Wikvaya found the sand painting a morning’s walk from the wash.
The sun hung high in the sky, strong and hot, and the Almighty had made it a good growing season so far. The villagers’ prayers and offerings had not gone unheard by Rain Cloud, and the seasonal rains had been regular and steady, occasionally overly generous and swelling the wash so that the water rose and the wind sang through the entrance and across its liquid surface. Because of this, the People had named this place Aponovi, the wind that blows across the gap. But all of that could change so quickly. And it would, if Wikvaya did not get back in time to warn the other spirit warriors.
He stared at the sand painting, unable to resist watching it shimmy and shift. The unseen hand wielding the colors was expert, the lines precise and myriad. Never in his twenty-two summers had he seen such complexity and beauty. The combination of textures and the odd, dark hues were mesmerizing, pulling him closer because he couldn’t wait to see where the lines would go next. Was there a sound? Was it whispering to him, enticing him to reach down and try adding a line or two of his own to the pattern, something to bring it closer to completion? Another step—
Something screeched over his head and Wikvaya jerked, looking up. The wind had risen and an eagle, perhaps the largest one he’d ever seen, perched on the swaying branch of the old and battered acacia tree that overhung the ground where the sand painting was taking shape. The eagle’s golden eyes seared into his and Wikvaya realized he was shivering, so cold that he felt like he’d been standing for hours in the snow. He was supposed to be running back to Oraibi, his village, to warn them of the sand painting. What had he been doing? How long had he been standing here? With horror Wikvaya realized the sun had sunk halfway to the horizon. It was the painting on the ground, of course; it had robbed him of precious time as surely as if it had formed hands and held him in place. Even now its surface squirmed and re-formed, beckoning, but Wikvaya forced himself to turn away. He would not let himself be bewitched again.
“Thank you, Kwahu,” he murmured to the eagle. It merely watched him with unblinking eyes. Its silent disapproval weighed on his shoulders like boulders, but Wikvaya did not know how to make amends for his foolishness. All he could do was turn his back on the sand painting and begin the long run back to Oraibi.
His strength and youth carried him well, and even though he’d run the entire way, fear made Wikvaya arrive at the village with energy to spare. His brothers were waiting in the family pueblo, and Wikvaya could see the irritation in their expressions. He was supposed to have been here hours ago to help weave his future bride’s wedding clothes.
“Where have you been?” Cheveyo, his eldest brother, was sitting next to their father and the youngest boy, Hania. It was clear that they’d been working on Cha’kwaina’s wedding clothes for quite some time. He and Cha’kwaina were to be married in five days, and tradition dictated that the males of his family would all help weave her attire. Wikvaya should have been here earlier in the day to do his part, but things would be altered a great deal from the plans that had already been set. A lot of people would be unhappy, most of all his bride-to-be, but that could not be helped. “Cha’kwaina will be here at sunrise to grind corn,” her father told him. “Your mother is looking forward to her help and to making sure she will be a good wife for you.”
His thoughts spun and for a moment Wikvaya said nothing. Was he absolutely sure about what he had seen? It all seemed so far away now, and there was a part of his mind, a small, insidious voice, that insisted the sand painting had been nothing but his imagination, the result of too much time spent beneath the high desert sun and too little water. There was so much to do in the coming days—
No . . . it had been true. Nothing else could explain the hours he had lost or the painful redness on his shoulders where the sun’s rays had scorched his unmoving skin. “I bring news,” Wikvaya said hoarsely. “I have seen the gate of evil.”
The other men stopped their weaving and looked at him, their eyes wide. Honaw, his father, set aside his work, then stood. His movements were slow and ponderous, much like those of his aged namesake, the bear. “Tell us.”
“It is as the stories have always foretold.” Wikvaya chose his words carefully. “An image in the sand that forms by itself, created by something unseen.”
“Perhaps it was the wind,” Cheveyo said. “You were gone for most of the day. The sun can play tricks on a man.”
“It can,” Wikvaya agreed. “But it was the image—a sand painting—that spirited away the hours. It . . . called to me, and I wanted to help complete it.” At his father’s look of alarm, Wikvaya added hastily, “But I did not touch it.”
“Are you certain?”
Wikvaya turned to stare at Hania. “What do you mean?”
“You admit that the sand painting stole many hours from you. What did you do during that time? Do you recall?”
“I . . .” Wikvaya could not finish. Instead, he looked at his hands, but the flesh seemed unchanged and told him nothing.
“As I thought.” Hania settled back, Cha’kwaina’s wedding clothes forgotten. “We must ready ourselves for battle. According to the dark prophecy, we must be strong and stop the gate to the Underworld before it can open.”
“In case we are too late, the village must be rendered sightless,” Wikvaya added. “Legend says that any beast that comes through cannot harm those who cannot see it. Those who see it, fear it, and the creature’s power comes from fear. So—”
“—only the spirit warriors may have vision,” Cheveyo completed.
“Yes,” Honaw said. “Only the four of us.”
Cha’kwaina had just finished gathering her things for her three-day stay at the home of Wikvaya’s family when she heard shouting outside. Grandmother Chochmingwu, ancient and becoming hard of hearing at fifty-seven summers, was bent over her grindstone, and the old woman looked up only when Cha’kwaina touched her on the shoulder. “Something is happening outside,” she said in a near shout. “Everyone’s running around.” Reluctantly the elderly matriarch pushed herself to her feet and followed Cha’kwaina to the doorway, leaning heavily on a twisted mesquite cane. Not for the first time, Cha’kwaina was silently amazed that one so old and frail could be so revered in the village, so powerful. Chochmingwu’s daughter—Cha’kwaina’s mother—had died birthing her second child, a son, so someday Grandmother Chochmingwu’s position as village matriarch would pass to her granddaughter. As it always did, the prospect brought a roll of anxiety deep into Cha’kwaina’s belly. How would she deal with such huge responsibility? How would she lead?
Their adobe was a full level up from the common area, and while Cha’kwaina scurried easily down the ladder, her grandmother waited by the doorway, watching the activity; while her hearing was slipping away, there was little wrong with her eyesight and nothing at all amiss with her perception. Even though she went down to find out what the excitement was all about, Cha’kwaina found herself glancing upward to check her grandmother’s reactions.
“What’s going on?” Cha’kwaina called out as girls she knew ran past. Everyone seemed to be abandoning their chores and heading back to their adobes. “What’s happening?”
But no one took the time to stop and answer. Finally, Cha’kwaina spotted Wikvaya and his brothers at the far end of the plaza. They were huddled together with their father like a bunch of old men trading stories about a bygone hunt. Shouldn’t they be working on her wedding attire? In five days she and Wikvaya would be married and he would join her grandmother’s household, turning his attention and energy during the day to supporting her family’s cornfields. If the great spirits looked on them with favor, the nights would work to ensure that they had babies of their own in the coming years.
Tired of trying to figure it out, Cha’kwaina strode to the men and touched her groom on the shoulder. He spun in surprise, his eyes unaccountably wild, and she almost back-stepped. “Wikvaya,” she said. “What is all the excitement about? No one will say.”
Instead of answering, he took her by the elbow and started guiding her back the way she’d come. “You must go home,” he said urgently. “You and your family must stay inside, and you must cover your eyes with fabric or skins—”
“What!”
“The whole village must do this,” Wikvaya continued. “Haven’t you noticed? People have already started, and there’s no time to waste. No one can remove the eye bindings until the spirit warriors tell the elders that it’s safe.”
Cha’kwaina pulled against Wikvaya’s hand, slowing him. “Spirit warriors? What has happened that we need those?”
“The warnings that my grandfather’s grandfather gave us have come true,” Wikvaya told her. His solemn face was covered in fine desert dust, there were worry bags beneath his eyes, and his mouth was drawn into a hard grimace. He looked as though ten summers had passed since she’d seen him just yesterday. “I have found one of the gateways of which he spoke. The town must be rendered sightless until the opening is destroyed.”
“What?” Cha’kwaina repeated in confusion. “That makes no sense, not in real life. Those are just big stories told by old men breathing smoke fire down in the kivas. If there really is a gateway, and if something comes through, blinding ourselves is the worst thing to do—we won’t be able to see it, to run or fight.”
Wikvaya shook his head. “No, the tales are true. The ancestors testify that this has happened before, many times since the First People. If the gateway is not closed, a terrible creature will come through and destroy the world with fire just as Sóyuknang destroyed Tokpela, the First World. But this time, there will be no place for the People to hide, and we will all perish.”
Cha’kwaina stared at him. “But who among us can defeat a creature with that kind of power?”
“As has been written, the four spirit warriors,” Wikvaya told her. “The legends command that if a person cannot see it, the creature cannot see the person. It cannot harm what it can’t see. Only the spirit warriors may remain sighted in order to battle and kill it.”
Cha’kwaina took a step back. “The spirit warriors—you mean you? Your brothers and father? You can’t be serious.”
He scowled at her. “What makes you so doubtful? These are the ways of the People. We have always known this.”
“The ways of the Old People,” she said firmly. “I am nineteen summers and have never seen any gateway. It is a story invented by the elders to frighten children into behaving, just like the kachinas, when they come in costume, dance, and then hit the boys with sticks. The People have always been safe in the past, and they always will be.”
“Safety is not something to be taken for granted,” Wikvaya argued. “It is something to be watched over, and sometimes you must fight to keep it.”
“Times have changed, and it is silly to let ourselves be frightened by ancient, irrational myths. There is nothing here that threatens us,” Cha’kwaina snapped. Her face darkened as a thought slipped into her mind. “Perhaps you have reconsidered our marriage and this is nothing but a means by which to ensure that the wedding does not take place.”
Wikvaya’s mouth fell open. “I have done no such thing. No one would be so reckless as to do something so involved just for that. Our wedding will take place after the gateway is closed.”
“But—”
“And so it shall be,” a gravelly voice interrupted her. Cha’kwaina spun and saw her grandmother standing behind her. She had no idea how the old woman had climbed down the ladder. “Come. We return to our home now. We darken our eyes as instructed, and we do not come out until the spirit warriors say it is safe.”
Cha’kwaina started to say something but Grandmother Chochmingwu held up a weathered hand. “This is not a request,” she said. “You will do as you are told.”
And because she could do nothing else, Cha’kwaina bowed her head and sullenly followed her grandmother back to their adobe.
“We are too late.”
Wikvaya stared at the ground while the others crowded around, their expressions as horrified as his own. The sand painting was still there, but it had divided in and upon itself into dozens of pieces, all different shapes and sizes; the result was something huge, a visual cacophony shot through with streaks the color of dead deer’s blood. Wikvaya realized that it hurt to look at it—it felt as though his eyes were being pierced by the spray from a hundred boiling pots. When they slapped at their eyes, he knew that his father and brothers felt the same. Hot tears streamed down his cheeks, but Wikvaya would not look away, would not allow himself the comfort of diversion. When the torment quickly passed, he couldn’t help but wonder if what they’d felt had been real or ancient memory, an instinctive response built upon the experience of those who had come before. For, as the legend decreed, if they could see, so could whatever beast had passed through the gateway from the dark world beyond it.
“There.” Honaw pointed. “Just beneath the edge of the rock. The beast leaves us a trail.”
“Or bait,” Cheveyo said. “Knowing that we will follow—”
“—because we must,” Wikvaya finished. To his father, he asked, “What do you see?”
“The shadow of rotting blood,” his father said in a low voice. “Of death and evil, and the agony that will come if this creature is not driven back to its origins or killed.”
Something snapped in the dry summer grasses behind him and Wikvaya whirled, his spear ready. But there was nothing . . . he thought. No, he hadn’t imagined it. His brothers were standing in a crouch to either side of their father, bows drawn, their faces ashen with tension.
“We must hurry,” Hania said. “If the beast should reach Oraibi . . .”
“They will be safe,” Cheveyo said. “They have been blinded. They have been warned.”
Wikvaya nodded and fell in step behind his father as the old hunter followed the traces left by the unspeakable creature, thin trails of sand that carried traces of black and red. Everything it had touched was desiccated, all moisture and life sucked away until nothing remained but twigs and powdery dust that might have once been leaves or small desert creatures. The generous rain this season had spotted the earth with bushes and tufts of bright green grasses, creosote and weeds; the acacia and mesquite trees were thick with leaves, while the cacti were plump with moisture and fragrant blooms over which bees and other insects challenged one another for the best position. But cutting through it all was the path that he and the others followed, a trail that reeked of decay and seemed to widen as it went along.
What this demon could do to the People was unspeakable, but Cheveyo was right—everyone had been warned. The plaza had been nearly empty by the time they had left, with only a few latecomers rushing to put their most necessary items where they could be found without eyesight.
All Wikvaya could do was head back to Oraibi and hope with all his spirit that those who waited could be patient and strong.
Cha’kwaina sat with her back against the wall and listened to the wind slipping past the windows on its way through the rest of the pueblo. It had intensified and was spinning dirt and pebbles against the walls, occasionally pushing grit through the small openings and into the room where she and Grandmother Chochmingwu waited. The gusts made a noise that shifted between a thin wail and a moan, and the air felt heavier and uncomfortably hotter than normal, more oppressive with each thud of her heartbeat. She wished the wind would stop and that things would just go back to normal, that they would be rid of this nonsensical tale of legends and monsters and gateways to a dark spirit world that no one had ever seen.
The old woman was calm and silent and Cha’kwaina was too angry to make conversation. How long would they have to wait like this, with scraps of woven fabric knotted around their heads? It was a waste of time—she should be at her future mother-in-law’s right now, preparing to show the woman how well she could grind corn and perform a wife’s duties for Wikvaya. And what was he doing, her future husband? Out playing warrior with his father and brothers, perhaps painted to look like kachinas or striped like the Koshares, the black-and white-striped clowns that represented little more than gluttony and crudities. As angry as she was about the postponement of her wedding, Cha’kwaina knew that involving the entire pueblo in nothing more than an effort to procrastinate was unlikely, but was the whole village really in on this? Grandmother Chochmingwu had ordered her back to the adobe and they had moved so quickly that Cha’kwaina had been able to speak with no one.
Perhaps something else entirely was going on, something other than the ridiculous tale of gateways and demons that Wikvaya had related. It could be nothing more dire than a desert windstorm, and her fiancé was using it as a joke, some sort of premarital prank to elevate himself in the eyes of his brothers and his friends. If that were true, how would she and Grandmother Chochmingwu know, sitting here as they were, blindfolded and separated from those who inhabited the rest of the village?
Moving very carefully so that her grandmother would not hear, Cha’kwaina reached behind her head and untied the knot that held her blindfold in place.
Although it was a more difficult trek, they circled around and came down the ridge behind the pueblo, pushing themselves to travel faster than they normally would have dared. The path was there, but it was strewn with loose rocks and periodically angled to the point of being dangerous, well-camouflaged so that rival tribes could not find it. It took longer but would give them a double advantage: they could approach the village from a different direction than the one the beast had taken, and they would have a rare and unobstructed view of the entire pueblo at once. Standing there next to the men of his family, Wikvaya realized that sometimes the thing you work so hard to attain is also that which you’re the least prepared to face.
Without the cover of the desert—the shrubs, tumbleweeds, and twig-choked branches of the acacia and mesquite trees—to conceal it, the track of the creature was impossible to miss. Its trail came out of the last stand of mesquite trees as a scrambled brown line at the western edge of the village; the closer it came to the dwellings, the more it drew in on itself as it twined from door to door, clearly searching for victims. It looked like the sandy dirt had become a living entity crisscrossed with horrid, sunken veins, pathways that wove among the adobes and around the three plazas and kivas, circling the central well a half-dozen times before moving on to the next doorway. The discoloration crawled up and around the pueblo windows, twisting inside and coming out again like a crazed spider trying to find a target in the ever-so-silent village.
Until its course eased into the doorway of a certain second-level adobe . . .
And disappeared inside.
It was standing by the doorway.
The blindfold fell away and Cha’kwaina gasped before she could stop herself. Despite the wailing of the wind, the creature heard; it spun and focused on her, then grinned terribly as it shuffled forward. She backed away, struggling against the thick scream that tried to bubble out of her throat, knowing that Grandmother Chochmingwu, so frail and old, would still rip off her own blindfold and come to her aid. How foolish she had been not to listen to Wikvaya, to think that the old ways were dead and useless. All those warnings that she should have heeded . . . but she couldn’t think of those now, they would do her no good. Instinctively she knew that covering her eyes would no longer help—she had already seen and her mind would now fill in that which her eyes could not perceive. Perhaps she could angle around and get outside, where she would have room to flee—
But each way that she stepped, the beast moved likewise, and swiftly; each time she turned, it did, too. It was playing with her, a bobcat toying with a desert mouse before devouring it. It was a terrible thought, compounded by the way the monster looked at her through hungry eyes filled with dark, shifting sand above a mouth that had cactus needles for teeth, needles that were as long as her thumb and purple like the plentiful prickly pear spines at the height of summer. As it tracked her, a tongue, black and forked, flicked out of its mouth and tasted the air like a rattlesnake before probing the edges of its own lips until the sharp spines opened its flesh and left it bleeding and twitching. Would it eat her, tearing at her skin like the coyote ravaged the stricken rabbit? Or was there some other nightmarish fate that awaited her in the dark underworld she had claimed did not exist?
The beast reached for her. Its spiked hands were the color of cacti, green and shriveled with drought and disease. Cha’kwaina could sense its urgency, its craving for the moisture within her body, could feel everything that was inside her—water, blood, the very essence of life—being pulled toward it. It was impossible for her to look away, and she realized that she had been played, steered. Now she was trapped in the corner, with Grandmother Chochmingwu sitting quietly against the opposite wall and oblivious to the danger only a room’s width away.
The beast glided across the floor and sank the ends of its fingers into her shoulders. The sensation was agony, like pushing skin-first into the wreckage of a dead cholla. Cha’kwaina tried to pull away as her mouth opened involuntarily, but she locked her throat against the wail that wanted to come out. Pain erupted everywhere it touched her, and red sparks, like the embers from an out-of-control fire, swirled across her vision. But she would not make a sound, she would not—
Just to make sure of that, the creature closed its cactus-spine-covered mouth over her lips.
Nothing that Wikvaya had ever imagined could have been as terrifying as coming through the doorway and seeing the monstrosity latched on to Cha’kwaina. He catapulted into the adobe and screamed, slashing at the monster holding his bride-to-be at the same time his father leaped over to Grandmother Chochmingwu and held her blindfold in place. “Return to the darkness!” Wikvaya bellowed, thrusting his spear into its back again and again. “Let her go!”
“Cha’kwaina!” Grandmother Chochmingwu grabbed at her face but Hania stopped her before she could pull the fabric aside.
“Be still, old woman,” Hania commanded as he slapped her hands away. “Let the spirit warriors do as they must.” She sank back to the floor, but her hands fluttered at the ground around her, unable to stop their search for her granddaughter.
Wikvaya’s brothers rushed forward as the beast finally released Cha’kwaina and turned to face them. The young woman dropped without a sound, her eyes open but unfocused, her mouth seeping blood from a hundred punctures. The barbed ends of cactus spines protruded from the bottom half of her face, and more speckled her bare shoulders from the creature’s grip.
The monster itself seemed barely fazed by Wikvaya’s attack. It was a hulking abomination, the opposite of everything good that the Sun Spirit or Grandmother Spider had ever created. Its form was a collection of desiccated pads of prickly pear; they shifted as it moved, not sliding but dragging, stabbing itself a thousand times over with every motion. Below a half-crushed, misshapen nose, its wide, grinning mouth was an unspeakable pit of sharpness, and the sight of Cha’kwaina’s blood rimming it like war paint made Wikvaya want to vomit. Its eyes were fluctuating pits of dirty sand, light and dark streaks that moved constantly and tried to mesmerize him—
Wikvaya didn’t wait for it to charge. He hurtled forward and rammed his spear into the monstrosity’s chest. Instead of going down, the creature laughed at him—or at least that’s what he thought the twisted noise that came out of its throat might be. It clutched at the haft of the spear with its spine-studded fingers, trying to pull it out. Wikvaya held on with both hands, grinding his teeth at the beast’s unexpected strength. His weapon began to push back at him, sliding out of the deep crevice the spear’s blade had opened just below the monster’s neck. He wasn’t sure he could hold it, he was losing ground—
Then Cheveyo was there, hacking with his obsidian knife. The cactus-skinned beast stumbled at the ferocity of Cheveyo’s blows but recovered instantly, releasing the shaft of the spear as it swiped at this new attacker. Cheveyo ducked and stabbed again, then screamed as the monster swung backward and its spine-tipped limb opened the skin of his face from his cheek to his neck. Blood sheeted from the wounds and soaked his chest as he staggered backward, and the sight and smell of it seemed to renew the evil thing’s strength. Wikvaya’s spear still protruded from its chest, but it did nothing to slow the beast as it lunged after Cheveyo, drawn to his lifeblood. Wikvaya hauled backward on the spear but it was like trying to hold back a crazed bear; he couldn’t let go, but his feet slid uselessly on the dirt-covered floor as he was pulled behind it. With one hand slapped against his mangled face, Cheveyo made it back up to his knees and scrambled after the knife he had dropped. Wikvaya’s face twisted in repulsion as he realized the fiend was following the trail of his brother’s blood, sucking it right off the ground and into its blighted skin like some kind of abominable parasite.
“Hania!” Wikvaya shouted. “We must stop it—”
Hania’s arrow shot past Wikvaya’s shoulder and buried itself in the mass of pads at the beast’s shoulder. It roared in anger and tried to turn, nearly jerking Wikvaya off his feet. But Wikvaya refused to release it, and this time he pushed as it pulled, driving the weapon deeper, searching for something, anything, vulnerable. A mixture of sand and rancid oil abruptly oozed from the chest puncture, as if inside the beast were earth that had soaked up the fat of a bloated deer carcass. Still it paid no heed to Wikvaya as he desperately tried to force it to the side and angle it away from Hania while he readied his second arrow.
All of them were shouting at once but there was too much confusion for any one of them to be heard. Honaw gave up and shoved the struggling old woman toward Cha’kwaina, swinging his own spear forward and jabbing at the creature. His spearhead found its mark again and again but it had no effect. Cheveyo’s hand brushed his knife and he snatched it up, scuttled forward like a scorpion, and hacked furiously at the back of the beast’s legs.
For a moment, all the air seemed to disappear from the world and time slowed. Hania stood his ground and calmly pulled back on his bowstring, even though all four of them knew the youngest brother could not fire and still escape to safety. The monster swayed beneath Cheveyo’s slashes and kicked backward, embedding a hundred spines and shredding the flesh of Cheveyo’s arms just as Hania let go of his bowstring. Then Hania’s arrow pierced the shrunken, discolored spot between the hellish beast’s eyes, and the screams of all four spirit warriors mixed together as it fell onto him, enfolding the youngest warrior inside its murderous grasp.
And to the end, the horrible creature never let go of its prickly, terrible smile.
“Everything is ready for the ceremony tomorrow,” Cha’kwaina said. She glanced sideways at Wikvaya, who nodded slowly and watched as she drank deeply from an earthen pitcher of water. Did he think of his brothers—one dead and one hideously maimed forever—when he looked at her? Did he blame her? Perhaps. Even now she was sure he wanted to say something, then decided against it. “What is it?” she prompted.
“You’re so parched,” was all he said.
“I worked a long time in the sun today,” she told him. “Grinding corn and making the piki bread.”
Wikvaya nodded again but said nothing more and she dismissed him by turning back to her chores. There were many tasks ahead and her groom didn’t seem to know what to do next, a drawback of people who had relied on outdated traditions for far too long. Much of the matrimonial steps remained, but Cha’kwaina had changed the order to suit herself, disregarding Grandmother Chochmingwu’s instructions and, to a substantial extent, shocking the others in the pueblo.
No matter; Grandmother Chochmingwu was old and would not live much longer. When she died, Cha’kwaina herself would be the matriarch of the entire village, the one who made all the important decisions regarding ceremonies and traditions, things like the endless grinding of corn and the way her soon-to-be groom walked the desert every morning searching for ancient gateways painted in sand on the ground.
After a few minutes, she heard Wikvaya sigh, then finally leave. Cha’kwaina stayed where she was, her strong hands deftly working to crush the corn beneath the grindstone as Grandmother Chochmingwu’s sharp gaze shifted toward her from time to time. When the old woman was finally gone—and that would definitely be very soon—Cha’kwaina would see to it that the old ways became the dead ways. Then the new ways could move right in. For now she faced away from her grandmother and kept her head lowered, as if nothing in the world mattered more than the task at hand.
Smiling mindlessly, Cha’kwaina made sure to blink away the dark swirls of sand that gathered in the corners of her eyes.