People of the Silence (42 page)

Cornsilk walked around the side of the house and poured last night’s dumpling water on the tall turquoise sage. She figured that must be what Dune did or the plants wouldn’t be so huge. After she set the pot down, she hitched up her green dress and emptied her night water.

Then she ambled out through the sage, down the well-worn path that wound along the base of the towering cliff. The world smelled damp and fragrant. Frost patterns glistened on the leaves and cactus thorns. All heavily used trails led to water. From the time she had been a child, her mother had taught her that she had only to follow a good game trail to find a drink.

She swung the pot as she walked. Faint warmth oozed from the sunbathed cliff, making her shiver with pleasure.

Cornsilk stepped over a big black rock … and halted. Red corn kernels nestled in an indentation in the top. An offering? To the Spirit of the stone? Or to an animal that frequented this trail? She looked around. How odd that the mice and packrats hadn’t gobbled up the offering during the night. Had Poor Singer asked his Spirit Helper to keep them away?

A narrow wash cut a jagged swath near the cliff. Cornsilk smiled when she saw the catch basin, a crystal clear pool about one body-length across. It had been hollowed out of the sandstone. Beautiful swirling rings of red, gray, and tan adorned the rock.

She placed the pot beside the pool and slowly lowered herself to a ledge of stone. Her legs shook. Beyond the faint apron of ice at the edges, not a breath of wind stirred the water. It reflected the undulations of the cliff, a small triangle of blue sky, and a wisp of cloud. Cornsilk drew up her knees and propped her bow on them, letting the silence of the morning seep into her.

Two canyon wrens fluttered through the sage. Brown above with a rust-colored rump and pure white breast, they blended so well with the shades of the desert they almost disappeared. Cornsilk cocked her head as they whistled softly to each other: clear descending notes,
tee-tee-teer. Tee-tee-teer.

Cornsilk exhaled softly.

Sage and winter grasses blanketed the canyon bottom, creating a mosaic of gold and turquoise. Taller clumps of snake-weed, yucca, and rabbitbrush thrust up here and there.

Such beauty. It made her ache deep down.

She ran her fingers along the smooth wood of her bow and remembered the day Fledgling had helped her make it. They had been laughing …

A vague stinging sensation pervaded her body, as if every nerve hurt to the touch. Despair had become her constant companion. It breathed in her lungs, ran through her veins, gazed through her eyes. She had spent half the night fighting to recall the name of the warrior who—who’d killed Fledgling.
Gnat. His name was Gnat.

More than anything, Cornsilk longed to curl up in a warm blanket and sleep forever. If only she could.…

At the soft padding of paws against stone, barely audible, she froze, every muscle still. Sand spilled from a ledge above her, drifting down in a fine red mist. The pool rippled.

Cornsilk reached up, her movements agonizingly slow, and quietly drew an arrow from her quiver. She placed it across her bow, and inched her gaze upward.

On the ledge thirty hands above, a bobcat crouched. Black spots dotted her tawny coat, and she had two black rings on her stubby tail. Her tufted ears lay flat at the sight of Cornsilk.

She must hunt here every morning, crouching on the ledge overlooking the pool, waiting for smaller animals to come and drink.

Eyes locked with Bobcat’s, Cornsilk carefully nocked her arrow in her bow. The cat growled and arched her back, as if she understood perfectly well what Cornsilk had planned.

Cornsilk lifted the bow, pulled back the arrow …

An inhuman groaning, like a bear caught in a trap, sounded behind her, then something thrashed through the sage. She jerked around. The bobcat scrambled down the ledge, leaped into the brush, and bounded across the desert. Cornsilk sighed in defeat and lowered her bow.

Poor Singer stood in the sage just to the right of the offering rock. His long black hair draped his chest. He had his arms lifted away from his sides and his legs spread. The horror on his narrow face sent a chill through her. The nostrils of his thin hooked nose quivered.

She ran to him. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“I tripped over the rock,” he said, and hurried by her in a stiff-legged gait, swinging his legs wide.

Wading into the pool, heedless of the ice, he stretched out on his back, and leaned his head against the ledge where she had been sitting. His long black hair swam around him. Beneath the wavering water, his sunburned skin glowed a lurid reddish purple. “Blessed gods,” he groaned as if in relief.

Cornsilk sat down cross-legged on a stone, facing him, and laid her bow aside. “You’re just doomed to suffer, Poor Singer. I had that bobcat in my sights when you groaned. My chance for grease to salve your sunburn ran due east. Not that the bobcat would have had much fat this time of the sun cycle, but I thought anything would help.”

He sank deeper into the pool, letting the cold water wash around his pointed chin. “I am more sorry than I can tell you.”

“I’ll make a salve from crushed prickly pear instead. It won’t last as long, but it will ease the pain. Does old Dune have a supply of Spirit plants? Red dock root would really help.”

“Some plants are hanging in amongst the corn, beans, and squash. There might be some red dock root up there. I don’t know.” Poor Singer let out a pained breath. “What does red dock root do?”

“It cleanses and quickens healing.”

He turned to look at her. “How do you know so much about plants?”

Their gazes held. She couldn’t speak for a moment. “My—my mother was a Healer. She taught me.”

When her eyes blurred, he murmured, “I’m sorry, Silk. If you’ll give me a day or two, I really will travel back to Turtle Village with you. We’ll find your family and take care of them. I promise.”

She bowed her head.

What would he do when they didn’t go to Turtle Village at all, but to Lanceleaf? Would he know the difference. Most clans knew the general locations of other villages.

She got to her feet. “While you soak, I’ll collect prickly pear pads. Then, when I’ve tended your burn, I’ll make us breakfast. How are you feeling today? After eating last night?”

He smiled wearily. “My soul is floating, but I have one foot on the ground again.”

“Are you happy about that?”

Poor Singer shifted and sinuous locks of hair snaked around his skinny chest. “How strange that you would ask. No. Not completely. I’ve never felt so free in my life as I have the past quarter moon. Hunger purifies and sets the soul loose from the cage of the body. But why did you ask?”

Cornsilk lifted a shoulder. Her mother’s smile, the tenderness of her touch … “My mother always fasted before a Healing. When the patient was truly ill, she would go without food for eight days—twice the holy number of four. And after the Healing she would come home, eat a single bluecorn dumpling, then sleep for a full day. When she woke, she said she was always deeply sad—because her soul had lost its wings.”

Poor Singer exhaled and his breath sent silver ripples across the pool. The reflection did an ethereal dance over the red cliff. He nodded. “At least now I know my soul has wings. I didn’t before. Though I thought I did.” He smiled. “I thought I knew a lot of things.”

Cornsilk untied her knife from her belt, picked up an arrow and headed out into the sage, hunting prickly pear, not far from the pool. “And you don’t know as much now?”

She knelt down, said a soft prayer, begging the cactus to forgive her, asking that it allow her to use a few of its pads to help Poor Singer. She waited until she felt the prickly pear give its permission and gently cut off a juicy pad. Long thorns spiked up from the cactus; she carefully skewered the pad with her arrow.

“I don’t know anything, Silk. I … I suppose I never did.” Poor Singer splashed at the water. Rings bobbed out in every direction again, melting against the stone walls of the pool. Trailing green glimmers speckled the surface.

Cornsilk sawed off another cactus pad. “Don’t you think every new Singer feels that way?”

“Well, if Dune were here I could ask, but he’s not, so I have to guess. It’s very frustrating.”

Cornsilk moved on to the next cactus and repeated her prayer. You couldn’t cut too many pads from a single plant or the Spirit would become angry, and prickly pears had a nasty reputation for afflicting people with the knotted joint disease. When she sensed that the cactus had assented, she began a careful process of pruning.

“Didn’t you feel the same way when you went through your kiva initiation?” Many young men whispered about it, but she knew very little. It wasn’t a thing for unmarried women. They had their own special rites and kiva ceremonials. “I have heard that the journey to the First Underworld humbles young men.”

Poor Singer’s expression turned somber. “It does.” He looked away.

She took the hint.

The next plant stood half as tall as Cornsilk and had pads the length of her forearm and twice as wide. This time, she got no answer to her prayer, only a faint sensation of hostility. She moved on to another cactus, where she cut four pads and slipped her arrow through them. “I think ten pads will be enough. If not, I’ll cut more later.”

“Thank you.”

A breeze rustled through the sage and blew over the surface of the pool; it winked and glimmered. Poor Singer frowned. “Silk? Did your mother ever speak about feeling empty inside after fasting?”

“Empty? Empty of what?”

“Everything—thoughts, emotions. I even feel empty of myself. As if
I
am not really here.”

Cornsilk tied her knife to her belt again and considered his question. A piñon jay trilled high above her and she tipped her head back to look. The blue bird floated on the warming air currents above the rim, its wings wobbling against the glistening gold of morning.

“In my tenth summer, Mother did a Healing for a very old woman. It took half a moon. I remember that Mother fasted, and Sang, and slept for no more than a few hands of time. But the woman died anyway.” Cornsilk pictured her mother’s haggard face, and heard her tearful voice explaining the woman’s lingering death. “When Mother came home, she said that her soul had fled to the skyworlds, that it floated in nothingness, alone, waiting for the world to change.” She made a lame gesture with her hand. “I don’t know if she meant that she felt empty, but it sounds similar to what you’re feeling.”

Poor Singer closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything more for a time. “How long did it take before her soul returned to her body?”

“A while. Four or five days, I think.”

Poor Singer dipped his hand in the water and smoothed it over his sunburned face. He sighed as if in relief. “When mine returns, I—I’m not sure I will know who I am, since I don’t right now. I feel … different.”

Cornsilk propped her arrow against a rock, bent forward, picked up the boiling pot, and rinsed it out. As she refilled it, she thought about how much of herself she had lost. Where a child had played inside her a few days ago, now a frightened young woman crouched, breathless, confused. She responded, “I’ll understand, Poor Singer.”

She lifted the pot by the thongs and took the arrow in her opposite hand.

Poor Singer gazed up at her. “Should I rise?”

“It’s up to you. I just thought I’d walk back and start peeling the prickly pear pads.”

“But the sooner we salve my burns, the sooner they will heal.”

Rising, he stood dripping in the pool. Water beaded on his cold-pimpled skin, and slicked his long hair down over his chest. “Here.” He extended his hand. “Let me take the pot. You have your bow and the cactus pads to carry.”

Cornsilk handed it to him.

He started up the trail in his stiff-legged gait, holding the pot out to his side. When they reached the black offering rock, Poor Singer cautiously bent forward and smoothed his fingers over the gritty surface.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He picked up the kernels of red corn he’d knocked off earlier and carefully replaced them in the niche on top of the stone.

Cornsilk said, “Who is the offering to? The rock or something else?”

“It’s to Silence,” he said, and gently patted the rock.

Cornsilk frowned. An offering could be a request for help, or a gift in gratitude. Occasionally offerings simply symbolized the offerer’s love for the Spirit. Her mother had made an offering every day to the Spirits of the drifting Cloud People. But to Silence?

She followed Poor Singer up the trail.

When they reached the little white house, Cornsilk held the door curtain back for Poor Singer. He grunted softly as he ducked low to enter, and Cornsilk draped the curtain over the peg, letting the morning sun into the room.

Poor Singer hung the boiling pot on the tripod, then hastily backed away. “I’m sure I’ll go into convulsions if I stay near the fire, Silk.” He looked around uneasily and said, “I think I’ll sit next to the wall by the door. It’s cooler there.”

“Good. I’ll scrape the pads and be there in a moment.”

Poor Singer walked over and lowered his naked body to the hard-packed dirt floor, sighing, “Oh, that’s better.”

Cornsilk selected a large pot and set it beside the grinding slab. Propping her arrow beside her, she slid off the first cactus pad and took her obsidian knife from her belt. She had to be careful of the long thorns. They contained a very painful stinging poison. She slipped her blade through the pad like a stem and held it over the fire to burn off the thorns. Then she placed the pad on the grinding slab and skinned off the outer peel. She scraped the pale green pulp into the pot and started on another.

Poor Singer watched her with shining eyes. Despite his pain and self-doubts, he seemed oddly serene. He might have been looking upon the blessed face of the Sun Thlatsina, rather than Cornsilk scraping cactus pads. It made her feel peculiar, as if he looked through her, rather than at her. Was he looking at the color of her soul again?