Maranther's Deception Author:Nik C. Colyer All I wanted was to show my wife, Leigha my favorite dunes deep in the Sonora Desert in northern Mexico. I was excited for her to see the beauty I?d witnessed so many times when I went there alone. Okay, I also hoped that I could nudge her past that old fear that still haunted her from her childhood. As luck would have it, thirty miles from civi... more »lization a gale force wind came up and buried our car in the sand. After a horrible night in the car, we hiked across the dunes and up a long canyon to get to the nearest phone. Was it all a dream? Half way up the hill, on the second day of walking, the winds came up again and we stumbled upon six abandoned adobes. We took shelter and I don?t know how, but sometime during the night Leigha disappeared. Frantic with confusion and a sense of deep regret for putting Leigha in harm's way, I didn't know what to do. The next morning, while looking for Leigha, I met an old woman sitting in front of a fire. Without moving her lips, the old woman spoke in a booming voice. "I am the medicine woman Maranther. You and your wife have been separated for now. When you have proven yourself, the two of you will be reunited." "Proven myself," I screamed. "I?m not some high school student." Before I could shake the truth out of her, she faded and vanished. I spent three days alone in the settlement where I struggled to stay alive. I was stuck waiting to pass some trumped up test of that damn woman. Somehow, cast adrift in a time loop,I met the native?s who built the settlement. While sleeping, I leapt years, first into the past, eventually turning around toward the present, then to the future and back again. It was insane, but after a month of being jerked around by that old woman, I figured out her method, reunited with my wife and we scrambled to get the hell out of the desert and as far away from Maranther as we possibly could. That night both Leigha and I slept inside a mammoth structure in, of all places, Yuma Arizona. At least we were out of Mexico and out of that woman?s influence. Or were we?« less