If she agreed to go along with him, it might buy her time, time to simply stay alive. But she was lying to herself if she didn’t acknowledge that what he offered made her curious.
“Alright,” she agreed. “Will you show me?”
* * *
Diamond untied her. She rubbed her wrists, red and sore. Thoughts of escaping crossed her mind, but she didn’t know what was more risky—staying with Diamond or running north into a wilderness in which she would no doubt become hopelessly lost.
“Come with me.” He led her to the edge of the river. “What do you see?”
Emma looked at the Colorado in the afternoon sun. “Flowing water.”
“It’s a pathway. It moves along a grid of energy deep in the earth.” He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply then sighed. “It fairly flows through you if you let it.” When he opened his eyes, he appeared dazed. “That canyon,” he continued, pointing to the small inlet that opened to where they now stood, “also sits on a line of energy. Everywhere, the land speaks to you, if you just learn to hear it.”
“What’s the purpose of knowing this? How does this help?”
He paused, as if searching for the words. “It’s like a map. And it tells you the best way to go. Wouldn’t you want to know that? Wouldn’t that make your life easier? Richer?”
She nodded, still uncertain as to exactly what he meant.
“How does your gift work?” he asked.
“I see images. Sometimes, when I touch someone, I feel things.”
He took her hand before she could stop him, encompassing it with both of his. The jolt startled her, like lightning. Abruptly, he let go of her.
“You felt that,” he said.
“What did you do?”
“Desire is everything.”
She froze, suddenly wary of the undercurrent to which he alluded. Could she fight him off if she had to?
“Focus, Emma.” He tilted his head and looked at her. “Focus your intention. You’ll be amazed what can happen. And you won’t be so afraid anymore.”
“I’m always afraid,” she whispered, surprised that she spoke aloud.
He walked back to the campfire and sat. She followed.
“Do you ever see patterns?” he asked.
She frowned in concentration. This was something she’d never told anyone. “Maybe. I think so.”
“What have you seen?”
She drew a spiral in the sand with her finger.
“It’s the world beyond this one,” he said. “When do you see it?”
“Usually at the end of a vision. Sometimes, I see it before one starts.”
“It could be a spirit. Do you see anything else?”
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen sparrows. They’re alive, and then they die.”
“Have you ever asked them why?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“I can do that?”
“It’s the easiest way. When it gets dark, I’ll show you how.”
“Why then?” she asked.
“Because when day turns to night, it’s easier to slip back and forth. You’ll see.”
He smiled, and for the briefest of moments Emma thought she caught a glimpse of a terrifying beast, a demon. But then he was just Diamond again, a lanky, distorted version of a human. Maybe she was dreaming him, just as she had dreamed every other awful incident in her life. Maybe, God-willing, she would one day wake up and be free of all of this.
* * *
As the sun set Diamond worked by the fire, preparing a bowl of what looked like cactus pieces he’d pulled from his pack. He added water, then handed the concoction to Emma.
“Suck and chew on it before eating it.”
Emma looked at the contents of the bowl. It looked unappetizing. “What is it?”
“Peyote. It will help you see more clearly.”
Emma thought of Nathan’s experience with the plant. Despite his reluctance, it had helped him find Matt. She carefully put a piece in her mouth, then winced from the bitterness. “It doesn’t taste very good.”
“Keep at it.” He took the bowl from her and scooped a chunk.
For a time they sat by the fire, sucking on their piece of cactus, waiting for the potion to take effect. Emma stared into the flames, and an image began to take shape. It became sharper, morphing and changing before her eyes. And then, she saw her. Mama.
“How are you?” Emma asked, nearly weeping.
“Button.” Her mother smiled. She appeared young, as she had by the river, with a smooth complexion and dark hair.
“What are you doing here?” Emma asked. She blinked hard, worried her mother’s image would fade if she didn’t stay focused.
“I’m looking after you. Please take care. You’re so inquisitive. It can lead you down the wrong path.”
“I’m confused about so many things.”
“I know.” Her mama smiled in compassion.
“I miss you so much,” Emma whispered. The pain sliced through her heart with a strength and ferocity that made Emma gasp. She began to sob. “Why did you have to leave me?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Her mama looked away, clearly upset. “I wish it had never happened.”
“Do you know that Molly’s alive?” Emma burst out.
Her mother nodded. “Yes.”
“Did she suffer?”
Her mother nodded again. “But she’s strong, and she has Matthew. Do not stay long with this man you are with. There is darkness in him. You don’t know your way yet. He can easily mislead you. I must go now. Nathan has a good heart. He is good for you.”
Her mother’s image faded away. The fire filled her vision and she swayed. Where was Diamond? But she couldn’t see him or sense him. Had he left her?
She sat for a time and stared at the flames, but time was elusive. She didn’t know how long she’d been by the fire, but hadn't this been the case since she entered Grand Canyon? Time was altered here somehow. As she began to dwell on this, her thoughts seem to encompass a larger vision.
The Canyon was both affected by time and made its own time. She sensed the millions of years that the rocks around her had been in this place, how the erosion of water and wind slowly exposed them. So much time—it had taken so long. It was incomprehensible. She felt dizzy trying to understand, trying to envision it.
But somehow, deep in the bowels of the bedrock, where she now sat, she discerned the compression and the alteration of time. The Canyon changed the flow; it turned and wound back onto itself. It overlapped itself. Timelines merged into one.
More incomprehensible images flowed past her. She shook her head and hung it low.
She still sobbed.
She rolled to her side on the ground, then lay on her back and stared at the night sky. The stars danced, hundreds of them, to some unheard rhythm. But Emma knew the beat was there. It came from the Earth itself. Was it Tiowa’s heartbeat? She laughed at the display. What a lovely show—the bright dots hopping back and forth, so sparkly and pretty.
The shadow of a bird filled the sky and it slowly floated down to Emma. She watched its ease and flow, envious. It landed beside her. Sparrow.
She pushed herself upright and looked at the creature's small black eyes, the white and brown striations on her head, and her perfect beak. “Why have you been with me here in the Canyon?”
I am your power animal. I am here to help you when you journey in this reality.
“Thank you.” Emma concentrated on what to say next. She wanted to be clear, but her brain oscillated with waves of fogginess. Just ask the most important questions. “Why am I here?”
You were drawn here because there is abundant energy. There are other places on this Earth, but this was nearest to you.
“Why do I need to be near so much energy?”
Why not? It feels nice.
Emma silently agreed.
But you also came because you need to go to the next level with your abilities. You need a catalyst.
�
��Yes,” she agreed. “Although I can’t imagine why I would choose such a difficult journey. Surely there must’ve been an easier way.”
The universe does its work in the only way it can. Sometimes the only path is the one with obstacles. How else do you find what you’re worth?
Emma felt weary. She wondered if she was passing or failing.
“Why do I feel as if time is mixed up here?”
It is the way the energy is stored. Just as there are layers of rock rising out of the canyon walls, there are layers of memories, layers of timelines.
“So history repeats itself?”
Yes, sometimes because those that come later absorb the energy of that which came before.
Emma understood. It was, she suspected, the way her gift worked. She tuned in, somehow, to the layers of energy around her.
Time can flow backward as well, Sparrow continued.
“How?”
We can visit the past. We can let it live in the present. Sparrow moved closer. Climb aboard, and I will show you something.
Emma hesitated. Fly on a giant pretend bird? The thought made her giggle. But Sparrow silently waited, so Emma became serious and hoisted herself onto the bird’s back. Sparrow spread her wings wide and with one flap created a giant wave of air. They climbed upward, soaring higher and higher until they moved out of the canyon, flying east into the darkness. The wind blew but Emma was neither cold nor hot. She could see the dark outline of the canyon below, a long endless ink blot spilling across the skin of the Earth.
“It’s beautiful up here,” she said.
Sparrow silently agreed.
When the canyon turned north, Sparrow continued to fly east. She took Emma to a flat, high mesa where she encouraged Emma to dismount.
There is a story that I will show you. She cocked her head to beyond the mesa.
Emma watched, and images began to form before her eyes. A village came to life, a Hopi village, and an unknown light illuminated the busy scene. It was a large settlement with four rows of multistoried homes. There were three wide courts that stretched nearly the length of the mesa on which the town stood, as well as many kivas and shrines. Men, women, and children moved about the dwellings, some carrying food, some talking of hunting; youngsters laughed and chased dogs.
What is this place? The answer came immediately to mind.
Awatovi.
It sat atop Antelope Mesa. The main group of people who lived there came from the Bow Clan, but there were many other clans there as well—Tobacco, Sand, Rabbit, Bluebird, and Corn.
A group of men on horseback rode toward the village; all wore armor except one, who appeared to be a priest. The people of Awatovi placed a line of cornmeal across the trail to the village, a symbol meant to keep the strangers away. But the group of men proceeded into the village anyway. These Spaniards, these Kastilam, had already burned another village—Kawaika—when the people refused to surrender to their authority. The people of Awatovi feared the same fate, so tried to be friendly, giving gifts and waiting patiently. Eventually the Spaniards continued west, accompanied by several Awatovi men acting as guides.
The scene shifted, and now it was several years later. The Kastilam returned and brought additional white people—Bahanas. They were missionaries who began to wash the heads of the people in the village. This confused the Hopi. The priests told them it would bring them good fortune, and so the people let them stay and do what they wanted. The priests built a church. They taught the people of Awatovi to be Christians. The village became separated into two parts—those who had converted and lived near the new church, and those that had not.
Time continued to flow as Emma watched. Now, the missionaries began to dominate the village. They tried to stop the people from performing ancient ceremonies; they entered kivas and removed the altars, they burned the Hopi prayer sticks—pahos—they found in the shrines. They turned Hopi against Hopi, and took women and young girls for themselves, paying no mind to whether they were married or not. Some Awatovi men urged their people to have nothing to do with these Christians. They soon disappeared, and Emma could see they had been buried in a crypt beneath one of the church buildings.
A tide of anger and despair washed over Emma as an uprising began to swell in the village. The ensuing revolt left the great church demolished. Awatovi returned to its Hopi ways, but there was unrest. Half of the people had been baptized and no longer followed the old ways of their people. Discord flowed beneath the surface, a marked tension that made Emma feel pulled in all directions.
More time passed—twenty summers in all—and the missionaries returned. The Hopi who were baptized welcomed them. The priests began to rebuild the church on its old walls and spoke of returning to other villages as well. As this news flowed on the currents of the wind, the people of nearby villages—Shongopovi, Walpi, and Oraibi—became worried.
As many of its inhabitants became emboldened in their disrespect for the old ways, lawlessness permeated the atmosphere of Awatovi. The resulting violence and fighting kept many fearful in their homes.
The village chief of Awatovi, the kikmongwi, became deeply saddened and knew something must be done. He went to the kikmongwi of Walpi and requested that he help bring Awatovi to an end, to banish forever the evil that had followed them from the Lower World. He spoke of how the missionaries would never leave, how the young insulted the old, how the women were raped, the shrines desecrated, and the ceremonies ridiculed. He desperately asked for complete annihilation. The Walpi kikmongwi gravely disagreed. Such destruction went against everything Hopi believed in. Hopi only attacked out of defense. They couldn’t possibly raid their own people.
The Awatovi chief departed and went to the kikmongwi of Oraibi. They spoke at length and he agreed to help, but he wanted other villages involved. So the two of them returned to Walpi, but this time spoke to the kalatakmongwi, the war chief, instead. He agreed to their request. They decided that the Oraibi would take the women of Awatovi to help their village grow, and that the Walpi would take the land. The chief of Walpi did not agree with this choice, but with a heavy heart deferred to the decision of the kalatakmongwi.
Emma felt a panic grow in her heart. No. They cannot do this. She struggled to somehow reach out, physically, or more importantly, through thought or spirit, but she was caught in a place from which she could not venture out. She looked at Sparrow but the bird remained solemn beside her, her gaze fixed on the horizon and the story playing out before them.
The village chiefs of Awatovi and Oraibi and the war chief of Walpi made arrangements for the war parties to have four days to prepare. They departed one another and returned to their villages. The Oraibi and Walpi warriors readied themselves, rehearsing what they would do, making new arrows and repairing their bows.
The scene shifted back to the streets of Awatovi, where a Hopi priest wearing the ceremonial dress of the One Horn society wandered aimlessly. Despondent and clearly grief-stricken, he sang an Indian song that Emma didn’t understand.
“What does it mean?” she asked Sparrow.
He has lost his three sons, Sparrow replied. The night before, a gang of kwitamuh from the converted portion of the village attacked the brothers, murdering them. They rubbed cornmeal all over the bodies and threw them into a fire pit. It was a sign to the village that the old way of life was doomed to perish. The priest sings of this.
For four days the priest sang and surprisingly, to Emma’s great relief, some of the villagers listened despite the many who ridiculed him. The leaders of the Tobacco and Bow clans took sacred objects as well as many people, and hid them far from Awatovi.
But many still remained in the village. On the fourth day, the war parties from Oraibi and Walpi met outside of Awatovi, where they waited until the cover of darkness. The people went to sleep in their homes and inside the kivas. The village chief of Awatovi signaled the warriors with a firebrand held high at the entrance. Once the signal was complete, the chief turned back along the trail to
the village and descended down a ladder into a kiva.
“He’ll die,” Emma said.
Tapolo does not wish to live after the decision he has made. He does not make the sacrifice lightly. His sons will die also. Sparrow flapped her wings and Emma felt small beside the largesse of the bird. A hollow, sick feeling filled her, and she wanted to turn away from what was to come, but a morbid stillness overcame her.
The war parties passed through the stone gateway of the village and immediately dispersed throughout the village to the kivas. They removed the ladders so that the men inside who slept or performed ceremonies couldn’t escape. Chaos came swiftly as the warriors dragged men, women, and children from their homes, setting fire to anything that would burn. Some of the attackers stayed along the edge of the village and killed anyone who tried to escape by shooting them with arrows or throwing them over the cliff. Burning wood and cedar bark was thrown into the kivas, along with chili peppers found hanging, which caused fumes that stung the eyes. After a time, the screaming and shouting ceased as those inside suffocated. Only silence emanated from the now lifeless kivas. The attackers also did this to several homes, which had entrances through the roof.
Emma could barely watch as old women and children were brutally slaughtered. She flinched and looked away. How could such senseless violence occur?
As daylight filled the scene, the town was a smoky ruin, barren and lifeless. Still, the Oraibi and Walpi warriors continued the destruction until it was absolute. In shock, Emma thought that this would be the end.
No, there is more, said Sparrow. You must see all of it.
Emma didn’t have the strength to ask why.
The warriors left the village with captives—young women and children—and headed west. When they came to a wash, they rested. The warriors began to argue among themselves. The Oraibi’s said, “It was agreed with the chief of Awatovi that all the women would belong to us. The women with you, therefore, belong to Oraibi.”
The Sparrow Page 20