Healing Waters
“We’re almost there, Bruce,” Catherine called back over her shoulder to the perpetually grumpy mule protesting behind her.
He brayed and snorted his objection but continued to pull the wagon as he plodded through the dusty landscape under a vast open sky of twinkling stars. Her mare, a sleek, muscular black horse she had affectionately named Toirneach, meaning thunder, grunted beneath her, annoyed with the complaining companion behind them. The spirited mare and the curmudgeonly mule rarely were in agreement.
Catherine rolled her eyes and sighed as she turned her attention to the barely perceptible trail of wagon wheel ruts carved into the desert. It certainly wasn’t an established road, but she could see the way to the village. She had ridden all night from Santa Fe to the small outpost simply named Dama de la Esperanza, or Lady of Hope.
“Hope,” she whispered, pulling her poncho tighter with one hand while she rode.
The chill of autumn clung to the air. The sparse New Mexico landscape, with its endless stretches of desert and jagged mountains, was so different from her home in Ireland. She barely remembered her birthplace, having left as a young girl with her mother to come to America. Ireland’s lush, rolling hills, dotted with ancient stone circles and rich, green meadows, were a stark contrast to the harsh, arid terrain of New Mexico. The fall landscape in Ireland was a tapestry of vibrant oranges, reds, and yellows, the air crisp and filled with the scent of burning peat. Here, the autumn was more subdued, with dusty browns and muted golds, the air dry and carrying the scent of sagebrush.
Catherine hoped to make her new home in this strange land, finding solace in the wide-open spaces and the quiet strength of the desert. It was a week before Samhain, a special time of year for her as a witch in service to the Irish goddess Brighid.
Samhain was a time when the veil between worlds was thin, a time to honor the ancestors and seek guidance for the year ahead. In Ireland, she would have celebrated with bonfires and rituals, surrounded by her mother’s coven. Here, she would find her own way to honor the traditions, hoping that Brighid’s light would guide her in this new land.
The lonely ride through the desert had been long and arduous while the moon cast an eerie glow over the barren landscape. As she rode, Catherine recalled the misery of the last few years. The friends she had lost to the hatred of men in power.
She despised Brigadier General James Carleton, a Californian who had assumed command of the Military Department of New Mexico. His troops were always ready for action, driven by his brutal notions of how to deal with the indigenous tribes. She hated his desire to wage merciless war against all tribes he deemed hostile, to force them to their knees, and then confine them to reservations where they could be “Christianized” and taught agriculture as if their own rich cultures and ways of life were worth nothing.
The Mescalero Apaches of southern New Mexico were the first to feel the cruel effects of Carleton’s strategy. He placed Militia Colonel Kit Carson in charge, sending his men to harass the tribe into submission. Catherine and her mother were visiting the Apache tribe when the troops arrived.
She vividly remembered the horrifying scene when her mother fell, using her own body to shield bullets from a terrified family. The memory brought tears to her eyes as she recalled the bravery and sacrifice of her mother, who had given her life to protect others. The sight of her mother’s lifeless body, still holding the protection amulet she had crafted, haunted Catherine’s dreams. Her mother’s death had left her alone to continue building a life in a brutal new world.
By the spring of 1863, the heartless villain Carson had forced four hundred warriors and their families to relocate to the new Bosque Redondo Reservation on the Pecos River. Catherine, still reeling from the death of her mother, was forced to flee as troops rounded up her friends and marched them out of the territory. Going back to work as a traveling witch and natural healer had offered her some sort of purpose.
Jobs were hard to find as the territory was adjusting to its new place in the Union. New Mexico was flooded with adventurers, gamblers, speculators, and renegade whiskey-peddlers from the eastern states. Catherine struggled to establish herself as a legitimate healer among the scoundrels.
She had sent word back to the small settlement when she saw their posting asking for a healer and the issue with the well water at the telegraph office near the railroad station in Santa Fe. When she read the posting, she felt drawn to the small village, hopeful to help, and hoping this would be a way for her to move past the horrors of the past few years.
As dawn broke, Catherine reached the village, a small cluster of ramshackle houses, with a flock of chickens pecking the dirt near the entrance to the community. She dismounted near the edge of the village, stopping Bruce who happily ceased pulling the wagon and bent to munch on a cluster of dry brush. With the mule satisfied, Catherine took note of an older man who was watching her with curious eyes at the entrance.
“Buenos días, señor,” she greeted him in her broken Spanish. “Soy Catherine. Puedo ayudar con el pozo. Puedo hacer magia, hacerlo mejor.”
The man looked at Catherine, taking in her strange dress. She wore a green dress with runes stitched into the hem along the bottom, dusty boots, and medicine pouches on her belt where she also had her six-shooter and bullets. She was certainly a strange mixture of ranch worker and witch. He took all of this in and seemed to understand she was here to help. The man nodded, his expression softening with relief.
“Gracias, señorita. Por aquí, por favor.” He motioned for her to follow and she pulled Toirneach’s reins, walking slowly behind the man.
“My name is Juan,” he said, switching to English, much to Catherine’s relief. She loved the Spanish language, with its romantic curling pronunciations, but had struggled to master it in the years since they came to the area. She still spoke the old words from her homeland and had a strong grasp of English, of course. But Spanish still eluded her at times.
“I have been in this village since I was a boy,” he continued, his voice low and as dusty as the landscape. “Now I am very old,” he said with a chuckle, waving a sunbaked hand over his deeply lined face.
“But still muy guapo,” Catherine teased lightly, smiling at the kind old man. He barked a gruff laugh and shook his head.
“Eres una persona amable. Thank you,” he told her as they reached the center of the village where the well sat. “The water has turned bad, but we cannot understand why.”
Other villagers were gathering nearby, curious at the stranger’s arrival with her colorful wagon pulled by her mule and riding a massive black mare.
Catherine stood at the edge of the well, her red hair catching the early morning light as she murmured a prayer to Brighid. The well exuded a shimmering darkness, an evil magic lingering in the water, spreading supernaturally through the village. Catherine could sense the malevolent presence tainting the water, its dark tendrils reaching out to infect everything it touched.
She held a small silver chalice filled with spring water from Brighid’s well in Ireland. With a steady hand, she poured the water into the well, whispering ancient words in Gaelic, a language foreign to this land but sacred to her craft.
“Brighid, banríon na leighis, tabhair leigheas do na huiscí seo agus glan an dorchadas,” she intoned in the old language, asking the goddess for healing and purification.
The villagers, curious and wary, watched from a distance.
“Brighid, goddess of healing and fertility, cleanse this well and bring forth pure water,” she prayed, her voice steady despite the knots of uncertainty in her stomach. She felt the weight of her mother’s teachings, the expectations of her legacy, and the raw edge of her own self-doubt.
She continued the ritual, moving around the well, chanting and adding small drops of Brighid’s water. The holy water from Brighid’s well in Ireland held special significance; Catherine barely remembered gathering the water with her mother when she was little, before they left to come to America.
As the final drops of water fell into the well, a gentle breeze stirred the air, and the villagers gasped as a subtle glow emanated from the depths. Catherine allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. The ritual was successful. The water was purified.
The villagers approached, their wariness replaced by hopeful curiosity. An older woman with a weather-beaten face stepped forward, holding a basket.
“Gracias jovencita, eso fue increíble. Tienes una magia fuerte,” she whispered in awe.
Catherine nodded, her eyes softening, as she inwardly translated the woman’s thanks and compliment to her magic. She struggled to find the words to ask if there was any other way she could help the village.
“¿Puedo ayudar con algo?” she managed to work out finally, stumbling with the words.
“Un coyote…” the woman replied and turned to gesture at the older man who had brought Catherine to the well.
“Si un coyote malvado,” Juan answered and faced Catherine with grave eyes. “A terrible beast, like the coyote that run across the land, but different, strange, bestia magica.”
Catherine cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “An evil… coyote?”
He nodded, his expression grave.
“Sí, señorita. We have seen a large coyote creature at night, prowling around the village. It’s unlike any coyote we’ve ever seen—much larger, with glowing eyes. Livestock have been attacked, and the villagers are afraid.”
Catherine swayed slightly on her feet, feeling the exhaustion of the long ride through the night and the power she had spent on the ritual to heal the water. As Juan spoke, she could barely keep her eyes open, but her concern for the village kept her focused.
“We knew it had to be magic,” Juan continued, his voice tinged with desperation. “We wondered if the beast had affected the well or if our village was cursed.”
Catherine nodded, her eyes heavy but determined.
“I understand. I’ll see what I can do.”
Juan offered a kind smile.
“You must be tired. We can set up your wagon and you can rest.”
“Thank you, Juan. I’d appreciate that,” Catherine replied, her voice tinged with gratitude.
As Catherine and Juan approached the mule and the wagon, another man rode up—a very handsome priest with tanned skin, salt-and-pepper gray hair, dark eyes, and rugged good looks. He introduced himself with a friendly smile.
“Hello, I’m Father Joseph Accorsini,” his voice was tinged with a hint of French. “I had received your message that you would be arriving.”
Catherine regarded him with a mixture of mild disgust and dismissal. She had no love for the church.
“Padre,” she said curtly, tipping her hat before turning away.
Father Joseph seemed amused by her reaction.
“I assure you, just because I serve God and you are a witch doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. We’re both here to help.”
Catherine’s stance softened slightly, though she remained cautious.
“I suppose so. I’ll be heading out tonight to look for clues about the beast. If you want to come, you can, but you’ll need to carry a rifle.”
Father Joseph nodded. “I’ll be back at sundown then.”
He rode off, leaving Catherine to settle her mule and prepare for the night’s work.
