F
LUTE MUSIC ROSE FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT KIVA, and streamed over Longtail village like colorful ribbons. Redcrop listened to it as she walked by the kiva and took the trail down to the river. The plaza bonfire had been stoked to a blaze. Waves of orange light washed the plastered walls and illuminated the faces in the crowd.
The farther she walked from the village, the lighter her steps became. She would not have to stand bravely while people patted her arms or took her hands to share their misery. She would be spared the torment.
Redcrop trotted down the leaf-choked trail. As the cold deepened, mist curled from the river and twined through the cottonwood branches. Her long white cape rustled as it trailed over the glistening bed of leaves.
She did not look across the river at the place where her grandmother had been tortured and killed. She paused only a moment at the spot where the murderer had attacked the Matron, then hurried on toward the grave. Somewhere out there in the growing darkness, Browser and Catkin watched her. She trusted them to keep her safe.
When the trail turned damp and slick, she slowed down and placed her knee-length white moccasins with care, bracing her hands on tree trunks to steady herself.
She felt no fear. In the past two days, she had eaten her own heart, leaving her chest hollow and numb. Tomorrow, when Straighthorn came to watch her, perhaps she would feel something. She would be able to look out across the rolling hills and imagine that she saw him standing tall and straight, his bow and quiver slung over his shoulder.
She would not actually see him, of course. He was much too fine a warrior to let anyone see him. But she would dream, and inside, he would be with her.
The thought comforted her.
Redcrop gathered up her cape to step over a log that lay in the path. The beautiful curving trails of worms decorated the bark. As she stepped across, she saw the heart-shaped prints that sank into the mud at the river’s edge. The doe had come down to drink, then bounded away into the brush. The tracks were fresh. Redcrop’s movements had probably spooked her.
A drum boomed, and Redcrop turned to look back at the village. She could picture the drummer emerging from the kiva and trotting into the plaza. He would be wearing a buffalo-hide cape painted with red wolves, coyotes, eagles, and ravens, the special Spirit Helpers of the Katsinas’ People. Two flutes joined the drumbeat, and a wave of coughing went through the crowd as people readied themselves to greet the sacred beings.
Redcrop turned back to the trail. Sister Moon perched on the eastern horizon. Huge and perfectly round, her pale gold face floated in a gauzy layer of clouds.
She rounded the final bend in the trail and noticed the fresh pile of dirt, darker than the other soil. But it wasn’t over the grave; it formed a hump to the right.
Redcrop stood motionless, listening to the gurgling of the water running over the river rocks, and Wind Baby rustling the trees. Tendrils of mist trailed across the fresh dirt like ghostly iridescent fingers.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Had wolves dug up the grave?
In the distance, a dog barked. A frightened bark, as though the katsina Dancers had climbed out of the kiva and begun to whirl, their sacred feet pounding out the heartbeat of the world. Then all the dogs started barking, and an enormous roar filled the night. From the corner of her eye, she could see a bubble of light swelling over Longtail village. Light filled with gouts of black smoke. Someone must have heaped wood on the …
Panting. Very close.
Redcrop jerked to her right and stared wide-eyed at the brush. Something moved in there, parting the brush as it came. A low growl rumbled.
“Hello?”
She backed away a step at a time:
one, two, three, four …
She saw the long ears first, shining in the moonlight. Then eyes
rose above the brush, and a painted muzzle. The jaws opened slowly, and rows of sharp teeth gleamed.
Redcrop’s knees went weak.
“WHAT’S SHE DOING?” BROWSER ASKED, SQUINTING ACROSS the river into the gathering dusk.
He lay on his belly next to Catkin in a thicket of rabbitbrush three hundred body-lengths to the west of the grave. They’d chosen this hill because it was covered with brush, but they could not see the village, or much of the surrounding country, unless they stood up. Through the brush, they had one good view: Redcrop. Her white cape blazed in the moonlight. She had stopped abruptly a few moments ago and hadn’t moved since.
“I don’t know,” Catkin answered.
Browser brought his club up and turned it in his hands. He wore his bow and quiver over his left shoulder. He might have enough light to shoot tonight, but a war club would prove better in a close fight. He glanced at Catkin. She had rubbed soot over her oval face to keep it from shining in the moonlight. Her eyes resembled two black holes cut into a gray blanket.
“What’s she looking at?” he whispered.
“She’s probably praying, or speaking with her dead grandmother.”
“Maybe, but she turned toward Longtail village.”
“Or away from the grave,” Catkin pointed out, her voice sympathetic.
Browser silently pulled himself forward on his elbows.
Catkin whispered, “Where are you going?”
“Closer. I want to—”
“The brush thins out down there, Browser. If we go any closer, we will be visible.”
He stopped, turned, twisted his club in his hands. “All right. I will give her a few more instants.”
He had enough guards posted in the village, around the village, and along the trails that led to the village, that nothing could possibly happen without an alarm going up. But something about Redcrop’s stiff posture ate at him. He’d been studying her for four summers. It wasn’t like her …
Redcrop collapsed to the ground and put her hands over her face.
Catkin whispered, “See. She’s grieving, Browser. That’s all.”
Browser released his stranglehold on his club and sank to his belly in the grass. As the cold intensified, the mist along the river crawled across the ground like shiny white fingers.
Catkin pulled herself forward until she could look Browser in the eyes. Her plain buckskin coat and pants blended with the darkness. She whispered, “Why are you so anxious tonight?”
He lifted a shoulder. A strange, terrible sense of dread had entered his bones and would not leave. “It’s the mist. If it keeps moving like this, in less than a finger of time we won’t be able to see Redcrop. Perhaps we should go and escort her back to the village now.”
“Give her a little while longer, Browser. There are four guards watching—”
“How much longer?”
She rolled to her side to face him, and her long braid dragged the ground like a glistening black serpent. “Are you sorry she’s out there, Browser? Is that why you’re so jumpy? You think that you—”
“I know what I’m doing,” he answered sharply, and started to slide forward again, away from her.
Catkin caught his hand, and he stopped and looked back at her.
“This wasn’t your idea, was it?” she said.
He hesitated for a long time before answering. “It doesn’t matter. Two Hearts must be stopped, Catkin. I just—” His stomach twisted. He struggled with himself, trying to shove away the guilt. “She is just so young. I wish we did not have to do this.”
Browser anxiously started to move again, but Catkin entwined her fingers with his to keep him still.
“She may be young, but Redcrop understands what she is doing, Browser. No one ordered her to do this. She is out there because she wants the killing to stop, too. And Redcrop is not the only one risking her life tonight. Every warrior on guard is a target.”
Browser gazed down at her fingers. They looked small and frail against his big hand. He tightened his grip and could feel the slender bones of her hand, and the steady rhythm of her pulse where her wrist touched his arm. For just a moment—just a few heartbeats—he closed his eyes and allowed himself the comfort of her closeness.
“Browser, I have wanted to … to tell you …”
He heard the longing in her voice and opened his eyes. She looked vulnerable and frightened, her love for him very plain on her face. Tenderly, he brushed a lock of black hair from her cheek, and they
stared at each other for a long time, listening to the sounds of the night, the wind in the brush, the river splashing over rocks below.
Through a taut exhalation, Browser said, “That tone in your voice scared me, Catkin. Are you certain that you wish to tell me things that you may not be able to take back?”
She suddenly went rigid, and Browser instinctively gripped his war club. Catkin was staring over his head, in the direction of the village.
Browser flipped over to follow her gaze.
A strange haunting shimmer lit the sky above Longtail village. He stared at it, trying to decide what it was.
“What is that?” Catkin asked.
He shook his head. “Even if they piled the entire wood supply onto the ritual bonfire, the glow wouldn’t rise that high into the sky.”
“A lightning strike? Maybe a grass fire?”
“Maybe.” Browser propped himself on his elbows and eased up to get a better look.
Before his head cleared the tufts of rabbitbrush, he heard a thin, high-pitched sound. It rose and slipped away, like someone playing a wooden comb with a juniper stick. He got on his hands and knees—and gaped at the halo of red sparks that swelled in the sky.
“Catkin, there’s a fire in the village!”
He leaped to his feet and ran to the crest of the hill. The ground seemed to drop away from beneath his feet. “Oh, gods.”
“What is it?” she demanded as she ran up beside him.
A billowing pillar of flame and smoke rose above Longtail village. When the smoke shifted, Browser saw dozens of children huddled together on the roof of the tower kiva, apparently trapped by the flames. In the plaza below, people raced through the smoke with bowls of water, threw them on the fire, then ran back toward the river.
Catkin cried, “Was it an attack? Do you see enemy warriors?”
“No.”
Browser lunged down the hill, his legs pumping as hard as they could.
Catkin shouted, “Maybe the ritual fire burned out of control?” “Or sparks landed on the exposed roof timbers and caught before anyone knew it!”
Breathless squeals pierced the night.
The children! Gods, not the children!
He jumped a rock and stumbled out of control, his arms flailing
until he reached the base of the hill, then he ran flat out, leaving Catkin behind.
“Browser?” she shouted. “
Redcrop!
I’m going after Redcrop!”
“Go!”
Ant Woman appeared out of the smoke and started throwing children off the kiva roof into the arms of people below. They had to fall through a wall of flames, and their terrified screams split the night. A crowd of thirty or forty men and woman jostled on the ground, shouting, crying, and leaping to catch each child that fell. Several of the older children ran to the edge of the roof and bravely leaped off by themselves. Ant Woman pulled a blanket-wrapped infant from the arms of a little girl and threw the baby over the edge. The child seemed to hover in the air for a moment, then he came tumbling down end-over-end. A woman snatched the shrieking bundle out of the air and ran through the firelit darkness toward the river.
As Browser neared the river, he saw Ant Woman grab the arm of a little girl with long shining hair. The terrified girl struggled to break free, throwing all her weight against Ant Woman’s grip. Ant Woman’s mouth opened in what must have been a shout of rage, then she jerked the child forward so hard Ant Woman almost toppled over the edge herself. She pulled the screaming girl into her arms and heaved her over the edge. As the girl fell through the fire, her hair caught and burst into flame. In less than two heartbeats, the girl’s head blazed like a torch.
A man on the ground caught her, threw her to the dirt, and began beating the fire out with his bare hands while the panicked little girl shrieked and clawed at his face and arms.
Browser hit the river running. Injured people filled the water; many sat soaking burns, others nursed broken arms or legs. Some just appeared to be sitting in the water, weeping.
As he splashed across, Browser shouted, “What happened? Did anyone see what happened? How did the fire start?”
Wading Bird, twenty paces downstream, cupped a hand to his mouth and half-sobbing, half-yelling, called, “We were Dancing when the entire village seemed to go up at once! There were flames everywhere! The entire back wall blazed!”
“Are you all right, Elder?”
Wading Bird dipped his head in a weary nod. “I will live. Go and help those who are still in danger!”