

She turned and we shifted together in silence over the ground like sand in an hourglass. We reached her dwelling place in a shallow cave below the top of the ridge where a fire merrily burned. The dancing flames cast shadows that told the story of the desert in the swift foot of the wolf as it hunted jackrabbits. I was mesmerized until she gently tugged my sleeve, motioning me to a place in front of the fire pit. There, a circle was brushed away and in the sand lay the skeleton of a wolf, each piece laid out with a creator’s precision. Bending, she placed the last bone, a small thing, near the back leg. She stood beside me and her body was warm against the shiver of the desert’s night.

“Now daughter, you must sing,” she said.

I bowed my head and studied the scruff of my boots. I wanted to weep from the well of my soul, for my song had long since slipped away unnoticed, gone to the place where I couldn’t reach. “Alas Mother,” I said, “I have no song to sing.”

“Where is your song, then, daughter?”

“I have forgotten it.”

“Oh daughter, it is not gone, only buried in the sand like these bones. You must find it again, for it is waiting to be gathered and made whole.”

She knelt with me beside those bones bleached white by sun and corroded by air and water. “I will begin, but it is you who must finish.”

Before I could protest, she began a low murmur that sounded not at all human; it was the wind moaning across the sand, the rustle of the shrubs as animals snuck through them. It was pouring rain and the raging rivers of the spring. It was the rising sun and the setting. It was joy and sorrow, death and life. Eternity and nothingness. I tried to sing along and my voice cracked. So I closed my eyes and sang a mourning song to my childhood. Soon, it turned forward to miracles of womanhood, of loving a man and bearing children, of nurturing the lost and remembering Mother Earth.

When I opened my eyes, my voice flowed out and carried me with it. The bones were shaking and I saw sinew thread its way between them. I saw the ripe red and blue of veins weave throughout the body. I saw fur rise up, covering the bones until not one remained in sight. I felt the beating of the heart in my chest as the wolf lifted its head and stared at me with yellowed eyes. My mind tried to fear, but the woman would not let me, for she held tight my hand as I sang. I didn’t notice when she had stopped. I only knew that the song must go on until it was done. I sang and the creature breathed. The wolf stood, looked at us and bounded off into the darkness.

The next thing I knew, I was waking as if from a deep sleep. To the east, the sun frosted the sky orange and pink. The woman was gone, as was the fire. Only the circle remained and the imprint of wolf paws in the sand. I looked to the sun, squinting as my eyes sought truth over the desert, for I knew that somewhere a wolf was running and she was a woman.

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