The Beastly Bride

COYOTE AND VALOROSA Terra L. Gearhart-Serna

Many years ago among the burnt hills and dry winds of the Southwest, there lived a girl named Valorosa and, though she didn’t know it yet, the trickster god of the native tribes. His name was Coyote, because he was one. Not just any coyote, mijita, my little one, but the biggest, cleverest, most beautiful coyote on the mesas. Coyote could trick anyone, even himself! Valorosa, on the other hand, had just turned fifteen, and she knew that she must be a woman because the priest at her quinceañera had said so. Her mother had named her “Valorosa” so that her daughter would know that she had valor, courage, and also valor, great value. Her father, who was a mostly good man with a big nose and a cruel voice, called Valorosa “Rosa,” his rosita, a lovely little Spanish rose with round red cheeks and shining dark hair. Her mother thought that Valorosa’s father had missed the point. But what can you do, when you marry a man because your papa makes you? You can give your daughter a good name and hope that un díashe will live up to it. Las madres siempre esperan así, mijita—mamas always want such things for their daughters.

Valorosa was a proud girl, and fearless; she knew that she was meant for great things, or at least a great husband. After all, her father was the comandante of a great territory, and Valorosa knew that he was considered very important. Her mother told Valorosa that she would still be an important girl even if her father were a simple man with nothing more than a burro to his name, but Valorosa thought this was a bit silly. Jose Bañaco, down in the village, was a simple man with only a burro to his name, and no one thought very much of him.

Ahora. Ya al cuento. To the story. One day, Valorosa’s father heard news of trouble brewing among the tribes in a far-off corner of the territory. Since he was charged with keeping proper order in the name of His Majesty, the king of Spain, he immediately made preparations for travel to this troublesome native village. Before he left, he asked Valorosa: “Mi rosita lindíssima, ¿no quieres nada de tu padre? ¿No quieres un regalo de los salvajes?” “My pretty little Rose, don’t you want something from your father? Don’t you want a gift from the savages?” He told her that he would bring her some beautiful jewelry, perhaps a necklace made all of bright turquoise and shining silver. But Valorosa shook her head and asked if he could pick her some sand verbena flowers instead. She loved those hardy little pink blossoms that bloom in hot, sandy, barren places. Her father was taken back. “But you already have roses, mija!” he cried. “Beautiful roses, the only ones to be found in the whole territory, right here in our courtyard! Why, they were planted just for you.” But Valorosa asked again for the sand verbena blossoms, and finally her father promised to bring them for her.

When Valorosa’s father arrived in the Indian village that had been causing trouble, he and his men were very tired. The Indians seemed meek and sorry, and asked if he would only accompany their two head men, the chief and the medicine man, out into the hills. They wanted to speak with him, and then they wouldn’t cause any more mischief. The comandante agreed, and he followed the chief and the medicine man into the dry desert hills outside the village. Of course, these native men were not so stupid as the comandante thought. They had made a deal with Coyote, the trickster: they would bring the Spanish general out into the desert, and Coyote would give him a good scare, to teach him some respect.

Soon Valorosa’s father and the two Indians arrived on top of a big hill out in the desert. The two Indians lit a fire from dry brush and bade the comandante sit while they went hunting for a rabbit for their supper. The comandante sat down, nearly crushing a little sand verbena plant growing near his foot. “Qué grosera, what a disgusting little flower,” he muttered to himself when he spotted it, wrinkling his nose at its sharp, tangy smell. But he was a dutiful father, so he leaned over to pluck one of the pretty little flower stems. Suddenly, he stopped and rubbed his eyes in disbelief. Only a few feet away, near the edge of the fire-light, was a beautiful vine of wild roses, draped over a thorny old mesquite bush. These were not just any roses, mijita! They were in glorious full bloom, and they smelled like something from el Cielo—from heaven. Unable to believe his luck at finding this much more suitable flower, the comandante reached out and picked one of the roses. Immediately, a crackling, roaring voice cried: “THOSE ARE MINE!” It was Coyote. He had been making the roses grow as a way to pass the time while he waited for the Spanish comandante, and he had so amused himself that he hadn’t realized that the comandante had arrived.

The comandante began to quiver and shake. Like many men with military jackets and impressive mustachios, the comandante was really a bit of a coward at heart. “Por favor, señor,” he cried, trembling like a leaf in a dust storm. “Por favor, ¡no me mate!” “Please, sir, do not kill me!” “Es sólo para mi hija, mi Rosa, la rosita de mi vida!” “It’s only for my daughter, my rose, the little rose of my life!” Coyote, who realized now who this silly man must be, chuckled to himself so that the comandante couldn’t hear. “Well, ladrón, my petty thief,” he said (in a very cross, dangerous voice), “daughter or no, I will tell you this: those roses were my pride and joy! I cannot let you steal one from me without punishment, so here is what I will do. First, I will let you return to your home to kiss your woman and get your things in order. When seven suns have set, you must return to me and be my servant for ten years. After that, I will give you back to the desert.” With that, he let out a frightening, unearthly howl, and the comandante, that silly bobo, that fool, ran as fast as his legs could carry him away from the hill and the demon that lived on it. He didn’t stop running until he got back to the village, where he leapt onto his horse and rode back to his mansion, just as quick as a scared jackrabbit.

Coyote laughed to see the Spanish fool flee and was sure he had done a good job and taught the man some respect. He didn’t intend to make the comandante his servant — in fact, he didn’t care if the comandante returned at all! Satisfied, he went back to his lair to chew on quail bones and laugh a coyote laugh.

The comandante, pobrecito, poor little man, had a lot less imagination than Coyote suspected. He never guessed that it might be a trick, and he was white and shaking and moaning when he came home. He shut himself up in his study, where he paced the floors and shivered with fear. Finally, Valorosa came and tapped on his door. “What’s wrong, Papá?” she asked. “¿Qué le sucedió?”Her father tried to be brave for a few moments but soon he told Valorosa the whole story. “Why, Papá!” Valorosa exclaimed, “You can’t go! You are the comandante! But Iwill go — I am your daughter, and I will tell this demon that he can take me in your stead! Surely la Virgen will protect me.” Her father cried out and forbade her to go, but Valorosa wasn’t paying attention. In her head, she was thinking: Won’t this be a grand adventure? I’ll show that demon a thing or two! But her father continued to protest, so Valorosa said no more about it.

That night, Valorosa snuck out her bedroom window, saddled her horse, and rode away across the desert toward the Indian village that her father had fled so quickly. She told herself that she was such a good daughter, so dutiful, so loving! But she knew that really, she was a bit bored of making tamales, and wanted an escape. ¡Aventura, mijita!Adventure! It calls to us all.

When Valorosa arrived at the spot where her father had met the demon, she let her horse go to find some scrub to eat, and called out: “¡Diablo! Demon! I am here in place of my father, and la Virgen Santíssima will protect me!”

Coyote heard her and laughed to himself in amazement. He came out from behind the mesquite bushes and circled the girl. “So you are the rosita, eh?” he asked, slyly. “You are not so fragile, not so delicate as my roses here.”

“Pah!” said Valorosa. “I am Valorosa, la valiente, the brave! I am not afraid.”

At this, Coyote became a bit annoyed, and he decided that Valorosa might do very well for a new trick. I’ll keep her here with me, he thought. Her family will think that she has disappeared forever, taken by the powers of the desert! I will send one of my bitches, my woman-coyotes, to walk through the girl’s village with a rose in her mouth. Hah! They will all think that I have turned her into a coyote. That will teach the proud and pompous comandante a lesson! And he grinned a big coyote grin.

Meanwhile, Valorosa was examining this big golden-gray beast with a curious eye. He could speak and he had managed to scare her father witless, which meant that he was no ordinary animal; however, Valorosa had a bit more imagination than her father, so she knew that this could well be a local spirit, perhaps even a god. Not every powerful thing in the world is either evil or Catholic, mijita. Remember that.

Coyote, who had come to a decision about his trick, told Valorosa his plans for her. He told her that she would stay with him as his servant to cook him good food and groom his dusty coat, and eventually he might release her.

Valorosa stamped her foot and stared him down. “Pah!” she said again. “I will have no part in a trick played by such a dirty little animal!” Coyote was taken aback. What did she mean? “Why, if you had any real power,” said Valorosa contemptuously, “you would turn yourself into a man! Don’t you know that humans are made in God’s image, so God must be a man? No real god would be a coyote!”

Coyote was now more than a little angry, though secretly he was also quite impressed. “Oh, yes?” he cried boastfully, “Well, hormiguita, my little ant, watch this!” And with that, he turned himself into a man — a tall, muscular, sandy-haired man. Frowning because he was starting to wonder if he might be the tricked one, he carted Valorosa off to his lair.

Many weeks passed. Valorosa was forced to do chores for Coyote, but she didn’t really mind; at least there was no embroidery! Coyote brooded to himself, wondering whether and when he should complete his trick, and mulling over the words that Valorosa had thrown at him.

Despite herself, Valorosa rather missed that trickster’s grin that he had worn when they first met on the hilltop, and even though she thought him quite handsome in his human form, she didn’t really like the change in him. Finally, she came to him one evening and begged him to turn himself back into a coyote.

Coyote smiled. “Oh? So you do not think being an animal is so bad after all?”

Valorosa looked at her dirty feet and said, quietly, “No, perhaps not.” Coyote changed himself back on the spot, and he and Valorosa went for a wild moonlit ramble out across the mesas.

Eventually, after many such runs in the moonlight, Coyote let Valorosa go; he did not want her to leave, but he knew that some things must be simply because they must be. That is wisdom, mijita.

Valorosa returned to her father’s mansion, where her father welcomed her with open arms and wept tears of gratitude for the mercy of God. Her mother, sensing that perhaps Valorosa herself might have had something to do with her return, simply smiled.

After a few months, a new man came to serve under the comandante, a man with an easy laugh and a good mind. He and Valorosa became engaged, and Valorosa was content. Just before the priest began the wedding ceremony, Valorosa’s mother gave her a little bouquet, a ramillete: two stems of sand verbena and a sweet wild rose. Tucked in between the rose petals were a few golden-gray hairs. Valorosa looked at her mother, who grinned her own coyote grin. And I’ll tell you, mijita, there were many times after that when people swore that they saw a girl and a coyote running across the mesas together under the moon, howling and yelping and grinning. If Valorosa’s husband heard about any of this, he didn’t seem to mind; maybe he went along. Which just goes to show you, mijita, that you should never marry a man who does not like coyotes.

Though TERRA L. GEARHART-SERNA has been writing short stories since the age of ten, “Coyote and Valorosa” is her first published work. It was written for an undergraduate class at the University of Pennsylvania and wound up in this anthology thanks to the encouragement of a truly exceptional English professor. Terra is currently a student at Yale Law School, where she writes legal essays consisting of more footnotes than text.

I originally wrote “Coyote and Valorosa” as a midterm essay for a college class called “Feminist Fairy Tales.” In order to give the story its bilingual/multicultural flavor, I paid a return visit to my childhood memories of reading both Western fairy tales and the bilingual cuentos of the much-loved Santa Fe storyteller Joe Hayes.

We tend to think of shape-shifting as a purely physical thing, but as a young Latina my experience of “changing shape” has been a constant shift between my mother’s Hispanic family in the West and my father’s Anglo family in the East, between English and Spanish, between the interwoven threads of New Mexico’s Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo heritage, and most recently between the deserts of the Southwest and an East Coast university. “Coyote and Valorosa” also seesaws between various identities and traditions: English and Spanish, Hispanic and Indian, male and female, pride and humility. Valorosa achieves her metamorphosis from child to woman as she struggles with a new and different cultural and life experience; given this kind of change, what does it matter if she becomes a coyote or if Coyote becomes a man?