Boy, a splash of color in her fawn dress and scarlet headband, stepped lightly across the earthen floor of the cave. We followed her, our tread heavy. The snake on my chest writhed, going in for the kill. Fear rose from my belly to meet it. What were we doing here? On a quest for some legendary tablet that we only knew of through rumor. A foolhardy mission led by Cyril Baker, a crazed man who was now dead. A dark foreboding hung over me. The “Glittering World,” the “Earth Surface World,” felt very far away. We were trapped here in the realm of shadow.
The shaman was waiting, along with Isaac and Waldo. His grotesque mask glowered at us in livid reds and blues. In the sweat hut I had asked Boy about the mask, and she’d said it was called a kachina. When he placed it on his head, a man became the supernatural spirit carved on the mask. Kachinas control the living—birds, beasts and humans—and can bring rain or sun. They were savage gods, it seemed to me.
Walking through the gloom, I realized that what I had thought of as a cave was actually a natural drainage ditch. I could see a tiny patch of sky a mile above us. A glimpse of louring clouds. This cleft in the canyon had been caused by water pouring from the world above for time immemorial. I put out a hand to steady myself as, bending down, I followed Boy and the kachina.
Abruptly, as the sky far above our heads closed over into rock, we were plunged into darkness. My hand gripped the side of the tunnel, finding chill slimy stones, water-slick. Something clamped over my mouth and an iron grip took my other hand.
I tried to scream, but my voice was cut off by the leathery glove prodding into my mouth. My hands were tied, swiftly, before I had the chance to fight. I heard a shrill wail—Rachel. Then the sound of cursing—Waldo. Both of these noises were gone as quickly as they started, and in the damp silence I could only hear scuffling.
Something pushed me from behind and I stumbled onward, almost falling into a large cavern. It was filled with watery light from far, far above. Too weak to dispel the gloom. Much stronger were the brands that flamed from pockets in the rock.
Rachel was flung down on the stony floor after me, then Waldo, Isaac, Aunt Hilda and Boy. All of them had their hands tied and were being shepherded by grotesque masked kachinas.
It was a nightmarish vision, the cavern rising like a gothic cathedral in a pointed star-shaped spire. Down on the floor, and in the rocky ledges to the sides, dozens of robed, feathered figures flitted. They leered at us, their gaudy faces covered with turquoise, yellow and orange masks. From the depths of the cavern a great drumming and chanting started up, and they began to dance.
In the blinking light of the flaming torches, I could distinguish a cavorting figure. Kokopelli, the humpbacked flute player, beloved of the ancient canyon dwellers. A sinister mud head, lumpish and coarse-featured, like a figure from a dream drawn by a four-year-old. A clown with huge, red, rubbery lips and sad black-rimmed eyes, half pathetic, half sinister.
One dancer, garbed in moccasins and a buckskin kilt, his body daubed with paint and adorned with beads and feathers, had a head shaped like a bluebottle. Black eyeholes were cut in his mask.
“Be calm,” said Boy, who was on her knees on the floor next to me, her hands bound behind her back. “They will release us once they are sure we are pure.”
In the center of the space a ledge of rock rose like an altar. It was made of dark, shiny basalt. It bore something propped upon a stand. It was hard to make out from this distance, but it looked to be of pink-veined marble, with figures that reminded me of Egyptian hieroglyphs inscribed on it.
“The tablet,” I said to Boy, while one of our captors poked me forward. “Boy—that must be it. The Anasazi tablet.”
Wonder surged in me as I looked upon the thing. A slab of dull marble, not gold, not precious. But a thing of legend that for centuries people had fought and died over. A sacred object imbued with powers that were only talked of in hushed voices.
Aunt Hilda was staring at it, hunger on her face. I knew she would have given up any number of diamonds to possess this tablet. To return home to Oxford in triumph with this legendary stone, which the Indians claimed had been handed to them by their god.
She was not totally thoughtless, but at that moment she had forgotten that the tablet might actually cure me. All she saw was a picture of her everlasting fame as its discoverer.
“The Anasazi tablet,” she murmured in a trance. “Boy, where is your master? We must be released. Where is Far-Seeing Man?”
“Far-Seeing Man is not coming back,” a voice behind us said.
The clown stepped out of the shadows, his rubbery face breaking into a smile.
“Far-Seeing Man is gone,” he said.
“What have you done to him?” Boy called, and the clown opened his mouth wide in a jangling laugh that echoed through the cavern.
“He is dead. Quite, quite dead. Your shaman is dead. Nah Kay Yen, the great far-seer, didn’t see that, did he?”