The women and girls …
She sucked deep breaths into her lungs.
The Wolf Katsina rose and returned to loom over Hophorn. “She knew,” he said in a resentful voice. “She knew all about me. The War Chief used to whisper to her when they coupled. He thought his wife was talking in her sleep, using strange voices. He didn’t know who I was, but he—”
“The War Chief?” Catkin said, barely audible. “Do you mean Browser?”
“Of course, I do. Oh, yes, he used to go to you for talk, but he went to her for what his wife wouldn’t give him. And you were such a pathetic fool, you didn’t know.”
As Catkin’s pulse rate increased, the pain seemed to jet through her veins. Browser and Hophorn? Lovers? In the past, yes, but …
The Wolf Katsina grabbed Hophorn by the feet and dragged her to a shallow hole hacked into the ground. He threw her in face-first, then kicked at the snow until he found what he’d been searching for. He lifted a sandstone slab over his head, and hurled it down on top of Hophorn. The splitting skull made a dull, watery crack.
“Why did you do—do that?” Catkin demanded to know. “She was a g-good woman. She wasn’t a witch!”
“I don’t want her soul coming after me. She’s going to think I did this. I didn’t, but she’ll think so.”
“Why would she think you killed her?”
“She can’t tell the difference between me and Ash Girl’s father. He’s tricky. He disguises himself. Not even Ash Girl knew it was her father when he first came to her here in Straight Path Canyon. Oh, he called her ‘daughter’ and acted like he loved her, but she didn’t know who he was until just before he killed her.”
He knelt and started to shove dirt over Hophorn.
Catkin said. “Wait. Please.”
He stared at her for a disconcerting time, before whispering, “Why?”
Catkin used her bound hands to pull the pendant over her head. “She lost this at the bottom of the cliff staircase. Please, give it back to her. She would want it.”
Catkin held it out. The jet pendant swung, flashing in the gray light.
He walked over, and ripped it from Catkin’s hand, then tipped his head to examine it through the eye sockets in his mask. “This is a Power object?”
“She thought it was. I don’t know.”
He slipped it over his own head, and stroked the pendant. “She won’t need it. I might. He’s coming back, you know.”
“Who is?”
“Her father. He’s coming back. I’ll bet that girl is dead by now. Which means he’ll be here any moment.”
Sick fear washed through her. “Girl? Yucca Blossom? He killed her?”
The Wolf Katsina seemed to take it as an accusation. He swung around and shouted, “Of course, he killed her! You didn’t think I did it, did you? I didn’t kill any of them! I may have stripped the flesh from the bodies, and sealed the pots, but I’ve never murdered anyone!”
“I—I didn’t mean it as an ac-accusation,” Catkin panted, and tested her ropes. “Forgive me.”
He did not answer. He shoved dirt over Hophorn until he’d filled
in the shallow grave, then he stood and brushed off his hands. “He’s coming for you, you know?”
“Me?”
“He thinks you have his Turquoise Wolf.”
“But I—I don’t.”
He laughed, a low hideous sound. “He has done so many evil things in his life, he knows he will never find his way to the Land of the Dead without it. He’ll be drawn down the Trail of Sorrows, and Spider Woman will burn him up in her pinyon pine fire.” He paused. “He dug in the ruins of Talon Town for ten sun cycles before he found that Wolf. He
wants
it.”
“How did he lose it?”
“He didn’t lose it. That woman”—he pointed to Hophorn—“tore it from around his throat when he jerked her club from her hand. She paid for it. He used her own club to strike her down, then tossed it into the fire and piled wood on top of it. The burial party was coming. He didn’t have time to search for the Wolf.”
Snow began to fall heavily, whirling around them in huge flakes. Catkin kept her eyes on the place he’d been, but he faded in and out of the storm.
“I am going to make sure he never finds that Wolf,” he said softly.
Catkin caught movement, and saw his red knife flash as he walked toward her.
BROWSER LAY ON HIS BELLY NEXT TO THE TOPPLED house, less than ten body lengths from Catkin. He had been listening for a finger of time, and was shaking badly; he couldn’t steady his aim. His arrow kept slipping free of the bow string. He fumbled to secure it again, and drew back, focusing on the man’s chest.
How could this beast, this man-beast, know things about his wife that Browser had not? Could the things he’d said about Ash Girl and her father be true?
Why had no one in the Green Mesa villages ever spoken of his crimes? Had her mother kept the truth hidden so well that no one suspected?
The arrow shook loose from his bow again, and Browser rushed to get it back in place.
He’d thought when he left Talon Town that Ash Girl might be alive, perhaps being held captive. The hope had almost torn him apart. But this katsina had just said she was dead, that her father had killed her.
A new and desperate grief tightened his heart.
His bow wavered, and Browser clenched his teeth and hardened his muscles to keep it steady.
The Wolf Katsina knelt beside Catkin. “If I kill you, then Browser, Two Hearts will never find the Wolf.” His voice had the menacing hiss of a rattlesnake about to strike.
“No,” Catkin said, and squared her shoulders. “Nor will you.” She seemed to be fighting back nausea. She swallowed, and her head trembled. Blood clotted the rear of her skull, and hung in long frozen stringers from her braid, and the back of her white-feathered cape. “Don’t you wish to find your way to the Land of the Dead?”
He hesitated. “Do you know where the Wolf is?”
“Of course. I can take you there. It’s hidden in a safe place. We didn’t want to carry it around with us.”
The Katsina remained motionless, staring at her, wondering whether to believe her or not.
Browser held his breath. Aimed. Let fly.
The arrow sailed through the falling snow, striking the right side of the Katsina’s chest.
The man gasped, dropped his knife, and lurched to his feet, shrieking,
“Who did this?”
He stumbled around in a circle, frantically grabbing at the blood-slick shaft.
“You can’t kill me! Who will protect her if I die?”
Browser nocked another arrow and ran.
When the Katsina saw him emerge from the thick blanket of snow, he let out a blood-chilling scream and turned to run.
Browser shot him in the back, and the man fell face-first into the snow. His legs kicked, as if he were trying to crawl away.
Browser knelt beside Catkin, pulled the red chert knife from the snow, and cut her bounds. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said hoarsely.
Browser gently touched her cheek, then rose to his feet, and ran for the Katsina. The man was still breathing, his back rising and
falling. But both arrows had struck the lungs, he wouldn’t breathe much longer.
Browser slung his bow, kicked the Katsina onto his back, and glared down into the dark eye sockets.
“Who are you?”
he shouted.
As he gripped the wolf fur and tore the mask from the man’s head, the world died around Browser.
He couldn’t move, or speak. The mask dangled in his numb fingers.
Ash Girl lifted her hands and, like a small child, rubbed her eyes with her bloody fists, as though awakening from a long nap. When she saw Browser standing over her, she smiled, then her body convulsed. Blood gushed from her wounded lungs and poured down her chin.
“Oh. Gods …”
A hoarse scream tore from his throat.
Browser threw himself to the ground and pulled her to his chest, his muscular arms shaking. “Dear gods, what have I done? Ash Girl, Ash Girl”—he buried his face in her long hair—“I’m sorry. Gods, forgive me!”
Ash Girl’s head trembled. She looked up at him through eyes drowsy with death. Her voice was that of a child, high and frightened, “R-Red Buck …” she called him by his boy’s name. “Go. H-Hurry … coming. He … he’s …”
Slowly, as if it took time for her muscles to realize what was happening, her head fell back, and she went limp in his arms. Browser watched the soul drain from her dark eyes.
“I don’t understand,” he choked out angrily. “What happened? Whose voice was that?”
He lowered her to the ground, and looked at the hot blood on his sleeves and hands. A hollow sense of terror expanded his chest.
“What have I done?” he shouted. “Catkin?”
She walked toward him unsteadily, her eyes squinted in pain. Blood-clotted hair framed her face.
Ash Girl’s left hand jerked, and Browser grabbed for his war club, afraid that whatever it was that lived inside her was trying to rise, to get to him, or Catkin. The bloody hand rose into the air, and reached for Browser, the fingers spread wide, straining. Then the arm fell to the snow.
Browser’s eyes went huge. He backed up. “What was that—that creature?
Who
was it? Catkin? Did you hear that voice?”
Catkin placed a hand on his broad shoulder and fought to keep her stomach from heaving.
“The only thing I know for certain, War Chief, is that I am alive because you killed it.”
A chill went through Browser. He shivered and pulled away from her. Ash Girl stared up at him through still shining eyes. A serene expression slackened her bloody face.
I killed my wife. My wife!
His legs felt like granite as he turned.
He made it to Hophorn’s grave before his knees gave way and he collapsed to the ground.
Browser curled on his side in the snow. Ash Girl had been in a hurry when she’d shoved dirt over Hophorn. She’d missed a few locks of Hophorn’s long hair. They fringed the edges of the grave like delicate brushstrokes.
Browser’s shoulders heaved. His body shook. But no tears came to wash away the sight.
A
S CATKIN WALKED AWAY FROM THE BURIAL, CRIMSON light poured through the wispy clouds, turning the snow pink. One hundred hands away, Browser stood with his back to her, his hand braced on a large sandstone slab that leaned against the canyon wall. Twice his height, ten people could sit on the slab’s flat surface.
Catkin made it as far as the small abandoned house and eased down onto the toppled western wall to watch him. The pain in her head grew unbearable if she opened her eyes all the way.
Eagles played over the cliff to her right. The female circled the male, shrieked, and tapped him with her wings. The male shrieked back. Snow striped the ledges of the cliff.
Browser was gazing upward, toward the eagles, but he did not seem to see them. He stood so still and quiet he did not even seem to be breathing.
Stone Ghost’s search party had met them on the road back to Talon Town. He’d immediately sent a runner for the Hillside elders and insisted that Catkin and Browser accompany him back to the burial site to explain what had happened.
They’d waited for the elders for four hands of time.
A group of twenty guards had escorted the elders, including Jackrabbit and Skink, who now stood to Catkin’s left, on the western end of the grave, murmuring, watching the elders.
Springbank, Wading Bird, and Cloudblower stood to the south. Flame Carrier and Stone Ghost stood on the north side of the grave. They wore white, the color of cleansing and renewal. Their elderly faces shone in the red light streaming across the canyon. Cloudblower sobbed silently. She had faithfully led the sacred Dances until dawn, then been called here for this ghastly duty.
She looked exhausted. Black smudges marred the skin beneath her eyes.
Jackrabbit and Skink had worked for a full hand of time to scrape out the shallow hole where Ash Girl rested. No one had washed her body or dressed her in fine clothing. After hearing Catkin’s story, they’d been afraid to touch her for fear that the evil would leech into them. Jackrabbit and Skink had used juniper poles to drag her to the grave, and roll her over the edge. She lay sprawled in the pit.
Browser had not watched.
He’d been standing with his back to the ceremony since it began. His short black hair blew in the wind. He still wore the buckskin cape soaked with Ash Girl’s blood.
Catkin let her head fall forward and tried just to breathe. She hurt for Browser. She could not imagine how he must be feeling. The malignant soul he’d killed had not been Ash Girl, but it had lived in Ash Girl’s body. He must be wondering why he’d never seen it before. Or, perhaps, wondering if he had. The fiery black eyes that glared at Catkin through the mask were born in nightmares. If Browser had seen them, he would remember.
Flame Carrier said, “Cloudblower, you have the soul sticks.”
“Yes, Matron.”
Cloudblower wiped her cheeks, removed a handful of feathered prayer sticks from her belt, and walked around the grave, sticking them into the ground at the cardinal directions. The sticks would form a defensive line against the evil, keeping it in the grave. The yellow goldfinch feathers bobbed and twirled in the breeze. Cloudblower returned to her position, and bowed her head.
“Jackrabbit? Skink? Bring the stone.”
The two young warriors lifted the large sandstone slab and carried it to the head of the grave. They heaved it in unison, and it fell on Ash Girl’s head.
Browser flinched, and Catkin saw him shaking. He braced his feet to steady himself.
Flame Carrier waved a frail old hand. “Fill the hole. Let us be done with this.”
Jackrabbit and Skink shoved dirt over Ash Girl. Everyone else walked away.
There would be no sacred songs or speeches; no one would cut his hair in mourning or praise her life.
Catkin folded her arms and hugged herself. The stone, and the prayer sticks, would keep all of her souls locked in her bones forever, even the soul that had loved Browser and Grass Moon. Flame Carrier said they could take no chances the wicked soul might escape, and secret itself in another body. Everyone agreed, even Catkin. But it seemed wrong somehow. Shouldn’t Ash Girl’s soul be free to go to the Land of the Dead? Why did they have to condemn her as well as the wicked boy?
Catkin looked back at the grave. Jackrabbit and Skink stood to the side, whispering. The fresh mound of earth looked dark against the snow. The elders had gathered over Hophorn’s grave to Sing her to the afterlife. Flame Carrier’s gravelly old voice rang out above the others. She had loved Hophorn a great deal. Cloudblower knelt at the side of the grave, rocking back and forth, sobbing the Death Song.
Stone Ghost broke from the group and hobbled toward Catkin. His tattered turkey-feather cape caught the light. The feathers that remained winked. It looked as if he hadn’t combed his thin white hair in days. A spiky halo surrounded his wrinkled face.
He stopped beside Catkin, and studied the cliff. The fires of sunset turned the sandstone into a glittering wall of gold and white.
“Do you think he’s out there watching us?” Catkin asked.
Stone Ghost’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
He sat down beside Catkin on the low rock wall and braced his hands on his knees. “It is curious that the witch, Two Hearts, disappeared less than a sun cycle before Ash Girl’s birth. It’s possible that he found a village where no one recognized him and took a wife.”
Catkin’s heart started to pound. “He must be cunning.”
“Oh, he had a reputation for being exceedingly clever. He was being hunted at the time. I remember that very clearly. Several villages had joined together to search for him. The number of women he was killing had soared. First it was one or two a sun cycle, then it was two or three a moon, as if he couldn’t get enough of the blood. It’s possible that he cloaked himself in Green Mesa Village for a few summers.” Stone Ghost bowed his head. “I do
not even wish to think of it, but I may be partly responsible for this terrible act.”
“What?” Catkin said. “How could that be?”
“Twenty summers ago, when my sister was killed in Green Mesa Village, I went a little mad. I began a desperate search for the killer.” He blinked at the snowy ground. “I now fear that I may have accused the wrong man. Perhaps if I had searched longer and more carefully, I would have discovered Two Hearts and stopped him twenty sun cycles ago. Instead …” The lines around his mouth pulled tight.
“But the murders ended didn’t they?”
“Yes. Still, I’m not certain the man I accused deserved to die.”
Catkin scooped a handful of snow from the rock, and held it to the base of her head. It eased the hurt enough that she could get a full breath into her lungs. “It’s so hard to believe, Elder.”
“What is?”
“That Two Hearts cloaked himself among the Green Mesa clans and turned on his own child.”
Stone Ghost smoothed his fingers over the stones in the low wall, petting them as if to ease some hurt. “His souls are sick, Catkin. He must be dying inside.”
She glared. “You
pity
him?”
“Oh, yes, very much. People who commit horrible acts are deeply wounded, Catkin. Often, they endured intense pain as children, and they grew up struggling to hide their suffering. The child was helpless to stop the agony, so the adult craves control. Hurting others is a demonstration of the killer’s power. Especially the power over his own suffering.”
Catkin lowered her hand to the deerbone stiletto she had borrowed from Jackrabbit. “I would gladly end his misery for him, Elder, if I knew where he was.”
Stone Ghost’s bushy brows drew together over his hooked nose. “If Two Hearts really was her father, he’s a tormented man, Catkin. After he left the Green Mesa Villages, he came to Talon Town, and apparently began a panicked search to save himself, digging up graves, searching room after room, until he found a Turquoise Wolf.”
“You believe that story?”
Stone Ghost nodded. “It would not surprise me. Two Hearts is getting older. As the sun cycles pass, people think more and more about death. Two Hearts has good reason to worry. Spider Woman must be eagerly awaiting his arrival.”
“I hope she’s keeping her fire stoked up to a furious blaze.”
Stone Ghost patted her knee, and gazed at Catkin with luminous eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“I waver between wanting to throw up and wanting to sleep.”
“Well, it won’t be long now. I asked Jackrabbit and Skink to cut poles for a ladder. They’re going to carry you home. That way you can throw up, then fall asleep.”
Catkin managed a smile that didn’t hurt. “Thank you, Elder.”
Stone Ghost glanced back at Hophorn’s grave. “Flame Carrier says you will all be leaving here soon.”
Catkin frowned. “Really? Where will we go?”
“I don’t think she knows. The tunnel to the underworld did not open, as prophesied. She thinks you repaired the wrong kiva. She’s going to keep searching.”
Catkin blinked thoughtfully at the ground.
Stone Ghost said, “Will you go with her?”
She lifted a shoulder, and her gaze went to Browser. “I don’t know, Elder.”
A soft worried expression creased Stone Ghost’s face. “What did he do when he found out it was his wife beneath that mask?”
“He fell to his knees and held her until she died. He kept telling her he was sorry.”
The lines around Stone Ghost’s eyes deepened. “He could not have acted differently, but he won’t realize that for moons. You’ll have to help him.”
The love Catkin felt for Browser swelled painfully in her breast, and her head throbbed. She scooped another handful of snow and slowly ate it. “If he will let me, Elder, I’ll help him in any way I can.”
Catkin turned to squint at the rim, wondering. Jackrabbit told her that Water Snake was still out with a search party, combing the canyon for Yucca Blossom. But it had been snowing off and on since she’d disappeared. There would be no tracks. There would, Catkin suspected, be no trace at all. The killer was shrewd, and
he’d been at it a long time. She doubted he would make a mistake now that …
Stone Ghost clasped her hand tightly. “I must speak with my nephew.”
Catkin nodded. “I think he’s been waiting for you. Hoping someone can give him a logical explanation.”
“In cases like this, we’re dealing with the logic of dreams, Catkin. Nothing makes sense in an ordinary way.” He got to his feet. “But I’ll try.”
The pink light of evening streamed through the clouds, and dappled the canyon around him as Stone Ghost plodded across the snow toward Browser.
BROWSER HEARD HIS UNCLE’S STEPS CRUNCHING THROUGH the snow. He straightened, but didn’t turn. Long ago, someone had carved a perfect spiral on the left side of the stone slab. It had four rings, one for each of the underworlds the people had traveled through to get here to this place of sunlight. The Sun Katsina, and Wolf Katsina, stood above the spiral, guarding the pathway to the underworlds. A zigzagging lightning bolt shot across the rock beneath the spiral, warning of the dangers that would be faced by those who dared to walk that legendary trail.
Browser reached inside his cape and touched the lump sewn into the seam of his buckskin cape. The Turquoise Wolf felt warm. After Stone Ghost told him that only someone with the sense of a blood-sucking fly would carry such a Power object on him, Browser figured there was no safer place for it.
Stone Ghost stopped on Browser’s left and softly said, “Are you well, my nephew?”
Browser looked down into the old man’s luminous eyes. The breeze fluttered white hair around his wrinkled face. “Do you …” Browser’s voice came out hoarse, strained, “Uncle, do you know what it was? Inside her. That—that boy?” Browser’s shoulder muscles tensed and bulged through his cape. “The voice. The—the mannerisms. I can’t believe that my …”
He couldn’t say the rest. He couldn’t even think about Ash Girl at the same time that he did that
thing.
Stone Ghost folded his arms beneath his ratty cape and watched the eagles playing over the cliff for a several moments.
“Monster souls are rare, Nephew. I have met three in the past fifty sun cycles of solving murders. Each of those has had a profoundly different voice from the main soul. They are not easy to understand. They are often bizarre animalistic creatures that live in the deepest darkest corners of human beings. I remember one monster soul I met, oh, fifteen summers ago now. Her name was Silver Song. She lived inside a young man’s body, but she was an old woman. She had come to live inside the boy one afternoon when his father had beaten him unconscious. The young boy had excellent vision, but the monstrous old woman couldn’t see close up. She spoke in a high scratchy voice; the boy had a deep melodic voice. The boy could remember none of the terrifying murders committed by the old woman, but she reveled in every detail.”
Browser looked down at the dried blood on his hands. He had washed them in the snow, but red still crusted his fingernails. In a barely audible voice, he asked, “Is it witchery, Uncle?”