Shaman Winter Read Online Free

said.
    Sí, he replied, accepting her. Te vas conmigo.
    She smiled. Mi amor. Tu corazón.
    She was giving her heart to him.
    Niños, she said.
    Sí. He nodded. Suddenly the thought of children was natural. It was part of her plan, and she was sharing it with him.
    Aquí, she said, and reached for the dark tripod bowl and handed it to him.
    He took the bowl and held it up in the light of dusk. It was the kind of bowl he remembered seeing somewhere, perhaps in one of the many mercados he had wandered through in México. Ah, but this bowl was special. He felt the energy of life pulse in the black clay. She was saying the bowl held their children, their future.
    Sí, niños.
    Nuestro destino. She nodded, searching for the words to convey the meaning of the gift.
    Sí, nuestro destino. He smiled. Ah, the bowl held the dream. Their dream. Dreams of things to come.
    She pointed north. Nuestra tierra.
    Sí. La Nueva México.
    Then she pointed south. Tula.
    Ah, Tula, he repeated. He had been to Tula a few years earlier. It was the sacred city of the Toltecs, that civilization of ancient México that preceded the Aztecs. In dreams he often saw the ruins of Tula, and now he had met and fallen in love with a woman who carried a sacred bowl from there.
    He looked at the symbols engraved on the outside of the bowl. There was a pattern there, he was sure, but he couldn’t read the glyphs. He was sure that it must be a bowl the priests of Tula had once used in their ceremonies. A peaceful feeling emanated from the bowl.
    He gazed on Owl Woman’s lovely face, a classic face of Indian beauty. Was real love between a man and woman always like this? He felt he had entered her and remained in her. Perhaps it was the blood, the seed deposited, the soul of him already growing into hers. Now both were contained in this magic bowl. Perhaps it was her magic, the sureness in the way she had come to him and given herself to him. The way she spoke of their life together as if they had known each other a long time.
    Mujer del Tecolote, he said. Owl Woman. The bird of wisdom of the ancient Greeks. For the Indians of México, the owl was the bird of the shaman. Only the shaman dared speak to the owl. The shaman could take the form of a coyote, jaguar, or owl. This is the way they traveled, the way they came to power. The owl crying in the bosque could be a shaman.
    Sí, she replied and pointed at the glyph of an owl on the side of the bowl. She moved her finger. Next to the owl, the horns of a bull.
    Tu eres Vaca.
    Andres laughed. Sí, Vaca! This was incredible!
    Long before the Spaniards reached the New World the Toltec priests who carved this bowl had known he would come to join his blood to the blood of this woman. The bowl held their dream and destiny. Andres Vaca was destined to be here in 1598 on the banks of the Río del Norte, waiting with the expedition of don Juan de Oñate to travel north, joining his destiny to that of Owl Woman’s.
    But there were no bulls or cows in the New World before the Spaniards came, he thought. How could the priests, the ancient carvers of this calendar of dreams, have known?
    Es un sueño, she said, reading his thoughts.
    La vida es un sueño, he repeated.
    Dónde aprendiste hablar español? he asked her.
    Hablo sueños. I speak dreams, she replied, smiling and leaning close to him, touching her forehead to his. A current passed through them, a current as exciting as the physical love they had just shared.
    What a gifted woman, Capitán Andres marveled as Owl Woman rose and slipped into her soft buckskin dress.
    Calendario de Sueños y de Paz, she said. Together they held the bowl, their fingers touching.
    She spoke dreams, she passed the dream to him; she was the keeper of the Bowl of Dreams, visions of the peace to come over the land and its people.
    Her dark eyes carried a message of love as she leaned and kissed his lips softly, a kiss as warm and sweet as