T
HE DANCES STOPPED.
Wind Baby thrust icy fingers through the holes in Stone Ghost’s turkey-feather cape and poked at his ribs. Stone Ghost folded his arms to block the assault and leaned against the wall. They’d found an empty, roofless chamber in the rear of Talon Town. Three-by-three body lengths, a gaping hole marred the south wall, leading out into the plaza, and a thick layer of windblown dirt, old juniper needles, and the debris from the fallen roof covered the floor.
Cloudblower sat in the far corner, to Stone Ghost’s left, her face in her hands, rocking back and forth. The red paintings of the katsinas on her buffalohide cape swayed.
“I did this,” she whispered.
“No, Healer. You did everything you could to help her.”
“Gods, how did this happen?”
Torchlight fluttered over the walls, filling the chamber like fiery wings. “Murderers are not born, Cloudblower. They are molded as children. It requires vicious, repeated, intolerable pain to chase away a child’s souls and create a nest where a monster can be born inside them.”
Cloudblower looked up through tormented eyes. “But she is a good, caring person, Elder. I thought she was just confused, heartsick.”
“Confused?”
Cloudblower shook her fists. “Yes! Once, she came to me covered with blood, and told me she had done it while she was asleep. Then, a few months later, she insisted she hadn’t done it at all. She claimed that her father had appeared out of nowhere, killed the girl, and forced her to drag the body away to a—a place she called
the ‘sanctuary.’ I did not know what to believe! But I loved her, Elder. You must understand. I loved her, and I wanted to believe her.”
“You didn’t believe her father existed?”
Cloudblower ran a hand over her long graying-black braid. “No.”
Stone Ghost pushed away from the wall, and paced the chamber. “She may genuinely believe she didn’t kill anyone. The monster soul is very curious. In my experience, it comes at a time when frightened children give up hope, when they know they cannot endure the pain alone. It is as if their own souls fission, and give birth to someone stronger, a protector who can shield them from the pain.”
Cloudblower exhaled and her breath drifted across the chamber in a white cloud. “But Elder, if that is so, why wouldn’t she remember what happened to her? She did not. I swear to you! I could tell by the look in her eyes. She believed she was telling me the truth!”
People had gathered outside the chamber, whispering. Snow squealed beneath shuffling feet.
Stone Ghost kept his voice low. “Tormented children rarely recall what happened to them, Healer. Only the monsters remember. And hate. And wait.”
Cloudblower shook her head. “But Elder, if she was hurt so much as a child, why would she hurt others? Surely she would realize—”
“She may. But I doubt that
he
does.”
Cloudblower remained silent, listening.
Stone Ghost walked toward her. “I have seen it many times, Healer. When they are old enough to inflict pain, the monster souls re-enact what happened to them, as if by hurting others, they can exorcise the memories of their own childish terror and weakness. I have often wondered, if it isn’t also an attempt to kill the terrified child who still huddles inside them.”
Cloudblower murmured. “What do you mean?”
“By driving the child’s soul out of the body entirely, the monster soul never again has to hear it crying or begging for help. Monster souls often resent the children they protected. After all, the monsters were the strong ones. They took the pain, and survived,
while the child’s soul huddled in terror with its back turned, unable even to watch.”
Cloudblower rocked back and forth, her expression tormented. Tears had streaked the white powder on her triangular face, revealing the brown skin beneath. “I do not really understand this, Elder.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Stone Ghost held up a hand. “The question is, where would she go? Where would she feel safe? We must find her, before she can kill again.”
Cloudblower wiped the tears from her cheeks, smearing the powder, and straightened. “She called the place where she dragged the bodies the ‘sanctuary.’ Perhaps—”
“Did she say where this sanctuary was?”
“No. No, she didn’t, but she told me once that it was on the road to the Land of the Dead.”
“So. West, perhaps, where Father Sun slips into the underworlds at night? Or she may have meant somewhere along the Great North Road, to the sacred lake where the eyes of the dead sparkle.”
“Perhaps.” Cloudblower steepled her fingers over her mouth for several moments, as if mustering courage. Finally she said, “Elder. There is something else I must tell you.”
Stone Ghost spread his feet. He was tired and desperately worried about Browser and Catkin. Neither one of them understood what they would be facing. They would see the face of a loved one. Stone Ghost feared it might distract them until too late. “What is it, Healer?”
“It’s about the club. The warrior who was killed two nights ago? He gave his club to Hophorn just before he left on his last war walk. They had”—she paused to swallow hard, as if it anguished her to reveal this secret—“last summer he was badly scarred in a battle, and his wife said she could not look at him. He moved into Talon Town for several moons. During that time, he and Hophorn became lovers. It ravaged her heart when he went back to Silk Moth, but they continued to care for each other. They became good friends. Hophorn told him, just before he left on the war walk, that she was frightened. He was worried about her. He gave her his club and made himself a new one. That is why—”
“Yes, I understand,” Stone Ghost said, and nodded. “That explains many things. Thank you for telling me.”
Stone Ghost walked to the gaping hole and gazed out at the plaza. A milling crowd of people waited for them. Flame Carrier stood in the front, her old eyes fixed on Stone Ghost.
“Elder?” Cloudblower called.
“Yes?” He turned.
She rose to her feet with her fists clenched at her sides. “Please? I know it will not be easy. Too many people have been hurt, but I beg you to bring her back alive. I can help her now. I’m sure of it.
Please.
Let me try?”
“I am willing, Healer,” he answered, “but I am not so sure about the families of her victims.”
Stone Ghost stepped into the plaza, and people rushed toward him.
CATKIN WOKE, BUT DID NOT MOVE. A MAN WHISPERED A short distance to her right.
It was
his
voice.
She lay on her back, her head throbbing sickeningly. Ropes bound her hands and feet. Wind Baby had quieted. Not even a breeze disturbed the morning.
Snowflakes landed softly on Catkin’s hot face.
Father Sun must have risen, but only dim gray light penetrated the clouds.
Catkin inched her head toward the man’s voice and froze, unable to look away.
Less than six hands distant, a body lay, the arms and legs sprawled. The flesh had been stripped from the bones. Only the head remained intact.
Hophorn’s long black hair haloed her pretty face. Her lips had parted, and snow melted on her wide dead eyes, leaving them shiny as if brimming with tears.
The murderer knelt at Hophorn’s feet, using a red chert knife to scrape her lower leg bone. Tall, his blood-spattered white cape swung around him as he moved. The gray fur of his mask gleamed with a silver hue. An exquisite mask, expertly carved, long leather ears pricked alertly on top of his head. The white muzzle sparkled
with sharp teeth. A black line, the breath road, ran from his nostrils, over the top of his head, and—though she couldn’t see it, she knew—down his back to the base of his spine. As he scraped flesh from the bone, he whispered to himself.
Catkin subtly tested her ropes.
He stopped whispering. And turned. An odd black gleam shone through his eye sockets.
“I thought you were awake.”
He rose from his grisly task and walked to stand over her. The pungent scent of fresh blood wafted from his swaying cape. Softly, he said, “Cloudblower told you, didn’t she? She told you about me?”
Catkin shook her head. “I—I don’t know.”
“Yesterday morning on the rim. I heard part of it. She told you what Ash Girl’s father did to her when she was a child, didn’t she?”
The discussion about the woman?
“She—she might have. She told me about a woman who’d been hurt.”
“Hurt?” he snorted in derision. “He used to shove war clubs inside her when she was two. Two!” He knelt and lowered his mask very close to Catkin’s face, hissing, “Without me, he would have killed her.”
Catkin choked back her nausea, and said, “Who are you?”
He sank down to the snow, his knees spread wide like an adolescent boy puffed up with himself. He toyed with the knife in his hands. “She was three. Maybe four when I came.”
Catkin closed one eye, and the pain in her head dimmed a little. “What’s your name?”
“Yellow Dove. I took care of her.”
Catkin squinted. She’d never heard of him. He must not be from anywhere near Hillside Village. He seemed to be watching her intently, as if eager to talk.
Catkin forced a swallow down her dry throat. “What did her father do when you came?”
“He didn’t even know I was there!” With lightning quickness, he threw his knife and stuck it in the snow less a finger’s width from Catkin’s elbow. She flinched. He laughed, pulled the knife out, then he flipped it in his hands. His voice grew husky. “He’d taken her out into the forest, away from the village, because he
didn’t want people to hear her scream. When he started to hurt her, she fell asleep. Like always. That’s when I came.” He leaned forward, and Catkin could see a glimmer of black human eyes in the wolf’s mask.
“Did you fight with him?”
“I made sure he couldn’t hurt her anymore. I made her go away.”
Catkin’s vision blurred. The world spun around her in a haze of white, and gray. She closed her eyes. “Go where? Away from her village? Where did she go?”
Catkin eased onto her side, facing him, and opened her eyes.
He made a soft disgusted sound and got up. He started to walk away, then turned back. “He’s the one who killed her, you know. She was going to have his baby and he knew it.”
Nausea welled in Catkin’s throat. She choked it back, and whispered, “Her father killed her?”
“Of course, he did. At the end, he kept asking her if she knew Death’s name. But she’d never known. I knew. I could have told him. He used to threaten her with Shadow Woman as a child. He’d say, ‘You’d better not tell your mother what we did today, or I’ll tell Shadow Woman, and she’ll chew your heart out of your body.’ He’d repeat the name over and over,
Shadow Woman, Shadow Woman
, as if it meant something that Ash Girl should understand.”
Catkin said, “Who was Shadow Woman?”
“She helped him to kill Ash Girl. They both killed her. They wanted to kill her baby, too, but I wouldn’t let them.” He lowered a hand to his belly as though a child rested inside.
“Ash Girl’s baby? You mean—her son?”
“I don’t know what it was. But she hadn’t had her bleeding in three moons. She was pregnant with her father’s child, believe me.”
Catkin could feel herself on the verge of blacking out. A gray haze fluttered at the edges of her vision, and she was only hearing every few words he said. She had to keep him talking. The longer he talked the longer she lived. She laid her head in the snow. “How did her father kill her?”
“She thought he was a Spirit Helper. She begged him to make the voices in her head go away. The old fool told her he could do it. He said he knew where voices lived.” He aimed the knife at
the snowy ground. “He used these women and girls to find out. When he hit them in the head, and they lost their abilities to speak, he knew.” He turned suddenly and spat into the snow. “The voices in her head. She meant
me!
She wanted him to kill me! Can you believe that? After all I’d done for her. I’m the one who took the beatings! I’m the one who had to look into his eyes when he groaned on top of her!”
He turned to peer at Catkin through the black holes in the mask. “Oh, he could kill voices, all right. It worked with Ash Girl. But not the way he’d expected. He’s kept me tied up in a cave for the past seven days, trying to figure out who I am, and how to get his daughter back.” His deep voice went high, pitiful. “He wanted to hurt her more! I couldn’t let him. I remember the way it was. I wouldn’t let him do it!”
Gods, help me. His souls are loose. He’s completely mad.
The pain in her head blinded her for several heartbeats. When the world came back into focus, she saw strange snow-frosted shapes around her:
Frozen fingers reaching for the sky. Twisted faces.