Relics and Runes Anthology

by Heather Marie Adkins

  I complied, holding my breath at the proximity of her brilliant arms. But no heat emanated from the sunlight-made-living. Her glow bathed me as she fastened a heavy necklace around my neck. First Woman smelled of campfire smoke and the spicy scent of my mother’s hominy.

  She pulled away, and I felt her departure deeply. “Did you know turquoise is influenced by its owner?”

  I fingered the cool stones against my bare collar bone. “How do you mean, shimá?”

  “When its owner is sick or sad, the stone grows pale. When the owner dies, it shall lose all color. But in the hand of a new owner, the stone will regain its true hue. Remember that.”

  The sun had begun to set behind the old woman, casting her form into shadow. Darkness fell soft upon the island, more comforting than frightening.

  “Remember, too, shich'é'é: the dark does not last forever. The sun will always rise in the east. An endless cycle.”

  I smiled, my fingers tracing the edge of every imperfect turquoise stone dancing on my skin. “Everything is a cycle, shimá. Like everything is immortal?”

  First Woman gave me a toothless grin cast of sunlight. “Yes, child. Everything.”

  27

  I wasn’t given entirely clear instruction on where to go from here, now that I’d held state by the fire with the mother and father of my people. But any good daughter of Haseya and Bidziil Nez knew her myths. First Man and First Woman escaped the first world via the infinitely tall pine tree on the center of the island.

  So that’s where I headed.

  Centuries could have passed in the time it took me to climb. New generations could have birthed, lived, died, been reborn, over and over, as I crawled ever upwards, branch by branch. Pine needles rained upon me, and limbs scratched my skin. I welcomed the pain, because it made me feel... well, not dead.

  Below me, First World became nothing more than a disappearing speck of colors. Then it was gone, and I was alone in the thin place between: one foot behind me and one ahead.

  Lightning began on the last few feet of my journey, and the wind blew fiercely. I clung to the tree with all my strength as I fought against the brewing storm to reach the top.

  A vicious gust bowed the tree and toppled me. I fell from the branches. Before I could scream, or even consider that I might plummet back to First World, I landed hard on my side in the dirt.

  Considering I was dead, the pain was real. I sat up with a groan and rubbed away the sting in my elbow. All limbs appeared to be in working order, if a little sore from the impact.

  I looked around as the wind whipped my hair. This world was as dark and lonesome as the last. The sky hung heavy with thick, black clouds. Lightning danced and sang, marrying sky to earth in a dazzling spectacle.

  I pushed against the wind and began to walk. In the myth of Ni’hodootli’izh – Second World—First Man and First Woman escaped via footprints painted on a prayer stick. I was smart enough to assume my journey now would be to find the prayer stick; I wasn’t dumb enough to assume it would be easy in this weather.

  I could see little of my surroundings until the lightning illuminated the sky, so I don’t know how long the wolf walked beside me before I noticed it.

  When the wolves went extinct, the Navajo wept. I’d only ever seen images of wolves, and those lovingly painted pictures and aged photographs couldn’t have prepared me for the majesty.

  She trotted beside me, her long legs moving with such grace, she appeared to float. Her head came nearly to my rib cage and was as big around as a basketball. The wind flattened and wove through her long, thick white fur.

  Finally, she looked at me with huge, yellow eyes. “You do not always have to walk alone.”

  My steps faltered. I blinked at her. “You talk.”

  “You don’t,” she said pointedly. “The lightning is dangerous. Keep moving.”

  “What do you mean I ‘don’t talk’?”

  “Being a lone wolf is a weakness, Maurelle Nez. Not a strength.”

  “I’m not a lone wolf.”

  She huffed, a wolfie sort of laughter, I guessed. “You are. You detach yourself from others. You refuse help and you work alone.”

  “I like it that way.”

  “That way leads to hubris and death.”

  I stopped walking again. “I’m not prideful.”

  “You are. Keep walking. What did I say about the lightning?”

  “There is a million-in-one chance for someone to get hit by lightning.”

  “The more lightning, the more your chances rise. Remember that. And keep walking.”

  My own personal Yoda in the shape of an extinct dog. And she was lecturing me for being myself.

  “I am not a dog. And you are not true to yourself.”

  “You can read my mind now?”

  Her pink tongue lolled from between her pointy teeth in a goofy grin. “I can talk. I can read your mind. I could fly, if I wanted to. But I won’t. I know my limits. As you know yours.”

  We fell into silence for a time. I’d stopped cringing at the sharp crack of constant lightning, and I’d come to welcome the wind as my companion. A second wolf appeared on my other side: big, brown, panting as he trotted along with us.

  “You are a wolf, Maurelle Nez. You are a creature of habit and pack mentality. As are all people, all fae, all beings with consciousness.” The white wolf moved closer as she spoke, until her fur brushed my fingertips.

  On my other side, the brown wolf moved closer so that he, too, brushed against me.

  For a time, we remained silent. If my climb up the pine tree had seemed to go on forever, we walked now into eternity.

  Each brilliant flash from the sky revealed a new wolf joining our trek. Four, then five, ten, twelve – they surrounded me, gently urging me forward as my steps faltered with weariness.

  I became used to their silent guiding: teeth gentle on my arms to prompt me left or right. Brief nudges on my legs, or the lap of a warm tongue on my fingers. After a while, I forgot my humanity, and began to see my own silhouette in the storm as an ebony wolf.

  Lightning cracked, and the electricity of the impact raised the tiny hairs on my body. Someone in the pack urged us to run, and we did, catapulting through the darkness as if we could outrun the sky.

  When the fear and chaos ebbed, the pack came to a halt. I let my fingers tangle in fur, and warm, furry bodies pressed against my legs. I felt safe with them, even as fire continued illuminating the sky.

  Ahead of me, the pack of wolves parted, and the white-furred alpha approached with something long clutched in her teeth. She dropped an ornate prayer stick on the ground before me. I could just make out footprints painted on the wood.

  “Remember to trust your pack,” the alpha said. “Open to those who wish to help you. You are stronger as a whole than you are as an individual.” The white wolf bowed her head and stepped away. “Good luck, Maurelle Nez.”

  I touched her soft, thick fur, then stepped on to the prayer stick for my ride to the next world.

  Nihaltsoh – Third World. Where the two rivers converge as male and female, equal halves of one whole. The crossing of the waters beneath a squadron of mountains.

  This world lacked the dark pregnant clouds, vicious wind, and lightning. But even with something closer to daylight, the sky still hung dreary, casting the landscape into dim relief.

  I surveyed the mountains standing guard at each of the four corners. A mesa in the middle, so similar to the old cave dwellings, beside a cone-shaped mountain. The unbelievable vastness of the scene made my breath catch in my throat. The mesa looked as if the greatest artist in the hereafter had dipped a brush into the universe to paint the story of the world on rock.

  I stood in the shallows of the river delta. The dichotomous currents of the male river and female river tugged at my legs: one river pulling me back, the other pushing me forward.

  When the rain began to fall, I recalled the tale of the Third World. First Man and First Woman were caught in
a heavy downpour that made the rivers rise. They had nowhere to run as the waters overtook them.

  “How did they escape?”

  I whirled on the voice, my fists coming up in reflex. A man stood on the riverbank behind me: tall, muscular, with the hide of a coyote draped over him. His face was hidden in the shadows beneath the coyote’s lifeless eyes. His rough leather pants hung past his knees over dirty bare feet. A white hint of smile appeared beneath the coyote’s head, and I dropped my hands.

  Rice?

  “How did First Man and First Woman escape the flood waters?” the man asked again. I couldn’t hear Rice in the sound of the man’s distorted voice, but something about him felt like my brother.

  I took a step forward. “Is it really you?”

  Coyote took a step back. “Answer the question, Maurelle.”

  I laughed at the annoyance in his voice. I was only “Maurelle” when I annoyed him.

  The river continued to tug at me. Push. Pull. The water was over my hips, now. “A female reed.”

  Coyote nodded. “Tell me the whole story.”

  “First Man planted a cedar tree, but it remained shorter than the water. Then he planted a pine tree, but it was also too short. He planted a male reed, but it did not grow high enough, either. Then he planted the female reed, which shot into the sky. They escaped by climbing the reed into the Fourth World. Our current world.”

  Coyote nodded. He pointed with two fingers behind me.

  I turned, difficult in the water that had now reached my navel.

  Senka.

  An eternity had passed since my death. Hundreds of years, gone in moments as I journeyed through the worlds of my ancestors. Senka’s face seemed foreign here, in this time and place. Moonshine skin and haunted eyes. The rain didn’t seem to touch her, though the river lapped at her waist, as real as it did me.

  She held a reed tightly in one hand. Wordless, she offered it to me.

  I reached to take it, but stopped. Senka’s face was so sad. So... lonely.

  I thought of one hundred years in the dark. No one to touch, to hug, to love, to share stories and laughs and songs. One hundred years of solitude and silence. It sounded like hell.

  Senka sacrificed her life for the Hollow. The story was legend; everyone knew it. But... did we? Did Senka have a choice? Or like my own mother pushing me to be someone I’m not, did Rasha force Senka into being a savior?

  The thought brought tears to my eyes. Something told me Senka wasn’t given the choice.

  But I had a choice.

  I took the reed and snapped it in half. I let the two pieces fall into the rising waters now lapping at my breasts. “I want you to be happy, princess.”

  Senka watched the broken reed float away on the currents.

  I trudged through the heavy waters, my dress weighed down but my heart surprisingly light. As Senka had floundered beneath the desert by herself, overpowered by Acura’s dark legacy, I had never stopped loving her.

  I wrapped my arms around her pale, cold shoulders and embraced her.

  “You and me,” I whispered in her ear.

  Senka returned my hug with a fierce, affectionate embrace of her own. Beneath my arms, her skin warmed. Her soft black hair blew against my face on the breeze.

  The water rose. But I felt nothing but peace. I’d traveled the worlds to be here with my princess.

  As the river lapped at our chins, currents dragging at us, I clung to her and closed my eyes. “I’ll stay with you, Senka. I’m not afraid of the dark.”

  We didn’t let go as the water closed over our heads.

  28

  I blinked into brilliant sunlight.

  I lay on a pad of furs, an arc of sunlight dancing across the floor and into my face. High above, a circle of sky was visible out the peak of the teepee.

  I sat up, a woven blanket falling away. I still wore my white dress, but the soft leather was dry and supple, as if it had never gotten wet.

  Senka appeared in the open doorway. She smiled. “You are awake. I had begun to believe you would sleep forever.”

  I almost didn’t recognize her. She looked softer here – her long dark hair wild and free, her skin tanned by the sun, the same bronze shade as mine. Instead of the Dark purple dress she’d been buried in, she wore a gorgeous leather dress decorated by beads. Her voice was no longer the raspy, halting sound I’d come to know; instead, she sounded musical, like the delicate notes of a flute. And her eyes were the most delicate shade of lavender I’d ever seen.

  “Where are we?” I asked sleepily.

  “My home. Come.” She held out a hand.

  Her palm was soft and warm in mine as we stepped out into a beautiful day. A small fire burned nearby, a pot of spiced hominy roasting. Senka’s teepee rested on a mesa, high above a tremendous view of mountains and desert and the distant green of a forest.

  “This is beautiful.”

  “This is where I am when I am sleeping. When I am buried,” Senka said softly. “It is not a terrible place to spend my life.”

  I settled before the fire where she indicated. “But you’re not buried. I’m alone in your tomb. I mean, my body is alone.”

  Senka nodded. “I am asleep. I came to find you.”

  She took a kettle from the ring over the fire and poured a steaming copper cup of something translucent and spicy. “The best tea you will ever taste,” she told me with a grin as she handed over the cup. “I’ve perfected the recipe.”

  The concoction smelled of cinnamon and clove. I took a tentative sip and closed my eyes at the burst of flavor. “Delicious,” I agreed. “The rein hasn’t hurt you?”

  “No. His intentions are quite clear, even in my half-state of understanding.” Senka knelt beside the pot of hominy, her long legs folding elegantly beneath her. Her wild black hair swung forward, a curtain around her body as she peeked into the pot and stirred. “He will use me for his own end, and then he will destroy me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am the only thing standing between him and the darkness.”

  I shivered. “He wants Acura’s darkness?”

  She nodded, tapping her spoon on the edge of the pot before she placed it on a ceramic dish. “Another thing he can use for his own end.”

  “I knew he was bad news.”

  Senka inclined her head in agreement. I reveled in the clarity of her preternatural lavender eyes. Acura’s darkness couldn’t touch her here.

  “You look beautiful,” I told her.

  “As do you.” She looked back into the hominy as she continued to speak. “The current world has taken the wildness from her people. Technology beget ignorance beget ambivalence. The world is so broken, I often wonder how irrevocable we have become. It makes me prefer this hidden utopia, no matter how lonely.”

  “Is this place heaven?”

  Senka tinkled with laughter. “Heaven doesn’t exist, Relle. It’s a manmade construct to help people come to terms with the thought of death. This is a place of in-between. Here, we are not quite of the living, yet we are not quite of the dead, either. Here, we are the perfection of humanity. Unforged clay, ready for the next world.”

  “Reincarnation, you mean?”

  Senka scooped out a heaping ladle of hominy. “Of course. Like the corn.”

  “An endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth,” I parroted.

  “Always.”

  We ate in companionable silence. Distant birdsong and the calming music of the forest around us lulled me. I ate slowly. I moved slowly. I felt no hurry to be anywhere, to do anything, to be anyone but this perfect in-between version of me.

  Senka’s hominy was even better than my mother’s, which I would never have admitted to Haseya Nez. The thought of Mama made my heart ache. My life had been nothing but a disappointment to her. Now, she’d never know what happened to me.

  “Your mother is proud of you,” Senka interrupted my thoughts.

  I almost dropped my bowl. “What?”

&n
bsp; “There are no secrets here. I know you’re thinking of your mother. She is proud of you. As chieftess, she wants to see her daughter take her place in the tribe. But as your mother, she’s proud of how strong and selfless you are in the path you chose.”

  “Selfless. Yeah.” I set the bowl down, having lost my appetite. “My entire career has been founded on a lie.”

  Senka followed suit, laying her bowl in the grass beside her. “How so?”

  “I always believed anyone shadow touched was the enemy. Until I met Warren.”

  “Yes. The mixed blood.”

  “You know?”

  “I know everything, Relle.” She chuckled. “Acura’s darkness is impenetrable. But it is not forever. Hundreds of years will pass, and the darkness will fade. What you’re seeing with Warren is an evolution. Nature’s way of correcting the imbalance. Those born of one untouched parent and one touched parent will be immune to the darkness. That is not to say leaving the safety of the Hollow would be a good idea,” she warned, “but the shadow touched will soon become nothing more than a page in the history of humanity.”

  “But the Hollow is no longer safe. Is it?”

  Senka reached over and grasped my hand. “It will be. Will you do something for me?”

  “Anything.”

  Senka pulled a small knife from the belt at her waist. She sliced a thin line into her right palm, and then looked expectedly at me.

  I didn’t hesitate. I offered her my right hand, palm up, and winced as the blade opened my skin.

  Brilliant red blood welled and spilled over the wound.

  “My blood is your blood, Maurelle.” She gently wrapped her bleeding palm around mine. “You carry Rasha in your veins.”

  “I do?”

  “Distantly. But it is there.” She let go of my hand and placed her bloody palm directly over my heart on my bare skin. When she pulled away, a perfect imprint of her hand remained behind in our blood. “Your kindness to me during a difficult and trying time will never be forgotten, Relle. Your presence during my rising saved the Hollow. You found me inside that empty form.”