One

Maicoh

When the gods close their eyes, the instant is unmistakable.

My heart suddenly thunders.

I cross my arms over my chest and sag against the towering canyon wall, struggling to stay upright.

The night sky is blacker than black, scattered with the blazing footprints of the dead.

Magnificent red sandstone cliffs border this valley. Two thousand hand-lengths tall, they loom high above me. In my blurring vision, the gigantic rock pillars on the rim appear to sway back and forth, moving like a parade of monstrously deformed animals and people left from the Beginning Time.

I can’t stop it. The cascade in my souls begins …

The firelit village suddenly breathes, exhaling scents of food and sweating bodies, carrying the shrill music of drums and bone whistles that drifts from the crowded village plaza this autumn evening.

I force myself to focus on the chocolate-brown curve of the river that slithers snakelike through the scraggly cornfields and around the thirty pithouses that comprise OwlClaw Village. Partially subterranean and covered with a thick layer of earth, the pithouses are low humps, like giant anthills, scattered across the river terrace. Tonight, people lean against the sloping roofs to talk while they watch the festivities of the harvest ceremony. Ladders protrude from the centers of the roofs, allowing people to enter or exit the dwellings and smoke from the fires inside to escape.

Dogs run by.

Each moment is urgent now. I’m falling …

A woman laughs, and I see her step off a ladder onto a pithouse roof. Wreathed in firelight, she stands for a moment and looks around the village. She wears a gorgeous red cape made from the finest scarlet macaw feathers and carries a sprig of evergreen. Evergreens do not die in the winter, and every shaman predicts this will be a hard one. As she walks away, she holds one hand on her belly, and I think maybe she’s pregnant. Hard to tell with her cape. The wavering light of torches, carried by the dancers, flashes through her black hair. I stare for just an instant. Even less. But it’s too long.

The canyon wall tilts. The path heaves. The gods shove my souls into thin air.

Gasping, my body eats air as if it can’t get enough. So, in the beginning, there’s no fear. Just the lightheaded sensation of tumbling through a vast abyss inside my own body.

My mind tries to make sense of it. One thought keeps repeating: My heart. What’s wrong with my heart?

All my life, my heartbeat has been the one friend that’s never left me. It’s always there, reminding me that I’m alive and can keep going through the masquerade of my daily routine. But now it has stopped. While I’m waiting to hit bottom, I’m not alive. Blood no longer pulses in my veins, which means the night is getting really cold, and the rigidity seeping through my flesh seems to be accelerated. As the moments fly by, my stringy old muscles gradually turn to stone. When the paralysis is complete, even my eyes will be fixed in their sockets.

I stare at the children standing around the edges of the plaza. Their mouths hang open. The Deer Chief—beautifully dressed in white buckskin, with branching antlers mounted on his head—dances his way past them, as he retreats back to the underworld from which he came. His sacred gyrations have lent strength to Father Sun, so he may survive his long journey through the cold winter to come. Behind the Deer Chief, the six Horn priests dance, stamping their feet to shake the rattles on their legs. They move in single file, forming a stunning, magical procession of phantasmal figures pounding their way along the cosmic path that leads into the deepest past of our People.

Such a dark, dark night. The feeble gleam cast by the slowly dying ritual fires can’t hold it back.

Why am I still here? Curiosity fills me. When I look down I can see my tall emaciated body—worn down to the bones by the ravages of time and truth—that resembles a painter’s sketch drawn on my buckskin clothing, shades of gray, a little hazy around the edges, arms locked across the chest. One of my legs is straight, the other bent slightly at the knee. The Falling hasn’t erased me yet. But it will. Makes no difference that my body stubbornly insists it’s still here in this world. I feel it seeping outside through the cracks in the light, trailing along the laughter and whistles of panpipes, sailing away on a red cape.

It always takes so long. The moments stretch. Be still. Let it happen.

When the bottom rises up, there will be a jolt, a bizarre aftershock, and my heartbeat will start again. But for now, my lungs are struggling. As though I’m underwater, my vision goes opaque. I must inhabit my death or this will never be over.

What surprises me is the power of my disbelief. I died the first time when I was twelve, but part of my brain still refuses to accept the truth. Not again, it says. I’m stronger than this. But as the protection of my body grows increasingly unreliable, my hold on humanity becomes as tenuous as a ghost’s.

Then it appears.

There, at the corner of my eye, the blaze flickers to life, and I faintly hear her deep voice. It’s tiny now, barely a whisper of flames. She is on a holy crusade. A fight to the death against horrific evil.

Don’t reach for it.

For the past week, her voice has been growing louder, so I’ve felt this coming, but arrival is always a luminous moment of revelation. I tuck my fists into my armpits and hug myself hard, trying not to listen to the faint words slipping from the blazing soul pot I carry in the sacred bundle tied to my belt.

With one hand against the canyon wall, I stagger down the dirt path that parallels the rugged sandstone cliff. I’m riding the lightning bolt now, zigzagging my way into the heart of the big explosion on the mountaintop. Much depends on what I see in the next few moments, or days. There is no telling how long this will take. Maybe I’ll be all right, and no one will die. At any point, the hunt could be sabotaged. Perhaps a man steps out of a pithouse at the wrong time or a child suddenly looks up at me, and I must walk by.

Except for her ghostly whisper and the erratic shuffles of my footsteps on the dirt, there is no sound. This is how it goes: She calls my name. My feet walk, and the world outside perishes in the onslaught of transformation. Dark shapes flash by in utter silence. I see them, but they do not seem to see me. Perhaps I’ve become invisible. I’ve often wondered.

As the instants pass, I force myself to go through the motions of the awakening that will come. Feel for a hold on the wall, clutch a crevice, and hang on tight. Maybe tonight I will simply walk away. But the flame of her voice … As it grows brighter, the world turns teeth-chatteringly cold. Finally, I can’t stop myself. I must reach out for her faint words. When I find them, they are shouts, and light explodes inside me, streaming up to shatter against the roof of my skull, then trickle down inside my head in brilliant rivulets, bathing my thoughts in frosty inhuman splendor.

My body slides down the canyon wall to sit on the ground, and I topple to my side, jerking like a clubbed rabbit.

A strange tranquility comes over me, smoothing out the edges, softening the horror. Is that what I really want? Just to die? To have this over with once and for all? No more struggling to decide if what she tells me is right or wrong. Besides … I deserve to die. My inadequacies, my crimes, are legion. The gods should not have let me live this long.

My body jolts, and my heart slams against my ribs. The hazy village goes quiet and still. People freeze in midstride, arms akimbo, heads tilted slightly to the left or right, mouths open. Their firelit faces seem carved of pale amber ice.

I try to stand up, to flee, but my legs are too weak to hold me up. I’m afraid. Always terribly afraid. Settle into the cradle and let it rock you until you fly apart. Don’t want to. I’m still quivering as the yawning blackness rushes toward me, and the dark night of the soul descends.

I hear quick steps approach. His cotton kirtle rustles. The long pole he holds before him is an elegant artifact, the legacy of his most ancient ancestors. It’s been polished with sunflower oil and shines like a sliver of firelight. A ceremonial fox skin and a bunch of hummingbird feathers dangle from the top of the pole: the crest of a dead war god who long ago marched upon villages far to the south.

Shaken, I manage to say, “I—I saw BoneDust. D-Did you?”

At this point, he is a dispassionate presence, unobtrusive and totally uninterested in the outcome of this struggle. I’m fighting for my life, and he stands by as a silent witness, fulfilling an ancient duty to gods I no longer believe in.

“Yes, I saw her. She’s finally alone, walking down the river trail. Slide your arm across my shoulders. We have to go find her now. Hurry!”