by Sarah Dreher
What was that?
''What the fuck?" Larch Begay grunted as the wave of vibration hit him.
Jimmy Goodnight gave a frightened squeak.
The campfire shrank to embers, then exploded in a tower of flame. Begay reached for his bottle of cheap bourbon.
Gwen stopped fighting the ropes that cut into her wrists and ankles, and looked up into the darkness. "Stoner?" she whispered.
The little Burro stepped away from the tunnel entrance to let the shock wave pass, and went back to eating.
Siyamtiwa smiled to herself. So. Green-eyes has found the bundle.
THIRTEEN
She thought she could see light ahead. Distant, flickering, yellow light.
It might be an hallucination. It felt like hours since she had entered the tunnel. It may have been minutes. She had lost all sense of time and space.
It was light, all right. And growing brighter. She stopped to listen. A male voice, low, rumbling. The light was from Larch Begay's campfire.
If the tunnel kept going straight ahead, it would dump her right at his feet.
Which was, under the circumstances, a terrible idea.
Moving very slowly, scarcely breathing, listening for signs of discovery, she inched her way forward.
She could see the fire now. And Begay. And Jimmy Goodnight. Their backs were to her as they lounged against opposite sides of the cave entrance, looking out toward the desert. If they were expecting her, they were expecting her to come from below.
Larch Begay was fooling with a gun, a pistol. It looked like the kind of six-shooter you saw in cowboy movies.
Between her tunnel and the campfire was a small ante-chamber-like room. If either of them turned around they would certainly see her. But, with luck, she might be able to slip into the darkness away from the entrance.
She decided to call up a cloud. In the shadow-laced, wavering, reflected firelight, it wouldn't stand out, and might give her a bit of added protection.
This time it was easy, though she had to fight a desire to hurry. Gwen was there somewhere. She might be hurt or worse. Before she went looking for the bundle, she was by-God going to find Gwen.
The cloud enveloped her like a fog. It made her job more difficult, trying to see through a heavy mist, but it made her feel safer, too. At the moment, safer was what she needed.
Her knees were wobbly when she tried to stand. Too much crawl-time. She stretched her legs, did a few knee-bends. Her joints sounded like popcorn.
She stopped her breath, afraid Begay had heard, but his grumbling went on uninterrupted. Jimmy Goodnight answered in a scared, whiny voice. Begay barked an obscenity.
Everything normal out there.
She looked around the antechamber. More tunnels, dozens of tunnels. Some tall enough to walk through, some too small even to crawl. No wonder he hadn't found the bundle yet. It would take weeks, months to travel down all those passageways. Pikyachvi Mesa was like a gigantic ant farm.
She groped her way through the semi-darkness, keeping her back to the wall, her eyes on the cave entrance.
Far around to the right, the antechamber opened into a second room, a low-ceilinged compartment no bigger than a closet.
"Stoner?"
She strained to see. ''Where are you?" she whispered.
"Down here. Don't step on me."
She dropped to her knees and felt her way around the floor like a dog sniffing for tell-tale scents. A cup. A tin plate, tangled pile of rope. A foot.
A foot. She groped her way up Gwen's leg.
Something huge and tight in her chest gave way. "Gwen, are you all right?"
"Just get me out of here," Gwen whispered.
She ran her hands down Gwen's arms, her legs, and found the knots that bound her. They were tight. Very tight. Gwen's wrists and ankles were swollen, the rope cutting into her flesh. Her skin was cold.
Stoner swore under her breath. Digging her knife from her pocket, she sawed at the knots.
Gwen gave a little gasp of pain.
"I'm sorry,"Stoner whispered. "Did I hurt you?"
"I'll be okay."
At last she had her free, and tossed the ropes away angrily. She rubbed Gwen's hands, felt her wince as feeling returned.
"Oh, God," Gwen said, her voice shaky with fear,"I don't think I can walk."
Stoner slipped an arm around her shoulders. "You will. I have a lot to do before it comes to that, anyway."
Gwen fumbled for her hand. They sat for a moment in silence, watching the firelight flicker on the wall.
"This is a mess, isn't it?" Gwen asked at last.
"Sort of."
''What are we going to do?"
Stoner scrubbed at her face with her free hand. "I guess the first thing is to find the Ya Ya bundle..."
"The what?"
My God, she doesn't even know what this is all about. "I'll explain everything later." She moved to get up. "Stay here. Pretend you're still tied. That might buy me a little time before Begay knows I'm here." She felt for the cut ropes and handed them to Gwen. ''What's the story on Jimmy Goodnight?"
"I don't know."
The reflected fire-light cast a rusty glow on Gwen's face. In spite of the artificial reddish tint, she looked tired and sick and frightened. She looked the way Stell had looked the night she had gone to the hospital.
Oh Jesus, Stoner thought. He's drawing energy from her, probably to fuel his Coyote side to help him find the bundle.
She leaned over, gave Gwen a quick kiss, and got to her feet. "Things might get a little strange. Be cool, okay?"
"Sure. Yell if you need help."
She forced a quick and—she hoped—reassuring smile and slipped out into the antechamber where the tunnels converged. Begay was standing up, his back to her. She couldn't see Jimmy Goodnight.
Keeping her eyes on Begay, she felt the wall behind her for her entrance tunnel.
It was easy to see why he hadn't found it. She couldn't find it, herself. Of course, it was dark ...
She had the unsettling thought that it wasn't because of the darkness, that even with a spotlight she wouldn't find it, because that tunnel had sealed itself and disappeared.
She told herself that was ridiculous, but she couldn't shake it.
She slid along the wall, feeling the openings of other tunnels, each of which probably led to other tunnels and other tunnels and other...
The chances of getting lost multiplied geometrically.
She dreaded going back into the dark.
Come on, she told herself firmly, stop fiddling and get the show on the road. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for her plunge into blackness.
The familiar klaxon bray sounded from the cave entrance.
She looked out. Jimmy Goodnight was there, with the burro on a rope.
"Lookit, Mr. Begay. There wasn't nobody out there, just this old donkey."
"Lemme see that." Begay snatched the rope from the boy's hand and yanked the burro to him.
The little animal's eyes rolled in fear.
Stoner tensed.
"Hang on to the son-of-a-bitch,” Begay snapped at the boy. He thrust the rope toward him, grabbed the burro's neck, and tried to mount.
The burro danced sideways out of his reach.
"Hold still, Goddamn it." He tried again.
The animal kicked out with its hind legs.
Begay swore and reached for a heavy stick of firewood. He waved it threateningly. "When I say hold still, I mean hold still." He raised his arm to strike.
Blind rage wiped all other thoughts from her mind. "Stop that!" she shouted, and hurled herself at his legs.
Begay was slow-moving, half drunk, and out of shape. He went down like a palm tree in a hurricane.
Jimmy Goodnight jumped back and covered his face with his hands. He dropped the rope.
The donkey whirled and high-tailed it back down the path and out into the desert.
Stoner scrambled to her feet. She figured she had about a five second
head start.
She backed into the cave and slipped down the nearest tunnel. She heard Begay drag himself up, cursing and start after her.
She didn't dare run. In the pitch blackness, she might smash into a wall, or hit her head on a low-hanging rock. At least it was easy to hide in the dark. Until it occurred to him to go back for his flashlight.
The sound of his breathing, heavy and angry, filled the silence. She held her breath. She could almost see him in her mind, heavy head swaying back and forth, his eyes trying to penetrate the dark. If he decided to switch to his Coyote side...
"Goodnight!" she heard him yell, "get the lantern."
It was almost a relief. As long as he stayed human she had a chance. Gwen had a chance. But it had taken only hours for him to drain Stell to the point of death. And Gwen was already halfway there.
She understood now. All summer he'd lived on the women's energy, using them like dry cell batteries to power his transformations, to nourish his animal spirit. Without woman energy he was helpless, his magic reduced to tricks. But once he had the bundle, he would be free of his dependence on women. Once he had the bundle, nothing could stop him.
She saw the balance now. Woman spirit kept him going. Woman spirit had to end it. She had to end it. Because she was woman. Because she was a woman who's spirit no man had ever used. That was why Siyamtiwa—or her Spirits—had chosen her. No man had found the pathway to her soul. Her doors were closed to them.
Her hand reached up and clutched her medicine bag. Oh, Grandmother, help me to weave the proper pattern. Help me to restore the balance. And if I fail, please know I did my best.
Light danced on the tunnel wall, coming her way. She pressed deeper into the shadows. The light paused.
"Come on out, Sweetheart."
She waited.
"You don't want to make me come after you," Begay said. "You really don't."
She eased along the wall, found another passageway, and slipped inside. The beam of light swept over the spot where she had just been.
“We can do this the easy way," he called. "Or we can do it the hard way. It's up to you, Sweetheart."
Slowly, carefully she backed down the narrow passage.
"I got your girl friend. You wouldn't want me to do anything to her, would you?"
She froze.
She had to divert him from that line of thinking, to keep him coming after her. She bent down and fumbled for a rock. She found one, and threw it blindly toward him.
His light followed the direction of the sound.
"I don't have to come after you. All I have to do is start cutting the bitch."
Stoner gritted her teeth. "Screw you, Begay. I knew you were a chicken-shit."
She scooped up a handful of rocks and tossed them, one after another, to her right. She hoped they sounded like running.
The beam of light shifted away from her. In the second before it shifted back, she dove for the tunnel on her left.
She took a long breath. She was drawing him deeper into the mesa. Where she could get as lost as it was humanly possible to be. Where there might be bats and scorpions and other unpleasant things. Where she could starve to death, or die of thirst. Where she'd never see daylight again.
But, by God, neither would he.
Begay was coming back.
First things first. She forced herself to go on, sliding her hands along the wall, feeling overhead for hanging rocks, moving carefully and silently.
It occurred to her that it would take a very long time to die, here in the darkness.
She could hear Begay, stumbling and cursing as he searched through the dark corridors and dead-end passages.
He stopped cursing, began walking slowly but steadily in her direction. Pausing, moving forward, pausing. As if he were following a trail.
What?
She bent down and felt the ground. Dust. She had been walking in dust, leaving a path even a baby could follow, and he had found it.
She could keep running, and he could keep following. Endlessly.
Maybe it would come to that, but not yet. First she would stand and fight.
But not here, not in a hard rock corridor where there was no place to hide and Larch Begay carried the only light. She stumbled on through the blackness.
If only she could see.
Suddenly she remembered the night Siyamtiwa had shown her the kiva. It had been dark then, at first. But she had felt the size and shape of the room.
She stood and quieted her heartbeat, turned her attention to the surfaces of her skin, waited for impressions. She picked up a closeness to her right and forward. Walls. But on the left...
She sensed an opening. No, two... three openings.
Her mind told her this was insane. There was no way to see without seeing. Not with such accuracy. Not without years of practice.
Her instincts told her to trust her impressions.
Her practical side decided she didn't have a whole lot of choice.
She reached out and felt air, then rock, then air again, rock again, air.
Something drew her to the center opening. She ducked inside.
''What the fuck?" Begay's voice was puzzled.
From where she stood she could see his flashlight beam, pointed at the ground.
There was only solid rock beneath her feet.
He had lost her trail. He began sweeping the walls with his light.
She took a lesson from Brother Snake and stood very still.
Begay and his light disappeared into the left-hand tunnel. Okay now what?
If she had the means, she could seal off that passageway, locking him away forever inside Pikyachvi Mesa. But, of course, she didn't have the means.
She tried to think, was distracted by a feeling of warmth high on her chest. Heat, coming from her medicine bag. She grasped it in one hand.
It might be her imagination. She might be picking up her own pulse through her fingertips. But it felt as if the medicine bag were beating like a heart.
She held her breath and tried to make out the meaning.
Something made her want to go deeper into this tunnel. A gentle tug at her mind, an idea. A message through the kopavi.
She followed it. Into the darkness. Deeper and deeper, beyond any turning back.
Now she was hopelessly lost.
She kept on going, into the heart of the mesa, where only magic could ever get her out.
She tripped, stumbled, and glanced down. A stump-like formation, a stalagmite.
She went on.
Wait a minute. There was only one way she could know that was a stalagmite. By seeing it.
She looked around. It was lighter here. Softer, the darkness less brittle.
She walked faster.
Now the light was turning gray. It must be another entrance. She had come out on the other side!
Something wrong about this.
Light does not come through cave entrances in the middle of the night. In the middle of moonless nights. Of course, it could be dawn. But somehow she knew it was something else.
She kept on going forward, toward the light...
The shock wave knocked her back against the wall and rolled away down the tunnel.
Her heart pounded.
What is going on here?
Slowly, she started forward again, closer to the source of the light, ready for another silent explosion.
She passed through a door-like opening...
...and caught her breath.
She was in a deep chamber, as wide and high as a cathedral. Stalactites dripped from the vaulted ceiling. Stalagmites formed rows of dragons' teeth around the room's perimeter. Stone draperies decorated the walls. Flowerlike formations of white and blue and pale green blossomed on the cave floor.
And in the center of the room, glowing as if phosphorescent, lay the source of the light.
A rough pile of sticks and cloth and indefinable things.
The Ya Ya medicine bundle.
She stared at it.
If it weren't for the light, it would be only an accumulation of litter, dusty and moth-eaten, something to be passed by and left for the street-cleaner.
She got on her knees to look closer.
The decaying cloth that covered it revealed, through holes and tears, yucca leaf baskets containing corn in many colors. Carved fetishes in the shapes of bears and deer and birds lay scattered among the kernels. Beads and bits of turquoise. Prayer sticks. Kachina dolls carved from cottonwood. Small bones and feathers and pottery bowls. A wooden mask, large enough to fit over a man's head. A kilt-like skirt of hide. Rattles and shell bracelets. A necklace of bear claws.
She shuddered and reached into her own medicine bag, bringing out a pinch of corn meal and dropping it onto the bundle.
The light grew stronger.
She got to her feet and walked a circle around the bundle and sealed it with corn.
Then she sat against the wall to wait.
Nothing happened.
Lowering her head on her arms, she pulled her concentration into the energy knot in her stomach.
It began to grow.
Lightness spread out and through her, filling her body and arms and legs. She felt strong and whole, and unafraid.
Power radiated from her.
Come on, Begay. We have things to settle.
She looked toward the ceiling and saw...
Movement.
Not objects in motion but pure movement. Movement seen out of the corner of the eye. Movement like ice melting, like rising steam, clouds forming and reforming, drifting fog, the turning of the tide.
Now the stalagmites that ringed the chamber seemed to melt, to broaden, to grow taller, to take on color. As she watched, they became...
Masks.
Huge wooden masks, larger than life and each one different.
Faces painted black and red and white and yellow and blue.
Faces with noses, with beaks, with dog-like snouts.
Faces crowned with feathers and juniper sprigs.
Faces surrounded with sun-like rays.
Faces with yarn hair and cornhusk hair and human hair.
The masks of the Spirits.
And suddenly the bundle was no pile of decaying litter at all, but color. Vivid, vibrant, living color. Corn yellow and turquoise blue. The orange of flames. Red brighter than the brightest rose and richer than blood. Spring green and autumn brown. White of snow and ermine. Colors so brilliant they seared her eyes.
