WINDWALKER (THE PROPHECY SERIES) (22 page)

****

Seven sleeps later:

Layla accepted her place in Cayetano’s life. She didn’t fully understand it, but she couldn’t deny what she felt. He was Cayetano, and although their faces weren’t quite the same, there was something of Niyol in him, as well. And when he wrapped her in his arms at night, he was the Windwalker, sweeping her up into the wind and carrying her away from danger.

The blisters on her skin were nearly healed, and as soon as the sun no longer made her eyes weep, she would be officially welcomed back by the people of Naaki Chava.

With the bandages off, she finally saw the world into which they’d come.

****

The city sprawled out across a great valley between jungle-covered mountains. It was tropical in appearance, but while the foliage was somewhat familiar, it was much larger and more colorful than anything she’d ever seen in books. There were enormous trees that looked like palms gone wild, and ferns higher than a two-story house. It made her think of artists renderings of earth during prehistoric times.

Color was everywhere - in the mountains surrounding Naaki Chava, in the fabric of their skirts, in the designs on their handmade pottery, and most especially in the bird-life.

There were all sizes of parrots, in colors of the rainbow, as well as birds that she’d never seen. Large, royal-blue birds with massive wingspans and tails as long as her grandfather’s braids, red and green birds with topknots that fanned out across their heads when they were angry; like a hand-carved comb stuck in a woman’s hair. And their calls were just as colorful as their plumage. It was, without doubt, the most stunning sight she’d ever seen, and at the same time made her sad, wondering if their earth had looked this way in the beginning. The monkeys high up in the trees were of every hue and size. At night, the sounds of big cats on the hunt could be heard coming out of the jungle around them.

The streets were paved with a kind of limestone that made them so white that they glistened in the light of day. Nearly all of the dwellings were square, like the old pueblos, but larger, and with ornate carvings above doorways and on roofs. Everything started with a square and if it was more than one room, it went up in graduated sizes of the same shape. There were no round corners anywhere that she could see except in art, or in the carvings.

Despite the numbers of newcomers she’d brought with her, they had somehow made room for them to live. She didn’t know whether they’d built new dwellings in preparation for their coming, or if they were living with the residents.

During the Last Walk, before their earth died, Layla and the others had moved through vast desert-like areas with sparse growth and trees stunted from a shortage of water. Here, everything was in abundance, from the river running through the valley, to the lush abundance of the fields where food was grown. It looked like paradise, and yet Layla sensed an undercurrent of secrets she had yet to learn.

As Acat had shown her, the women wore a length of hand-woven fabric around their waists that hung just to below their knees, and ornate bib-like collars that hung lay on the front of their chests like a breast-plate on a piece of armor. Some of the bibs were braided cloth or woven reeds, some were formed by connecting different sized pieces of hammered silver. The more ornate bibs had tiny shells fastened within the silver. But the collar Acat put on Singing Bird was nothing like the others. It was all different sizes of turquoise; the sky stones signifying status.

The mens’ breechclouts were made of hand-woven fabric and hung to their knees. Their hair was cut straight across at the ends, pulled back from the sides of their faces, and fastened at the tops of their heads.  

Cayetano’s dwelling was what she would consider a palace of its time. It had been built on a rise overlooking the valley below. Adobe-like brick and natural stone had been laid in colorful geometric shapes to form the floors. The openings between the rooms were tall and arched, and most without doors. There was a natural water flow from the mountain behind the dwelling that flowed into an aqueduct beneath it, furnishing water directly to the cooking area and to a room where a sunken bath had been built. It channeled the water in such a way that it was always running a trickle of fresh water through it, like a self-aerating pool.

She was continually surprised at what she would have called advance technology for the times, and wondered how it had all been lost.  

The servants treated her with deference, which furthered her belief that Cayetano held some high office, but it was the large open room in the middle of the palace that proved her suspicions correct. He was obviously their chief and that great room was where he ruled. Even though it was nothing like the tribal council she’d been used to, she had to keep reminding herself that wherever they were now, old rules no longer applied.

There was a raised section at one end of the great room where the throne had been placed. The back and arms of the chair were made of elaborately carved wood with large, equally over-sized spears fastened in a crossed position behind it. The walls were painted in fresco-like fashion with pictographs telling centuries’ worth of history she had yet to understand.

A Jaguar skin with a fully attached head hung on the back of the throne. The head was positioned so that whoever sat beneath it appeared to be its next prey, its mouth open in an eternal snarl with two large amber-colored stones set where they eyes used to be. The big cat’s legs were draped over the arms of the throne, so that whoever sat in the seat took on the persona of the cat, claws and all.

Servants came and went throughout the palace all day, some bringing food, carrying water, cleaning behind the constant stomp of the footsteps of those who came and went.

One did nothing but work a loom weaving cloth, and the steady thump as the woman worked it was, at first disturbing, then after a time no longer noticeable.

The room that concerned her the most looked like a war closet, rather than storage. It was filled with feathered headdresses, and what looked suspiciously like body armor. There were hundreds of spears and bone knives and axe-like weapons. The axe blades fastened to the handles appeared to be the fangs of the same kind of cat as the one on Cayetano’s throne and guessed them to be ceremonial rather than useful.

But seeing the weapons was a reminder that the aspect of war had begun when from the start of human existence. She started to worry about what kind of world she’d led her people into then cast aside the worry. Whatever was here was still far better than what they’d left behind.

The only building higher than the palace, was the temple; a towering four-sided pyramid in the middle of the city. From a distance, it looked a little like a square layer cake with a single stairway on every side. The top of the pyramid was yet another small room and she wondered what happened in there.

In her mind’s eye, she already knew the vista from the highest point of the temple - from the rooftops of the city, to the marketplace, to the river, to the acres and acres of growing crops, and the jungle beyond. It was yet another unsettling memory that had no explanation.

Cayetano ruled it like the chief he was, but she had no idea how that would impact her until the day she made her first public appearance.

Chapter Fourteen

Cayetano walked into their rooms as Singing Bird was being dressed. Acat and two other servants were trying to help, but she was balking despite their insistence of certain garments.

Although the women of Naaki Chava wore their hair in elaborate hairstyles, looping the lengths into big fat rolls both at the sides and the tops of their heads, Layla wanted hers down, and so it was; glistening like sunlight on dark water. The silver necklace she’d worn around her neck was now threaded through her hair in such a way that the little bird charm was hanging in the space between her brows; a private homage to her father and her past.

The bib of turquoise around her neck rested on the swell of her breasts, and the soft fabric of her multicolored skirt clung to her shape like another skin. She was still thinner than she’d ever been, but Cayetano understood why. It was at great cost that his Singing Bird had returned from the dead.

He eyed her proudly, thinking to himself what a magnificent woman she had become and discarded the tiny changes. Besides the lack of weight, the only other differences were the scars on her body, which she wore proudly, and the occasional glimpse he would get of how fierce she had become. She’d died a woman beloved of her people, and returned a warrior for their race.  

He walked up behind her and despite the women giggling around them, kissed the back of her neck.

Layla shivered with longing. Just a touch and she melted before him.

“You like these best,” he said, and put them in her hand.

She looked down at the chunks of turquoise marbled with thin threads of gold, obviously meant to hang from her ears. But they were hardly metal studs and she didn’t have any holes big enough in her earlobes for the cords to fit through.

“They’re beautiful, but they won’t fit in my ears.”

Acat giggled and took them out of her hands. “Yes, they will fit. I will do it for you.”

When Layla felt the weight of them on her ear lobes she was stunned.

“But how?” she muttered, running her fingertips along the on the sides of her face and then along her ears. Without warning, she abruptly stopped. In her mind, she’d been touching a stranger’s face.

“I need to see. I need to see!” she muttered, and began moving from table to table, looking for something that would give off a reflection.

“What is wrong?” Cayetano asked.

She was beginning to panic.

“It doesn’t feel like me. It is the face of a stranger.”

He smiled, pulling the scar at the corner of his mouth upward.

“You came home, that is all.”

But she wasn’t satisfied. Of all the things that she’d lost from one world to the next, at that moment she would have wished for a mirror. When she saw the large platter of fruit on a nearby table she grabbed it. The fruit went flying as she carried the silver platter to the light. If it was shiny enough, it just might give off enough reflection to satisfy her panic.

Cayetano had known this day would come, and quickly sent the servants away.

Acat was in tears as she left, thinking she’d done something wrong.

Layla tilted the platter slightly to catch the most light. For a few moments all she could see were shadows. And then she moved it again and there was an image, but she didn’t recognize the woman she saw.

Her hands began to shake. How had this happened? She was still Layla inside, but Layla Birdsong’s face was gone. This face was a little thinner and her nose had a tiny bump where before it had none. Her cheekbones were higher, her mouth wider, her lips fuller. Some parts of the face were the same, but other parts were not. It was what she’d first thought when she’d seen Niyol in Cayetano.

She turned to Cayetano with a look of disbelief.

“How did this happen?”

He took the platter from her hands and set it aside.

“You have become who you once were.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand. I know we have a connection. I don’t dispute that. But are we talking about reincarnation? Do you say my spirit once lived in this time? And if this is so, then why is the face I came here with no longer mine?”

He sighed. “It is your face. It was always your face. I will tell you this now. I should have told you before, but today you need to understand why our people so readily accept your presence, and why you understand everything that is said to you.”

He led her to a bench then pulled her down onto his knee.

“What I am going to tell you will be difficult to understand, but you must wait until I am finished before you judge.”

Layla saw the fear in his eyes and wondered what would be so terrible – so frightening – that a warrior like Cayetano would be afraid to voice.

“I am listening.”

He reached for her hand, threaded their fingers together then held it over his heart, then without thinking, lovingly stroked the scar on her face.

“Soon it will be the celebration of the corn. It is the celebration for a good harvest. During that celebration when you were here before, you were killed by an enemy I did not know I had. He escaped, but I went mad with grief. I tracked him for many days, and when I found him, left pieces of his body all over the jungle so that his spirit would never be whole to meet his ancestors.”

Layla was still grappling from the shock of hearing him say, you were killed, when she focused back in to what he was saying.

“Your death started a terrible war between our tribes. During that time, one of our shamans began having visions, and each vision he had was worse than the one before. He saw into the future destruction of our people, and how one day we would disappear from our land, and the earth would be no more forever.”

Layla’s head was spinning.

“You are talking about the Firewalker, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“But if all of you disappeared when earth burned, then how are you here? I thought that this place and all of you are the children of the Anasazi who disappeared so long ago.”

“No. We are not their descendants. We
are
those people, but in a time before our culture died.”

Her heart was beginning to hammer. This was about to get worse, she could tell.

“So, when we escaped Firewalker, we did not come through the portal to a new land?

“This is not new land.”

“But you call this Naaki Chava. That means two, or second in the Navajo language.”

He nodded. “But our people have moved many times over this earth. This is our second time.”

“Where were you before?”

He shrugged. “I do not know the name. The Shamans say it was far away where mountains blew fire and the sky was always dark with smoke.”