The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries (34 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries
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Browser sipped his tea, and the sweet flavor of fireweed blossoms coated his tongue.
Catkin answered, “Not one of ours, but we’re not sure she was an orphan, either. Something frightened her. She ran down the hill into the drainage and hid in an old coyote den in the bank. A man found her. The girl tried everything to avoid his grasping hands. She clawed the walls and floor of the den before he dragged her out on her belly and carried her away.”
Cloudblower’s soft brown eyes widened. “How old was she? Could you tell?”
“Seven or eight summers.”
Catkin said, “Redcrop discovered the tracks. She also found a cornhusk doll in the rear of the den.”
Cloudblower’s gaze lifted to Catkin. “What does this girl have to do with Ash Girl? You don’t think she … ?” Her lips parted with words she did not speak.
Catkin said, “She may be the same girl whose footprints Stone Ghost found at the torture site. The same girl Browser heard at Aspen village. All we know for certain is that the man who found the little girl was wearing the same sandals as the man who helped to murder our Matron.”
“Is that why you wished me to hear this?” Browser asked Catkin.
“You think the little girl may be suffering the way Ash Girl did?”
Catkin said, “There are three of them, Browser: a man, a woman, and a little girl. I fear it is possible that she is his daughter.”
“Blessed gods.” Cloudblower bowed her head and closed her eyes for a long moment. “I pray not.”
Stone Ghost’s deep wrinkles rearranged themselves into sad lines. “We all do, Healer. But we must make plans in case Catkin is right.”
“Yes.” She stared at Stone Ghost with tear-filled eyes. “I will do whatever you wish me to.”
Stone Ghost nodded. “I am grateful, Healer. Where is Redcrop?” “At the grave, Uncle,” Browser said.
Stone Ghost braced a hand on Browser’s shoulder and rose unsteadily to his feet. “Please bring her. I want her to be there when we speak
with Ant Woman. Your Matron may have told Redcrop things in the past thirteen summers that no one else knows.”
 
I LAY ON MY BELLY ON A SANDSTONE TERRACE HALFWAY
down the side of the eroded bluff. My buckskin clothing blends with the tan rock. Father crouches five hundred body lengths below me. He is invisible to my eyes, like a serpent coiled among the sage, but I know he is there, watching. I
feel
him there.
The girl sits alone by the grave. She rocks back and forth.
The tension in Father’s tall body must be unbearable, like a starving cougar with a rabbit in sight, afraid to leap for fear the rabbit will escape.
He has barely slept since he first saw her out there by herself. He wants her badly.
My gaze drifts over the rolling hills. Somewhere, warriors hide, waiting for him to strike.
Father knows this, of course. He must be trembling, his whole body fit to burst from the longing, but he will not give them what they expect. He will bide his time until he can no longer stand it, then he will trick them into turning away, into looking in the opposite direction for one brief instant, and when they do …
“Mother?” the whisper is barely audible. “I have been good. Can we go? I want to go.”
A man in a red shirt walks the river trail toward the girl below. He is tall, with broad shoulders, and carries a club in his hand. The War Chief, Browser.
“Mother? My legs hurt. Please?”
I pull my buckskin hood up to cover my hair and flatten my body against the sandstone ledge. I have not been afraid of being seen before now. The other warriors require only ordinary precautions, but this War Chief scares me. He has eyes like an antelope. No matter how far away I am, or how well hidden, his eyes always find me. I must be some curious color or shape to him. He has not yet realized what he is seeing, but he always takes the time to look more closely. Someday, he will see me, and then one of us will die.
Yes, but first I will play with him as a ferret does a rabbit. We are entwined in the old gods’ web. We will Dance together, casting shadows in the moonlight until his shadow is devoured by mine. In the end the only laughter will be the Blue God’s—echoing in the empty rooms of empty places.
“Mother?”
“Shh. Your grandfather is coming back. I feel him coming.”
She seems to turn to stone, her eyes huge.
“Now?” she asks in a trembling voice. “Is he coming now?”
“Yes.”
She grabs my hand and tugs with all her strength. “Let’s run away! Hurry, let’s run!”
I jerk her to the ground. My voice is ice.
“He is the only one in the world who loves us. Do you understand?”
Her mouth opens with silent cries. She lies down beside me in the dirt and hides her face in her hands.
I stroke her back.
“The
only
one.”
D
USTY CRIED OUT AND BOLTED UPRIGHT, GASPING. HE batted the top of his sleeping bag out of the way and gulped air. “Good God, not again.” He bent over in the cold darkness and cradled his head in his hands.
The creak of the trailer floor shot sudden adrenaline through him. He tensed, sensing a presence, feeling the faint shift of the springs. His tongue had gone dry in his mouth.
“Dusty?” the voice asked softly from the metal stairs outside.
“I—I’m okay, Maureen. Just a dream.”
The latch on the door clicked and a sliver of light widened across the room. She wore a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants and held a flashlight in her hand. Long black hair draped her shoulders, falling to her waist. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
He shivered. “I said I’m fine. It was just a bad dream.”
She stood uncertainly in the doorway. The flashlight beam illuminated her face and her black eyes shimmered. “The same one?”
“I wish I’d never seen that little son of a bitch.” Maybe it was the hour, the lingering aftereffects of the dream, but he actually wanted company.
“The basilisk?”
He made a gesture and squinted up into the light. “If this is an interrogation, I’m supposed to be in a wooden chair. But I think you’ve got the light about right.”
“Uh, sorry.” She lowered the beam. “The basilisk from 10K3?”
He rubbed his bearded face. “I swear it belonged to someone insane.”
She stepped into the room and leaned against the stove. The sweatshirt looked two sizes too big, but it must have been warm to sleep in. “That thing really has a handle on your subconscious.”
“Yeah, fancy that.” He rubbed his face and exhaled. His breath fogged in the cold air.
“It’s just an artifact. A piece of stone.” She sounded so sure of herself.
He frowned. “Part of me believes that—the part that went to the university. But the part of me that went down into that kiva when I was twelve thinks you’re really naive.”
She bowed her head, and her hair fell over her shoulders in thick black waves. “That’s possible, but I want you to consider the possibility that the dream is trying to tell you something. Are you struggling with guilt because Elder Walking Hawk wanted that basilisk reburied, or are you torturing yourself over something else?”
He shivered again, mostly from cold this time. “The other explanation is that evil exists and I touched it. Somehow or another, it got its hooks into me. Not all the way, but just enough.” He rubbed his cold arms. “Remember the cleansing that Elder Walking Hawk did for us?”
She nodded. “Very well.”
“I did that again the night I packed the
basilisco.
You know, just to be sure. God knows, if I hadn’t, I might have cut your head off or something today.”
She crossed her arms against the cold. “You’re not the type, Stewart, despite what I originally thought about you.”
“How nice of you to keep an open mind.”
She tilted her head and smiled. “Tell me about the dream. Was it vivid?”
“Clear and sharp—even the smell.”
“The smell?”
“The odor of burned skin and meat. I’m awake and I can still smell it.”
She leaned against the counter. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”
He swallowed hard. “I was sitting on a bench in the kiva. It was beautiful, the walls painted in white on the top, and bright red on the bottom. Bundles—net bags, I think—hung from the rafters. And really peculiar paintings. I think they were katchinas; they each had holes gouged in their chests. You could see the stone walls where the plaster had been chopped right out of the paintings, as if they’d cut their hearts out.”
“Who did? Did they look like anyone you know in real life?”
“No. I didn’t recognize any of the faces. They wore white capes, and carried war clubs and axes. Men, all of them. Lots of jewelry. Turquoise and jet bracelets. Colored feathers. Some wore what looked like necklaces made from bone disks.” He shook his head. “They were insane, Maureen. Angry and filled with hatred. I’ll never forget those bronzed faces, their black eyes enraged as they grouped around the woman.”
“What woman?”
He frowned. “I don’t know who she was. Proud, though. Stately. She just seemed to radiate authority and poise. She was someone important. Someone who had lived all of her life respected and obeyed. You could tell by the way she carried herself. And she despised the men around her.”
A gust of wind rattled the trailer, and mice scrambled in the walls. “They weren’t her men?”
“No. Anything but. Her face twisted with pain as she watched them set fire to the pile of katchina masks in the middle of the floor. I could feel her fear growing with each beat of my heart.”
“What does that mean, burning katchina masks?”
“It’s a sacrilege. That’s what they were doing. Destroying the katchinas.”
Maureen brushed her long hair over her shoulders and braced a hand against the counter. “What happened to the woman?”
“She was dressed in blue, and she had gray hair, long, hanging down like yours. She wore a turquoise and eagle-bone breastplate, a beautiful thing that caught the light. Around her throat she had a choker covered with beads. And I remember a wolf pendant, hanging down over her chest, but separate from the breastplate.”
He exhaled hard and his breath glimmered in the light. “The men prodded her forward. She turned her head, just far enough to glare at them like they were something she’d scraped off her foot. One of the men shoved her into the fire.” Dusty shivered. “That’s when the smell came. She pulled up the hem of her skirt and tottered around in that burning mass of katchina masks. I could see the skin on her calves blistering and wrinkling in the flames. When she could no longer stand, she fell and rolled against a big painted olla, a jar. She just lay there, writhing.”
Maureen’s eyes tightened. “She was dead?”
“No. One of the men leaned forward. It was like he knew the others were losing their will. He jammed his foot down on her burned feet, tramped on them. The burned skin split and peeled back; blood seeped through. Her toes came off, Maureen. I mean, my God, the meat, the muscles, were cooked.” He took another breath. “Each time I huddled back on the bench, hoping, praying that they wouldn’t see me. That they wouldn’t turn and throw me into that fire.”
Maureen rested the flashlight on the counter and aimed the beam at the back of the wall. “Did they?”
He shook his head. “They were interested in her. She tried to stand, and … and she fell, because her legs wouldn’t hold her. So she tried crawling away, dragging herself. Her skin peeled away on the dirt floor, leaving a smear of blood and fluid.”
“That sounds horrible.”
He closed his eyes. “It was. That’s when the big guy turned and looked right into my eyes.”
“Is that when you woke up?”
“No.” His tongue felt swollen. “The big guy shouted something. I couldn’t understand the words. It wasn’t in Hopi, or Zuni, or any of the languages I know. But there he was, looking at me, while the old woman clawed at his legs, and tears ran down her cheeks.”
“You’re sure you don’t know who this man was?” she gently asked.
“No. He was Indian, brown, broad-cheeked, with his hair done up in a bun like in the pictographs.”
“Okay. What happened next?”
“I looked back at the old woman. She had wrapped her fingers in her beaded choker and twisted it so that the weight of her arm hung on it.” He paused. “She was dead, Maureen. She had strangled herself.”
“What did the big guy do?”
Dusty shifted uneasily, crumpling his sleeping bag with his hand. “He laughed, and—and when he looked back at me, it wasn’t the big guy.”
Maureen shifted and flashlight beam bobbed around the trailer. “Who was he?”
His voice cracked. “An old man! A toothless elder. He was wearing
el Basilisco
on his chest.”
Maureen cautiously came over and sat down across from him. “You know what I think?”
“What?” He looked up into her dark confident eyes.
“I think you need another cleansing. One performed by an elder who knows what she’s doing. Someone like Hail Walking Hawk.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in such things?”
Maureen leaned toward him and softly replied, “The point is that you do.”
Dusty ran a hand through his sweat-drenched blond hair. “You think I’ve talked myself into this, don’t you? I believe the basilisk was evil and so I’m acting as though I’ve been witched, right?” He actually wanted her to say yes. It would have made him feel better, like the basilisk really wasn’t evil and all of his fears were for nothing.
Instead, she surprised him by reaching out to touch his hand. Her fingers felt cool on his. She said, “No matter what I say, Dusty, you won’t believe me. You
believe
you’ve been witched. The only way you’ll know for certain is by talking about this with an elder that you trust.”
He turned his hand up and gripped her fingers. “Thanks for coming.” He squeezed her hand and let it go. “But I feel better now. Why don’t you go back to bed and get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow, okay?”
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
“Okay.” She straightened and headed for the door. She looked back just once, before she stepped outside.
Dusty dropped his head in his hands and tried to figure out what the hell was happening to him. Was it just his own mind playing tricks? Could Maureen be right? Or could an ancient witch from the past be tormenting him?
He flopped back on his blankets and stared at the ceiling.

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