“Okay, but what is he? Is he a god?”
Dusty said, “Kokopelli and Kokopelli Mana, the male and female humpbacked flute players, apparently embody the creative power of the universe.”
“Big medicine,” Steve said in a quiet reverent voice, “until the katchinas came along.”
Maureen looked back at the pot. “I don’t understand. They put a big rock on top of this pot, sealed it with pine pitch, and there’s nothing inside? Why would someone do that?”
“Kokopelli’s inside.” Dusty ground his teeth for a few moments.
“And maybe he’s not alone, or I should say, he
wasn’t
alone.”
Steve’s dark eyes went back and forth between Dusty and Maureen. “Is this some cultural tradition I don’t—”
“Oh, I get it,” Sylvia said, and grinned. “We just let a ghost out of the pot, right? A ghost that Kokopelli was supposed to be regenerating, or, maybe, reincarnating?”
Dusty fingered his beard thoughtfully. “Maybe.”
“God, I love ghost stories,” Sylvia said. “I hope it doesn’t fly around shrieking and wailing. I’m really tired tonight.”
Maureen set the rock down on the table and picked up the pot. She tipped it to the lantern light, studying the interior pot walls. “If you want my opinion, I think that whatever was in this pot evaporated. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
“How?” Dusty said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to scrape the interior of the pot and put it under my microscope, Stewart. It’s a little scientific process that physical anthropologists use to kill ghosts.”
The beef stew bubbled over and started spattering the stove top.
“Stew’s ready, folks,” Sylvia said. “Let’s kill ghosts later.”
B
ROWSER STOOD IN THE TREES ABOVE THE RIVER, HIS eyes on Obsidian. She walked the trail below with another woman and a tall man. She was smiling, her white cape swaying around her tall body. Morning sunlight flashed from the wealth of long black hair that fell from her hood. She walked slowly, her gaze on the trail, but an eerie faraway gleam lit her eyes. The man and woman beside her walked with their heads down, as though grieving. Their white hoods hid their faces, but Browser might not have known them anyway. Many of the people who’d come for the burial were strangers.
Browser removed his white ritual cape and draped it on a branch to his left. His red knee-length war shirt would not keep him warm, but he needed to feel alive this morning. Death breathed all around him, walking the land on silent feet.
Obsidian had stood rigid through the burial. She hadn’t joined in the sacred Songs or Dances. She had made no effort to help send the Matron on a safe journey to the Land of the Dead. She’d caught Browser’s eye when the katsinas Danced and everyone else had lifted their arms in praise. Obsidian hadn’t moved. She’d stared unblinking at the Matron’s body on the burial ladder.
Browser leaned a shoulder against the trunk of a towering cottonwood and wondered at that.
Obsidian and her friends passed through the dappled sunlight forty hands below, and the precious stones on her wrists glittered. She moved with uncommon grace for such a tall, slender woman.
As if she felt his gaze, Obsidian stopped, then tipped her pointed chin up. Her dark eyes met his like a clash of war clubs.
“Watching me, War Chief?” she asked in a voice just barely loud enough for him to hear.
“Watching the trail, Obsidian.”
“Indeed? I would think any warrior could do that. A great War
Chief should limit himself to more important duties, like guarding our village.”
“Several of the elders are at the grave. I wish to make certain they have no trouble getting back.”
“Then you are alone up there?”
“I am.”
Obsidian touched the strange woman’s hand, then tugged up the hem of her white cape and climbed the bank toward Browser, her steps as fluid as those of a Dancer. Her hood waffled in the breeze, shielding her face. The strangers continued down the trail toward the village.
Browser straightened and lowered his arms. The idea of being alone with Obsidian tore at his insides like talons. He tried not to rest his hand on his war club. As she approached, he called, “How may I be of service?”
Obsidian halted two paces away, her huge haunted eyes on him, jet black and warm, very warm. He did not know what to think of her. He had never known a woman whose mood could change so quickly. One instant she could look at him like this, and the next instant she could turn to ice. She threw back her hood and tiny turquoise pins twinkled through the endless midnight of her hair.
Browser said, “What is it you wish?”
“Just to talk with you, War Chief.”
She walked closer and loosened the ties on her cape, revealing the rich blue dress beneath and the swells of her breasts. Browser felt suddenly starved for air. He could feel the warmth of her body and smell the sweet scent of blazing star petals that clung to her clothing.
“Talk about what, Obsidian?”
Her elegant brows lifted. “You’re not afraid of me, are you, War Chief? What have I done to make you feel that way?”
Browser’s stomach muscles tightened. There were times, like now, when he swore she was not the same woman he’d spoken to earlier. Her voice had turned deep and husky. Her eyes had a feral glint. “What do you
want
, Obsidian?”
A flock of ravens soared over the treetops, cawing and diving, but neither of them looked up.
Obsidian lowered her eyes to his chest, and her gaze traced the muscles, then moved to his arms and legs, as if seeing beneath his red war shirt.
Browser was burningly aware of her. He clenched his fists. “If you came to speak with me, then speak.”
Her eyes returned to his, faintly amused. “Where is it?”
“What?”
“I think you know.”
His blood stung as it pulsed through his body. He’d left his buckskin cape in his chamber draped over his bedding hides. She couldn’t know. Could she?
“What are you talking about?”
Obsidian moved to less than a hand’s breadth from him. Her swaying cape patted his legs as she examined Browser’s face in minute detail, and the aching need in her eyes made his breathing go shallow. Her lips parted invitingly.
“I have something I would like to show you, War Chief,” she whispered, and toyed with the fringes on his shirt. “Will you accompany me back to my chamber?”
“I have duties, Obsidian.”
“Later, then?”
As Wind Baby gusted through the trees, she caught the dark cloud of her flying hair and held it until the gust passed, then she released the hair and let it fall freely over her shoulders.
Browser propped his hands on his hips. Curious, he asked, “Who are you, Obsidian? Where do you come from?”
“I am from here, War Chief. Longtail Clan.”
“You were born here?”
She touched Browser’s hand, and her fingers felt cool and soft. His skin tingled. “Perhaps we could meet tonight when you return to the village?”
He pulled his hand away. “Perhaps you could answer my question.” “Why do you care where I was born, War Chief?”
“I care because I have never heard you speak about it, and generally if someone does not speak of their home it is because they are hiding something.”
“Hmm,” she said, and laughed softly. “I never heard your Matron speak of her home. Is that what you really mean? You think she was hiding something?”
The words left Browser floundering. Was that what he’d meant? Perhaps his souls had started down the twists and turns of the maze left by Flame Carrier’s death, and he was just taking his anger out on
Obsidian? He looked into her eyes and felt a deep swallowing nothingness.
Browser pulled his ritual cape from the branch. “Good day, Obsidian.”
He walked past her.
Obsidian laughed and called after him, “I will see you later!”
DUSTY STARED DOWN INTO HIS COFFEE, FEELING ODDLY self-conscious. He tapped the table with his fingers and glanced away at the soft pastel colors of the Holiday Inn dining room in Farmington. He and Maureen had spent the morning shopping for the camp and doing their laundry. It had been pleasant. He glanced at her sitting across from him, then looked around the room. The place, like so many in the Southwest, had been decorated in pseudo-adobe with patterned upholstery that echoed indigenous designs. The Navajo waitress was polishing the brass railing on the low adobe wall that separated the buffet from the dining room.
“Boy, I needed this.” Maureen cupped the white ceramic cup in her cold fingers and sipped at the hot coffee. Her long black braid fell over her left shoulder. She wore a cream-colored wool sweater over a black turtleneck, with black jeans. “That wind has a bit of a bite, eh?”
Dusty smiled. “The wind doesn’t blow in Ontario?”
“On occasion, but not like this.”
He settled back in the chair, and stared out the window at the parking lot where grimy pickups had nosed into the spaces.
Dusty lifted a hand. “You get used to the wind after a while. You only get worried when the branches start cracking off the trees.”
Maureen laughed. “You know, I’ve been listening to you all morning, talking about the Anasazi and the modern Puebloan peoples. You speak very passionately for a White guy.”
“The Southwest has been the centerpiece of my life. I have a tie to the tribes that not even I understand fully.”
She set her coffee cup down and peered across the table at him, studying him with that scientist’s eye that he both loved and despised. “You mean because you were initiated into a kiva?”
“Partly, yes. But my fascination goes deeper.” How on earth did he tell her about things that lived so quietly in his heart? “I guess it started when I was a kid on Dad’s digs. I was always too curious, in trouble a lot, but I learned early that you didn’t trip over the grid strings,
didn’t fool around on the pit walls. Believe me, you don’t want to deal with the consequences of collapsing one. Not on Dad’s digs—or even worse on one of Dale’s. And never ever touch the pottery, let alone pick it up. We still found a lot of whole pots back in those days.”
Maureen nodded, as though encouraging him to continue. “So what did you play with when you were out in the field? You were a kid, after all.”
“Mostly I wandered around playing with things like grinding stones and flakes. I couldn’t break them. I’d pretend I was grinding corn in the mealing bins. I’d build my own little pueblos out of the stones. At least until the walls collapsed. Those Anasazi masons were a lot better builders than I was. Sometimes I’d go into excavated rooms and just sit there in the silence. I’d listen, trying hard to hear them.” He slowly shook his head and gave her a hesitant smile. “Maybe it was a kid’s imagination, but I could close my eyes and see them. At least they looked like I thought they should. Like the Indians I knew from the pueblos, but wearing different clothes, with different hairstyles.”
Maureen’s brows lifted. “Really? Did they talk to you?”
“Sometimes.”
She frowned down into her coffee. “I thought I heard voices the first time I went to Sainte Marie Among the Huron. They’ve reconstructed a longhouse at one of the original Jesuit Missions in Ontario. It’s magnificent. I swear I could hear them speaking Iroquois, but with a strange accent. I suppose you’d say it was like coming home.”
For a moment they were silent, watching each other, measuring each other’s responses.
Finally, Dusty said, “That’s a curious admission, Doctor. I thought you didn’t believe in spooks?” He said it teasingly, but she obviously took it seriously. Her expression tensed.
Maureen smoothed her fingers over the tabletop, as if buying time while she tried to figure out how to answer him. “I don’t. But I wonder if some places don’t absorb memories in the same way we do. I—”
“You don’t have to explain.” He lifted a hand to halt her. “The walls in Chaco Canyon often speak to me. I may be a White guy, but my soul is tied to the people here, the old ones. I’ve tried to explain that I can sense them, but few people believe me.”
“Oh, I’ll bet that goes over big with the Natives.”
“It depends. Some, like Maggie Walking Hawk Taylor, understand.
Others, all they see is the skin on the outside and forget that we’re all human beings inside. That you can really care who people were five or six hundred, or a thousand years ago. Just because you don’t happen to be a direct descendant doesn’t mean that they can’t talk to you, too. It’s, well …” He gave her a probing look. “When I stand over something like that bone bed, I don’t see science, Doctor. I see people, and I wonder at their pain and their desperation. I care what happened to them.”
The wind hurled itself against the window, and the pane rattled. The trucks in the parking lot seemed to ripple, as though not quite real.
Maureen said, “Do you feel the same way about your European ancestors?”
Dusty thought about that. “I went to a conference in Paris a few years ago. I wandered into Notre-Dame, and I felt nothing. It was sterile. Dead. Sure, it was a beautiful building, and the rose window was stunning, but it wasn’t mine. In Brussels, they have this really neat site under the street in front of St. Michael’s Church. The bones of the monks are still sticking out of the excavation units. I looked at them, and felt nothing. That connection to those people just isn’t there for me. They’re strangers. Their spirits don’t talk the language of my soul.” He paused. “Am I sounding hokey yet?”
“Not yet.” She sipped her coffee, and he found himself wishing that they could both let down their guards for just a little while. But he couldn’t do it first. She had to.
Maureen slipped two fingers through the handle of her coffee cup and pulled it closer. “Maybe it’s because half of me is Seneca, but if there really is a Spirit World, the Spirits should be able to talk to whomever they wish. No matter what your racial or ethnic heritage.” Her lips tightened, then she said, “Not everybody agrees with me, of course.”
“How’s that?”
“Oh, two years ago I got hate mail from some Mohawks. They told me in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want any ‘science’ done on their ancestors’ bones.” Her fingers traced a pattern on the tabletop. “The thing is, those skeletal ‘people’ in my lab are important to me. Sure, I measured and took samples, but I had the feeling that they really wanted to teach me about who they were, and tell me what had happened to them. Isn’t that what elders do? Teach? I think we should
use science as a means of understanding the world. I really believe, unlike a lot of my colleagues in the First Nations, that science is another way of knowing. The best way.”