“
M
AGPIE, COULD YOU HOLD THIS?”
“Of course, Aunt.”
Hail Walking Hawk handed her cane to Magpie, and dug around in the pocket of her yellow dress for the two pieces of bread she had saved from their supper of venison chili and biscuits. The pieces of fluffy white bread looked almost silver in the twilight as she withdrew them. She lifted the morsels to the pale blue evening sky, and Sang softly. The brightest Evening People had awakened, and sparkled on the eastern horizon.
Hail said, “This is for our mother, Iatiku,” and bent over to place the bread on the flat slab of sandstone. Her yellow dress billowed around her legs. “And this is for you, Utsiti, creator of the universe.” She placed the other piece of bread beside the first. They seemed to gleam against the tan stone.
Hail straightened. The temperature had just begun to drop, and her whole body heaved a sigh of relief. She had spent most of the day in her tent, watching the shadows of the bugs who walked on the red nylon. The pain and the ghosts kept crying out to her, trying to force her to sit up and take notice of them. As the evening cooled, she felt a little better.
“There,” she said, “that should do it.” She reached for her cane and propped it on the ground. The tip sank into the soft sand.
Magpie took Hail’s left elbow and smiled. “Do you realize, Aunt, that if everyone made offerings to the gods each night, all the wars would go away, and no one would ever be hungry again.” Perspiration soaked the armpits of her white T-shirt.
Hail grinned. “Especially Iatiku and Utsiti. They’d be as fat as those wrestlers in Japan. What are they called?”
“Sumo wrestlers, Aunt.”
“Sumo,” Hail tried the name on her tongue. It tasted sticky, like the rice they served in those Chinese restaurants in Albuquerque.
Hail sighed and studied the cliffs that surrounded them. The darkness had turned the tan rock a grayish purple. Owls perched in the crevices, their eyes flashing as they searched the canyon bottom, waiting their chance to dive down and snatch up a juicy mouse or an unsuspecting kangaroo rat.
Hail turned toward the Haze child. He’d been gurgling for the past hour, like a baby blowing bubbles to occupy himself. A black piece of plastic covered the pit. Hail could feel his hope. He knew people had found him, and he could not understand why no one had taken care of him yet. He had been trapped here for a long time.
Not much longer
, she promised.
As soon as these diggers get you out of the ground, I’ll take care of you. Don’t be afraid.
Hail’s filmy old eyes moved to the top of the pit where the stone rested over the witch’s head. She had been a tall woman. Dusty had dug around her long limbs, revealing how her arms sprawled. Washais said it looked like the woman had been hurled into the grave.
Hail glanced at the other pits. All of these women and children had been thrown away like old rags—but from the marks Washais pointed out on the long bones, the muscles had been stripped from them before burial.
That frightened Hail.
When she had been a little girl, she’d heard the Pueblo elders whispering about two
maleficiadores
, enchanters, who dug children from their graves, and cooked their flesh in a large pot in the moonlit graveyard. People could smell the foul odor for miles. Some witches ate only the organs of powerful shamans, to gain their powers. Other witches jerked the flesh of their victims and fed it to their enemies as a way to hide their crimes.
Hail glanced at the square holes.
Many of these women had stones over their heads, but she could sense they weren’t witches. Someone had just treated them that way. Nevertheless, evil did live here. They had awakened it with their digging. She could still feel the
basilisco
’s malignant
presence. Even after centuries of lying in the ground, the corruption was strong. Hail could taste it at the back of her throat, cloying, like the odor of rotten meat.
Dusty would have to get these bones out of the ground soon, so they could all leave, or the corruption would make them sick.
“Aunt,” Magpie said, and gently touched Hail’s white hair. “I’ve been having scary dreams.”
Hail swiveled her head. Sweat glued Magpie’s short black hair to her cheeks, and made her rich brown eyes appear deep and dark. Spirit Helpers often came to people in dreams, delivering messages to help the tribe. “What dreams?”
Magpie tipped her head, as if reluctant to say. “I see terrible things. You and Grandma are talking in the Land of the Dead, and I—”
“Is she letting me get a word in edgewise?” Hail asked seriously. “She could talk a dead rabbit away from a starving coyote.”
Magpie smiled, but she gave Hail that look that told her she knew Hail had cleverly sidestepped the part about being in the Land of the Dead.
Hail tucked her cane under her arm and clasped her knobby fingers over Magpie’s. At the feel of her smooth skin, love swelled Hail’s chest, easing some of the pain. “Help me back to my bottle of iced tea,” she said. “We’ll talk on the way.”
Magpie supported Hail while she searched for steady footing in the sand, then they veered around a thick greasewood bush, and headed east, toward the firelight that haloed the tents and outlined the blocky shape of Dr. Robertson’s square camp trailer. He’d towed it in that afternoon behind his shiny red truck.
Dusty sat next to Sylvia before the leaping flames in the fire pit. Washais and Dr. Robertson stood over a table scattered with bones to Hail’s right. She could see them in the white sphere of light cast by a Coleman lantern. Frowns incised their foreheads.
Hail and Magpie’s red tent nestled between the two groups; the rain fly that had been set up as a ramada out front waffled in the night wind.
“Please tell me the truth, Aunt,” Magpie said hesitantly, fearfully.
Hail smiled up into her niece’s dark eyes. “Oh, it’s nothing so bad. Not for me, anyway. Death and I have been companions for many years, walking side-by-side, just like old friends.”
Magpie’s steps faltered. She looked down at Hail with pained eyes.
“Don’t mourn me, child. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I cherish every moment, every color. When you smile at me, my heart soars like that owl up there.” She lifted her cane and pointed to the big bird wheeling silently in the slate sky above them. His body shone blackly as he passed in front of the brilliant crescent moon.
Tears glistened in Magpie’s eyes. “Oh, Aunt.”
“Listen,” Hail said, “I’m going to need you to help me. I don’t want anybody else to know about this, and the pain gets really bad sometimes. I have trouble breathing. When it comes upon me, you may have to get me back to the tent before I fall down flat.”
Magpie jerked a nod. “Please let me take you home?”
“I need to be here.” She gestured at the excavation. “These diggers, they don’t know what’s slinking around out here. Something old, something evil. I still have things to do. The time’s not right yet, but when it comes, I have to be ready.”
Magpie tenderly touched Hail’s white hair and bit her lip. “Oh, Aunt, I can’t stand to see you in pain.”
Hail glanced her way. “I have a bag full of pain killers in the tent, child. I just haven’t been taking them. I get wobbly, and I can’t think straight when I do.”
Magpie kept silent for a time. “What if your doctor needs to run a test? Don’t you need to be close—”
“He can’t do anything more, Magpie.”
Magpie squeezed her eyes closed, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Is he sure?”
“Yes, child. It’s just my time. Like it will be yours someday. I want to live my last days out in the open, watching sunrises and sunsets, not in a white smelly hospital.”
Magpie’s jaw quivered. She seemed to be nerving herself to ask the question. “Is it …”
“Cancer, yes. Just like your grandmother.”
Magpie clutched her arm so tightly it hurt.
Hail petted her fingers. “Now I know how packrat feels in Eagle’s talons.”
Maggie loosened her grip. “Breast cancer?”
“Yes, girl. Which means you have more to worry about than me dying. That doctor in Albuquerque said sometimes this sort of cancer runs in families.
You
have to go get checked. Soon.”
Magpie’s voice came out low. “How long, Aunt? Did the doctor tell you?”
“A few months. Long enough for me to drive you crazy telling you how much I love you. Now, help me back to my chair by the fire. I want to finish my iced tea, and I don’t want you looking like somebody in the family just died, because I’m still here. You see me, don’t you?” Hail waved her cane.
“I see you,” Magpie smiled, but it looked like it hurt.
Hail gripped Magpie’s arm, and took one agonizing step at a time. Why did breast cancer make her hurt all over? It didn’t make sense. Her chest, naturally, burned as if on fire, but her knees and elbows felt like an ice pick had been wedged between the bones. Her sister, Slumber, had never complained about these kinds of pains, but now that she thought of it, Slumber had never complained about anything. Her sister had stayed on her feet and busy to the end.
And so will I.
But, unlike Slumber, she had one last battle to wage. And this one, she couldn’t afford to lose.
The wind changed, blowing smoke in her direction. The fragrance of the fire pleased Hail. Dr. Robertson had hauled in four bundles of ponderosa pine logs, and the faintly sweet tang saturated the night.
Hail said, “Are you going to be all right?”
Magpie wiped her eyes on her white shirt sleeve. “I’ll be fine now. Thank you for telling me straight out.”
“I should have done it sooner. I was just being selfish. I wanted to see your eyes shining for me, and I was afraid the truth would dim them.”
“It won’t. I promise.” Magpie suddenly turned and hugged Hail.
Hail stroked her niece’s short black hair. “I love you, child. You’re the reason I’m still here. You’ve taken good care of me these past few years.”
Magpie couldn’t speak. She swallowed and patted Hail’s hand.
They walked in companionable silence, smiling gently at each other.
DUSTY CAUGHT SIGHT OF HAIL AND MAGGIE AS THEY APPEARED from the darkness. He stopped peeling the label from his Guinness bottle and studied them. Both wore curious expressions, almost desperately loving, as though each feared the other might disappear at any moment. He smiled at Maggie. She smiled back, and led her aunt to the lawn chair beside Sylvia. After the elderly woman eased down, Maggie pulled her chair up so close that the aluminum arms touched.
Maggie reached down for the almost empty bottle of iced tea laying in the sand, unscrewed the lid, and handed it to her aunt. “Would you like another bottle, Aunt? This one is almost gone.”
Hail shook her gray head. “I’d just have to get up twice in the night, and the ghosts might get me.”
Sylvia’s green eyes widened. She had clipped her brown hair up in back, and the style made her face look as lean as a weasel’s. She wore a tan tank top, Levi’s shorts, and hiking boots. “Did you hear them again last night, Mrs. Walking Hawk?”
“I hear them every night. They’re a noisy bunch.”
“What did they say?”
“They were shouting at each other and shoving back and forth. I could hear their feet scraping the ground.”
Sylvia glanced at Dusty, then whispered, “I wonder what they’re fighting about?”
Hail said, “I don’t know, but he’s really mad. Last night his voice screeched, then her voice went soft, like she was afraid of him, begging him not to hurt her.”
“He? I thought we just had women here.” Sylvia’s eyes scanned the darkness.
“I heard a man,” Hail replied, with a distant look in her eyes. “I think he’s the cause of all this. He’s really bad. He touched the basilisk. I could feel him in the stone.”
“Can you hear the ghosts now, Aunt?” Maggie asked.
Hail cocked her ear to the wind. White hair danced around her wrinkled face as she listened. “No. Even that Haze baby is quiet.”
Sylvia sank back into her chair. “Good. I don’t want to accidentally get in their way, you know? Getting whacked by a ghost isn’t my idea of sacrificing for science.”
“Whacked?” Maggie asked. “Ghosts whack you?”
“You betcha.” Sylvia nodded. Her freckles looked larger in the firelight. “My mother used to tell me bedtime stories about ghosts when I was growing up. They were always whacking people by throwing chairs and making chandeliers fall on them. I remember one story that scared the bejeesus out of me. The ghost broke an icicle off the roof of the house, then slipped into a young woman’s bedroom, and plunged it into her heart, but the woman didn’t die right away. She ran around screaming until she stumbled through a window and a piece of broken glass lopped her head off.”
Dusty reached for the top log in the woodpile to his left and tossed it into the fire pit. Ash puffed, and whirled upward into the night sky. As flames licked around the wood, sparks crackled and shot in all directions. “Your mother told you stories like that at bedtime? And you didn’t run screaming?”