by T C Donivan
“Reincarnation, worship of inanimate objects, you’re saying it’s all true?” I asked in wonderment.
“If you can imagine it, then so it is somewhere in the universe. We are not so brilliant that our tiny minds can imagine impossible things Clayton. In this moment, you are viewing only the surface of an ocean deep as the stars,” he answered then smiled, breaking the spell.
“They are wonderful concepts,” I said.
“Your mind retreats from them as soon as we pause. Doubt and fear rush in to fill the void.”
“Is that what happened to Spencer?” I asked speaking of him if he were not present, as he seemed not to be intellectually.
“No, Spencer was the greatest earthly receptacle of confidence I have ever known, but he filled the void with the sound of his own voice. It was his failing all his days, long before you or I met him. Do you remember your dream in the Indian camp, in which you first stalked the ancient plains of creation?”
“How do you know that? I told no one about it, not even Spencer,” I said, a chill creeping up my spine.
“It felt real didn’t it?” He asked. I nodded. “The place we visit will be like that. Though we are only there in spirit form, what happens within the Compass is real. If you are injured badly enough, you can be torn from your soul and die,” he warned.
“You’re talking about magic,” I said.
“What is magic Clayton?” Mozart asked. “Imagine trying to explain a steam engine to a man of Christ’s time. Would that not be magic to him? So is Eternity’s Compass to you, but it is real as the steam engine. It has mass as does the soul. You don’t believe me, but air is invisible to the eye and still you can breathe it. I have traversed it many times as have you. I have done it with my eyes open, fully aware, but you have been there only while asleep, or within the guise of death. There are focal points on Earth and I believe that Tree Owl has found one. I can feel it vibrate in his soul. These places allow access to the spokes of the compass, if you have a guide.”
“And you are the guide?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Where is this place?”
“In the Mexican territories, north of their trading post at Santa Fe,” Mozart said.
“Have you been there then?”
“Not in this lifetime.”
“In another?” I asked. He smiled, but did not answer.
Tree Owl spoke up, “He was one of my mother’s people. I saw it in the smoke lodge when I was among them.”
“And who are your mother’s people?” I asked.
“The Anasazi,” Mozart said.
“Who are they?”
“An ancient people who vanished into the wind,” he said.
“Can Annie come?”
“Of course,” Mozart said.
“She and the little pale one were the doves you saw in your dream,” Tree Owl said.
Zenobia had sat silent through all the fantastic things that Mozart had told us. “What do you make of all this?” I asked him.
“I’m game,” he said.
Mozart considered the four of us then spoke carefully. “There is a price to be paid for everything. If you choose to be with a woman, then you sacrifice the freedom to roam. If you choose to roam, you sacrifice the opportunity to be with the companion you love. There is even a price to pay for doing nothing, as you have sacrificed the chance to do something. The journey we embark upon will be the greatest adventure and sacrifice of our lives.”
Chapter 26 – The City of Ruins
Seven of us set out for New Mexico on a chill morning in late February of 1845. Spencer, Mozart, Sosanna, Dr. Zenobia, Tree Owl, Annie, myself and Mordecai the dog composed the company of travelers. I felt it a fool’s mission, but could not deny Spencer his request.
Our journey was an arduous one, taking us more than a month due to the muddy spring conditions. The route took us due south into what was alternatively called the Texas Republic and the Mexican Province of Upper California, depending upon whose claim you subscribed. It was a beautiful country regardless, full of towering peaks covered by thick pine forests and bisected by wide, blue rivers. The country was devoid of civilization, the inhabitants consisting of a few sparse bands of nomadic Indian tribes who gave us no trouble. We skirted the eastern slopes of the Rockies to avoid the last snows of winter before turning west and crossing the Rocky Mountain Range by a circuitous route through its lower passes.
A sense of dread hung over me despite the magnificent weather and scenery. Spencer was incoherent much of the time and required tending, lest he wander off into the wilderness and become lost. He talked gibberish, claiming that the banshees and demons visited him at night and wondered why we could not hear them.
Zenobia was morose and Mozart his usual, enigmatic self, his pearls of wisdom drying up once the women of the company joined us. In fact, he reverted into his simple darkie persona and would play his fiddle for us at night and sometimes the flute by day as we rode along, acting the innocent all the time. He and Sosanna treated the journey as a lark, laughing and playing like children, which served as a stark and often jarring contrast to the ghost-like presence of Spencer.
I made only the briefest of notes as we traversed this wonderful, wild country. I had left Spencer’s sketchbooks and my journals at the fort for safekeeping, bringing with me only a single, slim notebook to record our journey. I had no fear of losing whatever new stories I came across, for the deeper we had plunged into the great American wilderness, the more I found I could retain and recite, at will, the adventures of our trip. I could feel as well, a weariness in my soul of the cathedral-like emptiness of the country and a hunger to reach San Francisco where I might set down our tale in a book for posterity.
Annie, meanwhile, was in her element, proving our most able hunter with the long gun. My own skills as an outdoorsman had improved dramatically under her tutelage. We slept together at night, apart from the others, no longer concerned with what they might think of us. We talked about marriage and traveling east by schooner around the Capt of Good Hope to Boston once our mission was done. A new life, undreamed of, stretched out before us.
Tree Owl acted as our scout, riding out ahead, preparing our camps and parlaying with the locals, if any were to be found. He made for an imposing sight, sitting tall atop his wild pony, clad in tan, fringed buckskin from head to toe, fearsome lance bristling with eagle feathers, a bow and full quiver of arrows slung across his back. I was proud to be his friend.
At night, Tree Owl, Zenobia, Annie and I talked of religion, Native American, Hindu and Christian while Spencer and Mordecai looked on. Mozart would not be lured into our discussions, intent on retaining his façade of the naturalistic fool. Tree Owl entertained us with tales of Cheyenne ceremony, including the horrific Sun Dance into which he had been initiated as a youth. I watched Annie’s face as he again told the tale. She did not flinch. She, in turn, told us of a sect in Texas that spoke in tongues and rolled upon the dirt floor of their homely little church while Comanches circled outside hurling blood curdling screams at the worshippers.
“Was this your church?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “I knew of it,” she said.
Once again, I had overstepped the boundaries of privacy. Though Annie had raised the subject, if she had wished to admit her membership in such a congregation, she would undoubtedly have told the story in the first person, not as an observer. I smiled and hoped to let the conversation move on. At that point, Spencer chose to surface from his catatonic state.
“Did you toss your skirts over your head and sing God Save The Queen?” He asked.
“Spencer!” I said in sharp rebuke.
He grinned at us from his skull’s face. “A reasonable question. I knew of a church of snake handlers in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. One of the women would strip off her clothes; place the reptile between her legs and dance about the room as if it were a six foot phallus.”
I was speechless at the outrage
ous statement. Annie spoke up, taking the challenge merrily, “Did she shave her legs in the Egyptian style?”
“No, she was hairy as a dog. It was against their by-laws,” Spencer said.
Annie reached over and stroked my beard. “You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads, nor harm the edges of your beard, Leviticus 19:27.”
All of us except Spencer broke down in laughter. Even the dog seemed to grin, his tongue popping out as his stubby tail beat a rhythm upon the frosty ground. My poor, benighted friend seemed confused by it all. Tree Owl rescued the moment in his dry, casual way by picking up the conversation.
“The Hopi, who live in this part of the country, dance with snakes, but only in the late summer. The women sprinkle cornmeal on the men while they dance. They do it to find the rain,” he said.
“Are they a dangerous people?” I asked.
“Not really, but we must keep our ears and eyes open for the Apache and Navajo. They will kill you if they find you in their country,” Tree Owl said.
“Are we on their land?” I wondered.
He gave a slight grin. “They both claim this ground, but it belongs to my ancestors and they are ghosts, now except for the few I met when I was here last winter.”
“We are always on someone’s land. It’s a like a feudal monarchy. I hope to God there is law and order here someday so a man can rest without fear of being murdered in his sleep,” I said.
“Highwaymen are common to all parts of the world. I was privileged to serve with Captain Sleeman, who personally wiped out the Thuggees of Delhi,” Zenobia said.
“Who were the Thuggees?” Annie asked.
“A band of murderers organized along the lines of a tribe, or cult. Some say they were disciples of Kali, but this is a slander of the Goddess, as though Kali is indeed the consort of Shiva, the master of all time and death, she is not an evil deity devoted to such pastimes. Rather, they worshipped the darker aspects of the Goddess.”
“How did they operate?” I asked.
Zenobia settled into his most comfortable mode, that of the instructor. “They would attach themselves to unwary travelers and after gaining their confidence, attack them while they slept, strangling them with a garrote.”
“Typical bandits,” I said feeling unimpressed.
“It is said they murdered more than a million people during their six hundred year reign. Their master assassin, Behram, claimed nearly a thousand murders by his own hand. Captain Sleeman witnessed a single gravesite with over a hundred corpses,” Zenobia said casually.
“An astonishing story,” I said.
A faraway look came over Zenobia’s features. “Sebastian enjoyed hearing it. I told it to him countless times. You know, at the end, I told him I was his father, but he pretended not to hear me. When I persisted, he denied it and swore at me for insulting his mother. I regret that,” he said tearfully. The revelation effectively ended our night’s fellowship. We excused ourselves and drifted off to our blankets.
As we turned west, venturing deeper into the mountains, Tree Owl became remote; falling into what was either a deep depression, or religious introspection, the two being indistinguishable in my observation. Finally, on a cold morning in early April, with snow still on the ground, Tree Owl informed us that our destination was less than a single day’s journey to the west. With the morning sun at our backs, we turned our ponies toward a high plateau several hundred miles south of Fort Laramie, somewhere north of the Santa Fe trading settlements. I delighted in the possibility that our journey was nearly over.
With Tree Owl at our point, we rode all that morning through a forest of Juniper and Pinyon Trees through twisting ravines and precipitous hillsides, our scout guiding us as expertly as if he were following one of the great turnpikes in the east. All around us was wilderness, the day filled with the sound of birds of every variety chattering in the trees. So empty was the world, I began to suspect that Tree Owl’s city would prove as elusive as Coronado’s fabled Cibola.
As my faith wavered, the forest opened suddenly to a wide outcropping of brown sandstone and all the sound seemed to fall away. I stared up in disbelief. Before us stood an immense palace of stone carved from the side of the Earth, beneath a massive overhanging of rock. Dark windows stared out like lifeless eyes from the palace walls. Turrets, as would befit a castle in the time of King Arthur, stood guard above circular pits and sloping ramps. Slowly, the sound began to return and I could hear eagles and hawks cawing overhead. Crows roosted in the windows of the dead city screeching out a warning to us like jealous landlords. Annie and I turned to each other simultaneously with stupefied smiles upon our astonished faces.
“What is this place?” I asked.
Tree Owl nudged his horse beside mine. “The city of stone I told you about.”
I shook my head. “When you told me that, I thought you meant adobe huts like the Mexicans build. This is a true city.”
Zenobia craned his neck like a tourist. “This is every bit as magnificent as the Great Cave Temple of Elephants near Bombay.”
“Do people still live here? It looks deserted,” I said.
“My people were here when I came during the winter, but I cannot feel their spirit now,” Tree Owl told us.
“Can we ride in?” I asked, my enthusiasm building.
“The stones are loose. Leave the horses here,” he instructed.
Spencer stood beside Blue, patting his neck, whispering, “Almost home, almost home.”
I glanced up at the stone ruins beneath the cliff and my heart went out to him. Though I was thrilled to have found such an archaeological wonder, I doubted the resolution to his dilemma lay within these empty walls. I counted four levels in the tallest tower. Behind it lay the city, steeped like layers of a cake, ascending into the interior of the cliff.
We tied the horses securely and started up. Annie took her rifle from its sheath, but I left mine, secure in the Colt at my waist. Spencer had given over his revolver to Annie. Zenobia carried a brace of pistols, both his and Sebastian’s. We were well armed for such a small company.
“How many people do you suppose lived her?” I asked Zenobia, thinking him an expert of sorts from his experiences among the antiquities of India and the Far Eastern world.
He ran a calculation through his head. “Upward of five hundred I’d guess.”
“And what happened to them?”
“Who knows – drought, war? Maintaining such a city is more difficult than you’d imagine. It’s far easier to live a nomadic life. Our own society is built on the ash heap of centuries of failure. And it, no doubt, will someday look like this to future generations of explorers. We live in an anthill Clayton. The taller it grows, the more susceptible it is to the wind and the rain and the boot of an unthinking giant.”
“It’s a chilling thought,” I said.
I took Annie by the hand as we climbed the curving ramps that led into the interior of the city. The broken brown walls of the ancient city below looked like so much rubble from the place we stood. Bricks fell to dust beneath our boots and moccasins. Perhaps we were treading upon the papyrus of some ancient Constitution I thought. Soon we were at the top level of the city. The sensation was strange, looking back out at the forest below. Imagine a view that no other civilized human eyes have beheld for centuries. I seemed to sense ghosts all around us, stories crying out to be told from voices silenced forever.
Tree Owl stood alone at the top of the city, a stricken look upon his proud, savage face. Annie and I climbed up the final, broken stones of the wall and joined him. The musty smell of centuries lay upon the dusty ruins around us. He stared at the rock face of the cliff as if contemplating a great mystery.
“What’s wrong my friend?” I asked.
Despair filled his voice, “There is nothing here. Half the city is gone. Was my imagination drunk with dreaming?” He raised a fist in anger against the bare walls. “Where is the city of my ancestors? This is a cemetery of dry bones!”
“Could it be farther on? It’s a vast country,” I said hopefully.
He lowered his head in defeat. “No.”
A voice echoed off the walls below us. “Rachel, Rachel!”
We turned to see Spencer scrambling over the rocks in a frenzy below us.
“My God, he’ll kill himself!” I exclaimed as he stumbled near a pit.
Zenobia chased after and caught him before he could do himself any harm. The Doctor waved up at Tree Owl and me to let us know he was all right. Just then a sound like the swishing of a projectile whizzed past my ears. Zenobia’s face froze as if he had swallowed something sour and his hands flew to his chest. I wondered what was wrong with him. He pushed Spencer behind a wall, but remained standing. Mordecai ran about their feet, barking. More missiles buzzed past my ears and the Doctor seemed suddenly to sprout points like the broken spokes of a wheel. Realization came to me – arrows.
I craned my neck skyward and saw a half dozen black masked men dressed in fantastic costumes on top of the cliff wall. Tree Owl pushed us away as arrows clattered all around us. Annie and I scrambled beneath the cover of the overhanging rock as Tree Owl raced down the ramp, launching arrows from his own quiver at the attackers. His marksmanship was true and a body fell from above, bouncing sickeningly off the stone walls, its limbs twisted at impossible angles. From the corner of my eye, I saw Mozart and Sosanna disappear into a corridor. I prayed they would find shelter as neither was armed.
I held my Colt Revolver at the ready, hammer cocked. A dozen worries blotted my mind, our companions foremost, but the horses too, without them we were as good as dead in such country. What fools we had been not to leave a guard with the animals. I turned to Annie.
“How many do you think there are?” I asked.