“Are you hungry?” I ask. “We have a pot of rabbit broth.”
“That will be excellent.” Dipping Grandfather a cup, I hand it to him and sink down beside him. With him close, I’m safe again. Happiness fills me.
Ahote asks, “Elder, what are they saying in OwlClaw Village? Does anyone know why she was killed?”
Grandfather’s gray brows pinch over his long nose. “There were so many Straight Path People in the audience it might have been clan revenge. But she was one of the Blessed Sun’s special priestesses, named BoneDust, so most of the village council believes it was vengeance against the Blessed Sun and his ancient religion, which most Canyon People consider to be foreign witchery.”
Ahote absently turns his cup in his hands as he stares into the fire. “It is foreign witchery. That’s why the thlatsina faith is spreading far and wide. If more people truly believed—”
“Oh,” Grandfather says in a patient voice, “I know the growing season was so short this year that our squash and corn did not fully ripen, but I’m not sure it’s witchery.”
Ahote frowns. “You do not believe the priestess’ death was witchery?”
As Grandfather brushes at the soot on his sleeve, he says, “What I think doesn’t matter. Chief Seff is terrified. When the priestess asked the council if she could build a kiva here, and the council said no, she gave Seff a gift from Blessed Sun Leather Hand.”
“A gift?” Ahote asks, startled.
“Yes, a clay doll, about the length of two hands.” He uses his hands to demonstrate the size, touching his fingertips together. “Seff is afraid of it, but doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s unbaked clay and very fragile. When the priestess gave it to Seff, she said it was a token of the Blessed Sun’s respect and love. He can’t really throw it away without risking offending the Blessed Sun.”
“I’d crush it to dust in secret,” Ahote says. “I wish Maicoh and his son could get to Leather Hand and end that problem once and for all.”
I hear the musical honking of geese and, looking up, see a long V-shaped flock sailing through the blue sky. Flocks of migrating birds have been passing over for a half moon, flying south for the winter.
At the mention of the mysterious witch hunters, Grandfather tips his cup up and gulps the broth. When he lowers it, he says, “Maicoh and his son are more legend than fact, though I do not doubt they are based on real people who existed long ago.”
“You don’t believe they exist today?” I ask.
Grandfather shakes his head. “No, child, I don’t. I think people wish they did. That’s what keeps the stories alive. It’s comforting to believe there’s someone out there with great magical powers who can kill the most evil creatures on earth.”
“But don’t you remember that crazy old Trader who came through last moon? He said that Maicoh had turned himself into a wolf and torn out the throats of a dozen witches in Yatki. Do you think the Trader lied?”
Ahote watches Grandfather, as though awaiting his answer just as breathlessly as I am.
Grandfather smiles at us. “Traders are entertainers. They treat stories like deer bladders. They blow them up into fishing floats and hope people will drift away with them and not notice they’ve been overcharged.”
Ahote gestures with his cup. “But, elder, Old Woman Dezba told me she’d met Maicoh once, as a child. She said even then Power rode his shoulders like a granite cape.”
Grandfather’s bushy gray brows draw together, and he stares down into his broth, as though seeing images moving across the surface. “Well, I can tell you one thing. If Maicoh does exist, he is the saddest man on earth.”
“Sad?” I ask.
“Of course. Unlike the rest of us who spend our days frivolously dreaming of other places and other people, Maicoh is condemned to see every moment of life against the horizon of death. It’s the price, you see. He must hold death before his eyes at all times. He can never look away.”
Voices, barely audible, whisper from the toys in the niches on the rear wall. I can’t make out their words, but I wonder if they’re talking about death, about the things they’ve seen. I hope they are talking to that baby boy, comforting him.
“Well, I like believing in Maicoh and his son,” I say. “Makes me feel better to think that someone is out there battling witches.”
Grandfather’s gaze drifts to the boy’s grave and grief rearranges his wrinkles into sorrowful lines. “I wonder if the boy saw the murderer?”
“Will you ask him?”
“Yes. Later.” After inhaling a deep breath, he says, “Tsilu, would you please bring me a clean shirt?”
Jumping up, I run to the basket where we keep clean shirts and pull out a blue shirt with red stair-step clouds painted down the sleeves. “Is this all right?”
“Yes. Fine.”
When I bring it back and hand it to him, Grandfather slips off his dirty cape and knee-length shirt and pulls the blue shirt down over his head. “All right. I must finish the last task for the boy.” He adds, “I know you’re exhausted, Ahote. Tsilu and I can do this by ourselves. Go home to your family. They must be worried about you.”
“Thank you, elder. Will I see you at the council meeting tomorrow afternoon?”
Grandfather gives him a tired nod. “Yes, you will.”
Ahote rises, bows respectfully to Grandfather, then waves to me and walks to the ladder to climb down and head back for OwlClaw Village.
Five
Tsilu
Grandfather hangs his gray head and stares at the floor of the rockshelter for a long time before saying, “Are you all right, Tsilu?”
“Yes, Grandfather. Just sad for the baby.”
“Well, don’t be too sad. Death is just a small step along the Blessed Path.”
Grandfather struggles to stand up, but his tired legs fail him, and he almost topples back to the ground, sitting down hard. There is a new fragility that has begun to possess him over the last few summers, but I am still surprised when he has trouble doing simple things.
“Here, Grandfather!” I jump to my feet. “Take my hand. I’ll pull you up.”
“I guess I’m more tired than I thought.” He grasps my hand and lets me pull him to his feet. “Thank you, dear girl.”
Limping to the cradleboard, he picks it up and moves it so that it rests against the wall beside the baby’s head. The cradleboard is a pretty thing, lovingly woven of reeds and cushioned with bunches of cattail down. A clay baby rests inside the cradleboard. Its face has been lovingly painted so that it looks lifelike, as though the baby is asleep.
“For most of the day, the little boy cried. I could hear him all the way to the tansy mustard patch.”
“He misses his mother. Do you still hear him?”
“No, not now.”
“Probably cried himself to sleep.” Gently Grandfather strokes the cheek of the clay baby. “The boy will feel better soon. Each night, when he climbs out of the grave and enters the clay body in the cradleboard, we will speak with him, tell him stories, and feed him cornmeal to keep him happy until he can be reborn in a new body.”
“When will the women start coming?”
“The Hummingbird Clan woman, Muna, has already pleaded to be the first. She will come tomorrow night and sleep on top of the boy’s grave. She and her husband have been trying for many summers to have a child.”
My gaze roams the old tattered toys in the wall niches, babies that were never reborn. “Will he climb into her womb? I’m worried about him. The last baby decided to live in his favorite toy forever.”
There is a remoteness in Grandfather’s eyes, as though his soul is loose and wandering far away. “Hard to say. For a time, I’m sure he’ll Dance on the threshold between life and death, slipping into a womb, then slipping out. But he’ll be alive again in no time. I’m sure of it.”
“I hope so.”
Grandfather reaches out and pats my head. “The baby teaches a lesson. Are you listening?”
; “What lesson?”
A smile flickers at the edges of his lips. “For the moment, the boy is caught between life and death. He cannot travel to the afterlife, nor can he live in this world. He is trapped here in this rockshelter with us. The only way he can live again is to give up his dreams for a new family, clan, brothers and sisters, and all the things he longed for. That’s very hard to do.”
“But he must.”
“I hope so. It’s up to us to teach him that giving up things we love is part of being human. We all die many times over our lives, and each dying frees us so we may be born into a new life.” Grandfather bumps his forehead against mine. “Just as you and I were reborn when we found each other that long ago night on the River of Souls.”
I smile. Though I call him Grandfather, we are not kin. Terms like grandfather and grandson are terms of respect among our people. Grandfather found me ten summers ago wandering along the River of Souls in the south. I was about three. “I’m glad I was born into your heart, Grandfather.”
“And I’m glad I was born into yours.” He puts an arm around my shoulders and hugs me. “Can you find the red thread basket?”
“Of course.” I retrieve the small pot in the wall niche near the ladder and hand it over. “Do you want me to tie it?”
“I’ll do it, but thank you for offering.”
“I’ve done it before. I think I did a good job.”
“You did. Someday you will be a very great Spirit elder. I’m sure of it. It’s just my turn.”
I watch him clamp the red thread between his teeth to break it at the right length, before using his finger to make a hole in the soft dirt over the dead baby’s heart. After he plants one end of the thread and covers it up he takes the other end and ties it to the cradleboard. It’s the red road of life. Now the boy’s soul can follow the road to the clay body where he can see the sky and the cliffs. We don’t want him to get lost. He’s scared right now and confused. He might wander off, and we would never find him, then he’d become a homeless ghost baby.
Grandfather gently tugs on the string to make sure it can’t easily come loose from either the hole or the cradleboard. Then he gives me a careworn smile.
I say, “May I pull down a few toys and place them in the cradleboard for the boy to play with?”
“Please.” He smiles at me. “We want him to be happy until he’s born into a loving new family.”
Six
Blue Dove
“That’s it.” Crane—as he insists upon being called—points to a huge rockshelter in the towering canyon wall in the distance. “It’s called the Sleeping Place.”
Lifting a hand, I shield my eyes against the morning glare. The high red cliff to the west shines orange in the morning sunlight, but the Sleeping Place is still in shadow. One hundred hands above the canyon floor, the rockshelter is shaped like a giant clamshell.
“It’s a lonely haunted place,” Crane continues, “filled with the souls of children who, for one reason or another, chose never to be reborn.”
“You’ve been there?”
A faint expression crosses his pale face. “Long time ago.”
“Why? Did you carry a dead child there? Did you live in this canyon at one time? You don’t strike me as a dirt farmer, or anything ordinary, for that matter. Not even a Healer. Everyone with eyes senses something amiss about you.”
Crane turns to give me a long quiet stare. “Then we share something, you and I.”
I smile. “Perhaps we do.”
He stands a good head taller than me. Today he wears deerhide leggings and a drab knee-length shirt the color of the red dirt. Worn around the elbows and collar, it drapes his emaciated body like a baggy second skin. His ribs show through the fabric. A buffalo-hide bag is tied to his braided leather belt, and a black cloak hangs over his arm.
All in all, he resembles a shabby refugee from the war-torn south.
I, on the other hand, look regal in my magnificently woven white dress covered with intricate black-and-red geometric designs. Seven turquoise-and-coral necklaces encircle my neck. The longest hangs to my stomach and sports a large abalone shell pendant the size of my palm. Everyone in the village knows I am not from around here. Thank the old gods.
“Are you sure that’s where he is?”
“Chief Seff told me he’d taken the dead infant there, but he’ll return for the council meeting this afternoon.”
“I see. And who is this Tocho?”
Lightly, Crane shakes his head. “Don’t know much about him, though he’s a legend among the Canyon People. He’s performed many miracles here.”
“Miracles?” I scoff. “Nonsense.”
Crane does not turn. “I hear he routinely brings the beloved pets of children back to life. Others have seen him clap his hands over eggs and watched fully grown birds crack through the shells and flap away. He once brought a little girl back to life after she’d been dead for two full days.”
“Trickery.”
“Perhaps.” He lifts a shoulder. “Perhaps not.”
My gaze drifts. Drying racks, covered with strips of meat from rabbits, deer, and bighorn sheep, stand to the south of the village. Nearby, women sit gossiping in the shade of a three-sided ramada—a thin-walled structure made of sticks and mud. Tools and supplies dangle from the roof: winnowing baskets, fire-hardened digging sticks, tongs for lifting hot rocks or cooking pots from fires, and several bundles of sinew for sewing moccasins and other hide garments.
To the north, the pithouse they burned last night is little more than a circular depression in the ground filled with smoldering debris. The acrid smell stings my sensitive nostrils. All around the plaza, people from different nations walk about with cotton scarves over their noses and mouths.
“And why would this Tocho know the location of the Wellpot that holds Nightshade’s soul? Did your father, Spots, give it to him?”
Crane folds his arms, a gesture that barely stirs the thin fabric of his shirt. “It’s said that Tocho studied the shamanic arts with Spots. I don’t know the truth of it. Perhaps Spots told him where he’d buried the pot.”
“There are so many things I do not understand about your curious father. Stories say—”
“He’s not my father.”
I continue as though he hasn’t spoken: “Stories say he was a dear friend of Nightshade’s, but if so, why didn’t he take her pot to the Great North Road and break it open to release her soul onto the path to the afterlife? Any true friend would have done that soon after he’d captured her soul.”
“Yes, he would have, wouldn’t he?” Crane starts walking across the plaza toward the council house beside the river, where birds perch on the cattails at the edge of the water. “If he could have.”
I keep pace at his side. “Are you saying your father could not take her pot to a high place?”
For a time, I think Crane will refuse to answer. He doesn’t even look at me, just continues walking at a slow steady pace, his pale face inscrutable in the mane of black and silver hair.
Finally, he says, “I’ve heard that her pot is impossible to break. An old Trader told me that once. A man who had supposedly known Spots personally.”
Does he think me a fool or merely want to impress me with this tidbit of secret knowledge? “By the way, where is your son this morning?”
“Who?”
“Your son. I caught barely a glimpse of him in your cave last night. I’m not even sure I’d recognize him today, especially if he’s changed his hair or clothes. And you both do that, don’t you? Wear disguises? I’ve always assumed ‘Maicoh’ is two, or even three, different people.”
With an expression of tired distaste on his face Crane turns away, as though growing bored of me calling him Maicoh.
Without a hint of inflection he says, “Tell me why I need you?”
“What?”
“You’re an errand girl. A messenger from the Blessed Sun who wants a Power object. If I am Maicoh, as you believe, why woul
dn’t I simply kill you, find the pot, and take it back to the Blessed Sun to claim the reward?”
My cheeks dimple with a smile. “I doubt my father would give you the reward if you killed me.”
“Your father?”
“Yes. I’m his only daughter. My death would make him very sad. And angry.”
Crane lowers his gaze to the ground, and I wonder what he’s thinking. He must be terrified.
When he laughs, it so startles me, I stop dead in the trail. “What are you laughing at?”
“Oh, just thinking that it would work out well for Maicoh in either case. If he killed you, or made it known that he had the pot, the Blessed Sun Leather Hand would demand that Maicoh be brought before him. Once Maicoh was close enough, he’d kill the Blessed Sun. Which would secure, for all time, Maicoh’s reputation as the greatest witch hunter who has ever lived.”
Irritated, I reply, “Of course Maicoh would also be dead.”
“A minor point, I should think. Your father must be the greatest prize of all for a man who lives to kill witches.”
Amusement glitters far back in those jet black eyes.
“Is Maicoh that foolish? That he would throw away a lifetime of wealth and status just to kill the Blessed Sun?”
His deeply sunken eyes are hooded in shadow now. “Why would the Blessed Sun send his only daughter after Maicoh, when any messenger could have delivered—”
“So many people have tried to trap and kill Maicoh that my father supposed he would not come without proof that the offer was genuine. I am that proof. It is genuine. I bring my father’s true words.”
“But, surely, if you are the Blessed Sun’s child, you’d have an armed escort. Where is it?”
I toss my head coquettishly. “Do you really think I’m alone?”
Crane glances around the village at the people from many nations, as though searching for my armed escort, then gives me a cold smile and leisurely walks away down the trail.
Seven
People of the Canyons Page 4