by Jeff Posey
“You may keep your weapons if you leave us now,” said Tuwa to the guards. They shot glances to each other, to Pók who was dead or dying, and fled down the ramp.
Tuwa stared at them until they came to the first switchback, where they faced the angry women on the canyon floor.
“Nuva,” he said, energy draining from him. Nuva came, awkward in her hat and robes. She pulled off a pale yellow cloth The Builder had draped around her neck and began wrapping it around Tuwa’s wound. Then she went to Pók and worked to staunch his bleeding. “I think he’s gone,” she said and turned away from him, back to the crowd on the Standing Grounds and all over the canyon.
The trilling voices rose again, louder than before. Tuwa saw women in the courtyard of the palace with their hands held high, swaying and turning and waving. The same up on the canyon rim. Tuwa saw The Pochtéca and Tókotsi, still seated in the center of the Standing Grounds with an open ring around them guarded now by women with sharp sticks. They both looked up to the altar.
Tuwa’s legs felt as if they might collapse and he looked at Chumana. He saw her face with a new clarity. Her eyes were large and black, the sunlight glistened in them more brightly than the sparkle of mere bluestone. Her face was more oval than he remembered, the faint lines of wrinkles crept across her forehead. Her skin was not as dark, her mouth not as narrow. Tuwa forgot about the rest of the world. Chumana saw him watching her and came to him. She took his hand, which was dripping blood because he held it below his heart. She lifted it to his shoulder and tightened the wrap. Then she leaned into him and put her head against his. The heaviness left him and he suddenly felt light. As if he had been incinerated by a great fire, and now he floated in a puff of smoke, rising and turning lazily above the altar.
Pretty Close to Perfect
In the largest round hall at the palace, Nuva held the first gathering of girl messengers she dubbed Butterfly Runners. After two weeks of training and practice with Kopavi and Sowi, they were ready to receive their first proclamation from the new White Priestess. More than thirty girls huddled into the dark room, their hair sculpted into butterfly wings and wearing sun-bleached white cotton shifts.
Nuva stood at the center and slowly circled the fire as she spoke so that she made eye contact with each girl.
“I am so proud to see you all here. You are part of the light that will heal this land. A gentle light. A strong and persistent light that will last forever.
“Each of you has earned marks on the tips of two fingers.” Nuva held up her two middle fingers. “You are not yet fully members of the Sisterhood. Once you have completed one-year as Butterfly Runners, along with more training like you’ve had these past two weeks, thanks to Kopavi and Sowi—once you have done all that, you will receive your third mark and become full Sisters.” She held up a third finger.
Tuwa leaned against the dark wall, touching elbows with Choovio, along with The Pochtéca wearing his red hat, Sowi with Tootsa, and Lightfoot, who recovered in a miraculously short time from the wicked blow to his chest up on the altar. Peelay and Ráana, both bent and battered, Ráana still recovering from Pók’s final kick to his head, had somehow bonded and Ráana played the drum to Peelay’s flute, and they began to play the most alluring music anyone in the canyon Tuwa had ever heard.
Chumana sat close to the fire wearing her bluestone gown, but not her mask. Instead, she wore a hair weaving of stringed beads with dangling pendants of bluestone. Firelight danced in her eyes and the glittering stones exaggerated every movement of her head. Kopavi sat next to her, as close as Tuwa stood to Choovio. Kopavi smiled at Choovio, and he beamed back at her. Chumana and Tuwa rarely looked at anyone but each other. Even The Pochtéca seemed mesmerized by Nuva.
She interrupted the music, her arms raised. “I have my first proclamation for you to deliver far and wide. I will repeat it three times. Remember it precisely.”
Nuva stopped circling the fire and stood in place. She gazed through the hole in the roof and spoke in a high, slow voice.
“The White Priestess will lead a procession from this palace to the Village of Twin Giants. We leave at sunset the day of the next growing half-moon and we travel by moonlight. At the rise of the full moon between the Twin Giants, we will join in eternal union Tuwa and Chumana, Choovio and Kopavi, and any others who wish to be so bound and honored. All are welcomed to attend.”
Nuva moved a third of the way around the fire and repeated the message, arms raised, gaze to the dark sky, her albino coloring making her stand out more than her modified High Priest costume. She wore no hat and her thin hair hung straight down, gleaming with bear fat. She had taken the High Priest’s vest and sewed patterns of small bluestone beads to depict Mother Earth, Sister Moon, and Father Sun. She carried no staff and wore simple sandals.
All the Butterfly Runners stood quiet and still, a few mouthing the words along with Nuva as she spoke the third time. Nuva then had the girls recite it in unison three more times and released them. They bounded up the ladder like a herd of eager animals and all began talking at once when they stood on the roof. Kopavi and Sowi gave them final instructions, they gathered their traveling supplies—a water bladder, a thin sleeping skin rolled tight and tied across their back, a small bow with three good arrows, a sharp flake-knife, three throwing stones, a pouch of parched corn and strips of dried meat, and a few personal belongings. Then they ran in all directions like butterflies working a field of flowers.
Two weeks later, after the sun set and the half-illuminated moon rose in the sky to cast a thin white light, Nuva set off. She would not walk in the sunlight, she said, but only by the light of the growing moon. People, especially women with their daughters, lined the way and fell in behind, each laden with food and supplies—and as much earth as they could carry scooped from the altar to scatter it as far as possible from Center Place Canyon.
Behind her, an entourage followed. Cooks bearing utensils and pots. Former warriors who had switched sides carried high loads on their backs. A few that had been carefully questioned by Nuva and The Pochtéca were allowed to retain their weapons. Two of these escorted an emaciated man with one hand and no thumb on his remaining hand. Pók. Nuva’s new council assigned him to Tuwa, who couldn’t decide what to do with him, so they simply brought him along. Tuwa avoided him, though he did find himself watching the pathetic man from afar. He could barely feed himself and wipe his own anus. Tuwa kept asking himself what he could do with a creature like that.
Before the moon set near the middle of the night, Nuva asked a couple of girls bearing water jugs to wash the dust from her tired feet. They giggled and poured water and massaged her feet as she groaned in pleasure. Then they ran off and spread the word. Girls lined up every moonset after that to wash the White Priestess’s feet. Nuva had them join her and wash their own feet as she told them about the Sisterhood and her days of living in the palace with the Snake Maiden Goddess of the Future.
During the glare of the day, a tight tent of cotton cloth and supple hides, hung on a lattice of long, flexible sticks, allowed Nuva to hide from the sun. They made slow progress, but moving easily through the cool night of the high desert prairie had its own pleasure. Tuwa most often walked beside Chumana, their arms brushing, their skin tingling, talking of how life would be for them in the Village of Twins. Choovio and Kopavi did the same in their own way, far ahead, barely in sight, armed and wary. He had seen Kopavi instructing Choovio with a bow and arrow from time to time. Maybe with her tutelage, he might actually learn to hit something.
“I want to start a school for girls,” Chumana said. “I want them to know everything. How to watch the sky like your grandfather. How to defend themselves like Kopavi. How to run a village like Choovio. How to attend births and use herbs for healing like Nuva and Hita.”
“Boys need that too,” said Tuwa. He bumped her and put his arm across her back, his still-bandaged hand held high against his chest. He loved that he could touch her. The warmth and energy he felt from
her was more powerful than anything he had felt since childhood. The empty hole he’d felt for so long from his absent mother and grandfather began to fade.
The road was arrow-straight and smooth, but the scrub of the rolling desert plain stretched into a deep gray under the half-illuminated moon. They mostly watched where they would next place their feet. Other people walked along the road in the disorganized procession that followed Nuva north out of Center Place Canyon, but all had manners enough to stay far enough away they could not eavesdrop.
“You can open a boys’ school,” said Chumana, bumping him back.
“I’ll be too busy being learning how to be a skywatcher. I migh have forgotten everything.”
“I doubt that. You were glued to your grandfather.”
“I might remember a few things. I’ll teach our boys about skywatching when I teach your girls. Other than that, they’re on their own.”
“We’ll need a helper. To cook and clean.”
“You said Wooti might do it.”
“Hita wants her to, but she says no and clings to Hita,” Chumana stepped away from him and spun around, her arms outstretched. “The moonlight is wonderful!” she said.
Tuwa smiled. “You’re a goddess.” The white moonlight on her white dress made her look like a living spirit.
“I’m the Goddess of the Skywatcher.”
Tuwa laughed. “The Goddess of My Future.”
They walked in silence as they ascended a long incline, so steep in a couple of places that steps had been carved into the bedrock.
“That Wooti girl needs three summers with The Pochtéca,” said Tuwa. “That would bring her out.”
“Like it did you and Choovio? With her own little orphan army?”
“Exactly. She could flush out all the nasty men still hiding in the canyon.”
“I think all the women with sharp sticks will do that. They’re not likely to bow down to men like that again.”
Tuwa squeezed her to him. “If I’d known you were still alive back here, I would never have run away or joined The Pochtéca.”
“I know that,” she whispered.
A Butterfly Runner found them and bowed low. “The White Priestess requests you walk with her,” she said to Tuwa.
Tuwa said nothing and continued walking. The runner looked with alarm at Chumana, as if Tuwa might not give an answer for her to return. “Tell her I’ll get him to come,” she said. The girl looked relieved and ran back to Nuva at the front of the procession.
Chumana took Tuwa’s arm. “You must walk with Nuva.”
“Why?” He sounded like a child and he knew it. “I already know the story. She just wants to torture me through it again and make a few corrections. Can’t we just walk together, the two of us?”
“It’s important to know your birth story,” Chumana said.
“It doesn’t really matter anymore. I don’t think I could learn anything that would help me.”
“Are you serious?” They walked together in silence a few steps. “There’s always something to learn from the stories of our birth. There’s always more to it than you think. Every time you hear it, you see something you’ve never noticed before.”
“Like what? That you’re constantly surrounded by a bunch of snakes?”
Chumana laughed. “Exactly.”
“Tell me your story again. And tell me what you learn from it that’s new.”
“No. You tell my birth story, and then you can say what you learn from it. You’re the one who needs practice. And I want to see how well you remember.”
“I don’t remember your being this bossy.”
“Being a goddess for three years can do that to a girl.”
Tuwa laughed and snatched at her, but she dodged out of the way and walked backward in front of him. Her smiling face was hidden in shadow from the high moon behind her head.
“Okay. Okay then. You want a story, I’ll give you a story.” Tuwa puffed up and took on the voice of a comic storyteller. “Your mother, may her spirit live forever in the joy of having given birth to the only Goddess of the Future in the history of this world, and her people were moving to a new place. They’d grown tired of the old place because there were not enough snakes around to suit them. She was pregnant and thought she could make the journey, but you decided to be born in spite of the extremely bad timing and so she went off by herself to squeeze you from her loins while everyone else just stood around and waited, slapping mosquitoes and impatient to get going to their new snake-infested place. Anyway, your dear mother squatted and birthed you onto a blanket she’d laid on the ground, and right after you fell into this world she realized she’d born you into a den of rattlesnakes—dozens of them coiled and turned their heads to her, rattled their rattles, and your mother screamed so that every village for two days’ walk heard the shriek and thought the end of the world was nigh.”
Chumana giggled hysterically. Tuwa exaggerated his voice even more.
“Then your mother realized she had forgotten something. Let’s see, she thought, what could it be? Oh! She had left her new little baby in the care of rattlesnake mothers! She shrieked again and without thinking dashed into that nest of snakes and plucked you from the ground without a single snake so much as even daring a single strike at you or her. She carried you to safety like a Great Goddess of the Infant-Rescuing Sisterhood of Snake Women, and forevermore you, my sweet, have been the Snake Maiden, Chumana, she with no fear of snakes and snakes with no fear of her, who turned her back on her sister snakes and instead embraced fortunetelling and prophecy, and will soon marry the most wise skywatcher who has ever paced the platform of the Twin Giants. Except maybe for Grandfather.”
Chumana staggered she laughed so hard. She began coughing as if strangling on her own laughter.
“So,” Tuwa asked, patting her on the back. “How’d I do?”
“That’s pretty close,” she said with a wheeze.
“What do you mean ‘pretty close’? What did I get wrong?” He puffed out his chest and threw his chin into the air.
Chumana laughed again and cleared her throat. “Not a single thing, my most wise Skywatcher.” She got her breath. “But you still have to walk with Nuva tonight.”
“Only if you come with me.”
Chumana took his arm. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Pók Means Less Than Nothing
“How is your hand?” Nuva asked.
Tuwa gripped his wounded right hand with his left and Chumana touched his back. A warm pain hovered where his forefinger had been. “Sometimes I still feel it. Like it’s on fire. Or I’ll reach up to scratch myself with it and then….” He poked himself in the eye with his middle finger and jumped back in mock surprise. His one successful performance for Chumana had turned him into a comic.
“Your body doesn’t yet know it’s gone,” said Nuva, ignoring his antics.
“It’s not gone. I still have it. You gave it to me, all wrapped up.” He stepped in front of them and walked backward, looking from Nuva to Chumana.
“I know you feel giddy from going home….” said Nuva.
“And because I’m marrying my childhood sweetheart,” he interrupted with a leer at Chumana.
“And from that, but you must know that you’re not really meant to be a clown.”
Tuwa feigned heartbrokenness and drooped his shoulders.
“Peelay’s the master, I’m afraid,” said Chumana.
“Yes,” said Tuwa, straightening up. “Peelay is indeed the master.”
“The spirit in him,” said Nuva, “turns like a spiral in a direction I’ve never seen before.”
They walked in silence, and Nuva held her head down.
“Are you tired?” asked Tuwa.
“Before you finally agreed to come speak with me tonigh, a report came. Ihu and a straggling remnant of Másaw Warriors have taken Black Stone Town.”
Tuwa’s head bobbed up and down. He moved to Nuva’s side. “That’s not very surprising. I
’d wondered what happened to Ihu.” Tuwa remembered the night he couldn’t catch him. And the second time he escaped. He had always known something bad would come of that.
“He captured two Butterfly Runners. Tortured them. Released them. They got back to Center Place yesterday.”
Chumana hurried to Nuva’s other side. She put her arm around her. “Do you want to go back? You should be there now.”
“No.” Nuva held her head up. “Hita went back. She’s an even better healer than I am. They’ll be fine, just have a dark spot on them forever. But we all have those. Not as dark, maybe. But everyone has them.”
“What are you going to do about Ihu?” Tuwa asked. “The Fat Man and his former girls can’t hold off Ihu if enough warriors join him. I’ll bet the Fat Man would welcome Ihu inside if he thought he could make a good deal for himself. He’d release Tókotsi, and we’d be back where we started.”
“The Pochtéca thinks the Fat Man will cooperate,” said Nuva. “We’re setting him up to handle the bluestone trade.”
“But the Fat Man could just take all the bluestone now. The whole place is deserted. Everyone is here with you.”
“He could. He may even be tempted. But what would he do with it? He knows nothing of long-distance trade. He certainly can’t walk anywhere himself. Who would he trade it with? He knows no one outside the canyon. No. The Pochtéca thinks he’ll do all he can to keep his agreement.”
“And The Builder isn’t exactly trustworthy,” said Tuwa.
“Let’s just say he’s easily swayed,” said Nuva. Chumana gave a derisive laugh.