A shiny, new 4-door Etora lurched to a full stop. The accelerator pedal hit the floor. Her vehicle stalled half off the road, half off on the shoulder in the middle of the Wyoming badlands.

'No'�!'� she beat her hands against the steering wheel.

The urban gypsy stepped out of the car. Tangled waves of dyed, black hair fell to her waist. Sweat rolled down the small of her back, and the backs of her legs under her dress. Her witch boots -- her mother called them that -- hit the pavement like claps of thunder. The wind had thrown the car back and forth all day, through Colorado. Now, in Wyoming, it had something leggy to play with. Bored by the barren desert, it kicked up her clothing and hair.

They radiated away from the heat of the heart, as in the desert of Arizona, or the Mohave, great waves of some underwater prehistory. In the Remington landscape, hers was a sunset straight off of one of those canvases.

She stopped at random small towns on her way, mostly in Missouri, where she lived, before the landscape went barren, and entered local junk shops. She bought this black lace granny dress, quite split in the skirt, especially now after riding in the car. The moth eaten places burst open. She didn't care, now that her mother didn't walk the earth.

Pamela left the mirror to her sisters in Wyoming. Polly was taking it to them. She hadn't been back since she was a girl. Might as well do this. They wanted to see their niece.

She pushed the Etora onto the shoulder, and whacked it into park with a groan. '24 Hours'� the neon light had shined in the window, when she passed it. The gas gauge read ¼ tank. Ten times in her life, she ran out of gas, usually on the street where she lived, not in the middle of nowhere. She spent a few agitated moments leaned up against the hood of the car, and frowned. Nothing happened, except the light shifted the sundial aloes along the road.

'This is one bloody awful orangey sunset.'� She stopped, knowing her mother would have agreed with her, or would have said the same herself.

This was old Indian country. She grew up here, for awhile, her little fingers full of sticky branches, and pulled Indian paintbrush, when she was their baby, the Shoshone, the Bannock, the Sioux. Their names, she learned with a little research. There was nothing left out here to explain that ache, just the empty hills.

Within four miles, stood the gas station, behind her, not on this road, but one turn away. It had what she needed. She could get gas on the hypotenuse, and hopefully would score a ride back to her car. She could do this in the dark.

'Maybe a Bannock will come out of nowhere, and hack me to bits. Maybe that's how I'll go,'� she thought.

An orange and white cowboy sky shined in the reflection of the glass. In the liquid reflection, it darkened by the minute, she looked at the mirror lying in the back seat. It sat propped on blankets, further cushioned by a few towels. Some of them had slid onto the floor. She wasn't familiar with this particular piece of furniture, and no associations leant her comfort. Ornamental oak leaves and acorns stretched across the top of the frame.

It wasn't light, but she hoisted it against her hip, and held it with one arm. With the other, she opened the trunk, grabbed the gas can, which stank of old gas, and pushed the hutch closed.

'Some damned redneck might stop, break in and rob me. Rob my mother. That was always her luck.'� The mirror appeared light as air against the slight, willowy figure that held it.

In cowboy boots, she bore the mirror, with black eyeliner around the eye of Fatima. Her mother's mirror caught the sun, and shone like a brilliant bronze shield. The howl of the coyote beckoned. She did not struggle with the weight of her burden. The Grecian warrior entered the dead canyon of Medusa, but what did the Greeks know of sage, shooting star, and cramp bark? White gravel ground, and white sage, that's all there was. Academicians and politicians could not propel the Hellenes so far across the ocean with success, and though graphed and pampered, the alien would not live. This wouldn't take an hour.

"Never heard of any powwows, but the reservation's somewhere around here...," she mused.

She imagined an old western on the television screen her grandfather loved to watch, and he read Sarah Flaxton's work. That scene came to mind, when Tonto came over the hill, rode up to the settler, to whack them good and dead from the top of his horse.

But after all of this, she saw something. The great ghost, the extraterrestrial sea settled still in that reflection of heat she held in her hand. Really, that's all there was.

(italix:)
A Bannock.

The Bannock faded in and out of shadow on the crest of the hill. He repositioned himself, and watched her closely.

The lady struggled with some snobbish Victorian furniture across the canyon bottom. His reflection, she found it in the mirror for a second, and then it vanished.

No, there is no one on the rise. There isn't anyone there.
(end italix.)

A jetliner peeled across the sky. Its trail terminated near the sliver horn of the moon.

(italix:)
What was happening, this time?
(end.)

She could feel the thunder upon ground, felt the rider gain speed as he closed distance.

She smacked against the sand. The mirror flew out of her hands. Blood began to run from her palms, and face. She looked up, with a mouthful of hair, and lay eye to eye with the culprit, a bleached tree root. She spat the grit out of her mouth.

She dared to inspect the damage, and knew it was cracked. She squatted; her skirt ballooned. She stood it on end, and it was in her hands. The frame was okay, but the glass showed a crack that ran over the entire surface.

She stared into its reflection. She saw a feather on the ground. Her hand found it. She fixed her appearance, and rammed the eagle feather into her own head of hair, dismantled. Fingers tangled in strands, she remained completely still, her wild eyes followed the Bannock as he came down the hillside. He approached from behind, and stood behind her.

(italix:)
What was happening this time?
(end.)

Several years ago, she rode her bike next to the River Ka, and had an accident. She fell ill with severe heat stroke on the trail. Tumbled over on the gears, her wheels spun in their brackets, and her body splayed out on the grass like a corpse. She was on the southern stretch, with no one else around, due to temperatures which soared into the hundreds. Distant cars whizzed by, but no one could see someone so low on the ground.

The Grandmother, bare-chested, danced with death rattles, and watched her through pits on the edge of the reeds. The reeds whispered in the shake of the wind.

Polly felt well again, so maybe they hadn't been death rattles, afterall.



He shuffled from foot to the other. He checked his shoe with a fluid movement. He did not move any closer. He wore black jeans and a t-shirt.

'Hi,'� he said, and smiled a little.

She said nothing, quite surprised.

'Look, what are you doing out here? That's your car,'� he pointed towards nothing, in the direction of the stranded Etora. 'That's where I work," his long arm stretched in the opposite direction, at nothing, the invisible form of a gas station over the ridge ahead of them.

He shook his hand, drew her attention to what it held: a bunch of eagle feathers, some like her own. He held them, sure, being native, but she was screwed. She blushed. From her hands, the sand fell from its bed of dried blood.

'My mother was a hippy, sorry,'� she wanted to say, but didn't. He approached her like they were in a supermarket, and not two strangers somewhere out in the middle of no man's land.

'He won't call until later, so what the hell. I take walks.'�

She understood. His boss wasn't around. No one wanted gas for miles, no one, except for her, actually.

He razed her with that strange stare, and stroked the plentiful pin-straight hair, midnight black like hers. He stood, a sliver of feather. In a way, he was doing his job.

He grabbed the mirror out of her hands, and walked with it.

'Bannock,'� he called out at her, but didn't turn around.

He slinked towards the gas station, just slow enough so that she could keep up.

This was okay, because she felt well.

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