“I’m a scientist. If I can’t prove it I can’t believe it.” But that wasn’t quite true. Maureen thought about her bones. They always seemed to be comforted by the warmth of her touch. “What did the Hopi woman say about the lonely Cheyenne medicine bundles ?”
“She said, ‘Why would they be lonely? They have each other.’” Sylvia gave Maureen an askance look and added, “I had bad dreams about talking artifacts for weeks. If you think the babbling toilets on TV are grotesque, you should see a coprolite chatting with a kachina mask. ‘Hey, Wolf Kachina, check out this next tourist. What a babe, huh?’”
Sylvia brushed dirt away from the super orbital torus, the brow ridge, and Maureen frowned at the cranial depression fractures that scarred the bone. All had healed, except for the section smashed by the stone that had landed on her head. None of the fractures appeared to be the cause of death, though Maureen wouldn’t know for sure until she had the skull in her hands.
Her gaze lifted to Dusty. As he bent over in the shallow pit, his T-shirt conformed to the muscles in his broad shoulders. Before she knew it, Maureen found herself studying the lines of his tall body, and the way the sunlight glistened from the sweat on his tanned legs.
“Enchanted by something, Washais?” Sylvia said in a knowing voice.
Maureen gave her a bland look. “How are you coming with that skull?”
“Give me another fifteen minutes, and it’s yours. I still have to—”
Maggie Walking Hawk blurted,
“Where?”
Maureen shielded her eyes.
Hail Walking Hawk pointed at something in Stewart’s excavation unit. Excited murmurs broke out.
“When you’re finished with the skull, Sylvia, give me a call. I’m going to go see what Stewart found.”
“You got it.” Sylvia waved “good-bye” with her trowel.
As Maureen walked, her eyes drifted over the canyon. Thick streaks of black minerals flowed down the buff-colored canyon walls, giving them a mottled, melted appearance. Two large ravens floated on the searing air currents above the rim, cawing and clucking.
As Maureen approached, Mrs. Walking Hawk glanced up. Gray hair blew around her wrinkled face, tangling with her eyelashes. She said, “Hello, Washais. We found that lost boy. No wonder I could hear him so good. He wasn’t buried very deep.”
“Really?” Maureen stopped at the edge of the pit, and gazed down. Stewart’s green T-shirt clung to his back in sweat-drenched folds, and sun-bleached blond hair matted his temples under his rumpled cowboy hat. A thin coating of tan dust sparkled on his reflective sunglasses.
In the bottom of the pit, the tiny bones of a fetus rested in the abdominal cavity of a young woman. A stone rested over the woman’s head, but Maureen could see the bones from the shoulders down. The excavation unit couldn’t have been more than thirty centimeters deep.
Maureen knelt, gauging the size of the delicate bone structure with a practiced eye. “The fetus was about three months,” she said.
Stewart didn’t answer. His attention rested on an artifact between the woman’s third and fourth ribs. Maureen said, “Isn’t it odd that this burial is so shallow?”
Stewart blew dust from the artifact, and reached for a brush. As he worked, he said, “It’s not odd if you look at the stratigraphy of the other burials, Doctor. This site looks fairly flat now, but when the burials were interred the site sloped to the south at a five-degree angle. Centuries of wind and rain redeposited the soil, filling in the low spots. None of these burials were dug very deep.”
“Another argument for winter interment?”
Stewart used his tape measure and line level to record the provenience, then repeated the photo ritual Maureen had just seen Sylvia perform. As he opened his clipboard and painstakingly drew the artifact in on the excavation form map, complete with the measurements and depth, he said, “It certainly is, Doctor.”
He set his clipboard aside, reached for a dental pick, and gently levered the artifact from between the ribs. A low admiring whistle came from his lips. “This is beautiful.”
“What is it?” Maureen asked.
Stewart handed it up to her. “It’s a jet pendant.”
Maureen carefully rubbed away the dirt that clung to the red coral eye, and gaped at the exquisite workmanship. “Gorgeous.”
Maggie walked around the pit, and said, “May I see it?”
“Of course.” Maureen gave it to her, and Maggie took it back to her aunt.
Mrs. Walking Hawk felt the pendant with her knobby old fingers. “Tell me what it looks like, Magpie?”
Maggie said, “It’s a shiny black stone, Aunt. It’s been carved into the shape of a coiled serpent lying in the center of a cracked eggshell.” Maggie tipped the pendant, and the coral eye flashed in the sun. “The snake has one red eye. It—”
Hail Walking Hawk gasped, threw the pendant to the ground, and began frantically wiping her hands on her yellow dress. “Get it away!”
“Why?” Maggie shouted. “What is it, Aunt? What’s wrong?”
“Basilisk!”
she hissed.
“What? I’ve never—”
“Go get me some eggs, Magpie! From the ice chest. Do it right now!”
Maggie ran.
Stewart’s forehead furrowed. He studied Mrs. Walking Hawk for several moments, then said,
“El basilisco?”
Hail Walking Hawk nodded.
“Si. El basilisco es como los brujos, duerme con los ojos abiertos.”
Stewart leaned against the pit wall. Without being asked, he translated, “The Basilisk is like the witches, for he sleeps with his eyes open.”
Maureen said, “What’s a basilisk?”
Stewart removed his sunglasses, and looked up at her with bright blue eyes. “A mythical creature. In South America it’s a snake born from an egg laid by a cock. But in the southwestern U.S., any bird can give birth to a basilisk, and it’s usually described as a shapeless, hideous creature, not a snake, but more closely resembling a malformed chick.”
Maureen studied the agony on Mrs. Walking Hawk’s wrinkled face. Her lips trembled. Maureen said, “Why is that terrifying?”
“It isn’t. Unless you’re afraid of monsters. If the monster sees you before you see it, you die. Lots of southwestern tribes believe that only witches can look into a basilisk’s eye and live.” From the corner of his mouth, he added, “Which is, incidentally, what you just did.”
“I did?”
He nodded. “Uh-huh. A number of people die every year from
doing the same thing. People suspected of witchcraft are forced to look at a pendant like that, and if their toes don’t curl up on the spot, they’re obviously witches and are put to death.”
“Dead if you do, and dead if you don’t?”
“Right.”
Maureen turned when Maggie ran up with the bottom half of her T-shirt filled with eggs. Sweat coated her round face, and matted short black hair to her cheeks. “I brought six, Aunt Hail. Is that enough?”
Hail Walking Hawk said, “First, we have to get rid of the snake …” She used the toe of her shoe to push the pendant toward Stewart. “Put it back in the ground, Dusty. Cover it up. Hurry.”
Stewart used his trowel to pick up the pendant, and it seemed to take an act of will for him bury it in the corner of the excavation unit, but he did it. Maureen suspected he would have looked the same if he’d just been forced to swallow cyanide.
Hail Walking Hawk waved a frail old hand. “Magpie, give everybody here an egg, then start rubbing yourself down. The pure white shell draws the evil of the monster out of the body.”
Maureen took the egg Maggie offered, and watched Mrs. Walking Hawk. The old woman rubbed the egg over her face, then her arms, and finally, she lifted her yellow hem and started rubbing her sticklike legs. Maureen felt foolish, but she did the same, as did Stewart. When they’d all finished, Maggie collected the eggs, and said, “What should I do now, Aunt?”
“Go bash the eggs on rocks. Make sure they all break. That destroys the evil.”
Maggie walked away and began dropping the eggs onto a flat piece of sandstone. The yolks splattered the ground.
Hail Walking Hawk held her gnarled hands up to the sere blue sky, and began singing. The song had a soft haunting quality.
The commotion must have been too much for Sylvia. She crawled out of her excavation unit, and walked across the site with a curious expression on her lean dirt-streaked face. Her pale green shirt billowed in the breeze. “What’s going on?”
Stewart put a finger to his lips, and waved her over. When Sylvia knelt beside him on the edge of the pit, Stewart whispered, “I found a witch’s pendant. We’ve all been contaminated by the evil.”
“Cool,” Sylvia said, examining the bones of the woman and unborn child in the pit. “Where is it?”
“I buried it.”
Sylvia’s green eyes flared. “Why?”
“It was either that, or slit Mary the Hun’s throat. She’s the one who looked the monster straight in the eye, and refused to drop dead.”
“Wow,” Sylvia said, and squinted at Maureen. “Can I try next?”
Stewart put his reflective sunglasses back on and paused thoughtfully, watching Hail Walking Hawk. Under his breath, he answered, “Not unless you want bean burritos for breakfast the rest of the week.”
THE SETTING SUN SHOT GOLDEN RAYS ACROSS THE SKY, and lit the mountains to the east. The snow-capped peaks shimmered with a rosy fire. At midday, Catkin had rolled her cape and tied it over her pack, running in her knee-length blue war shirt. But she could already feel the chill of night eating at her arms. Soon, she would have to stop and put her cape on again.
The day had been warm for the Buffalo Pawing Moon. Most of the snow had melted. Mud puddles filled the trail, and sparkled like silver eyes across the desert.
Catkin had barely eaten in three days. She felt weak and lightheaded. Thank the gods that old Stone Ghost had forced her to share his prairie dog soup. That was the only real meal she’d had. Otherwise she had contented herself by chewing on jerky strips as she ran, dipping handfuls of water from the puddles when she grew thirsty.
Stone Ghost.
She shook her head.
What an odd old man.
His daft demeanor one instant, and lance-sharp questions the next, made it seem like two people inhabited his body: one perfectly rational, the other utterly mad. His lunatic appearance, however, did have advantages. The old man could pry loose a person’s most deeply held secrets before he realized what had happened.
What would he find when he questioned Matron Flame Carrier or the obnoxious Peavine?
Catkin leaped a large puddle and sprinted on down the trail. She could see the rim of Straight Path canyon in the distance, shining
like a winding strip of pure gold. To her left, Father Sun sank through a frothy layer of Cloud People. If she could keep up this pace, she might make it home before full darkness veiled the land.
Catkin pulled her war club from her belt and carried it in front of her.
The trail curved around a drainage channel, and, for a time, headed west toward the sunset. Catkin watched the last molten sliver of Father Sun’s face vanish below the horizon. The Cloud People gleamed in iridescent shades of crimson, orange, and the palest of yellows.
Over the past three days, she had considered every possible person in Hillside village who might be the murderer, but she just could not believe any of them capable of such a heinous deed. Granted, she had known the villagers for less than a sun cycle, but none of them showed signs of madness or of harboring a hatred deep enough to make sense of what had happened. Not even the loathsome Peavine would do such a thing.
Oh, Peavine had hated Ash Girl. Everyone knew that. Her rage began the day Ash Girl ran into the village proclaiming she had received a Spirit Helper. Peavine had refused to believe it. She had spent half her life seeking a Helper and never received one. Peavine accused Ash Girl of lying, of claiming she had received a Spirit Helper to get attention. Then Peavine started a rumor that Ash Girl had turned to witchery to advance herself. Several people sided with Peavine. Others did not.
But whatever side they took, few people liked Peavine. Catkin often wanted to whack her in the head to stem the maliciousness that poured from the woman’s mouth, but Peavine would never think of killing someone and then redressing the corpse in a man’s clothing. More important, Peavine, and everyone else, loved Hophorn. She wouldn’t have hurt her.
Near the canyon rim, a line of wind-smoothed boulders stood. They looked like gigantic eggs that had melted together and frozen. The pale blue gleam of twilight turned them a rich shade of lavender. At the base of the boulders a natural cistern always held clean water this time of sun cycle. Catkin had drunk out of enough muddy hoofprints during the last two days. She longed for a drink that she didn’t have to strain through her teeth.
As she neared the boulders, she heard a sound. Soft and muted.
She stopped.