People of the Silence (4 page)

“Are you … are you talking to me?”

He smiled.
“Yes, She Who Haunts the Dead.”

Slumber edged closer. Maybe he was real, and her eyesight was just getting sketchy. He was actually
beautiful.
She’d never said that about a man before. Tall, with long thick black hair, he had eyes the shade of mahogany furniture. A warm light shone in those dark depths.

“How do you know the name my people call me by? Do I know you?”

He extended a hand to her.
“Come. We must hurry if we’re going to use the clouds as stepping stones to get to the skyworlds. The storm is blowing away.”
He took a step closer.
“It is your choice, She Who Haunts the Dead. You may stay for a short time longer, or go now. With me.”

Tears welled in Slumber’s eyes as understanding dawned. She hadn’t expected to be frightened, but she was. A little. Instinctively, she turned to gaze at Magpie. Longing wrung her heart. She would miss her granddaughter. Magpie had been very good to her. Slumber’s knees started shaking.

“You may stay if you wish,”
the man gently reminded.
“You do not have to come today. I just thought you might wish to.”

Taking a deep breath, Slumber turned back to look at him. “It’s my time. I’ve been itching to get away from the sickness.”

He extended his hand a little further and smiled. “When you put your hand in mine, the pain will go away.”

Slumber wet her wrinkled lips, stepped toward him, and reached out …

*   *   *

Maggie hugged herself as Marisa Fenton stomped across the plaza, then headed for her Jeep. Her tan jacket fluttered in the wind.

Kyle Laroque propped his hands on his hips. His white sleeves were splotched with rain. “She’s not as bad as you think. She’s just feeling stepped on.”

“So am I.”

“I apologize, Maggie. I never intended for this to turn into a shouting match. I hope we’re still friends.”

Maggie shrugged. “Kyle, I know the canyon is a sacred place to you. And maybe to some of the others in your group. I—I’ll talk to the park administrator and the regional tribes. There must be a solution to this problem. A middle road we can all take.”

“Thank you, Maggie,” he said sincerely. “That’s all we ask. I…”

A curious, alarmed expression creased his tanned face. He tilted his head, as if listening.

“What’s the matter, Kyle?”

A swallow went down his throat. “Maggie, I … did you hear that voice?” He turned halfway around, peering toward the rear of the pueblo. “It was a man’s voice, deep, beautiful.”

Maggie suddenly noticed that her grandmother no longer sat on the wall where she’d left her, and panic ran like fire through her veins. She shouted, “
Grandma? Grandma, where are you?
”

She broke into a run, dashing across the plaza with Kyle close behind. They peered into one empty room after another, then headed for the trail that led … her steps faltered.

“Oh…”

Slumber Walking Hawk lay curled on her side on the damp ground, one arm extended in front of her as if reaching for something. Wisps of gray hair had fallen over her wrinkled face, but Maggie could see her grandmother’s serene expression.

She forced her numb legs forward and knelt. A broken turquoise knife lay clutched in her grandmother’s hand and, beside it, what looked like an ancient deerbone stiletto. Maggie tenderly took Slumber’s wrist to feel for a pulse.

Her throat ached. “Oh, Grandma.” She eased down to the wet ground.

Kyle knelt beside her. “Is she—”

“Yes.”

He bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Maggie.”

“She was dying, Kyle. She knew it. And though she never said so, I think she’s been in a lot of pain. It’s just that I—I loved her so much.” Maggie gazed at him through blurry eyes. “I wish she could have stayed for a little longer.”

He fumbled with his sunglasses, pulling them off so he could really look at her. He had soft brown eyes. That glow had returned, the one that made her go still inside, as if she gazed through a door that led between the worlds. “The man … the voice I heard?”

Maggie frowned. “Yes?”

Folding the glasses, he tucked them into his shirt pocket, and seemed to be struggling with how to say something. Beads of rain shimmered on his blond hair. “The man said, ‘You may stay if you wish. You do not have to come today. I just thought you might wish to.’”

She stared at him.

Kyle looked embarrassed, as if he wished he hadn’t told her.

All of Maggie’s life she’d heard people tell stories about her grandmother and ghosts, but her grandmother had never talked to Maggie about them. Was that why Slumber had insisted on coming? Had a ghost told her she’d be free if she accompanied Maggie to this place today? Free from her sick body. Free from the pain.
Free
 …

Maggie used her sleeve to wipe away her tears. “I’m sure she wanted to go. I don’t blame her.”

“Why don’t you stay here with her? I’ll run back to the Visitor’s Center and get help.”

Maggie nodded, but as he trotted down the trail, Maggie called, “Kyle?”

He turned. Wind ruffled his blond hair.

“Thank you. For telling me about the voice you heard.”

He shrugged. “It’s just the place, Maggie.
It talks to me.
” He lifted a hand to her, then trotted away.

Maggie’s gaze followed him until he vanished from sight. Then she squeezed her grandmother’s frail old hand. Wind fluttered gray locks around Slumber’s peaceful old face.

“I guess the
Shiwana
just see the colors of people’s souls, huh, Grandma?”

One

Sun Cycle of the Buffalo, Moon of Falling Snow

Sternlight’s moccasins went silent behind her.

Young Fawn turned and saw him drop to his knees in the middle of the trail, his white ritual shirt aglow with starlight. Huge sandstone boulders surrounded him. Many sun cycles ago they had broken free from the towering canyon wall and tumbled into the valley to stand like monstrous guardians along the Turning-Back-the-Sun trail. Kneeling in their midst, Sternlight looked pitifully small. Long black hair fluttered around him as he rocked back and forth, his face in his hands, his necklace of copper bells jingling. His cries resembled a lost child’s.

“No,” he kept whimpering. “No, please…”

He had stopped twice in the past hand of time. At first, he had pounded his fists on the ground. Now he wept inconsolably.

Young Fawn knew little about the trials of priests, but even she could tell he was weary beyond exhaustion. He had been praying for sixteen days, eating only cactus buttons, and begging the ancestor Spirits to help him. Now, it seemed, the ghosts would not leave him alone.

Young Fawn leaned against a rock and folded her arms on her pregnant belly. Golden owl eyes sparkled in every hollow of the dark sandstone cliff, watching, wondering. To the south, fires gleamed. Fourteen large towns and over two hundred smaller villages lined the canyon walls. The priests would be rising, readying themselves for morning prayers on this critical day of the sun cycle. The fires cast a wavering yellow gleam over the massive sandstone bluff on the opposite side of the canyon. It looked dark and brooding this early, but when Father Sun rose, the sandstone would turn so golden it would appear molten.

Young Fawn sighed. The tang of sage scented the wind, but the fragrance did little to soothe her fears. Sternlight spoke softly to someone, and apparently received an answer he did not wish to hear.

“But why must I do it?” he wept. He lifted his head and looked to his right. As he shook his head, his long black hair flashed silver. “Why me?”

At the age of twenty-seven, Sternlight had been Talon Town’s Sunwatcher for nine winters, and his reputation had grown with each one. Chiefs as far away as three moons’ walk relied upon his advice. Young Fawn had seen their messengers arrive, packs filled with extraordinary gifts. Over the cycles, stories about Sternlight’s wealth had become legend. It was said that twenty rooms at Talon Town brimmed with his fortune—and some dared to whisper that only witchery paid so well.

Young Fawn nervously smoothed her palms over her turkey-feather cape. The brown-and-white feathers glistened in the light. Witches—her own people called them sleep-makers—had great Power. By jumping through a hoop of twisted yucca fibers, they could change themselves into animals, and they used rawhide shields to fly about, spying on people. The most terrifying sleep-makers raided burials to gather putrefying corpse flesh, which they dried and ground into a fine powder. Once the soul had left the body, only corruption and wickedness remained. Corpse powder concentrated that evil, and when sprinkled on someone, could cause death or madness.

Young Fawn had been captured in a raid ten summers ago, but she remembered the sleep-makers among her own people, the Mogollon, who lived far to the south. The Straight Path people called them Fire Dogs, for the Mogollon believed that they had originally come to earth in the form of wolves made from gouts of Father Sun’s fire. The Mogollon and the Straight Path people raided each other constantly, taking slaves, stealing food. Her father, Jay Bird, was the greatest and most powerful Mogollon chief. Sleep-makers had continually tried to kill him.

… And the earth had quaked each time, as if the ancestor spirits who lived in the underworlds were enraged by the foolishness of the witches.

Young Fawn reached up to touch the small bags of sacred cornmeal she wore around her throat. On occasion, when she missed her family, she thought about those sleep-makers and wondered if their Power had grown over the long summers. Was her father still alive? The earth continued to quake, more often of late, and she took each tremor as a great omen that he had survived yet another attempt on his life.

The Straight Path people, however, took the recent rash of quakes to mean that their ancestors were growing more and more angry with the greed and malice that filled the hearts of their descendants.

Young Fawn glanced at Sternlight. Could he be a sleep-maker? She had to admit that strange things did happen around him. His older sisters had vanished before they’d turned fifteen summers, and no traces had ever been found. Though rumors persisted that they had been taken slave by the Mogollon, Sternlight’s cousin, the great warrior, Webworm, had suggested a dire possibility. Sleep-makers lived very long lives—at the expense of their families. When a sleep-maker grew ill, or wanted to extend his life, he used a spindle to extract his relative’s heart and put it in his own chest.

After Sternlight’s second sister disappeared, Webworm spent days going from family member to family member, begging them to help him kill Sternlight. Both had been very young at the time, Webworm thirteen, and Sternlight fourteen. Webworm’s accusation had been taken very seriously. Sternlight, it was said, had truly feared for his life. The penalty for witchery was death, and the sleep-maker’s own family had to carry out the sentence. When they’d killed him, they would throw him facedown in a grave and cover his body with a heavy sandstone slab so that his Spirit could never escape. Alone, locked in darkness, the ghost would wail for all eternity. But no one could hear. No one could save him.

Young Fawn jumped when a flock of piñon jays soared over the canyon rim. Against the twinkling background of the Evening People, they whirled like windblown black leaves. Long ago the jays had lived among her people as sacred clowns, Dancing, bringing laughter, and teaching spiritual lessons. They had chosen to be reborn as birds to watch over the Mogollon people.

Keep me safe, guardians. I fear I need your protection on this day.

Sternlight whispered, “Don’t tell me that! I … I can’t.”

Young Fawn glanced at him. He had his hand out to no one she could see. Clenching her fists over her belly, she waited. No matter how desperately she longed to run away, she could not. It would shame her master and bring terrible punishment upon herself.

Last moon, the wife of the Blessed Sun had selected Young Fawn as Solstice Girl. The choice had been a competition between Young Fawn and her best friend, Mourning Dove, a fact which had delighted them both. Ordinarily, much older, wiser slaves received the honor. Because of that, Young Fawn performed her tasks with great care. She washed the priest’s ritual clothes with yucca soap and pine needles to give them a pleasant scent; held his sacred herbs next to her heart to keep their Spirits warm; made certain the blood of his meats never fell upon the ground, for that might offend his animal Spirit helpers. Despite her youth, she tried to be the best Solstice Girl ever.

But as the child in her belly grew, the work became increasingly difficult.

Sternlight pulled himself to his feet and stood on shaking legs. The turquoise and jet bracelets on his arms winked and sparkled in the silvery light.

She called, “Elder, are you well?”

He jerked around, and his copper bell necklaces jingled wildly. His eyes went huge. “Who—who are you?”

“I am Young Fawn. Don’t you remember?”

As sunrise approached, the evil Spirit child, Wind Baby, raced through the canyon, bending the scrawny weeds, flicking dust about and whistling around boulders. He ruffled Young Fawn’s turkey-feather cape and probed at her white dress beneath, his fingers frigid. She shivered.

“Young Fawn?” Sternlight came forward like a man picking his way through a field of rattlesnakes. “You are Young Fawn?”

“Yes, Elder.”

A hollow sensation swelled her heart. What a beautiful man. He had a straight nose and full lips. When he was an infant, the back of his skull had been flattened by the cradleboard, shoving his cheekbones forward and accentuating his deeply set brown eyes. Each time his moccasins struck the ground, the seashells tied to the laces made music. His knee-length shirt, woven from the finest cotton thread, outlined every muscle in his tall body.

He looks like one of the sacred sky gods fallen to earth.

He halted a hand’s breadth from her, and in a pained voice said, “I prayed you would not be here. Why are you here?”