How the Stars did Fall

by F Silva, Paul

  “What’s that?” Faraday asked.

  “I said it’s not right being here. These savages are blasphemers. If we share in their hellish practices, surely we too shall be condemned.”

  Just then Dr. Tennyson came out of the building, a dog following him.

  “Settle down, now, preacher,” Tennyson said.

  “We’re not sharing anything,” Faraday said. “We’re just going along for the ride for a while until they let us go.”

  The dog smelled Faraday and looked up at him, and Faraday kneeled down and gave the dog a good rubbing.

  “Where’d this guy come from?”

  “He just showed up. No one has come to claim him,” Tennyson said.

  “Tell me again why it is they released us?” Turnbull asked.

  Faraday briefly recounted the events that had transpired in the underground chamber with Xingu. According to the elder, the depiction on the tapestry of the man in Oushanis was not just a prophecy but historical record, and the bearded man had been a real figure. A seer and a patriarch who had traveled to that land long ago, bringing with him knowledge of planting and building and smithing. Further than that, the Ohlone believed that man would come again and Xingu had long suspected that second coming would occur precisely in the time and place shown in the painting. At Oushanis, when the stars fell from the sky. An inscription had been carved into the rock wall describing the attributes of this mysterious bearded man, and Xingu had read it aloud, translating it into English so Faraday could understand:

  “He was endowed with intelligence. He saw and instantly he could see far, he succeeded in seeing, he succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When he looked, instantly he saw all around him and he contemplated in turn the arch of heaven and the round face of the earth.”

  This description bore an eerie resemblance to what Faraday had experienced before he had met with Xingu, when he had been able to find a way out of the quarry just by wishing for it in his mind. He had told Xingu this and the elder Indian’s eyes had opened up wide. Now Xingu looked on Faraday with some trepidation, for he had never come upon such power as this and had only heard the stories of his ancestors. To Faraday’s surprise, the elder had asked for no proof of the claim. Instead, he had trekked up out of the underground chamber, talking to himself, and urging Faraday to follow him. That very day, Xingu had convinced the chief to release not only Faraday from the quarry, but Tennyson and Turnbull too, and the three of them were given quarters on the edge of the settlement.

  But they had not been freed yet. A pair of guards watched over them day and night while they waited. Xingu had explained it: if he could show that Faraday was the man from the tapestry, come again in some way, then the chief would free Faraday and his friends.

  “You know,” Turnbull said after Faraday had finished explaining the situation to him for the second time, “I stopped asking God for freedom about six months into my captivity. But now that I’m so close, I confess I do desire it. I do, with every ounce of my heart, and if that means we have to indulge these pagans in their idolatry for a moment or two, then so be it.”

  “That’s the spirit, Turnbull,” Tennyson said. “By God, I believe they will free us. Is it true what you told them? That you can see things, find things?”

  “It happened once.”

  “Just once? Have you tried it more than once?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you ought to try it again.”

  That night the chief called the whole tribe together. They assembled around long tables made of wood and covered by the hides of animals. The women brought out pitchers of water and pots of stewed corn and beans and fry bread and whole turkeys and mashed berries and skins filled with fermented drink. The tables formed a circle around a fire. Faraday and the other white men sat at the same table as Moon and Xingu and the chief, and the Indians broke bread with them in peace. More than once, an Indian boy or girl approached Faraday and offered him a gift. A jumble of flowers, or the head of a spear cut out of limestone. Word had begun to spread about him. But still there were a few Indians whose gaze fell on him with hate and anger. Faraday ignored them and ate his fill and more, savoring the food and drinking tiswin until he felt a great elation building up in his head and his spine. And he asked for more and more tiswin until the order came down from the chief himself that Faraday would be served no more of the intoxicating brew.

  When Turnbull finished his meal he brought out the wood he had been working on. The shape of a crude cross could already be discerned from it and Turnbull took the knife and dug at the wood, whittling it further. The former preacher leaned into Faraday and smiled. After the meal, the chief drew himself up and addressed the assemblage. He spoke at length in the Ohlone tongue and then handed the floor over to Xingu, who managed to speak for even longer than the chief. Following Xingu, one of the Indians who had been staring angrily at Faraday stood up and offered what sounded like a counterargument against Xingu.

  In many ways, the schism between Xingu and his challengers was far more than a mere squabble among doctrinarians. If Faraday was indeed an ancient teacher come again, then the Ohlone had not given him the reverence he was due. If he was not, then the eldest and wisest of the Ohlone was defending a man who had trampled upon sacred ground and deserved his fate. There was a very real sense that the fate of the whole tribe hung in the balance, and the assemblage heard the pronouncements with fear and trembling. After all arguments had been expounded, the chief addressed Xingu directly. He asked the elder something and, after replying, Xingu took Faraday by the arm and presented him to all assembled.

  “Show them what you told me you can do. Show them and they will know who you are.”

  The first Indian approached Faraday. He had in his hands a small pair of leather pants. A child’s garment.

  “This one has lost his child,” Xingu said. “Can you help him?”

  Faraday took hold of the small pants and, closing his eyes, tried to do as he had done before. And he did pass into a realm beyond, seeing far into the distant wilderness but also into the hearts and minds of those around him. He saw something like a sliver of light hanging about the pants, some residue of the spirit of the child, and Faraday concentrated on that residue and it led him to the very edge of his consciousness. Then he stopped and found himself enveloped by shadows and he could see no further.

  “I cannot help him, Xingu,” Faraday said. “I cannot see far enough.” Xingu explained to the man what had happened and in his place came another Indian. Now a woman who had lost not a child or a person but a ceramic bowl. She explained she had seen it on the windowsill of her sandstone home before it disappeared. Faraday closed his eyes again, and this time his mind took him through the mesa into the homes and the halls until he found the bowl hidden underneath some hay.

  “I see it,” Faraday said. “On the westernmost part of the mesa, the third house from the left, covered up by hay.”

  The woman set out immediately, a whole contingent of Indians following her, and when she returned bearing the bowl that had been stolen from her, the chief took it in his hand and examined it. Xingu smiled broadly. Then more Indians came and formed a line to speak to Faraday. Each one described to him something they had hidden and he described back to them the precise location of the object. Like some carnival sideshow. And this went on until not a single Ohlone in the whole mesa held any doubt about Faraday’s gift. Satisfied, the chief declared Faraday a free man and the great teacher come again, and to make amends for his time imprisoned, the chief said Faraday could ask for anything he wanted and his desire would be granted. Faraday asked for only one thing: that Turnbull and Tennyson be freed also, and the chief freed him, declaring it so to all those assembled.

  The rest of the day Faraday spent with Tennyson and Turnbull, gathering supplies and burdening their horses so they could leave. The Indians pleaded for him to stay, for they believed he had been sent to guide them at the most perilous time, when all of the tribes
were threatened by extinction at the hand of the white man. But Faraday said he had to leave, that his family needed his help. Nevertheless, the Ohlone insisted that he stay at least one more night, that his lingering presence could afford them a small measure of protection, and Faraday agreed. It was almost dark anyway and he would not be able to ride for very long until the morning.

  That night while Turnbull and Tennyson slept, Faraday lay down on the ground of the mesa with Xingu, looking up at the chains of the Pleiades. And Xingu told Faraday what he knew about those great lights and the weight they had carried in the mind of the ancients—the ones who had hollowed out the mesa so very long ago. To them the stars above were not static bulbs but moving harbingers of the most ancient of days. Encoded messages sent out into time. And the ancients took those everlasting constructs as their guide and in imitation they did their own work in stone, setting down guideposts for those still to come. Oushanis was one of those, Xingu said, but there were many others hidden underground.

  The white men woke before dawn and set out, taking the road north. They rode all day, past the dry land around the mesa into the chaparral and then into a stretch of pines and firs standing over the road like mendicant friars. They made their camp amidst those trees, tying their horses to the branches and setting down wood for a fire. Turnbull brought out his knapsack with all of his carvings and chose from within the cross, bringing it out and laying it on the grass. And he bowed his head and whispered a prayer. Tennyson placed a pot filled with water over the fire and poured a tin of beans and pieces of cured bacon into it and left it to boil.

  “God forgive me,” Turnbull said.

  “Forgive you for what?” Tennyson asked.

  “Long have I resigned myself, accepting God alone as my portion, but now as I contemplate my freedom I feel my heart filling up with desire.”

  “That just means you’re alive.”

  “It means I am growing in my own estimation and God is diminishing in equal proportion.”

  Faraday pulled from his back a skin he had filled with tiswin before leaving the mesa and handed it to Turnbull.

  “Drink this,” Faraday said. And Turnbull did, and when he had finished he lay on the ground and slept. Tennyson slept, too, but Faraday found himself unable to rest, so he got up and fed the fire. He looked out into the woods. The height of the trees and the denseness of their leaves blotted out the light of the moon and much of the stars. Faraday set out into that oppressing dark, walking, keeping his footing by hugging the trees until he saw the subtle silver reflections of a pond. And he stood over the pond, studying it, catching here and there glimpses of his own face.

  Moon found him crouched on the ground.

  “Careful. My people have a legend that looking too long into a pool at night can cause you to lose yourself,” she said.

  “Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing.” Faraday stood up and tried to discern Moon’s face amidst the dark. “What are you doing here?”

  “I asked my father to let me go with you. He said no but I left anyway.”

  “Go with me? Where do you suppose I am going?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ve lived my whole life on the mesa with only Xingu’s old stories to give me any excitement. I want to see the world.”

  “I think you need to go back. In fact, I’ll take you back myself once the sun comes up. I can’t be responsible for you.”

  “I will not go back. If you won’t take me, then I’ll go off on my own.”

  “Goddammit,” Faraday said. “Alright. Better that I can keep an eye on you. And how long do you propose to travel with us?”

  “Long as I want.”

  “You’re really something.”

  They left the camp a few hours later while it was still dark, riding hard north on the road until they reached the town of Cuevas just as the sun’s first rays breached the roof of the world. The town was small but well populated. At that predawn hour, Faraday was surprised to find quite a lot of movement on the town’s main street. One point in particular bustled with people. It was a saloon and Faraday salivated at the thought of eating real food again.

  Only one table sat empty in the crowded saloon and Faraday picked it out, sat down and ordered. The waiter brought them thick slabs of bread, bowls of hot porridge, plates with bacon and eggs, and a pitcher with tea and another with coffee. Tennyson lathered a slice of bread with butter while Turnbull poured himself coffee. Once the slice was buttered enough, Tennyson took a big bite and noticed that a few men at another table were looking directly at him. When they noticed that Tennyson had seen them, the men turned to each other, pretending to discuss something. Tennyson made nothing of it and continued to eat.

  The men that were eyeing Tennyson left their tables but returned just as Faraday and the others were finishing their meal. They came back with the sheriff of Cuevas and at the sight of the armed official, the saloon emptied. Faraday tried to get the others to leave with the rest of the patrons, but the sheriff of Cuevas and his men were upon them before they could get up. They aimed their rifles at Faraday and the others.

  “Don’t move. Don’t you dare move,” the sheriff said.

  The sheriff took all four of them to the town’s jail, a dusty old gray brick house, and locked them inside cells. There they were left, deprived of food and water. After what seemed like hours, the sheriff returned, holding up for the prisoners to see a wanted poster bearing the likenesses of both Faraday and Tennyson.

  “You fellas in some dire straits,” the sheriff said. “Best if you confess to the crimes herein described. I will tell the judge if you are cooperative.”

  Faraday thought on that for a moment before spitting in defiance. The sheriff wiped the spit off his boot and opened the cell. He pulled his gun out and hit Faraday across the face with it, the slash sending blood onto the wooden floors. More blows followed until Faraday slumped to the ground, his face swollen and dusty. While Faraday lay there writhing in pain, he let his mind wander. He pictured the key to his shackles and he found it. A little bronze thing. He saw it hanging from the wall in an adjacent room. But knowing where the key was profited him nothing, so he sat back and waited while Moon tended his wounds as best as she could. They spent the night in that jail.

  The next day, they were shackled and loaded into a wagon. Faraday pleaded for answers but the sheriff gave them none. Two men drove the wagon out onto the road until they had left Cuevas well behind. Then they stopped and dropped down, drawing their revolvers from their holsters and pointing them at Faraday and the others.

  “Go on to the back of the wagon,” one of the men told Faraday. “You’re worth more to us alive, but you best be sure I’ll kill you if I have to and just take the loss.”

  “What do you mean to do?” Faraday asked.

  “None of your goddamn business,” the man answered while the other pulled Moon out of the wagon by force, nearly ripping her clothes in half while doing so. They had begun to unbuckle their pants when the low whistle of an arrow pierced the sky and punctured one of the men’s neck. The arrowhead ruined the man’s throat and he fell a gurgling mess, the blood bubbling out of his mouth. The horror of this scene drove the other man into a frenzy and he began to fire wildly in every direction. One bullet entered the wagon and missed Turnbull by a hair. A second arrow put an end to the man’s flailing. An Indian appeared, tall and wearing a red death mask. First he knelt beside each body, making sure the men were dead, and then he took a knife from his waist and scalped the bodies, leaving the domes of their heads red and inflamed. He found Moon still in shock on the ground and helped her up, speaking to her in the Ohlone tongue. Faraday listened while they argued, with Moon eventually prevailing. She found the keys to their shackles on one of the bodies and freed Faraday and Turnbull and Tennyson.

  “This is one is called Tenhorse,” Moon said, referring to the Indian who had saved her. “My father sent him after me.”

  “Thank God he did,” Turnbull said.

&nb
sp; But their talk was soon cut off, for the sound of the gunfire had reached Cuevas, and the sheriff and his men emerged riding hard after them, holding up their long rifles and firing into the air.

  “Let’s go,” Faraday said. Taking the wagon, they fled into the chaparral. But the heavy, laborious thing could not keep pace with the horsemen and before long the men of Cuevas were upon them with weapons drawn and ready. Tenhorse’s hands were a blur as he nocked arrow after arrow, dropping the men from their horses before they could take aim at anyone from their party.

  Still, a few of the men from Cuevas shot true. Turnbull took a shot right in the head and died instantly. Tennyson took on in the stomach and he screamed in pain.

  Eventually the men from Cuevas ran out of bullets, but their pursuit continued unabated. It began to rain. The wagon hit upon a boulder and tumbled to the side, flinging the occupants out. The rain fell so hard they could barely make out the terrain ahead. Faraday and Moon slogged through the wet and muddy land as hard and as fast as they could until they fell exhausted, letting the rain pelt them in the face, their nostrils filled with the smell of moist grass. The pair lay on the grass. They dared not speak or move. Slowly the moisture in the rain collected in their clothes, soaking through to their skin, until Moon lightly trembled in the cold. Turning to her, Faraday slithered closer and tried to embrace her, but she pushed him away.

  “I can find the others,” he said.

  Then he closed his eyes and sought first for Tennyson, but he could not see the man and feared the worst. He tried to find Tenhorse next. He could see the Indian, but faint and fading.

  “I know where Tenhorse is.”

  “Take us there.”

  Crawling with their elbows digging into the mud, Faraday led Moon towards the spot where Tenhorse bled. They found Tenhorse just as Faraday had seen him. The Indian sat on the ground, one hand covering a wound in his stomach. Moon tenderly pushed his hand aside and felt the hole the rifle ball had made. She stuck two of her fingers inside and Tenhorse muffled a cry, and when Moon’s fingers reappeared they held the bloody ball precariously between her nails. Then Moon grabbed Tenhorse’s hand and placed it over the wound, pushing it against the Indian’s flesh to try to stop the bleeding.