Ash Girl’s throat went tight. She had not seen him smile at her in sun cycles. His love had slipped away, and now she was losing her only child. A soft cry escaped her lips. If she had been home, Browser would have knelt beside her and sternly ordered, “Stop this. If the people see you, their Spirits will turn to water. You must be strong for them.”
She had tried.
But as her son wasted before her eyes, his cheeks growing gaunt, his eyes sinking into his skull, desperation had taken hold of Ash Girl’s senses.
“I thought you would help,” she choked out. “You told me you would. You promised!”
She buried her face in the soft feathers of her cape.
Images flitted across her souls. Disconnected. Haunting. Browser’s worried eyes peered at her, and she thought she could hear him calling her name, his voice panicked, loud …
She jerked, and sat up, panting into the darkness.
The voice seeped from everywhere at once, the ceiling, walls, the floor.
“Why, my daughter?”
Ash Girl stopped breathing. “Two Hearts?” She twisted around to see him. “Where are you?”
She could make out the lighter gray of the rounded entry. A shadow blackened the right side. Fear and relief vied for control of her senses.
“Oh, Two Hearts, thank the gods. I was so afraid, I—”
“I asked you why?”
She stammered, feeling small and stupid, as she always did in his presence, “I—I do not understand your question.”
“Why do you believe your son is dying?”
She spread her arms. “He can’t breathe. Fever rages through his body. I have tried every Healing plant I know, but none has eased his suffering.”
The shadow wavered like a man straightening to his full height.
“Blood comes from his lungs.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Ash Girl said, “Yes. Every time he coughs. He spits it up and gasps for air.”
“But you are not ill?”
“No.”
“What of the voices? Do you still hear them?”
Ash Girl’s muscular legs trembled, but she rose to her feet. “No. And I—I do not care about them now! It is my son that wrenches my heart. Please, help him. He has seen only four summers. He is a good boy. Let him stay on this earth for a time longer.” She reached out to the god. “He needs you. If you would only …”
She grabbed her head and staggered, suddenly dizzy.
Two Hearts’ voice softened.
“Did you take the herbs I recommended?”
“Yes, but … I am no better. The pain continues to strike me at odd moments, and makes me sick to my stomach.”
“The last time you lost your power to speak. What about this time?”
Ash Girl shuddered. Sometimes his voice sounded so much like her husband’s, it stunned her. Did he do that on purpose? Did he know Browser and imitate his voice to frighten her? Two Hearts usually did it when he was loving her, and it acted like a lance in her heart.
She answered, “Just pain. And some weakness in my right hand. I—”
The shadow vanished.
Ash Girl’s gaze darted over the empty entry. “Two Hearts?” She lunged for the entry and raced out into the cold night air. After the utter blackness of the cave, the tumbled boulders resembled hunching giants. She searched the darkness.
“Two Hearts? Where are you?”
Juniper branches snagged at her cape as she hurried up the trail, tearing the red feathers loose, and scattering them in her wake.
A low cry, like a dying rabbit, pierced the quiet.
“Two Hearts?”
Somewhere in the distance a coyote yipped, then the whole pack broke into song. Their howls rose and fell with the wind.
Ash Girl gazed up at Sister Moon. As she climbed higher into the night sky, the cold air sparkled.
A whisper, barely audible, touched Ash Girl’s ears:
“Come this way. This way.”
Ash Girl cried, “Where are you?” and trotted up the trail.
He stood in a pool of moonlight twenty body lengths from the cliff. His pointed ears and gray fur glimmered as though carved from ice.
He lifted one foot, then brought it down with a powerful thump. Then he lifted the other foot, but left it suspended in the air.
“Do you know Death’s name, Ash Girl?”
She edged toward him. “Death has a name?”
“You used to know. Don’t you remember?”
“No.” She shook her head.
His foot came down violently, and he began Dancing, his arms swaying up and down. The fringes on his white buckskin shirt and pants licked out like tongues of silver flame.
“Hurry,”
he said,
“run past me. Before she sees you.”
Ash Girl looked around. “Who? Before who sees me?”
“Hurry! Don’t you see her? There she is!”
He tore the war club from his belt and pointed behind Ash Girl.
She whirled in terror. “What?” Only black shadows met her gaze, but in places the darkness seemed to ripple and sway. “I see nothing! What are you talking about?”
She started to turn back, and glimpsed the war club just before it slammed into her head, staggering her. She screamed. “No, please! Not now!”
Two Hearts waved the club, and the wooden muzzle of his mask dropped open. A fetid coppery odor gushed out, as though he’d been gnawing on a long-dead carcass.
Ash Girl cried, “I don’t care where the voices live! Leave me alone!”
His mask lowered, and eerie, inhuman laughter split the night. Ash Girl ran.
Two Hearts’ feet pounded after her.
“Why are you doing this?” she cried, and glanced over her shoulder.
He Danced less than a body’s length away, spinning and leaping, swinging the club over his head.
“Do you know Death’s name?”
“No! I already told you, I …”
Her foot tangled in a clump of dry grass, and she sprawled face-first across the ground. Before she could rise, he stood over her, his wolf’s mask glowing. The fringes on his white sleeves trembled.
He whispered,
“Death stalks the desert, Ash Girl. She has been in the south, skimming creeks for moss, and chewing on rotting bones to survive. At this moment, she watches you, begging you to call her by name, so that she might spare you. She is hungry. Too hungry to control herself unless she knows you. Call out to her, Ash Girl. Call her by name. Tell her she knows you.”
Ash Girl shook her head. “But I do not know her name!”
He gripped his war club in both hands.
“Come closer, Ash Girl. Look at her reflection in my eyes, and you
will
remember.”
Ash Girl forced herself to look, but she saw only emptiness, and darkness.
“Two Hearts, please, I see nothing.”
“Oh, gods.”
Sobs strained his voice.
“She relishes terror even more than living flesh!”
His muzzle fell open again, and he began breathing on Ash Girl. His breath warmed her ankles and legs, then touched her hand and moved up her arm toward her face.
“What’s happening?” she cried. Gods breathed upon the dead to bring them back to life. “Why are you breathing life into me? I’m not dead!”
A shudder went through him.
As though waking from a terrible nightmare, he slowly lifted his head. Moonlight gilded his fur. He knelt so still that his sharp teeth caught the light and held it like polished pyrite mirrors. He turned toward the ruins in the distance.
Ash Girl jerked around to look.
They had built their own village, Hillside Village, alongside the massive half-moon-shaped structure that they believed to be Talon Town. In comparison, the rectangular buildings of Hillside looked pathetically small and crude.
“At the end,”
he whispered,
“witches filled the town. Did you know that? Talon Town became a hive of evil. The witches dug up the burials and robbed the corpses, taking any object that contained a shred of the First People’s Power. They wove the Power around them like capes of
stone and used it to destroy the First People. That’s why they are gone. Their fire has gone out of our blood, because they were too stupid to realize—”
“
Our
blood?” Ash Girl asked, surprised. “But you are a god, not a man.”
He turned toward her.
Moonlight filled the eye sockets of his mask and illuminated the interior. He stared at her through intense black eyes, and she saw something familiar in their shape.
Ash Girl scanned the long lashes, the delicate brow visible through the right socket.
He must have known the instant she knew.
“Yes. Go on. Scream, Ash Girl. Scream her name before it is too late.”
She grabbed for her knife.
He caught her hand and, as they struggled against each other, he whispered,
“I’ve never forgotten the feel of you, my daughter.”
W
ILLIAM “DUSTY” STEWART LOOKED OUT OVER THE desert-worn hood of his battered Bronco. A thin layer of dust had sifted over the older, rain-pocked dirt that had been partially cemented to the seared blue paint.
How like this elemental land to claim everything for its own—to mark it, infiltrate it, and become one with it.
Behind his Bronco, a convoy of vehicles threaded across the picturesque New Mexican terrain. A land of colored earth surrounded them, dotted with turquoise sagebrush, vibrant green rabbitbrush, and a pale scattering of chamisa.
Stewart rubbed his jawline with a callused right hand, feeling the stubble. He’d had trouble remembering to shave all of his life. This morning had been worse than usual. Today marked the beginning of a lifelong dream. Today he’d sink his first shovel into Chaco.
Six feet tall, blond and muscular, he wore faded Levi’s, a pair of worn Nacono boots, and an oversize T-shirt emblazoned with a Mimbres lizard and the logo for the Casa Malpais site over in Springerville, Arizona. The desert had punished his fair complexion. His oval face with its straight nose and blunt chin had a weathered look. Eventually he would have to pay for those years of sun, wind, chill, and dust. Crow’s-feet already etched the corners of his blue eyes. Not good for a man in his mid-thirties. He’d overheard women say he was too damned good-looking. A blond Adonis. Not that good looks had ever gotten him anywhere with women.
A familiar unease crept around just under his consciousness.
Don’t even consider it. Open that door to the past, and you’ll spend all day dwelling on it.
Funny how something that happened long ago could stick with a man, screw up his whole life.
At the crest of a low ridge, Dusty glanced back through the dust boiling up behind the Bronco. The land could not be escaped, not here. Grains of sand infiltrated clothes, homes, and machinery. Its tan, gritty texture eventually came to permeate everything.
The vehicles that followed his were strung out across the sage-speckled desert like gleaming beads, a quarter mile apart, linked by fading plumes of dust. To follow any closer meant clogged air filters, jammed cassette players—critical equipment in a land of only two distant radio stations—or stuck doorlocks, or automatic windows. Any other mechanical thing that liked to function in a clean, lubricated environment existed at its own peril.
Automotive engineers in Flint, Dearborn, or wherever these trucks were designed, didn’t quite understand what “off-road” really meant in the West. Over the years, and with the development of the “Sport Utility” class, something had been lost in the translation. Suburban mothers braving three inches of slush in Peoria as they carried four kids to basketball practice wasn’t quite the same challenge as being buried up to the fenders in slimy brown Kayenta mud fifty miles from the nearest pavement.
As Dusty’s Bronco rocked and jolted along the rutted dirt road, he glanced out the side window at the gnarly cactus and yellow-tufted rabbitbrush. Here and there the buff-colored sand had collected in small dunes—called sand shadows by the geomorphologists. In other places bare outcrops of sandstone concentrated the sun’s heat, ironic reminders of the ancient ocean that had once covered New Mexico and Arizona tens of millions of years past.
In another time, a mere thousand years ago, this same desert stretch had grown Ponderosa pine, juniper, and lots of grass. But that was before the Anasazi had come with their stone axes, before the frenzied building of the “Great Houses,” when over two hundred and fifty thousand trees had been cut for construction alone, not to mention the wood needed to light the giant pueblos, fire the exquisite pottery, cook their meals, and heat their homes. That was before the Anasazi population had burgeoned, and they had planted every arable hectare in corn, beans, and squash.
By the end of the eleventh century these eroded ridges had been denuded. Violent monsoon rains had washed away the topsoil, exposed the slick rock, and carved deep arroyos into the flood plains. Each centimeter had lowered the critical water tables. After the exhausted soil finally dried out, most of the people left.
Dusty crossed the cattle guard that separated Chaco Culture National Monument from the surrounding Navajo lands, and sighed as his all-terrain tires hummed on the irregular pavement. He waved at the stone-and-wood Park Service entry sign, its white letters looking so crisp on the brown background.
To his right lay Pueblo Alto, the nexus of the fabulous Anasazi road system that radiated out to the north, east, west, and south. The ruined pueblo stood hunched and broken against the western horizon. Incongruously, the cell phone chimed. Dusty rounded the curve that led into Mockingbird Canyon, blew the thin coating of dust from the gray plastic, and punched the “Send” button. “Stewart here. It’s your nickel.”
“You’re dating yourself, Stewart,” Maggie Walking Hawk Taylor’s familiar voice chided. “It’s like a dollar a minute out here, when you can get any reception at all.”
“I like dating myself.” Stewart smiled, his left hand resting on the use-polished steering wheel. “It’s cheaper, and I don’t have to impress myself with a forty-dollar bottle of wine.”
“No wonder no woman will have you for more than two months. You’re also late. Where are you?”
He ignored the comment about women. He’d just avoided falling into that funk, and he’d be damned if he’d let Maggie edge him into the abyss. “Just dropping down into the canyon. We got held up in Albuquerque. Had a major disaster. The usual place, the one that carries Guinness, was out of stock. We had to convoy across half the city, including a stop at Page One Bookstore—”
“You had to go to the bookstore to find Guinness?”
“I wish. Anyway, I’ll be at the Park Service headquarters building in five minutes.”
“Great, but I’m out at the site. Like I said, you’re late. Knowing how you play fast and loose with the rules, I thought maybe you’d decided to screw the paperwork and gone straight to the dig.”
“I always obey the rules. Oh, and it’s not a dig until we get a shovel into the ground. Technicalities, you know, Maggie?”
“If you weren’t such a brilliant archaeologist, I’d nail you, Stewart.” He heard the smile in her voice. “Anyway, I wanted to get out of the office. You know, away from the phone. I’ve got all of the paperwork here: excavation permit, a list of ten thousand park rules, the special camping permit, tons of safety requirements, and all the other bureaucratic horse pucky they pay me to enforce.” A pause. “Oh, by the way, you’re not packing that big pistol around, are you? No, firearms—”
“I left my pistol at home, Maggie,” Dusty interrupted and used his heel to jam his Model 57 Smith & Wesson back under the seat out of sight. “See you there in about fifteen.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He punched the “End” button and dropped the phone onto his seat. During the conversation, he had followed the serpentine blacktop through sheer-walled Mockingbird Canyon and out into the flat bottom of Chaco Canyon. At the stop sign, the Park Service sign pointed the way to various ruins, the campground, and visitor center. To his left, up Chaco Wash, he could see Fajada Butte, home of the Sun Dagger astronomical site, place of legend, where Spider Woman descended to earth. All across the sere landscape he could feel the Power.
Chaco called to him, beyond the centuries, across the bridge of cultures, peoples, and worlds. Only the soul-dead left Chaco Canyon unaffected.
He took the right and glanced into the rearview mirror. Sylvia’s Jeep, Michall’s Durango, Steve Sander’s ratty old Toyota Land Cruiser, and the University Suburban accelerated behind him.
At the end of summer most of the field crew returned home to prepare for next semester. The students he had left were true diehards, the stuff great archaeologists were made of. Even then, two of them would be gone in a few days. Michall Jefferson, a short woman with red hair, would be leaving for the University of Colorado, and Steve Sanders, a tall black man, for the University of Arizona.
Dusty drove west past the Visitor’s Center, and gazed out at the weathered sandstone cliffs, and the rubble of thousand-year-old pueblos that hemmed the canyon.
Chetro Ketl, its massive columns like blunt teeth stood with its straight-walled back to the cliff. The second-story hanging balcony had allowed the Anasazi to enjoy the shade during the midday heat.
Then came Pueblo Bonito, the largest Anasazi ruin in the world. In its heyday it had stood five stories tall, with over eight hundred rooms; the walls had been plastered in white clay. The place still ruled the canyon. He couldn’t help but cast sidelong glances at the stunning walls. They threw crisp shadows over the empty, ruined rooms. Where once thousands of people had walked in the light of a hundred torches, now only ghosts slipped across the courtyards.
The loop road passed Pueblo del Arroyo, then Kin Kletso, and curved southward; there, just before the road crossed Chaco Wash, a brown steel-pole barrier had been opened, the little wooden sign beside it proclaiming AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Dusty slowed and turned off the pavement. After passing Casa Chiquita, the road narrowed to an overgrown two track. Behind him, his caravan followed like a weaving mamba line, each vehicle swaying over the ruts. Sunlight reflected from chrome and glass. Greasewood made squealing sounds as it scratched the sides of his Bronco.
A single puke-green Park Service truck had been parked off to one side. No more than thirty meters beyond it, a woman stood on what looked like a rocky outcrop, the stones studded with brush. Another two hundred meters beyond her, the sheer sandstone canyon wall rose against the pale blue New Mexico sky.
Maggie Walking Hawk Taylor turned, hands propped on her hips. She stood five feet six inches tall. Her round face betrayed her Indian ancestry. The faint breeze teased unruly strands of her short black hair around her dark eyes, and broad cheekbones. She wore a Park Service uniform and tan boots on her feet. The belted brown pants hugged a trim waist. She cocked her head and smiled.
Dusty nudged his Bronco past her pickup and into a flagged area that would be the field crew’s parking lot. He set the brake and turned off the ignition. Then he fiddled through the clutter of notebooks on the passenger seat and retrieved an aluminum clipboard that held a fieldwork authorization and a site map.
Dusty opened the door and walked over to where Maggie waited
on the pile of cracked rock. Her large brown eyes reflected amusement and excitement. During the excavation she would be the “Authorized Officer,” meaning the Park Service person in charge, since the government didn’t speak real English.
“Good to see you again, Maggie.” Dusty extended his hand, and she shook it.
He looked out over the rubble. In the background he could hear the slamming of truck doors and the chatter of the field crew as they began unloading the vehicles.
“You ready for this?” Maggie asked, looking out at the section of desert. Six yellow stakes, each made of freshly sawed lath and topped with blaze-orange flagging tape, created a long rectangle in the greasewood. The stakes marked the future location of a weather monitoring site for NOAA. A tower would stand on a huge concrete slab, and solar powered antennae would beam satellite information back and forth. In all, over three thousand square meters of desert would be disturbed during construction.
“I’ve been waiting all of my life for the chance to dig here.” He opened the metal clipboard and produced his excavation permit with a flourish. “Here you go. All signed, sealed, delivered, and official.” Then he added wryly. “Just what a good, rule-bound boy like me would do.”
She took the paper, scanned it quickly, and said, “You and Dr. Robertson are listed as Co-principal Investigators. Sylvia Rhone will be the Crew Chief. Is Sylvia here?”
As if on command, Sylvia appeared, trooping through the sagebrush with a transit and tripod slung over her shoulder. Beneath a ball cap that proclaimed: “Member, Chinle Yacht Club,” her shoulder-length brown hair had been tied into a pony tail. A sleeveless red T-shirt exposed muscular, tanned arms, and she wore her faded-blue Levi’s tucked into scuffed hiking boots.
“Hey there, Magpie,” Sylvia called “Maggie” by her real name: Magpie Walking Hawk Taylor. “Long time no see. How’s life as a tourist herder?”
“Hi, Sylvia. Same old thing. The tourists still want the thirty miles of road between here and the highway paved. People keep picking up bits of pottery and stuffing them into their pockets. A couple of the rock art panels on the canyon wall were vandalized
last week. We’ve had to restrict more of the park to protect what’s left.”
“People suck.” Sylvia settled the tripod’s pointed feet onto the dirt. “Imagine how they’d trash it if that thirty-mile stretch was paved.” She looked around, her green eyes narrowing as if sighting a rifle. “It’s better like this. A private and peaceful jewel.” She paused. “Uh, we got a datum here anyplace?”
“Datum?” Maggie asked.
“The reference point we use to lay out the excavation grid,” Dusty told her. “Come on, let’s go see.”
As he walked, he pulled out the survey map Dale had drawn months ago when he first came to inspect the construction site for archaeology. The site had been given the Smithsonian number 29SJ10003. Twenty-nine for the state of New Mexico, SJ for San Juan county, and ten thousand and three for the number of sites in the county.