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by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  Three of the objects were covered jars of fired clay. Their contents had been lost long ago, but the designs incised around them hinted at their purpose. One showed seeds planted in even furrows, and beside them tall grasslike plants growing in lines. Another showed a tree, a curl of bark, a figure on a litter holding the bark, and then a figure standing, robust. The third showed the jar itself, but as if it were transparent, so that inside the women could see it once held a central core and winglike filaments and was filled with liquid. Though none of them knew what that liquid was supposed to be.

  Other objects were more easily recognizable. A model of a boat, with precise lines etched in it, as if to show its construction. A thin, hollow cylinder with inner ridges that once held disks of some type, and if the disks had been glass, then the cylinder was obviously a telescope. And a heavy stone of metal with one polished side on which a diagram of the sun and planets had been inscribed.

  Then there were those simple objects whose purpose was unclear. A bundle of woven cord, a weight like a plumb bob, and a rod of metal marked with the same precise lines as were found on the boat. Another bundle of several small planks of wood joined by knotted cords, with the edges of the planks dotted with what could be, but might not be, random indentations, though each was identified by a carved figure, undecodable by the women. There was also a badly tarnished metal box, no larger than a hand, that held a collection of tiny gears.

  Two objects were fired-clay cylinders in which stones and metal had been embedded, and which some women thought might be recipes. One cylinder had flint and a chunk of metal, so it seemed reasonable to conclude it was to show how fire could be made. The other cylinder was more puzzling. It held three stones with threads of metal ore, and a final small ingot of a different metal. The women assumed it took the first three ores to make the metal, but it was not their place to understand, only to preserve.

  The final object was the most obvious in purpose, and the most precious: a collection of thin gold sheets, bound together like a book, on which the Spider Woman had written her words, though in symbols none today could read.

  Someday, all the women knew, Spider Woman would come back to read those words to them again, and all would be understood. That she had promised.

  Among the women who prayed today, Yazhi was the youngest, a new generation, and when the prayer was completed, she asked to speak.

  Shimasani was eldest and gave her permission.

  “Have you seen the news?” Yazhi was excited and nervous, all at the same time. “In Antarctica, they’ve found a tsenadjihih. Like this one!”

  “I find that difficult to believe,” Abequa said. “There are no people there.”

  “But there were, they say. They found bodies. Hundreds of them. Very old.”

  “You say the bodies were left there?” Chochmingwu asked.

  Yazhi nodded urgently. This was so important. “All over the place.”

  “What people leave their dead like that?”

  “Old-time people. They say they traveled across the whole world a long time ago and built tsenadjihih everywhere they went to teach the people that they met.”

  “What things did they teach?” Shimasani asked.

  Yazhi gathered her courage. “The things we say the Spider Woman taught us.”

  “Yazhi, you are young. You know the White Man does a lot of confusing things to try to mix us up. I think this story is one of those things.”

  “But they had pictures. I saw them.”

  The older women spoke among themselves, and as far as they could tell, there was a simple explanation for what their youngest member had seen.

  “Yazhi, there are people everywhere,” Shimasani said. “Maybe different gods made them in different places. I don’t know. But we were made here, and this is the land the Spider Woman gave us. And here on the tsenadjihih she made for us, these are the gifts she gave us, to protect and care for until she returns to us.

  “We know this is true because this is what our mothers told us. And it’s what their mothers told them. And their mothers and their mothers all the way back to when Spider Woman told the first mother. So that’s what it is. And you shouldn’t listen to what the White Man says.”

  Yazhi bowed her head, embarrassed for having questioned the truth. “I’m sorry. If . . . if you want me to leave the Naakits’ladah, then I will go.”

  Shimasani smiled for the young girl. “We all make mistakes. We’re all the same. That’s why the tsenadjihih is round.”

  Yazhi felt better. There was comfort in the place, knowing the secret things she knew, knowing the sacred trust she had accepted.

  So for the rest of the day and into the night, the twelve women chanted all the verses of how the land was formed and the people made and all the other lessons taught by the Spider Woman.

  In time, Yazhi would memorize the entire saga, and then add the stories of the twelve women gathered here today, so she could teach the verses to her daughter, who would teach them to her daughter, and on through the journey that would last until the Spider Woman returned to the people, as she had promised.

  Still, Yazhi couldn’t help wondering, why had the Spider Woman left in the first place?

  And where had she come from?

  SIXTY

  “Homo antarcticensis,” Colonel Kowinski said to David and Jess. “It’s not official yet. Probably be a few more years and a lot more sequencing, but that’s what they’re calling them for now. It’s an entirely new species, as different from modern humans as Neandertals.”

  They were standing in front of the glass wall that overlooked the sample preparation lab. In that sterile environment, two workers in masks and gowns delicately dissected one of the 432 bodies recovered from what the MacCleirigh Foundation had named the Ironwood-Palmer Site.

  “The biggest anatomical difference so far?” Kowinski continued. “It’s the brain. The Navy Medical Research Center’s done MRIs. No corpus callosum. No cerebral hemispheres. It’s just one undifferentiated lobe. Nothing like it in primates at all.”

  “Do they know what that would mean?” Jess asked.

  “Not a clue. Other than there’re a few more cubic inches of gray matter packed into their skulls, and communication between different areas of their brain was likely more direct, without hitting the bottleneck of the connecting tissue between hemispheres. Judging from what the archaeologists are pulling out of Palmer, the calculating machines with all their gears, the blueprints for their ships . . . I’d say the structure of their brains made them smart. Exceptionally smart.”

  “Couldn’t be that smart,” David said. “They’re extinct.”

  “As a species, yes. Now that we’ve started examining their DNA, we can conclusively say they interbred with modern humans.” She looked at David. “Maybe that’s where we get our geniuses from.”

  “I hope not,” David said. “Imagine being so smart you figure out how to thrive in Antarctica for the one brief window when it’s actually possible. Then the climate swings back to normal and you’re done. Maybe there’s such a thing as being too smart.”

  Kowinski’s eyebrows shot up. “So modern humans have managed to survive because we’re stupid?”

  Ironwood’s missing all the fun, David thought. He’d have loved debating with the colonel. “There’s got to be a reason, and that’s as good as any.”

  David allowed a lab technician to take new cheek swabs and blood samples. It was the least he could do to make his apologies to the colonel, and to thank them for the medical protocols he was following.

  Afterward, he and Jess waited in the entrance lobby of the building.

  “You back to Zurich now?” he asked. He knew he would miss the intensity that had thrown them together and changed both their lives. He wondered if she felt the same. If so, she didn’t say. It had taken her some time just to treat him as an ordinary person again. Because of years of conditioning, David thought. Beliefs that had to change now, even if human nature didn’t.


  “Zurich soon,” Jess said. “There’s a lot the Family has to talk about, and do. The Shop needs a new director. Su-Lin and Andrew are nowhere to be found. So that’s three defenders who need to be replaced. Though, if the Promise has been fulfilled, it may be there’s no need for the Twelve anymore.” She broke off and frowned. “And there’s still the mystery of whatever was on the tables in the temples.”

  David had been keeping up with that search. So far, based on the map he had photographed in Cornwall, five more outposts had been located in distant locations around the world, and confidence was high all the remaining ones would be found within the year. None so far had been found intact, though, even the most inaccessible ones. Which to David meant there could be another reason why the tables were empty and the artifacts gone.

  “I don’t think it is a mystery why the artifacts are missing,” he said.

  “Neither do I. Looters took them all.”

  “I agree they were taken, but not stolen.”

  Jess looked confused.

  “I think the artifacts on the tables were used, Jess. The sun maps are like calendars, to save us from ‘the confusion of days.’ The maps showed our world and how to travel it. Who knows what other kinds of instruction books or manuals or models were on those tables? But I bet they showed people how to build things, how to plant crops, write . . . all those skills Ironwood told us about that . . . that kick-started civilization around the world all at the same time, even though . . .”

  “Even though the First Gods had gone home to die?” Jess didn’t look convinced.

  David smiled. “Their knowledge survived. What more can any of us send on to the future?”

  Jess wouldn’t give in. “Our genes.”

  Neither would David. “With genetic drift, catastrophe, just plain bad luck, there’re a lot of genetic dead ends, but knowledge survives. Your family and all that they’ve done through the generations is proof of that.”

  Jess was quiet for a moment. “You and I are going to be writing a new chapter of Traditions. New lessons for more than just the children.” She banished whatever dark thought had momentarily clouded her features. “But, first things first. I’m off to Roswell, New Mexico.”

  She said “you and I.” So she was planning to see him again—but when? Until he’d made her see reason, Jess believed she was his defender. Now David wished she still believed it. She wouldn’t be leaving him two months before his twenty-seventh birthday. So few days left.

  “Roswell?” he asked.

  “Ironwood filed a new will his last day in Vanuatu. He left his entire collection of historical artifacts to me.”

  “The government isn’t going to confiscate it?”

  “Agent Lyle doesn’t think so.”

  “What about the . . . other thing?”

  “The other thing,” Jess repeated. “The ‘signature.’ Right.” The look on her face told him she was no happier about this part than he was.

  “So you got the talk, too,” he said. “Too many religious implications, which means political implications, so, until there’s more evidence, don’t mention the impossible ten-million-year-old map or the three-fingered inhuman hand.”

  “The map is imprecise, David. I’ve heard some experts say it’s an artistic interpretation no more than ten thousand years old.”

  “Imprecise compared to what? Computer simulations of what the Earth looked like back then? Maybe the computers got it wrong.”

  “And there’s only one of those handprints. No other sign of . . . whatever it might have been.”

  “No other sign, you mean, except for those grooves on the stone path in the cavern. Apparently, they match the size of the talons, fit the spaces between the sharp metal under that gold cross . . . You think maybe that’s how my ancestors—your First Gods—jump-started their own civilization so quickly? They reached Antarctica, checked out the caves for shelter, found the library of golden books some other even earlier civilization had left, and then spread it around the world?”

  “It’s going to be a long time till Antarctica’s ice-free again. We’ll probably never know the answer.” Jess fell silent, then looked up at him. “What about the treatments?”

  “I’m not dead yet.” Time slowed for David as he saw her pale.

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “I’m in perfect health, but some of my anomalies are in gene regions that may be involved in sudden cardiac death.”

  “Oh, David . . .”

  “No. That’s a good thing. It’s what I hoped for. A direction. Something to try.” He smiled. “It’s knowledge.”

  “What can they do?”

  David shrugged. “I’m on a raft of drugs. Sunday night I check into Walter Reed to get a pacemaker. If my heart acts up, I’ll be okay. And if that is what kept everyone else from reaching twenty-seven, then I’m going to be fine.”

  “I don’t like all those ifs,” Jess said.

  “Not knowing just makes me like everyone else.”

  A Maybach drove up to the main doors.

  “Willem’s here . . .” Jess looked at David, and time stopped for both of them.

  She reached up, touched his face. “I’ve spent all my life waiting for you. You’d better wait for me.”

  “Twelve Winds of the world, Jess.”

  Jess understood. She touched the silver cross he always wore now. “No one ever knows . . .”

  Yet in that moment, both did know one thing for a certainty: However long their journey would be, it wasn’t over yet.

  ANTARCTICA 10,800 YEARS B.C.E.

  On the twenty-first day of their journey they saw it, just as the sun slipped into the terrible waves and darkness claimed the raft and the seventeen who clung to it. A shimmer of difference at the distant edge of the endless sea. Not the frothing white of the cresting waves that relentlessly attacked them, sweeping them up in huge surges, driving them down in blinding, stinging agonies. Instead, an arc of white that remained still and untroubled.

  Land.

  That glimpse gave them hope as they rode the waves and the night.

  The wind sliced through the salt-spray-stiffened hides they wore, even as the seventeen huddled to conserve what little body warmth they had remaining.

  The last of the fish had been eaten seven days ago. The gourds of water from the last icy downpour had been empty for three. The bright-eyed seabirds that glided so slowly and so tantalizingly near, their lace-feathered wingtips only a handsbreadth from the heaving surface of the waves, never came within reach.

  The raft-riders fought the near-overwhelming urge to gnaw at the tendon and leather bindings that held together their mat of resin-sealed bamboo and woven vine. When the sun broke free from the sea again, only sixteen were alive to feel its warmth.

  No one had seen Stonecutter slip from the raft. If he cried out in despair or release, no one had heard him. All on the raft were his kin, but none mourned. Death was the way of things.

  Netweaver was youngest now. Fourteen years old. Both her children were lost in the first days, after the storm swept the raft from the shoreline of home. On the fourth day, her boy was thrown off by a wave and never resurfaced. On the sixth day, her girl, not yet a year old, didn’t awaken, her once black skin ashen. The young mother held her daughter close for two more days before Firemaker slid the small, still body into the green depths.

  But all the others on the raft were her kin as well, and now, for them, Netweaver used her young eyes to stare through the slowly brightening haze of dawn. The white was there, larger, closer. The random, capricious wind that had lifted them from one shore was taking them to another.

  At her side, Carver, the oldest, almost twenty, stoically kept his apprehension to himself. He had journeyed up the mountains of home and understood what white meant. Making landfall on ice and snow was no better than remaining adrift on open ocean. Either alternative meant death within days.

  The wind picked up as the morning passed, and, in the star
k blue sky, thick clouds tumbled into billowing towers, darkening with rain above the new shore.

  Netweaver forced her cracked, stiff hands from the palm-fiber rope that bound her to safety, and fought exhaustion to rise unsteadily to her feet. Others near her braced her legs on the slippery bamboo deck so she could see just that small bit farther as the raft creaked at the crest of the next wave.

  She held her arms out for balance, gasping as the raft slid down the next trough, then leaned sharply forward as the raft careened up the next wave. There, at the top, for just a heartbeat, just a moment, she saw something more than white.

  There was green as well, sweeping down from distant mountains to the nearing shore.

  Carver listened to what Netweaver shouted to him over the roar of wind and water. With the help of the others, he stood beside her, to see for himself.

  She was right. There was more than ice ahead, and the raft was closing quickly.

  More hours later, as the twenty-second day of the journey ended, they were soaked anew in the plumes of spray from wild waves crashing against sharp black rocks. Past that barrier, they could see a crescent of dense trees framing wide stretches of waving grasses.

  Green.

  The raft held together almost long enough.

  A hundred meters from the black stone beach, a corner of the raft snagged on a jagged boulder. The bindings tore, and the bamboo floats under the back half burst free like fish leaping into the air.

  Netweaver and the rest scrambled and slid to the intact end of the raft as Trapper and two others were swept away. Before anything else could be done, another wave slammed down on the floundering raft and burst it apart completely.

  Twelve of them made it to the black beach that day. Crawling, gasping, cut and gouged flesh stinging with salt. Twelve of twenty-three.

  Firemaker and two others didn’t pause but searched through the stones, collected driftwood, finding the raw materials of their trade, of survival.