La Noche de la Chankla: Cats and Wolves
Chapter 25
With Mary upon the couch in her cocoon of healing, the other brujas sharing Luna’s bed, and Enrique sleeping in his truck, having refused to leave, the little white house was quiet. Javier, secure in his bed under the covers with his shivering little tan amigo, was about to drift off into slumber when Hueso stood up on the side of the bed and began to sniff and wag his tail.
A voice calmly floated through the room to Javi’s ears, a seemingly real voice, not one of an apparition, not in his head, not like Sergio Harkness’.
“Tú tienes muchos huevos, brujito.”
The boy’s eyelids flickered open, and he could immediately see two large eyes looking at him from atop his dresser. They were bright green and shone like the moonlight that crept in under the curtains, shining at certain angles like the reflectors on his bicycle but bearing black crescents down their centers … like a cat’s. The voice, in contrast to the eyes that may have appeared demonic to some, was calm and soothing. Javi found that he was not afraid, and, as his eyes adjusted to reawakening, he could make out the form of a jaguar.
“Are you El Gato?” he asked.
“Claro,” the sleek cat replied with a flick of its tail. “Soy un brujo de Puebla. Soy El Gato.”
As Javi watched, the cat became a man, sitting atop the hand-carved dresser, a small, dark man, with long ebony hair, wearing what could only be called a loin cloth, a small pouch, and the claw of a large feline on a black-beaded string around his neck.
“Soy un nahual, y tú eres un nahual tambien, guerrerito.” Saying this, the little man jumped from his perch and came to Javi with his hand extended, beckoning the boy to abandon the safety of his bed clothes.
Hueso shivered and wagged his tail, knowing instinctively that the nahual was a friend, something in his little dog’s heart telling him so, telling him that this cat man had come to help his boy. But Javier, though not afraid of the nahual, hesitated.
“I am not brave,” he confessed. “I am not a warrior, El Gato … I am scared.”
“Tú eres un nahual, niño, y tienes la clarividencia,” the small man responded, with a look of wise compassion upon his young but weather-beaten face. “Un gran espíritu está en tu corazón. Ven conmigo, brujito. Tranformemos en nuestras almas.”
Although Javier was not exactly sure what the nahual had said to him, he got the gist and felt his confidence rise in his heart as he took the cat’s hand. They walked silently through the hall and, when they had reached the living room, El Gato stopped and went to Mary on the couch. He began speaking with her, as Javi had, and the boy knew then that the cat could also see. Taking something from his small black pouch, what Javier thought was a yellow powder, the nahual rubbed a pinch under Mary’s nose. She sneezed and then fell into a real sleep, a sleep of deep healing.
“Will she be okay?” Javier asked.
Sensing that the boy had some difficulty understanding him, El Gato replied in very broken English, telling Javier that Mary would wake in the morning “very good.” Then, leading the way to the backyard, they both found that, with the completion of the protection spell, the chill had gone, and the moist warm air of late summer had returned. The yellow grass looked almost grateful as the cat knelt in the sand and beckoned Javier to do likewise, facing him. The nahual took a small green plant from his pouch and bid the boy to place it into his mouth. The taste was strong and sour and sent electric currents of tartness down his throat and into his body. Then the brujo put his hands on the sides of Javier’s head and covered his eyes with his thumbs, before beginning a chant, the words of which Javier could not comprehend.
Without warning, the boy found himself standing in a clearing at the edge of a lush jungle. Animals … animals of all kinds emerged from the flora, gathering before him, as the chant faded off into the background. As Javier surveyed the menagerie, it parted and one lone species approached him, large, tawny … a puma. It growled and hissed at him, but he stood his ground. And then, pensive, it pounced. As he watched what would have meant certain death in the mortal world leap towards him, something held him still, a feeling that he could not disobey. The big cat did not kill him … but entered into him. He could feel its power fuse with his heart, take up residence within his soul. Suddenly he was back in the world and could hear the brujo’s chanting again, which stopped as the boy opened his eyes. He saw El Gato smiling at him.
“El gato montés! Esta es tu alma! Somos dos gatos!” the shaman said grinning.
“It is in me?” Javier asked, unsure of what had just transpired.
“No, niño, no in you. Es tu alma … your soul. It is you,” the cat explained.
* * *
Luna awoke, a feeling of overwhelming uncertainty having come over her in her sleep. She felt as if her nieto had changed, but could not place what the difference was. However, it was not a presentiment of evil, far from it, and it left her confused. She slid from under the covers, as Luz and Xochitl remained unaware, lost in dreams, and she went to the window that looked out into the backyard.
As the sand of sleep faded from her eyes, she saw what appeared to be her nieto … with a jaguar. Her grandmotherly instinct was to run to the boy and rescue him, but her reason stopped her. She thought to herself that there were no jaguars in Agape, and then Mary’s having told her and the brujas about El Gato returned to her. As her ambivalence kept her still, she watched in partial dismay and partial amazement as Javier, her only grandchild, became a catamount before her eyes and leapt over the back wall into the desert. Exasperated, it suddenly crossed her mind that she must be dreaming, but the jaguar remained in the indigo light of the moon. It turned its head and looked at her, and, when it did, she heard a soothing voice inside of her mind.
“El es un nahual, bruja.”
At that moment, she understood. El Gato had come to finish her training, the training she could not give the boy. And she stared out the window as the jaguar followed the cougar over the wall into the desert.
* * *
The big cats tore through the purple-cloaked sands, evading the yuccas and ocotillos, the no pals and the tumbleweeds. Javier’s heart raced, pounding with a thunder that made the sky’s seem weak. As they ran in the direction of the Silver Moon, the swampy air of the monsoon gave way and the chill began to return. They rushed up a hill and surveyed the indigo-lit moonscape, and that is when they saw it.
A lone figure, just a silhouette, loped across the night, a night teeming with life, but disguised as barrenness. A Two Legs. It appeared to be heading toward the town, and it was carrying something. The catamount looked at the jaguar, and the jaguar tore down the hill toward the enemy, with the young puma on its heels. The Two Legs, a nahual, but unnatural and not possessing the form it took within its soul, spied the two cats coming for it and it thought to run. It was too late, and it turned to fight.
Just as it dropped whatever it was carrying, the Two Legs was overtaken by the jaguar. El Gato sprung for its throat, but it caught the big cat by the forelegs and held it at bay. Javier, in possession of his puma soul, was overtaken with the urge to bring down his prey, and he, without thinking, rushed in to aid the jaguar, sinking his teeth into the mock nahual’s side and digging his claws into its shoulder. It was forced to release El Gato, who, wasting no time, quickly circled behind it and, before it could even begin to defend, sunk his fangs into its neck. The Two Legs howled, then it ceased to struggle and dropped to its knees. The big cats detached themselves and watched as the spirit escaped the wolf.
El Gato retook his human form, blood upon his mouth, and sought the object that the infernal minion had dropped, but he could not discern what it was and decided to take it to Mary and the brujas. Javier wanted to regain his natural form, but found that he did not know how, and he cried to the other nahual in his puma voice.
“It will come like the sun from a cloud, niño,” El Gato tried to explain, before shifting back into a cat, carrying the unknown object in its mouth.
Knowing that the Two Leg’s howl had likely alerted others, they ran again, back through the blue of night, back to the safety of Agape, where they, once again, leapt over the wall … only to find the livid scowl of Luna. She was sitting in a lawn chair, waiting impatiently, and tapping her chankla on the cement. Although she found two large felines with blood-stained muzzles before her, she was too angry to see anything other than her nieto and an irresponsible brujo.
“Javier! Did I say you could go out into the desert in the middle of the night?” she chastised, rhetorically. “And you, brujo! Did you ask me if you could show my nieto how to change and take him off into danger!?”
Shifting back into human form, El Gato bowed his head. “Perdóname, Abuela. Tienes razón. I … I … did not thinking,” he said, trying to use his broken English out of respect. He was assuredly more powerful than Luna, but she was his elder and he knew the ways.
“Javier! Change back!” she demanded.
But Javi still did not know how, and, no matter how hard he tried, he could not find the path back to his mortal self. He could see that his abuela was angrier at him than she had ever been, but he knew it was out of love and concern for his safety and he wanted nothing more at that moment than to obey her. He thought it might be better if he slunk back into the night in his shame until he could discover the secret, but, as he was about to give up, Hueso ran out to him from the open sliding glass door, darting up to his cat face without fear and licking his nose. As Javier laughed inside, his form suddenly returned to him, and then he understood how to control it, just like the sun emerging from behind a cloud, just as El Gato had said.
“Javier!” Luna chastised again, as Luz and Xochitl pushed their way through the door into the backyard, confused, having been awoken by Luna’s admonishments. But she was no longer demanding he change, and he quickly realized that all he was wearing was his chones, as his pajamas had left him when the puma came.
Xochitl, who had draped a blanket over her shoulders, still expecting the chill, quickly used it to cover him up and rustle him away from his grandmother’s ire.
“Clean up and go to bed,” Luna ordered, calling after him. “Both of you!” she said, looking at El Gato.