Catkin nodded. “Yes. Dry Creek village. I overhead Ant Woman speak of it one night in the plaza.”
Browser’s thoughts darted about like swallows on a summer evening. Without realizing it, he turned toward the south. Dry Creek village sat along the Great North Road that led to Straight Path Canyon. They
had passed it on their way here. It was a small village, two stories tall, with perhaps forty people.
“What is it?” Catkin asked. “What are you thinking?”
“My uncle told you that ‘The Two’ had returned home. If Longtail village was their home, and our Matron grew up less than half a day’s walk from here …”
Catkin slowly straightened. “Blessed Spirits, do you think she knew them?”
“She must have.”
Catkin blinked and gazed out at the starlit river below. After inhaling a deep breath, she said, “There’s something else I must speak with you about, Browser. It is, perhaps, another of your ‘knots.’”
“What?”
“That night at Aspen village when the woman crawled up to me and told me you were in the kiva, she was wearing a pendant I’d seen before.”
Browser shrugged. He couldn’t fathom why she thought a pendant might be important. “What pendant?”
She stared unblinking into his eyes. “It was carved from jet. A spiral serpent lying in a broken eggshell. I can’t swear to it, but—”
“You mean it looked like the pendant Ash Girl found in Talon Town and gave to Hophorn?”
“Yes. It looked
exactly
like the pendant that Ash Girl put around her own throat just before …”
Her voice faded and a chill went through Browser. “Just before I killed her. It may have looked the same, Catkin, but it can’t be. We buried Ash Girl with that pendant, and no one would rob a burial to steal a fetish from her chest.”
“Then the same artisan must have crafted it. If it was not the same pendant, I swear it was an identical twin.”
Browser put a hand on Catkin’s shoulder, squeezed it in gratitude, and rose to his feet. “Thank you for telling me. I promise I will think more about it.”
She looked up at him with shining eyes. “You will never feel safe, Browser, until you learn to let your wife go. You know that, don’t you?”
Browser’s heart ached. He fumbled with his cold hands. Finally, he said, “I do feel safe, Catkin. Sometimes, when I look into your eyes. I’m sorry I’ve never told you that before.”
She did not reach out, she did not smile or say anything that would
require him to say more. She just nodded in understanding and held his gaze.
“Get some sleep, War Chief.”
“You, too, my friend. You’ve had even less than I have.”
“I will see you at dawn.” She rose and walked toward Water Snake.
Browser gazed out at the dark hills, wondering about the pendant. Ash Girl had found the pendant in Talon Town. Could it have been made by the same artist who crafted the pendant for the woman at Aspen village?
He wearily shook his head and started back for his chamber. Perhaps when he’d rested, he would be able to think more clearly.
As Browser neared the southeastern corner of the village, he saw a man sitting on the ground with his back against the wall. A gray blanket covered his head and bony shoulders, but Browser could see his elderly profile in the moonlight. Springbank stared at the ground as he rocked back and forth. The soft forlorn sounds coming from his throat rode the night wind.
Browser hesitated, not certain he should intrude, then he changed course and walked toward the old man. No one should have to mourn alone. Browser had done enough of it to know.
“Elder?” Browser said as he knelt before Springbank. “Are you all right?”
As though embarrassed to be caught like this, the old man did not look up. If anything, he seemed to retreat more, huddling inside the tent of his blanket, but Browser could see the tears on his wrinkled cheeks.
Browser sank down beside him and leaned against the cold wall. The guard on the hill in the distance had shifted positions. Moments ago he’d resembled a black pillar; now he looked like a hunching animal. He must have crouched down. A wealth of bright stars glittered in the sky above him.
Gently, Browser said, “It would break her heart to see you like this, Elder.”
Springbank wiped his eyes on his blanket. The forlorn sounds stopped, but his shoulders shook from the effort. “I know,” he whispered in a shaky voice. “I just feel lost without her.”
“As do I, Elder. Her presence had become like a second heartbeat in my chest. I always knew her strength was there for me if I needed it. I will miss her very much.”
Springbank inhaled a halting breath and let it out in a rush. “Do you think the katsinas have abandoned us, War Chief? Is that why she died?”
Browser gazed into Springbank’s moist eyes and wondered how many other people were suffering from the same fear tonight. He replied, “I do not know, Elder. I have never been able to put much faith in gods.”
“You are the most solitary man I have ever known, Browser. I do not know how you manage. Do you believe in nothing?”
Browser touched his war club, but he was thinking of Catkin. He believed in her. He believed in himself and his skills as a warrior—but his “faith” didn’t go much beyond those things. “You are a holy man, Elder. I am a warrior. I put my faith in the things I can see.”
“I used to feel that way, when I was young and strong. Perhaps when a man has the strength to fight his enemies, he does not need to beg a god for help.” He frowned out at the moonlit river, and his wrinkled lips sunk in over his toothless gums.
They sat together in silence for a time, listening to Wind Baby whimper around the village.
Tears filled Springbank’s eyes again, and he whispered, “It is harder to believe in the katsinas with her gone. That frightens me.”
It had not occurred to Browser until now that Flame Carrier’s death would wound them so deeply.
“Do you think we should disband the Katsinas’ People?” Springbank choked out the words as though he could barely stand to hear them said aloud. “Perhaps we should give up the Dream.”
The agony in the old man’s eyes implored Browser to say no, but he couldn’t find it in him to lie to Springbank, not when the old man spoke to him with such honesty.
“I think we need time to think about this, Elder. Tomorrow, after the burial, we must start thinking about a new Matron. When we have selected a leader, then we can consider our future.”
Springbank’s head tottered in a nod. He adjusted the blanket over his head and said, “Yes. Wisdom rests in doing what must be done next. If we just take one step at a time, perhaps all will be well.”
“I think it will, Elder.”
Springbank put a withered old hand on Browser’s forearm and held it. After a short interval, he softly asked, “Do you think the old
gods would hear me if I prayed to them tonight? The Flute Player and Spider Woman?”
Browser patted Springbank’s hand. “Any god should be happy to hear from a deeply holy man like you, Elder.”
T
HE DREAM WAS SO REAL …
Dusty cried out and jerked upright in his sleeping bag. Cold sweat prickled on his skin. He took a deep breath as the fragmenting tendrils of the nightmare broke around him. The inside of the trailer was black as pitch. What time was it? Midnight?
“Goddamn it.”
He slung his legs out of the sleeping bag and perched on the edge of the fold-down bunk. Dale’s trailer felt like an oversized coffin. In the silence, he could hear the faint sigh of wind through the junipers outside. A mouse skittered along the frame, its tiny claws scratching the metal.
The distant hoot of an owl sent a shiver across his soul. Most southwestern people had a wary respect for Owl. Even the Hispanic population was leery of
el Tecolote.
Dusty pulled on his pants, slipped into his boots, and shrugged on his worn blue Filson coat. The trailer stairs squeaked as he stepped out into the night and looked up at the late October sky. A three-quarter moon hung in the east, setting the pale cottonwood leaves aglow.
The stories came welling up from his memory. Tales of selfish people jumping through yucca hoops to become witches. How workers of evil would pervert the ways of Power to achieve revenge, or their own ends.
His rootless childhood had been full of stories about witchcraft. While the Navajo skinwalkers tended to be more colorful, the Pueblo witches had a nastier element. For years Dusty had believed that that element of their evil was descended from the Anasazi, particularly the Chacoans; some scholars thought they’d eaten people as a means of terrorizing subordinate villages. A sort of: “Be good or I’ll send my elite warriors down to burn your town and eat your wife and children.”
The idea wasn’t far-fetched. Even the Hopi admitted that they
had destroyed the villages of Awatovi and Sikyatki over witchcraft. Hopis killing other Hopis. To this day, Pueblo peoples were circumspect when it came to leaving loose hair, nail clippings, or sweat-soaked garments lying around. The Hopi elder who had been Dusty’s mentor had urinated on rocks to prevent witches from later molding a doll out of that damp soil to use against him.
He thought about that as he walked silently through the camp and down into the shadows of the cottonwoods.
He stopped at the river’s edge and looked out over the moon-silvered water. It seemed to dance and swirl, alive with the power of life. Like so many of the rivers in the Southwest, it had been flowing here when the Anasazi had devoured themselves like the proverbial snake swallowing its own tail.
That long-ago night when the kiva burned, the gaudy light would have cast a red-orange glow over this water. Here, where he was standing, he would have heard the screams of the children. Were the parents shouting back, desperate to reach their sons and daughters? Or were they silent witnesses to the extinction of their hopes and dreams?
“Stewart?”
He started, wheeling, then sighed: “Jesus! You almost made me jump out of my skin.”
Maureen stepped out into the moonlight. Black hair tumbled down her back like a midnight mantle. Her face was ghostly pale, her dark eyes like round holes in white cloth.
He said, “What are you doing up?”
“I think it was the jalapeño cheeseburgers. I didn’t dare pick half of those peppers off. I would never have lived it down.”
He sucked in a deep breath. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking when I made them. I just made them to my tastes.”
She walked closer and examined his face. “Are you all right?” “Fine. Just out for a walk.”
“Uh-huh,” she said as she folded her arms over her black coat. “Is something wrong, Dusty? You haven’t been normal since I got here.”
“The words ‘Dusty Stewart’ and ‘normal’ aren’t generally joined in the same sentence, Maureen.”
“Nightmare?”
He used the toe of his boot to squash a blowing leaf and replied, “I get them on occasion.” More lately than ever before.
She paused, took another step toward him, and gazed out over the
river. “Well, after looking at the boiled skull, and the kiva filled with bones, I don’t doubt it.”
Dusty winced and closed his eyes. “Do you mind, Doctor?”
“Is that what you dreamed about? Burning babies?”
He nodded. “I was down in the kiva. The bodies were fresh, charred, the hair melted over the skulls until it looked like glass, lips pulled back to expose cracked blue-black teeth. The eyes, my God, the eyes were popped out where the vitreous humor had boiled inside. I had been chased in there, had fallen among them, and my hand—” He held it out in the moonlight, studying it, feeling it alive and warm. “I kept trying to push myself up, and each time my hand pushed right through rotting bodies. They were all slimy inside.”
“Then what happened?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling odd about telling her his dreams. “I searched the kiva for the ladder to get out, and there was Dad, looking down at me, laughing. But the voice wasn’t his. It was … It was …”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, Doctor, I’m not about to feed more rumors about the Madman of New Mexico. Besides, I’ve always secretly been afraid that maybe insanity runs in my family.”
“Oh, come on. Granted I didn’t know your father, or what would have possessed him to kill himself, but I do know you.” The moonlight added its magic to her beautiful face. “I may not always like you, but I’ve never seen anything that made me doubt your sanity. The quality of your soul, yes. Sanity, no.”
He couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Yeah, well, the next few sentences will make you reconsider. Do you know why I called you to come to this site?”
“Other than the obvious reason that I’m a physical anthropologist, no.”
He bent down, picked up a rounded rock, and pitched it into the river. It splashed liquid silver in the moonlight. “This is really going to sound crazy, so brace yourself.”
Maureen gave him a suspicious look. “I’m braced. Go ahead.”
He waved a hand at the night. “It’s all tied together. Everything. You, me, this site. I showed you that potsherd for a reason. I know it sounds delusional, but this site
is
tied to 10K3. Unless I can lift fingerprints
from the pottery, I’ll never be able to prove it, but we—you and I—are connected to these sites. And I think I know the reason.”
She shivered before she could squelch it. “Okay, why?”
“You liked Magpie Walking Hawk Taylor, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “We’ve been writing letters since I returned to Canada.” “Do you think she’s crazy?”
“No, I don’t. Why?”
He pitched another rock into the river. “Because she and I believe a lot of the same things. Funny, isn’t it? She’s an enrolled member of the Keres tribe, and no one thinks she’s nuts because she believes in witchcraft. I’m a White guy who’s lived on reservations off and on for most of my life, been initiated into a kiva—”
“But if you believe, you’re a lunatic.”
“The lady wins first prize. Right as rain.”
She bowed her head and long black hair spilled around her. The waves rippled platinum where the moonlight touched them. “So, you’re telling me you believe these children died because of witchcraft?”
God, she was beautiful, straight and tall, with that perfect Seneca face.
Maureen tilted her head to look at him. “How long did you keep the basilisk in your house, Dusty?”
His stomach tingled. “Too long, I think. I had it in my house for about six months before I finished the excavation report and curated it, along with the other artifacts we found.”
She seemed to let it go. She looked out at the river and the full moon shining down. “It’s beautiful here.”
“It is. Just before you arrived, I was thinking about that, about
El Rio de las Animas Perdidas
, the River of Lost Souls. Just south of here is Aztec Ruins. When Earl Morris dug it in the twenties, it was littered with bodies, and just south of there is Salmon Ruins. Cynthia Irwin-Williams dug it in the seventies. It had another tower kiva like this one. Also filled with children.”
“And you think witchcraft was the cause?” She didn’t sound so skeptical now.
“One man’s belief is another man’s heresy. When someone dares to believe differently than you do, it always helps if you can label him as evil; that way people can hate him without feeling guilty. It’s very convenient.”
Maureen tucked her hands into her pockets and tipped her chin to look at the stars. “I recall that Hail Walking Hawk thought the basilisk was a witch’s amulet. She said it was dangerous, filled with evil. Do you think you’ve been witched?”
Their gazes held.
“That’s why you think we’re tied to these sites, isn’t it?” she whispered as though she feared someone might be listening. “You and I have been witched?” A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
Dusty didn’t see the humor. “Go ahead and laugh, but I recall that you spent a good deal of time touching the bones from that site, and even took home a pot of corpse powder. I’d get rid of that pot
pronto
if I were you. I’m surprised you haven’t had the Blair Witch traipsing around your dreams.”
Her smile faded.
Dusty caught the tension in the sudden set of her jaw. “Really? And you haven’t told me about this before?”
She let out a breath, and it frosted in the air. “Actually, I thought about calling you, or Maggie, but I just couldn’t convince myself to do it—and I haven’t had the dream since I’ve been out here.”
Dusty studied her taut expression. “Which means you had the dream more than once in Canada? It’s a recurrent dream?”
She sternly pointed a finger at him. “Yes, and if you tell anyone, I will mail the pot of corpse powder directly to you.”
Dusty crossed himself. “No need to threaten. I’m good at keeping secrets. What’s the dream?”
“It’s”—she gestured awkwardly—“it’s not a witch dream, it’s a ghost dream.”
“Go on.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears, stalling. “A wolf leads me to a cave in the mountains. In the back of the cave, there’s a skeleton in a pool of water. While I’m standing there looking at it, four people come in.”
“Four. A sacred number. Do they talk to you?”
“The old woman does. She tells me not to be afraid.”
“I’m sure that calms you right down, huh?”
Maureen laughed. “Yeah, right. Anyway, it’s not a scary dream, it’s more like—”
“A Spirit Dream?” Dusty asked. “Like you’re being called by a Spirit Helper?”
Maureen frowned at him. “I suppose some would say so.”
“Which figure in the dream is calling you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe all of them. The old man looks right at me, though.”
“I could arrange for you to talk to some Puebloan tribal elders about it.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “You’re the one who needs a head session, not me.”
The clipped tone of voice made Dusty’s heart shrivel. “Just can’t take the risk, eh? I assure you that nobody I recommend will blab to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.”
She balled her fists in her pockets. “You know what? This has been a lovely chat, but I think it’s time to go back to bed.”
She spun around and strode away.
Dusty sighed, spent a few seconds staring at the stars, then called, “Hey! Wait up. I’ll walk you back.”