Thirty

Tsilu

We camp far from the trails, on the crest of a knife ridge that barely stretches twenty hands across. It’s more easily defended. Anyone who wants to attack us will have to climb the ridge’s steep rocky slopes. We will hear them long before they arrive and can flee. The ridge overlooks two valleys, one to the east and one to the west. As I stand gazing down, trying to guess how far it is to the valley bottoms—four hundred hands?—the last rays of the sun turn the snow on the distant mountain peaks fiery orange. Behind me, I hear Crane going about his evening duties, making the fire, getting the tripod set up to boil the ruff-legged grouse he shot just before sunset.

“Tsilu? Please come over here. Let’s talk about today.”

I don’t turn. A hollow floating sensation fills my head. Kwinsi is gone and I still can’t believe it. The disbelief is so strong, I keep looking for him. Down the slope in the fragrant pines. Did I just glimpse his cape between the trees? In the valley bottoms along the creeks. Is that black dot moving? Wishful thinking. I buried him and Sang his breath-heart soul to the afterlife. By now he must be in the middle of the Star Road, walking toward the Land of the Dead. It takes ten days to get there. When the first footprints of the dead blaze to life in the evening sky, I search for him. Are those new footprints, just being laid down? Is that Kwinsi walking above me? Tears burn my eyes.

“Tsilu?”

I walk to the fire.

Crane watches me as he arranges the legs of the tripod near the flames. I don’t see the plucked grouse. He must have already cut it up and placed it in the large pot hanging from the tripod. Two wooden cups and a small teapot filled with water rest on the ground in front of him. “I thought I’d make yucca blossom tea for supper. Is that acceptable?”

Slipping Kwinsi’s pack from my shoulders, I gently rest it on the ground before I kneel in front of the fire. “I like yucca blossom tea.”

He gives me a concerned look. “All right.”

Tugging open the laces of his pack, he draws out a small yellow bag, shakes dried blossoms into the pot, then pushes the pot into the coals at the edge of the fire to heat.

“How are you feeling?”

I shake my head.

Crane sits down cross-legged, pulls Kwinsi’s bow and quiver close, then scans the growing darkness.

“Tsilu, I’m brokenhearted about Kwinsi.”

Flames crackle through the branches of sagebrush, and the savory scent blankets the camp.

I take a deep breath, then gesture to his injured face. Tiny holes, filled with congealed blood, cover his cheeks. “How did he hurt you?”

“Crosswind uses a blow gun—a hollow reed—when his enemy is standing close enough. I was angry. I let emotion overwhelm my good sense. I’ve seen him use it before. I knew better.”

“What’s in the blow gun?”

He reaches up to touch his face and flinches. “Hundreds of splinters of obsidian fly from the reed and pierce his victim’s face. The miracle is that I’m not blind. That was his goal. If he can blind his victims, even for an instant, he can kill them.”

I’m afraid to ask. After all, the old witch said he could bring the dead to life. “Is he dead? Truly? I’m still afraid that he’s sneaking up—”

“He can’t come after you, Tsilu. He’s absolutely dead. Thank the gods.”

The breeze gusts and the boiling pot bangs against the legs of the tripod. We both watch it rock.

“If you were Maicoh”—despite what he says, I’m still not certain he isn’t—“it would add to your reputation, wouldn’t it? That you could kill Crosswind, one of the greatest witches ever?”

“I’m sure it would, but I am not Maicoh. Don’t you see? Crosswind was testing you, hoping you knew the answer to a question that has plagued him for decades. The true identity of Maicoh.”

I twist my cold hands in my lap. “Was everything he told me a lie?”

“What else did he tell you?”

I’m watching his expression closely as I say, “He told me I’d been dead for two days when Maicoh carried me to the Sleeping Place and Grandfather brought me back to life.”

The look in his dark eyes is unreadable. “I’ve heard stories of Tocho bringing the dead back to life. But I’ve never seen it. Have you?”

“No. But I know people in OwlClaw Village—knew people—who had seen it.”

Against a background of charcoal-colored clouds, nighthawks soar and dive, their wings whirring through the air above us.

Crane tosses another sage branch on the fire, then asks, “You were going to give him the fetish, weren’t you?”

“Oh, yes.” Tears tighten my throat. “I would have done anything to have Kwinsi back.”

The wrinkles across his brow deepen. “If you’d given it to him, he would have become the most powerful man in the world. Leather Hand would have been his pawn, forced to do Crosswind’s bidding, no matter how terrible. Entire villages would have ceased to exist for the slightest insult.”

“That already happens.”

The wind gusts and flames leap though the branches, wafting the scent of autumn pines again.

“Yes, it does. But imagine a world where Crosswind and Leather Hand were working together? Both evil and deranged. It would have been much, much worse.”

“I wanted my friend back.” Even now, when I think about it, I know that if I’d had more time, I would have given Crosswind the fetish and run to dig up Kwinsi so he could rise and smile at me.

“I know you did, Tsilu. I’m so sorry.”

Profound sorrow overwhelms me. Everything sways—smoke, trees, flames. The loneliness is wrenching. “Is Leather Hand your pawn now? You have the fetish.”

“Gods, no,” he says with a violent shake of his head. “It gives me leverage with him. It does. I’m sure Leather Hand is desperate to have it back. But I don’t know how to control souls, whether they’re locked in pots or fetishes.”

I use my hand to wipe the tears off my cheeks and try not to think about the fetish or Kwinsi, or what the future holds for me. Just now, I feel like my breath-heart soul has been whittled down to a splinter of bottomless despair.

“Can you help me understand the other things the witch said to me?”

“I’ll try.” His voice is soft. He sounds worried.

“He made me see memories. Flashes of memories.”

“What memories?”

Pain laces through me when I see them again, flowing behind my eyes. “My mother, naked, her clothes torn off. And shapes, dark shapes of warriors move at the edges of the vision. Then someone clutches my hand in a rock-hard grip and drags me toward a burning pithouse. I’m screaming. At least I think it’s me.”

A swallow bobs in Crane’s throat. “What else?”

His expression—the lines around his eyes—is suddenly familiar, from when I was a baby and my mother and father were alive. But that can’t be right.

“I see … no. I feel a man rocking me in his arms, singing me a lullaby. His voice is deep and beautiful. I think I’m dead. I can’t see him, but I know he’s crying. Warm tears fall on my cold cheeks.”

Crane looks stricken. “I didn’t … I—I…” He pauses to take a deep breath. “Your father’s heart must have been breaking. He loved you very much.”

As though he can’t bear to hear any more, Crane rises and quietly walks to his pack to begin laying out his bedding for the night. He unrolls his blanket and spreads it over the ground, then kneels and draws out the first small pair of moccasins. It’s tiny and painted on the bottoms. Spirit moccasins. Babies cannot walk to the afterlife, but they need moccasins to keep their feet warm while they wait to be reborn into this world. Why weren’t they on the baby’s feet when it was buried?

My eyes narrow. “Do you know anything about my memories? You look like you do.”

He touches the moccasins to his lips before he places them to the west, just above where his head will rest for the night. “Some. I’ve never pried—”

“Is Maicoh my father?”

Crane slowly sinks down atop his blanket, as though his knees have gone weak, and tugs his pack into his lap. “You should ask your grandfather these questions. I’m not—”

“He’s not here. You are. Do you know?”

“Tsilu…”

When he says nothing more, I scratch at a stain on my leggings. A grease stain. I need to avoid his tormented eyes for a while. “If you don’t know, or don’t want to tell me, it’s all right. I understand.”

Crane reaches over and gently lifts my chin with a long bony hand, so he can look into my eyes. “What I’m about to tell you will put you in grave danger. I’m sure that Tocho would never approve—”

“Is Maicoh my father?”

He exhales the words. “Yes, he is.”

This is such strange news, I’m not sure I believe him. “How do you know?”

The silence weighs on my chest like a fallen mountain.

“He’s my son.”