At the End of Babel (2 page)

“Tsichtinako
.
Thought Mother. Our legends say she created the universe through the hand of Uchtsiti
,
the All-Father. He built the world by throwing a clot of his own blood into the heavens. The
chaianyi,
what the whites would call medicine men, they taught that the sun represented Uchtsiti
.
It was the male. It was father. The moon was the female. We might call it mother. Both male and female are needed for life, but the male drives away what he most needs, so the moon flees to the north, toward death. It was said that if man does not call back the moon, she will leave us forever. The father's consort will be gone. He can have no more children. What is will wither and die. Nothing new will replace it. It was said by the
chaianyi
that Thought Mother taught this much to the first peoples when they emerged from Shipapu
,
the darkness beneath the earth.”

“You believe this?”

It took her a moment to answer. She was remembering her father's footfalls, his leather moccasins shuffling in the clay as he danced and sang, danced and sang. “My ancestors believed,” she said at last. “So it's important to me.”

“I don't believe in gods,” Red Rabbit said. Suspicion flashed in his eyes. “I believe in money.”

“Which is why you won't get the rest until you've taken me to the top of the rock.”

Whatever had been in his eyes vanished. “Then eat, Hoarse Raven. The trail to the Sky City is long.”

She swallowed the rest of the bread, then stood and looked out through the canyon opening to the flat plain. Spread out before her, the patched and faded land reminded her of one of the woolen blankets her grandmother once made for her. And kilometers away, she could see where the mesa broke from the plain like the thumb of God struck through the parched, sage-strewn flats. Lifting a scope to her eyes, she could just perceive the outline of the blocks scattered upon the table of its summit.

“We can't leave yet,” she said. “I must prepare.”

Red Rabbit had stood, too. He laid a hand on her shoulder. His fingers smelled of coals. “For what?”

Now it was her turn to smile. Greedy and atheistic though he might be, she appreciated her guide. She enjoyed the simplicity of his life. She looked down at her tan jumpsuit and plain boots, the modern vest of factory-built fabric. “For one thing,” she said, “I cannot meet an old god in new clothes.”

“You need to change?”

“Yes. And I must prepare my soul.”

*   *   *

Tabitha stood naked beneath a circle of sky, her back to the multi-toned sandstone wall surrounding a well of rainwater. The crack leading to this place had been too narrow for her pack, so she'd pulled out what things she needed and left the rest outside with Red Rabbit. He would have helped her carry things in, she knew, but somehow it seemed best for her to carry it all in herself, as if the clothes were some sort of offering, brought to the sacred pool.

Silly, of course, but fitting:
Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone.

Ohiyesa had said that. Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman, the whites called him. Brought up among the Santee Dakota, he'd managed to get into Dartmouth, then earned a medical degree from Brown. He'd helped to establish the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls. Ohiyesa had verified the burial place of Sacajawea. He'd been the only physician to tend to the injured at Wounded Knee.

So much irony,
Tabitha thought as she slipped the simple fabrics over her body.

It had taken her a great deal of time to find someone who could still make clothing in the old ways, using the old materials. The search had been so difficult that she'd often found herself wondering if she might risk jumping onto the grid for a minute or two, just to find what she was looking for, to find out where it was. But if she accessed the grid, they would know where she was, too. They would know that a speaker was indeed still alive, and they might even know what she planned to do. So she'd been forced to search on foot, by word of mouth, moving quietly through the slums of the cities. Always wary, always cautious. Never asking too many questions. Never answering many. It took over a year, but she'd found the old woman just in time, on her last search of Albuquerque's Old Town.

New old-style garments in hand, she'd looked for a mercenary-minded person who could guide her through the city screens, out into the wilderness, out to the old, forgotten places—someone who hated the lancers as much as she did and knew how to keep his mouth shut for the right price. A far easier task. She'd hired Red Rabbit only two hours later.

Tabitha slipped on the moccasins, then stepped forward. Foot by foot. Leather roughing on sandstone. She summoned up prayers that hadn't been uttered since the morning of the last dance. Prayers no one else alive could speak.

When she reached the edge, she knelt and scooped the cold water onto her face, breaking its sheets against her skin. She rubbed it across her cheeks, into her eyes. She stood, faced the sun as it crossed the horizon of her sunken place. As it did so, she offered a final, unspoken orison. To the water, the rock, the sun, the sky.

The Great Silence. Alone.

*   *   *

The sandhills began near the entrance to the secret well, and Tabitha and Red Rabbit followed a winding path over and between them, pausing only briefly in the semi-shade of piñons. Tabitha felt growing impatience, wanting to get there, wanting to be done with it all one way or another. She had a hard time not watching the sky, and several times she tripped on exposed juniper roots, causing no small amount of pain to feet already aching from the new moccasins.

An hour after departing the well, they left the sandhills and entered the flatlands. And although the sage and sparse-grass plain was more exposed to any passing skiff, they were able to take a more direct path toward the waiting mesa. Tabitha felt her mind begin to ease. There was no place to hide now. No place to run. If a skiff came, she'd be dead. Red Rabbit, too, probably, though he did not seem concerned about the possibility as he trudged ahead of her through the dirt.

The wall of Acoma mesa, towering higher with each step they took, was rusted clay, a deep and rich color. Dark streaks ran down its many faces. The stains of ten thousand tears.

Farther in the distance along the horizon, almost five kilometers northeast of the Sky City, she could see where yellow sandstone cliffs rose one hundred and twenty meters out of the dusty sea. The old stories told how the people had long ago lived atop those cliffs. It was a beautiful village, but there was only one trail to the summit. One day, the people went down to the plain to gather the harvest. Three women, though, were sick and couldn't go. That day, terrible rains came. The waters washed away the trail to the village. The men tried to find another path up, but there was none. There was nothing anyone could do. Weeks passed, and the women grew quiet as they starved to death. One of them died. The other two, who did not want to die of starvation, walked to the edge of the cliff, looked down upon their families and their friends, then jumped, hoping to find the arms of Great Eagle or White Hawk. It was said that their cries could still be heard among the crags sometimes. The place had been very holy among the people.

The whites did not understand this story. They called the place the Enchanted Mesa. To Tabitha's people it had been Kadzima
,
the Accursed.

*   *   *

Tabitha and Red Rabbit found a little farm at the base of the Acoma mesa. Dry farming. Her family had done the same until the skiffs and their crews of lancers had come.

The farm was little to look at. A shanty of four weathered adobe walls, not more than four or five meters on a side, covered over with corrugated sheets of scrap metal, with two windows: one cracked and grimed, the other clumsily boarded over. Desiccated posts made of piñon branches marked the perimeter of a small yard in front of the building. Two chickens and a rooster, still contained within a battered wire mesh strung between those posts, were the only signs of life.

At Red Rabbit's urging, Tabitha stayed some distance behind him as they approached. He had an old-style gun in the holster at his hip, and Tabitha noticed that he kept his hand close to it and that he walked with a sort of balanced crouch. “I don't think anyone here wants to hurt us,” she said.

He didn't turn around to answer her. “I don't take chances. Never know who lives out here.”

“Probably just poor farmers.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But there's lots of crazies outside the cities. People like me.”

Tabitha looked down at the ceremonial knife tied to her belt with leather thongs. She fingered it for a moment, then thought better of it. Instead, she cupped her hands around her mouth and called out. “Hello?”

Her voice echoed back from the building and the silently brooding rocks. The chickens clucked in senseless reply.

“Is anyone here?”

Red Rabbit had turned to glare at her, but the sound of shifting rock spun his attention back around. There was a native woman standing among the jumbled boulders beyond the shanty. Her arm was extended to her right, disappearing into rock.

“Show us your other hand!” Red Rabbit called.

The woman hesitated, then drew in her arm, pulling a little cloth-covered basket into view. Tabitha waved, friendly. The woman waved back, more unsure, but slowly she began to walk back down to the building. Red Rabbit relaxed a little, though he kept his hand close to his side. “We don't want any trouble,” the woman said when she came near.

“We won't give you any,” Tabitha said.

“You're not lancer scouts?” The woman's weather-worn skin was the color of old saddle leather, coursed over with crisp ridges and furrows. There were long needles of wood in the braided hair at the back of her head.

“Not hardly,” Tabitha said. “Just hiking to the old pueblo.”

The woman nodded, but a new expression had come over her face as she listened to Tabitha speak. “Do I know you?”

“I don't think so. My name is Tabitha Hoarse Raven.”

“You used to live on the mesa.”

“I did,” Tabitha said, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice. “How did you know?”

“I was young, but I remember your father when he was the chief.”

Tabitha involuntarily cringed at the term. It reminded her too much of what the
diya
whites had done to her people. “My father was
tsatia hochani.
”

The woman looked as if she'd seen a ghost. “You can speak—”

“Keresan, yes. Can you not?” Tabitha tried to hide it, but even she could hear something akin to hope in her own voice.

“No. I lived in the city back then. I know only English.”

“Oh.”

“I came to the pueblo only a few times. But I remember Gray Feather. He invited us out for some of the dances. I remember his daughter.”

Tabitha fought to ignore her own emotions and Red Rabbit's sudden gaze. “I'm sorry. I don't remember you.”

The woman had relaxed a little. “It's okay. You were even younger then. My name's Malya Prancing Antelope.”

“Antelope Clan?”

“I think my uncle told me we were Badger Clan. But that was a long time ago. There aren't any clans anymore, Tabitha Hoarse Raven. There's just people. One people. And you, of course.” She stuttered a little at that and turned from them, blushing. She addressed the building. “They're not scouts!”

There was noise inside, and the door opened inward. A young man dressed in worn blue jeans and a tattered gray shirt stepped into the sun. He was young—Tabitha guessed him to be perhaps twenty years old—with strong native features: tall, with red-brown skin over a face of long and sharp angles, a wiry build, and black hair tousled in careless mats. But while Tabitha found him ruggedly handsome in his way, most of her attention was riveted on the shotgun he was carrying in his hands.

“My son,” Malya said. “Joseph Man of Sorrow.”

Joseph shouldered the weapon and offered his hand to Tabitha, who shook it at once. His long-fingered grip was strong. Red Rabbit, too, shook the young man's hand. “We thought you might be scouts,” Joseph said. “There've been more of them around lately.”

“Why?” Red Rabbit asked.

The younger man shrugged. “Don't know. Maybe they're looking for you. Funny to hike with a revolver,” he said, nodding towards Red Rabbit's pistol.

“We thought it best to be prepared,” Tabitha said before Red Rabbit could reply. “You never know who's out here.”

“Just us,” Joseph said. “No work in the cities this season. Came to the old farm.”

Red Rabbit motioned to Malya's covered basket. “What's in that?”

“Seeds,” she said. “I was going to plant.”

“Oh,” Red Rabbit said. And he looked away, out across the plain they'd crossed.

Joseph turned to Tabitha, smiled. “You're pretty far from the cities, Tabitha Hoarse Raven.” He looked her clothes up and down, seemed to linger. “And you're not dressed like a tourist. Why're you here?”

“I grew up here.”

“Doesn't answer my question.”

“Enough, Joseph,” Malya said. “Fetch water for our guests.”

Joseph's smile faded, and his cheeks darkened. He started back toward the building.

“Please don't,” Tabitha said. “We have water. We'll just be on our way up.”

Joseph stopped walking, half turned. “You're going up?”

Tabitha nodded, even as his mother started to ask forgiveness for her intrusive son.

“It's okay,” Tabitha said. “I don't mind. Yes, I'm dressed strangely. Yes, we're going up. It's time for the moondance.”

Joseph looked confused, but Malya was shaking her head, her eyes furtive. “It's not allowed,” she said.