The Secret Sister

by Elizabeth Lowell

  On the rim of the canyon, a hunchbacked flute player called to the ravens far below.

  Chapter 26

  Christy didn’t remember calling to Cain, but she must have because he scrambled up over the rim and ran to her, afraid that she was hurt.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s right over there. Hurry, the sun is moving so fast.”

  “The rock sure isn’t,” he said, breathing hard.

  Yet he didn’t object when she took his hand and all but dragged him to the lip of the mesa thirty feet away.

  The sun had indeed moved. Now it highlighted the petroglyph.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said reverently.

  He sat on his heels next to the drawing, running his fingertips very light over the rough surface of the rock. Kokopelli’s figure was faint, eroded, and unmistakable. The universal Pan, bursting with sexuality and life.

  The point of the dagger of sunlight burned only on his magical flute.

  Cain looked up at Christy. His eyes, like the flute, burned with light and life.

  “You’re good luck for me,” he said.

  “What’s luck got to do with it?”

  “Everything.” He glanced back toward the two Sisters, then checked his watch. “Noon. Or close enough.”

  “So?”

  “Do you know what day this is?”

  She thought for a moment. “September twenty-first?”

  He nodded.

  “So?” she asked.

  “It’s the autumnal equinox, the day of balance when the sun is directly over the equator. Day and night are of equal length.”

  Cain’s voice was like his eyes, full of life, a vitality that tugged at her as surely as the wind and wild land.

  “See?” He pointed. “The narrowest part of the shaft of sunlight is touching Kokopelli’s flute at noon on the equinox—give or take a minute or so. Nothing stays precisely the same over time.”

  “The Anasazi knew that the light would touch the flute at the equinox?”

  “If you had a growing season that was just barely long enough to produce corn or beans, what would you give to know that the days were lengthening or shortening?”

  “A tenth of my crop,” she said dryly.

  He smiled. “The standard religious tithe. I suspect the price of Anasazi peace of mind was a lot steeper.”

  Again he ran his fingertips just above the figure of Kokopelli. The combination of strength and delicacy in his touch reminded Christy of how he’d held the Anasazi bowl when she first saw him in the Two-Tier West. Now she saw what she’d missed before, his love and respect for the artifacts chance brought his way. He was far more complex than she’d thought at first.

  In terms of second hands and concrete blocks—rational terms—it had been only yesterday that she’d met Cain.

  In terms of sun and land, wind and time—elemental terms—it had been a lifetime.

  “Honey?” he asked.

  Her breath caught at how natural the endearment seemed.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Did you touch this at all?”

  “No. As soon as I saw it, I must have started hollering for you. I don’t remember. I just knew it was something I had to show you.”

  A smile gleamed momentarily against his beard. Then his mouth settled into a hard line as he looked from the sandstone dust on his fingertips to Kokopelli.

  “What’s wrong? Isn’t it real?” she asked. “Did some cowboy make it or—”

  “It’s real,” he cut in. “So real someone tried to erase it. If this hadn’t been in full blazing sunlight, you’d probably never have seen it.”

  “Why would someone vandalize a piece of ancient art? Sheer meanness and stupidity?”

  “Maybe. And maybe it wasn’t Kokopelli someone tried to destroy. Maybe they were trying to hide something else.”

  Slowly he looked around, searching for anything else that might have been overlooked.

  Moki’s sudden, aggressive barking made both of them turn toward the sound. It came from below the rim.

  “Did he fall over?” Christy asked, alarmed.

  “Doubt it.”

  But Cain followed her to look over the rim into the canyon below.

  Moki stood on a rounded boulder eighty feet below, wagging his tail like a battle flag and looking up at them expectantly. When they didn’t move, he barked again, impatient to get going.

  “Is he all right?” she asked.

  “He wouldn’t be wagging his tail and dancing around if he’d fallen there. There must be another way down.”

  “Was Kokopelli pointing the way?”

  “Could be. Maybe that’s why someone tried to blot the old boy out.”

  Cain quartered the rimrock until he came to a small cleft in the rounded sandstone. “This is as good as it gets.”

  He eased into the cleft.

  “Cain?” she asked hopefully, wanting to follow him.

  “Let me check it out first.”

  She watched anxiously when he disappeared into the cleft. A curse and the sound of pebbles rolling floated back up to her. Just when she’d decided she’d be left behind again, he reappeared.

  “It’s a hell of a lot better than it looks at first,” he said. “Still want to play mountain goat?”

  She grinned.

  “Hand me the backpack, then,” he said, grinning back.

  He put on the backpack and held out his hand once more. She took it—and started sliding toward him. Fast.

  “Yikes!”

  “I’ve got you,” he said.

  He caught her, held her until she found her feet, then released her with a slow smile that said he’d liked feeling her body against his.

  “I could get to enjoy hiking rough country with you,” he said. “Watch your footing, now. It’s not what you expect it to be.”

  “Neither are you.”

  He gave a crack of laughter, touched her cheek, and turned away to lead her farther beneath the mesa’s eroding rim.

  The cleft became a gap between two massive chunks of sandstone stacked on each other like a giant’s toy blocks. The gap quickly became a tunnel that was hidden from above and lit only by sunlight from either end. Despite Cain’s warning about the uneven footing, Christy stumbled more than once.

  “Hell,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, these stairs are hard for people used to modern steps.”

  “Stairs?” she asked blankly. “Where?”

  “Under your feet. Look at the surface of the stone. See those pockmarks?”

  She squinted into the gloom. “Yes. Barely.”

  “Those were left by a hammer stone wielded by some poor son of a bitch who was told to chip steps out of solid rock.”

  “Ouch. Glad it wasn’t me.”

  She walked slowly, amazed at the work that had gone into making a steep watercourse into a path. As she settled into the rhythm of slope and stairs, she found herself stumbling less.

  “Heads up,” he warned.

  The ceiling of the tunnel was dropping. He was bent over already. Soon she was crouching right along with him.

  “If this keeps up we’ll be on all fours,” she said.

  “Starting real soon.”

  Twenty feet ahead, the burning blue of the sky and Moki’s excited barking promised an end to the tunnel. Cain and Christy had to crawl on all fours for the last ten feet. His shoulders were too wide to fit the exit. He had to twist and slide through sideways, pulling the backpack behind.

  “Very neat,” he said, grunting as he forced himself past the narrow opening. “A ten-year-old with a sharp stick could hold off an army.”

  “When I went to school, I was told the Anasazi were peace-loving subsistence farmers.”

  “Your professors were left over from the hippie-dippy sixties,” he said, amused. “Nobody builds and lives on the face of a cliff because they like losing toddlers and old folks over the edge.”

  “You make cliff dwelling sound irresistible.”<
br />
  His hand came back through the opening. “Grab hold. Tight.”

  When she did, he pulled her out of the tunnel and into the sunlight. The first thing she noticed was that there was nothing in front of her but air.

  Lots of it.

  “Steady,” he said as he shrugged into the backpack again. “There’s not much room on this ledge.”

  She made an odd sound.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Give me a second to get used to the idea of walking on air.”

  “Stone, actually.”

  “Says you. Looks like air to me.”

  Breath came out of her in a long sigh. When she looked up, he was watching her closely.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Really.” She took another deep breath. “And I take your point about living on cliff faces. You’d need a really good reason to do it. Sheer survival comes to mind. Nothing else would be good enough.”

  Moki came bouncing across the rock face like a rubber ball, urging them on. The dog had the advantage of four sure feet and he was headed straight for Christy.

  Cain’s hand moved in a short, sharp motion. Moki stopped so fast he skidded. Another brief motion of Cain’s hand and the dog stood as though nailed to stone.

  “Impressive,” she said.

  “He would have made a fine hunting dog.”

  “You don’t like to hunt?”

  “Ex-cons can’t own firearms.”

  His voice was matter-of-fact rather than bitter. He was absorbed in studying the rock.

  “More steps,” he said. “Follow me and do what I do. Exactly. Like a child’s game, only damned serious. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes pinned her for a moment. Then he smiled. “I’d kiss you again, but it has a bad effect on my sense of balance.”

  “It doesn’t do much for mine either.”

  Something flared in his eyes. Then he turned and started walking.

  She followed him across the rock on steps so faint and weathered she wasn’t even sure they were there at all. It was faith in him that drew her, not any evidence of her own senses. She put her feet where his had been.

  Exactly.

  Slowly they made their way for fifty feet along the face of the cliff. From the corner of her eye, she gradually became aware that their path was leading them out and away from the talus slope and over a steeply slanting section of mesa wall whose front had broken away and fallen to the canyon bottom far below.

  “Am I the only one who doesn’t see anything below us but air?” she asked uneasily.

  “Don’t look at the air. Look at the rock. Especially here.”

  He stopped and pointed to a place where the steps came at a different interval than they had before.

  “Stop and switch feet here,” he said. “Most people lead with their right foot on a stairway. Lead with your left from here on or you’ll find yourself down on the canyon floor.”

  A single look at his face told her that he was quite serious.

  “Left foot, huh?” she said. “Okay. Left foot it is. But why? Did they measure the steps wrong or something?”

  “It’s an old trick, like a long step thrown in with a bunch of short ones. Causes no end of grief to outsiders who don’t know the key.”

  “Peace-loving, huh?” she asked.

  “You bet. Gentle, fruit-eating apes, every last one of them.”

  She snickered. “I’d love to have seen you in academia.”

  He smiled lazily. “It was fun.”

  She watched and changed leads at the spot he indicated. Walking that way was awkward at first but she quickly caught the new rhythm. They made their way across the rock face for another fifty feet before he stopped.

  “No wonder nobody ever found anything up here,” he said softly. “Look at the size of that flake.”

  “Flake?”

  He gestured.

  She realized that the “flake” he was talking about was a sandstone slab as big as a basketball floor and nearly as thick as Cain was tall.

  “That,” she said, “is one big flake.”

  From a short distance away, the sandstone slab appeared to have broken neatly off the canyon rim and slid thirty or forty feet down the face of the mesa. In geologic time, the event was recent. The edges of the sandstone slab looked newer, brighter, less weathered than the rest of the mesa face.

  “Look at the steps,” he said in a hushed voice.

  The faint path of worn steps led directly up to the edge of the fallen slab and vanished.

  “End of the line?” she asked, disappointed.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Look up there.”

  Five or six feet above the path, there was a little hollow, almost like the sandstone slab had fallen over the front of a small alcove, concealing it. The hollow was in full shade.

  Christy stared and then stared again, feeling excitement sweep through her.

  “Is it…?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter 27

  Without looking away from the flake, Cain held his hand out. When Christy took it he squeezed hard.

  And then he laughed.

  Suddenly she was laughing too. She forgot her uneasiness at being perched on the exposed rock face. There was no need for fear. She knew what it was to fly like a raven above an ancient, timeless land.

  Ahead of them the corner of a man-made wall loomed from the shadows.

  “Look at the thickness of those vigas,” he said.

  “I would, if I knew what they were.”

  “The cedar roof supports.”

  Moki emerged from the shadows at the edge of the fallen slab. His whole body vibrated with eagerness for them to join him, but he didn’t race forward or bark. He was on his best hunting behavior now, watching his master’s hands for instructions.

  The order was to stay put.

  Christy nearly laughed at the dog’s visible disappointment. “Poor baby.”

  “I don’t want him to go through a kiva roof or trash a pot while chasing rats,” Cain said.

  “Rats?”

  “Not the New York kind. The Moki kind. Pack rats. They move into ruins and fill up the storage cysts and lath walls with nests.”

  “Rats are rats. I hope Moki’s part terrier.”

  “Moki is part everything.”

  When they reached the tumble of rocks where Moki waited, Cain stopped Christy with a hand hard around her wrist.

  “No farther,” he said. “Ruins can be dangerous. The walls are usually unstable. So are kiva roofs. And the alcove stone itself…”

  Warily he measured the massive sandstone flake that had fallen within historic times, shutting off the alcove except for a narrow window or doorway at each end. The sandstone slab looked like it was teetering on the edge of falling again. When it did, it would take a lot of the rim with it.

  Just a matter of time.

  “I don’t like the looks of that flake,” he said.

  “Are you going in anyway?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then so am I.”

  He turned to argue with her and saw she wasn’t having any. “Okay, honey. But be real careful where you put your feet.”

  He started up the rubble pile to the entrance of the alcove. The sandstone debris seemed to be stable, as if it had been wedged together during the fall.

  Halfway up the ramp, a fist-sized chunk of stone came tumbling out of the pile. The rock hit the ledge at Christy’s feet and bounced down the steeply sloping stone face until it disappeared soundlessly over the edge.

  Cain looked at her.

  “Whither thou goest and all that,” she said through her teeth.

  “What happened to the woman who said cluck cluck?”

  “She discovered her wings and flew away.”

  Smiling, shaking his head, he stepped onto the little sill of rock that ran across the alcove window. After a moment, he motioned for her to follow.

  A faint breeze stirred
within the shadow-filled alcove. When she reached the sill, she saw another wedge of sunlight on the far side.

  “Let your eyes adjust,” he said. “When you can see into the shadows, let me know.”

  As her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, she saw what lay behind the huge sandstone curtain.

  “My God,” she breathed.

  “Amen.”

  The alcove held a well-preserved cliff dwelling, intact except for a fallen wall across the front of the structure. The corner of wall and roof they’d seen from below was part of a block of rooms that stretched for almost a hundred feet across the alcove. There were from two to four stories in the building, depending on the slope of the alcove roof.

  “Is this as good as I think it is?” she asked softly.

  “It’s better, honey. It’s like a time capsule. I don’t know of another ruin in the Southwest that’s been protected like this.”

  “How old are the buildings?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but the doorway style looks a lot like Mesa Verde. Mid–twelfth century. About the height of the Chaco empire. And about the time things started coming apart.”

  Cain took another look around. His left hand moved slightly. Moki bounded past them and into the ruins.

  “Change your mind about letting him in?” she asked.

  “Yeah. He’s better at sensing bad footing than we are, and better able to get himself out of trouble if something gives way.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “Hell, yes. In ruins this size, some of the floors will be lucky to support themselves. And no, you’re not going with me if I go exploring.”

  One look at his set expression convinced her to wait now and argue if and when he went exploring.

  Moki appeared atop one of the rooms close to their window, tail wagging and coated with what looked like twigs. The breeze from the interior of the alcove suddenly smelled rank.

  “Yuck,” she said.

  “Moki found a pack rat’s nest.”

  “Wonderful,” she said without enthusiasm.

  He smiled. “I hope you don’t mind getting dusty and dirty. These ruins haven’t been cleaned for nearly a thousand years.”

  He eased down onto a low wall that once had run along the lip of the alcove. The masonry was thick and strong.