“I’m sorry.”
Cloudblower’s eyes shone. “Don’t be. Sunrunner was a living prayer. I haven’t forgotten the words.”
Browser’s eyes drifted over her triangular face and sharply pointed nose. He never knew quite what to think of her. The fact that she possessed a male body created a natural bond of friendship between them, but her female soul, gestures, and tones of voice, often left him puzzling what to say. In truth she was wholly “other”: Neither male nor female, but some grand blending of both. He had seen her fight and been stunned by her skill with bow and club. But her reputation as a Healer spanned half the world. She had saved far more lives than she had taken.
Browser could not say the same. He finished his tea, and set the cup aside. “How is Hophorn?”
Cloudblower leaned forward to put a hand on the red-and-blue blanket over Hophorn’s chest. “The injury was not as bad as I feared. In some people with head wounds, when I remove the circlet of skull, the membrane swells to the size of a fist. Hophorn’s was less than one-third that size.”
After several moments of feeling the Sunwatcher’s breathing and heartbeat, Cloudblower leaned closer and whispered, “Hophorn your breathing has slowed. You seem to be resting easier. I know your breath-heart soul is flying, and it feels wonderful, but please
don’t fly too far. Remember the time you helped me open old Sawtooth’s skull? He enjoyed flying so much that he flew straight to the Land of the Dead. I do not wish that to happen to you. I love you too much. I want you here with me for a few more sun cycles.”
Cloudblower picked up her cup and went to refill it from the pot over the coals. From somewhere outside childish laughter rang out.
Browser said, “Aren’t you late for the morning races?”
“The children will have to do without me today.”
Every day at about this time, Cloudblower went out to run races with the children. She never won, of course, but she cheered a good deal. Grass … his … his son had cherished racing with Cloudblower because she insisted upon running at least one race where no one won. The children had to strive to come across the finish line at exactly the same time. If they did, Cloudblower would lavish praise upon them, saying, “See, isn’t it more fun when all of us win together?”
His son had glowed with pride when he’d come across the line next to Dull Knife, the biggest, fastest boy in the village. Browser recalled one morning—
“Browser?”
He leaned out into the plaza and saw Catkin climbing down the ladder. Browser rose to his feet.
When Catkin hit the ground, she trotted toward him with her white-feathered cape flapping about her broad shoulders. Her beautiful oval face looked as if it had been carved from some pale stone.
Flame Carrier must have sent her to fetch me to the burial.
He felt sick.
He turned back to Cloudblower. “Thank you for your story, Elder. It helped.”
She nodded. “I’m glad.”
Catkin stopped two hands in front of Browser, her dark eyes wide, nostrils flaring with swift breaths, and Browser knew she had not come for the burial.
He hissed, “What is it?”
“War Chief, I do not know how to say this, except to say it. Your wife … her body is gone.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. “What do you mean? Where is she?”
Browser lunged into the bright sunlight that flooded the enormous plaza, and met Catkin’s eyes. She looked as if she feared he might crumble to pieces at her feet.
Catkin said, “Matron Flame Carrier asked me to dig a new grave for your son, then I was supposed to bring your wife’s body back to the village. I found the pit empty, except for this.” She opened her cape, and gingerly, as if touching a snake, pulled out a small bundle of white cloth. She unfolded the cloth and revealed an owl feather.
Cloudblower gasped, and Browser whirled to see her standing in the doorway with her hands clasped over her mouth.
Witches often turned themselves into owls and flew about spying on people.
Browser shouldered past Catkin and ran for the ladder. Who would take his wife’s body? It made no sense!
As he climbed, he heard the commotion outside. Shouts and cries of shock. Flame Carrier’s voice carried over the din:
“Stop this! We know nothing yet!”
Whiproot offered Browser a hand and helped him step off the ladder onto the roof, saying, “Take care, War Chief. People are wild with fear. They do not know what they are saying.”
“What are they saying?”
Whiproot closed his mouth as if he wished he’d never opened it. A swallow went down his throat. He answered, “Some of the young women suggested that perhaps your wife was a witch, and someone found out and”—at the expression on Browser’s face, Whiproot continued more softly—“and that’s why she was buried with the stone over her head. Peavine …” Whiproot hesitated when Catkin stepped off onto the roof and joined the circle.
Browser ordered, “Tell me.”
“Well, Peavine—she’s such a gossip. She said that someone may have stolen the body because they feared you would bury your
wife without the stone, and her spirit would wander the village murdering people.”
Browser pulled the ladder up and flipped it over the opposite side of the wall. He descended the rungs two at a time and ran through the milling crowd. They hissed and pointed as he passed, but no one dared say such words to him.
At the edge of the crowd, he saw Flame Carrier and Peavine. Peavine stood rigid, her black eyes blazing. Thirty, she had an ugly square face and gray-streaked black hair. She lifted her chin defiantly as Browser passed, and shouted, “She was a witch! I knew it all along!”
Flame Carrier cried, “Hush!” and reached out to Browser. “War Chief? Wait!”
He ran harder, his long legs stretching out, cutting the time to the burial pit. He raced by his son’s burial ladder without stopping, but the well of darkness in his souls inched outward, devouring his chest.
The buff-colored canyon wall reflected the sunlight with a blinding intensity. Ravens soared over the pit, cawing, and
thocking
at each other. They tilted their heads to watch Browser. He slowed to a walk ten paces short of the pit, and began checking the sand for sign.
Catkin ran up behind him, breathing hard, and said, “I already looked. There’s nothing.”
“What about leading away from the grave?”
“Nothing. It is as if she was lifted from the pit by eagles and carried off.” Catkin glanced uncomfortably at the circling ravens.
Browser shouted, “These are the acts of a
madman!
Why would someone do this?”
His eyes scanned every nook, every root protruding from the soil.
He could hear people coming up the trail, their voices low and forbidding. One man kept yelling,
“But where is the body? What happened to it?”
Peavine responded, “Thank the gods it is gone! Would you have her wicked soul sucking the breath of life from your child tonight ?”
Flame Carrier cried,
“Enough!”
Browser swallowed the bitterness that rose into his throat. He closed his eyes, and stood, just breathing. Golden sparks danced behind his eyelids.
Finally, he said, “Catkin, there is a trail that parallels the Great South road. My grandmother told me that Stone Ghost’s house was built into the side of Smoking Mirror Butte. Please. Get your weapons, and pack, and hurry.”
She nodded. “Yes, War Chief.”
“
H
ERE’S ANOTHER ONE!” SYLVIA RHONE SHOUTED. Dusty left his dental pick lying in the eye socket of a long-dead woman and straightened. He stood in unit 6N 4W, a two-by-two meter excavation unit he had laboriously dug until his shovel chipped the forward point of a hip bone. Immediately resorting to a trowel, he’d followed out the rest of the woman’s skeleton.
Dusty called, “You’re joking?”
Sylvia crossed her heart. “I swear.” She had a curious expression on her lean face, half excitement, half fear. She’d tucked her brown hair up beneath a broad-brimmed straw hat. Dirt streaked her sweaty cheeks.
Before Dusty could climb out of his unit, he saw Dale trotting across the site, his battered fedora pulled down to shield his face from the fierce glare of the summer sun. He might be seventy-two years old, but he could keep up with the kids. Maybe not when it came to shoveling out a kiva, but he made sure the records were being kept, along with the pit logs, artifact bags, and other minutia of an expanding dig. The hot air left his thick gray hair dry and dust-coated. He wore jeans and a faded red cowboy shirt.
Dusty carefully braced his hands on the pit wall and lifted himself out. Drenched blond hair framed his tanned face and glued itself to his cheeks. Every part of him spilled sand: his green T-shirt, khaki shorts, and hiking boots. Grains even trickled from behind his left ear. He brushed at them as he headed toward Dale.
Chaco Canyon at this time of year could be brutal. Either the sun roasted you, or the thunderstorms filled your excavation units until they resembled small square lakes.
He passed eight other excavation units, dug in a line between his and Sylvia’s pits.
Michall, occupied with cleaning up around what appeared to be a twelve-year-old girl, didn’t even seem to notice when Dusty passed.
Steve Sanders, however, stood up and wiped sweat from his rich black skin. He’d been patiently brushing sand from a black-and-white pot rim. “Another woman?” Steve asked.
“I’ll let you know,” Dusty said.
Plastic bags filled with artifacts—mostly lithic debitage, the chips left over from stone tool making—and a large number of Mesa Verde black-on-white potsherds—nestled on the edge of Steve’s pit. The sherds probably dated the site to the Big House Period, from A.D. 1250 to 1300, when migrants from the Mesa Verde region of southern Colorado had reoccupied the canyon, but Dusty didn’t consider that definitive yet. A great deal about this site left him puzzled.
He veered wide around the bags and stepped carefully over taut strings until he reached Sylvia’s unit. Dusty knelt beside Dale. Fifty centimeters below, Sylvia bent over a partly exposed human skull. The frontal bone, and the superior borders of the orbits, the eye sockets, were visible in the sand.
Dale shoved his fedora back on his head. “Good God, that makes eight so far.”
“Another female,” Dusty added. “At least that’s my guess from the brow ridge and the bossing of the frontal bone. The others have ranged in age from ten to forty-five. I wager this one will, too.”
Dale’s thick gray brows lowered. “Where is that Indian monitor we asked for?”
“I talked to Maggie yesterday. She promises the monitor is coming. Probably after our next break.”
Dale frowned at the skull. “Well, she’d better hurry. Do you want to lay bets on the condition of this one?”
Dusty brushed sweaty blond hair from his forehead. “No, I think I’d lose.”
Dusty eased over the side of the pit, careful not to disturb any of the artifacts Sylvia had pedestaled, meaning she had cleaned away the dirt, but left them in place on a short pedestal of sand while she continued digging. Dusty said, “Sylvia, hand me your trowel.”
She delivered it with a flourish. “All yours, boss man.”
He crouched to the left of the skull and began removing thin layers of sand—definitely a woman’s delicate brow ridge, not that he knew much about this physical anthropology stuff, but that’s what it looked like to him. Elevated concepts of human anatomy, and evolution, didn’t much interest him.
He reached for one of the brushes near Sylvia’s feet and gently swept the dirt away.
When the first fractures appeared, Dale whispered, “They’re all alike. What on earth happened here?”
Dusty kept brushing, revealing the dents in the smooth outer table of the woman’s cranium. “Battered just like the others.”
Dale studied the skull, then glanced at the few artifacts in the unit, and said, “It’s time we called in a physical anthropologist.”
“I agree, Dale, but I don’t want some lab rat that can’t stand dirt under his fingernails.”
“No, we need someone accustomed to the rigors of field work. I know just the person.”
Dusty’s brush halted in midair. He felt his facial muscles tighten as they tried to pull his mouth into a rictus. “Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you are.”
Dale rubbed his shirt sleeve over his gray mustache. “I am. She’s the best.”
Dusty threw the trowel to Sylvia, and scrambled out of the pit. “Over my dead body!”
Every time he thought about Dr. Maureen Cole, his stomach churned.
Dale pulled his fedora down and walked away.
Dusty ran after him, calling, “Wait a minute. Let’s discuss this!”
“Maureen Cole is one of the finest physical anthropologists in the world. If we can get her, we’ll be lucky.”
Dale checked his watch and stepped up his pace, heading for Dusty’s Bronco; it sat parked near the five tents that formed a neat circle around a central fire pit.
“Are you really going to do this to me, Dale?” Dusty pleaded. “No matter how I prostate myself before you—”
“That’s
prostrate,
you illiterate.”
Dusty thought about it. “Whatever. Listen Dale, I genuinely despise that woman. I do not—”
Dale finished, “—want to work with any woman who knows more than you do. Yes, I know.”
Dale opened the door to the Bronco and tossed his hat inside. As he wiped sweaty gray hair from his forehead, he added, “This is not open for negotiation, William.”
Dale got into the Bronco and pulled out Dusty’s cellular phone.
Dusty propped his dirty hands on the roof of the Bronco. “You’re a sadist, my friend. And very likely an accomplice to murder. Don’t you realize I’ll have to kill her just to preserve my masculinity?”
As he punched in the number, Dale said, “After this discussion, I’d say you’re already too late.”
WHEN HER PHONE RANG, MAUREEN COLE CLOSED THE LATEST issue of the
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
and placed it on the table beside her wicker chair.
She wavered on whether or not to answer it. She had one more week at home before she had to return to Hamilton to prepare for classes and wanted to savor it. She reached for her cold glass of mint iced tea. She picked the mint fresh from her garden every morning, and it gave the brew a naturally sweet, cool flavor.
The phone continued to ring.
She turned away. What a beautiful day. Hot, but not too hot. She wore faded blue jeans and a red T-shirt. Sunlight glistened through the trees and dappled the floor of the porch that encircled three sides of her small house in Niagara-on-the-Lake. A cool breeze tousled long black hair around her shoulders.
Maureen drew her bare feet up onto the chair cushion and heaved a sigh. She’d turned thirty-seven last Tuesday. Lines had just started to crease the skin around her eyes and mouth. Her aquiline features, the straight nose, dark eyes, and full lips, came from her mother, a full-blooded Seneca. She had passed away just six months ago. Maureen swirled her tea and listened to the cubes clink. God, how she missed her.
The phone stopped ringing.
Maureen sighed and took a long look at Lake Ontario. The water turned a magnificent shade of blue this time of year. Autumn had already touched a few of the trees, dotting the shoreline with clumps of yellow and orange.
She took no joy in the fact that classes would start soon. Three years ago, when her husband, John, was alive, they’d spent every night discussing grand ideas about the future of the human species and sharing interesting questions their students had asked; it had made teaching fun. Since John’s death, she’d found joy only in the physical anthropology lab, talking to dead people. She’d discovered that they carried on far more interesting discussions than most living people. She—
The phone rang again.
After ten rings, Maureen grudgingly got to her feet and started for the screen door.
The oak floorboards felt cool against her bare feet as she walked across the living room to the phone on the table in the bay window. A notepad and pencil rested on the seat of the chair.
She picked the phone up, and said, “Hello.”
“Good afternoon, Dr. Cole, I understand classes start soon, are you anxious to get back to training the next generation of great physical anthropologists?”
Maureen smiled. “Dale Emerson Robertson, you old coyote. Are you in town?”
“No, I’m sitting in a Ford Bronco in northern New Mexico. It’s ungodly hot, too, one hundred six degrees.”
“Let’s see, that’s about forty degrees to those of us who live in the enlightened world. I’ve been telling you for a decade that you ought to move to Canada. It’s a lot cooler here in civilization.”
Dale chuckled.
“Maybe in my old age.”
Robertson was one of the truly great anthropologists of the twentieth century. He’d led expeditions into the jungles of the Yucatan to find lost Mayan cities, dug in Egypt, explored Thule archaeology in the frozen tundra of the Arctic, and pioneered the field of underwater archaeology. If he lived long enough, she expected him to be the first archaeologist on the moon. He was particularly legendary for his work in the southwestern United States.
“What’s up, Dale? Or is this a social call?”
“No, business, I’m afraid. Stewart and I are working on a project that’s turning up some burials, and I was wondering—”
At the mention of Stewart’s name, her eyes narrowed to slits. She said, “Good-bye, Dale.”
And hung up.
She’d tramped halfway back to the screen door when the phone rang again.
She lifted a brow. This time she didn’t wait for Dale’s customary greeting. She walked back, picked up the phone, and said, “You can tell the ‘Madman of New Mexico’ that I wouldn’t work with him again for all the well-preserved mummies in South America.”
Dale paused. In a stern professorial tone, he said,
“This is a very important project, Maureen. I’m sure you can both put your personal feelings aside for—”
“What do you mean ‘both?’ What did that glorified pothunter say about me?”
“Let me tell you about the site, Maureen. It’s far more interesting.”
She clenched her jaw. Two years ago she’d had the misfortune to work with Stewart on an Iroquoian excavation in New York state. Never again. The man was not a scientist.
Maureen said, “I’m listening, Dale. Go on.”
He did.
After a minute, her heart rate increased. She said, “Really? Mass graves among the Anasazi? That is fascinating.”
“It gets better. They’re all women.”
“All?” she blurted.
“Women and children, yes. But that’s not the only anomaly, Maureen. I really need your expertise.”
“Dale, I—”
“This will only take a couple of weeks. You can find a graduate student to teach your introductory classes, and give your master’s degree students special research projects while you’re away. I’m sure one of your colleagues would be willing to cover any other—”
“Dale,” she said, and propped her foot in the seat of the chair. “I really
hate
that guy.”
A pause.
She could hear someone else’s voice in the background.
Then Dale covered the receiver, and she heard muffled voices. It sounded like a spirited debate, but she couldn’t make out any of the words.
Dale returned,
“Sorry, Maureen. We have a
Kokwimu
on the site who can be very annoying.”
“A what?”
“Never mind. As I was saying, I understand the fifth Earl of Carnarvon was no piece of cake, either, but it didn’t stop Howard Carter from working with him so that he could dig King Tut’s tomb.”
Duly chastened, she sighed, “It’s that important, eh?”
“More important than I can tell you over the phone. You have to see the site to believe it. The number of healed cranial depression fractures—”
“What do mean ‘healed’? These women were struck in the head repeatedly, and lived?”