by Rada, J. R.
David’s body tipped into the hole and he fell. His left hand struck the edge of the hole, and held. He tried to raise his right hand up, but just as he was about to grab the edge, a cramp hit his left hand.
He suddenly realized he was hanging in the hole and his feet still weren’t touching the bottom. How deep was this hole? Not that he wanted to find out. It was too dark in there for him.
As David brought his left hand up to grab the edge again, the edge of the hole crumbled under his right fingers. He had only a brief moment to realize what had happened, and then he was falling through the hole.
CHAPTER 2
Adam Maho climbed down the ladder into the kiva, feeling a little pain in his knees. Nothing to complain about, mind you. A cup of snakeweed tea when he went home would ease the pain. It was just another of the trials of old age he had faced during the past few years. Only now it seemed he faced them every day instead of every once in a while, though he wondered which was creaking more: his knees or the wooden rungs of the ladder that were lashed to wooden poles?
When he had climbed far enough down the ladder, he pulled the nuta, the thatched covering, over the opening of the kiva to keep the sunlight out.
The kiva was a circular room built below the ground. This particular kiva was about eighteen feet in diameter, although it was slightly longer on the north and south sides. Unlike many of the other kivas in Oraibi, or throughout the Hopi reservation for that matter, no woman or white man had ever set foot in this sacred room. It was even more sacred than the other ceremonial kivas. In the center of the room, the coals of a near-dead fire throbbed with a red-orange glow giving almost no light.
Though he could only see a few feet in front of himself, Adam knew he was not alone in the room, which was not unusual. Someone was seated against the far wall hidden in the darkness of the shadows. As Adam passed by the fire, he tossed a handful of small juniper branches on the sheep dung and charcoal coals. The coals flared with small fires, then settled down to the familiar red-orange glow. White smoke billowed up from the fire into the room.
He stopped next to the sipapu, the ceremonial emergence hole into this world, and looked down at the huge stone plugging the four-foot hole. Other kivas had smaller sipapus and they were left open as this one had once been. The stone had been placed in this sipapu long ago when Chief Raymond’s grandfather’s grandfather had lived. Very few Hopis knew of the reason for this break in tradition, if they even knew of it at all, but they did not question the wisdom of Those-Who-Had-Lived-Before. Adam knew the reason, for it was the responsibility of his clan, the Sun Clan, to protect this kiva. That was the reason he chose to come to this sacred place to receive his visions. There were two kivas closer to his home, but none such as this one. The magic was strong here; the mystery overpowering.
He pressed one foot on the stone to make sure it was still wedged tightly within the sipapu. There were no gaps around the edges. That was good. It was better that no kachina, good or otherwise, be able to use this kiva to enter the Fourth World.
The stone trembled beneath his foot. Startled, Adam jumped backwards hitting one of the roof-supporting pillars. The stone had moved! But that was impossible.
Was it?
Yes! Just because he had received visions of a sipapu opening from Kuskurza, the Third World, did not mean that this sipapu would open. Those-Who-Had-Lived-Before had made sure of that. He touched his foot to the stone again. This time there was no trembling. Satisfied, he removed his foot from the stone.
Adam walked to the far wall and sat down on the stone bench built along the curving wall. He leaned back against the clay and stone wall allowing its coolness to spread through his body. He could see the man in the shadows now. It was Peter Kwa´ni. The older man sat silently to Adam’s left, deep in his own meditation.
Adam leaned his head forward and closed his eyes to meditate. He did not know if the visions would come once more, but he had to learn why the harmony between the Third and Fourth Worlds, Kuskurza and Tu´waqachi, was now unbalanced. Since the Fourth World was his own, Adam had a stake in seeing that it thrived.
Holding a deep breath of smoke from the fire, Adam tried to relax his body. The smoke was thick and foul smelling. He blew the air out slowly between his pursed lips. One of the juniper branches crackled in the fire. Beside him, he heard Peter take a deep breath and hold it. The kiva seemed to be filling with smoke, but Adam knew that was impossible. The ventilation hole allowed the smoke to escape into the sky. Yet, Adam’s eyes teared up as the smoke stung them.
He continued to try and relax because he wanted to be prepared to receive a vision.
He coughed from the smoke. The ventilation hole must be blocked because the air in the kiva was filled with smoke. Why was it darkening? The burning juniper gave off a white smoke.
Adam looked over at Peter. The medicine man didn’t seem bothered by the gathering smoke. His head was slumped back against the wall, his eyes closed. His arms were folded across his chest. Had Peter eaten herbs that would keep the smoke from choking him? Was there a poultice that the medicine man had rubbed on the eyes to keep them from tearing? Adam had never heard of such a poultice or herbs, but he was not a medicine man. Peter was. He knew many things about the medicinal properties of plants that most Hopis did not, and he seemed unaffected by the thick, dark smoke.
Again Adam concentrated on relaxing his body. His body had to be receptive if his mind was to pierce the veil between the Third and Fourth Worlds. He had determined after his second vision a week ago that he had truly seen the mythical Third World, which legend said was destroyed because of its evil. But Kuskurza hadn’t been destroyed. At least not if Adam’s visions were true. Kuskurza still existed or at least a portion of it still existed and continued to breed the same evil that had supposedly led to its original destruction. Only now it threatened to destroy both Kuskurza and Tu´waqachi.
Adam straightened his back so that his head was upright. The very top of his head tingled like an annoying itch as his ko´pavi opened to receive a vision from Taiowa, the Creator. The ko´pavi was the doorway through which life entered the body of a baby. As the baby grew older, the doorway hardened and closed. In adulthood, the ko´pavi only opened when a Hopi communicated with the Creator.
Images flooded into Adam’s mind too fast for him to comprehend. He glimpsed pueblos eight-stories tall and with at least fifteen-hundred rooms, flat-sided mountains of stone even larger than the pueblos, a war among a pale-skinned race of people with skins even whiter than the white man’s, pale-skinned warriors flying on shields of scaly, feathered skins, and other images that flashed in his mind so quickly that he barely had time to register he had seen anything let alone understand them. The images finally slowed and Adam saw a lone man, a white man, not one of the pale people. The man ran through the darkness. He wore a filthy and ragged suit. Some distance behind the white man, Adam saw five members of the Bow Clan chasing him.
Pahana. The white savior of the Hopi. Could it be?
The pursuers did not look the same as the Hopis, although they were of the same people. The members of the Bow Clan had pale-white skin the color of snow at the tops of the mountains. Their eyes were large and round, but had sharp corners on the sides. Their hair was not black, but as white as their skin. The Bow Clan were short, thin men with long fingers. Perhaps the most-obvious difference was not physical. The members of the Bow Clan were warriors who ruled the Third World brutally in a way that pitted the Ancient Ones against one another. They inspired distrust, fear and hatred among the Ancient Ones. When the other clans had fled Kuskurza and emerged through the sipapu into Tu´waqachi, they had left behind the Bow Clan. Adam was not sure how he knew the pale-skinned men were of the Bow Clan, but he did not question the insights given to him by the Creator.
The Bow Clan warriors closed the gap between themselves and the white man. The white man knew he was being pursued, but he could not move as quickly as the Bow Clan warriors could in the darkness
. Adam knew the warriors must not kill the white man, though that is what they planned to do if they caught him. If the white man died, then Adam’s world, Tu´waqachi, would be destroyed and So´tuknang, the nephew of Taiowa, would not create another as he had done in the past. This was the last chance for the Hopis to prove themselves worthy of Taiowa. But if the white man died, the Dark Kachinas would rule everything and everyone in the Third and Fourth Worlds rather than just controlling the Bow Clan in Kuskurza.
Adam heard a whisper in his head. It was too faint to understand. He concentrated on hearing the words, for it might be Taiowa advising him on what he must do to save the white man. As Adam heard and understood the whisper, his vision faded from his mind. No longer could he see Kuskurza. He sat in the kiva. Peter’s hand was on his shoulder. The thick smoke had vanished and the kiva looked as it should.
“Are you well?” Peter asked.
Adam stared at him blankly. Peter was a medicine man. He knew how to cure the problems of the body, but this was a problem of the spirit.
“Don’t you feel it?” Adam said.
Peter thought for a moment. “I’ve felt an uneasiness here today, but I don’t know what it is.”
Adam remembered his vision and interpreted it. “Someone from this world has gone to Kuskurza.”
Peter smiled and patted Adam on the shoulder. “The Third World is gone, my friend. So´tuknang destroyed it when he created the Fourth World for our people. You know that as well as I do.” He paused and stared closely at Adam’s face. Peter reached out with a finger and wiped the tears from Adam’s face. “Even if it weren’t so, who would be so foolish as to venture below where evil thrives?”
“A white man.”
“A white man?” Peter said sharply. “Pahana?”
Adam thought about it. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. I only know he went from the Fourth World to the Third World.”
“But no white man knows the path to Kuskurza. It is a sacred place among the Hopi. Very few know that it even exists. Certainly no white man could know how to find it. No white has ever set foot in this kiva. The stone is still in place.”
Peter pointed to the plugged sipapu.
“I don’t know this man’s name. Only that I have seen him in my visions recently. This is the fourth vision. He has found another sipapu ... somewhere, not here ... and it has led him to Kuskurza.”
Peter nodded his head. “So that’s why you have visited this kiva while your crops cry out for water. People have been saying that your visions have made you sick in the head.”
Peter tapped his finger against Adam’s forehead. Adam pushed his friend’s hand away.
“I’m not sick. It is distress and fear that you see.” Adam recalled all that he had learned from his previous visions and told Peter. “The dark kachinas were imprisoned because they are spirits, and spirits cannot be killed. They would have only waited for the destroying flood So´tuknang sent to recede and then they would have followed the clans through the sipapu to the Fourth World. They have not been punished with death as we believe. So´tuknang spared a small portion of Kuskurza from the flood and imprisoned the dark kachinas with bright light in mountains of stone, but the light that holds them in their prison is dimming. When it dims, it won’t be strong enough to hold the dark kachinas in the mountains of stone, and they will be free. They will leave the Third World and spill over this land like the flood that destroyed Kuskurza, and they will destroy this world just as thoroughly, unless...”
“Unless what?” Peter asked.
Help him. That is what the whispering voice in his head had said over and over, but how do you help a stranger who was somewhere unknown?
Adam sighed. His shoulders slumped forward and he bowed his head as if in prayer. “I don’t know.”
Peter rubbed his chin. “You’re my friend, Adam, and because of this, I believe you. However, what you have seen is important to all our people. Chief Raymond should be told. It’s up to him to decide what should be done to protect Tu´waqachi.”
Adam stood up quickly. “No. It is not up to him. It is up to Taiowa to decide. If the Creator wants Raymond to act, he will give Raymond his own vision. Otherwise, Taiowa has given me the responsibility. I must find a way to protect this white man I have seen in my visions.”
Adam knew Peter was not convinced, but he would say nothing...at least for now. Adam walked toward the ladder holding to the edge of the round wall so that he would not have to look at or touch the sipapu stone once again.
He climbed out of the kiva and left Peter alone to meditate. Though Adam doubted the medicine man would find much peace in the kiva now. Adam knew he wouldn’t.
Standing on the ground above the kiva, Adam squinted his eyes against the bright midday sun. When he could see without squinting, he stared out over the sparse fields below the Third Mesa of the Hopi Reservation. He admired the order among the fields, straight lines of plants that were carefully tended and cultivated by the men of Oraibi. This was the view he preferred to see before he entered and as he exited the kiva. It was a view that showed him the faith of the Hopis and the power of Taiowa. Together, they had brought forth life upon the barren land.
Adam turned slowly to face the village. He walked toward his pueblo trying not to let Oraibi’s decay upset him. For more than 750 years, the Hopis had lived in Oraibi. It was the oldest, continuously inhabited town in the United States. The Hopis had thrived in Oraibi centuries before the white men had even set foot on this land.
The white anthropologists who studied Hopi ancient artifacts thought Oraibi had been built to defend the Hopis of the Third Mesa against attacking Navajo and Sioux war parties. They were wrong, as they usually were in matters concerning the Hopis. Oraibi had been built to protect the Navajo and Sioux from the Hopis, or rather from those from whom the Hopis had fled. Those-Who-Had-Lived-Before had felt a responsibility not to spread their evil over their new world. Oraibi had been built as a shelter for the families of the men who guarded the sipapu to make sure it remained closed.
As Adam walked down the main street of Oraibi past the two-storied pueblos, he noticed the cracked and missing clay from the pueblo walls that left the stones beneath exposed. Some of the roofs on the lowest rooms had caved in. Roofs on the higher rooms threatened to do the same. On other pueblos, entire walls had fallen leaving the rooms behind them exposed to the elements. Stone stairways were nothing more than slanted ledges, the steps worn down to nothing.
Such decay had not existed before the Great Division. It was only afterwards, when Oraibi was controlled by those who wanted change that the slow death of Oraibi began. During the Great Division, the Hopis who welcomed the changes the white men offered drove those who felt it was unwise to forget the old ways from Oraibi. The Hopis who left Oraibi had built the villages of Hotevilla and Bacabi on the Third Mesa, or they had gone to the other villages on the First and Second Mesas. The Great Division left only a few in Oraibi who remembered why the village had originally been built. The Hopis who welcomed the white men’s changes didn’t recall the purpose of Oraibi, or if they did, they did not believe it. They allowed the old things to fall into disrepair as they were abandoned in favor of the white man’s things.
Adam walked down the main street nodding to those people he passed. Because the day was warm and the sun was high, he saw mostly women sitting in front of their rooms shaping or painting pottery. While the men worked in the fields below the mesa, the women shaped the clay pots by coiling strings of clay on top of each other with the same symmetry a pottery wheel could create. Some of the women prepared piki or other foods by grinding corn, seeds, and herbs into meal with a metate and mano, a mortar and pestle. These were the ones who still believed, who did not go to McDonald’s for a Big Mac or Albertson’s for canned vegetables.
Adam turned left at an intersection and walked to the second pueblo, one of the older pueblos that made up a wall of the plaza. The wooden door to his rooms was open allowing whatever
breeze there might be blow through. Adam had built the chairs, stools, and table in the main room. He had bought the cabinet standing in the back corner in Winslow for his wife, Connie. A shallow pit for cooking fires was dug into the floor near one wall. Most of the wooden floor was covered by a large, colorful Navajo rug for which Adam had traded two silver bracelets and a turquoise necklace.
His granddaughter, Sarah, sat on a mat in the middle of the main room. She hummed to herself as she shaped balls of cornmeal dough to make pik´ami, a sweet cornbread that would be cooked in the pit. She did not look up when Adam entered. She simply hummed and patted more meal into dough balls.
Adam crossed the room to where the wash basin sat on a small table. Using a pitcher Sarah had made when she was a child, Adam filled the basin with water. There was no indoor plumbing on the Hopi reservation, except at the Hopi Cultural Center where the white tourists stayed.
He removed the red bandeau wrapped around his head and dipped it into the water. Wiping his face with the bandeau, he tried not to think about his visions, which was impossible. He had seen things more horrible than any nightmare he might have dreamed. He had to act. It was his responsibility. Taiowa had given him this duty; he must not fail.
“You have been to the kiva again. The smell of smoke follows you,” Sarah said from behind him.
Adam turned to face her. She had set the dough ball on the mat and was standing only a few feet away from him.
“Have you decided to give up your crops? They must be dying now. They have been a week without water,” she said.
Adam could tell how upset she was. As he watched her nostrils flare and the shaking of her head that appeared to be nothing more than a twitch, Adam could have sworn that he was looking at Connie. Granddaughter and grandmother shared the same delicate features. On occasion, Adam thought even their voices sounded alike. How he wished his wife had lived long enough to know her granddaughter as a woman.