Soul of the Sacred Earth

by Vella Munn

  Fray Angelico said something, but the words all ran together and barely earned a glance from Morning Butterfly. “He is praying,” she said. “At least I think he is; his words are so strange, tangled together. Cougar, you are one Navajo among many Spanish.”

  “Maybe it is enough.”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lopez, which enabled him to see something both desperate and determined in the captain. He couldn’t say how many Hopi were watching, but he felt their strength, absorbed it, and fed off it.

  If he lived through the day, he would find a way to tell his people about what he’d experienced—not just the confrontation and danger, but what wasn’t of this world. Energy and light.

  “Kachinas,” he said to Morning Butterfly. “Kachinas and other things Hopi are with us, speaking to us and telling the outsiders of their existence.”

  “Yes. I do not understand it, but my heart is full.”

  He’d been wrong to think he was ready to face death. Now he realized that not enough had flowed between him and the young Hopi woman, that what he was now hearing, feeling, and experiencing would take a lifetime to understand.

  First Man, Changing Woman, Hastseyalti, I give myself to you. If my time to walk this land is over, so be it, but I pray for many more seasons so I may learn—

  Captain Lopez’s eyes were still telling Cougar about hatred and determination. Lopez might never understand what was happening on Oraibi, but he was a soldier and wanted to do what soldiers have always done.

  They walked toward each other, arrow and musket at the ready, Navajo feet silent, Spanish boots thudding almost in time with the chants. Fray Angelico had stopped praying and, like the soldiers and the Hopi, simply watched. Cougar’s head was full, not of what he had to do to stay alive, but a Hopi song.

  The song resounds back from our Creator with joy, it said. And we of the earth repeat it to our Creator at the appearing of the yellow light, repeats and repeats again the joyful echo, sounds and resounds for times to come.

  “With beauty before me, may I walk,” he chanted in Navajo. “With beauty behind me, may I walk. With beauty above me, may I walk. With beauty below me, may I walk. With beauty all around me, may I walk. Wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, I walk.”

  A growl escaped the captain’s throat followed by something from Fray Angelico, but Cougar held on to the song of the Dineh and made it part of the Hopi Creation song, the two coming together inside him, warming and strengthening him.

  Only vaguely aware of what he was doing, he let his bow and arrows drop to the earth. Captain Lopez continued to study him with his predator’s eyes, but that was all right because one predator understands another—only Cougar was more than that, more than a Navajo warrior today.

  Slowly, gracefully, Cougar lowered himself so he now squatted close to the ground and placed his hands flat against it. His eyes challenged the captain to do the same, and although he looked confused, Lopez handed his musket to the nearest soldier and followed suit—except that his hands hovered over the earth instead of making contact with it.

  Captain Lopez de Leiva wanted to do what the savage had done, to prove he was equal to whatever insane show of strength Cougar had in mind, but he felt a rumbling through his boots, and his legs were both hot and cold. When he looked at Cougar’s hands, it seemed to him that they’d grown larger; instead of remaining separate from the ground, the two flowed together, threatened to merge.

  In an effort to free himself of this insanity, he looked for his father-in-law, but what he read in Gregorio’s stare weakened him.

  “You do not understand,” he told the older man defiantly. “You will never understand.”

  “Because there is no comprehending,” Gregorio retorted, but maybe he was talking about more than Lopez’s behavior.

  A few moments ago Cougar had been chanting something, but he was silent now, and although the savage should be watching his enemy’s every move, he didn’t seem to care about anything except what he was doing. Lopez tried to concentrate on the earth; although it was an insane thought, he could swear it had come to life.

  Something was down there—a humming, a rumbling, a breathing—no! Not breathing! How could the earth breathe?

  “What is he doing?” Lopez demanded of Morning Butterfly. Although his throat felt rough, his voice held at a whisper.

  “Speaking to Mother Earth.”

  The world grew darker, and if he’d been able to concentrate, Lopez would have looked up to see the size of the cloud that blocked out the sun. When he breathed, he inhaled the scents of dirt and rock, Hopi cooking—and something wild, as if the air itself had a smell. His vision narrowed until he thought he might be going blind, and yet he could still see Cougar’s features, feel the savage’s challenge.

  Touch Mother Earth, Cougar said without words. Finally, because he had no choice, he did.

  Heat. No, cold. Something beating. Lopez’s head screamed and he was afraid he would fly apart. He told himself—tried to, anyway—that this wasn’t happening and if he could only fix his mind on—

  Yes, that was what he would do. Force away the shadows and concentrate—

  Oh, God, no!

  “What is that?” He pointed at what had caught his attention.

  “Tell me, Captain, what is it to you?” Morning Butterfly asked.

  “You see it, do you not?” he demanded of Gregorio and Fray Angelico. “Tell her! Tell her!”

  Although both men stared at where he’d indicated, neither spoke. Still squatting, his calves and thighs burning, Lopez stared at the gray creature standing at the edge of the mesa.

  “A wolf,” he mouthed more than spoke.

  “Not a wolf,” Morning Butterfly said. “Chindi.”

  Something clamped around his throat and he couldn’t breathe. He felt himself rising, but how could that be, when an instant ago he’d lacked the strength to move. The dark shape had simply materialized, but that—like so much—was impossible. A wolf wouldn’t venture into the middle of a Hopi village.

  Fray Angelico must be seeing the same thing, because the padre had released the girl he’d been holding and his arms hung limp at his side. He’d dropped the knife, his mouth was open, his eyes bulged, and maybe he was crying. Lopez tried to step toward him, but before he could think his way through the incredible task of making his legs work, Gregorio started running toward the ladder.

  The wolf was walking toward Lopez, its steps clean and weightless, teeth bared, and yellow eyes unblinking. The infernal chanting continued, part of the air and the earth.

  He screamed, trying to silence the sound, but the chant swallowed his voice.

  And when he started running, it was because the chindi-wolf was howling and the howl had found its way into his soul and he couldn’t stand it.

  Someone was already on the ladder. Bellowing at the living hindrance to his escape, he thrust the man away and began scrambling down.

  He didn’t hear Gregorio’s scream as his father-in-law hurtled through space; nor did he feel the hands that guided him down to the desert floor.

  • • •

  “You are all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Relief poured through Cougar and he clutched his grandfather to him. He still hadn’t fully come to grips with the fact that he was no longer on Oraibi. Indeed, he might spend the rest of his life trying to make sense of everything that had happened up there, but because he hadn’t died today, he would have that time.

  Although the sun was just now setting, the soldiers huddled around their camp had already built a fire and showed no inclination to leave it. They spoke little, and when they did, their voices didn’t carry. A few Hopi might still be on the mesa but most had followed the soldiers down after Gregorio de Barreto had fallen—or been pushed—to his death.

  Singer of Songs had guided Captain Lopez to his tent. The Spaniard hadn’t said anything for a long, long time, not even to acknowledge her presence. After settling him on his bed, Singer
of Songs had turned her back on the captain and walked to her parents, who’d welcomed her with loving embraces.

  Left alone, Lopez had first fortified himself with a healthy dose of whiskey and then started going through his father-in-law’s belongings. His hands shook and he kept dropping things. He muttered to himself while continually and apprehensively glancing at his surroundings. When his gaze lit on his troops, he looked at them only briefly. For their part, they stared relentlessly back at him.

  “What is he saying?” Cougar asked Morning Butterfly.

  “That he is leaving here and does not care what anyone else does. He says the same words over and over again. I think his mind is no longer his.”

  Satisfied with that explanation, Cougar turned his attention to Drums No More. Singer of Songs was taking care of him now. An elderly Hopi man stood nearby, his attention never leaving Drums No More’s wounded side, his single hand holding the healing herbs.

  “It is right that my grandfather and One Hand meet,” Cougar told Morning Butterfly.

  Nodding, she whispered that she believed the same thing.

  Although she was trembling, he was afraid to touch her. “The time will come when we will speak of what happened today,” she said, “but I am not ready for it.”

  “Neither am I.”

  He swept his arm in an arch indicating not just the still-muttering Lopez but Fray Angelico and the soldiers as well. As he watched, one of the soldiers separated himself from the others and, head down, trudged over to the pile of rocks that covered Pablo’s body. Kneeling, he placed something on the mound and remained there for several moments before standing and walking back to his companions. Cougar recognized Madariaga, but he seemed much older than he had when Cougar had first seen the young soldier. He wondered if the soldier had prayed over his friend’s body or if prayers had failed him.

  “Tonight they are the deer and we, Navajo and Hopi, are wolves and cougars,” Cougar said.

  “But we are not predators who seek to kill.”

  There were enough Navajo and Hopi that if the newcomers put up a fight, they couldn’t win. Still, he was glad the Spaniards had put down their weapons. Sometimes when a wolf or cougar is full, he sleeps near a deer herd and the deer continue to feed because they know they aren’t in danger. It was like that tonight.

  “The men of my village will soon meet,” Morning Butterfly told him. “They want the padre to leave when the others do and must talk of how that is to be done.”

  When they’d first returned to the desert floor, Fray Angelico had paced here and there like a trapped animal, but now the padre was standing in the doorway of his church, his shoulders slumped and his head hanging. He’d made no attempt to get anyone to join him or to walk over to where the soldiers were; it was as if they lived in separate worlds.

  “Is he praying?”

  “I do not think so,” Morning Butterfly told him. “Maybe, after what happened at Oraibi today, he has forgotten how.”

  “Maybe by morning he will have remembered.”

  “Perhaps, but it will not be the same as before for any of them. I believe that when the other Spanish leave, he will willingly go with them; no one will have to tell him he does not belong here.”

  Morning Butterfly knew more about Fray Angelico than anyone, maybe more than the padre himself did, which made it easy for Cougar to accept what she’d just told him. He and his fellow warriors had brought food with them and he spotted Navajo adding their supply to what the Hopi were preparing for dinner. This peace, like what existed between Indian and Spanish, might be gone before morning, but he had no need to look beyond tonight.

  “Did we see a chindi?” Morning Butterfly asked. “If we did, then what is Navajo came to Hopi land.”

  “I have asked myself the same thing, but what else could it be?”

  Staring up at him, she began shaking her head. It might only be the dying sun, but he thought he saw something in her eyes that had never been there before. The way she gazed at him—the same look had been in Sweet Water’s eyes the night their bodies came together for the first time.

  “Cougar?”

  “What?”

  “You risked your life for me,” she whispered. “You did not have to, and yet—why?”

  “I do not know,” he started to say, but a man who has faced his enemy’s weapon doesn’t hide from a woman’s question. “If you died,” he told her, “I did not want to go on living.”

  “When Captain Lopez aimed his musket at you, that was how I felt. Without you, without you . . .”

  A tear trickled down her cheek, and he brushed it away with a finger that wanted to stay on her flesh.

  “I think—” She swallowed and started again. “I believe that we are no longer Hopi and Navajo but two people who have come from Mother Earth and are touched by her love.”

  “What you feel,” he told her with newfound wisdom, “is not just Mother Earth’s love but what I have for you.”

  It didn’t matter which of them reached for the other first because when they embraced, they ceased to be two halves and flowed into a whole.

  As they did, two maimed old men looked at each other and smiled.

  Postscript

  Fray Angelico, Captain Lopez, and the soldiers did indeed leave Oraibi the next day. The padre returned to Santa Fe and the Franciscan mission there, which provided shelter for the broken man. He never spoke of what had happened on the mesa. Captain Lopez went to the de Barreto land holdings, where he made a feeble attempt to take up the reins of ownership, but his wife soon left him and he eventually drank himself to death. Unfortunately, they were far from the last Spanish to come to what is now Arizona.

  History records that attempts to Christianize the Hopi and Navajo were less than successful. The Navajo lifestyle kept them at a distance from missionaries and the military, and the Hopi held their traditional beliefs to their hearts while outwardly accepting what was imposed on them.

  Although a mission—the Hopi called it the slave church—was eventually constructed at Oraibi, it was destroyed during the Pueblo Indian revolt of 1680 and no piece of it remains. Today Oraibi, which may be the oldest continuously occupied community in the United States, belongs to the Peaceful Ones and is part of the Hopi nation, a pocket of land surrounded by the larger Navajo nation. These days Highway 264 provides access through land virtually unchanged since the first Hopi and Navajo settled in it, bringing past and present together.

  Excerpt from Blackfeet Season

  Keep reading for an excerpt from another gripping

  Native American Historical Novel by Vella Munn,

  Blackfeet Season,

  coming soon!

  Prologue

  In a time hidden by the mist of years, the Blackfeet had nothing but their legs to carry them over endless prairies as they hunted buffalo, the beast vital to their existence. Stories of a spirit tribe living in the bottom of a distant lake spoke of strange, swift animals called pono-kamita, or Elk Dogs, but although many braves went in search of the magical creatures, none of those men were ever seen again.

  Then came Long Arrow. Chief Good Running had taken the orphan into his tepee and raised him as his own, but Long Arrow still believed himself an outsider. A handsome, courageous hunter, Long Arrow decided he would try to find the Elk Dogs. If he succeeded, he could rightfully take his place within the tribe. And if he failed . . .

  The journey took four times four days and then another four times four days, but finally he reached a massive lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Awakening from an exhausted sleep, he saw a small boy standing over him. The boy told Long Arrow to follow him to the bottom of the lake, which Long Arrow did, discovering he could breathe underwater.

  After Long Arrow shared a pipe with the boy’s grandfather, the boy took him to the Elk Dogs and showed him how to ride. Long Arrow wanted nothing more than to take a few of the animals back with him, but he wasn’t a thief and was afraid to ask for such a wondrous gift.
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  Several days later Long Arrow spotted the grandfather’s feet, which were hooves, and despite his shock, asked about them. Pulling his black robe around him, the grandfather told Long Arrow that because he was the only outsider to have ever seen the hooves, he could have three wishes.

  Long Arrow requested the old man’s multicolored belt, his medicine robe, and the Elk Dogs. After promising to give Long Arrow half of his herd, the old man explained that the medicine robe would make it possible for Long Arrow to sneak up on wild Elk Dogs and the belt would allow him to hear their songs and prayers, thus allowing him to learn more about them. As a final gesture, the old man gave Long Arrow a magic rope so he could take the herd back with him.

  When Long Arrow returned home astride one of the Elk Dogs, the rest following behind, the tribe hailed him as a hero, and the lives of the Blackfeet were forever changed.

  Chapter One

  Fall, a short span of peace before the cold and danger of winter, had touched the vast plains. The wind lived here with the Blackfeet and was a changeling, alive with energy and promise in spring, hot and drying throughout summer, sometimes an angry force driving snow and sleet across the sprawling land. Now while grasses turned brittle and sparse trees gave up their color, the breezes played with what was left of summer’s heat, sometimes cherishing it, sometimes throwing it carelessly about. Mornings were cold and a threat of what was to come, but as the sun warmed the land, the wind laughed.

  This moment is all there is, it seemed to say. Today is enough.

  But those who’d lived through the winters fashioned by Creator Sun knew different.

  Darkness closed in around the young Blackfoot known as Night Thunder, but although the sounds the rest of the raiding party made as they went about setting up their sleeping places called to him, he wouldn’t leave his solitude until he’d given thanks to Old Man for safely bringing him and the others this far, until he’d listened to the wind and learned at least a little of its wisdom.