by Vella Munn
• • •
Angelico had prided himself on being in decent physical shape for a man his age, thanks to his rugged lifestyle, but by the time he and the other Spaniards had reached the top of the mesa, breathing had become such torture that he couldn’t speak. He was soaked in sweat and had lost both sandals, and if there’d been any other way, he wouldn’t have come up here. But he’d had no choice because a full half dozen of the heathen Navajo had ridden their horses into his church and forced him back until he’d stood under the cross he’d sacrificed and sweated to bring here. They’d thrown ropes around the cross and pulled it down. Destroyed what was sacred.
Unable to bear the memory of the splintered wood, still shocked and horrified by the sacrilege, he forced himself to take in his surroundings. He hadn’t been up here in weeks, and even when he had, his visits had been infrequent and far from relaxing. As a consequence, he had only a rudimentary understanding of the placement of the various structures, though he had no trouble recognizing the kivas.
“What are we going to do?” he asked Lopez with what breath he could summon, each word a heartbeat behind Gregorio’s as the landowner asked the same question.
Instead of answering, Lopez turned in a slow, hesitant circle. He still had hold of Morning Butterfly, but she no longer fought him. Instead, except for keeping a wary eye on Madariaga and the frightened soldier’s young captive, she seemed a disinterested observer.
Angelico had been wrong to think the majority of the Hopi had been below because he now saw just how many women and children were watching them from a distance. At least he didn’t see any men, a thought that should have relieved him, but didn’t.
“This is insane!” Standing toe to toe with Lopez, Gregorio shook his fist at his son-in-law. “A proven fighter would have known not to let himself be trapped this way. How are we ever going to get back down?”
Fray Angelico had been all too eager to join the others in taking refuge on Oraibi, not that he felt compelled to tell the man that. At the moment, all that mattered was that he was alive—alive to ask both himself and his God how the Navajo could have desecrated his church.
“You know these savages, at least I should hope you do,” Gregorio said when Lopez didn’t respond to his question. “Is it likely the two tribes will join forces against us?”
That was a question Angelico wouldn’t even have had to ask a short while ago. Ignoring the men, he limped over to Morning Butterfly.
“By all that is holy—” he began. Then he caught the look in her eyes and a chill spread through him. “That does not matter to you, does it?” He couldn’t raise his voice above a whisper. “Everything I have tried to tell you—”
“They are your words, Padre, not mine.”
His legs threatened to collapse, and for a moment he couldn’t swallow around the knot in his throat.
“Your god is not mine, Padre.” She sounded like a mother comforting a heartbroken child. “And I do not want him to be part of what you and I say to each other.”
Lopez breathed in loud, noisy snorts, his mouth open in an effort to draw enough air into his lungs. Gregorio stared at him as if he was some loathsome insect he’d uncovered; the hostility between the two was unnerving.
“We will prove—we will prove our forces are superior,” Lopez gasped. Blinking as if he just now realized where he was, he briefly studied his surroundings.
“The Hopi have always repelled their enemies from up here,” he said, his voice again rich with authority. “That is what we will do—when our enemy attempts to overwhelm us, we will be ready for them.” He pointed at the top of the ladder. “The moment they show their filthy heads, we will shoot.”
“With what?” Gregorio insisted. “In case you have forgotten,” he punctuated each word, “most of the ammunition is below. By all that is holy, Lopez, this is the most ill-conceived—”
“Ill-conceived?” Lopez interrupted. “If you thought that, what are you doing here? When we run out of powder and balls, we will use the savages’ weapons—rocks.”
The thought of the Crown’s soldiers being reduced to throwing rocks was ludicrous, yet Lopez was right—they had no other options.
Rage no longer transformed Gregorio’s features but neither did he look convinced of his son-in-law’s plan. Turning toward the soldiers, he asked if they agreed with their captain.
“Our lives are in God’s hands,” Madariaga said while the others stared at him. “There are so many places here the savages can hide. And the way they look at us . . . they are waiting for us to turn our backs on them. Padre, I beg you, pray for our souls.”
The mesa wasn’t flat but sloped away and had several minor depressions in it. The uneven terrain, along with the randomly spaced houses, made it impossible for anyone to see everything. A number of Hopi were bold enough to now be standing in full view, and there might be God knows how many others waiting their opportunity to attack from the shadows. Lopez might have a plan for repelling the enemy below, but what about those who already surrounded them?
Perhaps Gregorio had come to the same conclusion, because he stepped in front of his son-in-law and addressed the soldiers.
“You know who I am.” His voice, although not overly loud, rang with authority. “And that I am a wealthy man. Before God and man”—he inclined his head toward Angelico—“I vow I will most handsomely reward whoever comes up with and implements a plan which gets us safely out of our predicament.”
“The kivas.” Lopez spoke so softly that for a moment what he’d said didn’t register with Angelico. “We will seize control of them.”
“What are you talking about?” Gregorio demanded. “What does—”
“I have already demonstrated to the Hopi what we are capable of,” Lopez interrupted. “With her help”—he indicated Morning Butterfly—“they will be made to understand that either peace will be restored and the Navajo made to leave or we will destroy them all—each and every one of their idols.”
Morning Butterfly whimpered, low in her throat, but said nothing. With his head clamoring and his nerve endings screaming, Angelico struggled to assess the wisdom of what Lopez had just proposed.
“Father, I beg of you.” Madariaga pulled his captive even closer. “Pray for us. I do not want to end up like Pablo.”
Instead of acknowledging the soldier’s request, Angelico turned his attention to the nearest kiva. A solitary old man stood in front of it. Holding a small, finely decorated basket in his hands, he appeared harmless, and yet—
• • •
The mesa known as Oraibi was far from impenetrable. Over the generations its residents had chosen a primary route from their gardens to its top, but there were other, less well-trod ones, and Cougar had chosen one on the opposite side of the mesa. Both his fellow Navajo and a large number of Hopi had wanted to accompany him, but he’d pointed out that they’d risk exposure by going up en masse. If and when he wanted them to join him, he would scream like a cougar and trust the wind to carry his message.
The various buildings were all made of stone, hard and lifeless and yet he felt something—not simply the essence of those who lived and even now stood here but something else. A chindi could have followed him and his awareness might be the only warning he’d receive that he was going to die today.
A cougar is a solitary hunter. Although one might occasionally charge a deer herd, it would have already picked out its prey and would follow that particular creature to the ground. No matter what the danger to Morning Butterfly and her people, Cougar wouldn’t attack his gathered enemy, but if one stood apart from the others, he wanted nothing more than to sink his claws—his knife—into that vulnerable flesh.
But would killing one Spaniard alter Morning Butterfly’s fate? Or his own?
• • •
The sound was heartbeat and rhythm, older than the oldest Hopi and part of everything she’d ever been and would ever be. As the chanting from the nearby Bear Clan kiva grew louder, Morning B
utterfly pulled the murmur deep into herself. The Spanish had drawn closer together and stared nervously at the sound’s source, but she and New Corn didn’t share their fear because they understood that a number of Bear Clan members were singing the Road of Life Song.
“What is that?” Gregorio demanded. “What are those devils doing?”
Fray Angelico and Captain Lopez looked at each other as if waiting for the other to supply the answer; the soldiers began praying. The padre had cleared his throat and opened his mouth when another sound began.
This one didn’t come from human lips, Morning Butterfly was certain of that, but seemed to belong to the wind. It was as if earth and sky had reached out to each other in exploration and this soft, low whisper was what they’d created. If she’d had time and freedom, she would have run to the Bear kiva and asked the clan members to be silent so everyone could hear what remained.
“What is that?” Gregorio repeated. “What are they doing?”
“Singing. Praying. Nothing for us to concern ourselves with.” Angelico tried to sound secure in his opinion, but it amused Morning Butterfly to see him slide closer to Captain Lopez. The military man continued to search his surroundings, his eyes narrowed.
“Make them stop,” Gregorio ordered over the soldiers’ rote-like prayers. “Damnation, force them to—”
“Listen to the sound,” she interrupted. Ignoring everyone except the powerful older man, she addressed him. “Listen and learn the truth.”
“What truth? Damnation . . .”
The wind-music had already grown stronger and held the potential for even more strength. Caught by the wonder of what was happening, for a moment she couldn’t do anything except listen. Then:
“It is the song of who and what the Hopi are,” she told him. “A song as old as the ground we stand on, ancient and wise.”
“Shut her up,” Gregorio barked.
A single knife-stroke would silence her forever but it didn’t matter. Nothing did, except what she was hearing.
“End me if you must,” she told Lopez, who gripped his sword with white-knuckled fingers. “But if you do, you will never understand.”
“Make them stop,” Angelico pleaded. “By all that is holy, make them stop.”
“I cannot,” she said, “because what we hear are more than human voices.”
“The hell they are!” The oath burst from Lopez’s throat, a man shocked back to life. “Damn you, I will not—”
“Listen!” she ordered. Although the captain’s weight was nearly twice hers, she didn’t shrink from him. “The kachinas are singing. If you tell yourself that you hear only the voices of those of the Bear Clan, it is a lie. Today is not for lies, only the truth.”
“What truth?”
So Gregorio was capable of doing more than ordering people about. “The kachinas belong to the Hopi and we to them,” she told him. Because the soldiers had fallen silent, she addressed them as well. “Today they sing of Tokpela, which is Endless Space.”
“Blasphemy,” exclaimed Angelico.
Turning her attention back to the padre, she shook her head at his ignorance. “The Niman ceremony, the one you said was the devil’s work because it involved snakes, is our way of telling the kachinas that the harvest season is coming and they can leave the earth and return to their below-ground home until winter is over. But that did not happen this time, not because the Hopi did anything different or wrong, but because of what was done to the Snake Clan kiva.”
For a moment the memory overwhelmed her, then, after giving White Corn an encouraging nod, she continued. “You destroyed what is sacred to our people and angered the kachinas. They are still here, among us, singing today.”
“No!”
“Listen! Listen and tell me different.”
The sun had darkened and dried Angelico’s face, but today his flesh appeared stripped of color. Instead of doing as she’d ordered, however, he clamped his hands over his ears.
“Only God exists!” he shouted. “Everything else—all this is the devil’s work.”
“Not the devil,” she replied, noting that for the first time the soldiers weren’t looking at him as if expecting all answers and truth to come from his lips. “Taiowa, who is the Hopi creator. He cries with the kachinas.”
The padre must still have been able to hear because he shook his head violently. “No, no, no,” he muttered over and over.
Music danced on the air and echoed off ancient stone buildings. The sound reminded her of a bear’s low growl, a distant wolf howl, restless wind pushing past grass and brush. She heard something a great deal like this every time her people drummed and sang during their ceremonies, and yet this was different—inhuman. If she had been surrounded by Hopi, Morning Butterfly would have dropped to her knees, closed her eyes, and become one with the vibrations.
“Taiowa is the beginning,” she said, timing her words with the chant’s rhythm. “And yet there was no beginning and no end, no time or shape, just the great void that was life in the mind of Taiowa the Creator. Taiowa is infinite and yet the Creator fashioned us. That is what we now hear, Taiowa saying that you had no right to destroy what he created.”
“No. No. No.”
“Why cannot you believe?” she asked, her voice laced with sadness. “You ask us to accept your belief but you cannot do the same?”
“No. No!”
Before she could begin to react, Angelico sprang forward, but instead of attacking her, he snatched New Corn from Madariaga. At the same time, the padre pulled a knife from somewhere deep in his robe and pressed it against the girl’s throat.
“Tell them to be silent!” Spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes darted about. “Make them stop or I will kill her.”
Morning Butterfly started forward, then forced herself to stop when she saw how the padre’s hand trembled. “Even if I ask the Bear Clan to be silent, what you hear will not end. I am only a Hopi woman and cannot control the kachinas or Tokpela.”
His mouth flapped open, but instead of speaking, he stared down at New Corn as if he’d never seen her before.
Someone was emerging from the Bear Clan kiva. Whoever it was wore a kachina mask designed to represent a bear. Although there was nothing to fear from an old Hopi man in a wood-and-fur mask, several of the soldiers gasped and Madariaga dropped to his knees and extended his clasped hands toward the padre.
“Help me! Please, pray for my soul,” he whimpered.
Fray Angelico barely acknowledged him. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the kachina impersonator and the other, similarly costumed clan members who’d joined him.
She should tell the Spanish that the Hopi were harmless so they’d lower the weapons they’d raised, but before she could decide on the wisdom of that, New Corn whimpered; Angelico’s knife had nicked the child’s flesh.
“Padre, careful!”
“Make them stop! Make them stop! Otherwise”—Angelico fixed his gaze on Morning Butterfly—“I will kill her.”
“You are a man of peace.”
If he heard her, he gave no sign, and from the way his eyes bulged and his jaw muscles twitched, she wasn’t sure he knew what he was doing. The Bear Clan members had stopped chanting before emerging from their kiva, but although the hollow reverberations had lessened in volume, what remained continued to flow around, through, and over her.
“This is a place of peace,” she told the padre. “We are the Peaceful Ones, and if you harm this child—”
“Shut up!”
Fear for New Corn had made her forget everyone except Fray Angelico, and she jumped at Captain Lopez’s order. His long-barreled musket represented deadly strength and for too long commanded her attention.
“Shut up, Morning Butterfly,” Lopez repeated. “I do not know what’s going on here, but it is going to stop, now!”
So this was what it felt like to have a Spanish weapon pointed at her. She’d recently seen blood flow from Drums No More’s wound and knew wha
t a musket was capable of.
“I say to you what I said to the padre,” she told him. “What we hear does not come from Hopi throats, and I have no control over it.”
Lopez shook his head much as the padre had done a few moments earlier, and even Gregorio no longer looked as if he owned the land his feet stood on. However, she had no time for the changes in the two men because the padre was backing away from the kachina singers, and his knife hadn’t left New Corn’s throat.
“Padre.” She started after him. “Padre, I beg you—”
“Leave him!” Lopez ordered, his voice like thunder. “Get back here, now!”
• • •
Captain Lopez might he afraid, Cougar thought, but fear hadn’t destroyed the soldier in him. The musket aimed at Morning Butterfly didn’t tremble and his hard eyes and clenched jaw said he wanted her dead. Morning Butterfly’s concern continued to be for the girl the padre held, which meant she might not be attuned to the captain’s mood.
Letting his body say what he didn’t have the Spanish words for, Cougar stepped out of the shadows. He’d already fixed an arrow in his bow, and if he released it, it would bury itself in the captain’s chest. Nothing mattered except seeing the captain turn from Morning Butterfly to him, the hatred in his eyes. Morning Butterfly, too, now stared at him, her eyes filled with emotion.
When Lopez spoke, each word was a low thunderclap. “He says,” Morning Butterfly translated, “that if you shoot him, you will die.”
“So be it.”
“Cougar, do you not understand? He has ordered his men to kill you.”
He started to tell her that his life was only one and worth sacrificing as long as she lived, when it hit him that his life was as vital to her as hers was to him.
