by Dinah McCall
As they walked a little farther, she caught a glimpse of a familiar face and took Cayetano’s hand.
“Come see this man. Back in my other life, he was a policeman where we lived, like the guards who are around us now. When I was attacked, he came with my grandfather and stood guard outside my room as I healed.”
Cayetano was anxious to meet such a man. He had a momentof jealousy as he watched Singing Bird embrace the man, then realized it must be the way friends greeted in those times, because she then embraced others standing beside him.
“Nantay! Leland Benally! It is so good to see you! Are you well?”
Both men were smiling widely, then Nantay asked the question they were both thinking.
“We are alive, which is a miracle we will never forget. We heard you were seriously hurt when you came through the portal. You seem well. Is this so?”
“It’s true. My burns were bad. I could not see a thing for several days. It was a scary time, but as you can tell, I am well now. I want you to meet Cayetano. He is my husband here.”
They both eyed the chief curiously, but with respect.
“It is an honor to meet you,” Benally said. “There are so many of us, we are very grateful that you have welcomed us into your city.”
Layla quickly translated and Cayetano was pleased.
“You are most welcome,” he said. “Our shamans told us you were coming. We knew there would be many. If you have other needs, you must let us know.”
Layla translated again then asked Nantay a question of her own.
“Have the New Ones had trouble assimilating into this culture?”
“It’s been a learning experience for sure,” Nantay said.
“When I saw you coming, I wasn’t sure you would know me,” he said.
“Oh, because I look different? You should have seen the fit I had when I saw my face,” Layla said.
Nantay and Benally both laughed.
“I’m serious,” Layla said. “I didn’t know what would happen to us when we made the Last Walk. I just knew it was the path I was supposed to take to keep you safe. I didn’t know we were coming back in time. I honestly thought we would be going into the Anasazi’s future. This has all been strange for me, too. I still feel the same inside. I still feel like Layla, but now I remember Singing Bird, too.”
Benally grinned. “Double whammy, but it looks like you hit the jackpot. Cool dude,” he said, referring to Cayetano who was looking at the ceiling fan Nantay was building with great interest.
She laughed. “Yes, the chief is a cool dude. So how are the others treating you?” she asked. “You know they refer to all of you as the New Ones. It’s kind of funny because, in truth, you are the old ones.”
Nantay shrugged. “It is all good. Not easy, but anything new is not easy. There are things to be learned. My wife is struggling to accept no running water or indoor toilets, although her grandmother still lived in a Hogan down in the canyons.”
“Where is Shirley?” Layla asked.
He pointed to the door of their dwelling. “Inside. She broke her leg on the Last Walk. It is healing, but she still can’t put weight on it.”
“Oh no! Could I talk to her?”
“Sure. Come inside,” he said, and walked back into the house.
Layla took Cayetano’s hand again. “His woman broke her leg on the Last Walk. She is a friend. I want to talk to her.”
He followed her inside.
Layla was taken aback but the interior. It was very crude compared to the palace. And there was no comparison to the home they’d had back on the reservation other than four walls and a roof. Here, they had one small window, an open door, sleeping mats, a pot to cook in, and a jug of water nearby. She could only imagine how Shirley Nantay was faring.
“Shirley, it’s me, Layla. I didn’t know that you’d been hurt.”
Shirley was a small woman with bright eyes and a ready smile – at least she had been. The woman lying on the mat was in need of a more comfortable place and her ready smile was gone. When she saw Layla, she stifled a gasp as she tried to sit up.
“Montford said that you had changed. I couldn’t imagine how. Now I see.”
Layla knelt at her side. “Only on the outside, Shirley. I am so sorry you were hurt. It makes all of this change even worse.”
The sympathy was Shirley’s undoing. She covered her face and began to cry.
Nantay was immediately upset and at the same time, embarrassed.
“She’s in pain,” Layla said, explain what was happening to Cayetano. “But most of all, I think she’s overwhelmed by the change.”
“Tell her that I will send Little Mouse. She will help.”
“You are truly a good chief,” Layla said softly, then patted Shirley’s arm. “Cayetano is sorry for your pain, Shirley. He wants me to tell you that he is sending a healer to you. Her name is Little Mouse. You will love her as I do, but now we’ll leave so you can rest.”
They walked out, with Nantay behind them.
“Thank you! Thank you so much,” he said. “Without any way of knowing what plants in this place are good for healing or dangerous to touch, I couldn’t even make Indian medicine for her, myself.”
Layla’s eyes widened. She’d been so busy thinking of how the New Ones would change the way of life here, that she’d forgotten they would also need to be taught about the land into which they’d come.
“I will see to it that Little Mouse, and others like her, will teach all of you what you need to know. There are some good hunters in our people. They need to learn how to hunt here, as they did before.”
“Yes, people have been talking about that. I will tell them it will happen. We want to make our living conditions better, but didn’t have any idea of how to begin. We need more building materials and many other things that have to be foraged, and we don’t know where to start.”
“Did we get here with any tools? We had to leave so much behind when we started to run.”
“Yes, we did. When we began lightening our loads on the Last Walk, I told the men who had tools and knives to keep them if they could. We have more than a thousand or so men who came here with different kinds of tools. We could build better, if we had the goods to do it.”
She quickly translated to Cayetano, and just like that, he knew who to talk to get that started.
“What else?” she asked.
“Their weapons are crude. They have metals, but they are mostly ornamental. It would be helpful to them if they had metal tips on their arrows and metal heads on their axes instead of bone or rock,” Nantay said.
“Even if you had the proper raw ore, you would have no way to-“
He smiled. “There are many men here who had held many different jobs. If we knew where to look, we could do much.”
Layla turned again to Cayetano, her eyes alight with excitement.
“Are there people from Naaki Chava willing to teach the New Ones where to find supplies they need?”
“I will think about the right people and tell them,” he said, then looked up at the sky. “It will rain soon. We go.”
“I’ll come back,” Layla said. “Spread the word. We’ll make things better. I promise.”
And he’d been right. They had barely reached the palace before the sky unloaded the near-daily downpour. They never lasted long, but were part of why the tropical aspect of this place existed.
****
It was about a week after their arrival before Evan was allowed to move around. He had to be careful, but was happy to be upright and breathing without being in pain.
Layla’s morning sickness was with her daily, but she endured it without fuss, and simply waited for it to pass before she put food in her mouth. She had not had another conversation with her daughter, and accepted that it would happen on the baby’s time and not hers.
She began to spend a lot of time teaching the boys the language of Naaki Chava and they were learning quickly. But the day she caught the twins spe
aking in their own private language, she was intrigued.
When Adam realized she had walked into the room, he blushed, then stammered.
“I didn’t know you were there.”
Layla was intrigued. “What language is that? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”
“It’s our language,” Evan said. “We only speak it among ourselves.”
“And Yuma. We’re teaching it to Yuma,” Adam added. “I might be useful one day if we could talk to each other without people knowing what we say.”
Layla sat down on a stool as the boys gathered around her.
“Do you mean that you two made up an entire language that only you know?”
The twins nodded.
“Twin-speak,” she said. “I’ve read about it when I was in college, but I’ve never met anyone who had done it.”
Evan shrugged. “We had to. We knew how we came to be born and were afraid of what Mr. Prince would make us do, so we made up our own language. If he couldn’t understand us, then he couldn’t control us.”
At that point, Yuma came into the room with Acat and slipped into Layla’s lap. Despite his assurance that he was a man, there were times when he still wanted to be little, and this was one of them.
“I go to the marketplace,” Acat said, explaining why she was leaving Yuma in her care.
“She’s bringing back some sugar cane for all three of us,” Yuma said. “I asked. Is that okay?”
Layla grinned. “Of course it’s okay. Bring one for me, too,” she added.
Acat giggled and scurried off.
“So, back to our conversation,” Layla said. “What did you mean when you said, ‘how we came to be born?”
Evan looked at Adam. “You tell,” he said softly.
Adam nodded and began the tale. “Our mother was a gypsy who read fortunes. She could see the future and into people’s hearts. Mr. Prince found out about her skills. He also knew a man who could feel no pain. People could cut him or burn him, and he never cried out. Mr. Prince paid my mother and this man to make a baby. He wanted to know how a child would be from two people like that. Our mother agreed, not knowing that he meant to keep us. After we were born, he wanted her to go away but she wouldn’t. So he had her killed.”
Layla was shocked by his lack of emotion.
“What about the man who was your father?”
“We don’t know, but he didn’t matter to us because we didn’t matter to him.”
“What did Prince think you two were going to do for him?”
Adam shrugged. “It was always about gaining power.”
Layla frowned. “This is bad, but you are here now. One day you will grow up and have a family of your own.”
Adam frowned and Evan shook his head.
“No, we won’t marry. We are able to feel a connection to people, and be bound by honor, like we are to you. But we can’t feel love as you are intending. We love each other and that is all, but only because we are one and the same.”
Layla frowned.
“You can’t know this yet. You haven’t matured enough to-“
Adam shook his head. “But we do know this. Our mother was psychic, and so are we. Our father could not feel pain. We feel pain, but we cannot feel love. This is how we were born.”
“I am so sorry,” she said. “But I’m glad the man who owned you died. Murdering your mother was a terrible crime, but what he did to the both of you was a crime against nature.”
The boys shrugged. “He was a collector and we were part of his collection. He had all kinds of things that were supposed to be good luck and maps to hidden treasures. It was his portal key that got us here.”
“Do you still have it?” Layla asked.
They nodded. “We stole it back from Bazat when we ran away.”
“It needs to be hidden away,” Layla muttered.
“It needs to be thrown away,” Evan said.
“It needs to be destroyed,” Adam said.
“We’ll talk to Cayetano about this tonight. For now, just leave it wherever you’ve hidden it. The fewer people who know about it, the better off you are.”
The twins looked at each other and smiled. She had not asked where it was hidden, or asked to see it. Even more proof that she was not only a good woman, but one who could be trusted.
****
That night, she told Cayetano what they’d said.
“Do you mean they will never feel for a woman what I feel for you?” he asked.
Layla nodded. “That is what they said.”
Cayetano shook his head in disbelief. “My heart hurts for them. The greatest thing about being a man is being with the woman of his heart.” He pulled her close, running his fingers through her hair. “You are my heart, Singing Bird. Without you, the best part of me would die.”
Layla’s hands trembled as she cupped his face. “One of the first things the Windwalker told me, was the same thing Niyol told me, and the same thing you told me.”
The surprise on his face was visible.
“This is true?”
“Yes. Do you know what it was?”
“No.”
“You all said… ‘You belong to me, and you will love me’.”
His nostrils flared. “And is this not so?”
“It is true. I do love you, with all my heart.”
He smirked. “Then it seems we were very wise to have predicted such a thing.”
As she laughed she remembered what she’d promised the boys.
“There is another thing. The boys have the portal key that brought them here. They want to hide it so no one can ever find it again. Can you help them?”
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Yes. I will talk to them myself.”
“Thank you. Now my job for this day is done.”
He growled, as he swung her up into his arms.
“You have yet to make love to me this day.”
A shiver of what was to come shot through her.
“Today, I would ask that you make love to me,” she whispered.
He laid her down on the sleeping mat.
“It will be done,” he said softly, and slid between her legs.
Chapter Twenty
The City of the Sun belied its name. The moment Chak and the traders entered, he felt darkness. He thanked them for their company and parted ways, anxious to explore. Yet even as he was walking through the marketplace, he sensed an underlying fear that was reflected in the people’s faces. Their voices were subdued, raised only in arguments, and there was little laughter. It was nothing like Naaki Chava.
But, his belly was empty and he had nothing to trade but information. He didn’t even know how to get an audience with Bazat without getting himself into trouble. The traders said this chief used beheading as a means of solving his problems, so he had to be careful.
The temple was easy to see, rising above the houses in the middle of the city. He moved toward it instinctively, hoping he would find more of his kind. They would know him as a true shaman and hopefully get him an audience with the chief. But upon arrival, his hopes were dashed.
The temple was abandoned. Only vultures roosted on the uppermost corners, which told Chak it was a place to which they were accustomed to finding food. When a large rat slipped out from a lower doorway and scampered along the base of the temple before disappearing into the jungle behind it, he shuddered.
This city was smaller than Naaki Chava. The palace, just visible on the rise behind the temple appeared more ornate, while the dwellings of the residents were as unkempt as the people who lived in them.
He had a moment of hesitation, wondering if he wanted to insinuate himself here. If it had not been for Singing Bird, he would not be in this position. Hate grew as he saw the road leading up to the palace. If he took it, there was no going back.
As he stood, debating with himself about the wisdom of his intent, there was a rush of wind in his face, as if a spirit had passed by. He looked up and then gasped.
The sun! It was being eaten by the moon!
He threw up his hands and raced toward the palace to warn the chief, his heart pounding with every step.
****
Bazat was on his back, while the woman astraddle his body was methodically pumping herself upon his erection. A large blue bird swung on a nearby perch in perfect rhythm. She had been at it for a while and he was nearing release when he became aware of commotion outside his window and then the sound of running feet inside the palace. He tried to push her off but she was so high on the dry mushroom she had smoked, she was oblivious.
“Get off!” he shouted, but she kept on humping and suddenly it was too late to stop.
Evan as he was shoving her off his legs, light was bursting behind his eyes; his seed spewing from his body.
“Bazat! Bazat! Come quick!” a servant said, as he ran into the room.
He took one look at the moaning woman and the condition the chief was in and started to retreat when they began hearing screams down in the city.
At that point, Bazat was already on his feet.
“What is happening?” he shouted, and ran to the window.
“There is a shaman who asks to speak with you. He says to tell you that the moon is eating the sun,” the servant cried.
A knot of fear tightened Bazat’s bowels. “That is not possible!”
“It is so! Look up into the sky. The shaman was right! It is beginning!”
Bazat looked. The knot of fear grew tighter. “Send him to the great room.”
The servant dashed away as Bazat put on his breechclout, stepped into his sandals, jammed his feathered headdress onto his head and began fastening the feathered cape around his neck as he strode to the throne room.
He wasn’t accustomed to doing these tasks for himself, but there was no time for ritual. And after losing the twins, he did not want to anger another spirit by appearing before a shaman as anything other than the great chief Bazat.