“And what about you, holy man?” I turn to Tocho. “Why didn’t you do something when it was trying to choke me to death?”
Tocho takes a moment to shove his hair behind his ears. “Did you actually feel hands around your throat?”
“Well, no. But she definitely paralyzed me. I felt like a beetle stung by one of those repulsive wasps with the red and yellow stripes. I knew I was going to suffer the same fate as the beetle and be turned into a mindless slave.”
The warriors go silent and swivel their heads toward me.
The albino glances at Tocho and softly says, “She’s not strong enough to be the Keeper.”
“Not while she’s ill, but later, perhaps.” As though curious about something, Tocho tilts his head, and asks me, “Did she speak to you?”
“You mean when she was trying to kill me? I heard nothing coming from the bag.”
I have no intention of telling him about the eleven dancing figures. They scared me badly. I’m fairly certain it was just that I was fevered, but …
“Her soul pot was resting right beneath your ear, and you heard nothing? Not even whispers?”
I shake my head. The fact seems to fascinate him. “No. Not a sound. Why?”
“It’s curious, that’s all. She ordered me to give you the bundle, but she hasn’t said a word to you. It’s as though…”
When he hesitates, I prod, “As though what?”
“Well, I don’t know, of course, but I wonder if perhaps I misunderstood her. Maybe you are not supposed to be the new Keeper. Maybe she just wants you to carry her pot.”
“I’m a pack dog for a disembodied witch? For what purpose?”
Tocho shrugs. “Impossible for me to say. Bundles can be very secretive.” He turns to the albino. “Do you have an opinion, Maicoh?”
The albino slips one hand inside his cape and pulls it back to expose the faded old bag tied to his belt. Barely audible, he asks the bag, “Is she the new Keeper?”
Both Tocho and the albino cock their heads at the same time, as though listening to the old witch’s response. To my left, my warriors mutter darkly. Do they hear the same voice?
I glare at Wasp Moth. “Do you hear it talking?”
Wasp Moth shakes his head. “Not from way over here.”
“What about you two?”
Iron Dog and Weevil shake their heads, but Weevil’s eyes go so wide, he could be a goggle-eyed old bobcat. His broken yellow teeth are visible in his gaping jaws.
“Are you lying to me, Weevil? Tell me what she said.”
“I heard nothing! I swear it, Blessed—”
“Perhaps I can help.” Tocho walks closer. “She said to tell you that the signal stations between here and Flowing Waters Town have been repaired.”
Wasp Moth frowns. “If that’s true, we should send a message to tell your father that we are only a few days away.”
“Where’s the closest signal station?”
“About a half day’s march to the south, Blessed daughter. We can make it by noon tomorrow, if you’re feeling up to it.”
“And if I’m not, you can rig a litter and carry me.”
Wasp Moth bows. “Of course we can.”
Tocho gazes down at me with tired, yet kind, eyes, and I have the sense that the old witch’s message was not simply about signal stations.
“Did she say something else?”
Tocho shakes his head. “Nothing you want to know.”
“I do want to know, old man.”
At the edge of my vision, I see the albino’s eyes narrow as his expression turns to stone. He doesn’t like it when I give Tocho orders. I should do it more often.
Tocho’s voice is tender, as though attempting to soften the blow, when he replies, “The Blessed Nightshade told me that her body is changing, lengthening into a wolf’s lean form, while her feet shift to paws. She says she is almost ready to lope across the face of the world.”
A chill runs through me. “In the pot? She’s changing into a wolf inside the pot? That’s not possible.”
The sound of Weevil’s panting is so distracting I whirl to glower at him. “Get out of here! You and Iron Dog, go down to the spring and collect some willow switches for me. I’ll boil them tonight to make powder for my headache.”
“Yes, Blessed daughter.”
Weevil and Iron Dog trot away toward the cottonwoods that surround the spring, but Weevil keeps casting glances over his shoulder, as though he expects something horrific to happen before he can get far enough away to save himself.
Grimacing, I turn back to Tocho, and repeat, “That’s not possible, is it?”
“I would have said the same thing.” He nods. “Living witches shift shapes at will, but I’ve never heard of a dead witch doing it.”
Maicoh’s hushed voice seems to ring from the cliffs. “This is Nightshade we’re talking about. I suspect she can do anything she wishes.”
The albino suddenly looks down at the bag hanging from his belt. As Father Sun sinks toward the western horizon, the blue wolf’s image grows sharper, clearer. I can see glittering white fangs now.
Thirty-seven
Tsilu
The mingled fragrances of wet juniper and pine blow over us as we hike the trail toward the village that sits in the valley below. It’s beautiful here. Layers of red sandstone band the towering golden cliffs that encircle us, and this time of afternoon, they are shading orange, the soft color of a newborn buffalo calf. Trees whisker every ledge. Their long shadows stretch across the rumpled vista like thousands of splayed fingers.
I watch my feet. Crane, my grandfather, walks a few paces ahead of me with his black cape flapping around his long legs. We haven’t spoken much today, but that’s my fault. He’s tried to start conversations. I just don’t know what to say to him. Dazed and bewildered, I can’t seem to find words.
Kwinsi’s murder has left me floundering, but it’s more than that. Crosswind gave me memories. Now I dwell on them day and night, struggling to remember more, praying my mother’s smile and the sounds of my brother and sisters playing will spark other memories, but each time I return to that night terror fills me, and I pull away.
Crane slows down and lets me catch up to walk beside him. He places a gentle hand on my shoulder and says, “You’ve been quiet today, Tsilu. Can I help?”
I tip my chin to the village ahead. “What’s that village?”
“Flower Moon Village. It’s a friendly little place. I’ve always liked it. We’ll sleep in a warm pithouse tonight.”
The sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, softly open doors I thought had been closed forever. I don’t see him in the memories, but sometimes Crane’s deep voice rises and falls in the background, almost like fragments of a half-forgotten song.
Trying to keep the conversation going, he says, “The women in Flower Moon Village make a delicious blue corn bread called piki. They add chamisa ash to the cornmeal. It’s a very thin bread, almost see-through. Usually, they serve it with a bowl of bighorn sheep meat and beans flavored with chili.”
In his voice rests the beauty of my childhood, of a mother and brother and sisters—all dead now. A sad hunger for them fills me.
“Did you live with us when I was a child?”
He seems startled by the question. He pauses before he says, “For a little while. After my wife died.”
“Did you sing me lullabies?”
“Often.”
When I look up at him, I find him staring down at me with tormented eyes. I drop my eyes to my feet again. “I hear your voice. In the memories.”
As we walk, his hand tightens on my shoulder, and snips of flute music dart through my mind … and sunlight glinting as someone carries me through blossoming trees … the far-off yelping of wolves in moonlight … the sweet smell of bulrush-root syrup being boiled in the fall. Are they truly memories from my childhood? Was he there for each one? Is that why his touch reminds me?
Maybe the key to remembering my li
fe does not lie in returning over and over to the terrible night when my family was murdered, but in tracking his words like deer hoofs. If I’m patient enough, and careful enough, will the tracks lead me to the memories I need?
“Your family loved you very much,” he says.
Follow the words, let them lead you …
“Do you remember that?”
Under the enchantment of his words the desert fades, and the summers drop away until I find myself picking wildflowers in a long-gone spring meadow. The scent of each new bloom comes as a revelation. I try to run, but my legs aren’t very strong. So young. Crane’s delighted laugher mixes with my mother’s, somewhere long ago, and drifts through my mind. Where’s my father? And my sisters and brother? They must be out there. In the meadow.
I close my eyes and stop in the trail, straining to hear them. Listen. Listen.
Finches chirp in the cottonwoods and I smell a river. Powerful now. Yes … I hear them. My brother and sisters. There’s music in their voices, the lilting strains of flutes and drums that we danced to in a village that is no more. As I follow the sounds, my loved ones come trotting back across the meadow, smiling as though they have not been dead all these long summers. These summers where I missed them so much, and did not know it: Zihna and Yoki, twins with wild black hair and matching high-pitched laughs. Standing together, I see Chosposi, my oldest sister, and my older brother. What’s his name? I can’t recall. Sun shimmers in his silver-gilt hair as he moves through the tall grass like a hunting lion, all languid grace, his skin too red. Time has erased so much, but not his pale blue eyes.
I have a brother.
If Crane is truly my grandfather, why didn’t he tell me my brother is alive?
Hot tears roll down my cheeks and I open my eyes to stare up at Crane like a wounded animal. “You should have told me.”
“About…?”
As though it strikes him like a blow to the gut, he kneels in front of me and draws me into his arms in a crushing embrace. For a few moments, I bury my face against his throat and allow him to hold me, to comfort me. Only this man, who shares even more memories of my lost family than I do, can understand what it’s like to see them again.
In a hushed voice he says, “I know how hard it is, but everything’s all right, Tsilu. I’m here and I’m not leaving you. Not ever again.”
Between us stretches an ocean of grief and loneliness that will never be crossed. I think he knows this, too, for when I pull away from him, his face is bleak and tired. Is this what happens to those who remember? This desperate yearning for things lost that will never again be found in this world?
I hear the sound of feet softly placed on damp earth, but pay it no attention, thinking now that I remember, I can ask him …
With a gasp, Crane leaps to his feet, confusing me.
“What’s wrong?”
He’s not looking at me, but at something behind me.
I turn and there stands the tall warrior, Iron Dog, his dark eyes blazing, and Weevil, looking at me with the same curious malevolence they did when I stood in the burning ruins of OwlClaw Village.
Kill the little bitch and come eat. We want to head home.
My knees go weak. When I stagger, Crane catches me and roughly shoves me behind him, shielding me from the warriors.
“Blessed gods, it’s about time!” Crane says. “I’ve been chasing you for an eternity. Take me to Blue Dove this instant. I must speak with her immediately.”
Thirty-eight
Blue Dove
I can’t believe my eyes!
Iron Dog and Weevil trudge up from the spring herding two people before them. The man is a walking skeleton in a worn black cloak. In the last slanting rays of sunlight he seems to have more silver in his temples than when I last saw him. He strides forward, staring fixedly at me.
I call to him, “Crane! After you betrayed him, I thought you’d run off to escape Tocho’s wrath.”
Bizarrely, neither Tocho nor the albino turns around to look at Crane as he walks up behind them … as though they’ve known he was coming since before the earth was born.
Iron Dog calls, “Said he’s been chasing us forever, and ordered us to bring him to you immediately.”
The girl flies past me, making a beeline for Tocho, crying, “Grandfather! Grandfather!”
Tocho’s old knees crackle when he kneels down to hug her to him. “Sweet girl, I wish you weren’t here, but it does my heart good to see you.”
She wipes her face on her sleeve. “Grandfather, Kwinsi—”
“I know.” Tocho hugs her again and strokes her hair. “I felt it the instant it happened. It won’t be easy, but we’ll get through it somehow.”
Words pour from her mouth as though she can’t stop them. “Crosswind made me see things about my life. He—”
“Crosswind?” I interrupt. The old witch is one of my father’s greatest allies. He does Father’s bidding, killing his enemies, sending plagues or evil Earth Spirits to punish recalcitrant villages when they refuse to obey Father’s orders.
The girl turns and frowns at me. “Yes. Crane killed him.”
I give Crane a speculative look. “You killed one of the most Powerful witches in the land?”
“He didn’t leave me any choice,” Crane calmly replies. “He was intent upon killing me and Tsilu.”
“But you told me you were just an ordinary Healer. How could a common Healer kill a witch as powerful and wicked as Crosswind? He could have burned you to a crisp with a snap of his fingers.”
“I got lucky, that’s all. Tsilu distracted him, and I sneaked up—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This sham has carried on long enough. Only Maicoh could kill someone like Crosswind.”
“I am not Maicoh.” Crane extends a hand to the albino. “He is.”
The girl looks confused, staring at the albino with tears in her eyes. Before Tocho can stop her—and he tries to grab her sleeve—the girl dashes across the space that separates them and grabs the albino around the waist in a desperate hug.
The albino looks stricken, like he doesn’t know what to do. When he casts a questioning glance at Crane, the old man subtly shakes his head, and the albino abruptly wrenches the girl away from him, saying, “I don’t know who you think I am, but I—”
“I—I’m sorry.” Her expression changes so suddenly, I almost miss it. She has realized in a heartbeat that she’s made a grave mistake.
“What’s going on here?” I say.
Backing away from the albino, the girl gazes up at him with pained eyes and stammers, “Maicoh s-saved me. At OwlClaw Village. I just … I wanted to say thank you. He flew away so quickly that day, I didn’t have a chance.”
As though responding to a complete stranger, the albino coldly answers, “You were, and still are, an innocent child.”
“What do you mean he ‘flew’ away?”
Weevil answers from where he slouches on his blanket, “It’s true, Blessed daughter. We all saw it. Four of us. Maicoh turned into a whirlwind and spun away into the sky.”
Across the canvas of my souls, I conjure the event, watching the albino’s pale body disintegrate into dust that whips up into a small tornado and careens away through the blue heavens like a writhing serpent. At least four people saw it …
As though a veil has fallen away, I see the albino clearly for the first time. “So … You really are Maicoh?”
The albino’s eyes are blue flames. “Let’s talk about the girl. She is a child who inadvertently got tangled up in all this. You should leave her in this village where she can be cared for while we continue on our journey.”
I press my lips into a tight white line as I study the girl. What an ugly little wretch. Though she has sensitive brown eyes, her wide nose spreads across her moonish face. And her jagged haircut is appalling. Even worse, I swear she tugged her worn old cape from a trash heap. It’s covered with grease stains and streaks of soot from a thousand campfires.
�
��Did you hear me?” Maicoh calls sharply.
I glance from his threatening expression, to Tocho’s defeated face, and finally to Crane’s clamped jaw. And it dawns on me that I have just stumbled upon a priceless treasure. This girl matters to them. All of them.
“Are you four related?”
Tocho says, “Tsilu is my granddaughter.”
I hear him, but my eyes tell me something far different. Tsilu keeps peering up at Maicoh with tears in her eyes, as though she knows him, and is so relieved to see him that she can barely contain her emotions. And the albino is working very hard not to look at her. The truth is so obvious that I’m surprised. He’s terrified I’ll discover who the girl really is.
The sounds of the village suddenly intrude, bringing me back to the here and now, where wooden spoons clack as women stir dye pots and the yapping of dogs is timed to the laughter of playing children. The scent of rain-damp junipers carries on the breeze.
I shake my head. “The girl is coming with us. I want to talk to her.”
“She is of no use to you,” the albino insists a little too vehemently. “She will just slow us down and make it harder—”
“She’s coming because you don’t want her to. And neither does Crane. I can see it on his face. That makes me think she’s far more than simply Tocho’s granddaughter. She’s a daughter or a sister … and more valuable than I can possibly guess.”
Thirty-nine
Tsilu
My legs are shaky. Crane warned me. I should not have run to my brother. That revealed too much, made him vulnerable. I’ve put our entire family in danger. It’ll be my fault if we’re all killed.
“Shh,” Grandfather whispers as he walks over and puts an arm around my shoulders to pull me close against his side. “It’ll be all right.” He guides me away from my brother and over to the fire, where we both stand blinking down at the flames.
Shivering from guilt and fear, I’m afraid to say anything. The pretty Straight Path woman watches me like a hungry mountain lion.
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