by Jeff Posey
Nuva scooped her into her lap. She squeezed Wooti and rocked her. “Her spirit is loose now,” Nuva said. “It will go to all of us in the Sisterhood. Haki will be with us forever.”
Wooti buried her face in Nuva’s shoulder, and Tuwa gave her a piercing look. “There are things you must tell me.”
“We haven’t much time.”
“Then you must talk quickly.”
“Chumana is fine, if that’s what you mean. She’s performing the most important duty of her life this morning. Pretty soon, I think. Maybe now.”
Tuwa almost interrupted because he wanted her to confirm only one thing about his birth story, the identify of his father, but his mind leaped to what she said about Chumana.
“What’s she doing? Is she safe? Take me to her!”
“Just a moment, my long-lost son.” Nuva put her hand on Tuwa’s lips. She ran her cool fingers over his face as she had done when he felt too warm as a child. “Chumana is doing what she must. She’s the only one who can perform the task. If you go to her now, we will all be in extreme danger, especially her. We must trust the gods of the Sisterhood. She’ll be fine. Or we will all fail.”
Tuwa wanted to scream. He wanted to see Chumana, help her, now that he had gotten so close. What could he do? What crazy plan had they dreamed up? He looked around as if for a quick way out. He even stood.
“Where are you going?” Nuva asked.
He clenched his fists. “I don’t know.”
“Sit a moment longer,” Nuva said, her white halo of hair floating around her face. “There is nothing you can do for her, Tuwa. She is strong. You will see her soon.”
Tuwa hung his head. Go to Chumana? Or ask what he wanted to know from Nuva? He felt ripped cleanly in two. “Pók,” he finally said. “Is he my father?”
Nuva sighed and arranged herself into a more comfortable sitting position on the floor, with Wooti in her lap—who, Tuwa noticed, had turned and half-opened her eyes. She listened. Of course she did. Tuwa would do the same in her situation. He decided he didn’t care. “The first thing you must know is that you have the spirit of your mother and not of your father. You were stillborn.” Nuva studied Tuwa’s face. “You had no spirit of your own inside you. You lay like a dead thing until the moment your mother’s spirit left her body. Then you made a popping sound and the spirit of your mother filled you with life. There is no shred or tendril of the spirit of your father in you. Not at all.”
Tuwa swallowed and wished she would stop. He suddenly didn’t want to hear or know or even think about his father.
“What was my mother like?” he asked, redirecting Nuva, and himself, from his father. He paced the tiny room like a trapped animal.
Nuva pulled a shawl from atop a sleeping mat and wrapped it around her shoulders and half-smiled. Wooti had to scramble to stay in her lap, like a puppy about to be dumped. “Imagine a beautiful woman with the bearing of your Grandfather,” Nuva said. “She stood like him. Held her head like him. When she listened, she half-closed her eyelids like him. I see the same in you.”
“What made her spirit leave?” Tuwa knew he entered dangerous territory here. He knew something unspeakable had happened to her.
“A man, your father, killed her…in a very bad way,” Nuva said.
Tuwa gripped his hands into fists until they shot pain and his stomach muscles tightened. Plunge in, he thought. Like a jump into water through an ice hole. “How?”
Nuva sighed again and looked down to Wooti, who looked up, her eyes wide. She gently placed her fingers in both the girl’s ears and spoke quickly. “He pulled her by her hair off the birthing mat and shoved her face into a bed of coals in the hearth fire. He put his foot on the back of her head until she stopped moving.”
His face burned and his lungs seared in sympathetic agony. His mother. His beautiful mother. Tuwa wanted to punch the life out of the man who did that to her. To make Pók suffer as much as possible. “You saw this?”
Nuva nodded. “I saw. Barely. Before he touched your mother, the man kicked me in my stomach, then my face. Broke my nose. I saw through tears, my breath paralyzed, my nose flowing blood.”
“Why did she marry such a man?”
She released Wooti’s ears and ran her hand over the girl’s hair. “Oh, he was quite handsome and dashing at the time. And charming. The youngest patrol captain in anyone’s memory. He is very good at talking to people and making them like him. She thought he offered protection, a safe future, not just for her and her children, but for Grandfather, too.”
“Did Grandfather agree with her?”
Nuva looked away to something distant, then back. “No.” She took deep breaths. “Grandfather thought him…” she breathed “…unworthy. And shunned him.”
“Did that make my mother angry?”
“No. I rarely saw your mother angry. She thought your Grandfather would come around.”
“But he never did.”
“No, he never did.”
Nuva turned and straightened her legs. Wooti gave up and sat to the side and half-behind Nuva.
“What did ‘this man’ do after he killed my mother, his wife?” He felt silly referring to Pók as “this man,” but that’s how he thought Nuva wanted it.
“Just as the spirit rattled out of your mother, it rattled into you. You made a popping sound, coughed and sputtered and cried out. He looked around as if afraid and picked you up in one hand. That’s how tiny you were. You fit in his right hand.”
Tuwa imagined the scene. A dark Pók with no face holding him as a powerless newborn.
“Then he muttered a few words,” Nuva said. “And climbed up the ladder left-handed.”
Tuwa closed his eyes. “What words did he mutter?”
Nuva sighed and whispered. “You are less than nothing.”
Tuwa seethed, but he felt it as a grim smile. He would be far more than nothing to this miserable man. “Then what happened?”
“I managed to stand up and climb the ladder. I couldn’t bear what he might do to you. I saw him throw something over the cliff to the trash pile below. You. Then he went down the steep path you liked to use to the river.”
So Tootsa truly had overheard. “You told all this to Chumana.”
Nuva shifted her eyes. “Well, yes. Once. Only once. When I felt weak. When I thought you were gone forever.”
“Tootsa overheard you.”
Nuva looked at Wooti, who had mentioned a boy by that name. “Tootsa?” she asked
“A boy I know. He sneaks places. He overheard you and told me.”
“Well, I don’t see how.” Nuva laid her arms across her ample chest. “I’ve never seen a boy creeping around here.”
“It doesn’t matter. You found me in the trash pile. Then what?”
“Well. You were lucky, that’s what. Landed in a pile of old corn husks. You didn’t have but a few scratches.”
“Did Grandfather try to catch the man?”
“He vowed to either kill him or be killed by him if they ever met again.”
“But he didn’t go after him?”
“No. That’s not the kind of man your Grandfather was. He devoted himself to watching the sky and making his string record. And to raising you.”
“Did the man ever come back?”
“Once. Choovio’s father wanted to shoot him with an arrow, but Grandfather stopped him.”
“Why?”
“Your Grandfather said being quiet and patient was more powerful than killing.”
“Did the man say anything?”
“He accused your Grandfather of being a child stealer and…,” Nuva mumbled her next words.
“What?” Tuwa asked.
“A witch lover.”
Tuwa smiled. An albino witch lover. He knew people called Nuva that.
“I wish Choovio’s father had killed him,” he said.
“I’ve thought the same,” whispered Nuva.
“Then what?”
“He became Chief War
rior when The Builder gained power here in Center Place, and he welcomed those bands of crazy Másaw Warriors from the south. And then the most despicable things in the history of our people began happening.”
Tuwa scanned the dark horizon of his mind, searching for revenge. Or justice. At the moment, they seemed the same. “Entire villages, killed and eaten,” he said.
“Yes,” said Nuva.
“And then when the Day Star appeared, he made people build a high altar of earth at the palace.”
“Yes.”
“And he killed Grandfather there.”
Tears streamed down Nuva’s face. But Tuwa kept his face like cold stone. Wooti hid behind Nuva again.
“And you and Chumana were almost killed the same way. And many, many others. Choovio’s parents. Kopavi’s entire family. The parents and families of the Pochtécans. Countless children. More than…more than anyone should have to bear.”
Nuva sniffed and nodded, holding a piece of cloth to her face.
“Tell me, my True Mother.”
She looked down. “You already know, my son. Yes, your father is Pók.”
So now there was no hiding from what he had suspected in the blackest recesses of his mind but would never let himself truly accept or believe. The man who murdered Grandfather had also murdered his mother and the families and friends of those he held most dear. His father was his boyhood Nukpana, most evil one, a man he hated beyond redemption.
“But there’s good news for you, too,” Nuva said.
Tuwa looked at her with cold steady eyes. The look, he hoped, of a snake. He felt at the moment that he had no pulse.
“I know where Grandfather’s string record is hidden.”
Tuwa’s mind cracked open. He resented losing his beautiful ice-cold anger, but he couldn’t ignore the string record. “Grandmother Haki said they had all been burned!” Wooti peeked around Nuva at the mention of Haki.
“And so they did. Except for Grandfather’s. Do you remember when you and Choovio and your boyhood gang wanted to light a signal fire on Mount Pahu?” Nuva asked.
Tuwa did. Twelve of them set out. The two youngest grew afraid and ran back home. Six decided to go to the hot springs that flowed from the banks of the river at the feet of Mount Pahu, where Grandfather soaked himself after every full moon, except in winter. That left four of them to climb high above tree line on the side facing the Twin Giants, which loomed through the misty distance like two dark, gnarled fingers pointing toward the sky. They watched until the Twins were illuminated by the rising full moon, and then lit a bonfire of sticks they’d gathered and prepared for days. Almost immediately they saw an answering bonfire near Grandfather’s circle of stones and they’d danced around their own fire like ancient human gods. They felt invincible.
“I do remember,” he said.
“What was the name of that boy who went with you? The quiet one with high eyebrows that made him look surprised all the time.”
“Sweena,” said Tuwa. “I don’t remember his real name, but that’s what everybody called him because of the way he looked.” Some of the other boys picked on him, but Tuwa had liked him. He never complained, always did more than his share of work, and laughed a lot, though he spoke less than Choovio.
“Sweena stayed behind when we left in a hurry for Center Place after the Day Star appeared,” said Nuva. She spoke quickly, as if time ran out. “Grandfather asked him to hide a few things for him. Under the stone firebox you said you built on Pahu.”
“Did he do it?” asked Tuwa.
“He says so.”
Tuwa grasped Nuva by the shoulders and looked into her face. “The string record!”
She nodded. Then smiled. Tuwa hugged her. Wooti scurried back to the sleeping mat in the corner.
“I hope it was well-sealed,” Tuwa said.
Nuva nodded. “I did it myself. In a little jar, smaller than the one we used to keep it in at the house, with piñon sap around the lid, wrapped in cotton cloth, inside another larger jar with a lid also sealed with sap. It was heavy.”
“Is it still there?”
“I believe so. You will have to find it.”
“What happened to Sweena?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head.
“This is the year the full moon rises between the Twins,” said Tuwa. He remembered. He kept count. Grandfather made him memorize it. “This fall. When the day and night are equal.”
“I’d forgotten. That is the most powerful time of all.”
Tuwa grinned without being able to stop, his anger dissipating. Grandfather’s string record! He imagined himself standing in Grandfather’s circle of stones where he tracked the sky, particularly what passed through the narrow opening between the tall columns of the Twin Giants. That, he realized, is what he wanted to do after this mission of revenge and justice. Carry on the work of Grandfather. Add years of observations to the string record. Live in peace in the Village of the Twins as the next skywatcher, with Choovio as village chief, and after he killed Pók, marry Chumana….
She entered his thoughts like a jolt of lightning.
“Take me to Chumana,” Tuwa said, standing and pulling Nuva to her feet. “Take me now.”
“I can’t!” she said. “Pók and The Builder and maybe even Tókotsi are about to start a council. She’s never done what she has to do today.”
“I must see her.” Tuwa pulled her out the door and almost dragged her down the hallway.
“Wait,” she said. “Stop pulling me. I’ll show you. But you have no idea how dangerous this is or what it may cost if we’re caught.” In a stern voice, she told Wooti to stay put, then led him to a doorway not far from the kitchen. Tuwa could see the light of dancing flames from the cook fire.
Nuva peeked inside. “She’s still alone, but we must hurry.” She stepped through the doorway holding Tuwa by the hand behind her. Chumana sat in her costume of bluestone, her mask hanging down as if she were completely dejected. Nuva coughed, and the mask moved to look up.
Tuwa rushed around Nuva and stood before the bluestone mask. The woman pulled it off and Tuwa saw her face. The first time in years. He saw her face, her wet eyes, her beautiful skin, her teeth through parted lips. Everything else washed out of his mind. Nothing else mattered anymore. All he cared about was her face.
“Chumana,” he said.
To the Altar
Chumana sat beside The Builder’s pedestal of stacked mats. No one else had yet arrived. Her heart raced and she gripped the strange hand-arrow with sweaty hands. She couldn’t believe what she must do. What Nuva said she must do. She thought of Tuwa, come back as if by magic. She wanted to see him so badly she couldn’t concentrate. A shiver ran through her. Tuwa. Is here. Somewhere close, maybe. She could find him. They could hide, run away, never come back. But no. She had to stay here and help him. Help him by killing a man. Or men. Could she do that? She felt a wave of tears, but took deep breaths and sent them back down. All she wanted was to see Tuwa again. And the sun. She so missed sunlight. She would do what she had to do. What she could. What she must.
A large man’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. He stood and peered inside. The Fat Man? What would the Fat Man be doing at the palace? She thought he would enter, but a guard pushed him away. She felt relieved he didn’t intrude.
She sat a long time, even stood and paced, clenching the stubby weapon, jumping any time a sound made her think someone approached. She wondered if anyone would bother to come, whether she should wait here or go back to Nuva. Something must be happening to keep Pók and The Builder away. They were late. Very late.
She sat back again and began to feel so dejected she nearly sobbed. She rallied again and paced for what seemed a very long time, asking herself over and over if she could really kill a man. Even if it’s Pók?
A cough got her attention and she looked up to see Nuva making a strange gesture. Chumana didn’t understand. Then a young man rushed around her and came straight at Chuma
na. She gripped her short arrow, her heart racing. And then she knew. Not so much from his face, which looked very different from the last time she’d seen him, but from the way he moved, the way he stared at her with an open mouth.
She removed her mask as he got to her.
“Tuwa,” her mouth said, though no sound escaped.
“Chumana,” he said. He touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers but came no closer. Chumana wanted him to hug her, to bury her face in his chest, to let him take her away. But Nuva coughed again, and Chumana realized with a flush how much danger they were in.
“Go,” she said to him. “You must go, now.”
“No,” said Tuwa. “Come with me. Let’s go.”
“No,” said Chumana. “Pók will be here at any moment. The Builder, too. There are guardsmen all over the place. You must hide. And leave as soon as possible.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” said Tuwa.
“Yes, you must. You have no choice.”
Nuva pulled Tuwa’s arm. “She’s right. We must go. Now.”
“But,” Tuwa pulled back. “I don’t understand. Why?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” said Nuva. “Just come with me. Now.”
It pulled Chumana’s heart from her chest to see him leave. He watched her, didn’t break eye contact, until he was gone. Chumana took a deep breath, looked around to see if anyone watched, and pulled her mask back in place. No one had seen. Or heard. At least as far as she could tell. She sat in a state of shock. Now she had to go through with it. She had to kill Pók. Or one of them. To give Tuwa a better chance to do whatever he planned to do.
She worked the short arrow in her hands and thought about using it. A rushing sound filled the room, so loud she thought her ears would pop, and she kept imagining someone bursting into the room to attack her, but she sat alone and waited until the noisy beating of her heart seemed to overpower her. Finally, a shadow appeared in the doorway. Pók.
He entered the room. Her heart raced. Only one lamp burned and she couldn’t see his expression. She got the hand-arrow ready in her lap. Nuva said to attack hard before he expected it. Go for the side of the throat. She could do that. She would do that. She tensed forward.
