People of the Silence (12 page)

“Get up, my son. I must show you the secret place where the Cloud People hide their hearts.”

Buckthorn braced an elbow in the forest duff and sat up. “Do you know where it is?”

“Yes, my son. Come. I will take you there.”

Buckthorn threw back his blanket and got to his feet.

His father walked up the hill to the sage-covered crest, where the wind whipped his long hair and the hem of his white shirt. He stood tall, silhouetted against a star-sprinkled expanse of deep blue.

Carefully, Buckthorn followed, avoiding rocks and the coyote holes dug into the slope. Marked only by black spots the size of his head, they were difficult to see. He joined his father and stood with his head tipped back, studying Spider Woman. She had already crawled to the middle of the sky. The three stars that made up her body angled westward, while her legs crept out in every direction.

His father turned to Buckthorn.
“Are you ready, my son?”

“I think so. What do I have to do?”

“This place we are going is very far. You cannot run the distance in a human body.”

“Then how will I get there?”

His father placed a gentle hand on Buckthorn’s shoulder.
“I will help you. Get down on all fours.”

Buckthorn dropped to his hands and knees and saw his father do the same beside him. They looked very strange as four-leggeds. A tender smile curled his father’s mouth; he lifted a hand and scratched Buckthorn’s neck, as if to dislodge biting fleas.

“What are you doing, Father?” Buckthorn hunched uncomfortably. “What—”

“Now run,”
his father instructed.
“Down the hill. Run.”

Buckthorn scrambled forward through the sage and sand, feeling foolish. “Father, why am I doing this, I…”

A beautiful coyote with a thick glossy coat trotted up beside Buckthorn.
“You are doing this,”
the coyote said,
“so that you may fly like the wind. Follow me now. Run!”

The coyote galloped away through the sage, veering around cactus.

“Blessed Spirits!” Buckthorn said sullenly. “You’re very fast, Father!”

He scrambled down the slope as quickly as he could. His knees tangled in his long shirt, and his palms landed in dead cactus pads that lay hidden in the darkness. When his right hand suddenly sunk into a rabbit burrow and landed hard four hands below, jamming his wrist, he screamed, “Yeowww!”

His father lifted his shining muzzle and howled, too, yipping and whining.
“Come on, boy! We haven’t all night!”

Buckthorn picked himself up and tried again, crawling through the brush with his face tipped so as not to have his eyes clawed out by the twigs. Thorns shredded his shirt and tore at his arms and legs.

At the bottom of the hill, he saw his father loping far out ahead, winding down a deer trail, and Buckthorn’s own labors seemed to grow immensely easier. He trotted after his father, then broke into a lope, moving with the swiftness of a swallow, leaping upthrust stones effortlessly. He caught up with his father in no time, and ran at his side with his black-spotted pink tongue dangling from the side of his mouth.

“Father?” Buckthorn asked as they angled down toward a deeply cut drainage channel. A thread of water glinted in the bottom. “Have I always had a coyote’s soul?”

“Yes, my son. Always.”

His father leaped forward. He splashed through the trickle of water and bounded up the opposite side of the drainage, his coat glinting as though netted with fallen stars.

Buckthorn glanced down at his furry coyote body and felt warm and happy. He raced after his father. The silvered trail sped by beneath his soft paws. Freedom, like cold fire, tingled through his veins.

As he splashed through the muddy water, he threw his head back and yipped … letting his father know he followed.

When he reached the lip of the drainage and trotted out across the grassy flats, the scent of pines and water rose powerfully. His eyes widened.
Where am I? What happened to the desert?

Jagged pine-whiskered mountains thrust up around him. He ran through an alpine meadow, surrounded on all sides by winter-bare aspen trees. A few old leaves clung to the white-barked branches, quaking in the cold wind. Elk grazed in the shadows. Their eyes glinted when they jerked their heads up to watch Buckthorn pass. Through the heart of the meadow, a small crystal-clear brook babbled its way down the slope.

Awe filled Buckthorn. His father trotted in the distance, his bushy tail down, his fur shimmering in the brilliant wash of moonlight.
Moonlight!

Buckthorn looked eastward. Sister Moon crouched full and bright on the horizon. She had just cleared a vast range of shining peaks that rose like gigantic ice spears. Clouds encircled the summits.

His father stopped at the top of the grassy meadow and waited. When Buckthorn loped up, his father used his black nose to point.
“There, my son. The turquoise cave is up there.”

“The turquoise cave? The one I saw in my vision in the kiva?”

“Yes, son.”

Buckthorn looked. “It’s up there?” His night-sharp vision searched the lofty peaks and he spied a black spot, round, like a dark womb that receded endlessly into the side of the ice spear. The opening faced east. Buckthorn’s belly prickled. He nervously licked his muzzle and expelled a frosty breath. “It … it reminds me of the tunnel to the underworlds, Father.”

The coyote peered at him unblinking, his shining eyes pale green in the moonlight.
“Come, let us go.”

Buckthorn trotted up the snowy slope after his father, his paws slipping. Snow clotted the fur between his toes and made them ache. As they climbed, freezing wind blasted their faces, sleeking their fur back and forcing them to squint.

His father stood at the lip of the cave with one paw lifted, his nose thrust forward. He sniffed the dank moss-scented air. As if from something threatening, he backed away, his tail tucked between his legs.

“What is it?” Buckthorn asked.

“I will stand guard. You must go in alone, my son. The cave is not open to me.”

“But…” Buckthorn peered into the cave and his front legs shook. “How do you know it is open to me?”

His father’s voice echoed hollowly from the cave:
“Go now, hurry.”

His father turned and trotted to the base of the slope, where he stood scrutinizing the meadow for movement.

Buckthorn took a tentative step forward. As he edged closer, he noticed that the cave sloped downward. Moonlight spilled inside, lighting a narrow strip of the interior like a torch. A thicket of creeping barberry bushes blocked his way. Their waxy holly-shaped leaves reflected the moon glow.

Buckthorn lightly stepped into the thicket and tested the wind: The cave smelled oddly musty. It looked tiny and narrow, but he couldn’t really tell. The thin crescent of light only went back a few body lengths. Beyond that the darkness extended forever. He pushed through the thicket and walked deeper.

His toenails clicked on the stone, and he heard water dripping, a melodic
plop, plop.
His whiskers quivered. The deeper he went, the warmer it felt.

Buckthorn looked around. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could make out the thin veil of moisture on the walls. Drops slid down and pooled in the undulations of the floor, shining blackly.

He walked faster, his body swinging down the incline. The floor of the cave warmed his paws, and melted the snow clotted in the fur between his toes. He shivered with delight.

He entered what appeared to be a large chamber. A black pool of water covered the floor, and he could locate the source of the drip, straight above, draining down through the rock and splatting into the pool. Mist hovered near the roof, tendrils escaping into the brighter corridor, floating upward until they reached the mouth of the cave, where they shimmered. As they rose into the luminous sky, they gathered the cold around them like a thick woolly coat and grew, and grew, expanding to become clouds.

Buckthorn watched in wonder.

Sister Moon cleared the lip of the cave, hanging like a huge silver ball in the sky. When he turned back to the chamber, he expected to see a flood of revealing light pour down, but as she rose higher, he saw a flicker, then a series of flashes, as if bolts of lightning shot back and forth across the interior. A blinding azure blaze built, and a low half-moan half-growl rumbled in his throat. Buckthorn settled on his haunches and whined in fear. Now he could see.…

Over thousands of sun cycles, percolating water had carved a rounded hollow in a thick vein of turquoise, and this hollow
was
the chamber. Sharp fragments jutted out everywhere, like crystals in a geode. The moon glow made them burn with a brilliant blue fire. As Sister Moon continued her climb into the sky, the light shifted and Buckthorn’s jaws parted in awe as light streamed directly down the entrance. The cave transformed itself into a tumbling waterfall of ice-blue, sparkling azure, flowing across the roof and flooding the floor. The entire blue world seemed to be on fire, the sacred stone flaming, searing his eyes, and tingling like sparks in his veins.

The conflagration died.

Just died.

Sister Moon rose higher and diffuse pewter light filled the cave.

Buckthorn blinked.

Heart hammering, he gazed down into the pool. He could still see the turquoise lining the basin, but it shone dully, like chunks of common slate.

The pool wavered, as if pushed by a breeze, but Wind Baby could not penetrate so deep. Buckthorn’s eyes narrowed. He glanced up at the drip; it continued its rhythmic fall into the water:
plop, plop, plop.
Not the cause. The pool began to whirl and rock. Water washed over the walls of the cave.

Buckthorn stretched out on his belly and rested his chin on his paws to watch.

Someone shouted, an agonized cry. Then a scream, a thin wavering thread of sound, made him leap to his feet and scramble, slipping and sliding, up the wet corridor as fast as his paws would take him.

Just as he reached the barberry thicket, sharp pain lanced Buckthorn’s belly, white hot, like a war lance. He let out a ragged yip, and fell back, sliding on his side down the incline until he struck the wall and spun to a halt. Water soaked his fur. He lay panting, his gaze seeking his attacker.

Thunder roared through the cave, but from the depths he made out voices, hundreds, no
thousands,
of shouting, screaming people. Then …
he saw them.
They oozed from the very walls. The cave filled with running people and slamming fists. Like an enraged swarm of bees, they crowded up to kick him, beating him with war clubs, yelling in an unknown tongue. Buckthorn huddled into a ball and yipped desperately, praying his father would come and …

A tall beautiful woman stepped from inside the turquoise cave and the enraged people faded as though they had never been. He could just make out her face, with its turned-up nose. Waist-length black hair draped her shoulders. She wore a magnificent scarlet dress, a shade he had never seen, iridescent like sunrise. A little Power bundle hung from her belt, and a turquoise pendant from a cord around her neck.

“Who are you?” Buckthorn called. “What do you wish from me? Did you make the vision go away?”

“I make visions come and go.” Her deep voice sent chills up his spine. She walked closer, almost too graceful to be human, and peered into his eyes, as if searching his soul. “You are Coyote Clan. Why are you here?”

Breath shuddering, he answered, “M-my father … he brought me.”

She knelt down, so close that Buckthorn could feel the warmth of her body. Locks of her long hair brushed his fur. He gazed into the woman’s huge coal-black eyes with the shock of a lizard who suddenly feels the wind of a swooping hawk. He couldn’t move.

The woman studied his body in minute detail. She touched each of his paws and ran her fingers down his furry back. When she examined his pointed ears, her hand moved with such aching tenderness that it set Buckthorn’s heart to pounding.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“B-Buckthorn.”

She rose to her feet and stood like a slender pillar of scarlet flame. “Buckthorn of the Coyote Clan. Who is your father?”

“I—I don’t know … really.” With his muzzle he gestured to the moonlit cave entry. “Shall I call to him? He is in the meadow—”

“He was very bold to bring you here. Tell him I said so.” Her stare bored into his face. “I usually kill curiosity seekers.”

“
Kill?
” Buckthorn asked breathlessly. “Why? Who are you?”

“I am the Keeper of the sacred Tortoise Bundle. My clan is … was … the Hollow Hoof Clan.”

Buckthorn rose on trembling legs. “Was? Your clan is dead?”

“Dead and gone. Its heart, the Bundle, was stolen twenty-two summers ago. The people lost faith, they married into other clans. They drifted apart. I am all that is left of the noble Hollow Hoof.”

Sorrow animated her words. She peered back into the turquoise cave, slate gray now, as still and silent as a tomb. Her gaze fixed on the pool, and her brows slanted down. Perhaps she saw something there that he did not. Something that held her unwavering attention. The corners of her mouth twitched.

For a long while she did not speak. Then, very softly, she said, “Ah, I understand.” She nodded. “I see now why he brought you here. He
really
believed I’d kill you. Hmm. For that reason, I think I’ll grant you some advice. Study the ways of the coyotes, Buckthorn. They are quick and smarter than humans believe. They watch from a distance, in silence, until they know it is time to move. Always be smarter than people think. Never take action before you are certain of your goal.”

Shadows filled the hollows of her eyes, turning them into huge black wells. “In the coming moons, there are many who will seek to cage you. You will have to be very quick and very smart, or…” A grim smile curled her lips. “Or the next time you return here, Buckthorn of the Coyote Clan, your world will be dying all around you. Be prepared to make an offering. Do you understand?”