T
HUNDER ROLLED ACROSS THE LOW HILLS. Catkin pulled her red-and-black striped blanket over her head and hunched forward against the bone-piercing morning cold. Rain dripped from the juniper branches onto her shoulders in a steady
plop-plop.
A faint gray haze brightened the eastern horizon, telling her that dawn had arrived, but Father Sun remained hidden in the bellies of the Cloud People.
Two paces away, Browser knelt beside the fire with the collar of his elkhide coat turned up. Rain ran from his flat nose and sleeked his chin-length black hair against his head. His soft brown eyes stared at nothing, as if he wasn’t quite here in this world with her, but far away, running trails she could not see. From the bruised crescents beneath his eyes, his exhaustion matched her own.
They’d run away from the slaughter ground in silence, afraid every step of the way. Four hands of time ago, they’d stumbled to a stop, unable to go any farther. Catkin had stood watch for two hands of time while Browser slept, then he’d stood watch while she tried to sleep. Catkin had lain awake most of her rest period, listening to the howling wind, watching the Thunderbirds soar and flash as they brought the storm.
She’d awakened half a hand of time ago, but Browser had barely spoken to her, and when he had, his voice had come out gruff and strained. He’d been tramping around camp, kicking rocks and dead limbs, as though punishing Our Grandmother Earth for the rain. Catkin had seen it before. He wore guilt like a mantle.
A branch cracked in the fire, and Browser leaped to his feet with his war club over his head.
Catkin said, “You are acting like Vole when he hears Coyote’s footsteps in the snow.”
“You aren’t helping.” He gave her a sour look.
She nodded. “I know.”
Since she’d awakened, she’d jumped at every peal of thunder or distant flash of lightning. She kept glancing over her shoulder, as though she expected to be grabbed from behind. She’d ripped her club from her belt so often that she decided to just lay it across her lap. It saved time.
Catkin sighed. “We are hungry and tired, Browser. Perhaps if we take care of those things, our nerves will stop tingling.”
“Maybe yours will.”
He knelt again, and tossed another branch on the fire. White smoke rose from the wet wood. “We’ll get a hot cup of tea yet.”
Browser blew on the fire until flames leaped and crackled, then began adding more wood.
Catkin pulled a piece of venison jerky from her belt pouch and tore off a hunk with her teeth. It tasted rich and smoky.
Her gaze roved the hills, landing on branches that seemed to sway too much, or patches of grass with unusual colors. Any shape that did not seem to match its surroundings sent blood surging through her veins.
There’s nothing there. Stop this.
She had been living with fear for two sun cycles, since the day she’d run away from home to join the Katsinas’ People. One would think she would have grown used to it.
“Browser, we haven’t spoken about last night, and we must.”
“Yes, we must,” he answered gruffly, but didn’t offer any information. Catkin eyed the tendons sticking out on his neck. “Were Walker and Bole dead when you arrived?”
After a few heartbeats, he nodded. “Yes. They had been dead for some time.”
Catkin blinked, recalling the timing of last night’s events. “How is that possible? You signaled them just before you left me.”
Browser shook his head and water fell from his black hair onto his coat. “By the time I signaled, Catkin, they were already dead. I think someone captured them right after we walked away and forced them down into the kiva.”
Guilt thickened his voice. They had spent a good deal of time examining the mummy. He must be thinking that if they hadn’t stopped to look, Walker and Bole would be alive.
“Do you think that’s why they hung the mummy at the top of the trail? To give the killers more time?”
Browser blinked thoughtfully. “I believe the mummy had another purpose. She was supposed to tell us something, Catkin. We are just too dim-witted to understand.”
Catkin remembered the scars on the elderly woman’s back and feet and the skeletal hand twined in the magnificent collar. A highly prized slave who had choked herself to death to end the pain—or perhaps her torturer’s pleasure.
“You were right. I should have listened to you.” Browser angrily jerked a stick from the woodpile and stabbed at the flames. Sparks crackled and whirled into the rainy sky. “It wasn’t wise to separate last night. We should have stayed together.”
“I was not right,” Catkin replied. “If we’d done that, we’d all be dead. I suspect Walker and Bole held their attention long enough that we—”
“No.” Browser pointed at her with the stick, and his brown eyes bored into hers. “We are alive because they let us go, Catkin. That is the only answer. A slaughter is no good unless someone is left alive to tell the story.” He shook the stick. “That’s us.”
Catkin ripped off another hunk of jerky. She could feel strength stealing back into her tired limbs. It always amazed her that a scant morsel of food could rejuvenate the body. “If that is true, what role did the wounded woman play?”
“Maybe the woman was supposed to create a diversion so that the rest of her war party could make their way up the western trail and out into the forest without being seen.”
“The warriors could have solved that problem by killing me, Browser. You would have been alive to tell the story. I think there is more to this. What else did you see in the kiva?”
Browser put his stick aside and pulled the tripod with the teapot over the flames. The soot-coated pot swung. “I counted forty-two dead, including Walker and Bole.”
Catkin’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t find words. She stammered, “Are—are you sure?”
“There may have been a few more or a few less. At any rate, they were headless.” He looked at her from under his heavy brows as though she should know what that meant.
“Those are the heads we found …”
“I’m sure of it.”
The wind shifted, and smoke billowed up, filling the air between them. Catkin could barely make out his face in the gray haze.
“But if the Matron survived, there may have been others—”
“She didn’t ‘survive.’ Don’t you understand what we witnessed last night?”
Catkin paused. “Why don’t you tell me.”
Wind Baby gusted through the juniper grove, slapping the branches and flinging rain in every direction. Catkin pulled her blanket closed at her throat.
“They blinded the Matron, cut out her tongue, and arranged the heads of her loved ones around her. She sat in the midst of the heads for a while, then she must have wandered away into the forest. That’s why the leader seemed surprised when they came into the aspen grove. That’s why he made the slashed-throat sign and split up his war party. He was ordering them to hunt her down and kill her.”
Catkin watched the raindrops splash into the pool at her feet. “Why? Why would they do that?”
He threw up his hands. “I don’t know!”
“Do you know who they were? What clan? I noticed their strange clothing.”
He shook his head. “No. If I did, I would hunt them down.”
Catkin chewed another bite of jerky before asking, “Tell me more about the headless bodies in the kiva.”
He waved a hand, as though uncertain how to proceed. “Last summer Old Pigeontail told me stories I didn’t believe. He said that it was common for the Flute Player Believers to kill Katsinas’ People, strip their bodies of flesh, and force the survivors to carry the butchered remains of their loved ones to a place where the meat could be prepared. Pigeontail said that once the flesh had been smoked and dried, people couldn’t tell it from antelope or deer. He claimed it had become a valuable Trade item.”
It took a few moments for Catkin to understand.
“Blessed gods, are you telling me that the people in the kiva had been butchered?”
“Yes,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Even some of the infants.”
Rain beaded Catkin’s long lashes, creating a rainbow shimmer at the edges of her vision. Horrifying memories flashed across the canvas of her souls …
Straight Path Canyon nine moons ago … the masked Wolf Katsina cutting the flesh from their friend Hophorn’s body … Browser shooting the katsina, watching it reel, and run, then the terrible instant when he tore the mask from the dying murderer’s face …
“Browser, who could have done such a thing? The white-caped men we saw—”
“Perhaps they did it. I don’t know. Surely it was someone who hated the katsinas.”
“Why do you say that?”
Browser toyed with a stick in the woodpile. He pulled it out and tossed it into the fire. “The attackers painted katsinas across the front of the village, then ritually killed them. Each katsina had a huge gaping hole in the middle of its chest.”
Catkin pulled her wet blanket over her head and studied the glowing center of the fire. Just concentrating on it seemed to make her feel warmer. “Browser, why would our enemies waste time killing gods they don’t believe in?”
Browser shrugged. “I do not know.”
Catkin continued in a soft voice, “If I hated the katsinas, I wouldn’t paint them at all. I would paint the Flute Player on my enemy’s village instead. Or better yet, I would paint the Flute Player
over
the katsinas. If someone obliterated my gods and replaced them with their own, it would infuriate me.”
He drew up a knee and propped his elbow on it. “Perhaps the attackers believed in different katsinas than we do. I have heard of such things. Ant Woman, the Matron of Dry Creek village, told me that the special Spirit Helpers far to the west are the Mouse Katsina and the Butterfly Katsina. Gods that are foreign to us.”
Browser didn’t take his gaze from her for a long while, then he bent over the teapot. “This is warm. Toss me your cup. We should drink and be on our way.”
Catkin dug around in her belt pouch and threw him her wooden cup.
Browser dipped it full, handed it back, and filled a cup for himself.
As he sipped, his rain-shiny brow furrowed. “There were other things, too, Catkin. In the plaza last night, I found five copper bells like the one you discovered in the mummy’s belly.”
“In the plaza? Just lying on the ground?”
“Yes. They had been polished to make them shine in the moonlight, then placed in a line leading from the eastern trail to the kiva.”
Catkin’s hands tightened on her cup.
“Bait?”
“Probably, yes.”
“And you climbed into the kiva anyway?” she almost shouted.
He lifted a hand to halt her tirade. “No, not at first. I went from
room to room in the village, and climbed halfway up the western trail before I turned back. I had to look in the kiva, Catkin.”
“You, who are like Packrat and always need an escape hole? Great gods, Browser, why aren’t you dead?”
He looked up and rain beaded his eyelashes. “I’ve been asking myself that same question. I should be. I heard them coming. The woman threw a copper bell down into the kiva before she pulled out the ladder.”
“Taunting you?”
Browser swirled his tea in his cup. “I can’t be sure, of course, but I had the feeling it was payment.”
“Payment? For what?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a feeling. I think she wanted a witness.”
Her mouth quirked. “Most killers murder witnesses. They don’t pay them, Browser.”
“I know I must sound crazy, Catkin, but I am trying to think of different reasons for what I saw last night. None of this may be correct.”
Catkin released her hold on her blanket, and it slipped back from her head and onto her shoulders. Rain misted her face. She was good at figuring things out; it was one of her few talents. She had never learned the skills most women cherished, what to plant and when, cooking, making beautiful pottery. But she had an uncanny ability to slip into her opponent’s souls and view the world through his eyes.
“Tell me everything, Browser. You climbed down into the kiva and the woman walked up, pulled out the ladder, and left you.”
He gestured with his teacup. “There is one other important thing. Remember I told you about the girl? While the woman was arranging the hides and weighting them down with the ladder, I heard the little girl’s voice.”
“What did she say?”
“She called the woman ‘Mother.’”
“You mean you think there were two women last night? Working together? One trapped you while the other occupied my attention?”
He ran a hand through his hair, squeezing out the water. It cascaded down the collar of his elkhide coat. “It could have been one woman, I suppose, but that means she would have had to hide her daughter somewhere while she distracted you.”