James helped lift him onto the stretcher and they began their long walk down the dirt slide.
28. The Encounter
Saturday 9:10 a.m.
Roy gathered the riders for the tour and headed to the Valley of Spires. Warren finished putting water in the troughs and feeding the horses as quickly as he could. He saddled Fearless and prepared a satchel with bottled waters for the ride.
Fearless nudged a brush that lay on the table in the stall and neighed.
"Sorry, Fearless. There's no time for a brushing today." He petted his neck and mounted him. "Let's go find Daddy. Hup." They were off for a ride around the property. "Don't worry, Fearless, he survived for weeks in these canyons with only a pocket knife and a canteen.”
Talking to Fearless comforted Warren. He never had brothers or sisters, and his steed always listened. He thought about how his father was the smartest person when it came to survival. Once he sewed up his own flesh wound after falling on a rock. Another time, Warren was bitten by a snake and he sucked the poison out of his leg. Warren sighed, sliding his hand into his pocket to rub his thumb on the worry stone.
Fearless galloped to the Anasazi village. As they rounded the corner, Warren gasped as he noticed the grave markers had been removed and scattered and the ground had been excavated, leaving several holes. He dismounted and ran to the edge of one of the graves. Inside, he saw the skeletal remains.
Warren clutched at his chest as his heart pounded and fell to his knees. His face crumpled.
He thought back to his childhood when his mother had brought him there. It was the place his forefathers had settled for hundreds of years, a place where he had a history that made him a part of the circle of life. He was one with his people. Mother of Earth created them from sand, and when Warren died his body would be buried and turned into earth.
He thought he would be buried beside the rest of his tribe here, and now their bones were dug up and scattered like garbage. He sat in silence letting it sink in. A tear trickled down his cheek. Fearless came up behind him, sniffing his shoulder. Fearless didn’t understand what the bones meant to him, but he understood compassion. Warren had a special bond with him. Fearless used to be his mother’s horse and had been born in the stables before Warren was even a thought in his parents’ minds. He reached to pat Fearless’s nose as the horse blew raspberries in his ear.
Warren wiped his face, stood up, and ruffled Fearless’s ears. "C'mon, Fearless. It's going to be ok. Some grave-robbing asshole stole everything from my ancestor's graves, but I'll find who did this and replace everything. Even if it’s the last thing I do." He mounted Fearless and galloped a circle around the area, looking behind every rock. "Looks like he isn't here, Fearless.” Fearless cantered out of the village and they went to explore.
Warren remembered his father's eyes and how mysterious he had been that morning when he had asked him to take the laundry back to the hotel. It was out of character for his father, not just the fact that he had never asked this of him before but, because of the message his eyes sent, when he had asked him. He had looked stern, yet his eyes pleaded at the same time. But why?
Warren and Fearless covered the acreage to the east, looking over the edges of the most common climbing areas, but turned up nothing. He headed back to the stables around the time he expected Roy to come back with the tourists. He and Fearless rejuvenated themselves with a fresh drink of water, then they waited, watching from saddleback.
It was high noon when the first horse and rider appeared over the horizon. He watched as the seven riders came down the trail, followed by Roy on his horse and holding the reins of an unsaddled Hototo. It looked like he had taken the reins off his own horse to put them on him.
"Hup," Warren said. Fearless galloped to meet Roy. When they met up Warren pulled the reins and Fearless came to a halt. "What happened? Where is my dad?"
Roy shook his head. "There was no sign of him. Hototo was galloping around like he got a spook. It took me a while to catch up to him and get him settled down. I asked the tourists to keep an eye out for any sign of your dad. I looked everywhere, but you know how big the Valley of Hoodoos is. Without a big search party, it would take days to find anything."
Warren felt his heart sink. The memory of how he felt when his mother had disappeared without a trace resurfaced. "What are the chances of losing two parents to the canyons?”
"Your father is an expert at survival.” Roy tried to reassure Warren with compassion, as if their argument from the night before had been forgotten at the moment. “I'm sure he'll be fine."
"Roy," Warren said, "someone excavated the graves in the Anasazi village."
Roy raised his eyebrows. "Really?"
Warren nodded. "It was freshly dug. I think they went when we were at the party last night."
"Who would do that?" His voice became deeper, and he sat up straighter.
"I have my suspicions. I'm going to do a more thorough search for my dad. I may not be back for a while. I'm sorry, I know it's a lot of work, but can you take over for the rest of the day?"
Roy nodded. "Done."
Warren swallowed. "Thanks.”
Roy continued to the stables as Warren went on to the valley.
The sun beat down on him. He opened a water bottle and guzzled it down as they trotted around every hoodoo, spire, and rock.
Hours passed with no sign. His stomach grumbled at him, but he ignored it. He stopped Fearless in front of what his father had told him was the ancient Anasazi dirt slide and looked down the passage as far as he could see. He got down from the horse, knowing that the horses were afraid of the area. He knew if he walked down the passage and into the canyon, he would not return anytime soon. He opened a bottled water and fed it to Fearless, pushing his muzzle upward and giving him a pat.
A couple of drops fell onto Warren's boot when he noticed a poison dart by his foot. Warren picked it up to inspect it. To his surprise, it had been used and removed from whoever or whatever it had punctured, which was evident by the blood on the end of the sharp point. Warren's eyes widened.
Batrachotoxin was a lethal poison and there was no antidote. If someone had been hit with it, they were in serious trouble. The toxin had been known to take effect on monkeys within seconds after entering the bloodstream. The way that Warren and his father collected the poison was somewhat less astringent than the Choco tribe's poison darts. The way his father fed the golden frogs and extracted the poison made it a weaker strain, but still unpleasant. The poison would bring on a temporary paralysis and labor one’s breathing.
Warren set off down the passage on foot with a spring in his step.
29. Late Night Gathering
Saturday, 11:02 p.m.
The girls began to sift through the articles on the dirt floor of the kiva.
Maya inspected a pot with ancient writing on it. "I guess we’ll have to get Lance. He’s the only one who can translate."
"No!" Chantal let out a sigh of exasperation. "I don't want him involved. You know how clumsy he is. He'll probably break everything."
"Sorry to bruise your ego, but we have no other choice. We’re not capable of doing this alone."
She frowned. "I guess you're right, but he can't go with us. He trips, falls, breaks everything. He's a walking disaster."
Minutes later, they were knocking on his door.
Lance opened the door, bleary-eyed. "What?"
Chantal mumbled while looking at her feet. "We need your help."
"Um, what was that?" Lance asked sarcastically.
"We need you to..." Chantal started.
"Huh?" He smirked and lifted his eyebrows.
Maya rolled her eyes and cut in. "Will you please translate something for us?"
"What time is it?" he asked.
Maya looked at her watch. "Eleven fifteen."
"I'll do it in the morning." He began closing the door.
Chantal pushed the door open and grabbed him by the ear. "Do it now, twerp!"
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"Ouch." He pulled away from her grasp and tried to slam the door, but she stuck her shoe in as a doorstop. "Leave me alone!" he shouted.
“Stop!” Maya tried to pull Chantal off her brother.
"Uh-hem," a man cleared his throat from across the hallway.
The three of them turned to see a couple they had awoken from the next room staring at them. The woman had curlers in her hair and a green mask. The man smelled of Ben-gay.
Chantal let go of his ear and smiled at the couple, then stroked her brother's hair. "I'm so sorry."
Lance straightened his composure.
"We're trying to sleep," the woman said with a pinched face.
The man was so angry he was shaking. "Be quiet!"
The three of them nodded and the man and woman shut the door.
Maya took the situation into her own hands. "Please, we found a code Ahote left for us," she whispered. "We need your help."
He relaxed his shoulders and spread his feet apart. He had grown since the beginning of the summer, and his chin had the first signs of blond whiskers. "You could have just said that to begin with. Show me."
Chantal looked down at her feet as Maya pinched her lips together and rolled her eyes at her. They headed to the basement.
Lance’s mouth hung open as he looked at the sand-covered floor and missing wall. "You are going to be in so much trouble!"
"Shut up!" Chantal gave her brother a noogie and pushed him away. "Ahote gave us permission."
Lance flattened his hair and knelt by the pottery.
"Don't break anything," Chantal hissed.
He looked over his shoulder at her. "Do you want my help or not?"
She sighed. "Yes."
"Then be quiet." He closed his eyes and placed his hand over the vase.
Maya looked over his shoulder. "What does it say?"
He began to speak in native tongue.
Chantal rolled her eyes. “In English.”
"Okay, okay. One wavering path becomes two and the tombstone marks the door. The key of dual uses will open the old world. Take the ivory bridge. Fill the bowls with four elements. You are forewarned—do not disturb the slumber of the dead. Take the chasm where the sands withstand time. Do not make deals with prisoners." Lance looked up from the tablet.
They looked at each other, puzzled for a few moments.
"The first part gives directions to the door to the underworld," Maya said. “That’s obvious from the legend Ahote told us the other night.”
"You're right," Chantal agreed, kneeling beside Lance. "Let's write them down."
"No!" Lance said, firmly. "No translations- Ahote's rules."
"Why?" Chantal asked with a scowl.
"If you write them down, it can get into the wrong hands. The way it is now, the information is protected."
Maya frowned. "We'll have to take the pottery with us, but it's so fragile and bulky."
"No, I have a better idea," Lance said. "We'll make a rubbing, just like the ones in our family library. We’ll need parchment and an oil pastel.”
"I have the oil pastels,” Maya said. “They're one of the only things that didn't get damaged after the break-in.”
"There are some old parchment scrolls here that don't have any writing on them," Chantal said, walking to the corner of the kiva, and unraveling the paper that was wrapped around a stick.
"Perfect," Lance said.
Maya fetched a pastel and came back, hoping her cousins wouldn’t kill each other while she was gone. When she came back she was surprised to see them working together to get the parchment around the vase. They held the paper while Maya made the rubbing. It came out surprisingly well copied. Lance rolled up the scroll and carried it under his arm.
Chantal sighed. "What was the first clue again?"
Lance repeated, "One wavering path becomes two where the tombstone marks the door."
Maya thought back to the legend Ahote had told them about Kokopelli. She remembered him dancing and chanting around the bonfire while chopping firewood.
Maya recited the story. "The people knew Kokopelli was the only one who knew where the key to the underworld was, so they chased him between the entrance where the third and fourth world connect. His bones rest there, and his spirit lives on today."
Chantal continued. "He constructed a flute that he plays and he carried seeds that helped the people to be prosperous. But where does one wavering path become two?" She held her elbow with one hand and pinched her chin between her thumb and forefinger with the other.
"We have to follow the bats that roost in the mouth of the cave. That is the entrance to the underworld," Lance reminded them. "Let's gather everything we need for the journey."
They each took one of the torches. Maya held it in her hand. It was made of wood, surprisingly light, and about the length of her arm. The handle was at the bottom and became thicker as it reached the top where there was something that looked like a cup at the top. Inside the cup was a dingy cloth that appeared to have something wrapped inside. She looked into the bundle and saw a light green powder.
“It’s sulfur and lime,” Lance said. “Ahote uses it occasionally.”
Chantal noticed the tomahawk that had fallen onto the floor after she had broken down the wall. She tried to pull it out, but it wouldn't budge.
Maya tried to give it a go, but it had lodged itself into the floor.
Lance grabbed the tomahawk and shouted a command in the native tongue. The tomahawk pulled free and Lance fell backwards onto his bottom. "Ouch!"
Maya watched in amazement. "How did you do that?"
"I read the symbol. It means release yourself in the Anasazi language. It's written here on the handle."
Wind blustered in from nowhere as it had done before. Grains of dirt swirled in a frenzy, rebuilding the facade.
The three of them dropped to the floor to hide their faces from the swirling sand and rolled over the line to the laundry side. They kept their faces down until the wind relinquished. When Maya looked up she was humbled to see there was not a grain of sand out of place from the original sand painting. She breathed a sigh of relief.
"Let's hurry," Chantal said. "Grab drinks, snacks, climbing gear–"
"And the box Grandma gave me," Maya added.
⭐⭐⭐
Saturday, 11:28 p.m.
Maya knocked on Warren and Roy’s door. She hadn’t heard any news about Warren’s return, and she knew he wasn’t going to be able to find his father.
She could hear murmuring, and then the door swung open. Roy rubbed his head. His eyes were barely open. “What are you doing up at this ungodly hour-”
“Can I talk to Warren?” Maya whispered.
“He isn’t here,” he replied.
Secrets of the Anasazi Page 26