“Look,” Ed said quietly. “It’s snowing.”
Tiny flakes were drifting down but melting as soon as they hit the windows.
Snow? thought Celestino. He’d looked at weather forecasts in preparation for his measurement of Rigel. There’d been no precipitation in the forecast.
“It’s her,” whispered Ed.
Celestino looked at him. These men–men Celestino had known nearly their entire lives–were terrified, almost unhinged. If they were afraid, maybe there was a good reason. If that explosion had not been a meteorite, it had to have been an immense lightning strike. This was definitely not a part of the prophecy. This was not how it was supposed to go.
“The dwarf was with her,” said Victor.
Celestino looked back at him.
“He had a rifle.”
Celestino shifted the car into reverse.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
LIVVY WATCHED SK explain it again. Some men from First Mesa had come out to investigate the explosion and fire. They’d decided to let the pole and bushes burn themselves out. There wasn’t water for miles and it provided some heat and light.
SK had said a lightning bolt had struck it. That much was true. What he hadn’t told them was how it had happened. The empty SUV had been parked and Dale had accidentally hit it when he had swerved after the lightning strike. He’d even left a note on the windshield.
Livvy waited with Dale in the idling truck. Sore, tired, and cold, the two of them simply sat. She looked over at the shrinking fire and the light dust of snow on the ground as it reflected the orange flames.
Lightning in the real world.
SK had told her everything. If not for him, they’d both be dead. She suddenly thought of her mother and the way she had died. It hadn’t been like this but–Livvy closed her eyes, trying not to remember.
“Are you all right?” asked Dale, quietly.
Livvy opened her eyes. “Yeah,” she said, as a reflex.
When she thought about it, though, the taser marks stung and she had a headache. She was about to tell him when she saw a strange look on Dale’s face.
“How about you?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“I had a dream.”
He’d been subdued since the accident but she’d thought that could be expected.
“I saw my life without Leon,” he said, not looking at her.
Although they hadn’t actually discussed it, Livvy had heard enough to understand that Dale had prescient dreams.
“Was it a prophetic dream? I mean, are you sure you won’t be together?”
He nodded, still not looking at her.
“Do all your dreams predict the future?”
He shook his head, still looking out the windshield. “Most don’t,” he said. “But I’ve gotten to know the difference.”
“Maybe it’ll be a temporary thing,” Livvy suggested.
Dale looked at her. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
His eyes had an anguished look and the furrows in his forehead seemed to age him. He opened his mouth as if to say something but then didn’t.
“Dale,” she said, quietly. “I’m so sorry.”
He stared back out the windshield.
The passenger door opened and SK climbed in.
“They bought it,” he said, sitting down next to Livvy. “A lightning strike from the storm.”
He paused and looked from Livvy to Dale.
“Everything all right?” SK asked.
Livvy looked at Dale but he was silent. She turned back to SK. “Not really,” she said.
She could see that SK wanted to ask but didn’t. After a few beats, he held her hand.
“How are you feeling?” he said quietly.
“Tired,” she said. “But okay.”
He reached up to move her hair from the bump on her forehead.
“I guess we were all pretty lucky,” he said, with a little smile.
Lucky, she thought. They were lucky to have survived, any of them. She had ‘reaped this’ the sorcerer had said. But what about Dale or SK? Had they? She looked down at SK’s hand holding hers. For a few moments, the only sound was the idling of the truck.
“So Canyon de Chelly, then?” asked SK.
Suddenly, a flash of memory made Livvy catch her breath.
“What?” said SK.
“Celestino doesn’t have the tablet,” she said.
“What?” Dale asked.
“That’s what they wanted to know,” she explained, looking at the SUV. “They thought I had it.”
“But if Celestino doesn’t have it…” Dale began.
“And we don’t have it…” SK added.
“Then who has it?” finished Livvy. She paused and shook her head. “Well, whoever has it, they’re in Canyon de Chelly.”
Dale released the parking brake. “And we need to get to it before Celestino does,” he said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
AS SOON AS the lightning disappeared, the plaza went dark again. Leon peered into the blackness. Although he couldn’t see them, he knew someone was there. What were they doing in the plaza? At this time of night?
Then again, what was he doing.
He crouched down and stepped back as far as he could, but still see the plaza. Without any light, though, there wasn’t much to see.
In the silence, Leon could hear a scraping sound in the distance.
He peered through the darkness, scanning back and forth in the direction of the faint sound. What were they doing over there? Off to the right, was there a shape? He stared in that direction but couldn’t make anything out. Then further to the right, he saw it. There was someone there but they were white–completely white from head to foot.
If he didn’t know better, he’d say it was a ghost.
Its faint outlines swayed from side to side, in time with the scraping sound, which he now recognized as feet on dirt and gravel.
What ghost had feet?
He decided to ask.
“Hey, Casper!” he called as he stood up straight.
His voice rang out clearly in the eerie quiet. No dogs barked, no birds sounded. There was only that scraping sound, getting a little louder as the white being started to come closer and become more visible. It seemed not to have heard him.
“Hey,” Leon yelled, but not angrily. “This is a ghost free zone.”
A single dog in the distance responded to his challenge with a couple of barks. Then a light appeared to his left. It was from the door of one of the homes that bordered the plaza. His yells had roused someone. Although that person stood in the doorway, light spilled around them and sliced across the plaza in uneven beams. In the direction of the ghost, a dim and grainy figure began to appear.
It was no ghost. That would have been less shocking. Leon's mouth fell open as he stared at it. The giant head could only mean one thing.
But it’s too early. The kachinas haven’t returned yet.
“Hey,” Leon called, standing up to his full height, the bantering tone gone. “What do you think you’re doing?”
As though awakening from a frozen lethargy, the kachina dancer took a step forward and into the light. Leon recognized the mask.
“No,” he whispered.
The domed white head covering had large red ear flares and a thick ruffle at the neck but, where there should have been a face, only a giant, black star appeared. With four rounded points outlined in red, it covered the front of the mask from top to bottom and ear to ear.
“The Blue Star Kachina,” he whispered.
No wonder it had seemed like a ghost. Its entire body was white. The long sleeve shirt was white with some black lines decorating the shoulders, forearm, and neckline. It wore white leggings, stitched up the sides.
It stamped its feet rhythmically. Leon watched its moccasins rise up and down and heard the small scraping sound as it continued to dance. Its nearly silent movement, without any type of rattle or tinkler, made it even more eerie.
> As if he were waking from a dream, Leon shook his head. The thing he had wanted to prevent–had even resorted to stealing in order to stop–was now happening in front of him.
“Hey that’s enough,” Leon yelled but the dancer ignored him, turned toward the light and kept up his dance, heading in the direction of the house.
Another door behind him opened and flooded more light into the plaza. The dancer was plain now.
“What’s going on here?” demanded a woman, behind and to Leon’s right.
Leon didn’t acknowledge her as the seriousness of what was happening closed in on him. He strode toward the kachina.
“I said that’s enough,” he yelled.
The kachina turned its back to him and kept dancing, upping the pace, moving away.
Leon broke into a trot.
“Stop!” he yelled.
There was more light in the plaza as curtains were pulled aside and more doors opened. Leon could see a bunch of bright blue feathers at the top of the kachina’s head. The semi-circular symbols for clouds were painted on the back of the mask. Leon’s eyes focused on it as he bore down on the figure. The dancer sped up, trying to get away.
Though big, Leon wasn’t slow. His boots pounded the ground and, in seconds, he had closed the gap between them.
“When I say stop,” he yelled in panting breaths, “I mean stop.”
He lunged at the dancer, hitting it in the back as the two of them crashed to the ground.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
THE HEADLIGHTS OF the truck bounced crazily as they bumped along the deeply rutted dirt road.
“You’re sure this is the way?” Livvy asked.
Dale gripped the steering wheel as though it were trying to escape, rotating first one way and then quickly reversing.
“Believe me,” he said, his voice tight. “If there were a better way, I’d take it.”
The three of them swayed in unison. Dale’s occasional grunts let her know his breastbone was bothering him. Her head still ached, and by the way SK held his neck, she knew he was also in pain. Nobody talked about their injuries though. All eyes were on the road.
“How do you know the back country?” asked SK.
“It’s really not that hard,” Dale said. “It’s called Canyon de Chelly, singular, but there are actually three canyons. The place Olivia described is at the intersection of two of them. These dirt roads lead up those canyons. We’ll run right into it. The only other way would be to hike down from the rim.”
Livvy remembered how she’d found the tablet in the first place–hiking down that cliff face. She preferred this method by far.
“I don’t imagine the Navajo or the park rangers are going to appreciate us trespassing,” said Livvy. “Is there enough moonlight to cut the headlights?”
“They’ll hear us long before they see headlights,” SK said. “But in this cold, we might get lucky and everyone will be somewhere warm.”
“We’ll only get lucky if our luck changes,” said Dale. “Do you recognize any of this from your vision?”
Livvy peered into the darkness, holding up a hand to block the light from the truck. They had left the clouds behind almost an hour ago. Although there was nearly a full moon, it was dark in the canyon. The walls, several hundred feet to the left and right, were simply black, an absence of stars and moonlight. The way ahead was illuminated by the headlights but that wasn’t far.
Her vision had been brief–dreamlike in its intensity but also in its lack of details.
“No,” she said but then a dim shape outlined by stars appeared in the distance, off to the right, in the canyon itself. “No, I mean yes.”
She watched as it rose up toward the sky, growing taller by the second.
“We’re here,” Dale said.
“That’s it!” Livvy exclaimed.
Dale shut off the engine and headlights. SK was already out of the truck but he waited for Livvy. He took her hand as she slid out. All eyes were drawn up to the impossible spire in front of them.
“Spider Rock,” said Dale into the silence.
Like a needle of rock, the dark form shot straight up from the valley floor several hundred feet, nearly level with the surrounding plateau. Its dark form was side lit with moonlight and its top blotted out the brilliant stars in the sky.
“No wonder you knew what Liv had seen,” said SK. “Pretty distinctive.”
“Yeah,” said Dale. “Kinda makes sense too.”
It makes sense? Livvy thought.
She cocked her head at Dale but realized both he and SK were waiting for her.
“Right,” she said. “The vision.”
She closed her eyes and tried to remember. This was definitely the landmark she’d seen but, now that she was here, she realized she’d never actually seen who had the tablet. She opened her eyes and scanned the dark surroundings. In the geological scheme of things, they were among steep and narrow canyons. But even a narrow canyon was too much to search on foot. If the giant spire of rock was her only clue, it might take them weeks, not hours, of searching to find the tablet. She looked up to the tip of the rock, which seemed to lean toward her, a trick of perspective. Suddenly, she realized it wasn’t the right viewpoint.
She let go of SK’s hand and approached the base. The incline of loose rock and dirt must have accumulated over the centuries. Her shoes crunched over the debris as she circled to the right. Still gazing upward, she sidestepped the sparse vegetation that dotted the ground. The point of rock wasn’t symmetric. In fact, it was two spires, connected one behind the other. The one spire behind was considerably shorter and, now that she’d come around to the side, she could see that the back one was connected to another rising outcrop of rock behind it. She wouldn’t be able to circle behind it but–she stopped. She wouldn’t have to.
This was the right angle but still the wrong perspective. She hadn’t seen this place from below. She turned around and looked up. In the vision, she’d seen it from eye level.
“It won’t be down here,” she said, pointing up.
“You’re kidding,” said Dale as he turned to see where she was pointing.
“No,” Livvy replied. “Why?”
“Because there’s a better road up on the canyon rim,” he said. “We could have just taken that if you didn’t actually want to be at Spider Rock.”
Livvy looked up at the rim. She was a terrible judge of heights.
“Can you see the spires at eye level from there?” she asked.
Dale thought about that before answering. “No, you can’t. You look down on the spires from the rim.”
For a moment, Livvy was relieved.
“We’ll either have to hike up from here or down from the rim to be at eye level.”
“Great,” Livvy muttered.
Hiking and cliffs.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
LEON GRAPPLED WITH the dancer for several seconds before he realized he was looking at a human face, but not one he recognized. This was not a Hopi dancer. He was white and wearing a black, knit, ski cap.
“Who are–”
Though they were both still on their knees, the man punched him squarely in the jaw, snapping Leon’s head sideways. Surprised more than hurt, Leon let him go. The dancer scampered to his feet and lurched toward a dark alley.
Leon heard the kachina mask tumbling along the ground behind him. He turned to see it roll into the center of the plaza and come to a stop. The great black star of the face seemed to turn and look at him before it came to rest face down.
A small child appeared on the other side of the plaza and ran toward it.
Leon got to his feet and became aware of yelling.
“No!” implored a woman.
“Don’t let him touch it,” yelled a man.
Leon realized it was the child’s parents who were yelling. But they were too late.
The young boy quickly latched onto the mask with both hands but couldn’t quite lift the weight. Instead, he only succe
eded in rolling it toward Leon. Leon snatched it up and turned his back to the boy.
“Let me see!” the boy said as he jumped, reaching his hands toward it, but Leon kept spinning away.
Finally, his mother scooped the boy up and glared at Leon.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said accusingly.
“No, it wasn’t me,” he said. He cradled the mask, trying futilely to hide it.
People ringed the plaza now. Some of them herded their kids away while others stood watching.
“It was him!” Leon yelled, pointing to the alley.
Several of the adults started to turn away.
“No,” Leon yelled, angry now. “I’m not clowning. There was a guy who was dancing. I didn’t recognize him.”
The remaining few people only shook their heads. Darkness returned to the plaza as curtains dropped and doors closed.
“No,” he started again and realized there was no point.
He looked down at the mask in his hands, the great black eye glaring at him. Panic rose as he realized what had just happened–he had helped to fulfill the prophecy. The Blue Star Kachina had removed its mask in front of an uninitiated child.
He whirled toward the alley. He wouldn’t be blamed. It hadn’t been his fault. But whose fault was it?
Leon charged into the alley but he knew within moments he’d made a mistake. The remaining light only penetrated a short distance and he couldn’t see a thing. As he came to a halt and stared into the darkness, he heard something behind him. He spun around.
In the feeble light from the plaza, he could only see one thing–a large silver blade sweeping toward him.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
DALE STOPPED SO suddenly that Livvy collided with his back.
They had gone about halfway across the canyon floor in the growing darkness. As the moon continued its westward motion, it had gone beyond the far canyon wall, which now cast an inky black shadow. Dale had been using his cell phone for light, closing and opening it each time the screen went dark. Now it was off and he just stood there.
Olivia Lawson Techno-Shaman Books 1 -3 Page 74
