Fatalis (12 page)

"
Petaja
," Tumamait said, a formal expression of gratitude. "I thought you might come."

"Oh?"

"There was an owl feather on my stoop this morning," he said.

"The messengers of the Great Eagle," Grand said. So that was it, the reason for Tumamait's smile.

"The feather was the color of your hair and eyes and the eyes were damp with dew."

"Are you pleased?" Grand asked.

"I'm always pleased when my beliefs are vindicated."

Grand grinned. He detected a whisper of the old Joseph Tumamait in his manner. Tumamait wouldn't give Grand the satisfaction of admitting he was happy to see him. But Grand sensed he was.

Tumamait took a step back and looked his former student over carefully. "You look tired."

"I am."

"I mean inside," Tumamait said, touching his own chest.

"That too," Grand replied, his smile softening. "It's been difficult."

"You are tired because you keep Rebecca trapped inside," Tumamait said. "Her spirit is free. You must let it go."

"I know," Grand said.

The Chumash believed that unless the spirits of "the beloved dead" were ceremoniously put to rest, they stayed with the living. Frustrated at being unable to touch and feel, the spirits became malevolent and destructive-sometimes physically, as
maniti
-poltergeists-and sometimes emotionally. Tumamait had offered to help him send Rebecca away through fasting and recitations of a ritualistic wedding ceremony, bonding the widower to the earth. That would allow Rebecca to become
nashu
, "the next thing," an animal closer to the gods. Grand had declined. He wasn't ready to let Rebecca go.

"But you know me," Grand went on. "I carry a piece of everyone I ever met I carry a lot of
you
with me."

"My people call these 'scars,'" he teased.

"There are a few of those, but there are other things too," Grand smiled. "Mostly very good things."

"Not recently," Tumamait pointed out.

"No," Grand admitted. The smile softened. "Joseph, I came here because I need a favor. I need you to help me solve a puzzle."

"What kind of puzzler?"

The elderly man listened as Grand described the new discovery up in the mountains. Grand described the tunnel, the white circles and crescents, and the symmetry of the designs. When Grand was finished, Tumamait was silent, his expression unchanged. Grand had hoped that the nature of the discovery might spark some of the old curiosity. Apparently, it had not.

"I've never heard of a Chumash shaman creating astronomical art," Grand continued. "If that's what I've found in the caves, it could be an extraordinary discovery."

"For whom?" Tumamait asked.

"For all of us," Grand said.

"You know what I believe," Tumamait told Grand. "Those works were not created for all of us. They were meant for the eyes of the gods and for other shamans."

"I also know that we aren't certain who they were meant for or who looked at them."

"And we will never know," Tumamait said. "Why not leave them, then, as the creators wished?"

"Because I want to learn everything I can about an amazing civilization. And I want to show others
how
great they were… how great you are."

"What others think won't change my people."

"But it might help improve the rest of us," Grand said. "We think that our communications and medicines and knowledge are greater than anything that has come before. That isn't necessarily so."

"James, years ago I told you that when the Great Eagle came to me I realized the paintings of my people are not meant to be talked about and analyzed," Tumamait said. "They are not stories to be read. They were painted by the enlightened. They are doorways into another realm meant to be opened only by the gods. I'm sorry, but I can't help you with this. If the earth has chosen to speak to you, you will know it in time."

"'In time' may be too late," Grand said. "Strange things are happening in the mountains. Disappearances, caves opening, the past emerging."

Tumamait said nothing.

Grand felt like he was back in school, being pushed by his professor to discover things on his own. In this case, though, he wasn't sure whether his mentor wanted him to continue searching or whether he really wanted Grand to stop.

"All right then," Grand said. "Let's try this. Have you had other visions since the first one?"

"Many," Tumamait said.

"Were they all of the Great Eagle?"

Tumamait nodded.

Grand stepped closer. "Be my teacher one more time. Tell me one thing he's taught you."

Tumamait thought for a moment. "I will tell you this.
Haphap
is dangerously near," the elder replied.

"The Mountain Demon," Grand said. "How do you know?"

"The Great Eagle comes to me when the world is in discord and he is no longer content to be spirit," Tumamait said. "He came to me recently. He was changed."

"In what way?"

"His feathers were those of an owl."

"Why?"

Tumamait didn't answer.

"Is he well?" Grand asked.

"He is a god," Tumamait said. "He comes because the earth is not well."

"In what way?"

"That is for us to determine," Tumamait replied.

"And fix."

"And fix," Tumamait agreed. "Good luck."

Grand smiled and offered his hand. "I'm not sure what I need good luck with, but thanks for your time." The smile turned bittersweet. "I miss the old days, sir. I miss talks like these, our explorations of mind and land."

"Perhaps we will have them again."

"I want to," Grand said. "It's been too long." Tumamait clasped Grand's hand. "There are many roads to the same place. Hopefully, I'll see you at the end. Until then, James, be careful."

"I'll do my best," Grand said.

He left the office feeling-how had Rebecca put it once when she came back from church?
Lightened but not enlightened
.

Though be still didn't know much about the paintings he'd seen, he had reconnected with Joseph Tumamait. And that was something.

Grand pulled up to the curb just as Fluffy was coming in from his late afternoon walk. The scientist was looking forward to seeing the dog. He could use some unqualified support after the difficult encounter with Tumamait.

He didn't get it.

The Labrador retriever had a walker named Stanley Walker, which was one of the reasons Rebecca had hired him. The retired actor was conscientious and had good references, but Rebecca also enjoyed irony and silliness.

Fluffy usually greeted Grand by throwing his oversized front paws on his chest and barking until he drooled. Today he planted his paws on Grand's chest and just stood looking up at him, silently.

"What's wrong, boy?" Grand asked.

"He's been a tad weird today," said the short, white-haired, well-groomed Walker.

"In what way?"

"Our boy has been extremely quiet."

Grand put his hands under Fluffy's big ears and looked into his gentle eyes. "You got a problem you need to talk about? Was that collie next door teasing you again?"

"I don't think so," Walker said. "Marley was quiet today too. So were my other dogs."

Grand looked at Walker. "All of them?"

Walker nodded.

"Has that ever happened before?"

"Just once," Walker said. "Right before the Northridge earthquake. But this is different."

"In what way?"

"It's not like they're earthquake afraid," Walker told him. "They haven't been hiding under the bed or in the bathtub or any of that business. It's also not a sick quiet I don't feed them the same brand of food, so it isn't poisoning. They're just-not excitable. That's the best way I can describe it."

Grand scratched hard behind Fluffy's ears. The dog took it without his usual panting enthusiasm.

"See what I mean?" Walker said.

Grand nodded. "It could be the weather."

"Too much gray?" Walker said.

"Maybe. Something else we can blame on La Nina. If we can whip up a little sun tomorrow maybe we'll all feel a little better."

"I know I would," Walker said as he gave Fluffy's ribs a strong pat. "I'm running out of dry shoes." He gave the big dog another pat and then headed for his station wagon. "Well, good night, Fluffy. Good night, Professor."

"Good night," Grand said.

Grand and the dog crossed the stone walk that cut through the center of the small, neatly kept yard. Grand had cut the seven stones himself after Rebecca's death. He'd carved them in the mountains and carted them down here; anyone who looked at them closely might notice that they were rough-hewn letters that spelled his wife's name.

Grand took a quick shower, dressed in sweatclothes, and snatched a cold chicken drumstick from the refrigerator. He usually bought a whole cooked chicken on Sunday and picked at it the rest of the week. It was only Wednesday; this bird wasn't going to make it But it had been an active week and Grand usually didn't bother eating lunch.

He finished the chicken leg and sat down at his crowded desk. Fluffy lay on the mat beside the chair, as usual. As Walker had said, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with him other than the fact that he was quiet Rebecca had always insisted that animals could get the blues, just like people. Maybe La Nina
was
that cause.

Grand booted the computer. Over the years be had built an extensive library of prehistoric and pictographic art, starting with books he had begun accumulating when he was six years old.

Back when he was Jimmie "Grand Canyon
," he thought. The memory came with feelings that were both bitter and warm, loving and angry, polar emotions in careful balance. Two more things that were perched on the tips of the Great Eagle's all-encompassing wings.

Grand still had those original books on his shelves. Only now there were literally thousands of books featuring tens of thousands of illustrations ranging from the hieroglyphs of Middle Eastern peoples to the more recent designs of Native Americans. While many of the illustrations were in books, some were on videotape and some-most, in fact-were stuffed in file folders.

Undergraduate anthropology students at the university had been scanning the loose art onto diskette for Grand. He decided to check those first The pieces had been indexed by subject and he began by inputting the keywords
moon, sun, planets, comets
, and
stars
. Grand was more familiar with the European and North and South American animal art than he was with celestial art and was curious to see what would turn up.

The search gave him star charts of prehistoric Polynesian seamen, carvings of constellations by the Naxca peoples of southern Peru, stars drawn in the Sacred Almanac of the Mayans, Babylonian lunar maps, and the Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, monuments of the Anasazi,

Grand accessed the Anasazi photographs, which were of artwork dating from A.D. 900 through 1130. There was a color petrograph of the 1,054 supernova which created the Crab Nebula. It consisted of carvings showing three concentric circles roughly a foot in diameter with flame firing off to the right. Above it were a large star, a crescent moon, and a handprint.

All of the renderings were interpretive rather than literal. So were the astronomical designs Grand found in other files. The Egyptians of the Eighteenth Dynasty visualized the omnipotent sun as a wide, glowing eye. The Hopi of the North American Southwest portrayed stars as flaming arrow tips. The Thules of prehistoric Alaska imagined shooting stars to be the dripping blood of wounded animals. Apparently, no early artists had rendered the heavens as literally as the Chumash painter. Grand checked some of his books and found the same symbolic art among other ancient peoples.

That made sense
, he thought. Like the afterworld, the heavens were incomprehensible to ancient people. They would have personified or anthropomorphized the universe to make it understandable.

Grand sat back in his chair. It was getting dark and he switched on the fluorescent desk lamp. He thought for a moment. He went over what Tumamait had told him, but he didn't have any new insights on his single word.

He put Tumamait from his mind for now and went back to the source. Maybe the old man
didn't
know the answer and was simply suggesting that the question itself was the problem.

The trick to solving mysteries like these was to try and free the mind from contemporary knowledge and references. Not to think of the earth or moon as huge spheres but as a fragile dirt shell and a bright eagle's eye in the sky, respectively. To imagine the gods living above and below and seeing everything and controlling the weather and the flow of water and the fertility of the land. To be aware of their spirit emissaries moving through the dark to give shamans visions and ordinary mortals dreams or nightmares.

To think like an ancient man.

When that was done, it was necessary to look at the designs for the first time-again.

He had found Chumash paintings of the Great Eagle soaring through blackness, but never any that represented the heavens. Perhaps showing the god was as far as the shamans went.

"Hold on," Grand thought aloud. "Maybe they're not stars at all, Fluffy."

Grand went back to his earlier thoughts and word-searched
eggs
. He found several designs from around the world. They ranged from perfect ovals to cracked ovals to hatched and broken shells. Some eggs were giving birth to animals, some to people, some to hybrid gods. Some were white, some were brown, some were red. He found nothing that looked like the Chumash designs. He checked
Native American alphabet
. The Chumash frequently traded with other tribes, perhaps they picked up some of their symbols.