Tanya Keenan
Coyote’s Seduction
from “Dialogues with Animus Mundi”
Once there was a woman who walked barefoot in the desert, listening to the wind, going where it led her. Coyote saw her, walking across the rocks and sand, amidst the sagebrush and juniper and piñon, and he fell immediately in love. He set about to seduce her.
He tried everything he knew. He danced lightly on ledges, swishing his tail. He lay rabbits at her feet for dinner. She was flattered, to be sure, but not moved to love him. He tried harder. He gathered berries for her breakfast. He chased away other suitors. Still, she could not love him. No matter what he tried, she would not respond to his overtures.
So one night, alone and miserable, he began to wail. His friend, the moon, rose and Coyote poured out his love and his sorrow. The moon argued with him, asking Coyote, “Why should this woman love you?” Coyote told of all the acts of love he performed. They debated like this for hours.
Meanwhile, the woman slept fitfully, dreaming of a lover who sang to her, sometimes in sweet, sad melodies, and sometimes in lively bursts of sound. She awoke to see the full moon high in the sky. She still heard the song of her dream-lover and set out in search of its source. She followed the song across snowy mountains, and through dense, moist forests. She came to the edge of swamps. She trudged through the gutters of cities and followed the song across a frozen plain. Finally, she came back to the desert, to a canyon with red striped walls. Her lover’s voice was closer, finally. His song was so lovely and sweet, it made her heart break. Tears streamed down her cheeks for the first time. She sobbed so much, rivers formed in the dry washes, and a flood came pouring forth. Finally, she cried out to his song, “Here! I am here, my love!”
Coyote heard a voice while he spoke with Moon. He stopped. He heard it again, amid the rush of water:
“Here. I am here, my love.”
It was his woman’s voice.
He ran toward her, forgetting all about Moon –
– who knew why he left even though he said nothing –
he ran and ran until he found a canyon with water flowing, rushing madly through it. At one end of the canyon sat the woman he loved. She saw him, and wondered why in the world Coyote was there. Then he opened his mouth, and sang a song of love, and desire. He sang of survival and fire and water and wind and blood. The woman heard him and felt her heart breaking again. She had loved him all along.
***
Coyote and the woman lived together many years. She taught him how to weave, and he taught her how to rip the flesh from chickens. She showed him the cities of her people, and he showed her the badger with whom he hunted (and who sometimes was the hunted). She showed him the wastelands of her civilization’s progress, and he showed her the paths he’d made across the land, taking her across his vast range. They curled up together at night, knowing that they each must survive.
One day, the woman woke up and remembered a dream. She remembered a family, and a house. She recalled that she used to sleep in a bed raised above the earth, not in an alcove beside a wash. She mentioned this to her lover, Coyote.
“Coyote, darling, I seem to recall something. I once lived in a house, and slept in a bed, and wore clothes. Isn’t that funny?”
But Coyote didn’t think this was funny. Because he knew that the woman’s people were calling her back, back to live with them, far away from the desert, far from canyons. He nuzzled her ear.
The woman dreamed of her people and her old home for 7 nights, until one morning she awoke and couldn’t understand Coyote any longer. He talked and talked, cried and cried to her, but she was only frightened and confused. She wandered back from the rabbitbrush and sagebrush, the juniper and piñon, back from the slickrock, deaf to the voice of the wind. She came back to the cities of her people, but with a haunted and feral look in her eyes.
She is still there, wondering what she hears on the wind.
Coyote has followed her to all the places she has gone, calling her, calling her, calling her. He peeks at her from the treeline.
She sees his eyes glowing golden from the trees, and something vague stirs in her. She does not remember their life together, but her heart remembers his love and his song, and it still makes her weep and call out, “Here!”
“I am here, my love.”
© 2009 Tanya Keenan