Maggie pulled up behind Dusty’s Bronco and turned off the ignition. She sat for a moment, allowing the stillness of the night to settle into her weary bones. The day had been long and complicated. A little boy from New Jersey had defied the warning signs and tried to climb the cliff behind Chetro Ketl. He’d gotten scared halfway up the Jackson stairway. Park personnel had been forced to rappel down from above to pluck the boy off the cliff. Maggie’s job had been to calm down the obnoxious parents, who kept shouting they were going to sue and have the entire monument shut down as unsafe.
She turned off her lights and stepped out of her truck. Dusty stood at the edge of the parking area, his back to the campfire, a bottle in his hand.
“Is that you, Maggie?”
“It’s me.” She smiled in the darkness. “Sorry I’m late. I had quite a day.”
“Yeah, I heard. Dale was at the Visitor’s Center when they pulled the boy off the cliff. New Jersey, huh? Is the suit filed yet?”
She chuckled. “I don’t know. What is it about people? A thousand signs in the canyon saying don’t climb on anything, and they still climb, then figure it’s your fault. You’d think that common sense would tell somebody that if they let their kid scramble up a sheer cliff, he might get into trouble.”
From around the fire, Sylvia said, “It’s another sign that civilization is doomed. Humans are too stupid to survive.”
“You might have something there,” Maggie called back, then paused, and looked at Dusty. They’d been friends for five years.
She usually knew what he was thinking, but not tonight. “Dale said you
really
need a monitor.”
Dusty seemed suddenly reluctant. “We found another one today.”
She heard the wary tone in his voice, and said, “You didn’t do anything disrespectful, did you?”
“Who do you think I am?” He paused. “I want to talk to you about this alone, okay? Away from the fire.”
“If it’s a pass, forget it.”
“I don’t make passes.”
“Right. Your reputation for being a real hot dog with women is all made up, huh?”
Dusty said, “You’ve known me for five years, and you still believe the things I say about myself?”
He led her away, toward his blue Bronco.
“Why can’t we talk in front of the crew?”
He leaned against the rear of his Bronco, and firelight glimmered in his blond hair. In a low voice, he said, “From the delicate nature of the bones, body number one looks like a woman. Body number two, another woman. Body three, a woman. Body four, same thing.”
“These were matrilineal people. Men went out to war and to trade. They worked in the fields, and hunted. They didn’t come back as often. What’s the problem?”
“Each woman has a fractured skull. They were beaten to death.”
Maggie sat down on the bumper. “Really? Go on.”
“You’re not shocked?”
“Of course, but I’m not one of these people who takes it for gospel that the ancient ones were peaceful farmers. That ‘Red Saint’ thing is for romantics. What else?”
Dusty twisted his beer bottle in his hands. “The first victim had a rock dropped on her head.” Dusty waited in silence.
Maggie stared. Then she blinked and straightened. “You’re sure? The rock didn’t roll down off the cliff and accidentally wind up there? You’re positive it was intentional?”
“We’re not sure of anything. We located the burials and stopped. We’re waiting for that monitor. I just want you to know what the monitor
might
be getting into.”
“Since when would an archaeologist care what an Indian monitor was exposed to?”
“Since the archaeologist was me,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to be responsible for bankrupting somebody’s family to pay for a cleansing.”
Maggie’s heart constricted. She whispered, “You really think this is witchcraft?”
Even saying it aloud made her quake. She glanced around at the shapes that fluttered in the firelit darkness.
“It’s a possibility. That’s why I wanted to talk to you alone. For now, I don’t want this to go any further than you and me. I’m not interested in having this turn into a circus.”
She studied him. “I thought archaeologists loved circuses. You know, publicity, your picture in the paper, chairing a symposium at the next Society for American Archaeology meeting, et cetera, et cetera. Since when does a White archaeologist turn down a chance for fame?”
Dusty frowned at his beer. He peeled more of the label off the bottle and seemed to be thinking about what to say next. “Maggie, I don’t talk about this, so I’m only going to say it once and trust that you won’t repeat it. I was thirteen when I was initiated into a kiva. My life was wreckage. Dale had just taken me under his wing. I was headed for trouble, and Dale was friends with this old Hopi. They thought I should undergo this ceremony. I was an angry, hurt kid, drowning in hate and guilt. Really screwed up. My mother was gone. My dad was …” His voice softened. “He was dead. I thought I was tough. But when I went down the ladder into that kiva, my world changed. Let’s just say I don’t need any fame. I need balance and harmony in my life. Turning this into a circus wouldn’t accomplish that.”
A long silence stretched between them as she studied his firelit face. He raised the bottle and took a drink. She caught the earthy odor of dark beer.
Maggie said, “You know, there’s more to you than meets the eye. I’m going to have to rethink my opinions of the renegade, Dusty Stewart.”
Dusty gave her a closed-mouth smile. “I’d wait if I were you. I’m
sure in another week I’ll do something to prove your first opinion right.”
Maggie smiled, rose, and took his arm. “Come on,” she said as she led him away from the Bronco, and back toward camp. “You can buy me a can of Coke. I’ll sit around, enjoy the fire, tell Sylvia how stupid tourists can be, and give this thing some thought. I’ll find you the right monitor.”
“You’d better do it fast,” he said. “We’re running out of time to complete this excavation. NOAA wants to lay a concrete pad in three months. We’re already behind schedule.”
“Dig faster.”
“I’d like to, but every time we sink a shovel we hit another body.”
Deadly sober, she whispered, “Do me a favor?”
He turned. “What?”
“Don’t touch that rock until I can get someone in here who knows what to do.”
Dusty looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Don’t worry. I have no desire to see a witch’s soul running around loose in my camp.”
B
ROWSER SAT WITH HIS BACK BRACED AGAINST THE door frame of Cloudblower’s chamber. From here, he could look out to the west, across the ruined plaza of Talon Town. What a place it must have been when the Straight Path nation had been whole. Even now, Power radiated from the stones, the burned poles, and crumbled roofs. Five stories. How had they managed it? He marveled at the First People’s perfectly fitted stone work. The elegance of their architecture. In comparison, the chunky, irregular design of Hillside Village seemed childlike.
To his left, above the toppled fifth floor, Propped Pillar leaned menacingly as if it might fall at any moment and crush the last of Talon Town’s dreams.
Browser looked into the chamber, and his heart throbbed. Hophorn lay on a pile of soft hides in the middle of the floor. A red-and-blue striped blanket covered her tall willowy body. He longed to go to her, to touch her just to let her know he was near.
Hovering over the warming bowl, the
Kokwimu,
Cloudblower, prepared her tools for the delicate operation. Beside her, the slave girl, Redcrop, chewed her lip, her anxious brown gaze darting between Hophorn and the
Kokwimu.
Redcrop had seen fourteen summers, almost all of them as a slave. Flame Carrier’s son had captured Redcrop and her mother when Redcrop had been a little over a summer old. They had worked her mother to death, but Flame Carrier had taken a liking to the quick-witted girl. She treated Redcrop more like a granddaughter than a slave. Even now, the girl wore a finely painted yellow cotton dress with olivella shells decorating the collar. Most slaves wore plain coarse garments.
Cloudblower pulled Hophorn’s long black hair up over her head,
then used a sharp obsidian blade to scribe a semicircular line around the wound. The light glinted from the stone, blood welling along the slit scalp. The
Kokwimu
’s skilled fingers changed their grip on the sliver of stone and slipped it between the skull and skin as she pulled back on Hophorn’s hair, curling back a hand-size piece of scalp. The depression could be seen in the blood-streaked curve of bone.
Browser could not take his eyes from her. Images of her beautiful naked body flitted across his souls, her long legs, the feel of her moving against him. Her eyes had always shone with a strange luminescence when they’d loved each other.
The jet pendant Hophorn had worn since last summer glittered. The spiral serpent coiled inside a broken eggshell. It had a single red coral eye. Ash Girl had given it to Hophorn. She’d found it while crawling around exploring the abandoned chambers in Talon Town. Hophorn considered it a stunning gift. She constantly commented on its beauty and extraordinary workmanship. Browser did not see it. When Browser gazed upon the serpent, a chill went through him. The serpent always seemed to be watching him, its gaze malignant, evil.
Cloudblower said, “Redcrop? Hand me that obsidian drill. I need to enlarge the holes in the circlet of skull I’m going to remove.”
“Yes, Elder,” the young slave girl responded.
Browser watched. It grew harder every moment to teeter around the edges of the chasm that had eaten a hole in his soul. Some part of him longed to fall in, to lose himself in that inner well of darkness. Perhaps then the guilt would end.
Ash Girl’s face fluttered across the warp and weft of his souls, appearing exactly as it had the last time they’d spoken. He had known only that she was upset with him, perhaps tired of caring for Grass Moon, and needing Browser’s help. He had excused himself from the war discussions—which, for the sake of their people, he should not have done—and gone to care for their son. Now, he wished he’d tried talking with Ash Girl, perhaps if he’d—
“I must find my Power herbs,” Cloudblower said. “Just sit quietly, Redcrop.”
Wrinkles cut the skin around Cloudblower’s eyes and across her forehead. Her long graying black hair hung wetly over her
cheeks, accentuating the triangular shape of her face. She searched several of the black-and-white pots that lined the rear wall. A pot slipped from her blood-slick fingers and fell. It struck a woven mat and rolled around in a circle before she could grab it, and right it.
Cloudblower poured a small amount of herbs from the pot into a bowl and reached for another pot. “There,” she said, “that should be enough.”
Redcrop shifted, and the red gleam sheathed her oval face and large black eyes.
Cloudblower turned back with the small bowl in her hands. She poured water from a gourd into the bowl, and used her bloody finger to mix the herbs. The distinctive scents of sage leaves and ground juniper bark filtered through the chamber.
Cloudblower set the bowl beside Hophorn and stretched her weary back muscles.
“May I pour you a cup of sunflower tea, Elder?” Redcrop asked and reached for the pot that hung on the tripod over the bowl of coals.
“I’ll drink when we are finished here.”
“Yes, Elder,” the girl said.
Browser’s gaze drifted over the magnificent paintings on the walls. Life-size, the katsinas wore brilliant feathered masks and carried dance sticks in their hands. The Buffalo katsina danced on the south wall in front of Browser. He had one foot up and his arms out at his sides, marching to a sacred Song that Browser could not hear. His long curving horns and black beard looked strangely iridescent against the white wall.
Only Cloudblower and Hophorn had enough courage to take up permanent residence in Talon Town. Many people believed the place cursed. Others said witches flew in and out every night, unseen, unheard, except by the lost souls who roamed the abandoned rooms.
Hophorn had moved here because of Browser. So they could be alone, beyond the direct gazes of Hillside villagers.
Cloudblower’s ground-floor chamber nestled in the southeastern corner of the plaza. From the doorway, Browser could look due west across the plaza to the narrow line of rooms that bisected the massive semicircular town. The great kiva they’d begun restoring
sat in the middle of the line of rooms. Though mostly subterranean, the upper quarter of the structure rose above the ground. The fresh white plaster shone in the noon sun.
Flame Carrier had ordered everyone home to Hillside Village, except Redcrop, himself, and Whiproot. He could see Whiproot crouching on the roof of the long south-facing wall. Dressed in his white ritual cape, he resembled a huge snowy owl. Above Whiproot, dark clouds drifted northward, silent as the shadows of the masked gods.
The only way in or out of the town was by ladder over the southern wall where Whiproot perched. Browser himself had pulled up the ladder, and stowed it on the roof. He could see it laying to Whiproot’s right.
“I’m ready,” Cloudblower called, and Browser looked back into the red-hued chamber.
As Redcrop held Hophorn’s head steady, Cloudblower slid two long chert flakes beneath the circlet of skull she had drilled and gently lifted it, separating the circlet from the rest of the skull, but she left it attached to the thin membrane that encased the brain. Almost immediately, the membrane puffed out like a fawn bladder balloon. The fluid inside looked faintly yellowish.
Cloudblower sighed, and sat back. “That should release some of the Evil Spirits feeding in her brain,” she said. “When the swelling goes down, we will pull the flap of scalp back and sew it in place again. Then we’ll plaster it with the Healing herbs.”
“How long will that take?” Redcrop asked.
“That is up to the gods, girl. But pray it is not too long.”
Redcrop’s eyes widened. “What will happen if it takes too long?”
“The flap of scalp will die and Hophorn will have a spot of bare skull for the rest of her life.” She gestured to the soot-blackened pot hanging from the tripod. “You may pour me that cup of tea now.”
Redcrop picked up a gourd cup and dipped it into the pot. The liquid steamed as she handed it to Cloudblower.
The old woman blew on the cup, and her soft brown gaze centered on Browser. She gave him a sympathetic look. “War Chief, would you like a cup of tea?”
“Yes, Elder. Thank you.” He sat up straighter.
Redcrop dipped another gourd cup into the pot, and Browser took it.
As he sipped, the fragrance of sunflowers rose. His round face reflected in the pale green liquid. Dirt streaked his flat nose, and dust glittered in his thick brows and shoulder-length hair. His eyes resembled those of a dead animal: wide and glassy. A ravening wolf lived in his body, silently slinking through him, eating him alive.
“You have killed many warriors, have you not?” Cloudblower softly asked.
“What?” Browser asked in confusion.
Cloudblower turned to Redcrop. “Please, go and tell Matron Flame Carrier that we have opened the skull, that Hophorn is alive, and she may proceed with the burial of Browser’s son whenever she wishes.”
Browser’s son.
His insides shriveled. After the burial, he would spend all night cleaning his wife, bathing her body in pine needle tea, washing her hair, trying not to see her crushed face …
“Yes, Elder.” Redcrop rose. She stepped over Browser’s extended legs, and trotted across the plaza. He heard her call, “Warrior Whiproot, please lower the ladder!”
Browser studied Cloudblower. “Why did you ask me about the people I’ve killed?”
Cloudblower slid backward, away from Hophorn, and braced her back against the wall. She drew up her knees and propped her elbows on them. For a time she did not speak, then she smiled gently at him, and said, “I knew a man once. His name was Sunrunner. A small, feeble man. He—”
Browser lifted a hand. “Please, Elder. Another time.”
As though she hadn’t heard him, Cloudblower continued, “On first glance, there was nothing impressive about him. He was short and skinny—”
“I have no interest in hearing a story, Elder. I—”
“We had both been captured and taken as slaves by the Fire Dogs. They took us to live in the south. It was not a pleasant life. But when Sunrunner was close, none of us felt the hunger, or blows, or saw the death all around us. It was nothing he said or did. I am telling you the truth. He was an ordinary man. In fact, he was a man who did not hope.”
“And why was that?” Browser sighed, resigned to his fate.
Cloudblower swirled the liquid in her cup. “I had hope. Everyone around me hoped. We spent every moment locked in our souls thinking of home and family, of good food, and being able to sleep in warm hides. We didn’t wish to be slaves.”
“Of course not,” Browser said. “No one does.”
A sad smile touched her lips. “Sunrunner did not mind, because he did not hope. Why would he? He found joy in the smallest of things. The singing voice of another slave. Someone’s talent for mending holes in leather. I would see him coming, walking through the heat and misery of the stone quarries, and I would long to shout, ‘Why are you smiling? Don’t you see what’s happening around you?’ But I never said those words because Sunrunner’s eyes seemed to be focused entirely upon our agonies, but they did not wither his souls, as they did ours. Still, he was no hero. He was quite ordinary. He did not console, or preach, or take great suffering upon himself.”
“Then what made him special?”
Cloudblower smiled. “He was not afraid.”
Browser lifted his brows. “Forgive me, Elder, but as a warrior, I consider that heroic.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But if you had known him, you would not have thought so. Truly. On one of the few occasions when he spoke to me, he said, ‘Cloudblower, there are men who die because others kill them, and there are men who die because they are afraid to live. They carefully cut a hole in their hearts and invite death to come and nest there.’ Which are you?”
She tilted her head.
Browser gazed at her, until he realized the question was meant for him, not part of the story. Or perhaps it served two purposes.
He said, “You think I’m cutting a hole in my heart?”
“I think you are very adept with a knife, War Chief, and not the one you carry on your hip.”
Browser sloshed the remains in his tea cup. “I can’t seem to help myself, Elder. I have been thinking, and there are many things I wish I had done. Things I should have done. If only—”
“Guilt is an excuse, Browser. Let it go. Accept what you did, learn from it, and get on with living.”
Browser stared into his tea. “Your words sound right to my ears, Elder, but my heart isn’t listening.”
Cloudblower tucked a loose strand of graying black hair behind her ear. “Then your heart is foolish, War Chief.”
Some of the weight lifted from Browser’s shoulders. His gaze rested on Hophorn, and desperation ate at him. He leaned into the chamber to stroke the blanket over her feet. “I’m here, Hophorn,” he whispered. “Right here.”
Cloudblower looked away, as though to give him privacy.
Browser straightened and took another sip of his tea. The flowery taste warmed his throat and belly. “What happened to Sunrunner?”
“Oh,” she said, “a woman came to me one day and told me Sunrunner was dead. I never knew how. Probably he did something to annoy the guards.”