“Thank God,” Stewart said. “No blaring horns, or smelly air, or crime, or traffic jams, or frantic lines. Just peace, tranquillity, and fresh air. But if you’re desperate for donuts, I think we’ve got some. Probably as good as Tim Horton’s. Whatever that is. Picked ’em up back at the convenience store in Crownpoint. They’re the powdered sugar kind with—”
“Stewart, that is heresy.”
Sylvia pulled up a chair between Maureen and Maggie, and took a comb from her back pocket. As she ran it through her tangles, she said, “Outside of vituperosity, what’s for breakfast?”
“Vituperosity?” Dusty asked. “Is that a word?”
“It is now.”
“Well, you have a choice,” Dusty told her. “You can have eggs, bacon, and dark rye bread, or any combination of the above.”
“Cool. Ethnic food.” Sylvia finished her hair and tucked her comb into her back pocket again, then she turned to Maureen. “I’ve been telling Dusty for two years that burritos three times a day makes your pit partner go away. He wouldn’t listen until one time—”
“Sylvia,” Dusty interrupted, “why don’t you find the cups. The coffee’s done.”
“Oh, sure.” She got up and went to search through the wooden footlocker near her tent.
Hail Walking Hawk laughed silently and shook her gray head. Maggie had a hand on her great-aunt’s arm, smiling.
Maggie whispered to Maureen, “Be glad Dusty stopped her. I’ve heard the conclusion before.”
Dusty echoed the sentiment with an exaggerated nod. He picked up a stick, and dragged the coffeepot out of the fire onto a hearthstone. Thick brown foam bubbled over the spout. “And if she ever starts the story about the strippers in Cortez, Colorado,” he said to Maggie, “I expect you to save me.”
Maggie leaned forward in surprise. “What strippers in Cortez?”
“Oh, hey,” Sylvia said as she walked back, fingers looped in the handles so the cups hung in a cluster. “You haven’t heard that story? It’s really nauseating. Dusty took the field crew to this place called the ‘Slit and Run’ for dinner. I thought it looked kind of dark, you know. Then we got inside, and there were these two women onstage who must have weighed four hundred pounds each. Man, I got to tell you. The place didn’t even serve food. My gag reflex started early and went into overdrive when Dusty got up to dance with Muffet—”
“Muffet?” Maureen narrowed her eyes at Stewart. “You danced with Muffet?”
“I—”
“Not for very long,” Sylvia answered for him. “Muffet did one those twirly things and her size-fifty triple C’s knocked Dusty off the stage and onto a table filled with empty Coors bottles. We got him to the hospital as soon as we could, but we spent half the night waiting for him to be sewed up. I mean, wow. No wonder they called it the ‘Slit and Run.’ That’s what happened to us.”
Maureen looked at Stewart. He was staring at Sylvia as if he longed to strangle her.
Maureen tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention, and in a fair imitation of Sean Connery, said,
“You call this archaeology?”
L
ITTLE BOW SAT AT THE EDGE OF FROSTED MEADOW Village’s plaza. Across from him, his relatives gathered in front of the clay-washed face of the village, a two-story rectangular building that served as both living chambers and storage rooms. Children squirmed in their grandparents’ laps, whispering questions. Warriors in knee-length blue war shirts encircled the plaza. Occasionally one man would lean sideways to whisper to another, but their expressions spoke more of curiosity, than apprehension.
They had assembled to watch the madman who pranced in the firelight.
Beyond the ring of warriors, at the very edge of the firelight, Little Bow’s brother, Singing Mantis, stood tall and muscular, his backbone rigid as he observed the proceedings. He wore buckskin pants and a finely tanned white leather coat with long fringes on the sleeves. The fringes shimmered in the firelight. Singing Mantis was a renowned Trader. He ran the roads all the way to the great ocean in the west, where he obtained rare seashells, which he traded to the northern wild peoples for exquisitely colored cherts, and buffalo horn spoons. Grief strained his young features, making him look more like forty, than eighteen summers. He had lost both his wife and son in the past quarter moon. They had died of the wasting disease while he’d been away. He had yet to forgive himself.
Little Bow looked beyond the bizarre show in the plaza, and watched the mist that crept along the dark rim of Straight Path canyon. Thin starlit streamers twisted and billowed, blowing about like enormous spider webs. Evening People glittered across the night sky. He folded his arms, and his braid tumbled over the front
of his gray-and-white rabbitfur cape. He had a chiseled face, his cheekbones sharp, his chin squared bluntly.
“Please, my husband,” his wife, Marsh Hawk, asked in her weak voice. “Sit down.”
She knelt on a deerhide at his feet. Shoulder-length black hair fell over her buffalo fur collar. She had a beautiful round face with a petal-shaped mouth and soft brown eyes. That is, until the wasting disease had consumed so much of her. Now her face had a sunken look, and despite her pregnancy, her bones stuck out. Her energy had ebbed away and a dullness had begun to creep into her eyes. When she coughed now, she brought up blood as often as phlegm.
As he exhaled, Little Bow’s breath shimmered. Returning his attention to the ragged old man who spun around in the firelight, he said, “I don’t like this.”
“Wait …” Marsh Hawk began, and started coughing. The fit shook her entire body.
Little Bow leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you need a cup of tea?”
Marsh Hawk shook her head.
Three moons ago they had lost their last child, a son, to the coughing sickness. Many people in the village suffered from it. A few whispered that the evil flew about on a witch’s wings. In the past sun cycle, two of their children had died of the disease, and young Tadpole, their eldest, had disappeared without a trace. It was almost too much to bear.
Little Bow tenderly touched his wife’s hair. “Are you warm enough? Shall I fetch you a blanket?”
“I’m fine, my husband.” She gave him a frail smile, and touched her swollen belly. The baby had been growing for about five moons. “I just wish your daughter would stop kicking me in the lungs.”
A shout rang out, and they both lifted their gazes to the old man who danced, or more correctly, stumbled around the fire. He looked like an outcast. Large patches of feathers were missing from his ragged cape, and his sparse white hair stood out at odd angles.
Little Bow whispered, “Do you think that is truly Stone Ghost?”
Marsh Hawk shrugged. “He says he is.”
“But Stone Ghost is supposed to be a Powerful shaman. This old man looks like a derelict.”
“Shh,” the village Matron, Corn Mother, hissed. She sat to Little Bow’s left with a blue-and-white blanket over her bony shoulders. Sixty-seven summers old, she had a skeletal face and jutting lower jaw. Thick gray hair matted her head. “I’ve also heard him called a witch,” she said. “We do not wish to anger him.”
Little Bow’s gaze shot back to the old man. A witch? He had never heard that. Powerful shamans could be frightening, but they worked for the benefit of their people. Witches, on the other hand, thought only of themselves. Hatred and wickedness drove them to do inhuman things. They might extract their enemy’s heart with a spindle and put it inside their own chests so they could live twice as long. Sometimes they stole the eyes of animals and left them in odd places to watch people. Little Bow’s aunt had once found a bobcat’s eye staring up at her from her tea cup.
Little Bow knelt beside his wife. “I thought the old man wished to speak with us about Tadpole’s disappearance?”
“Yes, he does, but he said he had to Dance to appease the Earth Spirits first.”
“He calls
that
Dancing?” Little Bow grunted.
Short and as thin as a corn stalk, the white-haired old man kept whirling and stumbling, laughing, then whirling around again. His deeply wrinkled face glowed orange in the firelight.
“Have you ever heard that?” Little Bow murmured in Marsh Hawk’s ear. “That Stone Ghost was a witch?”
“No, but—”
Stone Ghost suddenly stopped in midwhirl, and stared at Little Bow, as if he’d heard the whisper. The old man’s bushy white brows lowered.
Little Bow went as still as a mouse under an eagle’s shadow. His heart slammed his ribs. “Blessed Ancestors,” he croaked to Marsh Hawk. “You don’t think he …”
Stone Ghost turned away.
Little Bow grabbed the cape over his heart and let out the breath he’d unwittingly been holding. “Gods, for a moment, I thought he might have heard—”
“That is why you must keep your voice down!” Corn Mother hissed. “Witches have ears like a cougar’s.”
Stone Ghost dropped to the ground on his hands and knees and sniffed the sand like a dog.
Little Bow exchanged uneasy glances with Marsh Hawk and Corn Mother.
The old man was crawling around the firepit, smelling the hearthstones, and using his long hooked nose to poke at the cooking pots. When he stuck his nose to the hot teapot at the edge of the fire, he yipped and leaped sideways. His nostrils flared. He slowly crept forward again and lowered his head to the sand beside the teapot. The watching villagers had gone as still as rabbits, a new anxiety in their eyes.
Little Bow said to Marsh Hawk, “Gods. He’s as dimwitted as a clubbed grouse. You don’t think he’s going to attend the Ceremony of the Longnight at Hillside village, do you? I may not go.”
“You will go,” Corn Mother ordered. “I have already sent word to Flame Carrier that we will attend.”
“But, Matron! What if this old man is a witch? I do not wish to—”
“Shh!”
From inside his cape, Stone Ghost pulled a wooden bowl, and began scraping up sand.
Corn Mother studied this act for several moments then said, “Little Bow, why don’t you go over, and ask him what he found?”
“Me?” he said, surprised. “You want me to go talk to a witch? I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m not—”
“Don’t speak so loudly!” Corn Mother said. “He could whistle and turn all of us into dung beetles!”
Little Bow closed his mouth.
Stone Ghost got to his feet and hobbled toward them with his bowl. Dark brown age spots showed through his wispy white hair and dotted his hooked nose.
The old man stopped in front of Little Bow and looked up through radiant eyes. “I found this footprint over there by the fire. I think it belonged to your daughter.”
Little Bow peered into the sand-filled bowl. “I don’t see a footprint.”
Corn Mother looked, squinted, and pulled back.
Marsh Hawk looked, too. She lifted her brows and said to Stone Ghost, “How do you know it belonged to Tadpole?”
“Because the girl walked alone.” Stone Ghost looked back and forth between Little Bow and Corn Mother. Then he turned to Marsh Hawk. “Your daughter did not have many friends, did she?”
Marsh Hawk nervously wet her lips. “No, Elder.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Stone Ghost said in a sad voice. “She didn’t have the same strength as the other children. She couldn’t play as they did, because of her headaches.”
Little Bow’s mouth gaped. His daughter had suffered terrible headaches, and backaches. “How did you—”
“Her footprints.” Stone Ghost shook the bowl of sand. “She stumbled a lot, like a duck that’s been hit in the head with a rock.”
“She
had
been hit in the head!” Corn Mother said. The white stripes in her blue-and-white blanket shimmered with an amber gleam as she leaned forward. “Tadpole claimed her Spirit Helper had done it to teach her lessons.”
Stone Ghost peered at Corn Mother like a lizard seeing a shining fly. He edged over and sat down cross-legged in front of her. Corn Mother looked as if she might bolt.
Firelight gilded the left side of the old man’s wrinkled face. “You didn’t think it was her Spirit Helper.”
Corn Mother shook her head. “Well, no, I—I thought it was one of the other children, but Tadpole would never name her assailant.”
“Who was her Spirit Helper? Did she say?”
Corn Mother’s gaze darted here and there across the sky, anything to avoid meeting the old man’s intense stare. “It has been a long time, but I believe she said Wolf was her Helper? Is that not correct?” She turned to Little Bow.
He nodded, swallowing hard, his mouth suddenly dry. “Yes. Wolf. He visited her for six Blessed moons before she disappeared, told her wonderful stories of great heroes, and brought her strange gifts.”
“Gifts?” Stone Ghost asked.
Marsh Hawk said, “Yes, Elder. Wolf brought Tadpole many gifts: turquoise bead anklets, exquisitely carved shell bracelets, pendants made from magnificent stones that we had never seen
before. Tadpole said that Wolf had brought the gifts from the belly of the world.”
Stone Ghost studied the elders seated before the clay-washed village and the dogs that lay beside them. He surveyed the ladders sticking out of the rooftop entries. “And how many times a moon did this visitant come?”
Little Bow said, “Two or three times a moon, Elder.”
Stone Ghost didn’t say anything for a time.
Little Bow asked, “What are you thinking, Elder?”
Stone Ghost lifted his chin toward the village. “Show me where your chamber is, Little Bow?”
Little Bow pointed to the far western end of Frosted Meadow, to the little square window under a line of roof poles. “There, Elder. In the corner on the first floor.”
“You enter from the roof, yes?”
“Yes, Elder … . Well, adults do. We have another window that you cannot see from here. It faces west. Our children often go in and out that way, though we discourage it, of course.”
The wrinkles drew tight around Stone Ghost’s mouth. As if speaking to himself, he whispered, “That’s how he lures them out.”
Marsh Hawk twisted her hands in her lap. She got on her knees. “Elder, may I speak? Another woman went missing from Starburst Village a few days ago. I heard they found her mutilated body in the village plaza, but before they could properly care for her, she vanished. I’m frightened.”
Stone Ghost nodded. “Speak.”
“Sometimes our daughter would wander home very late at night and crawl in through that window. Her head would be bloody. It terrified me. I begged her to tell me who was doing that to her, but she would only mutter, and weep, and claim that her Spirit Helper was punishing her. We called in Healers from as far away as half a moon’s run, but none of them could cure her. The headaches finally got so bad, we asked the
Kokwimu
from Hillside village to open her skull to release the evil Spirits.”
“Cloudblower.” The old man bowed his white head, and his hooked nose glimmered with a fine coating of dust. “She is a great Healer. Did her treatment help?”
Little Bow saw his wife’s eyes blur, and gently put a hand on
her arm. When Marsh Hawk didn’t answer, he said, “It seemed to, Elder. But shortly after Tadpole recovered, she disappeared.”
“Indeed?” Stone Ghost said. “How did it happen?”
“Tadpole went out to collect kindling for the fire one night and never returned. We hunted everywhere for her but found nothing.”
Stone Ghost poked at the sand in his bowl, and frowned as though he could see images shimmering there. “Did she vanish during the winter?”
Corn Mother blurted, “Yes!” and she gazed curiously at the sand. “It snowed the night she disappeared. You saw that in the bowl?”
Stone Ghost’s eyes flared. “Why, yes. Did you think I made it up?”
“N-no.”
Stone Ghost turned back to Little Bow. “You found no tracks?”
“We found nothing,” Little Bow said. The same anxious futility he’d felt that night returned to gnaw at his belly. Long after the village had ceased searching for his daughter, he and Marsh Hawk had climbed the cliffs, calling her name, searching the rocks for threads, or tracks, or any sign that she might have passed that way. They’d found only sand and stone.