Voices hiss in the falling raindrops:
We are coming.
Thirty
Tsilu
We camp far from the trails, on the crest of a knife ridge that barely stretches twenty hands across. It’s more easily defended. Anyone who wants to attack us will have to climb the ridge’s steep rocky slopes. We will hear them long before they arrive and can flee. The ridge overlooks two valleys, one to the east and one to the west. As I stand gazing down, trying to guess how far it is to the valley bottoms—four hundred hands?—the last rays of the sun turn the snow on the distant mountain peaks fiery orange. Behind me, I hear Crane going about his evening duties, making the fire, getting the tripod set up to boil the ruff-legged grouse he shot just before sunset.
“Tsilu? Please come over here. Let’s talk about today.”
I don’t turn. A hollow floating sensation fills my head. Kwinsi is gone and I still can’t believe it. The disbelief is so strong, I keep looking for him. Down the slope in the fragrant pines. Did I just glimpse his cape between the trees? In the valley bottoms along the creeks. Is that black dot moving? Wishful thinking. I buried him and Sang his breath-heart soul to the afterlife. By now he must be in the middle of the Star Road, walking toward the Land of the Dead. It takes ten days to get there. When the first footprints of the dead blaze to life in the evening sky, I search for him. Are those new footprints, just being laid down? Is that Kwinsi walking above me? Tears burn my eyes.
“Tsilu?”
I walk to the fire.
Crane watches me as he arranges the legs of the tripod near the flames. I don’t see the plucked grouse. He must have already cut it up and placed it in the large pot hanging from the tripod. Two wooden cups and a small teapot filled with water rest on the ground in front of him. “I thought I’d make yucca blossom tea for supper. Is that acceptable?”
Slipping Kwinsi’s pack from my shoulders, I gently rest it on the ground before I kneel in front of the fire. “I like yucca blossom tea.”
He gives me a concerned look. “All right.”
Tugging open the laces of his pack, he draws out a small yellow bag, shakes dried blossoms into the pot, then pushes the pot into the coals at the edge of the fire to heat.
“How are you feeling?”
I shake my head.
Crane sits down cross-legged, pulls Kwinsi’s bow and quiver close, then scans the growing darkness.
“Tsilu, I’m brokenhearted about Kwinsi.”
Flames crackle through the branches of sagebrush, and the savory scent blankets the camp.
I take a deep breath, then gesture to his injured face. Tiny holes, filled with congealed blood, cover his cheeks. “How did he hurt you?”
“Crosswind uses a blow gun—a hollow reed—when his enemy is standing close enough. I was angry. I let emotion overwhelm my good sense. I’ve seen him use it before. I knew better.”
“What’s in the blow gun?”
He reaches up to touch his face and flinches. “Hundreds of splinters of obsidian fly from the reed and pierce his victim’s face. The miracle is that I’m not blind. That was his goal. If he can blind his victims, even for an instant, he can kill them.”
I’m afraid to ask. After all, the old witch said he could bring the dead to life. “Is he dead? Truly? I’m still afraid that he’s sneaking up—”
“He can’t come after you, Tsilu. He’s absolutely dead. Thank the gods.”
The breeze gusts and the boiling pot bangs against the legs of the tripod. We both watch it rock.
“If you were Maicoh”—despite what he says, I’m still not certain he isn’t—“it would add to your reputation, wouldn’t it? That you could kill Crosswind, one of the greatest witches ever?”
“I’m sure it would, but I am not Maicoh. Don’t you see? Crosswind was testing you, hoping you knew the answer to a question that has plagued him for decades. The true identity of Maicoh.”
I twist my cold hands in my lap. “Was everything he told me a lie?”
“What else did he tell you?”
I’m watching his expression closely as I say, “He told me I’d been dead for two days when Maicoh carried me to the Sleeping Place and Grandfather brought me back to life.”
The look in his dark eyes is unreadable. “I’ve heard stories of Tocho bringing the dead back to life. But I’ve never seen it. Have you?”
“No. But I know people in OwlClaw Village—knew people—who had seen it.”
Against a background of charcoal-colored clouds, nighthawks soar and dive, their wings whirring through the air above us.
Crane tosses another sage branch on the fire, then asks, “You were going to give him the fetish, weren’t you?”
“Oh, yes.” Tears tighten my throat. “I would have done anything to have Kwinsi back.”
The wrinkles across his brow deepen. “If you’d given it to him, he would have become the most powerful man in the world. Leather Hand would have been his pawn, forced to do Crosswind’s bidding, no matter how terrible. Entire villages would have ceased to exist for the slightest insult.”
“That already happens.”
The wind gusts and flames leap though the branches, wafting the scent of autumn pines again.
“Yes, it does. But imagine a world where Crosswind and Leather Hand were working together? Both evil and deranged. It would have been much, much worse.”
“I wanted my friend back.” Even now, when I think about it, I know that if I’d had more time, I would have given Crosswind the fetish and run to dig up Kwinsi so he could rise and smile at me.
“I know you did, Tsilu. I’m so sorry.”
Profound sorrow overwhelms me. Everything sways—smoke, trees, flames. The loneliness is wrenching. “Is Leather Hand your pawn now? You have the fetish.”
“Gods, no,” he says with a violent shake of his head. “It gives me leverage with him. It does. I’m sure Leather Hand is desperate to have it back. But I don’t know how to control souls, whether they’re locked in pots or fetishes.”
I use my hand to wipe the tears off my cheeks and try not to think about the fetish or Kwinsi, or what the future holds for me. Just now, I feel like my breath-heart soul has been whittled down to a splinter of bottomless despair.
“Can you help me understand the other things the witch said to me?”
“I’ll try.” His voice is soft. He sounds worried.
“He made me see memories. Flashes of memories.”
“What memories?”
Pain laces through me when I see them again, flowing behind my eyes. “My mother, naked, her clothes torn off. And shapes, dark shapes of warriors move at the edges of the vision. Then someone clutches my hand in a rock-hard grip and drags me toward a burning pithouse. I’m screaming. At least I think it’s me.”
A swallow bobs in Crane’s throat. “What else?”
His expression—the lines around his eyes—is suddenly familiar, from when I was a baby and my mother and father were alive. But that can’t be right.
“I see … no. I feel a man rocking me in his arms, singing me a lullaby. His voice is deep and beautiful. I think I’m dead. I can’t see him, but I know he’s crying. Warm tears fall on my cold cheeks.”
Crane looks stricken. “I didn’t … I—I…” He pauses to take a deep breath. “Your father’s heart must have been breaking. He loved you very much.”
As though he can’t bear to hear any more, Crane rises and quietly walks to his pack to begin laying out his bedding for the night. He unrolls his blanket and spreads it over the ground, then kneels and draws out the first small pair of moccasins. It’s tiny and painted on the bottoms. Spirit moccasins. Babies cannot walk to the afterlife, but they need moccasins to keep their feet warm while they wait to be reborn into this world. Why weren’t they on the baby’s feet when it was buried?
My eyes narrow. “Do you know anything about my memories? You look like you do.”
He touches the moccasins to his lips before he place
s them to the west, just above where his head will rest for the night. “Some. I’ve never pried—”
“Is Maicoh my father?”
Crane slowly sinks down atop his blanket, as though his knees have gone weak, and tugs his pack into his lap. “You should ask your grandfather these questions. I’m not—”
“He’s not here. You are. Do you know?”
“Tsilu…”
When he says nothing more, I scratch at a stain on my leggings. A grease stain. I need to avoid his tormented eyes for a while. “If you don’t know, or don’t want to tell me, it’s all right. I understand.”
Crane reaches over and gently lifts my chin with a long bony hand, so he can look into my eyes. “What I’m about to tell you will put you in grave danger. I’m sure that Tocho would never approve—”
“Is Maicoh my father?”
He exhales the words. “Yes, he is.”
This is such strange news, I’m not sure I believe him. “How do you know?”
The silence weighs on my chest like a fallen mountain.
“He’s my son.”
Thirty-one
Tsilu
Astonished, my mouth hanging open, I try to think of something to say. “Then … you’re my grandfather? My real grandfather.”
“Only by blood. Tocho is far more your grandfather than I will ever be. He was there when you needed him most. I was not. Neither was your father.”
Wind batters our ridge-top camp, thrashing through the trees like a wild beast on a rampage. Must be a storm coming. While I allow this news to seep through me, I look northward at the dark wall of clouds that boils high into the night sky, blotting out the Star Road. Could be rain, but I fear it’s snow. Either way, by midnight, we’ll be shivering.
Crane looks tired and frightened. He pulls his black hood up and holds it beneath his chin to keep the wind from jerking it away.
If this man is my grandfather, he’s the only true member of my family I have ever met. And I have a father.
I have a father. Somewhere out there. A man who is feared and despised, as well as considered a hero by many.
This news changes everything. But I’m not sure how yet.
“No one knows that, Tsilu. If you repeat what I just told you, you could kill our entire family, and there aren’t many of us left. Over the years, we have gone to great efforts to make sure no one knows our real story. People have fragments, but they’ve confused them, mixed them up. Some of the fragments you’ve heard about Maicoh are actually about me. The reverse is also true. We have cultivated that confusion.”
There’s a question that has plagued me my whole life, but now, when I have a chance to find the answer, I’m afraid to ask.
Finally, I work up the courage. “Is my mother really dead? So many times I’ve dreamed that she’s alive and searching for me, and I knew that someday she would find me—”
“She’s dead.” Sadness tightens his eyes, as though it hurts him that I’ve spent my life hoping for that. “The flashes of memory you saw, so far as I know, are correct. That’s what happened.”
More pieces of my life. A rush of elation warms my veins, momentarily diminishing the wrenching despair. “Did you carry my dead body to Grandfather?”
“No. Your father did that.”
“And was I truly dead?”
Crane leans forward, and the firelight illuminates his face. It looks waxy and yellow, as though all of his life’s blood has drained away. “My son believed you were. More than that, I don’t know.”
I need time to come to terms with this fact. Since I was a little girl, I’ve felt disconnected, like I am somehow stranded in this world. Half here, half somewhere else. Just a lonely ghost traveling among the condemned, not able to live in this world, not able to go on to the Land of the Dead. I thought it was just because I was an odd orphan who had trouble making friends.
“Crosswind told me that my … my breath-heart soul was in the Land of the—”
“And it scared you, didn’t it?” Rage strains his sallow face.
“Yes.”
“That’s why he said it. People think a witch’s power is all supernatural allies, spells, and incantations, but for the most part, witches use distraction and deceit to kill.”
Distraction and deceit. I must remember this.
“Tsilu? Please listen to me. This is very important. Your father is always at risk. I don’t want him to expose himself unnecessarily to get the information he needs to rid the world of evil, so I, and other people, help him. Do you understand?”
“And that’s why some think you are Maicoh?”
“That’s right.”
Licking my lips, I consider what that means for me, his daughter. “How many people know who I am?”
“As of tonight? Four, including you, and we must do everything we can to keep it that way.”
I’m wondering … thinking back …
“Elder—Grandfather, may I ask one more question?”
He smiles faintly. “Please save that title for Tocho. He’s earned it. You can call me Crane. Go on. What’s your question?”
“At the council meeting in OwlClaw Village, Kwinsi said he hadn’t seen you in thirty-five summers. What did he mean?”
“Ah…” he says and leans back. As he tightens his hold on his hood, he draws the black leather close around his face, and his skin looks ghostly pale. “I knew, at some point, you’d ask me that.”
“What did you decide to tell me?”
Crane pauses—as though still deciding—and pulls two sticks from the woodpile, which he uses as tongs to lift hot rocks from the fire and drop one into the teapot, another into the stewpot hanging from the tripod. Steam explodes, and glistening veils rise into the firelight.
To help him decide, I say, “When I talked with Kwinsi later that afternoon, he did not remember the event at all.”
“No, he wouldn’t have.” He shakes his head. “It was his first time with her, and it must have been overwhelming for him. I’m surprised he made any sense at all that day.”
I think back to that afternoon by the river when he told me I was pretty. “Kwinsi told me he’d seen his death. She had showed it to him.”
Crane’s gaze lifts, and respect and admiration etch his features. “Then he was a very brave man. He knew what would happen if he came along on this journey, but he came anyway. She must have felt it was necessary to tell him, so he could make the decis—”
“Are we talking about Nightshade?”
Crane rubs his left palm on his cape, as though it’s suddenly gone clammy. “Yes. You see, when Kwinsi entered the council pithouse, he was carrying Nightshade’s soul pot.”
I’m stunned. “He was?”
“Yes. It wasn’t Kwinsi who said he hadn’t seen me in thirty-five summers. It was Nightshade. I met her when I was twelve, and I remember every instant of that astonishing encounter. She knelt down, looked into my eyes, and told me that one day my selfishness would kill my souls. I was terrified.”
My spine slowly straightens. “And that’s why you thought Kwinsi had the pot in his pack?”
“Yes.” Crane gestures to it where it rests on the ground to my left. “I’m still not sure it isn’t there.”
The star-silvered pack seems to have heard him. It glows brighter, beckoning one of us to drag it over and look inside.
It takes a moment before I can convince my hand to reach for it. As I pull the pack into my lap, it feels wrong. Like a violation. This does not belong to me. It belongs to my dead friend. Before I untie the laces, I let my soul drift through the air, trying to ask Kwinsi if he minds … but I sense no response now. He really is gone, on his way to the Land of the Dead.
“I guess it’ll be all right.”
As I work the knots loose, the leather laces are icy cold against my fingers.
Crane slides across the ground, getting closer to me so he can peer inside the pack the instant I open it.
Taking a deep breath, I untie t
he last knot and use my hands to spread the pack open. A folded shirt, old and frayed, with faded yellow designs, is revealed in the firelight. Gently, I lift it out and rest it on the ground at my side. Before I return to sorting the pack, I lay a hand on the shirt and lovingly stroke it. I miss you so much.
“What’s that?” Crane says and points.
Also inside the pack are several small bags and something carefully wrapped in thick cloth. I lift a blue bag to my nose and sniff it. “Dried mint.” Placing it on top of the shirt, I reach for the next bag, which rattles.
Just from the sound, Crane says, “Pine nuts. What’s wrapped in the red cloth?”
“Don’t know.” Pulling it out, I can tell that whatever’s inside is fragile and precious. “It’s thickly wrapped.”
I set the pack aside and rest the fabric wrapping on my cape. When I begin unrolling it, I hear voices. Tiny, tiny voices. High-pitched. Whimpers, maybe. The same voices I heard in the old storage room that rainy night at GoingBuck Village.
It takes me a while to reveal what’s inside. When I unroll the last layer of cloth and they appear, Crane lets out a sharp cry and scrambles backward, breathing hard. His black eyes are huge.
I don’t know why he’s afraid of them, or maybe he’s just stunned to see them. They are beautiful. Four perfectly sculpted clay figurines about the length of my palm—and they know my name. Each calls to me in a sweet bell-like voice, turning my name into an unearthly musical chime. Their voices make me feel as though I’ve just been swaddled in a fire-warmed blanket. Suddenly, I know I’m loved and safe.
“Are they speaking to you?” Crane asks in a hoarse whisper.
I can’t answer.
Far back in my soul, in a place inside me that I have walled off, I see them. The figurines stand on a shelf in our house. Mother is there, smiling at me where I curl on my side on the soft sheep hide by the fire, watching my older brother and three sisters play around me. I’m so happy to see them again.
People of the Canyons Page 19