Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (27 page)

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

BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries

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“Could she?” Catkin asked.

“Oh, yes. In the next seven sun cycles, she gave him five children.” Stone Ghost’s wrinkles rearranged into somber lines as he watched a single tendril of fire curl up around the willow stick. “Then the Tower Builders raided from the north. Horned Ram was away. Upon his return he found his wife and children butchered and rotting in his doorway. For the next five sun cycles he and a small band of warriors raided the Tower Builders. It is said that they lived off the land, always moving, raiding small farmsteads and settlements. They appeared out of nowhere when the men were away and left no one alive. The Tower Builders chased them, but Horned Ram’s Spirit Power was so great the Tower Builders never caught him. The story is told that one day the Blue God appeared and told him that was enough. That he should go home. And he did. He went back to the Red Rim country and lived in the canyons there.”

“I’ve heard that his souls are loose,” Browser said.

Stone Ghost pulled another stick from the old mat and used it to contemplatively poke at the coals. “The Tower Builders blamed him for terrible atrocities. According to one story, he hung a pregnant woman from a tree and slit open her belly so that her womb dropped onto an ant pile. They say he ate corn cakes while she screamed and the ants swarmed her living fetus.”

Browser closed his eyes for a long moment, and Stone Ghost glanced at Catkin. She stared at the fire, but her jaw had gone hard, as though she found this
display of emotion unpleasant. Stone Ghost wondered at that. Catkin loved Browser, but she clearly could not stand to see him appear vulnerable, at least not in front of others.

The little girl lifted her head, and Stone Ghost watched her from the corner of his eye. She peered at Browser like Cougar spying Rabbit, as though she could smell weakness, and the scent drew her like a dying animal to water.

Browser said, “No wonder Horned Ram is so feared by his enemies.”

Stone Ghost nodded. “Yes. When he returned from raiding, he immediately started moving towns up onto the mesa tops, then he built line-of-sight signaling towers. His people use polished slate mirrors to send messages back and forth. It is almost impossible to attack them. Most of those who have tried are dead.”

“His warriors are said to be very loyal.” Browser absently looked at the line of black spirals that decorated the white wall.

“Of course,” Stone Ghost replied. “Horned Ram brought them victory.”

Catkin said, “His Spirit Power is supposed to make him invincible. I have heard that he spends days without food or water, lying facedown on the kiva floor with his ear to the underworld. The Blue God supposedly whispers things that only he can hear.”

Browser glared at the fire bowl. He didn’t say anything for a time; then he looked at Stone Ghost. “I wish the things they said about you were true, Uncle. I would appreciate it if you would jump through a yucca hoop and go make Blue Corn and her allies sick.”

Stone Ghost chuckled. “Me, too.”

The girl jerked. It was a small movement, but quick. She stared at Stone Ghost with dark unblinking eyes, like a hunting wolf suddenly surprised to discover that a bear had sneaked up behind him.

“For days we have been pursued by White Moccasins,”
Browser said. “Now Blue Corn and her warriors are at Center Place, and she’s posted warriors all around the canyon.” He gestured his frustration. “Forgive me, but we’re not in a very good situation here.”

Stone Ghost smiled at that. “No, but we’re still alive.”

Catkin propped her chin on her knee and stared down at the floor. “I wonder who was killed the night we left?”

Browser said, “I don’t know, but I—”

Stone Ghost interrupted, “I should have anticipated that.”

Catkin turned and short black hair glinted. “Why?”

“Only a direct affront to Blue Corn would have goaded her into following us. She’s very frightened.”

Browser scowled. “She is?”

“Of course.” Stone Ghost reached for another willow stick and snapped it into hand-sized lengths. “Her people are hungry. It is no longer safe to work the fields for fear of being killed by raiders. Starving refugees pour into her village constantly. Whole towns, like Longtail village, have been destroyed.” He added the sticks to his warming bowl and smoke spiraled up toward the ceiling. “Worse, she knows that she faces Two Hearts and the White Moccasins on one side”—the little girl covered her head with his turkey-feather cape—“and Horned Ram and his Flute Player warriors on the other. Both men are desperate to save their worlds no matter how much blood they spill in the process. Then”—he waved a hand—“a young Mogollon prophet appears. He is like a spark in dry grass. When he is murdered, her own people turn him into a god.”

“But he was a man, Elder,” Catkin pointed out.

“Yes. He would have remained a man but for the way he was mutilated. His words now ring with a greater authority. Even the doubters among the Bow are convinced. And”—he lifted a finger and aimed it
at Browser—“the Mogollon conversion is so powerful that they freely submit to the command of a Straight Path War Chief. Think of that, Nephew. The warriors of the Bow Society follow you. Obey your orders. Can you think of another time, ever, when Fire Dogs followed a Straight Path War Chief?”

Browser shook head. “No, I can’t, Uncle.”

“Our grip is very tenuous. If we fail, Nephew, our people are doomed. Two Hearts and Horned Ram will turn us upon each other like mice trapped in a pot.”

“But how do I defeat them, Uncle?” Browser was lost in thought. “We are less than twenty strong. How do we find and kill Two Hearts, avoid his White Moccasins, and avoid Blue Corn’s warriors, too?”

The willow sticks burst into bright yellow flame, and Stone Ghost saw the little girl’s eye peeking through the hole in his cape. It looked like the glistening eye of a wild dog. He wondered what she must be thinking about all this. Did it remind her of the days before her village was attacked and her family murdered? Was she afraid? She didn’t appear to be, but it was hard to tell.

Stone Ghost turned back to Browser. “We defeat them, Nephew, by having the heart of a cloud, just as Poor Singer said.”

WHEN BROWSER AND Catkin had gone, Stone Ghost shifted to look at Bone Walker. She lay absolutely still, peering through the same hole in his turkey-feather cape.

“Well, Bone Walker,” he said, “what do you think of all this?”

Bone Walker’s eyes glinted.

Stone Ghost added a handful of twigs to the warming bowl and shivered as flames crackled to life. Orange
light flickered through the chamber and danced in her tangled hair like ghostly wings.

“We’re in real trouble,” he continued. “We are being hunted by Blue Corn’s warriors, Flute Player warriors, and White Moccasins. They have us surrounded. How do we overcome this?”

Bone Walker tugged his cape down so that the top half of her pretty face showed. “You said by having the heart of a cloud.”

“Yes, I did,” he replied through a long exhalation, “but I’m not sure my nephew understood.”

She toyed with the feathers in his cape. “I didn’t understand, either.”

He could see her thinking, trying to work it out.

“What do you think the heart of a cloud is?” he asked.

Bone Walker petted the feather for a time. “Rain?”

“Oh, very good. And what is human rain?”

Bone Walker’s gaze darted around the room, absently landing on the old baskets to her left, then the dusty mats to her right. She chewed the inside of her cheek before looking back at him and venturing, “Tears?”

“Very good.”

“What happens when bones cry?”

“Bones? Can they cry?”

“Mine do.”

“Is that how you got the name Bone Walker?”

She was silent. Then, just as he was about to speak, she said, “I’m just bones. Walking bones.”

“How is that?”

“Bones are all that’s left.” She looked up, eyes engulfing his souls. “When you’re dead. All that’s left is bones. Bones that cry.” She paused. “Tears are the heart of a cloud.”

Stone Ghost smiled. “Someday, if you work very hard, you will be a great Singer. There are holy people ten times your age who do not know how to answer
that question. But that is exactly what Poor Singer meant. He meant that we only see clearly when we live inside the tears of other people.”

“Live inside the tears of other people,”
she repeated to herself and crushed and recrushed the feathers of his cape. “But”—she rolled her eyes as though the answer lay somewhere in the high corners of the room—“if I can live inside tears, why can’t I live inside my breath-heart soul?”

“Hmm?” Stone Ghost swiveled around to face her. The logic of children always amazed him. He wondered where she had found a connection between tears and her afterlife soul?

“My breath-heart soul,” she said, “the one that runs the road to the Land of the Dead, where does it live while I am alive?”

“Ah,” Stone Ghost said with great seriousness, “that is a question I have wondered about my entire life. Where do you think it lives?”

Bone Walker sat up and his cape fell around her waist. She put her hand to her chest and clutched a handful of faded blue fabric. “I don’t know. I can’t feel it.”

“But you can feel it filling your lungs with air and your heart with blood, can’t you?”

She nodded. “So it lives in my heart and lungs?”

“Well, no. I don’t think so. I used to think the breath-heart soul was like a hunting coyote, always tiptoeing in the shadows, but I no longer believe that’s true.”

Bone Walker frowned intently at something just past Stone Ghost. In a very soft voice, she said, “My mother cries.”

Stone Ghost cocked his head. Her thoughts had returned to tears.

“Why does she cry?”

“She’s afraid.”

Stone Ghost shivered suddenly, and Bone Walker
picked up his cape and trotted across the chamber to hand it to him.

“Thank you, child,” he said as he slipped it around his shoulders. This small kindness pleased him. She had shown so few normal emotions since she had been with them. It seemed to him a good sign.

The cape felt warm from her body. He shivered again, but with relief. His old bones just couldn’t stand the cold the way they once had. “Where’s your blanket, Bone Walker? You must fetch it or you will be cold, too.”

She ran across the cluttered room and pulled it from the dark corner. As she ran back, she knotted it around her narrow shoulders, then squatted at Stone Ghost’s side before the warming bowl. Long dirty black tangles fell over her shoulder. He longed to wash and brush her hair, but she had yet to allow anyone to touch her.

Bone Walker toyed with a stick that rested beside the warming bowl. “So, where does it live?”

Stone Ghost watched her play with the stick, tapping it on the ground, on the side of the warming bowl, as though to make light of a question that was very important to her.

Stone Ghost tied the laces of his cape beneath his chin. “The answer is complicated. Are you sure you wish to hear what I think?”

Her gaze fixed upon his eyes. She nodded once, with utter gravity. “Tell me.”

“All right, I’ll try.” He resettled himself so that his aching left leg was extended. “I think there is a place where a person’s inner world and the outer world touch. Can you feel that? Close your eyes and search for that place.”

Bone Walker did, and he could see her eyes moving beneath her lids. When she opened them, she poked her stick into the twig pile and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“It’s easiest to feel when you’re just about asleep.
Anyway, I think that every place where those worlds touch makes a kind of invisible skin. While we’re alive, it protects everything inside, including our hearts and lungs, but it also allows us to be connected with the outside world. It’s that ‘skin’ that I think travels to the afterlife.”

“A skin,” she whispered. “A hollow skin?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I think it’s full of who you were when you were alive.”

“But not bones or fingernails?”

“Well, Spirit bones and Spirit fingernails.”

Bone Walker used the stick to draw a spiral in the dust on the floor. “Do you think someone can witch your breath-heart soul and put it in a rock? So that it can’t find its way to the Land of the Dead?”

A tiny tremor had laced her voice when she asked the question. She peered hard at her stick, waiting.

“Yes,” he said, “I believe that witches can do that. Why? Did someone tell you that?”

Bone Walker drew a long wavy line with her stick.

He noted how her hand shook.

Stone Ghost said, “I won’t let anyone do that to your soul, Bone Walker. I know many ways to protect a person’s souls.”

She cocked her head as though she didn’t believe him.