The Visitant: Book I of the Anasazi Mysteries (40 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: The Visitant: Book I of the Anasazi Mysteries
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Flame Carrier stopped beside Browser and pulled the torch from his hand. “I’ll carry this. You lead the way, War Chief.”
“Yes, Matron.”
Browser pulled his club, and caught up with Stone Ghost in four long strides. “Uncle, allow me to go first. Just in case there is someone—”
“I would rather you walked at my side, Nephew. So that we may talk.”
“The Matron asked me to lead—”
“Then do not get too far ahead of me.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
Browser stepped out in front. The whispers and rustles of clothing made it impossible to listen to the darkness. Browser prayed the murderers were not …
From behind him, Stone Ghost said, “They are, Nephew. Be certain of it. They’re out here watching us right this instant.”
His fingers tightened around his club. “How do you know? Do you see them?”
“No, but less than a hand of time ago, one of them spoke with stragglers coming in from Frosted Meadow Village.”
Browser’s steps faltered. He had to force his legs onward. “What did he say?”
“Nothing important. He spoke to them to let me know that he’d been watching me all day. But I knew that already. Of course, he didn’t know I knew that.”
Frustrated, Browser said, “Uncle, just tell me what he said!”
“Very well, Nephew, no need to growl. He told Little Bow and Marsh Hawk that they might have to do battle with the most powerful witch in the world, and urged them to ask about the ashes.”
“The ashes?” Browser glanced at the old man over his shoulder. His uncle’s wispy white hair bore a thick coating of gray. “The ashes in the ritual fire pit?”
“Of course, Nephew. He was just threatening me. Do not let it disturb you.”
Flame Carrier walked up beside Stone Ghost, and said, “What are you two whispering about?”
“I was just telling my nephew—”
Flame Carrier said, “Well, hush! People are frightened. They’re like a covey of quail back there, ready to burst into flight at the sight of their own shadows!”
Browser said, “Yes, Matron,” and led the way to the fire pit near the canyon wall.
People started to rush forward, coming in like a wave. Browser shouted, “Stay back! You’ll destroy what we’re looking for!”
Shouts and curses rang out as the crowd settled into an irregular semicircle. People shuffled and jostled for position but stayed about five paces away.
Stone Ghost knelt beside the curious mark in the soil, and Flame Carrier bent over him. Her red cape glittered in the torchlight.
“Bring the torch closer, Flame Carrier,” Stone Ghost instructed as he held the mended chert cobble over the mark.
Flame Carrier lowered the torch.
Browser tried to watch the crowd and Stone Ghost, shifting his gaze back and forth.
Stone Ghost rotated the cobble onto its side and compared it to the mark, then grunted unpleasantly. He spun the cobble in his hands, tipped it on end, with the point aimed at the sky, and tried again.
“Ah,” he said softly. “Nephew, I wish you to see this.”
Browser knelt opposite Stone Ghost and watched as his Uncle lowered the heavy end of the cobble to the ground, and inserted it into the impression. “You try,” Stone Ghost said and handed the cobble to Browser.
Browser took the cobble, bent down, and carefully placed it into the niche in the soil. The right side sank more deeply than the left, but it fit perfectly. Browser lifted the cobble and handed it to Flame Carrier. “Matron, do you wish to see?”
“I have seen all I care to, War Chief,” she said. “Tell me what this proves? One of our warriors dropped his club here before your son’s burial. That does not mean he used it to strike Hophorn. Or that he is the one who harmed your wife.”
“No, Matron. But if not, why was the club thrown into the fire? Someone obviously did not wish for it to be found.”
“Perhaps it was destroyed, War Chief. That does not prove that our warrior harmed people with it first.”
Stone Ghost shoved up on wobbly legs. “Matron Flame Carrier is correct, Nephew. We have proven nothing. All we can say is that it looks as if the club struck the ground here, and then, at some point, all of the wood was thrown into the fire, along with the club. Now that we’ve determined that, let’s return to the plaza and rejoin the festivities. I’m thirsty for more of Flame Carrier’s excellent yucca blossom tea.”
“But, Uncle—”
“Come,”
Flame Carrier ordered and walked back up the trail.
The crowd turned and followed her, casting backward glances at Stone Ghost and Browser.
Stone Ghost slipped his arm through Browser’s and fell in line at the rear of the assembly.
Stone Ghost whispered, “I wish you to consider something, Nephew.”
“Yes, Uncle?”
“The voice Catkin heard that night on the rim, and the voice she heard in Talon Town last night …” He looked up at Browser, as if expecting him to finish the sentence.
Browser said, “Might have been—that warrior—after all.”
Stone Ghost nodded. “I am not saying it is so. Only that you
should think on it, and on the reasons that warrior might have had to murder someone.”
“There were times when I thought he wished to murder his wife, Elder, but I never heard him wish anyone else ill.”
Stone Ghost stepped around a rock in the trail. “The warrior had difficulties with his wife?”
“Moons ago, Uncle. You saw how badly his face was scarred. It happened in a battle last summer. When he returned home, his wife would not touch him. His heart was crushed. For three moons, he moved into one of the chambers in Talon Town. He did not stay long. Silk Moth asked him to come home in early autumn.”
“I see.”
Browser glanced down at the thin old man beside him. Stone Ghost had said the words slowly, deliberately, as though he really did see something Browser did not.
Browser said, “Uncle, that warrior returned from a war walk late the night before the burial. He helped carry my son’s burial ladder to the grave. He was my friend. I cannot believe in my heart that he—”
“Hmm?” Stone Ghost said as though he’d just noticed Browser was speaking. He blinked owlishly. “Oh, well, of course not, Nephew. I don’t believe he did it either.”
Browser stopped, letting the procession move on ahead of them. They stood near the southwestern corner of Talon Town, just beyond the gleam of the torches.
“Why did we just take the cracked head of his war club out to the fire pit if not to prove that he—”
“Not he. His war club. Did he ever mention to you that it was missing?”
Browser sifted his memories. Had it been missing, Whiproot would have demanded that Hillside Village be searched, and the culprit punished severely. War clubs were not weapons, they were alive and part of a warrior’s souls.
Browser said, “No.”
“Then he loaned it, or gave it to someone, didn’t he? Who? Why? A warrior and his club are usually inseparable. I doubt he would have given it to a passing stranger.”
“You think the murderer was a friend of his?”
“Or a relative. Maybe someone powerful enough to demand he turn his club over. One of the elders in Hillside Village? Who would you give your club to, Nephew? And why?”
Stone Ghost started walking again.
As they rounded the corner and headed up the road, Browser said, “My wife, perhaps, if I thought she were in danger, and I knew I wasn’t going to be there to …”
I was never there. Ever.
He let the sentence hang and grimaced.
Stone Ghost stared at him with unnerving concentration, “What?”
“Nothing, Uncle.”
Browser lifted a hand to Jackrabbit, who stood on the roof, and said, “I must tell my warriors this news, Uncle, before they hear it from someone who does not know the facts.”
“Of course, Nephew.”
Stone Ghost started to walk away, then stopped and turned. “Catkin is standing guard in your position, is she not?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“When you go to relieve her, Nephew, take great care. The two of you, together in one place, and away from the village fires—”
“I understand, Uncle. I will. Sleep well.”
Stone Ghost inclined his head, smiled, and walked up the road.
Browser looked at the two guards, one standing on each of the mounds to his right, then cautiously went to the ladder and climbed.
Jackrabbit extended a hand to help Browser from the ladder to the rooftop, and said, “I don’t believe it! Our friend would never—”
“That’s right, he wouldn’t.”
Jackrabbit stared openmouthed at Browser. “But I heard people talking as they passed. They said our friend—”
“His club, Jackrabbit, not him. Do you ever recall him loaning it, or giving it to anyone?”
At the very thought, Jackrabbit clutched his own club in both hands. “No, War Chief.”
“Well, he must have. Start asking around among our people.
Quietly.
”
“Yes, War Chief.”
Browser gazed out across the moonlit canyon to the place Catkin
should be standing. Dark cloud shadows roamed the canyon bottom, flowing like water over the low hills.
“I must return to my guard position, Jackrabbit. Remain alert. He-Who-Flies will relieve you at dawn.”
He jerked a nod. “Yes, War Chief.”
C
ATKIN ROLLED ON TO HER BACK IN HER BUFFALO hides and gazed at the big fluffy flakes of snow tumbling through her roof entry and onto the coals in her warming bowl. A soft sizzling filled her chamber. A few Evening People gleamed through the gaps in the clouds, sparkling against the indigo blanket of night.
Catkin stretched. The rich scents of ritual cooking filled her nostrils. For the past two days women had cooked rabbits, band-tailed pigeons, deer, and a variety of corn flour breads. They’d roasted gourds, pine nuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, boiled enormous pots of beans, and made a delicious jam by boiling dried yucca fruits and chokecherries until they became a paste. All of those scents clung to the village. Her stomach growled.
Catkin sat up and tossed a few twigs into the bowl. The wood crackled and spat, and flames licked up around the tinder.
She rose in the soft yellow gleam and walked to the big red pot across the chamber. On this, the shortest day, and longest night of the sun cycle, she had sacred duties to perform.
As she pulled her tan sleep shirt over her head, she Sang:
My breath-heart is calling to you Father Sun,
Hear me calling,
I am coming,
I am coming,
Dark purple rises in the east,
I am coming,
Begging you to awaken, and light the world,
I am coming, Father Sun.
She drew out her long blue war shirt, a white dance sash, her white feathered cape, polished slate mirror, and a small pot. Beautiful red, black, and white paintings of the katsinas covered the pot.
She hung her cape on the ladder that thrust up through the roof entry, then shrugged into her blue war shirt, and tied the white sash around her waist. As she slipped on two pairs of cotton socks and her sandals, she thought about Cloudblower. Catkin had never known anyone as kind or caring. Or secretive. She did not know what to expect today. They might simply climb the cliff, perform the sacred Turning-Back-the-Sun ritual, and return to Talon Town for the morning Dances. But Catkin had the uneasy feeling that, after all that had happened in the past few days, Cloudblower would feel obligated to speak with Catkin. And Catkin did not know what she would say.
She laced up her red leather leggings, then combed and braided her long hair.
As she lifted the lid on the small painted pot, the sweet perfumes of corn flour and ground evening primroses encircled her. Catkin dipped her fingers and rubbed the fine white powder over her face.
“In memory of White Shell Woman,” she reverently whispered, “grandmother of Father Sun. We thank you for giving us light and warmth.”
She studied herself in the polished slate mirror. The powder shimmered a ghostly white, and her dark eyes looked huge.
Catkin tucked the pot and mirror back into her big red jar and stepped to her buffalohide bedding.
Her war club, as always, rested to the side within easy reach. She picked it up and tested its familiar weight. It felt comforting in her hand. She tied it to her dance sash and yawned.
As she walked to the ladder and swung her white-feathered cape around her shoulders, snow fell around her, landing on her hair and hands. Climbing the stairs cut into the cliff would be treacherous, especially in the darkness. They would have to go slowly.
Catkin started up the ladder, and stepped out onto the roof. Tendrils of blue smoke rose from the other roof entries of Hillside
Village, and she could hear people talking softly, readying themselves for the sacred activities of the day.
Her sandals crunched snow as she walked across the rooftop. A few fires gleamed in the flats below. Her gaze landed on the place Browser stood guard. He would be tired and hungry, probably thinking about Whiproot’s war club, speculating on how it had ended up in a roaring fire.
As she had all night.
She walked to the ladder, and took the slick rungs down one at a time. Scattered patches of starlight lit the canyon, gleaming from the freshly fallen snow.
When Catkin reached the ground, she turned and saw Cloudblower waiting for her near the plaza fire pit where a bed of red coals glowed. Cloudblower had her hands extended to the warmth. She wore her buffalohide cape, painted with the red images of wolf, coyote, eagle, and raven, the Blessed Spirit Helpers of the Katsinas’ People. Feathers and seed beads knotted the ends of the long fringes on the bottom. Cloudblower had coiled her long gray-streaked black braid on top of her head and fastened it with carved deerbone pins. Her triangular face, slanting eyes, and sharply pointed nose looked somehow softer beneath the layer of sacred white powder.
She turned when Catkin neared, and said, “A Happy Longnight to you, Catkin. Are you ready?”
“I am ready, Elder.”
Cloudblower nodded and led the way.
They walked in front of Hillside Village and out onto the dark trail that ran eastward along the base of the cliff. The massive bulk of Kettle Town, almost as large as Talon Town, loomed huge and black in the distance. Orange gleams lit a few of the chambers near the front of the town, and Catkin saw the dark shapes of people moving about on the rooftops. After they’d eaten, and sung their morning prayers, they would dress for the celebration, and make their ways to Talon Town. Only the Dancers would be allowed into the newly restored kiva. Spectators would sit in the plaza or on the roofs and wait for the Dancers to emerge from the subterranean ceremonial chamber.
They walked behind Kettle Town to the ladder that leaned
against the rounded tower by the cliff. Cloudblower climbed up first, and waited for Catkin. When she stepped onto the tower’s roof, Cloudblower took the next ladder. The cliff here was too steep for stone stairs. The ladder, coupled with handholds, took them to the slope in the cliff where the stairs had been cut a hundred sun cycles ago.
“Careful,” Cloudblower said as she stepped off the ladder onto the stairs. “The steps are icy.”
“I will be, Elder.”
Catkin climbed slowly, actually it was more like crawling. She braced both hands on the top step, found a handhold, then slid her knees up, and reached for the next step.
Father Sun had just opened his eyes in the Land of the Dead. A deep blue gleam arched over the eastern horizon, lighting the tallest ridges and dying them an unearthly shade of purple. From this vantage, Catkin could see vast distances. Blunt buttes jutted up here and there across the eroded country. The early morning light threw their shadows across the uplands like arms stretched out in longing. Black slashes of drainages cut the hills and zigzagged into the bottomlands.
Cloudblower crawled onto the rim and extended a hand to Catkin.
Catkin grasped her fingers and allowed Cloudblower to pull her up. Golden spikes of grass grew in the rocky crevices. They swayed gently in the morning wind.
To the south, in front of her, the lands of the Fire Dogs rose in cool blue layers, the grass-covered flats giving way to pine-whiskered Thunder Peak. Billowing black clouds sailed over the canyon, trailing gray veils of snow beneath them. Turquoise Maiden formed a black hump on the eastern horizon, to her left. Westward, the fires of Starburst Town glittered like fallen stars.
Catkin inhaled the beauty and exhaled a prayer of thanks.
Cloudblower walked westward across the canyon rim, her head bowed, Singing softly.
Catkin followed. Father Sun would be very weak this morning, his strength exhausted from a sun cycle of rising to light the world. If he could not pull himself into the sky, he would stand still on the horizon, and Cloudblower would have to perform the
sacred Turning-Back-the-Sun ritual. She would have to offer her own strength to Father Sun.
Two summers ago, in Flowing Waters Town, Catkin had played the flute for Hophorn while she’d performed the ritual. Hophorn had been fasting for sixteen days, drinking only dried squash blossom tea. Yet she had lain on her side and wretched into the winter grasses for two hands of time. By dawn, the vomiting had turned to dry wrenching heaves. But her strength had been enough. Father Sun had risen and chased the cold and darkness from the land.
Cloudblower walked around a shoulder-high pillar of wind-carved sandstone, then turned, and looked eastward across the point of the pillar. As she pulled out the four small bags she wore as a necklace, snow coated the shoulders of her buffalo cape. Melted flakes glistened like tears in her hair.
Catkin folded her arms beneath her white-feathered cape and waited.
Cloudblower opened the first sack, and her deep beautiful voice echoed across the canyon,
“In beauty we begin. In beauty we begin.”
She tipped the sack and poured white cornmeal to the east. Wind Baby caught the meal and carried it out over the rim in a fog. It shimmered among the snowflakes, and fell.
Cloudblower turned and emptied the red cornmeal to the south, the yellow to the west, and the blue cornmeal to the north.
Then she lifted her meal-covered hands to the sky, and finally, bent over to touch Our Grandmother Earth, as she Sang:
“In beauty we finish. In beauty we finish.”
Catkin looked eastward. Usually, at this time in the ritual Father Sun crested the horizon, but it appeared they had some time.
Cloudblower said, “Forgive me. I am not as adept at this as Hophorn. She always knows the exact moment to empty the last sack.”
“She has had more practice, Cloudblower. I don’t think Father Sun cares if our prayers are a little early.”
Cloudblower smiled and walked to stand beside Catkin, gazing eastward. A translucent lavender halo marked the place where Father Sun would first show his face. The Cloud People seemed to be waiting, hovering in the purpled light, with their bellies gleaming.
The longer they stood there, the more uncomfortable Cloudblower seemed to be. She finally walked a few steps away.
Catkin said, “Are you well, Cloudblower?”
Cloudblower’s mouth tightened. She knelt and gently touched an ice-sheathed blade of grass that protruded through the thin layer of snow. “Beauty is such a frail thing, Catkin. I often wonder if humans understand how precious it is. Every time we love, or touch someone tenderly, or laugh in genuine delight, we should be deeply grateful. Each should be a prayer. I have always tried to live that way, but often, more of late”—Cloudblower gave Catkin a tremulous smile—“I fail.”
“We all fail, Elder. It is allowed on occasion.”
Cloudblower rose to her feet, and shook her head. “Not for me.”
Wind Baby gusted across the rim, kicking up snow, and whirling it over the edge in a luminous haze.
“Why not, Elder?”
Cloudblower frowned at the eastern horizon. Father Sun had still not shown his face.
“I have made too many errors, done too many terrible things in my life, to be allowed to fail ever again.”
Cloudblower took a step toward Catkin, and Catkin felt suddenly anxious. Sweat broke out beneath her arms, and trickled down her sides.
“I have only seen you do good things, Cloudblower. I think, perhaps, you demand too much of yourself.”
Cloudblower tipped her head to the right, and stared at Catkin. The lines around her dark eyes deepened. “I can do many good things, when I—I live in my female soul. But often my male body takes over, Catkin, and you cannot imagine the things I long for. The things I do.”
She took another step closer, and Catkin backed away toward the rim. Two hundred hands below, she could see Talon Town. The plaza fire blazed, and people had already begun to line the walls. Old people sat with blankets pulled over their heads, and parents clutched children in their laps. Even in the dim blue gleam, the bright colors and elaborate designs on their clothing made a gorgeous sight.
Catkin said, “What’s wrong, Cloudblower?”
The sacred
Kokwimu
turned away, but not before Catkin saw the anguished expression on her face. “You see, it is because I understand the twists of male and female souls that I try so hard to help people.”
“I can understand that.”
Cloudblower turned back, and tears blurred her eyes. “No, Catkin, you can’t. You see, not even I knew until a few moons ago, the—the violence—of the male soul.” She held out a hand to Catkin. Her voice went low and shaky. “In that time, I have learned a terrifying truth.”
“What truth?”
Cloudblower clenched her hand to a trembling fist. “Catkin, have you ever felt … I mean, has it ever occurred to you that there might be more than one person inside you? That perhaps, there is someone else who lives in your body without your permission?”
Catkin shrugged. “Often. When I am engaged in battle, I am a different person. I will catch myself about to slice a man’s throat and wonder who it is inside me who can do this terrible thing. But if that other ‘me’ were to ask my permission to take over my body during a fight, I would give it without hesitation, Elder. ‘She’ is the one who keeps me alive.”
Cloudblower kept silent, staring into Catkin’s eyes. Finally, she whispered, “May I tell you a story?”

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