The Fifth Sacred Thing Read Online Free Page B

Joe. For once in your life you could do something to make somebody else happy.”
    “Why should I? Would he do the same for me? Would he chant
The Communist Manifesto
to make me happy?”
    “He’s your father.”
    “Big deal!”
    Maya slipped quietly behind the tree so as not to disturb the prayers as she placed the jar up against the slender trunk. The tree was encircled with a copper ribbon, inscribed with writing in Hebrew and English that said,
She is a tree of life to them that hold fast to her
.
    “Hedging your bets, you old heretic?” whispered a crusty voice behind her. She turned and recognized Doctor Sam, one of Madrone’s colleagues from the hospital. With his mane of white hair and tufted eyebrows, he reminded her a bit of her own father in his old age, an age she had now surpassed by a good three decades. Not a handsome man but interesting, she reflected, favoring him with a smile.
    “Honoring my ancestors,” Maya said.
    “Are they impressed?”
    “Who knows? If I really wanted to placate my father’s ghost, I suppose I could burn some incense in front of a picture of Karl Marx.”
    “You
are
a heretic.”
    “And what about you? Don’t you claim to be the last godless atheist?”
    “I come for the arguments. Is the destruction of the environment the new form of the destruction of the Temple? And which tree of life should we hold to, Torah or Asherah, the Earth Goddess?”
    “And did you reach any conclusions?”
    “Nah, conclusions aren’t the point. You of all people should know that. If we ever came to conclusions, we’d lose the fun of the argument.”
    There was that spark between them, Maya realized suddenly. Could she develop a father fixation on a man twenty years her junior?
    The prayer was ending and the scroll was being replaced in the ark when the conch shells blasted forth again.
    “It’s time,” Sam said, holding out his arm. “Allow me?”

    Yemaya’s shrine was on the western slope of the hill, toward the ocean, although the bulk of Twin Peaks blocked the water from view. Madrone paused for a moment, beneath the statue of the pregnant fish-tailed mermaid, the great mother, Goddess of the Sea. She laid down the last of her offerings, a perfect sand dollar she had found long ago. It reminded her of the stone Bird had given her. Fossilized sand dollars were plentiful, but these days the cast shells of live ones were rare. It made a worthy offering. She hated to part with it, to lose a link to a memory: walking with Bird on the beach below the sea dikes that protected the outer neighborhoods from the rising waters of the ocean, the light playing on the waves, his songs in her ear, his hands smoothing her wind-whipped hair.
    The last warning blast of the conch rang out over the hillside. Now it was really time to leave the ghosts of her old losses and get on with the ceremony. “Original mother of life, first Ancestress, accept this offering,” she murmured to Yemaya. “Preserve the lives of the living. Lend me strength. And hey,
Iya
, Mama, I’m sad, I’ve lost my lovers and
compañeros
, old and new. I’m lonely. Turn the tide for me.”

    The sun was hot on the nape of Madrone’s neck as she headed back to the gathering place. To the east, shimmering waves of heat rose from the sun-scorched valleys, and ribbons of dust twisted in the air. West of the hill, blue fog lay in bands along the slopes of Twin Peaks.
    At the summit, a bowl-shaped amphitheater was hollowed out. It was filled with onlookers, but Madrone saw Maya down below, in the innermost ring where those who had a part in the ceremony assembled. Sam stood beside her, and Madrone sighed softly. He’d want to know how the birth went, and she’d have to talk about it again. She left the food from her basket at the feasting site, and joined the other two. They exchanged greetings as thefour
concheros
, bearing their shells aloft, walked proudly to the center of the circle. With eerie, dissonant harmonies, they