A Book Of Tongues (18 page)

With deliberate care, he took another small bite of the fowl,
chewing it slowly before swallowing — then another, and another.
Musing, as his vised stomach began to gradually unclench:
Been a
long time, for her, I expect — out here, all on her own, no other hex to feed
from. She must be starved for company indeed. And yeah, could be she
really
does
mean me well, just has a funny way of showin’ it . . . but even
if she don’t, well — I think I can take her.

They finished their meal in silence, consuming the bird down to
the bones, which the desert witch cast into the fire. Then squatted
down to peer at them as they smouldered, and said, “Now, Preacher
Rook — look closely, and listen. Let me show you how the world
really
works: how every world grows out of the one which came before,
into
the next — and just as all worlds are connected, everything must be
paid for.”

“Could you . . . be a touch more specific, maybe?”

Grandma snorted again, tossing back her braids, and rummaged
inside the skin pouch she wore on her belt, cross-strapped right
at the vague indentation where her waist should be. Withdrawing
a smaller bag, she shook a few pale yellow grains out into her big,
scarred palm.

“Cornmeal,” she explained. “Now: one more time, listen. And
see
.”

With two fingers, she twisted a hole in the sand at her feet, shook
the meal down and bent to breathe a low croon in after it, then sat
back, smoothing it over. Above them, the sky hung heavy with stars
. . . until, gradual but unmistakable, those same stars began to go
out.

A cloud,
Rook thought, and Grandma nodded, like she could hear
him. Like she knew he’d already forgotten how she probably could.

“Come down,
nilch’i biyázhí
,” she called up, into the air. “Wind’s
children, hear me — spin your wool to my loom, gift me with
threads to weave this working, keep my heart clean. Keep me from
misstepping upon the Witchery Way.”

Rook could all but feel their two species of magic pass by each
other in the night — her own strong faith, versus his sorrowful lack
of it — and when she smiled back over at him, he realized he’d never
before been so aware that a person’s teeth were also part of their
skull. The sight made the hairs on the back of his neck prick up,
a thin violet whining sound echoing through his head. And yes,
bellyful of fresh-cooked meat aside, it also made him . . .
hungry
.

“Give me your hand,” Grandma told him, her deep voice oddly
shaky, and Rook felt his scalp tighten. Was that a note from the
very same famished scale he heard, behind her words’ bone-born
“English” translation?

“Why — ”

“
Give
it.”

He hesitated — and saw it jerk forward of its own accord, her power
a taut-snapped leash around his wrist. Heat flowed swoonishly
outwards, dizziness mounting up fast as blood-loss. Scraping down
deep to his very marrow, like she aimed to eat it with a spoon — and
letting him know just how helpless he was to stop her from doing so,
if she happened to choose to.

Two conclusions to be gleaned here, neither welcome. First off:
she was
much
stronger than Rook had thought, or hoped.

And second —
is this how Chess must feel,
he thought,
when I do it
to
him
?

“This sort of spell cannot be done through natural means alone,”
Grandma told him. “It needs more than one
Hataalii
’s power,
whether or not the other aims to give it. Which shows us why it
should probably not
be
done at all.”

With a flourish, Grandma shook her fingers over the hole, and
Rook saw two types of hexation rain down into it, glinting hotly:
his and hers, admixed. The earth drank it gladly, puffed up the way
dough does in hot oil and shot up one green sprout, blindly seeking
for an absent sun.

“Things must be what they are,” Grandma said, stroking the
corn-stalk lightly. “From one grain I can make a kernel, and then —
from that kernel — ”

Sprout became stalk, grew to nodding-height with startling
speed — leafed out, a dancing-girl’s flapping skirts, spun all of a
sudden with dry-rustling silken tassels. Ears whose ripe husks
budded quick as grenades, golden-juicy fruit beneath aglow with an
inner light that stunk so high of artifice it made Rook’s mouth fill
with sour water.

“Take one,” she ordered. Rook did, gingerly. Even its weight felt
wrong
.

“Now eat.”

Rook bit savagely into the ear of corn, chewed, and was halfway
through his second bite when the taste struck him at last — dust and
ash, warm-slimy with decay. And as he choked down the third, the
whole cob disintegrated in his hands, stalk curling over upon itself,
shrivelling to the ground. Rook breathed deep, feeling his own
stolen power flood back into him.

“That was never meant to be,” said Grandma. “Do you see, now?
If I must steal from you to create a good thing, no matter how I try,
I cannot make it stay. It cannot be other than it is — one grain of
cornmeal in a new dress, sewn from dreams.”

Bread falling from the air, tasteless, unnourishing: Rook
remembered.
But the
bad
things you used your own — and Chess’s —
power to do, all of them . . .
those
things stand still. The train, bisected.
Bewelcome, in all its salt-slick glory.

Grandma reached down, prising up a rock to reveal the fossil
which clung close beneath it, froze in mid-crawl, as though excreted
straight from stone.

“Or this,” she said. “
This
slimy thing . . . something from the
Fourth World itself, perhaps. Suck from you — ’til you sleep, or die,
and I grow fat and drunk — and I might be able to make it creep, free
to roam once more. But how far would it get, before it drowned in air
it was never meant to breathe? Its time has passed. So I could feed
you for years out here, grandson, just as I have kept myself fed — but
never on corn, or sea-insects.”

“Not much of a miracle, then, is it?”

“Only gods do miracles, Asher Rook. Your own Book says as
much.”

“And . . . we’re not gods.”

“Powerful, yes:
Hataalii
, born to Balance or un-Balance, to do
right or walk the Witchery Way, perverting our own magic for profit.
But we are
not
gods, and never could be.”

“There’s one I’ve spoke with, now and again,” Rook replied,
slowly, “who might tend to disagree with you.”

And we both know who
that
is, now, don’t we?

No need to even nod. ’Cause from somewhere far below, the
threads of his dragonfly-cloaked Lady’s influence came spinning up
’round both of them in a slack silk knot, just waiting for any excuse
to tighten. And as she sat on the Sunken Ball-Court’s sloshing
sidelines, Rook knew she grinned to hear herself discussed — she,
her, the One Now Woken.

You,
Rook “heard” Grandma blurt out.

And heard the reply in turn, a barest liquid murmur —
Ah, yes:
me.

A surging snap lit Rook from within, at the very sound. Not fear,
so much, as a terrible urge to run wild and aimless in any direction,
run ’til his skin rucked up and his muscles unstrung themselves,
leaving his slick red bones to rattle at last into a sticky heap,
reconfigured by their own momentum.

Before he could, however, Grandma’s hand moved again, and
the unseen leash jerked him taut, puppet-stiff. When he made to
protest, she sewed a quick seam across his lips with one needle-sharp nail, muffling them shut — a locked purse, his tongue curled
too tight in on itself to even move.

“Stay
still
,” Grandma told him. “The Lady of Traps and Snares
has made threats, made you promises — of this I have no doubt. But
even she, powerful as she has become, is no true god, grandson. She
is
Anaye
, a monster. Enemy to all. Did she tell you
you
could be a god,
perhaps, if you only did her bidding? Or was it . . . that
he
could?”

There was a note in her double-voice which rung through Rook
like a bellyful of angry hornets, and made him just pissed off enough
to wrench his sealed lips free — just pop them back open, uncaring
of what might rip, and spit a mouthful of his own blood up, before
answering: “Don’t you . . . talk about . . .
him
.”

He’d at least hoped to startle her, but had to settle for a bare
smidgen of genuine respect, instead — before, with a flick of her
fingers, she wound him tight on himself again.

And here the Rainbow Lady came whispering once more, from
deep inside his ear’s shell —
You are in a bad place now, little king.
Do you wish my help?

Grandma’s head whipped ’round, bent low and seeking, as if she
might be able to find the words’ source somewhere in the dust at her
feet, if only given enough time to study it. “Do not answer her!” she
ordered Rook, peremptorily.

The Lady, ignoring her, continued:
For I will give it. That is
how close we already are, given the blood we have shared, our
marriage pledge. You have only to say the words . . .

Rook managed a groan, nothing more. Kicked out hard against
Grandma’s net, and got the blood cut off to all his limbs at once, in
return.

“
Ohé
, grandson — you will only hurt yourself, if you continue to
struggle,” she warned him, without much sympathy. “I might have
broken you of these bad habits gently, but my dreams tell me there is
no time. If you do not learn your business quickly, she will hang you
once more, and finish the job, this time — you, me, everyone else.
Even that boy of yours.”

“His
name
is Chess. And he ain’t no
boy
.”

“No. He is rage and fire, a fierce warrior, one whose blood would
enrich any tribe, did he not prefer to lie down with his own sex.
I have seen many such, in my time: two-spirited as Begochiddy
himself. But love is love, and you
do
love him, after all.”

Rook swallowed. “The hell’d you think I’d even come here for,” he
managed, finally, “if I damn well didn’t?”

“Then why do you fight me, fool?”

Say it, husband.

“’Cause . . .” His head swam, lightening like the sky, as the dying
fire sunk lower. “. . . she threatened to kill him . . . then promised to
save
him — ”

“From what,
herself
? In her time, the gods ate ones like him every
day — the beautiful, the gifted. They ate their hearts, and drank
their precious blood, because they could. Because that was what
tasted best
.”

Little king, say —

“That ain’t even vaguely what she — ”

“Oh, save me from all men,
bilagaana
or
Diné
— do you really
believe no one but you knows how to
lie
? Wake up!”

Say it, say the words —

Rook opened his torn mouth wide, only to have it twist shut on
him yet again, so fast it burned worse than a swallow of sparks.

“Your mouth stays
shut
, grandson,” Grandma repeated. “Or — ”

Or
what
, old woman?

Had he ever truly thought her gentle, kind? Damn, if the bitch
wasn’t right: between her and the Lady, he might well be the
stupidest whoreson alive.

Grandma gave a sigh, similarly frustrated, and pressed both
palms to her eyes, as though to soothe an aching brain. Then
continued, after a moment — “When North and South went to War,
Rook, you fought, yes? And that young man of yours, too — not
because either of you cared one way or another who owned land,
who kept slaves, but because you wanted to die and he wanted to
live. Because he knew himself born for killing, and saw a chance to
trade that skill for a long ride, far away. And neither of you cared
who else might be hurt by it — not least because, unaware of your
own true natures, you did not see what would happen when one of
you was hurt badly enough to come to power.

“Meanwhile, for we
Diné
, your War was one more theft in a long
string of thieveries. Treaties which signed away the land from under
us, leaving our horses no place to graze. Two of our sacred mountains
taken — as though that could happen! Your greycoats offered us
alliance against the bluecoats, but threatened us with death if we
did not accept. After, the government men sent Kit Carson to burn
us out, calling us traitors. And then, the Long Walk . . . men, women
and children driven to
Hwééldi
like cattle, three hundred miles in
eighteen days, on foot.”

She shook her head, her braids’ double shadow lashing the
ground. “Bad blood between us, always. Soon my people will march
home once more, and there will be war again — a war we will lose.
My dreams have shown me. Like the Steel Hats who drove your Lady
and her kind under the ground, you will make it so we are forgotten
even by ourselves.

“And I might have stopped it — I, and every other
Hataalii
. When
the tribes sent warriors to ask us for help, we
might
have banded
together, even at the usual cost. When they said,
These
bilagaana
do
not think of
us
as people, given how they treat us, so why should we think
of
them
as people?
, we might have answered,
You speak the truth. Let
us go to war. Let us answer force for force, and make such a slaughter as
the land has never seen.

“But I am the true fool, here. I told them no:
Bilagaana
are only
human beings, and to kill human beings by magic is the Witchery
Way.
We
would become skinwalkers,
Anaye
, were we to do so. Yes,
you ‘whites’ think no one as good as yourselves. You think you own
everything, and care for nothing. Yet you are not evil spirits, or
even dumb beasts — you love your children, at least, enough to cry
for their pain. And even if you do not, you still piss and shit as we
do, and know to go outside your own camps before doing so, for the
most part. This is human enough, for me.”