The Lady of the Sugar Skull Mask.

The full moon led the way across the tree dotted plain. The horse’s hooves bit into ground, kicking up loose mud as I rode on.

‘Go North” the curandera had said.
“North? ” I had asked perplexed.  No stars to guide one; not that I could steer by the stars anyway. The sun had set hours ago. Which way was North? Her outstretched hand pointed out to the dark horizon. “North”. 

Surely, it had been the flickering light of the candles in the culvario that had caused her silhouette to dance around the edges so, I remember thinking to myself , nervous; the woman with her long white hair in her long white shift like robe.  The Stone altar behind her had a shrine with niches. Each niche held a candle, each flame steady in spite of the wind…

The wind was cold, I felt hot; the horse sweating beneath me. I held onto the reign with my right hand, while in my left I gripped tight the cloth covered object she had given me. It was cylindrical and fit into my grip, like a baton. I was not allowed to see it till I had reached. Just where was, ‘reached?’

My search for my sister now drove me. I wouldn’t have normally sought out a traditional healer from a culture so alien to me. I knew nothing about these people but my sister had crossed the seas to this little town following clues to an ancient site that she had insisted held her destiny. Ancient sites. Destinies foretold by candles and crystal balls…I had snorted to myself. Hocus pocus for the illiterate. Only, my sister wasn’t illiterate, she had majored in Mexican Archeology. A safe enough subject our family had thought, till she had met up with Juan.

Strangely, the curandera had not been surprised by my presence.  “I would like a limpia” was what I had to say to her to gain access; as instructed by the townsmen. I had obeyed. A Mexican Spiritual Cleansing ritual was the last thing I needed, but questions to where my little sister was, was more pressing.

“Come into my capilla,” she said after a long silence during which her eyes burned into mine, extracting everything there was to know about me. Stop it! I chided myself and my over active imagination. I may not have understood all that she said, but could guess what the rectangular underground room was with the images of saints and gods standing over baskets of herbs and bones while candles of multi colors decorated a central block of stone; her prayer room. Everything in me wanted my legs to carry me out of here as fast as they could, jump into my car and race off down the road in a cloud of dust, never to return. But my feet wouldn’t budge; they were bolted down as were my arms beside me. Smoke rose from her ministrations, clouding the room and I would have coughed, if I could have moved.

I tried to keep everything out of my thoughts except my sister’s face and why I was here. I had been told there were good healers and bad, witches; I couldn’t tell the difference.  What had Sophia got herself into?! 

Now the rhythm of the horse, loaned to me by the curandera with a cryptic, “don’t worry, she will return to me when you don’t need her any more” brought me back to the cold of the night; the animal seemed to know where ‘North’ was, its steady gallop reassuring yet frightening in its surety. It halted with a loud neigh under a tree at the edge of an open field. A warning? A signal?  This place was another calvario, a spiritual portal. This much I did know from Sophia’s notes. Notes from the tattered eared, much thumbed leather bound note book in her knapsack which had been quietly handed to me by a child in town. The child had run away before I could ask her any more.

Two sleeping forms lay beside the altar.  They seemed to hug each other. I uncovered the baton in my hand; it was a candle as expected. The watery light of the moon revealed more - black, with a skull carved into it. I almost dropped it but remembered the stern caution of the woman. I lit it with the match she had provided me and by its light, saw the face of one of the sleepers – Sophia! Her open vacant eyes showed me my search was over; she had met her destiny. Juan lay face down beside her, his arm protectively around her.

Numbed with shock, I turned slowly when a woman in a sugar skull mask stepped out from behind the tree – long white hair and white shift…and through the corner of my eye, saw one of the still forms shake off the embrace and rise up.

By Susy Matthew

2019