The Next Skywatcher: Prequel to The Last Skywatcher Triple Trilogy Series (The Last Skywatcher, Anasazi Historical Thrillers with a Hint of Romance Book 1) (33 page)

Pók fell into Chumana, who kept her balance by stepping back. Tuwa pounced on top of Pók, his forehead bouncing off the stone platform. He saw stars swimming and felt warm liquid flowing from his nose. He gritted his teeth and turned, preparing to kick Pók into submission if he hadn’t already given up. The fingers of Tuwa’s right hand slipped in warm blood on his blade, and he struggled to glance back at Chumana, who removed her mask. Her hair was tangled and wild as she looked at Pók in a mixture of contempt and anger. Peelay picked up Tootsa’s knife and cut through Nuva’s binds. She spread her arms wide and looked to the sky, seemingly oblivious to the humans on the platform. Pók tried to stand. Choovio had his elbow in the throat of a downed guardsman, who gurgled. Another guard pulled at Choovio to get him off the man. Pók floundered without his right hand and couldn’t push himself up. Tuwa pushed himself into a sitting position with his right hand, which slipped and he felt the blade squeeze away. He managed to roll onto his back and kick Pók hard in the chest. He took a deep breath and kicked him again.

Pók gasped. “Curse your pathetic….” Tuwa kicked him in the face. Blood spurted from Pók’s wrist and now his nose, and the wound on his other hand where he’d lost his thumb bleed freely as well. He opened his mouth, the blood staining his pointed teeth, as if to say something else, and Tuwa kicked him again. And again. And then again. He never wanted to hear another sound from the man. Finally, Pók lay limp. Tuwa tried to hold himself up, his heels still propped on top of Pók, but he slipped again on his right hand. He gave up and lay back, holding his right hand in front of his face. His forefinger was gone. Sliced off. Along with Pók’s hand. His own blade had somehow twisted or turned as it collided with Pók’s wrist and cut through Tuwa’s knuckle, which glistened white in the sunlight in spite of the copious blood that flowed around the wound.

Nuva walked forward, her hands raised high. The guardsmen gripped their weapons, but hesitated. Pók came to, shook his head, and gripped his wrist hard with his remaining four fingers to slow the bleeding. Chumana’s face looked fierce, making her seem older and unlike the girl Tuwa used to know.

The women in the canyon went wild. Nuva and Chumana held hands and raised their arms, while Tuwa carefully stood on shaky legs.

Pók grinned up at him. “I see you’re losing body parts now, too, you miserable boy. You’ve ruined everything.”

Tuwa wanted to raise a club over him or hold a knife to his throat. He wanted to make that final kill. To watch the life flow from the eyes of this man who had killed his mother and his grandfather. But his body wouldn’t respond. He felt as lifeless and heavy as stone. It was all he could do to stand. Holding his bleeding hand. Staring at Pók. Who lay without struggle. Holding his bleeding stump.

Pók sneered. “You less-than-nothing piece of….”

Tuwa raised his leg to stomp the life out of Pók. To crush his head like a gourd. It felt good. It felt very, very good. But a sudden image of Grandfather held him back, pulled him back like Choovio had done.
Stop
. Pók watched him with the slightest of grins. He wanted to die. He wanted the son he failed to kill to end it. Now. Make it be over. But Tuwa did not have the spirit of his father. He had the spirit of his mother. And of his Grandfather. He lowered his foot and took a faltering step backward.

“I was wrong,” Pók said, blood spattering as he spoke. “You would not have made a great warrior. You have the weak spirit of your mother.” Tuwa watched him as Pók’s head sagged, his face white even as it was smeared with his own blood. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and his head fell onto his chest.

Tuwa didn’t know if all other sound stopped or if his ears simply roared with his own thunder. He looked around. Chumana kept her arms raised high, her night-black eyes on him. The Builder without his High Priest costume backed away. Peelay and Tootsa leaned against the back wall, gripping each other’s arms. Pók lay on the ground without moving, a puddle of crimson blood growing beneath him. Choovio still knelt holding his arm against the throat of a motionless guard. The other guardsmen backed away, their weapons held low.

“You may keep your weapons if you leave us now,” said Tuwa to the guards. They shot glances to each other, to Pók who was dead or dying, and fled down the ramp.

Tuwa stared at them until they came to the first switchback, where they faced the angry women on the canyon floor.

“Nuva,” he said, energy draining from him. Nuva came, awkward in her hat and robes. She pulled off a pale yellow cloth The Builder had draped around her neck and began wrapping it around Tuwa’s wound. Then she went to Pók and worked to staunch his bleeding. “I think he’s gone,” she said and turned away from him, back to the crowd on the Standing Grounds and all over the canyon.

The trilling voices rose again, louder than before. Tuwa saw women in the courtyard of the palace with their hands held high, swaying and turning and waving. The same up on the canyon rim. Tuwa saw The Pochtéca and Tókotsi, still seated in the center of the Standing Grounds with an open ring around them guarded now by women with sharp sticks. They both looked up to the altar.

Tuwa’s legs felt as if they might collapse and he looked at Chumana. He saw her face with a new clarity. Her eyes were large and black, the sunlight glistened in them more brightly than the sparkle of mere bluestone. Her face was more oval than he remembered, the faint lines of wrinkles crept across her forehead. Her skin was not as dark, her mouth not as narrow. Tuwa forgot about the rest of the world. Chumana saw him watching her and came to him. She took his hand, which was dripping blood because he held it below his heart. She lifted it to his shoulder and tightened the wrap. Then she leaned into him and put her head against his. The heaviness left him and he suddenly felt light. As if he had been incinerated by a great fire, and now he floated in a puff of smoke, rising and turning lazily above the altar.

In the largest round hall
at the palace, Nuva held the first gathering of girl messengers she dubbed Butterfly Runners. After two weeks of training and practice with Kopavi and Sowi, they were ready to receive their first proclamation from the new White Priestess. More than thirty girls huddled into the dark room, their hair sculpted into butterfly wings and wearing sun-bleached white cotton shifts.

Nuva stood at the center and slowly circled the fire as she spoke so that she made eye contact with each girl.

“I am so proud to see you all here. You are part of the light that will heal this land. A gentle light. A strong and persistent light that will last forever.

“Each of you has earned marks on the tips of two fingers.” Nuva held up her two middle fingers. “You are not yet fully members of the Sisterhood. Once you have completed one-year as Butterfly Runners, along with more training like you’ve had these past two weeks, thanks to Kopavi and Sowi—once you have done all that, you will receive your third mark and become full Sisters.” She held up a third finger.

Tuwa leaned against the dark wall, touching elbows with Choovio, along with The Pochtéca wearing his red hat, Sowi with Tootsa, and Lightfoot, who recovered in a miraculously short time from the wicked blow to his chest up on the altar. Peelay and Ráana, both bent and battered, Ráana still recovering from Pók’s final kick to his head, had somehow bonded and Ráana played the drum to Peelay’s flute, and they began to play the most alluring music anyone in the canyon Tuwa had ever heard.

Chumana sat close to the fire wearing her bluestone gown, but not her mask. Instead, she wore a hair weaving of stringed beads with dangling pendants of bluestone. Firelight danced in her eyes and the glittering stones exaggerated every movement of her head. Kopavi sat next to her, as close as Tuwa stood to Choovio. Kopavi smiled at Choovio, and he beamed back at her. Chumana and Tuwa rarely looked at anyone but each other. Even The Pochtéca seemed mesmerized by Nuva.

She interrupted the music, her arms raised. “I have my first proclamation for you to deliver far and wide. I will repeat it three times. Remember it precisely.”

Nuva stopped circling the fire and stood in place. She gazed through the hole in the roof and spoke in a high, slow voice.

“The White Priestess will lead a procession from this palace to the Village of Twin Giants. We leave at sunset the day of the next growing half-moon and we travel by moonlight. At the rise of the full moon between the Twin Giants, we will join in eternal union Tuwa and Chumana, Choovio and Kopavi, and any others who wish to be so bound and honored. All are welcomed to attend.”

Nuva moved a third of the way around the fire and repeated the message, arms raised, gaze to the dark sky, her albino coloring making her stand out more than her modified High Priest costume. She wore no hat and her thin hair hung straight down, gleaming with bear fat. She had taken the High Priest’s vest and sewed patterns of small bluestone beads to depict Mother Earth, Sister Moon, and Father Sun. She carried no staff and wore simple sandals.

All the Butterfly Runners stood quiet and still, a few mouthing the words along with Nuva as she spoke the third time. Nuva then had the girls recite it in unison three more times and released them. They bounded up the ladder like a herd of eager animals and all began talking at once when they stood on the roof. Kopavi and Sowi gave them final instructions, they gathered their traveling supplies—a water bladder, a thin sleeping skin rolled tight and tied across their back, a small bow with three good arrows, a sharp flake-knife, three throwing stones, a pouch of parched corn and strips of dried meat, and a few personal belongings. Then they ran in all directions like butterflies working a field of flowers.

Two weeks later, after the sun set and the half-illuminated moon rose in the sky to cast a thin white light, Nuva set off. She would not walk in the sunlight, she said, but only by the light of the growing moon. People, especially women with their daughters, lined the way and fell in behind, each laden with food and supplies—and as much earth as they could carry scooped from the altar to scatter it as far as possible from Center Place Canyon.

Behind her, an entourage followed. Cooks bearing utensils and pots. Former warriors who had switched sides carried high loads on their backs. A few that had been carefully questioned by Nuva and The Pochtéca were allowed to retain their weapons. Two of these escorted an emaciated man with one hand and no thumb on his remaining hand. Pók. Nuva’s new council assigned him to Tuwa, who couldn’t decide what to do with him, so they simply brought him along. Tuwa avoided him, though he did find himself watching the pathetic man from afar. He could barely feed himself and wipe his own anus. Tuwa kept asking himself what he could do with a creature like that.

Before the moon set near the middle of the night, Nuva asked a couple of girls bearing water jugs to wash the dust from her tired feet. They giggled and poured water and massaged her feet as she groaned in pleasure. Then they ran off and spread the word. Girls lined up every moonset after that to wash the White Priestess’s feet. Nuva had them join her and wash their own feet as she told them about the Sisterhood and her days of living in the palace with the Snake Maiden Goddess of the Future.

During the glare of the day, a tight tent of cotton cloth and supple hides, hung on a lattice of long, flexible sticks, allowed Nuva to hide from the sun. They made slow progress, but moving easily through the cool night of the high desert prairie had its own pleasure. Tuwa most often walked beside Chumana, their arms brushing, their skin tingling, talking of how life would be for them in the Village of Twins. Choovio and Kopavi did the same in their own way, far ahead, barely in sight, armed and wary. He had seen Kopavi instructing Choovio with a bow and arrow from time to time. Maybe with her tutelage, he might actually learn to hit something.

“I want to start a school for girls,” Chumana said. “I want them to know everything. How to watch the sky like your grandfather. How to defend themselves like Kopavi. How to run a village like Choovio. How to attend births and use herbs for healing like Nuva and Hita.”

“Boys need that too,” said Tuwa. He bumped her and put his arm across her back, his still-bandaged hand held high against his chest. He loved that he could touch her. The warmth and energy he felt from her was more powerful than anything he had felt since childhood. The empty hole he’d felt for so long from his absent mother and grandfather began to fade.

The road was arrow-straight and smooth, but the scrub of the rolling desert plain stretched into a deep gray under the half-illuminated moon. They mostly watched where they would next place their feet. Other people walked along the road in the disorganized procession that followed Nuva north out of Center Place Canyon, but all had manners enough to stay far enough away they could not eavesdrop.

“You can open a boys’ school,” said Chumana, bumping him back.

“I’ll be too busy being learning how to be a skywatcher. I migh have forgotten everything.”

“I doubt that. You were glued to your grandfather.”