Four

Cornsilk knelt on the north side of the plaza with two grinding slabs, one coarse and one fine, before her. An empty black-and-white bowl and a plain clay pot filled with red corn sat to her left. She had been here for over a hand of time and hadn’t made any apparent headway on the corn, though meal covered her hands and the skirt of her brown dress. As she studied the situation, it appeared that she had more cornmeal on her than on her slabs. Five paces away, a large pot tilted sideways on the hot coals of her firepit, reminding her of her duties. She leaned forward and pounded a handful of corn with the pointed end of her handstone, cracking the kernels.

Morning blushed gold into the rolling hills around Lanceleaf Village and glimmered on the green spears of yucca choking the slopes. It shone on the up-tilted blocks of tan sandstone rising over the patchwork of empty corn, squash, and bean fields that lay on every flat area around the village.

Billows of orange cloud burned swathes in the translucent eastern sky. Beneath them, the rugged peaks of the distant mountains were mantled in pristine white, and today they seemed to rip at the bottom of the clouds. At their base lay flat mesas, home of the Green Mesa clans who farmed the butte tops.

To the north rose the Great Bear Mountains, the home of First Bear, who had raised the high granite peaks to shelter him in hibernation. The claw marks of First Bear had ripped the land under the mountain, leaving long twisting ridges of canted rock. Ephemeral creeks ran at the bases of those ridges, flash flooding in spring, tumbling whole trees down into the basins, and trickling cool and clear after misty winter rainstorms. Those washes brought life to the land around Lanceleaf Village.

Generations ago, several families of the Ant Clan had come to farm the alluvial flats and mesa tops around Lanceleaf. In the beginning they built an attached line of four houses to spend the summers in while they worked the fields. With the crop surplus, they’d stayed through the winter, and in the following years, other clan members came, and additional rooms were built onto the village. Several kivas were dug into the red clay soil.

Life hadn’t been easy despite the rich bottomlands and water. The Tower Builders, barbarians who lived to the northwest, raided the Straight Path clans, killing, stealing food, and taking slaves that they drove northward to work their fields and clean their squalid houses. Sometimes wild peoples came down from the mountains, hunters who wore skins and worshiped animal gods. The wild hunters might trade, or they might raid. Then, like the beasts they were, they’d melt into the mountains without a trace.

Nor had all enemies been foreign. Lanceleaf had fought its share of wars with other Straight Path clans over the years. As a result, what had begun as a line of houses had been expanded with an eye toward defense. As the village grew, a second story had been added, then more rooms until the rectangular structure completely enclosed the plaza, providing a perfect corral. The only exit was a small gap between the walls in the southeastern corner, which they blocked with a pine-pole gate.

As long as the people had adequate warning, and could close the gate, the villagers could stand off any number of attackers by taking to the roofs with their bows.

But on this bright winter day, thoughts of war were far away. The men had left Lanceleaf Village to hunt at dawn, and most of the young women had gone to gather colored sand for sacred paintings. Dogs stretched out in the sunlight, sleeping. A few bold flies buzzed around them. Occasionally one would land, take a bite. The dog would wake with a sharp yip and go into a snapping frenzy, before flopping down again and drifting back to sleep.

Turkeys strutted through the village plaza, and they dipped their heads to examine every human activity, their brown-and-white feathers glinting in the wash of sunlight.

They had been bothering Cornsilk earlier, but now they tormented the seven old women sitting on the west side of the plaza. Her village rarely had meat, except on special occasions, so the turkeys were particularly prized. The young pullets pecked relentlessly at the strips of green yucca laid out for weaving baskets. Waving arms and harsh words split the morning. Matron Clover, the elder of Lanceleaf Village, reached out for a strip to weave into her sifter basket. As she started to lift it, one of the pullets leaped forward, grabbed the strip, and tugged.

“Stop that!” Clover yelled, her elderly face a mass of crisscrossing wrinkles. She tugged back. “Let go!”

With a great heave, she jerked the wet yucca strip away, and eyed the turkey malevolently. “Get away! Go find somebody else to bother.” She used the yucca to smack the pullet on the back. It let out a sharp high-pitched squawk and bounded off. Clover mumbled something Cornsilk couldn’t hear, but the other women laughed.

On the opposite side of the plaza, five hens dodged the flying chips from the eight old men making stone tools. Every time one of the men’s antler batons struck a flake of stone from a chert core, the hens dove for it, squabbling and plucking feathers from each other, before one hen grabbed it up, contemplatively tasted it, and spit it out.

The fat gobblers had bedded down along the south wall where a line of cradleboards leaned in the shade. Infants wrapped in bright blankets gurgled, shrieked, and waved tiny fists at nothing. Cotton straps ran across their foreheads, tying them to the cradleboards, and shaping their skulls. Flattening the back of the head broadened the cheekbones and gave the face a more desirable triangular appearance.

Cornsilk’s mother had not done a very good job on her head. Her face remained oval, though young men claimed she was still pretty—at least, they did after she threatened them. Corn-silk grinned to herself. The young warriors didn’t like her much, but the feeling was mutual. She had a pointed chin, full lips, and large dark eyes. When her black hair hung loose, it draped in a thick wealth to her hips. Her mother, however, insisted she wear her hair in large whorls over her ears, a style which resembled the wings of a butterfly—to announce to all the young men that she had reached a marriageable age. And she did wear them … within sight of the village.

She wiped her sweating forehead with the back of her mealy hand and tipped her pot to check inside. Still full. Oh, what she would give to be out with Leafhopper.

Beyond the village, little children played. Cornsilk’s best friend, Leafhopper, supervised them, ambling along behind while the children chased each other, threw sticks for their dogs, and laughed joyously.

Cornsilk sighed, reached into the pot for another handful of red corn …

Flapping wings split the air.

Cornsilk looked up. A huge raven fluttered to the ground ten hands away. His black feathers gleamed with a blue fire in the slanting light. Cornsilk glanced around the plaza. No one had noticed yet. She scowled at the raven.

“Brother, I swear you can smell the sweet scent of ground corn from half a day’s walk.”

The raven world was the first of the skyworlds.

“Go home,” she hissed at the big bird, and pointed heavenward.

Placing a handful of corn on the grinding slab, she sat back on her heels and took the opportunity to stretch her aching back muscles. Her brown dress spread around her knees. Warm sunshine drenched her face and glistened in her butterfly whorls.

The raven leaped into the air and came down closer to Cornsilk, head twisting curiously.

Across the crowded plaza her relatives turned to watch, whispering behind their hands.

“Look, brother,” she said, and gestured to the people in the plaza. “You have them whispering again. Do you wish them to think me a witch? We are Ant Clan. We don’t like you raven people. That’s why we always scare you away from our villages. From the instant the Creator breathed over us and brought us to life, the raven nation has been gobbling up Ant people. Why should I feed you when you have so many of my ancestors in your belly?”

The raven made a low pathetic sound and fluffed out his feathers, as if indignant at the suggestion.

“No,” Cornsilk said.

She picked up her handstone and pounded the red corn kernels on the coarse slab. After each sharp bang she rocked her stone back and forth, crunching the kernels, to grind them to a medium-grained flour. It took forever.

The raven thock-thocked at her.

“No! I’m not giving you any. Now, fly away!”

The raven stretched out his black neck and cawed loudly. He flapped his wings.

Leafhopper’s group of children trotted into the plaza and gathered into a knot near the kiva where the long-necked water jars sat. As they fought over who got to drink first, several pointed at her, their eyes wide. Leafhopper entered the plaza, herding the last children ahead of her, and stopped dead when she saw the raven.

Cornsilk glared at the big bird. “What’s wrong with you? Every day I scare you away. I throw rocks at you. I scream at you. Nothing works. Are you certain you’re not Trickster Coyote in disguise? Just seeing how much trouble you can mix up?”

Coyote had a bad reputation. After the First People emerged from the underworlds, Coyote had hidden in the grass with his long penis coiled in a basket on his back. He had stayed perfectly still until the first woman walked by, then he’d uncoiled his penis and sent it slithering through the grass after her. When she saw it, she thought it a snake, picked up a branch and proceeded to beat his penis half to death. Coyote had held a grudge ever since—for thousands of sun cycles. He got revenge whenever he could, tripping humans, fooling them, leading them off in the wrong direction on hunts.

Cornsilk eyed the raven. Surreptitiously, she tossed him several small bits of corn. “Now leave!”

The raven gobbled them down, rearranged his wings in satisfaction, and hopped closer.

“Hallowed thlatsinas!” she yelled. “Go away!” She waved her arms furiously, and shouted, “Go on! Leave me alone! Get out of here!”

The raven just hunched and waited for the tirade to be over. When Cornsilk’s arms fell limply to her sides, he straightened again and took a tentative step toward her.

Glum, she scooped the corn flour from her coarse slab and placed it into the black-and-white bowl at her side. Then she rose and walked toward the fire.

The raven hopped along behind her, wings out for balance.

The children by the kiva shoved each other, then one let out a sharp shriek, and all of them raced through the gobbling turkeys, scattering them every which way. Feathers flew up and gently pirouetted down across the plaza.

Adults murmured worriedly. Cornsilk caught a look of condemnation on Clover’s old face.

Crouching, she dumped her bowl of flour into the hot pot sitting on the coals and used a wooden paddle to stir it around until the cornmeal steamed, losing some of its moisture and browning slightly. Moisture led to spoilage, so this process assured that the flour would last longer and taste better. She stirred it for a time longer, then scooped the flour out with the paddle and refilled the bowl.

Every eye in the plaza rested on her as she rose and headed back to her grinding slabs, her moccasins soundless on the hard-packed dirt of the plaza.

The Ant Clan plastered their buildings with a rusty-hued clay that faded into the background of the rolling red and tan hills, but just over the roofs she saw yucca plants spiking up through the sage and heard their fist-sized seed pods rattling in the breeze. The fragrance of burning cedar encircled her.

Cornsilk’s family didn’t live in the main village complex, but in a small house on the hillside just behind it. Cornsilk’s father, Beargrass, held the position of War Chief of Lanceleaf Village. For this reason their house had been built higher than the rest of the village, with a wide view of the cornfields and approaches to the village. From those heights, Beargrass could keep better watch for Tower Builders, or Wild Men.

At that moment, Cornsilk’s mother, Thistle, walked into the plaza and caught sight of the raven. Thistle wore a white-and-yellow striped dress and carried a pot balanced on her head. She folded her arms, face sour as she watched the raven stride at Cornsilk’s side.

Cornsilk leveled a kick at him.

The raven fluttered up and came down.

“Blessed Spirits!” she hollered. “What do you wish from me?”

She speeded up. The raven ran faster, keeping pace with her.

Dropping to her knees, Cornsilk dumped the bowl of flour onto the fine-grained slab and got back into position. As she worked her handstone over it, grinding it to powder, it changed color, going from red to a pale rose-petal pink. After being browned, it smelled deliciously like popped corn.

The raven stuck his beak out, sniffing.

Cornsilk ignored him.

Leafhopper kept glancing at her as she worked her way across the plaza, smiling politely at the elders and speaking to each one. Though Leafhopper was Cornsilk’s age—fifteen summers, almost sixteen—she stood a head shorter, and had a round face with a pudgy squarish body. She never belted her dresses, which meant they hung like bean-harvesting sacks from her squat frame. Her parents had died four summers ago, and she lived with her aunt, who insisted Leafhopper wear her hair trimmed even with her chin, because the style required less care. A red headband kept it out of her soft brown eyes.

They had both become women fifteen moons ago, but not one young man had courted Leafhopper. Cornsilk herself had seen only one suitor: young Stone Forehead. He’d babbled endlessly about how one day he would be the greatest warrior the Ant Clan had ever known. The topic of conversation hadn’t varied after their first tentative coupling. But Stone Forehead had stopped coming to see Cornsilk after she’d gone hunting with him and shot four sage grouse to his one. She suspected she’d made her real mistake the night over supper when she’d casually mentioned that she planned to be the greatest warrior the Ant Clan had ever known.

Leafhopper bent over Matron Clover and made some comment about her loosely woven sifter basket. Clover patted her plump cheek.

Cornsilk took the opportunity to fling an arm out at the raven. He just pulled his head back momentarily and returned to his former attentive position.

“Oh, all right!” she growled in defeat.

Grabbing a fistful of coarsely ground corn from the other slab, she scattered it in front of him. The raven ate it up like a bird on the verge of starving to death.

“Now will you leave, please?”

The raven cocked his head, peered at her with one eye, and leaped into the sky. Cornsilk watched him circle the village, his black body striking against the deep blue of the winter sky, then wing southward toward the distant butte that thrust its square nose into the sky.

Cornsilk breathed a sigh of relief and went back to grinding the coarse meal.

Leafhopper hurried toward Cornsilk, her tan-and-black dress swishing around her short legs. She knelt, drew a handful of corn from the full pot, and placed it on the coarse slab. When she picked up a handstone, she whispered, “Great Badger, Cornsilk! This is the fourth day in a row that raven has pestered you. That’s a sacred number. Everyone is muttering about it.”

“It’s not my fault,” Cornsilk replied. She threw all of her weight into grinding the meal, crushing it to fine flour. “I think he’s just hungry.”

“Ravens move in flocks. This one comes to you alone. That’s not natural.” Leafhopper gave Cornsilk a sidelong glance. “He hasn’t talked to you, has he?”

“What!” Cornsilk slammed her handstone down into the meal. Pink flour puffed up and swirled in the breeze. Ravens only spoke to Ant people who were witches. She stared disbelievingly at Leafhopper. “Of course not!”

Leafhopper lifted a shoulder and short black hair fluttered over her fat cheeks. “I was only asking.”

“I am not a witch, Leafhopper. You know I’m not!”

Leafhopper pounded the kernels until they cracked and fragmented, then rocked her handstone over them and pounded some more. Eager to change the subject, Leafhopper tipped her head to the gray-haired women weaving baskets. “Brave Boy told me a story about old Pocket Gopher today.”

Pocket Gopher sat next to Clover, her dress—gray and white in diamond patterns—clinging to her skinny frame. She had a perfect triangular face with a long beak of a nose and deeply set black eyes. Pocket Gopher had never borne a child, but made up for it by disciplining everybody else’s. When Cornsilk had seen six summers, Pocket Gopher caught her hiding out in the bean field, eating the tender new shoots. The old woman had grabbed a dead cactus limb and beaten Cornsilk over the head all the way home. She scared Cornsilk—and every other child in the village.

“Brave Boy has seen only five summers. What could he know?”

Leafhopper whispered, “He said one of the young warriors standing guard saw her out in the burial ground at midnight on the full moon.”

Cornsilk’s handstone halted in mid-downward swing. “Doing what?”

“The warrior didn’t say, but I’m sure the old hag is a witch. She’s so mean to people, she must be. Do you remember what happened to Sand Melon?”

Cornsilk wet her lips nervously. “Yes.”

Sand Melon had miscarried in her sixth moon, and when the birthing women came to care for her, they’d found corpse powder sprinkled all over Sand Melon’s house. Sand Melon had accused Pocket Gopher, screaming that the old woman had been the last person in her house before Sand Melon had returned home. But no evidence could be found.

Still, people watched Pocket Gopher closely now, and if she had been seen in the burial grounds … Blessed thlatsinas! Perhaps she was a witch.

“I don’t believe it,” Cornsilk said. “People accuse me of being a witch, and I’m not.”

“I know that.”

Cornsilk pushed the flour to the side of the grinding slab and scooped more coarse meal onto the fine-grained slab. “It’s just the weather. People are worried.” She pounded the meal.

“The weather and the raiding,” Leafhopper corrected.

“They go together. Each summer without rain makes things worse. More and more witches are being accused and killed. And I…” She tilted her head at the blasphemy. “I’m not sure they are to blame.”

Leafhopper sat back on her heels and wiped her meal-covered hands on her dress hem while she gazed at Cornsilk. “Then who is?”

“I don’t know! Maybe … maybe the First People at Talon Town. We send them corn and pots and everything else we make. All that, and they’re supposed to talk to the gods so it will rain. They’re the ones who always start the wars. Not only that…” Cornsilk leaned forward to whisper, “I heard that Chief Crow Beard keeps corpse powder in his chamber to use against his enemies! Maybe he’s the witch!”

Leafhopper set the black-and-white bowl at the bottom of her grinding slab and pulled the coarse red meal into it. She had clamped her lower lip between her teeth, thinking.

Cornsilk kept grinding.

There were two kinds of “people” in the world: First People and Made People. The First People were descendants of those who had bravely climbed through the four underworlds, led by a blue-black wolf, and emerged from the darkness into this fifth world of light. All First People lived in Straight Path Canyon. The four clans of the Straight Path nation were, on the other hand, Made People. The Creator had “made” them from animals to provide company for the First People after their emergence. The Bear Clan, the Buffalo Clan, the Coyote Clan, and Cornsilk’s own people, the Ant Clan, had been the creatures their names implied. Through the miracle of the Creator’s divine breath, they had changed into humans. But the First People saw them as inferiors because they had once been animals, while the First People had always been humans.

Outsiders, like the Mogollon, the Hohokam, and the northern Tower Builders, were not people at all. Despite their human bodies, the Straight Path people knew they had the souls of beasts. Why, the Mogollon’s own legends said they had once lived as fiery wolves in Father Sun’s heart and been cast out because they started chewing up his body. As they ran through the heavens toward earth, their blazing wolf bodies had transformed into human shapes. To this day the Straight Path people called them Fire Dogs, for their souls remained predators, watching, waiting for the right time to kill.

The Fire Dogs could not be trusted. They didn’t think like humans.

Cornsilk wondered how the elders of the Made People clans got along at Talon Town. Each clan sent their greatest leader to live among the First People, to help and advise them on the ways of the world. The Made People had, after all, lived here much longer than the First People. But Cornsilk had heard that the First People routinely treated their clan leaders little better than Fire Dog slaves.

Sternlight, the legendary Sunwatcher, had the worst reputation. The Straight Path nation had been suffering from drought for sixteen summers, and where once the clans had looked to Sternlight for guidance, now they openly accused him of witchcraft.

Power flowed through everything in the world, from the smallest dandelion seed floating across the desert to the grandest of the Comet People. Priests and shamans called upon Power to help their peoples, to bring health, assure good crops, and influence the rains to fall. Witches used it to benefit themselves.

Two summers ago, a Trader had whispered that he had stumbled into one of Sternlight’s private chambers at Talon Town by accident. He said he’d seen piles of exquisite blankets, fine pots filled with chunks of turquoise, jet, malachite, and coral, and baskets of priceless macaw and parrot feathers. He’d also claimed he’d seen a line of human skulls mounted on the wall.

Cornsilk suppressed a shiver.

Good people never accumulated wealth. They shared what they had with their families. Only witches amassed such “things” for their own pleasures.

Leafhopper shifted her squat body to lean over and murmur, “Do you think the First People would starve without us?”

Cornsilk cocked a brow. “Thinking of subtle ways to kill the witches?”

“Shh!” Leafhopper said. She glanced over her shoulder, and her bean-sack dress pulled tight across her flat chest. “No, I was just—”

“Yes, they’d starve. We provide them with almost all of their corn, beans, squash, and dried meat.”

Made People hosted every major ceremonial at Talon Town, hauling in massive quantities of food to feed the attendants, and pay the priests, Dancers, and Singers who used their spiritual powers to call upon the gods. When the ritual cycle ended, the Made People stored the excess food at Talon Town. First People grew little of their own food; they survived on those reserves.

No one minded, not if the First People’s voices reached the gods and rain made the crops flourish—but that had not happened in many cycles. The gods seemed to have abandoned the First People.

But they still ate the Made People’s food.

“So,” Leafhopper said, “if we just stopped bringing them food they would die?”

“Or go away. There aren’t very many of them left anyway. It wouldn’t take much.”

First People only married other First People, and many of their children didn’t live past the first two summers. As a result, their numbers had dwindled dramatically. The Blessed Night Sun, Matron of Talon Town, and her husband, the Blessed Sun, had two living children—all the others had died. The Sunwatcher, Sternlight, had never married, and many of the other First People at Talon Town had vanished mysteriously. In the other thirteen towns in Straight Path canyon, perhaps another three hundred First People lived.

“But if they all die”—Leafhopper glanced uneasily at Cornsilk—“how will we ever find our ways to the afterlife?”

“We’ll just follow the north road to the sipapu and travel into the underworlds. We’ll get there.”

Because the First People had come up through the underworlds, they, and they alone, knew the correct path to the Land of the Ancestors. Legends said that unimaginable dangers, traps and snares, and bizarre half-human creatures, waited to leap upon the unwary soul. Fortunately, the First People knew each trap and hiding place. And, for a price, they would share their secret knowledge.

“Maybe we’d better not starve them,” Leafhopper said. “I wish to see my parents again. Besides, I think it might take a lot of Power to starve them. And, as you said, Crow Beard keeps corpse powder in his chamber. I don’t think we want to be witched as punishment.”

Cornsilk smacked a new handful of meal. Pink flour wafted up around her face. “A really evil witch could beat him.”

“Maybe.” A smile came to Leafhopper’s round face. She shoved up her red headband with a finger, leaving a streak of red meal across her forehead. “Wouldn’t that be interesting to watch? Witches hurling curses and drowning each other with corpse powder. I’d give a Green Mesa pot to witness that.”

Cornsilk absently glanced eastward, toward the Green Mesa clans. “You don’t own a Green Mesa pot.”

“Nobody does.”

“Some of the First People do. They get them in exchange for those little turquoise figurines that guide souls down to the Land of the Ancestors.”

“Great,” Leafhopper said. “I’ll have to steal a figurine to get a pot so I can pay to see witches kill each other.”

Cornsilk smiled, grabbed the black-and-white bowl of coarsely ground meal and got to her feet. “I’m going to go heat this up.”

“I’m coming with you!” Leafhopper jumped to her feet and stared wide-eyed at Cornsilk. “After all this talk of witches, I’m not going to sit here by myself. What if there’s a witch watching from the bushes? He might shoot a witch pill into my mouth and kill me.”

Cornsilk frowned out at the red hills, where birds chirped and membranous insect wings glittered in the sunlight. A nighthawk sailed over a line of up-tilted sandstone slabs and disappeared into a stand of prickly pear cactus.

“I don’t see anybody out there,” Cornsilk said, and started across the plaza … briskly. Just in case.

Leafhopper trotted at her side, craning her neck to examine anything that moved beyond the walls of Lanceleaf Village.