by Corie Weaver
I collapsed into a heap on the ground, the pounding in my ears bringing the taste of blood to my mouth.
Hesitantly, she stepped towards me. “Are you all right?”
I gasped for air, pushed myself upright with one hand. The other hand twined itself though the soft fur of the kitten I somehow still held in my lap. “Yes, thank you. I will be fine. Are you well?”
She looked lost, but there was no fear, no wonder at this new place. As if she dreamed and had no fears about the changes in the place of her dreaming. “I think so. I, I don’t remember. Was I here before?”
I watched her as she wandered away from me, then came back, her face a blank mask. “No, I do not believe you have been here before. Do you remember nothing of what happened?”
“I was running somewhere, I was scared.” She wandered away again, glancing around her, her brows drawn together. “I was looking for something, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’ve been looking for a long time, I think.”
“Isabel,” and then I stopped. If she did not remember her death and the betrayal I suspected had led up to it, was it needful for me to remind her?
For the first time she looked closely at me, focused clearly.
“I am sorry, we have not been introduced.” She picked up the sides of her skirts and bent her knees, bobbing up and down once, quickly. “I am Isabel de Granillo, ward of Fray Alonzo at—oh!” She gasped and I jerked back from her.
“You have him! You found my Nicco!”
She skipped forward, her face beaming, and reached for the cat in my lap.
She scooped him up before I could protest and pressed him close to her chest, burying her face in his fur. I felt the absence of him, even as I worried. Would this kill the kitten, for a ghost to hold him?
“Thank you, I have been looking for him everywhere.” She cradled the cat in her arms.
“It was very nice to meet you, but I should go now.”
I scrambled to my feet, blinking. “Isabel, wait, there’s something I must tell you.”
She ran towards the edge of the clearing. “I can hear the bells for Mass. I must go now, or I will be late!”
And she passed between the trees and out of sight.
I opened my eyes to the dim gray light of early morning. Jack knelt beside me.
“This time was different." I croaked. "I do not think she understood me. I will have to try again.” Weariness filled me, my head ached. I did not think I could do this again, not right away.
The cat stirred, still in my lap and my heart leapt. His unexpected venture into my dream world had not harmed him. Gold eyes opened, blinked, then long front legs stretched out and pricked my legs lightly as punishment for waking him. He stalked off into the forest without a backward glance, black-plumed tail erect. In the slowly growing light I could see the midnight of his tail tipped with a sprinkle of white hairs and wondered if they had been there the previous day.
I looked at Jack. “I do not know if I made any difference.”
“I do.” Jack’s quiet voice carried a weight that forced my attention back to the matter at hand. “You made a difference.”
He looked back at the site of the old mission building. “She’s gone.”
Chapter Twelve
Jack pulled me upright. “Let’s get out of here and then maybe take a nap for a bit. You look a mess.”
I grimaced at him. “Thank you, Jack. I feel much better now.”
I stretched, pulled the kinks out of my back from the long night. “We need to get back. I need to make sure that, now that she is gone, and so the source of the wind, that the illness is lifted.”
I ran my fingers through my hair, frowned at the knots and tangles that had sprung up overnight, then braided the mess out of my way the best I could.
“And we should find Maggie if we can. You know she’ll be wondering about us.”
He had done a good job with the maps while I had been otherwise occupied the night before. Without too much walking we mounted a bus carrying us back North. I dozed in the seat and Jack woke me when we needed to change to another bus.
As I drifted off, I thought how odd it was that already I had become so accustomed to this world to be able to sleep while in the stomach of this moving monster. Or perhaps it only showed how tired I was. I felt like leather that had worn so thin you could see light through it.
The trip home felt longer than the trip out, but by mid-morning we arrived back near Maggie’s house.
We headed back up the trail to the tree, our hearts light. I was anxious to see the results of our work. We reached the split cottonwood tree and paused.
“Ready?” Jack said.
I nodded and, taking his hand, stepped through.
~ * * * ~
The wind knocked both of us back and I hit the bark of the cottonwood hard enough to scrape my arm through the thin shirt.
“What happened?” Jack’s wide eyes roamed the land. “It’s worse than before!”
I shook my head and shouted to be heard over the raging wind. “I do not know. Let us get to the village and see if we can discover anything there.”
We fought against the wind as it blew and pounded us with each step, threatening to knock us from the trail, to drive us to our knees. We took turns leading the way in the hopes that one of us would provide a breakfront for the other, give the other a rest. But our plan failed, proved useless in a wind that came at us from all directions.
We reached the shelter of the village and crawled up the ladder a thin girl lowered for us.
On the roof we thanked her. She was one of the assistants I had trained before we left. I tried to speak, but she hurried inside and waved for us to follow her.
She did not say anything until we were in the tunnels beneath the buildings, the tiny flame of dished clay lanterns casting more shadow than light.
Jack pulled at my hand and whispered, but his voice was loud in the silence. “I don’t understand.”
The girl stopped. “The wind has been worse the last few days. More fall sick daily; the singing never stops. Even those of us who still walk, it calls to us, loss and rage, battering everything.”
Her gaunt face held deep shadows beneath her eyes.
“We have some stores of grain, but we must go plant soon, or face disaster.” She turned away. “But I do not know if anything will grow in this cursed weather, or in truth, how many of us there will be for the harvest.”
We passed a number of rooms filled with people who lay still. Only a few people passed from one pallet to the next, checking eyes, checking for reflexes. What had happened to all my helpers?
Our guide stopped, leaned heavily against a door. I moved towards her, concerned, but she shook my hand aside. “Your friends are within.” And with no other words of explanation she returned the way we had come.
Before us lay a fever-tossed Ash. Maggie knelt on the far side of him, her hand in his, her eyes bright and wild in her pale face. She stared at us as we came in and whatever we expected her to say about our missing the check-in the previous night was lost.
“You have to make him better, you have to stop this!” She brushed his hair back from his face, put her hands on his shoulders to keep his tossing form still. “I don’t understand what’s going on. He can’t leave me, he can’t!”
And then I knew the truth.
How could I have been so blind?
It was never the girl, she did not do this.
It was the boy, Tomás. The visions were of the girl, she was the key, but the boy had been the one raised in the old traditions, the one who would have the knowledge to breach the path between the worlds.
The boy who had hated to be separated from Isabel . . .
And we did not know where to find him, or his ghost. Jack had not seen him at the mission.
Wait.
The boy must have been the second skeleton, down in that pit.
“Bear Girl?”
I stopped cold, blocking the door, not seeing.
&
nbsp; “I am so sorry.” I checked over Ash. “I believe he will be fine. Please, trust me. All was not as it appeared.” I laughed, perhaps a bit hysterical. “Nothing was as it appeared, to be honest.”
A glimmer of a plan formed in my mind.
“I think I know what to do now, but I need your help.”
She looked up from Ash and blinked away the tears from her eyes.
“Anything. Just make him well.”
“I know what to do now,” I repeated. “But I don’t know how, not exactly.”
“Another vision?” Jack asked.
“No,” I pulled myself upright, wrapped my arms around my ribs. “In the beginning, this will take no magic, only courage. Maggie, you have to tell me: where can I find your father’s place of work at the University, and what can I offer him that will make him willing to work with us?”
~ * * * ~
Jack and I jogged back down the path. He spent no time with his friends this trip. We hoped to be able to reach the University quickly enough to find Maggie’s father still there. Maggie had said her father had been working late at the University for the last few weeks to finish his part of the study of the bones before they were returned to the Pueblo Council.
We rode the bus in silence, only the desperate grip of our intertwined hands betrayed our fear.
We ran through the campus without another glance for the sculptures or anything else until we stood in front of the tan building marked with a blue sign we had seen Maggie's father enter before.
“I think this is the right place.” Jack started towards the door, but I called him back.
“Wait, we can’t afford to make a mistake.”
I looked wildly for someone—anyone!—to confirm what the markings on the sign said, and swore that as soon as I could I would learn Maggie’s writing.
A young man with long brown hair walked by.
“Excuse me.”
He kept walking and I steeled myself. This was no time to worry about politeness.
“Excuse me!” This time I stood in front of him and yelled.
He jumped. “Whoa. Sorry.” And pulled tiny plugs out from his ears. “What’s up, kid?”
“Is that the Anthropology building? Can we find Dr. Sanger there?”
He glanced at the building, looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, that’s what the sign says. You’re a little old not to be able to read.”
I think he meant it as a joke, but there was no time to explain.
“And Dr. Sanger? He will be there?”
“I dunno, kid. I’ve never been in; I’m a comp-sci major.”
And with that he replaced the plugs in his ears and slouched off.
Jack and I tore through the building and looking at the doors.
Jack shouted over his shoulder. “I know what the writing for his name looks like. I’ll recognize that. It’s on all the mail.”
“Just find it, quickly!”
The student on the bus had given us the clue. Tomás might no longer be at the ruins of Santa Catalina, his spirit might be wandering free, but we knew where to find his body. More importantly, we knew who we must talk with.
Jack called me. “Here, it’s here!” He stood in front of a door, like all the others lining the hallway, with papers stuck to the front and a little square frame around more words. Jack pointed to the frame. “See. That’s the name.” He laughed, still a bit nervous, then rapped on the door.
“Office hours are over!” a man’s voice answered. “Come back tomorrow afternoon and we can talk about your test results.”
“Doctor Sanger?” I called through the door. “We are not here to talk about,” I looked at Jack, who shrugged at me, “about that. We are here to talk to you about the boy and girl you are studying.”
The sound of papers being shuffled was followed by steps, then the door was flung open. “Now, listen. The appropriate papers have been filed. You can protest all you want, but we need more time to finish—”
“Sir, please. I am not protesting anything. I need to talk to you, that is all.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not here to tell me what I’m doing is wrong?”
I shook my head. “Please let us talk to you.”
Frowning, he waved us into a cramped and cluttered room, packed with books and papers. He pointed to two chairs close to the door, then walked around a table and sat facing us.
"Are you sure? You look like you're here to argue with me."
Jack spoke up. "You know that's not fair. You always say that basing an opinion solely on someone's appearance, no matter their cultural background, is a mistake, and inappropriate for a scientist."
The older man blinked. "I do, do I? You look a little young to be in my classes."
Jack stuttered. "I, uh, have a friend that sits in sometimes.
Maggie's father stared at him, then returned his attention to me. You have five minutes.”
Mind racing, I struggled for the words Maggie had helped me come up with, that she thought would sway her father, even against his better judgment, but now I was on my own. “Sir, I understand that some people from the tribes may be giving you difficulties about the skeletons recovered from the kiva of Santa Catalina.”
He grunted. “Difficulties. Right.”
“I am not one of those people. I do not believe the people whose bones you hold care what you do with them. Your world is so outside of theirs, they have no way to understand, even,” I added hastily, “if their spirits were still here.
“However, I do have a request.”
His jaw tensed.
“I do not believe it will interfere with your work. It is unlikely that the ritual for the dead, the four days, has been sung. Of course, it could have happened long ago, but if a proper burial had happened, the bodies would not have been left as they were.”
He shook his head. “You can sing for them when they’re returned.”
“Please. A short time to sing over the bodies now and then we will trouble you no more. And I do not ask without having something to trade.”
He removed his glasses, polished the lenses with a cloth he removed from a corner of the table. “What do you think you can offer me?”
“First, I offer to do the sing where you can see me and hear me.” Maggie had told me one of her father’s biggest frustrations was the secrecy of the tribes, their need to keep their own secrets. And she had told me one other thing. A weakness of her father’s.
“Also, if you would like, I will tell you stories. I do not know if they are tales you already know.” I waved at his walls lined with books. “But I will tell you stories until you believe my debt to you is repaid.”
He sat back in his chair, glasses forgotten in his hand. “Would you let me record you?”
I looked at Jack, who shrugged. “If I did that, would you let me sing?”
“Let’s get our details straight first. How long do you want to be there?”
This time it was my turn to shrug. “As long as you will let me, but as soon as possible. Now, this afternoon, would be best.”
He frowned. “There’s something going on you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”
I could see no way to avoid telling him the truth, or at least part of it. “I believe that a great harm is being done. I believe the sooner the singing is begun, the better. I do not ask you to believe as well, but to only believe that I will not do anything to interfere with your work.”
“Your offer is tempting . . .” but his voice trailed off. “Still. There’s no way that I can let a couple of kids down there. This is a scientific lab, not a place to have a field trip.”
I could feel the moment slipping away from us. “Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what we want, and why? And don’t you want to know what stories I can tell you?”
Maggie’s father started to shake his head, but Jack jumped back in.
“We won’t touch anything, and it’s not like we’d be alone there.” His voice wavered, “Please
, we’ll be good.”
Maggie’s father looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “What an odd thing to say. What’s your name, young man?”
Jack mumbled and looked at his shoes.
“What was that?”
Jack looked the human man in the face, the only father he had known and despite everything I smiled with pride at his courage.
“Jack. My name is Jack, sir.”
“Huh. Of all the names. . . .”
Doctor Sanger looked at a corner of the desk, where a picture of Maggie sat. It showed her laughing under a tree with golden leaves and Jack, as he had always been, at her side, a black-and-white bundle of energy.
He examined us again and turned his attention back to me. “You may end up telling me a number of stories, you realize.” He stood up. “I need to make a phone call to cancel a meeting I wasn’t looking forward to. Then I’ll get a few things and we’ll go down.”
We descended steps, flights and flights of them, and were stopped at doors that would not open until Maggie’s father ran a small card through a hole in the wall.
I whispered to Jack, “Are you all right with this? I do not know what we will find.” I had seen corpses before, assisting my parents. This, I was sure, would be something far different.
He pointed with his chin towards the back of Maggie’s father, walking a few paces ahead. “I’ve already done the hardest part. I’ll stay with you.”
We finally entered a cold room with metal walls covered with squares. Maggie’s father walked to one square and pulled a section of the wall out. Hidden behind the square had been a narrow ledge that rolled forward, silent and smooth.
A skeleton, darkened with age, lay on the ledge.
“Isabel,” whispered Jack softly so Maggie’s father wouldn’t overhear.
“She’s not here, is she?”
He shook his head. “No, just the traces. I can see the shadow of her face on her bones, nothing more."
Relieved that I had at least done one thing right, I turned back to where Doctor Sanger pulled open another ledge.
And stepped back. I did not need Jack’s smothered gasp to tell me power radiated from the thin shelf.
