The snow had covered her tracks, and of course it wouldn’t occur to a search party formed after she didn’t show up at the office in Santa Fe that she might have headed for Hupobi. The drive would be considered insane in this weather. No one knew about Amir and the events of Cairo’s Bloody Wednesday, about why she had freaked out.
By evening she was slipping in and out of hypothermic consciousness, had been on the mesa for nearly ten hours and was bone chilled. Then gradually, like the intoxication of a good red wine, she became aware that she was feeling warmer. At first, she was grateful, then realized that getting warm meant she was freezing to death. She dug faster, even as the warmth mutated into a powerful sense of presence. A calm. Yes, a calm, supportive presence. She was once again sitting on her grandmother’s lap, being hugged with reassuring affection, feeling that soft belly, the buttons from her housedress pressing gently into her back. I’m hallucinating, she realized. She blinked and shook herself, rubbing her legs as vigorously as she could, twisting her torso, flapping her arms, moving her whole body in order to keep herself from freezing. The presence became more distinct, distinguishable, like two persons sitting close by.
“Are you my guides?” she asked. Lucinda had said my guides could come in any form.
No answer.
“Are you my guides?” she gently asked again, then waited. She felt a touch on her face as though a warm hand had moved tenderly across her cheek. Justine began to cry, to sob softly. “Thank you. Thank you.” With new resolve, and an unexplainably powerful confidence, she turned her attention to the stubborn roots claiming her foot, and pulled and twisted with all of her strength.
Justine knew her guides were with her when the roots gave way. With both hands she carefully extracted her foot and laid it down in the snow, feeling it was a strange appendage that didn’t belong to her. Searing pain shot up her calf, causing her breath to catch in her throat, her head to spin into near unconsciousness. Her awareness began to seep through when she stared at the gap in the hillside—the snow cascading over it—from which her foot had been removed. She saw remnants of an ancient garbage dump: large and small sherds of pottery, arrowheads, a gourd rattle, a disintegrating squirrel doll, stuffing gone, the sinew stitching unraveled.
One object didn’t belong in such a forlorn space: a black stone image about five inches tall, straight and flat, almost like a carved stone fetish. She could see it clearly now, and reached out her hand to extract the gift from its grave. She stopped herself in mid air, remembering her training as an anthropologist. The figure is a part of this place. It belongs here, not in some glassy cage. She could feel the sensitivity of her Lakota ancestors; her guides circled and embraced her, affirming her decision by moving closer, growing warmer. Vision blurred, she stared at the precious miniature, its rounded Bufano sculpture-like head, small eyes, and flat bottom. Little hands were scratched into either side, as though she were tenderly holding her stomach. Just as she withdrew her hand, Justine heard the snow above her break loose.
Fighting for consciousness, she rotated her throbbing head in a pirouette and gazed at the lovely white blanket of snow moving toward her. She turned back toward the wondrous find, urgently seeking the smooth fetish with her eyes as the avalanche erased the crevasse, immersing her in blindness.
Justine’s near frozen body spun like a top, tumbling downward with the racing snow bank, pain searing through her entire body, her injured foot dragging along as though it were the disintegrating leg of that old squirrel doll. The brutal wave of snow catapulted her into a flash of violent memory of overturning her kayak in the Rogue River, the pressure of the water spinning and pulling at her . . . water, wave—swimming. Swimming! a voice inside her cried out. She managed to roll onto her stomach and began to swim as hard and fast as she could, forcing her body to move like a dolphin through the collapsing mountain of snow. Roots and trees tumbled alongside, slashing through her ski pants, a sharp rock tearing at her cheek, even as the thundering avalanche carried her downward.
CHAPTER 43
“HI,” HE SAID, his fur-lined parka pulled up to shield his mouth. He stood in the blowing snow just outside the covered porch at Justine’s house in Taos. “Where’s Justine?” he asked the young girl shivering on the bench.
“I can’t find her.” Taya’s voice trembled as she spoke, her words almost lost in the frigid wind. “She’s gone.”
“I’m her father,” said Morgan Jenner, “just got in from Italy, flew all night. I need to find her quickly. Who are you?” He noted the girl’s engorged stomach.
“Taya. Her friend.” She pulled her coat more tightly around her stomach. “She usually leaves me a key.”
“Do you know where she might be?” he asked. He could hear the chaos in Tahrir Square blaring through the locked door. His eyes squinted as a desperate tone crept into his voice. “Help me.”
“Maybe at work in Santa Fe? Her car is gone.” Redness from the cold wind blended with the redness in her weeping eyes. “She’s mad at me, I think.” “I tried at her office. She didn’t show up for work today . . . mad at you?”
“She thinks I blamed her when my boyfriend and brother were killed. They slid into the gorge, you see. They were chasing her. I guess I did blame her a bit.”
“She told me. I think she blames herself too.” Morgan’s voice softened in the presence of such pain; he could only begin to imagine the anguish his own daughter was feeling. That’s why he was here. “You’re shivering—come sit in the car.”
Morgan helped Taya up and guided her to the car, raising his voice to talk through the shrieking wind. “You see, something has happened. I think her friend Amir has been killed.”
“Amir! Oh, no!” She began to cry.
Morgan was taken aback. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Justine introduced me. She loves him a lot.”
He flinched. “I know. We have to find her, Taya. Think.”
Taya put her mind to the question. “Well, she talked a lot about the ranch, the mountain, and Hupobi. She thought Hupobi was a real mystery—like a storybook.”
Within a half hour, Bill, Cheyenne, and Giovanna headed for the ranch and Lobo Mountain; Morgan and Pablo Williams were on their way to Hupobi. Too far and the weather was ferocious. Morgan left Taya in the lobby at BLM and asked the secretary to find her a ride home.
They knew it was a long-shot, but when Pablo told Morgan the story of the site, he convinced himself that it might have been her destination. The ranger station were called and the police were searching for her car. Helicopters were ready to be dispatched to the mountains around Ojo Caliente, or Lobo Mountain, when the storm cleared.
She must have seen him brutally beaten, Morgan knew, since he’d heard the television through Justine’s front door when he was talking with Taya. But how would she know it was he in that crowd? For the first hour of the drive both Pablo and Morgan were surprisingly quiet, lost in silent worry and foreboding. Neither speculated on the possibilities of being lost in a snowstorm overnight. They sat, two archaeologists, both afraid to speculate on their next find. Gradually, the truck grew cozy, their feet warm. Pablo asked, “You say you just got in from Italy?”
“Yeah. I was watching the riots in Cairo from my place in Florence when I was almost certain I saw our family friend Amir El Shabry beaten, possibly killed. Justine’s fiancé. He’s like a son to me . . . .” His voice broke.
“Sorry to hear that—I didn’t know.”
“Tried to call Justine, then her mother.”
“Justine’s told me a lot about her mother . . . Lucrezia, isn’t it? She with you?”
“No. Broke her ankle.” Morgan paused, somehow feeling a need to explain more. “We have what Justine calls a modern partnership. We live apart, but close by. See each other often. I’d be willing to give it another go, but Lucrezia doesn’t want to be married again.”
“I see . . . ,” Pablo said awkwardly. It was probably more than he wanted to k
now. “Your daughter is one special young woman.”
Morgan paused again, tensed by Pablo’s fast driving on slippery mountain roads. “I think so. Pablo, is this really feasible—could she have come this far? In this weather?”
Near blizzard velocity snow blew against the side of the truck like a white tornado.
“Wouldn’t think so, although she’s very fond of this place, determined to unravel its mysteries. For some reason, Taya was convinced that she might head here. We’ll know soon.”
“She told me about your trek to Hupobi—she was quite excited about the possibility of the Mesa Verde peoples migrating into the area.”
“Quite credible, I think. Timing, dry farming, pottery design. Don’t quite understand the resistance by some to the migration narrative.” Pablo stared straight ahead, determined to stay in the one set of tire tracks on the snow-packed mountain road. The road flattened and came to a stop sign. “We turn left here. Not much further.”
Morgan sat stiffly; the harrowing road conditions over the mountain had been worse than he’d experienced since he was a kid in Nebraska. But at least his homeland had been flat. He’d nearly given up hope of finding Justine at Hupobi—it was just too far, too treacherous. He regretted the day he first took her hiking, for it was the beginning of her risk taking. Into the mountains and rivers and old crypts alone. He worried about her often. His only child. “She takes the migration quite seriously,” he managed, distracted, his voice wavering.
Pablo glanced at Morgan briefly, not sure what he’d intended to say. He turned right into what might have been a narrow country road, but was now indistinguishable. As though from habit, the sturdy truck negotiated the roads to Hupobi as far as the frozen river.
They pulled up beside Justine’s Prius and stared at each other. It had now been nearly twenty-four hours since the bloody events in Cairo. Pablo picked up his phone and called the police to direct the helicopters into a more constricted area around the mesa, but of course that couldn’t happen until the snow subsided. Pointing to the looming plateau, he strapped on his backpack, as did Morgan, and began the march. The two men crossed the frozen river, trekked the half mile to the base of the mesa and began climbing. It was rough going, the spindly trees providing little support. Morgan’s boots, more designer than practical, slipping in the crunchy, dry snow; yet with Pablo’s help they crested the top of the mesa.
Pablo drew out his binoculars and scanned the plateau. The snow had buried any evidence of human or animal presence. Morgan pointed at the trees at the edge of the giant kiva, and the two men headed in that direction. They stared into the cavity smoothly encircled with fresh snow like an immense bowl of vanilla ice cream. The wind howled, making speech nearly impossible.
Morgan shook his head in despair, restraining tears, clearly feeling desperate. They turned slowly, keenly observing the contours in the land, the frayed edges of the cliff, the hills beyond. Without speaking, they turned into the blowing snow and started the hike around the perimeter of the mesa.
Morgan stopped dead in his tracks. “Do you hear that? A high-pitched sound? I think there’s a pattern . . . .”
Pablo shook his head. He hadn’t heard anything unusual. “The wind.” He obviously wasn’t encouraged, turning to continue the difficult hike around the mesa perimeter.
The danger of being enclosed in a small space, unable to escape . . . these were the familiar thoughts on Justine’s mind as she lay within a bubble woven of snow at the bottom of the canyon cliff. Cheyenne had explained to her that the Navajo rug has a Weaver’s Pathway—a way out—otherwise the weaver becomes sick and loses her mind, loses her way. The pathway is the road to liberation of the mind, the body, the spirit, and the designer within. Afraid of being trapped in the pattern, unable to escape the weaving, the Navajo weaver leaves a trail, a visible thread leading to an exit from captivity. Will I find a thread?
Once again she was in the crypt that had crumbled in Cairo during the earthquake, nearly buried by the collapse of the church around her. The fear of being buried alive a second time was mind-numbing. How could this happen? At least in Cairo I only had a few scratches. This time she couldn’t move. Her legs felt numb when she tried to move; the pain took her breath away.
Remembering to swim within the avalanche had saved her life, but the excruciating pain of propelling downward with a broken foot had brought her to near hysteria. She floated in and out of consciousness until the oxygen in her cage of snow was nearly gone. She had to act.
Her eyes searched unsuccessfully for the weaver’s pathway, the way out. Her IPhone still had a dim light, which she lifted into the air, face up, flat on her palm, and moved it around in a wide circle to project the meager light onto the ceiling of snow. “No Service” blared at her from the upper left corner of the phone; on the right, only a razor thin strip of black remained. I will be completely in the dark soon. She began to tremble from the fear of the dark, the pain, the cold. She shut her eyes and forced herself to meditate, then slowly opened them again. The light was still there. Justine fumbled with the phone.
Amir . . . Amir. Hadn’t he shown her a few other functions on the phone? An alarm clock, a calendar—which she had used—different apps—music! She started rapidly pushing buttons, it was easier with her bare hand, although it had little grip left. The phone slid out of her hand and landed face down in the snow. A thin rectangular light beamed upward as though projecting from a miniature coffin. She picked it up and pushed “music”—she would find “Chicago.” Grad school in Chicago. Late again for forensics . . . run. Am I ready for the exam?? Renee Zellweger blared out “Roxie!” Justine pushed the volume until the sound vibrated in her ears. “They love me for lovin’ them, we love each other . . .” pierced the air around her. She felt a thrill, her body yearned to move in time, but refused. “Give’m the old Razzle Dazzle,” Richard Gere pleaded next. Justine knew only too well that no one was within hearing distance, yet she stared at the phone as though she could will it to continue indefinitely.
Five minutes later, “The Cellophane Man” gave up in mid-sentence, “invisible, inconsequential me . . . you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I’m there . . . .” Her ice womb went black and she started to cry. Justine wasn’t sure about her alloyed fears of death—if she cared whether she died, or when she died. But she hadn’t wanted to die like this: in a dark cave, freezing, alone. Am I alone?
Once again, she forced herself to take control. She now knew she wanted to live, the will to live prodding her on. Where were her guides? Now she would have to rely on natural forms of information: her intuition, the wisdom of the snow. What can the snow tell me? It was still dark outside—no it couldn’t be—she forced herself to recall the image on the phone just before it went black: 1:00 P.M. She closed her eyes and opened them again, scanning the arch of her prison for the palest patches of light. The absence of air, compounded by the elevation, forced her to take short, shallow breaths. She could feel her blood pressure dropping. Her body no longer had the strength to shiver. She dozed off.
“Amir, I thought I’d lost you! Darling, you’re here!” she uttered this as a whisper. She attempted to reach for his face, push the black curl out of his eyes. She was growing warm again. “Come to me. I’ll learn to cook,” she lied, humor warming her chest slightly. “What? I can’t hear you.” Justine rolled into a fetal position.
She was awakened by a growing patch of light filtering softly through a thinning ceiling of snow, transforming the crystals into pale pink. An outline of two small creatures—ravens—perched on the thinning snow above. Her ravens come to save her. She stared at the ravens, watching them circling a thin spot as though they were scatching the snow, seeking to open it. In spite of the constancy of fear, the near unconsciousness, the sureness that she was hallucinating again, for a moment she experienced a wave of enchantment, pure joy, as though she was once again floating in the grotto on the isle of Capri with her father. Only then the light
was blue. Clarity focused her mind.
Justine rose on one elbow as far as she could stretch, made a fist of her one gloved hand and jammed it forcefully through the patch of pink. The pink gave way to azure blue as the sky stared down at her like a giant eye; her ravens took flight, cawing loudly, then resettled on the igloo. Oxygen flowed freely into her confined space. She inhaled deeply and smiled, but couldn’t move. Something more than a broken foot was handicapping her mobility. I’m going to die here, she realized once again.
“You won’t die here Justine,” said a voice near her shoulder, a warm sense of comfort flooding through her.
“Did you see that?” Morgan screamed. “Like the spout of a whale shooting up from that mound of snow near the bottom. Two ravens perched near the spout!” He pointed. Patches of blue sky replaced the softly falling snow.
“Gotta be Justine!” shouted Pablo. “There’s been an avalanche here. See this collapsed ledge.” He grabbed his police radio and began shouting into it. “Yes—we’ve found her. A couple hundred feet down the western edge. Can you see us?” The massive man raised both hands in the air and jumped up and down. Morgan followed suit. The chopper pilot waved back. Immediately, Pablo barked, “Follow me and be careful where you step.”
CHAPTER 44
THE HELICOPTER HOVERED for several minutes before it could land on the freshly-plowed pad just south of the emergency entrance to Holy Cross Hospital in Taos. During the thirty-minute flight from Hupobi, the first responders cut off Justine’s wet clothes, dried her nearly frozen body and covered her with heated blankets. They applied warm compresses to her neck, knowing full well that in cases of extreme hypothermia, treating her limbs first would draw blood away from her head and brain. Morgan sat beside her, cupping her hand in his; his face having lost its natural structure, reforming itself into a macabre mask of desperation. “Mom?” she asked nearly inaudibly through the oxygen mask.
A Rapture of Ravens: Awakening in Taos: A Novel (The Justine Trilogy) Page 24