“While I suspect you are both right, I cannot risk being wrong about the cause of my father’s death. There are those who will say it was witchery. That Maicoh claimed the greatest prize of all.”
“I suppose,” Cub says. “But I’m sure we can counter such rumors by spinning our own tale—”
“High War Chief.” I face Stinger. “I wish you to assign warriors to track down Maicoh and kill him. His trail is still fresh. Surely a couple of your legendary trackers can find him now?”
“If you wish.” Offhandedly, he gestures to Wasp Moth and Weevil. “You two. Gather your things and go.”
Weevil gasps and glances at his friend.
Wasp Moth replies, “Yes, War Chief.”
When they start to turn away, I call, “Wait. First, someone needs to get Nightshade’s Wellpot. I want you to crush it and toss the pieces out along the trail as you travel. You know—a few chunks here, a few chunks there. No one must ever be able to reassemble that pot. Weevil, you do it.”
Weevil touches the middle of his chest. “Me?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to pick up the Wellpot?”
Annoyed, I snap, “Isn’t that what I just said? Are you deaf?”
“No, but…” He shifts his weight to his other foot. “What if she’s still in there?”
“What are you talking about? She never was in there. The pot was empty. Don’t you recall?”
“It looked empty, but how do you know for sure? Maybe she was clinging to the lid when we looked inside the pot and missed her. I’ve been thinking about this. She could have been wound around beneath the pine pitch, or maybe—”
“Are you mad? I’m the queen now, and I just gave you an order!”
“I know, but I want you to consider—”
“Weevil,” Stinger interrupts in a low threatening voice. “Move.”
“Oh, good gods…” Weevil takes one step toward the witched chamber, then turns back around and licks his lips.
I yell, “Do you want me to eat your liver?”
Weevil flaps his arms against his sides. “Look, I realize we haven’t always been the best of—”
“Go!” I point to the doorway where Father’s dead body is visible.
After he takes a deep breath, Weevil throws out his chest, then trudges into the chamber, muttering to himself.
Fifty-five
Tsilu
A stray gust of wind sweeps this high mountain valley and tosses my hair around my face. It’s beautiful here. Peaceful. The towering red and gold cliffs cast long morning shadows that stretch across Orenda’s village, Range Village.
From the corner of my eye, I see my brother and father sitting beside the creek thirty paces away, speaking with Elder Orenda. I know nothing of the slender gray-haired woman, except that she is the adopted daughter of Nightshade, and she has agreed to guard the evil breath-heart soul locked in the serpent fetish.
I stayed to listen for as long as I could stand it, then I rose and walked away to find Grandfather.
He sits on a ledge above me in the shade of a juniper grove and smiles as I approach. He’s pulled his long gray hair back and tied it with a cord, which makes his elderly face look thinner and his nose more beaky.
I’m still untangling the story of who I am, but it’s clear now that I am the granddaughter of Cornsilk and the great-granddaughter of the legendary Night Sun. Which means I am heir to the rulership of the Straight Path nation. With the Blessed Sun dead, everyone, it seems, wishes to speak of my future.
Before I climb the trail to Grandfather, I stop beside a circle of red boulders taller than I am to listen to the standing stones Sing. As the breeze moves around and through them, the stones whistle in high-pitched voices. The cornstalks and sunflowers inside the circle shish and shake. It’s musical. Like a symphony of panpipes and gourd rattles. A thick lace of bean vines curls up and over the boulders. It’s smart agriculture, Grandfather says, because the boulders act like big sponges, soaking up water and sunlight, then slowly releasing them into the plants. He tells me the warmth created by the boulder circles gives the farmers here another moon of growing season.
“You know,” Grandfather calls, “that new blue dress looks pretty on you.”
I climb up the trail through the tree shadows to where he rests beneath a gnarled old juniper and sit down cross-legged beside him.
“It was a kind gift from Orenda’s daughter. I guess she thought my old dress was more like a rag. Which it was, of course.”
“Long days on the trail do that.” Grandfather pulls up his knees and props his elbows on them to look down at my father, brother, and Elder Orenda. “Are they still deciding your future for you?”
“They think they are.”
He reaches out to squeeze my arm. “It’s not an easy decision, is it? You are the only living female relative of Cornsilk and Night Sun. Blue Dove is not the legitimate High Matron. Not so long as you live.”
We heard many stories from the refugees we met as we traveled northward. Most were whispered tales told around our nightly campfires of how Maicoh, the greatest witch hunter ever to have walked the earth, had killed the Blessed Sun in his bed in Flowing Waters Town. Maicoh’s reputation is now mythic. The stories keep getting larger. The last one we heard claimed that after he killed the Blessed Sun, Maicoh walked away into the sky and became a god. The woman who told the story reverently pointed out his new constellation to us. The Witch Hunter constellation. So Maicoh is no longer a man. He hangs in the night sky and watches over the Made People. They pray to him. They ask him to bless their children and keep them safe.
I find these tales curious, for I know that my brother was with me when the Blessed Sun died. Which means that he is not Maicoh. Someday, I know, Grandfather will tell me about the real Maicoh, but for now I am content that we are all simply alive.
A few tales told by the refugees were about Blue Dove. She has apparently become as much a merciless tyrant as her father before her.
“And so … My life will be in danger forever?”
Grandfather’s eyes tighten. He slowly nods. “It will. But that will be true no matter what you decide. And, my dear Tsilu, you must consider more than just yourself. I think, if you decide to ascend to the High Matronship of the Straight Path nation, you will likely become the most beloved High Matron the world has ever seen. You have such a gentle heart.”
Movement draws my attention, and I’m grateful that the hopping cottontail came at this moment. Perhaps she is a Spirit Helper and knew I needed a short distraction to mull over the facts. It’s a shock to know that I will never live in peace with a man I love, nor raise a daughter for whose life I don’t fear every instant.
“Grandfather, if I give up my rightful position, and all the wealth and power that goes with it, stories will be told about me long into the future, won’t they? And all will say I was a witless simpleton.”
“Well…” He tilts his head, thoughtful. “Being a simpleton myself, I suppose I’m not the best person to ask. Especially since the way of the simpleton has made my life worthwhile. If I’d chosen another path, a path that required great cunning, I suspect my life would have long ago ceased to have meaning.”
My brother laughs, and the happy sound climbs the slope from the creek to reach us. I let myself drift upon the sound, for it comforts me.
After a few heartbeats, I say, “I will not challenge Blue Dove.”
Grandfather frowns and breathes deeply of the brittle autumn-scented air before he lifts his eyes to watch the puffs of clouds that slowly meander through the crystalline blue sky above us. “I want you to understand what that decision means. It means that a matrilineal dynasty that has lasted for more than three hundred summers will die. Can you live with that? To be known forever as the woman who brought down the greatest dynasty in the history of the Straight Path—”
“Would it make my grandmother Cornsilk sad?”
His face turns gravely serious. I rarely see thi
s expression. “Your grandmother had to make this same decision long before I was born. She chose to leave her People and her nation in the hopes that she could live peacefully—”
“But if she had accepted her rightful position, wouldn’t Father Ravenfire have become Blessed Sun—”
“Yes, he would have.” Grandfather closes his eyes tightly for a few moments. “But I think my brother and mother would have both been murdered within days of ascending to the rulership.” Grandfather lightly brushes at the stubborn mud that clings to his pant legs. “And my father would have been murdered, too.”
“Who was my grandfather? His name was Poor Singer, wasn’t it?”
A strange expression masks his face. He looks away and doesn’t speak for a long time. “No. His name was Swallowtail.”
“I don’t understand. Isn’t my grandfather your father?”
Slowly, he shakes his head. “Ravenfire and I have the same mother, but different fathers.”
I hug my knees more tightly against my chest. This has been a day of revelations, many unpleasant, and his dire tone of voice tells me that maybe I don’t want to ask too many questions about Swallowtail. As the last female in my line, I understand why my male relatives have spent their lives trying to protect me. But … what else are they protecting me from?
“Why do you have different fathers?”
“That is a discussion,” he says, “that you should, someday, have with your own father.”
In the great stillness of the autumn morning, my thoughts move like waves, rushing in and retreating. I glimpse my mother’s face, then my sisters’ faces. Finally I see my brother when he was just a youth.
“I forgot to tell you. I finally remembered my brother’s name. It’s not Maicoh.”
Grandfather must know that the change of subjects means I’m feeling overwhelmed, for he reaches out to softly clasp my hand. “No?”
“No. It’s Matcito.”
“Well. How interesting.”
Narrowing my eyes, I give him a suspicious look. Of course he’s known this all along. “And you’re really my uncle, aren’t you? Uncle Snowbird?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Is it all right if I still call you Grandfather?”
He turns to stare into my eyes, then puts an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. “If you didn’t, it would break my heart.”
Epilogue
As Weevil trotted south along the wide elevated causeway through the massive city, a heady rush filled him. He looked from side to side. Roads shot off in every direction. What grandeur! All around him, stunning pyramids rose like sharply pointed mountains, and other buildings, almost as imposing, clustered around them. Many of the blocks of stone that composed the buildings were engraved with huge grotesque images. About a moon ago, a man on the trail had told him the images were a new way of telling stories about kings and desperate wars gone wrong.
He inhaled a deep breath.
Blessed gods, from up on this causeway, he could see forever. Out beyond the glorious pyramids, there were no trees, just vast green fields. What crop was that growing out there? It still amazed him that this far south, it stayed green far into what would have been winter back home.
Freedom coursed through his veins. The green scents that rode the breeze were tangy and exotic. Everything here amazed him.
As soon as he and Wasp Moth had split up, Weevil had heaved the black Wellpot over a cliff, and a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. At least, until he’d heard the pot laughing as it spun downward into the abyss.
Ah, the perfidy of life.
Look where his thundering feet had taken him!
A group of about twenty people walked toward him on the causeway, speaking in a foreign tongue that resembled hisses and gulps. Looked like the man in the middle of the group was a Trader, for he carried a heavy pack on his back. Must be telling jokes. People were laughing and shaking their heads.
As Weevil trotted wide around the group, he admired the rich colors and designs of the men’s shirts. He’d have to get himself one of those tunics that hung down …
The Trader stopped and squinted at Weevil, seemed to recognize him, or maybe just his clothing and hairstyle.
“Hey, you!” he called in the Straight Path language. “Aren’t you from up north?”
“No.”
“Yes, you are. I’d know those white moccasins anywhere! You’re from Flowing Waters Town. One of the Blessed Sun’s elite warriors. I haven’t been there in moons. How is the Blessed Sun?”
“Dead as a clubbed dog.”
“What?”
It abruptly occurred to Weevil that he should not have answered. He was a moron. As soon as the Trader’s rounds took him back to Flowing Waters Town, he’d describe Weevil, and Blue Dove would know exactly where he was.
He took off like his hair was on fire.
“Hey! Wait!”
Weevil cast a glance over his shoulder and saw the Trader running after him.
Dear gods, what did that mean?
When he accidentally bowled through a group of women and children, knocking them flat, the women got up and started yelling and pelting him with rocks. Where’d they get their aim? These women must practice flinging stones day and night!
Covering his head with his arms, he kept running.
The thing that worried him was that all these roads might lead to oceans. Well, that and the fact that he’d seen some really big snakes creeping along out there …
Acknowledgments
We owe special debts of gratitude to our professional archaeological colleagues for the difficult and fascinating work they have done on Fremont culture in the American Southwest, but we would especially like to thank former Utah state archaeologist Dr. Kevin Jones, Corinne H. Springer of the Natural History Museum of Utah, Dr. A. Dudley Gardner, and Brian O’Neil. Brian has been sending us information on the Fremont, in preparation for this book, for many years. Sorry it took so long, Brian.
And thanks, also, to one of America’s great bookstores—Back of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah. Andy has been waiting for this book longer than anyone else. Thanks for your patience.
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