by Jeff Posey
“How many men does the Fat Man have?” asked Tuwa.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Nuva. “Several dozen. Some former warriors that convinced the new Northern Council they’re more loyal to the Fat Man than Pók or Tókotsi. Plus his old bodyguards, loyal for whatever strange reasons men have for being loyal. And a few old men. His former girls are probably his most fierce warriors right now.”
“Just trained for the wrong things,” said Chumana. Tuwa grinned, embarrassed.
“Some of them can shoot an arrow,” said Nuva. “But most will fight like Tuwa. Calm until they get close, then explode in hot anger.” She looked at Tuwa with a half-grin, but he felt a sinking in his lower stomach. He knew what it meant. He fought like Pók, using bursts of anger as his secret weapon. But he forced that out of his mind and concentrated on what Ihu might do from Black Stone Town.
“You may return to a Center Place occupied by Ihu and Tókotsi,” said Tuwa. “Chumana’s right. We should have been joined there, and then we could have slipped away back home.”
“If they take over the palace, then we’ll relocate to Three Waters,” said Nuva.
“And let them have the canyon?” asked Tuwa. He knew Nuva would tend to think defensively, to survive at all costs. But Tuwa had learned how often a surprise attack could weaken an enemy. Tuwa stopped walking. Nuva and Chumana looked back at him.
“We have to capture or kill Ihu,” said Tuwa. “We have to go into Black Stone Town just like we did Center Place. We’ve got to do it again.” He clenched his fists along with his lips and brow. His damaged hand pounded in pain.
Nuva walked to him and touched his shoulder. She held her hand there and squeezed him until he looked into her eyes.
“It’s not your burden anymore,” she said. “It’s mine.” She stood straight and began walking again.
Chumana watched her and then looked at Tuwa. “I don’t want you to do that. Just come home with me.”
Tuwa nodded. He took Chumana’s arm and walked to catch up with Nuva. Maybe they were right. He had to let go.
They walked for a while without speaking. The three of them ahead of the mass of followers strung out behind. Far ahead two figures moved on the road like ghosts in the moonlight. Choovio and Kopavi. Each night as the moon grew brighter, it stayed up longer in the night sky, meaning they traveled farther. Nuva wasn’t used to so much walking, and she crept along at times, but she never stopped until the moon neared the horizon. The night air smelled pure and cool, like mountain water. They often heard coyotes in the scrub not far away, but never close enough to see.
He could go on in silence like this the rest of the way. He thought about how to add his own observations at the Twins to Grandfather’s string record. He would have to study it to become familiar again with the knotted notations. And he thought about children with Chumana. Teaching them to one-hand vault over the cliff where there’s a secret landing place below. Then his mind drifted back to Ihu and Black Stone Town. If he went back, what would Chumana, Choovio, and Kopavi and the others do? He didn’t want to risk them. Not again. Not so soon. They would have to do something about Ihu sooner than later. Else nothing would be truly safe.
But Nuva was right. Tuwa didn’t have to think about that kind of thing anymore. Let others do it. Maybe relocating to Three Waters would work. If Ihu and his band of crazies left them alone. Of course, they wouldn’t. Which meant he and Chumana wouldn’t be safe even at the Village of the Twins.
He wanted to talk it over with Choovio and The Pochtéca. And Kopavi. They probably had a few weeks to decide whether to attack or not. Maybe even until spring. That might be the best time anyway. Surely Ihu couldn’t manage to keep all his underlings alive through a hard winter. Okay, he thought, his brain unclenching. That made a Grandfather kind of sense. Let winter work against your enemy. Attack them in the spring when their supplies are at their lowest. He nodded, and breathed the air, and smiled because he walked in the moonlight with the woman who raised him and the woman who would soon be his wife.
Tuwa spoke to Choovio the next day as they rested after walking to the top of a long hill. Nuva and Chumana lagged far behind. “I’d forgotten, but Nuva reminded me, that he came to the Twins once, when we were little kids. He looked over Grandfather’s shoulder at me and said, ‘Is he watching? I’d like to meet him,’ But Grandfather pushed him in the chest with his staff and made him go away.”
“I remember,” said Choovio in his soft voice. “My father was ready to put an arrow through him.”
“Did you know that was the same man when we came back and saw Pók?” Tuwa asked.
Choovio turned his head as if he heard something in the distance, but his body didn’t move. “Not at first.”
“But eventually you did?”
Choovio sighed. He signed yes with his left hand.
“Did you know he was my father?”
“Not for certain,” Choovio said.
“But you guessed it.”
Choovio leaned toward Tuwa. He looked him head to toe and nodded. “He looks just like you.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say to a guy who intends to save your life someday,” said Tuwa, trying to lighten the moment.
“Fights like you, too,” said Choovio.
“When I look at him, in the eyes, I recognize something,” Tuwa said.
“Other than that you both want to kill each other?” asked Choovio.
“I’m tired of wanting to kill him.” Tuwa imagined building a cage of sticks where Pók would live, near the great open round room in the center of his home village. People could look at him and remember how wrong a man can go. “I recognize what I could become if I do not follow the right path.”
“We will take him into the mountains this winter,” Choovio said. “Leave him.”
Tuwa imagined that. Traveling through snow with Pók and Choovio. Stopping. Watching Pók turn blue.
“No,” he finally said. “Maybe I’ll just throw him into the trash pile.”
That night, Nuva called again for Tuwa and Chumana to walk with her. As they dropped off the desert plateau into a wide, contorted canyon that let to Three Waters, more and more people came out to meet them. They stood in the middle of the road and then would move out of the way and stand to the side to gawk at the albino woman, the new White Priestess, as she walked by. Many more women and girls came than men and boys, and most of the men were old. The only places Nuva could speak in private to anyone anymore were on the steepest uphills. Nuva breathed hard and took her time. Tuwa maneuvered himself behind Chumana. He liked watching her move in the moonlight.
“What,” asked Chumana, “have you heard of Black Stone Town and the injured girls?”
“Nothing from Black Stone. A runner this morning said the girls are better. Hita already has them talking. That’s a good sign.”
“Hita is amazing. She brought Wooti out very quickly.”
“Yes, she did.” Nuva walked past a group of women and girls who waited on a small flat place up the steep side of a long hill. She waved and spoke to them, encouraged the girls to use their minds and grow strong, and to come see her when they were ready to serve the Sisterhood. Their faces went brilliant when Nuva addressed them, and Tuwa could see how she recruited strength for the future of the Sisterhood. Good for the long term. Not worth much in the short term.
“You remember Sweena?” asked Nuva.
“Yes,” said Tuwa. “He hid Grandfather’s string record.”
“That’s right. He’s still at the Village of the Twins, and he has something for you. I wanted you to know so you can be thinking about how to thank him: Grandfather’s staff.”
Tuwa looked at Nuva, and she broke into the biggest grin he’d seen from her since he was a child. Grandfather’s staff, he thought. He saw Grandfather’s hand, his old knuckles and yellowed thumbnail, wrapped around the head of that long stick. Tuwa would hold it the same way. He grinned at Chumana.
Nuva patted him on the sho
ulder. “That’s all. I’ve nothing else to tell you that you don’t already know.”
The Pochtéca joined them and Tuwa told him about the string record and the staff. He laughed heartily and beamed at Nuva. “See, I told you, didn’t I?” he said to Tuwa. “You had to want more than revenge when you came here. If that’s your only reason, you would have failed. Just like my coming here for trade as my only motive was a mistake. Haki pointed that out. I was too blind to see. But now, I see many, many more reasons to be here than bluestone trade. Much more indeed.” Tuwa didn’t quite understand the attraction, but there they were, Nuva and The Pochtéca, gawking at each other like shy teenagers. He shook his head.
Tuwa heard a commotion and saw Sowi running toward them. Running hard. Choovio waited beside Tuwa and they watched Sowi approach.
“Pók,” Sowi said as soon as his breathing allowed, “has escaped.”
Choovio turned to Tuwa. Chumana and Kopavi, who had been on their knees brushing Nuva’s dress with twists of dry grass, stopped and stood. The Pochtéca, too, stared at Tuwa.
“Those two guards went with him,” said Sowi. “He must’ve talked them into it. He can be pretty persuasive sometimes, I mean, even to me. He never stops talking, and I can kind of understand why they….”
“Did anyone go after them?” asked Choovio, interrupting. He held an arrow straight up to punctuate his question.
“Well, no. I thought about it myself, but I decided I should let you know, since you guys are the ones with the brains and all. I just kind of go along….”
Choovio put up his hand for Sowi to stop. Sowi closed his mouth and took a hard swallow. Tuwa turned his back on everyone.
What could a one-handed, four-fingered lunatic do? Would anyone other than a couple of goon guards follow him? Take care of him?
Yes, he decided. Pók could talk his way into almost anything. Sowi said so himself. So what would Pók do? He would go to Black Stone Town. That made Tuwa smile. Pók wouldn’t possibly allow himself to be lower than Ihu in rank. That means they would oppose each other. Weaken each other. Especially over winter, when none of them would survive with ease without the help of the surrounding farmers and women. Would they have that? Only if they ensured it by force. And they would certainly try that. But who was left there? Most of the remaining farming families had run away or hidden long ago. So Pók and Ihu would work against each other all winter, quite possibly to the distraction of taking Center Place Canyon when it is most vulnerable, while their supplies dwindle. Pók might actually be doing a favor for his son without realizing it. Tuwa grinned. Two snakes trying to cut off each other’s heads. Snakes would never do that. But humans would.
Tuwa turned back to the group, each of them waiting for him to speak. He smiled. These people were his true family. His father didn’t matter. Even his mother didn’t matter because he had never known her. Only Grandfather and Nuva and Chumana and Choovio and Kopavi and even Sowi. Only they mattered. He didn’t want to chase and fight anymore. He wanted to settle down in one place. He wanted to live the rest of his days as Grandfather had lived. He wanted to be the next skywatcher and have skywatcher sons with Chumana.
“No,” said Tuwa, all eyes on him. “Let him go.” He looked at Nuva, who narrowed her eyes at him. “For now, just let him go. He means less than nothing.”
More Than Anything
Two winters later, 1059 A.D., the skywatcher’s house at Chimney Rock National Monument, Colorado: The Twins
Outside the house where his wife shrieked in pain, Tuwa paced. He wanted it to be over. He wanted to hold his son, his new skywatcher.
The shrieks stopped and he stood still to listen. A falcon screeched from the twin cliff spires where Tuwa stared at the sky from his circle of stones night after night while his son grew in the belly of the woman he loved. What he expected to hear but did not were the cries of a newborn.
He hurried onto the roof and climbed down the ladder, holding his breath as he passed through the cleansing smoke that rose from the hearth, and once inside, in the dim light of the failing fire, he saw the albino midwife he loved as his true mother and his wife looking at a thing that seemed impossibly small.
“What is that?” he asked.
“It’s your son,” said Chumana in a lilting, exhausted voice. “It entered the world with such contentment that it has not cried out. The gods are happy with us.”
Tuwa felt something rise inside him. A shout that did not emerge, a scream of joy he did not loose. He loved this feeling that had begun to recur within him since he rediscovered Nuva and Chumana, his lifelong love. The feeling had become his personal god, something he carefully held and directed to help him convince others to build a monument to the sky high on this tilted mesa he called home.
He leaned close to the wiggling body and inspected it. A boy, no doubt. It had fat arms and thighs, and gurgled like a creek over cobblestones. He curled the child’s fingers over his own and brushed his lips against the soft baby forehead.
Tuwa felt uplifted as he raised his child into his arms and went to the side of his wife while Nuva grinned and wiped her forearms and hands. He wanted to take the baby in one hand and sprint up the ladder outside, hold him up for the moon and the sky to see, but that was not for fathers to do.
“Is this the child you wanted?” he asked, bending low to his wife.
“Yes,” she answered. “More than anything.”
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Author’s Note
Why did I write a novel about these people when I’m so obviously not one, even a distant descendant?
Because I saw a ghost. Sort of. I’m not a guy who sees ghosts, so I tend to demean what happened, but taking a tour through the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area (before it became a national monument) with my son, a boy ran across the trail in front of us. I put my arm out to stop my son from colliding with him. The boy ran to the cliff’s edge and vaulted over one-handed, and I hurried to see. Below the rock where he placed his hand lay a landing place, a narrow shelf padded thick with pine needles, the steep slope of forest plunging off below that. I nodded. Of course boys would do that.
It left me stunned as if from a head injury. I couldn’t stop thinking about that boy. What if scenarios kept playing in my head. But the ones that played most went like this: What if this boy changed everything about Anasazi society for just a little while? What if the Crab Nebula Supernova of 1054 set off a riot of violence, and this boy somehow stopped it?
This story started my career as a novelist, and I’m continuing the it as a triple trilogy, nine books in the Last Skywatcher Series, in which Tuwa is in his sixties. Thank you for starting the progression with me.
To learn more, see his books at HotWaterPress.com and his ever-growing collection of Anasazi-inspired author notes at JeffPosey.net.
Excerpt from Thirteen Spiral Stars: Book 2 of The Last Skywatcher Series
Chapter 1
Swinging Loincloths
1094 A.D. near Pueblo Alto, above the north rim of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: High House
In bright moonlight a man carried a bulging pack on his back. The black-and-white shadows he cast were in the form of a stick-figure humpbacked flute player, though no musical notes graced the air nor were any spells cast. The vast star-strewn sky, the blazing moon a day shy of full, dominated the landscape, which undulated with a covering of prickly vegetation and sudden drops into dark canyons. Snakes were a danger, but torn and battered feet were of greater concern, which is why the man wore elk-hide leggings and double-thick soles of woven yucca fiber wrapped in bison leather, a lo
op for three toes anchored firmly to the sole. He walked and ran for a living, so he insisted on the best for his feet.
The man knew this way, had traveled it many times, and already caught a glimpse of the flickering signal fire at the last-stop pilgrim trap an easy day’s climb above the great stone palaces on the floor of the sacred canyon. Vingta intended to stay for a short while, hole up in a side canyon to think about how he fit into this world that had gotten drier and hotter and more difficult each year of the last several. For the moment, he just wanted to trade his load of precious shiny cubes that weighed two-thirds as much as himself, and then hide for a while. Maybe find a woman and make a child. He liked the idea of having a boy around. He might even adopt a whole gang of them like the fabled orphan army of the old days. It made him smile as he walked. The power of children warriors and angry women with sharp sticks still obscured the masculine dominance rising again in the canyon.
The shiny heavy cubes were his ticket to the good life. He’d traced them to their source where a family lived who beat the mineral from the rocks, sorted, and traded the pieces in bulk. Those children had a hard life. He felt sorry for them and slipped them treats of pressed meat cakes and fresh game a few times. His children wouldn’t live like that. But to live well meant he had to trade well, so he struggled with his sack full of the best shiny cubes, paid for with four equally heavy loads of piñon nuts that took every bit of trading skill he had to accumulate, and required a half-dozen arduous trips out of and back into the high and remote mountains of the north.
The final long trip from the mountains to the sacred canyon proved exhausting. The cubes were compact, but enormously heavy. For the first time in his life, Vingta wished for an entourage of orphans or women burden bearers, like every trader he knew who ventured to the distant South. Instead, he worked alone, carried heavy loads, and walked with little rest as if he were on a mission for the High Priest. The thought of using unfortunate orphan children as beasts of burden offended him too much to consider beyond the fleeting desire born of exhaustion. And the idea of traveling with women worried him as much as flute music worried the canyon warriors of old. He’d never been lucky with women. The only ones he encountered were old hags intent on cheating at trade, or young women selling their bodies for bare sustenance. They disgusted him, though the desires of his own loins made him think about them from time to time. He always avoided them by leaving. That, he discovered, was the best way to have a good relationship with a woman: run away. Even though, in the depths of his consciousness, he knew he would someday need a woman to complete his life and give him children. Unless, of course, he simply acquired children already born. He could avoid women altogether if he did that. It was an intriguing possibility.