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THE BOX

After dinner, Vida takes the box from the shelf in the bedroom closet. Because she has handled the package with great care over the past eleven months, the yellow paper and blue ribbon look pristine.

A free end of ribbon from the bow passes through a paper-punch hole in one corner of a four-inch-square white envelope, securing it with a knot. On the envelope is her name in José’s neat handwriting. The envelope is sealed. She hasn’t opened it because it might have a message revealing the nature of the gift. She means to read the card only when the time has come to open the box.

This birthday gift, which José had intended to give her, was passed along by his brother, Reyes, who had flown in from Miami to attend the funeral, clean out José’s house, and settle the estate.

Now, as on other occasions, Vida sits on the edge of her bed with the box on her lap. As before, an inner voice that’s neither hers nor José’s warns, Every ending is a beginning, but this is a beginning on which you’re not yet prepared to embark.

If she’s to be killed in the days ahead, whether in a forest clearing graced with blue wildflowers or elsewhere, she doesn’t want to die without knowing what gift her lover, her fiancé, intended to give her. However, she’s aware that life is a layered tapestry, with recondite meaning below the surface. Mundane and mystical threads are equally strong and essential to the integrity of the fabric. If she opens the package, she won’t be felled by a curse for violating some occult proscription against doing so; the hidden dimensions of life aren’t as portrayed in pulp fiction, neither irrational nor realms of unrelenting menace. But if she ignores her intuition and opens the box, perhaps what lies within might set in motion a chain of cause and effect that will put her in greater danger than she would be otherwise. Her intuition, her ability to see what others can’t and know what others don’t, has served her well, and she is not fool enough to fail to keep faith with it.

She returns the box to the high shelf and tucks it into a corner, concealing it with a spare pillow and a folded afghan, so that an intruder, in her absence, will not see the bright giftwrap and be tempted to open the package.

This has been a long, busy day, and she is weary. She’s early to bed because she must rise at first light. Rise and be ready for those who drink the wine of violence.

The dream of her uncle and the crashed airplane represented more than a prediction; it had been a warning of an inescapable threat. Someone will come for her either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Her only ally will be the wilderness, nature and all its creatures, which Vida has been told she’s chosen to protect. Chosen by destiny. Which means the shaper of nature, of all things within the universe and outside it. Perhaps the seer at that painted table in that old house was insane. After all, does it not beggar belief to claim that such a solemn responsibility would be conferred upon a girl who works a placer mine and spends so much time learning humble skills like carpentry, backhoe operation, locating wild blackberries, and differentiating between edible and poisonous mushrooms? On the other hand, it is true that no creature of the wild has harmed her, that foxes often attend her progress through woods and meadows, that deer frequently visit her for hours as she seins the spaded earth for gemstones. And wolves are her friends.

As Vida rests her head upon her pillow and draws up the covers, she puts all doubt and worry behind her when she recalls something the seer said. Although the world is a place of wonders, Vida, what can be seen of it is the least part, and what can’t be seen is the magnificent why and how of the world. Happiness and peace require patient waiting for the sight that at the moment can’t be seen.

And so she sleeps.