The holy people glanced at one another, and Cub said, “There are no slaves left, Blessed Sun.”
“I mean the dead slaves.” He lifted his walking stick and stabbed it in the direction of the huge mound of bodies awaiting burial. Every time the wind shifted directions, the appalling stench assaulted his nostrils. “Aren’t some of our slaves stacked among the bodies of our enemies?”
Stunned, Dogbane replied, “A few of your personal slaves did perish while they were collecting enemy bodies. The other slaves carried them to the mound, but surely you can’t mean you want us to dig through—”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Get started immediately. I want their bodies thoroughly searched.”
Horror slackened Priestess Squash Blossom’s expression. She pulled her tall body straight and said, “But, Blessed Sun, anyone who touches those bodies will die from the same disease—”
“Since you were the first to object, I want you to personally lead the search party.” He stabbed his walking stick at her like a spear.
Squash Blossom gave Cub a tormented look, as though she knew her four children would soon be motherless, and it would be his fault if he did not stop this.
Cub tore his gaze away from hers and grimaced at the floor, but Leather Hand could see thoughts moving behind his dark eyes, thoughts that did not bode well for Leather Hand. At heart, the man was a traitor. Leather Hand could sense the truth in Cub’s every facial expression and gesture.
Beaker reached out and took Squash Blossom’s hand. “I’ll help you,” she said softly.
“Now get out. My heart hurts.” Leather Hand clapped a hand to his chest where the dull ache had been building since sunrise. His left arm felt like it was being twisted off his body by monstrous pincers.
The holy people bowed and ducked beneath his door curtain into the sunlight. In their wake, an icy draft flooded the chamber. Icy drafts followed them everywhere, as though they were servants of the beastly Cold Bringing Woman.
He watched the curtain sway for a few instants, then, silent as a mouse, crept over to watch them through the slit where the curtain met the doorframe.
The holy people huddled a few paces away, whispering. Dogbane kept shaking his head, as though disagreeing with whatever Cub was saying. The two women, on the other hand, nodded in agreement. All the while, they cast fearful glances at the White Moccasins stationed at the highest points around the town, as though worried about Leather Hand’s elite personal guards.
As the wind sailed around the walls, he caught fragments of their conversation.
Dogbane said, “… can’t do it without the White Moc…”
Beaker shook her head. “… have to do some…”
Cub held up a hand to still the disagreement—“… wait … think about…”
Laughter simultaneously seeped from the eighty-two soul pots on the shelves behind Leather Hand. He swung around to glare at them. Their laughter sounded like a hundred pot drums booming in a small room. He aimed his walking stick at his favorite pot, the black pot decorated with white lightning zigzags. The hunter laughed the loudest. Huge belly laughs that echoed across the entire town.
“Shut up, you fool! I know exactly how to handle treachery. I am a master of the art.”
Pulling the door curtain wide open, he yelled, “Cub? Send Stinger to me.”
“Yes, Blessed Sun.” The Sunwatcher bowed and hurried away from the gathering.
The three remaining holy people stared wide-eyed at Leather Hand, as though they realized the grave error they’d just made by gathering outside his chamber to whisper together.
Leather Hand called, “I’m going to tell the White Moccasins that I suspect you’re plotting to kill me, and order them to watch you.”
Chuckling at their horrified expressions, he let the curtain fall closed and carefully made his way to the thick coyote hides spread on his sleeping pallet in the center of the chamber, but he couldn’t sit down immediately. His heart was thundering in his chest, beating as rapidly as a bird’s, and his breathing had gone shallow. Leaning on his walking stick, he waited and tried to suck in deep breaths.
Sometime later …
Leather Hand jerked awake to find himself sprawled face-first across the coyote hides. Had he blacked out? His walking stick lay a short distance away, as though he’d dropped it.
How did he get back here to his chamber? This was so odd …
The last thing he remembered was standing with Cub and Stinger, watching the foolish enemy warriors throwing themselves at the walls of Flowing Waters Town. Was the town still under attack? Stinger was the worst high war chief in the history of the Straight Path nation. Why, when Leather Hand had been war chief, he’d have never …
Right in front of him, on the black northern wall of his chamber, Cold Bringing Woman shook out her long white hair and leaned down to peer directly at Leather Hand. Her blazing red eyes were blinding. They kept growing and growing, coming closer, until they filled the entire room.
Reaching for his walking stick, he used it to steady himself as he struggled to his feet. “What do you want, beast?”
Her voice sounded like hailstones striking the floor: Sometimes it’s mere self-defense, you know.
“What is?”
Dying.
When she smiled he could feel the earth break open like a fragile eggshell. The roar of storm winds filled his chamber. Gripping the knob of his walking stick, he braced himself against the sudden blast of freezing cold. He had the uneasy feeling that he and Cold Bringing Woman were heading toward some colossal confrontation.
To calm himself, he reached up to touch the Spirit bag that hung from a cord around his neck. It contained the jet fetish Webworm had given him. When he didn’t feel it, he frantically began patting his chest, searching for it. It was gone. Had he taken it off? Didn’t seem likely. He never took it off, for it contained his breath-heart soul. It was too dangerous to take it off. Someone might steal it or crush it to spite him.
Wandering from chamber to chamber in his suite, he searched every place he might have left it. He couldn’t find it! Panic set in.
Soon, his body would fail him. He could feel it coming. He was growing weaker by the day. And this constant dull pain in his chest …
As he lifted a hand to massage the leather shirt over his heart, he thought about the Mountain Witch, Nightshade. While he had forgotten many things, he remembered her curse perfectly well. Without that fetish, and her soul pot, he would never get to the Land of the Dead.
At the top of his lungs, he shouted, “Where’s my fetish?”
Steps pounded across the roofs outside as people ran toward his chamber. But none dared enter. Instead, the cowards gathered outside his door and speculated on what might be wrong.
Sunwatcher Cub called, “Blessed Sun? Are you well?”
Leather Hand hobbled over, threw aside the curtain, and stepped outside to scan the assembled holy people and High War Chief Stinger. He yelled, “Come here immediately. My serpent fetish is gone! You must find it!”
Cub moved a few steps closer. “Yes, Blessed Sun. We know it’s missing. We’ve discussed this before. We’re searching everywhere for the fetish. Have you forgotten?”
A sick feeling filled Leather Hand. They’d discussed this before? And he remembered none of it?
Drawing himself up as erect as he could, he shouted, “Of course I haven’t forgotten. Find it!”
Thirty-five
Blue Dove
Shouting wakes me, but I can’t seem to open my eyes. Lightning bolts of cramps lance through me. I’m sweating, my hands trembling. The cramps are so intense I feel as if I’m being flayed alive. What’s wrong with me? I fight to scream, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t move or speak. It takes twenty heartbeats of struggling to pry my eyes open enough that I can see the pithouse in the orange haze. Dark shapes move around me, but I can’t see them very well.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Mother Mazanita says, and a w
avering black splotch leans down close to my face. Eyes shine in the middle of that darkness. “It’s killing her.”
“How did this happen?” Wasp Moth asks.
“She must have lifted her hands in the night to use them as a pillow and accidentally rested her head on the old bag.”
Is that what the lump is? I have to move! But I can’t!
“You’re a fool, old woman. This is no accident. The bag waited until she was asleep, then it crept up there by itself and wiggled under her ear.”
“Gods!” Weevil cries. “How are we going to get it out? Will it kill us if we touch it?”
Mother Mazanita’s face fades, moving away from me as she straightens up. “I’m sure it will try.”
Wasp Moth orders, “You’re supposed to be a Powerful shaman. Reach down and pull it out!”
Mother Mazanita backs away. “I’m not touching that thing. The monstrous old witch who inhabits that bag is far more Powerful than I will ever be. She’ll swat me like a buffalo gnat.”
My vision clears slightly, and I can see legs shifting back and forth, as though no one knows what to do next.
Wasp Moth orders, “Iron Dog, pull a stick from the woodpile and try to drag the bag from under her head.”
“Don’t be an idiot. This has nothing to do with the pot. She’s diseased! She probably caught the plague from WhiteBark Village. I’m not going anywhere near her.”
“You mutinous maggot, as soon as I have a chance I’m going to crack your skull with my club!”
“Try it,” Iron Dog says in a low threatening voice. “If you’re too much of a coward to drag out the bag, why don’t you make Weevil do it? He’s low man here.”
Wasp Moth stomps over to stand directly in front of me. I can make out the lower half of his body, enough to see him pull his club from his belt and clutch it in a hard fist. “Do it, Weevil.”
There’s a moment of tense silence, then Weevil says, “This is ludicrous. Why do I have to do it?”
Wasp Moth takes a new grip on his war club.
“Oh, dear gods! All right.” Weevil tiptoes across the floor.
The ugly warrior pulls a branch from the woodpile and comes forward to crouch in front of my face. I see the stick loom toward me and feel the bag tug slightly. I can’t see it, but a portion of the bag must be exposed beneath my right eye.
“Pull harder,” Wasp Moth orders.
“I’m pulling as hard as I can! I think it’s stuck to her head.”
“It’s probably grabbed onto her hair,” Mother Mazanita says.
“Well how am I supposed to get it loose?”
Mother Mazanita scratches her wrinkled throat while she thinks about it. “Hit it with the stick. Maybe it’ll let go.”
Wasp Moth backs up, getting as far away as he can.
I see Iron Dog prop his hands on his hips and shake his head in disbelief.
“This is not a good idea,” Weevil complains, but he lifts the stick and repeatedly slams the bag right in front of my eye.
With each blow, my vision clears a little more, but agonizing cramps lance through me. An eerie wail, like a ghost keening through a graveyard, seeps from my mouth.
“I told you!” Weevil shrieks, throws down the branch, and charges over to where Wasp Moth and Iron Dog discuss the situation in hushed voices. I see their bodies swaying in the fire’s glow.
Mother Mazanita goes over to stand in the warriors’ circle. After surveying the men’s faces, she says, “Maybe you should set fire to it.”
“Fire?” Wasp Moth frowns. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“Might force the bag to let go.”
Iron Dog mulls the idea for a few seconds. “Kind of like holding a burning twig to a tick that’s dug in.”
“Exactly. You’ll have to be careful not to set fire to the Blessed daughter’s eyelashes or hair, of course.”
The imbeciles! My limbs start jerking spastically, as if trying to run away.
“What’s happening to her?” Weevil sneaks closer to peer down at me. His facial tattoo scrunches up. “She’s squirming like somebody has hands clamped around her throat. Is the dead witch choking her to death?”
Mother Mazanita says. “Better set fire to it fast, before—”
“Blessed Spirits,” a deep, annoyed voice comes from somewhere behind me, and I hear feet pad across the floor.
The albino quietly kneels in front of me. “Shhh,” he whispers and extends a pale hand to stroke the bag. Carefully he unties the laces from my limp wrist, eases the bag from beneath my head. “This is mine now. I’m taking it.”
Everyone but me nods enthusiastically.
As the albino rises and walks away, my pain vanishes, but I’m so exhausted I barely have the strength to roll onto my back and stare up at the clouds scudding across the roof entry. Above the top rung, veils of windblown rain gust and spin.
“All right,” Mother Mazanita says. “Now listen, I’m going to boil you a pot of mush for breakfast, then I want you out of my house.” She pauses to take a breath. “You’re a scary bunch.”
Wasp Moth answers, “We’ll stay as long as the Blessed daughter tells us to, old woman. And if I were you, I wouldn’t object.”
Thirty-six
Blue Dove
Kites wheel in the sky as I step off the pithouse ladder and look around Flower Moon Village. No one even glances in my direction, and that’s a curious feeling. If I were home in Flowing Waters Town, dozens of people would leap up at the sight of me and rush to tend to my needs. But here, in this squalid collection of ten pithouses, people in tawdry capes don’t even notice, they just continue going about their afternoon duties. The golden cliffs that hug this valley appear amber in the slanting rays of sunlight, but shadows are lengthening as Father Sun descends toward the western horizon.
Staggering down the sloping side of the pithouse proves how sick I still am. Though I slept most of the day, my weak legs barely hold me up. Once I hit the flats, I stumble my way through the village.
Boulders carved with clan symbols rest in front of each pithouse, telling the visitor immediately that this house is Snake, Sun, Bear, Coyote, Lizard, Eagle, Water, Parrot, Spider, or Bow clan. While the Canyon People are some of the least impressive humans on earth, I must admit that their rock painters and carvers are quite talented. The intricate details of the images are gorgeous.
By the time I reach the fire where my warriors stand speaking with the albino and Tocho, I’m trembling. I pull my rabbit-fur shawl tightly around my shoulders and wonder where Mother Mazanita vanished to.
Wasp Moth gives me a wary look. “You slept a long time, Blessed daughter. Are you well?”
“No, but I’m better. My pain is gone, which proves I do not have the plague. Where’s Mother Mazanita?”
“Told us she was going to live with her sister until we left.”
“Suits me fine. I can use another night’s rest without listening to her prattling on about witches seeping out of soul pots. What a despicable old woman.”
“I can use another day’s rest as well,” Tocho says with a sigh. “My knees—”
“I don’t care about your knees, you pathetic old man. They could fall off for all I care.”
Tocho’s deep wrinkles make him look a thousand summers old. Certainly too old to live much longer. Which will be a blessing. He’s as frail and useless as a shriveled-up old sheep carcass.
“May I dip you a cup of hot pinole?” Wasp Moth gestures to the pot, which contains a mixture of ground sunflower seeds and ground corn hanging from the tripod over the flames.
“What took you so long to offer?”
Wasp Moth kneels, pulls an ugly gray cup—clearly of local manufacture—from where it rests on the ground and dips it into the steaming pot. As he hands it to me he says, “It’s flavored with mint.”
I take the cup. “I know that. I can smell it from here. It must be ghastly strong. Have you been boiling it since dawn?”
Wasp Moth shrugs.
“Can’t say. One of the old women carried it over and gave it to us for breakfast. Tastes all right to me.” Offhandedly, he gestures to the woman in the fringed cape who’s hurrying across the village, as though eager to put some distance between us and her. Probably spoke with Mother Mazanita.
“Well, it’s better than nothing, I suppose.”
Holding the cup in both hands, I lift it to my lips and take a drink. Actually, it’s delicious. I’ve never had pinole with mint. The disparate flavors complement each other.
I heave a sigh and look around. The cool air smells of damp earth from the morning storm. Along the bases of the rock outcrops, women use chert knives to gather alum for their dyes. The white chunks form beneath rocks after rainstorms. Alum helps set the dyes. The gatherers move from rock to rock, scraping the alum into pots, laughing as they work. Four large dye pots, ten paces away, rest in the central fire. Two women tend them.
I watch the younger of the women throw chunks of alum onto hot coals until they foam, then pour them into the dye pots. The colors in the four pots are vivid: Rabbitbrush makes the bright gold, while the mixture of greenthread and week-old urine produces the vivid red-orange. Sumac leaves and iron turn anything black. I am particularly fond of the rose shade made from dried prickly pear cactus fruit.
As I drink my pinole, my gaze drifts over the ten low humps of pithouses, past the racing children with dogs yapping at their heels, and down to the spring where the yellow leaves of cottonwoods waver in the light breeze. A doe and two spotted fawns leap through the shadows. Their movements are elegant, poetry in motion. Easy to kill. Why isn’t someone down there shooting them full of arrows?
“So, albino,” I say as I turn to look at him. “Where’s the old bag?”
He lowers his hand to his waist and pats the lump beneath his blue cape. “Here.”
“You can wear it on your belt, but I can’t?”
His eyes narrow, as though I’m truly too stupid to live. At length he responds. “Clearly.”
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