Neophytes of the Stone

by C Lee Tocci

  Turning to the others that sat around the hearth, she announced: “Well, I’m glad about one thing.”

  “What’s that?” asked Nita.

  “I’m glad I’m not the Stone Voice. Who’d want that job?” she declared as she plopped herself into her purple mushroom.

  Her nose quickly buried back into her book, she did not notice the wary looks of the others.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Trickster’s Bluff

  The book closed with a satisfying whump. The smell of paper and ink washed her face with a delicious breeze. She opened the book again and slapped it back shut, the herby aroma a feeble consolation as she mourned the end of the story.

  And that was the last book in her den. She would need to sneak out to The Stash to get more.

  Lilibit smiled as she rolled on her back and dimmed the light from her stone, Ewa-Kwan. As she burrowed into her mushroom pouf, she stretched and yawned and plotted. She would be like Witanya. She would be strong and brave. She would sneak out at night and complete her mission so secretly that no one would even know what she’d done.

  She fell asleep chuckling.

  Four hours later, Lilibit crept silently from the hogan. Clinging to the shadows, she skirted the Crescent Courtyard and passed by the mysterious Tower of Quapan that soared silently above the Valley of Kiva. Even in the dark of the starlight, the Tower glowed dimly, eerie lights shimmering faintly behind its opaque shell. Everyone knew that the tower held the archives of Kiva and that Gil-Salla frequently visited there, but none of the neophytes had yet found the entrance. Lilibit had spent two Quaybo practices and a silversmithing class exploring the perimeter, with no success.

  Lilibit was careful not to brush the tower as she walked by; she knew the touch of her hand would cause the lights to pulse strongly and a quavering hum to sound from deep within it. She wasn’t just worried that someone might be awake to see or hear the tower’s response, she was also wary of the watching presence that she felt within the tower. She didn’t want to alert whoever, or whatever, was in there of her passing.

  Behind the tower, a wide swath of brush and rubble separated the hub of the valley from the red stone palisades of the Sienna Sentries. No path ran through this scrabble and Lilibit ignored the scratches on her feet and hands as she clamored over the rocks. Just as she reached the foot of the cliffs, a gypsy cloud covered the moon and she groped in the dark.

  She looked up and scowled, but it was going to take more than night mists to stop her tonight. She pulled out her stone, raised it above her head and, obligingly, it glowed bright blue. By the light of Ewa-Kwan, she quickly found what she was looking for. Hidden within a crevice between two hoodoos, a rope dangled innocently; its white sheen dulled by a layer of red dust rubbed into its threads. It blended so well into the surrounding stone that even in the light of day, it could have hung unseen by anyone not knowing exactly where to look for it. Lilibit gave the rope a few sound tugs and began to scale the cliffs.

  Witanya would have flown like a bird, she thought. Lilibit was crawling like a spider. She remembered how Keotak-se climbed the face of the Sienna Sentries like a spider the night they arrived at Kiva. She quickly squelched that memory. She wanted to be brave and thinking about that scary night was not going to help.

  The clouds had cleared the moon by the time that Lilibit reached the crest of palisades. Scrambling to her feet, she jogged the last quarter of a mile atop the ridge until she reached a cluster of stones heaped in a pile. Squirming between them, she entered the small pocket she called Jeff’s Bluff.

  She passed the hodgepodge of high-tech paraphernalia Jeff had smuggled up to the mesatop. A satellite dish, he had explained to her, a solar powered generator, and a wireless transmission station. For Dave, he said. She had listened politely, but honestly, it was more boring than Quaybo. What was far more important lay in a burlap bag under a waterproof tarp wedged between two large stones. She made a beeline for The Stash.

  As soon as she started to pull on the bag, she knew something was wrong. Sitting back on her heels, she patted down the canvas.

  Empty.

  Sprawled on her belly, she crawled into the gap. Her fingers groped into the corners but found nothing but grit.

  It couldn’t be! There had been dozens of books there! Could she have possibly read them all? She took a quick mental inventory, ticking them off on her fingers. Yes, it was possible. She reached back into the crevice but nothing had changed. No small paperback wedged into a crack. She crawled out backwards and sat with a flop, stunned.

  What would she do now? Without a book to read, she just might actually, Stone forbid, be reduced to attending her classes. She rose to her feet and climbed to the top of the rise. Looking down onto the plains that lay outside the Sienna Sentries, she saw the lights from the distant town of Alamos Tierra glittering faintly in the southeast.

  What would Witanya do?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Trouble

  Todd wasn’t worried when he woke to find Lilibit missing. Annoyed, but not worried.

  Keotak-se raised one eyebrow but made no comment when the clan of the Raven entered the Quaybo court short one clansman. Todd knew better than to make excuses. That he’d missed breakfast searching for Lilibit didn’t make her absence any more defensible; it just made him a more pathetic excuse for a chieftain.

  By lunchtime, his annoyance had morphed into concern. Lilibit had missed Tracking class and she liked Tracking. Jojoba, their instructor, always took them to a different part of the valley every day, showing them not only how to read the marks of man and animal in the world around them, but also to recognize the idioms of nature in the rocks and the plants and the air. It was like geology, animal sciences, meteorology and botany all taught with daily field trips.

  Jojoba was the youngest of their instructors. With his shaggy brown hair pulled into a loose ponytail and big ears that stuck out like butterfly wings, he didn’t seem that much older than some of the neophytes. Tall and gangly with a long, galloping stride, he looked awkward when standing still, but had a limber grace as he loped across the valley, stooping to examine this or stopping to explain that. Lilibit would skip alongside him and bombard him with questions that seemed as random as they were endless, but he was never impatient and rarely at a loss for an answer.

  Lilibit loved Tracking. Something was seriously wrong if Lilibit missed Tracking class.

  When Todd walked into the hogan, he found Marla and Donny standing by the cold ashes of the hearth. No flame danced on it, their hogan was warm from the afternoon sun, but the mood was chilly.

  “No luck?” Marla asked.

  Todd shook his head, but before he could answer, Nita and Devon rushed in like a small rockslide.

  “She’s not atop the falls,” wheezed Nita, breathless from running.

  “And she’s not on her thinking rock either,” added Devon, panting.

  “We’re going to have to tell Gil-Salla and Keotak-se.” Marla clutched the stone about her neck anxiously.

  “I wanted to wait until Jeff gets back.” Todd was not looking forward to explaining this. “He said he knew where she might be.”

  Todd walked to the door, the others followed. His feet moved slowly towards the entrance of Gil-Salla’s hall, but his eyes darted quickly, checking the paths leading down to the Crescent Courtyard and the hills and cliffs that rose behind them, but he saw no sign of either Lilibit or Jeff.

  “Psst!”

  Todd paused just as he was about to rap his staff against the arch of Gil-Salla’s entry. He looked around, trying to find the sound.

  “Todd!” an urgent, but disembodied, voice hissed at him. “Over here!”

  A sliver of red hair and a frantically jerking hand peeked around from the back of the Hall of the Flame. Grateful for the reprieve, Todd walked quickly over to it.

  Jeff looked guilty. Not a good sign.

  “I think I know where she might be,” he said, looking at the ground.
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  Chapter Nineteen

  Breach

  “What is all this?” Todd was so stunned that he forgot to move out of the gap between the two stones that hid the entrance to Jeff’s Bluff. Marla pushed him out of the way as she scrambled into the hollow.

  “Jeff!” Marla’s voice was hushed, but not with admiration. “What have you been up to?”

  “It’s a self-contained internet satellite system,” Jeff said, beaming with pride. He walked over to a collection of black vinyl sheets, framed and interwoven with aluminum. “During the day, these solar-powered panels store power in batteries over there---”

  “Jeff!” The edge of Todd’s voice cut through the gloating. “Where’s Lilibit?”

  Jeff shot Todd a dark look before stomping over to a canvas bag that lay deflated and discarded on the ground.

  “It’s empty,” he said unnecessarily.

  “I can see that!” Todd bit back his impatience. “But where’s Lilibit?”

  “It was full of books,” Jeff explained.

  Todd’s glare demanded more.

  With a sigh, Jeff continued. “When I snuck out to get this equipment, I bought Lilibit a bunch of books. When I came up here to check stuff out, I saw that the bag had been pulled out and that it was empty.”

  “Where did all this stuff come from?” asked Marla.

  “I bought it.” Jeff was defiant.

  “With what?” Marla crossed her arms and burned her eyes into Jeff’s.

  “Never mind that!” snapped Todd. “How did you get this stuff up here? The only way in or out of the valley is through Red Rabbit Ridge. The pass is watched constantly, there’s no way you could have snuck all this past them.”

  “Well, maybe that’s not the only way in or out of the valley.” Jeff strutted over to where a line of boulders created a natural battlement. Squirming between the stones, he stood on a lip that looked out over the valley.

  Close behind, Todd followed his eyes down to where a dusty rope dropped into the gap between two hoodoo columns, disappearing into the shadows of the rubble, hundreds of feet below.

  “Unbelievable,” Todd whispered. “For more than twenty centuries, the Sienna Sentries have been impregnable. You’ve been here less than three months and you’ve completely undermined their defenses.”

  Jeff nodded slowly as he looked down.

  “I know,” he said somberly. “It’s a gift.”

  It was quiet for a moment as Todd struggled with his temper. His eyes narrowed and his fingers clenched into fists. He could feel the heat rising from his neck, but whatever reckoning might have been due to Jeff, it got derailed by a small voice from above.

  “Jeff?” They both looked up to where Devon perched precariously atop of one of the boulders, his belly on the stone, his chin on his arms. “Don’t you think you should pull up that rope when you’re not using it?”

  The smirk left Jeff’s face as his eyes dropped to the cliff.

  “I did,” he answered.

  Chapter Twenty

  Alamos Tierra

  The cliffs of Kiva lay behind them. Devon and Nita waited atop Jeff’s Bluff with orders to lower the rope when they returned. If they didn’t return by nightfall, they were to go to Gil-Salla and tell her where they were.

  The town of Alamos Tierra lay before them. The late autumn sun hung low and clear, casting sharp shadows between the gentle buildings. At the outskirts, they slid off the horses and walked cautiously down the lazy streets.

  Alamos Tierra was a quiet little village. A few shops looked new, but most had seen few changes in the past century. Todd nudged Jeff’s shoulder and with a bob of his head, directed him to lead the way. Jeff walked down the main street; Todd, Marla and Donny followed.

  They heard a distant bell jingle in the rear of the bookstore as they pushed open the front door. Between the stacks, a little woman with snow white hair glanced up from the book that she was holding. She gave them a half of a smile before looking back down to her novel. A lanky man with thinning brown hair and coke-bottle glasses didn’t look at them at all.

  A beak-nosed woman hustled out from the back. Her streaked blonde hair was closely cropped to her head and her orange knit shirt clung low and tight over her chest. The smile on her face faded as she saw who entered the store.

  “Do you need help finding anything?” She didn’t sound like being helpful was high on her priority list.

  “We’re looking for a girl, about this high,” Todd held his hand about four feet off the floor, “black hair, kind of almond shaped eyes…”

  “Oh, her.” The bookstore lady sounded even less friendly. “She was waiting outside when I opened up this morning. Spent half the morning sitting on the floor between the stacks and then, when I told her that this wasn’t the library, she tried to buy a book with a rock! As if I could be fooled by a little gold paint! Hmmph!”

  The relief that ran through Todd was quickly banished by a feeling of unease. He rubbed the tingle from his scalp.

  “How long ago was that? And did you see where she went?”

  “I shooed her out before lunchtime, and no, I didn’t bother to see which way she went.” With that, she turned and disappeared back into the stacks.

  Out on the sidewalk, Todd looked up and down the streets. Dusk came early with winter so close. It would be dark in two hours and it would take them an hour on horseback to get back to Kiva. Todd did not want to think about having to face Gil-Salla and Keotak-se if they couldn’t find Lilibit in the next sixty minutes.

  “We’ll split up and meet back here in an hour. Donny, you stick with Jeff and ask any dogs or other animals that you cross if they’ve seen Lilibit.”

  Donny nodded proudly. On their journey to Kiva, Lilibit had given him Doo-Shi, his stone of power, and it gave him the ability to speak to animals. The simpleness of his mind might seem like a handicap to some people, but in the animal kingdom, Donny was a genius.

  Todd’s staff thudded on the dirt sidewalks that ran alongside the curbless streets. Alamos Tierra was not that large and he had quickly poked his head into every shop and searched every alley that ran between and behind them. The next street held the town offices. He stood staring in front of the sheriff’s office; he was no more eager to ask them about Lilibit than he was to confess to Keotak-se. Nonetheless, he took a deep breath and started up to the door, but stopped when he noticed a movement off to one side of the building.

  A dark haired woman in a blue print dress descended a simple painted wood staircase that clung to the side of the building. Todd’s eyes followed the stairs up and saw a doorway on the second level nestled in the shade of a covered balcony. A grin on his face, he read the sign lettered neatly on the door, “Alamos Tierra Town Library”.

  He started for the stairs but halfway up, the woman in blue put out her hand to stop him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but the library is closed.”

  “NO! I mean…” Todd forced himself to calm down when the woman raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, but was there a girl with black hair about this high in there today?”

  “Why yes,” the woman answered slowly. “There was a little girl in there all afternoon, she was still there when I announced we were closing, but she left before I did my final sweep.”

  A faint glimmer of blue caught the corner of Todd’s eye. It flickered through a crack around a shade drawn down over one of the windows.

  “Would you mind if I took just a quick look? We’ve been looking for her all afternoon and this is the last place anyone’s seen her.” Todd tried to sound casual, but his voice cracked anxiously. After a long glance back to the locked door, she nodded and turned back up the stairs.

  The key had barely turned in the lock when Todd squirmed through the half opened door and raced towards the room with the blue flicker. He quickly found the switch by the door and flipped it, flooding the room with fluorescent light and drowning the bright blue glimmer that came from beneath a table in the far the corner. T
he woman probably thought that he was rude, but it was more important that she didn’t see Ewa-Kwan’s glow. He strode over to the table, reached down and grabbed a small bare dirty foot that waved rhythmically back and forth.

  “Hey!” Lilibit squawked as she was dragged out, one hand clutching her stone, the other hanging on to a large picture book.

  “You are in such trouble!”

  “Todd!” Lilibit hugged the book to her chest and whispered reverently. “It’s a library!”

  “Yes, I know it’s a library. But you’re not supposed to be here!”

  “But look at all the books!”

  Todd grabbed Lilibit’s arm and pulled her to her feet. “You know you’re not supposed to leave the---” he bit back the rest of his sentence, suddenly remembering the librarian. He turned to find her standing with her arms folded across her chest, a frown between her eyes as she looked at Lilibit.

  “Didn’t you hear me announce that the library was closing?” The woman sounded very annoyed.

  “Uh-huh!” Lilibit nodded with a smile. “That’s okay! I don’t mind staying here by myself.”

  A scowl narrowed the librarian’s eyes. “If you wanted to keep reading, why didn’t you just get a library card and check out the books?”

  Lilibit’s face brightened, but Todd cut her off before she could answer.

  “We can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “We don’t, um, get into town often enough to return them.”

  “Todd!” Lilibit glared at him as she clutched the books to her chest. With her lower lip jutting and her legs squared and braced, she looked like a stubborn sparrow determined not to leave without her worms. Todd sighed. This was not going to be easy.

  “So where do you two live?” There was an intensity to the librarian’s question that made Todd uncomfortable.

  “North of Alamos Tierra.” He answered quickly before Lilibit could open her mouth. “Way north.”