By the time I reach the village, the council meeting is over, and people crowd the plaza discussing the day’s events. Most huddle around the central fire where big cook pots rest in the coals, and other pots hang from tripods at the edges of the blaze. During ceremonials, pots are always kept full to feed visitors.
I don’t see Grandfather, so I start weaving through the crowd, looking for him.
Eleven
Tsilu
As twilight deepens, the canyon walls go from red to a dark purple, and owl eyes glitter in the crevices. I see the dark shapes of people sitting on the roofs of pithouses with blankets around their shoulders. Pale amber halos have just begun to swell around the entry ladders. Soft voices carry across OwlClaw Village.
Rubbing my cold arms, I pace back and forth, glancing down at Grandfather where he sits cross-legged on the ground outside Kwinsi’s lean-to. We’ve been waiting for him since sundown.
“Maybe he’s not coming,” I say. “Kwinsi said we should go back to the Sleeping Place for the night. He was worried about us. He said it wasn’t safe here.”
“I saw him this afternoon. He said he might be late. Be patient.” Grandfather smiles. “He’s coming.”
“I don’t know. He acted very strangely today, even more strangely than usual.”
Grandfather’s long nose catches the gleam of the first footprints of the dead that have just appeared in the night sky. “Did you ask him about it?”
“Yes, but his answers were gibberish. Something about a voice in a flame. He was scared, though.”
“Hmm,” Grandfather says almost too softly for me to hear. “I’m surprised he was brave enough to tell you about the dancing figurines.”
“He didn’t tell me much. He told me to ask you about them.”
“Well, that makes perfect sense. Anyone who dares tell the story of the dancing figurines is placing himself in great jeopardy.”
I stop pacing. “Why?”
Grandfather pats the ground beside him. “Please, come and sit beside me. My neck hurts from craning it to look up at you.”
I sit on the ground beside him and draw my knees against my chest for warmth. “How do you know the story?”
He leans his head back to gaze up at the Star Road glittering high above us. As night settles in, it resembles a rumpled silver blanket more than a road. “It’s an old, old story. A dangerous story. I haven’t heard it whispered in, oh, nine or ten summers. I’m sure that’s why Kwinsi told you to ask me about it. He was afraid to tell you the entire tale. After all, people stopped telling the tale for a reason.”
“Why?”
“People who tell this story tend to die in particularly awful ways.”
The wind shifts, and a wave of juniper smoke envelops us. It smells rich and fragrant, but it stings my eyes.
“I still want to hear it.”
“Of course you do. You’re too brave for your own good. Never forget I said that.”
“Sounds like a warning.”
“It is.” When his face catches the firelight, I see a smile crinkle the corners of his eyes. “So. Here’s the story. It is said by the time Maicoh was in his early thirties his reputation for finding and killing witches was already the stuff of legend. Every village had a wild tale to tell about his astonishing deeds. For that reason, he could no longer live in a village. Every witch wanted him dead and would stop at nothing to kill him. So, Maicoh took his young family, his wife and five children, out into the remote canyon lands and built a house. They lived happily there for a few precious summers, until Leather Hand the Cannibal got wind of his location and sent a dozen of his elite White Moccasin warriors to find Maicoh. When the warriors arrived, Maicoh was gone, off witch hunting, but that did not stop the warriors. They burned down Maicoh’s house and killed most of his family to teach him a lesson.”
Grandfather stops to take a deep breath, and unconsciously lowers his hand to rest on the sacred bundle that makes a bulge beneath his cape.
“You said most. So some of them survived?”
“Ah…” Grandfather holds up a finger. “Supposedly, when Maicoh returned, the warriors were still there, camped near the burning ruins of his home. They’d left his wife and three of his daughters lying in the dirt where they’d been struck down with war clubs, their heads bashed in. But Maicoh found his son hiding in a nearby thicket. The boy was clutching his youngest sister against his chest. She was dying. They say Maicoh had to pry the girl from his son’s arms to bury her. The entire time the boy looked up at him like a demented animal, and he couldn’t speak for many moons afterward.”
Fascinated, I can’t take my eyes off Grandfather. “What about the clay figurines? Kwinsi said they jumped around in the fire as though alive?”
Grandfather leans closer to me and his gray hair picks up the bluish sheen cast by the Star Road. “They were alive. Maicoh made them by sculpting clay around sacred pahos, prayer feathers, and then breathing Spirit into them. He’d left those Spirit Helpers to protect his family.” He exhaled a slow breath. “But they failed.”
“Leather Hand’s magic was more Powerful than Maicoh’s?” I say in disbelief.
“Oh, yes. It was. And if Maicoh truly exists, I daresay it still is, or Maicoh would have killed him by now.”
As more of the footprints of the dead appear in the night sky, their gleam intensifies, and the mud-plastered lean-to behind Grandfather looks like a huge porcupine. Sticks poke out everywhere.
“Do the figurines still exist?”
Grandfather lifts a shoulder. “I’m not sure they ever existed. Though there are fabulous stories about the figurines flying through the air and appearing in the houses of anyone who speaks of them. There was a small village five summers ago that specialized in different versions of the figurines’ tale. Then one night, the entire village was slaughtered. Their heads were found in a circle, strung together like the beads of a giant’s necklace in the smoldering ruins of the village.”
I feel a hand touch my arm, and let out a small cry.
Kwinsi seems to materialize from the darkness. He has a pack slung over his left shoulder.
“Hurry,” he whispers. “We must leave.”
Silent as an eagle’s shadow, he backs away and melts into the night.
Grandfather orders: “Get up, Tsilu.”
I trot beside Grandfather as he hurries southward along the eroded riverbank after Kwinsi. No one speaks, and that scares me. Where are we going? Why do we have to leave?
Kwinsi ducks into a cluster of giant sandstone chunks that long ago crumbled from the cliff and now create a maze of narrow passageways along the base of the canyon wall. We follow him until he stops in a squarish chamber, partially roofed with a stone slab. Shafts of starlight fall through the gap between the slab and the cliff, illuminating Kwinsi’s rabbit-like face with his long ears and black hair.
Kwinsi rubs his face. “Do you feel it, Tocho? The Power riding the wind?”
“Faintly, Grandson. Age takes a toll. I haven’t really felt a wind filled with Spirit Power in, oh, a dozen summers. Is it strong tonight?”
“Unbearable.” Kwinsi huddles against the rear wall, trembling.
Grandfather places a hand on Kwinsi’s shoulder. “These things pass. Let it move through you. Don’t try to keep it out—”
“You have to leave, Tocho.”
Slowly, Grandfather lowers his hand to his side. “What’s wrong?”
“The Blessed Sun … he’s…” A ray of starlight penetrates the chamber and burnishes Kwinsi’s terrified eyes.
“Go on, Grandson. You can tell me.”
“What?”
Gently, Grandfather says, “You were about to say something about Leather Hand the Cannibal. What were you going to say?”
Kwinsi looks a little lost. “I wasn’t going to say anything, except that his warriors have been following me all day.”
“The Blessed Sun’s warriors are here? In OwlClaw Village?”
“Oh,
yes.” Kwinsi nods. “I’ve seen them flying around in the bodies of insects. Wasps, grasshoppers, butterflies. Moths.”
“Moths?”
Kwinsi lifts one hand to show Grandfather how tall they are, taller than he is. “As big as men.”
Grandfather’s mouth turns up in a smile. “Well, don’t fret about it. My Spirit Powers may not be what they used to, but I think I can still handle a few evil insects. Even big ones.”
“Can you?”
Grandfather straightens at his tone, gives him a questioning look. “Grandson, please tell me…”
In the maze of fallen rock, sandals scratch against stone—sandals, not moccasins—and Grandfather spins around to look back the way we came. The narrow passageway through the boulders is intensely dark.
“Tocho.” Panic threads Kwinsi’s low voice. “They know you have the pot. They’re coming for it. You must take Tsilu and run. I don’t care what they do to me, but you…”
His voice fades to nothingness as a cacophony erupts in the canyon outside. Like an army on the move, hundreds of feet authoritatively pound the ground, and a loud buzzing fills the air as arrows rattle inside rawhide quivers. A great roar eddies through OwlClaw Village. I hear people running.
“Grandfather, what—”
“Hurry, Tocho!”
Grandfather stares at Kwinsi with kind eyes, then swallows hard, as though preparing himself for a fate he has long feared. “Please, take Tsilu and go. Go now.”
“No, Grandfather, I want to stay with you! I—”
Voices in the passageway …
“Now!” Grandfather orders and walks away toward the voices, calling, “Hello? Is someone there?”
Kwinsi grabs me and shoves me up and out through the gap in the slab roof, then climbs into the starlight and motions for me to follow him. He balances precariously as he leaps across the tops of the boulders until he finds a place big enough for us both to hide. When I wedge myself into the niche beside him, he places a finger against his lips.
Grandfather’s voice trickles up between the boulders. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Come along, old man. Don’t make me hurt you.”
My eyes have riveted on the village. Warriors carrying torches are rousting people from their pithouses and rounding them up. They’ve separated the women and children from the men, and marched each group to opposite sides of the village. In the torchlight, their shadows waver, huge and deformed, on the canyon walls.
“Kwinsi?” My voice is barely audible, but he thrusts a hand against my lips and violently shakes his head.
Then I see Grandfather. A big warrior shoves him out of the passageway and forces him to walk to where two people stand at the edge of the river. I recognize one of them: The pretty Straight Path woman who was at the council meeting. The second man wears white moccasins that blaze in the starlight. They are the mark of the Blessed Sun’s most elite warriors. When the man lifts his torch higher to examine Grandfather, the light flares on the warrior’s face, and my mouth falls open. His tattoo is magnificent. His narrow nose creates the moth’s body, then its wings spread across his cheeks, and antennae curve over his dark eyebrows.
Almost voiceless, Kwinsi says, “Wasp Moth. That’s the name they call him. I heard them.”
Kwinsi waits until Grandfather has been marched away, toward the village, then he takes my hand in a hard grip.
“Don’t let go of me, Tsilu.”
“Where are we going?” I sob.
“I—I don’t … Come on.”
Kwinsi tugs me through the boulders and down to the river trail. When we hit the packed sand, we break into a desperate run, heading south.
After one hundred heartbeats, I glance back at the village. The burning pithouses resemble huge torches. Flames leap through the roof entrances and cast bizarre shadows over the canyon. Like monstrous dancing ghosts …
Twelve
Tsilu
I slide along the eroded riverbank on my belly. Five paces away, Kwinsi lies hidden in the clump of willows, trying to get a better look at OwlClaw Village in the faint light of dawn. All night long, smoke kept billowing high into the sky.
When I reach his side, I use my hands to part the willows and look out upon the smoldering pithouses. Wind tumbles golden cottonwood leaves through the ruins.
“Are the warriors still here?”
“I don’t see any,” Kwinsi whispers back.
“Do you see Grandfather? Where are all the villagers?”
In the brightening morning gleam, the smoke hangs close to the ground, twining through the carnage like gray serpents.
Kwinsi’s voice is tight. “See the charred heap to the north of the village?”
I frown at it, not sure what it is. “What…”
Then, as the smoke shifts, I see charred arms and legs sticking out of the heap at odd angles, and a hollow floating sensation fills me. “No.”
Shaking, Kwinsi whispers, “I’m sure someone escaped.”
I roll onto my back to gaze sightlessly at the clouds drifting high above the canyon rim. Cold envelops me, leaving me numb. Where is Grandfather? Is he down there? In that heap? And Ahote and his family?
Kwinsi stands up. “Stay here, Tsilu. I have to see if I can find my family.”
“No! I’m coming with you.”
He heaves a sigh and nods. “All right. I wouldn’t want to be alone either.”
As we walk into the burned village, we pass dozens of dead dogs. Each has been speared through the heart or clubbed in the head. In the middle of the plaza, stew pots still swing from tripods around the central fire, which has burned down to a bed of gray ash.
Kwinsi trots toward his parents’ pithouse. He has two little sisters.
When he struggles to move smoking debris so he can push his way inside the house, flames suddenly roar to life, forcing him to leap away.
“They can’t be alive in there,” he says with tears in his voice.
My gaze continually roams the village as I search for Grandfather. I pray to hear him call our names. But all I hear is my heart thumping in my chest.
“Tsilu, please go stand by the fire. Eat some of the stew in the pot while I keep searching for survivors.”
Mindlessly, I do as he says. I wander out across the plaza through the billowing smoke. Kwinsi coughs, and I glimpse him moving methodically from one burning pithouse to another, searching for the people who once lived there. It is a nightmare come to life.
Just before I reach the stew pots, I hear unfamiliar voices.
Four men come around the curve in the canyon wall. All wear white moccasins and sport magnificent facial tattoos: Silk moth, bumblebee, monarch butterfly, grasshopper. I counted six White Moccasins last night, though I’m sure there were many more. Where are they today? Where is Wasp Moth? And Grandfather? Sudden dizziness makes me stop and brace my feet.
When the lead man sees me in the midst of the blowing smoke, he checks his stride and instantly draws his chert knife from the sheath on his belt. The motion is practiced and effortless, a thing of awful beauty. He squints, as though he can’t believe I’m really here. Midtwenties, small round eyes the color of polished walnuts, and empty … as though his souls were sucked out many summers ago. Chin-length hair falls around his long narrow face in greasy black strands. I can’t help but stare at him. His tattoo depicts a large grasshopper, the wings splayed across his cheeks. His face and clothing are striped with blood and soot. Everything about the man is black and red, and terrifying.
A broad smile comes to his lips. “Just coming home?” he calls out. “Or passing through?” His voice is friendly, but the threat is overwhelming.
The other warriors stop behind him and look me over closely. Two are tall and muscular. The short man is older, late twenties, with broken yellow teeth and a winged ant tattooed on his face.
Mockingly, the short man says, “Oh look, one little canyon beast survived. Be cautious, Iron Dog. It might tear out your throat.�
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Iron Dog, the man with the grasshopper tattoo, casts an annoyed glance over his shoulder. He sheathes his chert knife with a dull thud. “Who are you, girl?”
My heart is hammering in my chest so hard I can barely hear him.
Iron Dog scans the village, looking for any other living thing.
“Little girl,” Iron Dog says as he approaches, looming over me like a giant. “What’s your name? Answer me.”
“T-Tola,” I lie. “Bear Clan.”
“Oh no,” the short man cries in mock horror, “my village was burned to the ground! My family was slaughtered. What will happen to me now?”
The warriors laugh, veer around me, and head to the fire. Behind me, I hear cups clacking against the ceramic pot as they scoop up stew.
“Bear Clan, eh?” Iron Dog says. “You don’t look like a Bear Clan girl. They’re usually pretty and wear bear claw necklaces. You’re about as homely a child as I have ever been forced to gaze upon.”
“S-sorry.”
Another man strides around the canyon wall wearing a deep blue cape. The buckskin looks dyed by a master using a mixture of purple corn and sunflower seeds. He has his hood pulled up. Inside the hood is a perfectly luminous face, translucent and ethereal—like white chalcedony—and he has pale blue eyes. A long white braid drapes his left shoulder. He’s truly beautiful. Albinos are relatively common among the Straight Path People, but rare here in Red Rock Canyon. I have never seen one before. That’s probably why he has his hood up. I’ve heard they are very sensitive to sunlight.
The man walks by Iron Dog and me without a second look and goes straight to join the men at the fire. Quiet voices rise, discussing which road to take home.
As Iron Dog watches the albino, his right hand slowly lowers to rest upon his sheathed knife. He might be about to kill me, or perhaps to defend himself against the albino. All I can do is gaze open-mouthed up at him, barely breathing.
People of the Canyons Page 8