From that day forward I more-or-less accepted that some fragment of the dragon’s anima clung to the skull and what skepticism I retained derived from my feelings for Yara, feelings that had magnified in intensity and scope over the weeks. I knew I was falling in love with her and love was something I had hoped to avoid – she wasn’t the sort of girl you gave your heart to unless you were looking to get it back FDA approved and sliced into patties. In many ways she was the female version of me, efficient in her cruelty where I was casual. More political and less cynical, but no less a manipulator, not someone in whom you would place your faith. I tried to equate loving her with my revamped attitude toward the skull, countenancing them both to be symptoms of mental defect, of weakness induced by exposure to a spiritually toxic environment. She was still the child-woman I had met in Barrio Villareal – I knew more about her than I had, but nothing that would alter the basic picture, and yet her flaws had diminished in my eyes and her strengths had become pre-eminent. This idealization, I told myself, was patently a distortion, a by-product of love’s madness, but I couldn’t so easily label and dismiss my emotional and physical responses to her. And, further, while I had my doubts about Yara’s sanity, her honesty, I didn’t really want those doubts to prosper.
Often I would pass an hour or two in the early evening sitting in the eye socket (the one not overgrown by vines), where I would pretend that my presence counterfeited the dragon’s missing pupil and was staring out over his kingdom, as it were. At full dark the clearing was a black field picked out by a scatter of dull, redly-glowing patches, like embers left over from a great burning whose smoky smell infused the air, with here and there the backlit, lumpy shapes of huts and tents, and silhouetted figures moving along sluggishly, appearing to struggle with their footing, as if walking in thick ash. Despite this infernal vista, my thoughts tended to be upbeat, consisting of flash visions of Yara, pieces of memory, a look, a cunning smile, a touch. One humid night she joined me there, kept vigil with me, and after a silence said, ‘This place was so much different when I arrived.’
‘Oh?’ I said.
‘There were only eight or nine people and most of them were crazy. Homeless guys. A couple of old women. The clearing was very small. Not even a quarter of what it is now.’
She left a pause and I did not try to fill it. This was the first time she had spoken in a nostalgic tone and I was afraid of spoiling the moment, hoping for a revelation. Birds rustled the foliage overhead, a last flurry before sleep.
‘It’s strange,’ she said at last. ‘I never thought any of this would happen. When I came here I was miserable, full of anger. All I wanted was to die . . . and to injure people by my death. I still have anger inside me, but now that seems irrelevant.’
She fell silent again and I felt the need to prompt her.
‘Some of your adherents tell me . . .’
‘They’re not my adherents,’ she said sharply.
‘The people down below tell me they’re here to help with the dragon’s rebirth.’
‘Did you laugh at them?’
Two people appeared to be dancing down below, silhouetted by a campfire, but I could hear no music. I felt Yara’s eyes on me and said carefully, ‘I’m less inclined to laugh than once I was.’
‘They have dozens of theories,’ she said. ‘I don’t subscribe to any of them.’
‘What theory do you subscribe to?’
‘I have no theory.’
‘But you advise them, you’re their guide, their mentor.’
Her sigh seemed to ignite a chorus of cicadas. ‘Each morning I go into that little chamber . . . you know the one.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll have a nap. When I wake I go to the clearing. I’ll see someone . . . not the first person I see, but a specific person. I’ll be moved to speak to them. I realize I have something to say, but I don’t have any idea of what it will be. The message comes to me as I speak. Usually it’s a positive message – you’ve heard me. At other times I’ll give them a chore to do.’
She reached back and gathered her hair into ponytail, held that pose for a beat, as if trying to think of something else to say.
‘That’s it?’ I said. ‘That’s all you got?’
‘I know the idea of a renewal is involved. An alchemical change, a marriage of souls. And I know Griaule is behind it. I’ve been here so long I can feel him. Like how you feel when someone’s behind you, watching what you do.’
I thought she would have a complex rap explaining the great good news coming from beyond the sky. This sketchy recital didn’t mesh with my assumptions.
‘He compels me to do things I don’t understand,’ she went on. ‘The money, for example. There’s so much of it, more than we could ever use, and I keep on collecting more. He has me meet people in the city and give them money. It frustrates me, not being able to understand everything.’
‘Who are they, the people you give the money to?’
