The old man bent down next to the bundle and frowned.
“What is that, Uncle?” Browser examined the room behind them, then turned back.
“You wouldn’t have to ask if you were closer. The smell of rotting flesh is very distinctive, even wrapped in thick fabric.”
Browser leaned against the door frame, where he could watch their back trail. “Human, or animal?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Stone Ghost began unwrapping the yellow fabric.
He had to tug the last layer loose from the blood-caked skull. The bones of the nose, cheeks, forehead, and jaw had been crushed. The hair was cut short in mourning.
Browser suddenly felt lightheaded. Blood pounded in his ears as he stepped forward. “Uncle …”
Stone Ghost ripped the cloth away to expose the ribs, the empty gut, and hips. The bones had been stripped. The thigh bones
were welded stiffly to the pelvis by dried ligament and tendon. Even the thin strips of muscle between the ribs had been cut out.
“Curious.” Stone Ghost reached down, and slipped off the anklet that adorned her foot. Made of carved jet beads threaded on a braided yucca string, it was beautiful. He slid it onto his own wrist, and reached for the bracelet.
“Blessed Katsinas,” Browser whispered.
He ran forward and bent over the corpse. The familiar jet bracelet, carved into the shape of a serpent, caught the weak solstice light.
“Uncle, this … this is my wife.”
Browser’s knees went weak.
“What happened to her? Uncle? Why is her—her flesh gone!”
But as he said it, he knew.
Browser sank to the floor and gasped for breath. “Oh, gods, dear gods.”
THE DAWN HORIZON GLOWED WITH AN EERIE LUMINESCENCE that only a desert could spawn. Maureen tipped her head back, enchanted by the sight, wondering at the diffuse pastel aurora. The lilting calls of coyotes rang from the canyon walls.
All night long, she had walked down the dirt road, alternately cursing Stewart, and teetering around the edges of the abyss left by John’s death.
Around midnight, she had ended up in the huge ruins of the giant pueblo where she now sat on a low sandstone wall, shivering, hunched over for warmth. How could a place roast you during the day, and freeze you at night?
Whether she looked inside herself or out at the greasewood, chamisa, and sagebrush, the view was the same: Dry, empty, and lonely.
The first plaintive songs of the morning birds filled the air. Bats fluttered around the dark face of the cliff to her left. She watched them in an odd haze of memory, seeing John’s body sprawled on the kitchen floor, his wide eyes staring sightlessly into hers, feeling his hand, all the strength and warmth gone. The stench of burning spaghetti sauce mixed poignantly with the fragrances of the desert and dawn. She’d come home late from a faculty meeting. The shock of finding him still numbed her.
Maureen rubbed her arms.
She wanted to go home. This wasn’t her place. None of her ancestors had ever trod this sere landscape. Her place was faraway. Cool, with slow, dark rivers, and billowing white clouds. The spirits of her ancestors, Seneca and white, moved in the Ontario shadows, not here.
She surveyed the ruins. Tumbled, ghostly walls—the wreckage of ancient dreams—thrust up around her. To her right, the gaping circle of a kiva yawned. A wooden marker bearing a white “10” indicated that she had stopped at some tourist point-of-interest. She rose from the stone wall and stared into the giant subterranean ceremonial chamber. Eyes seemed to peer back at her from the shadowed depths. For the briefest of moments, she could have sworn she heard singing, then the booming of a jet high overhead drowned it out.
She rubbed her eyes. “You’re tired. Hurting. You’ve been up all night wandering around with ghosts. No wonder you’re hearing things.”
After John’s death, she’d worked herself pitilessly, never missing a class. Weekends had been the worst. She’d rushed to her car after her last class, driven down Queen Elizabeth Way to her favorite liquor store in Niagara-on-the-Lake, then gone to their lonely home, locked herself in, and drunk herself into oblivion. Beyond feeling. Beyond any …
The sound of gravel crunching under a boot made her turn.
He stood silhouetted against the dawn, tall, his blond hair shining. A stab of fear went through her in that instant before she placed the rumpled straw cowboy hat.
“Get away from me, Stewart.”
He thrust his thumbs into his jeans’ pockets, as if cowed. “I’m truly sorry, Maureen.”
“You certainly are.”
He winced, shifted uneasily, and looked at the sunrise. The iridescent sky glittered with bands of indigo and orange. “I’ve been tracking you all night. It’s given me a lot of time to think.”
“You? Think? Did it give you a headache?” She crossed her arms, not wanting to shiver against the cold. Not in front of him.
His face was in profile, but she saw his brow line. “Tracking you wasn’t so bad at first. In the moonlight, I could follow your tracks down the dust to the road. After that, I had to search every room in Kin Kletso and Pueblo del Arroyo. You wouldn’t believe the size of the rattlesnake I stepped on. I guess he lives in the Mesa Verdean addition over at Arroyo.”
She looked at the ruins to the south. “Mesa Verdean addition?”
He nodded. “Anasazi migrants. They reinhabited the canyon around A.D. twelve-fifty.” He pointed behind her. “They also rebuilt the great kiva behind you. Roofed it, plastered it, painted it. We think it was a messianic movement, maybe the start of the kachina religion.”
She took a deep breath. “What’s the name of this place?”
The massive stone walls had solidified in the growing light. “This is Pueblo Bonito. Up until about eighteen-thirty, it was the largest building in North America. As best we can guess, it stood five stories tall and had over eight hundred rooms. When it gets a little lighter, I’ll take you around. The masonry will stun you.”
She could see the regret in his eyes. He really was trying hard to apologize.
“You’re an enigma to me, Stewart. I can’t figure you out.”
To her surprise, he said, “That’s all right, I’m an enigma to myself. I have this black place inside me. I don’t like to admit it, but it’s there. Sometimes, it opens up, and I say outrageous things like I did last night. Then I spend the rest of my life kicking myself for it.”
“For the sake of efficiency, I hope your knees are double-jointed.”
He peered down into the shadowed depths of the kiva. After a long silence, he added, “A lot of Power was concentrated down there. You can still feel it. Some good, some bad. The old gods still dance, echoing the beginning times and the journey up from the underworlds.” He paused. “That black place inside me, it’s my own kiva, I guess. I keep the past locked up in there.”
As though uncomfortable, he bowed his head. “I’m going to dig that unit you want me to.”
Maureen frowned, trying to figure his angle. “Why?”
He vented a deep sigh. “If we don’t, we’ll never know which of us is right. Is it a slaves’ burial ground, or a murderer’s hiding place?”
She gave him an askance look. “Can we dig the unit? Will Maggie authorize it?”
“Well,” he said and scanned the brightening sky. “It’s about three miles back to the site and asking her that exact question. Which means we ought to get started.” He held out a hand. “If you’re ready.”
“
D
O YOU NEED TO REST?” LITTLE BOW ASKED MARSH Hawk.
She stood bent over, her beautiful round face twisted in agony. Marsh Hawk’s cough had grown worse. She could barely take ten steps before another fit doubled her over.
Marsh Hawk shook her head. “No, I am well enough, husband, and it—it isn’t much farther. When we get there I will have all night to rest.” The curly brown hair on her buffalo cape looked black in the twilight.
Since noon, they had been falling farther and farther behind, straggling at the rear of the Frosted Meadow procession. His brother, Singing Mantis, walked just ahead of them, his bow in his hand, anxiously studying the canyon bottom.
Little Bow stroked Marsh Hawk’s shoulder-length black hair. “Very well, but I am planning to rest on the other side of the wash.”
She smiled. “All right, husband. I will do as you say.”
As Sister Moon rose higher into the sky, her silver gleam flooded the canyon, shimmering in the twisted junipers and outlining every dark crevice in the sandstone walls. Shadows draped the rocky rim like a string of polished black heads.
Ahead of them, Talon Town gleamed. The fifth story had collapsed into a heap of jutting timbers and fallen stones. Most of the plaster had cracked off and scattered the ground around the enormous half-moon-shaped structure like a dirty white apron, but torches burned everywhere, and he could smell the scent of cedar fires and frying bread. To the right of the town, Hillside Village sat against the cliff, white and rectangular. A large fire burned in the plaza.
Many small camps scattered the flats, and he could see groups of people standing in the wavering firelight.
“Hallowed Ancestors,” he murmured. “I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Talon Town looks alive.”
His great-grandmother, the Blessed Horned Bird, had told him many tales of the rise and fall of the grandest town in the Straight Path nation. On cold winter nights, she’d held Little Bow close and whispered of the wicked First People and their evil courtship of the lost ghosts who roamed the canyon.
She had often spoken about the Blessed Cornsilk. Her father had been a great warrior, one of the Made People and her mother had been the highest Matron in the land. Horned Bird had vowed that if Cornsilk had only taken her rightful place as Matron of Talon Town when Night Sun left, the Straight Path nation would still be strong: “The Blessed Cornsilk would have built alliances, not waged wars. She would have extended the trade routes so her people would have had food in the dark times. Cornsilk would have sniffed out the plots and stopped the First People before they started hiring assassins to take each other’s lives.”
Then, immediately after telling this story about the great and Blessed Cornsilk, Horned Bird would speak in low tones about the death of the last of the First People, and the celebration that lasted for a full sun cycle.
Marsh Hawk started down the road into the steep, jagged ravine, and Little Bow followed. Gravel grated beneath his sandals.
“You don’t think that crazy old man will be here, do you?”
Over her shoulder Marsh Hawk called, “Everyone else is coming. I don’t see why Stone Ghost wouldn’t.”
Little Bow leaped the trickle of water flowing in the bottom of the wash and started up the opposite side of the drainage. Marsh Hawk weaved in front of him and started coughing, the sound raw and wet.
He trotted to her side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, holding her up while she trembled and gasped. The effort coaxed tears from her eyes. Marsh Hawk leaned against him until the fit passed, then she gulped air and wiped her face with her hand.
“I’m sorry, husband. I know I’m the reason we have fallen so far behind.”
She rested her chin on his shoulder, and Little Bow hugged her. Her swollen belly pressed comfortingly against him. He patted her back. “In a finger of time, we will catch up.”
He held her as they climbed up out of the wash and onto the sandy flats. Moonlight sheathed the desert, casting odd shadows. Mixed with the flickering amber glow cast by Talon Town and the fires of the smaller camps, the shadows seemed to crawl toward them in a rush, then scamper away as if frightened by their human scents.
“I want you to sit down and rest, my wife. You are ill and with child. A few moments will harm no one.”
Marsh Hawk sank to the ground and heaved a tired breath. “Just a few moments, Little Bow, then we’ll be on our way.”
“Rest as long as you need to. We are in sight of the town. This night will be filled with nothing but reminiscences and feasting anyway. Tomorrow, the holy work begins.”
As he knelt by her side, an uneasy sensation crept through Little Bow. He squinted for a long moment at the darkness, wondering what had happened to everyone else. They must have descended into a dip, or perhaps the firelight had blinded him. A large boulder tipped precariously over the bank to his left. Little Bow reached for his club. The boulder cast an oddly shaped shadow. His souls could conjure the shape of a tall man’s shoulder, and a leg almost hidden by the rock. He stared at it.
“Look, husband. The rest of the village is almost there,” Marsh Hawk said and tipped her chin toward the fire blazing in front of Hillside village.
The first in a straggling line of people walked into the crowd, and voices rose. Matron Corn Mother strode directly toward a woman wearing a red-feathered cape, and they embraced.
“That must be Flame Carrier.”
“Yes,” Marsh Hawk said. “The new Matron of Talon Town.”
Little Bow smiled at the irony. Flame Carrier was one of the Made People, a member of the Ant Clan, masons, architects, and artists. The First People’s ghosts locked inside Talon Town must be shrieking at the insult.
He dragged his gaze away. Inside Talon Town, he could just see the upper torsos of the Great Warriors. The eye sockets in their
fierce masks gleamed with a curious fire, as if anxiously gazing beyond the people, and the camps, to the desert where Marsh Hawk and Little Bow knelt. Little Bow had the discomforting feeling that they saw something he did not.
He put a hand on Marsh Hawk’s shoulder. “If you are rested, wife, we should go.”
She looked up. “I thought you told me to take as long as I wished, husband?”
“I did, but …” he paused, his senses suddenly on alert. An owl hooted in the darkness, and he caught sight of a dark body sailing over their heads. “I think we should leave.”
Marsh Hawk shoved to her feet and scanned the moonlit desert. Barely audible, she murmured, “Why? What do you—”
He cut the air with a fist.
“Walk.”
She did.
Little Bow drew his war club, and held it at his side. He followed on his wife’s heels, protecting her back.
“Shh,”
someone hissed from behind them.
In one fluid movement, Little Bow shoved Marsh Hawk to the ground, and whirled around with his club up. “Who’s there?”
A shadow detached itself from the boulder, and hoarsely whispered,
“Run away before it’s too late!”
Little Bow took a step toward the man. “Who are you?”
“Great evil lurks in these ruins, Little Bow. Did they not tell you?”
He sucked in a desperate breath, as though he’d been running for a hand of time to get here. The shadow seemed to turn around, as if fearfully gazing over his shoulder.
“If you do not leave, you will have to do battle with the Wolf Witch, the most powerful witch in the world. Leave. Now!”
Little Bow’s mouth dropped open, but no words came.
The shadow hissed,
“Ask them about the ashes. Ask them, Little Bow.”
“What ashes? What are you talking about?”
The man seemed to dissipate into the air. The shadow vanished.
“Wa-wait!” Little Bow called. “Who are you? I don’t understand !”
Marsh Hawk cautiously sat up, her eyes wide with fear. Pale sand caked the front of her buffalo cape. Neither of them spoke for
three or four hundred heartbeats, then Marsh Hawk whispered, “Hurry. Let’s go.”
Little Bow wavered. If he’d been on a war walk, he would have run the man down, and demanded an explanation at the point of a deerbone stiletto, but he couldn’t leave his pregnant wife alone in the darkness.
Little Bow reached down and helped Marsh Hawk to her feet. She was shaking, her gaze on the place where the man had vanished.
“Stay to my right,” Little Bow instructed. “Walk quickly, but do not run. I must watch and listen. If you get too far ahead of me, I cannot protect you.”
Marsh Hawk nodded.
They started for Hillside village.
He heard nothing. No steps. No breathing. No leggings catching on brush.
But the owl’s shadow wheeled over the ground, as if circling them.
Little Bow dared not look, but his heart fluttered. What if the man were a witch? Witches were canny. They could change themselves into whirlwinds, and careen around villages unnoticed, or leap through magical hoops of twisted yucca fibers, and turn themselves into animals.
They were especially fond of night birds.
It took all of his strength, but he kept his gaze on the surrounding brush, searching for a human foe. Ordinary flesh and blood could be killed. He did not know about enchanted witches.
When they came to within fifty paces of the crowd in Hillside village, Little Bow turned to Marsh Hawk and shouted,
“Run!”
She gripped handfuls of her long skirt and ran hard, her hair flying out behind her.
Only when she had entered the crowd, did Little Bow grant himself the luxury of flight. He whirled and his muscular legs drove into the ground. He blasted into the crowd, and shouldered through the sea of people, following his wife.
Marsh Hawk saw him behind her, and stopped. Little Bow waved her ahead. “Go on!” he called. “Tell Corn Mother.”
Marsh Hawk headed for her.
Corn Mother halted her conversation with Flame Carrier. Her wise old eyes fixed on Marsh Hawk.
Marsh Hawk knelt before Corn Mother, and breathlessly said, “Matron, forgive me, but we must speak with you.”
“What is it, child?” Corn Mother clasped the hood of her blue-and-white-striped cape at the throat. Thick gray hair stuck out around her hood, and her skeletal face, with its jutting lower jaw, appeared unnaturally pale in the fire’s sheen.
Flame Carrier, who sat beside her, frowned. She had small narrow eyes, and a bulbous nose. A few kinky gray hairs made up her eyebrows. She sat on a deerhide, dressed in a beautiful red macaw-feather cape.
It took Little Bow a while to work his way through the two hundred or more people in the plaza. Some sat in small groups, others stood, talking and laughing.
“Forgive us, Elders,” he said as he bowed to the matrons, “but this is urgent.”
Corn Mother searched his face, then Marsh Hawk’s, and said, “Tell me.”
“A man stopped us at the wash, Matron. Well, I—I think it was a man,” Marsh Hawk corrected herself. “It seemed to be a man.”
Flame Carrier’s expression turned grave. She quietly asked, “What man?”
“We could not see him, Matron,” Marsh Hawk answered, “but he called to us from the shadows.”
“Yes?” Corn Mother asked. “What did he say?”
“He said that great evil lurked in these ruins, Matron, and told us if we stayed here we would have to do battle with the Wolf Witch, the most powerful witch in the world.”
“He said something else, Matron,” Little Bow added. “He told us to ask about the ashes.”
“Then vanished into the night.”
Corn Mother mouthed the words:
the Wolf Witch.
Flame Carrier gripped her arm. “Do you know what that means?”
The people closest to them went silent, and their gazes riveted on the matrons. A din of whispering broke out.
Corn Mother said, “Stories. I remember stories from when I was a child.”
The crowd rearranged itself, creeping forward, forming a ring around the two old women.
Another coughing fit struck Marsh Hawk. She tried to cover the sound with both hands. The fit affected her like a seizure, her whole body tensed, and quaked.
Little Bow slid over, put his arm around Marsh Hawk’s back, and drew her against him.
Matron Corn Mother waited until the fit had eased then began slowly, as if the words took effort. “It began about one hundred sun cycles ago. They knew they were in trouble. They began sealing exterior windows and doorways—actually walling them up with stone and mortar. Talon Town was originally open in the front, allowing people to come and go as they wished. Did you know that?”
“No, Elder,” Little Bow answered.
“Yes, when they first grew scared, they built that string of rooms on the south side, but they left two gates. Then they closed off the gate to the eastern half of the plaza, and narrowed the western gate to the width of an ordinary doorway. Finally, that gate, too, was walled off. They even closed the small vents that allowed air to circulate through the town. The only way in or out was over the walls by ladder.”