Fifty-Two

Jay Bird sat with Poor Singer on a grassy rise overlooking the stream that meandered at the base of Gila Monster Cliffs Village. The newly leafed trees added a bright spring green to the clusters of junipers. Puffy tumbles of cloud sailed across the blue vault of sky, but the air had a curious unfamiliar odor, a bilious, metallic tang.

“So, you killed Swallowtail?”

Poor Singer looked down at the blood on his hands, dried now, flaking off his skin in irregular patterns. “Yes. I did, Grandfather.”

Jay Bird pondered the story of the Keeper and the turquoise cave, and the horror of finding Swallowtail raping Cornsilk. Clots of blood matted Poor Singer’s black hair to his cheeks. Jay Bird leaned forward and propped his forearms on his knees. That sense of serenity, of growing Power, hung about the boy like a mantle.

“I offered my life in exchange for Ironwood’s,” Poor Singer said.

“You would have given your life to save him?”

“I wanted to very much.”

“And what did the Keeper of the Tortoise Bundle say to this?”

Poor Singer turned his deeply tanned face toward the speckles of sunlight falling through the trees. They glittered in his hair and reflected from his soft brown eyes. “She knew that you wished to kill him, and she—”

“She knew?”

“Yes, I don’t know how.”

A sharp pain lanced Jay Bird beneath his left breast. He lifted a hand to massage the spot. “Doesn’t matter. Holy people often know such things, sometimes before we know them ourselves. I was just surprised. Go on.”

Sorrow crinkled the lines around Poor Singer’s young eyes. “The Keeper asked me why I would give up my life for a man I barely knew. I told her I couldn’t stand to see any more of my friends die, that all of this was my fault. If I hadn’t been born, if Sternlight had let me die, none of this would have happened.”

Jay Bird lowered his hand to his lap and laced his fingers tightly. He didn’t know what to say. His grandson must love these Straight Path people very much.

Poor Singer shook his head and continued. “She asked me if I understood what it meant to have the heart of a cloud.”

“… The heart of a cloud?”

“Yes. A Spirit once told me: ‘You must have the heart of a cloud to walk upon the wind.’ I didn’t understand back then.”

“And do you now?”

Poor Singer frowned. “Some of it. I told the Keeper that I thought that the heart of a cloud was tears, and ‘to walk upon the wind’ meant to be able to look down from high above, to see more clearly.” He turned to face Jay Bird, and his eyes were moist. “I think the teaching means that if I live inside the tears of other people, I will see life more clearly.”

Jay Bird sat back. For a man Poor Singer’s age to understand the nature of shared pain was rare. How many old men, men in their seventieth summer, had yet to learn that truth? “What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Tell your grandfather what you did here. What you saw here. He will understand.’” Poor Singer frowned at Jay Bird, as if wondering if he did.

Jay Bird smoothed his hand over the grass at his side. The new blades felt soft and delicate. “Did she say anything else?”

Poor Singer nodded. “Yes. She told me that if I spoke with you, I would be a great Singer one day, and that I should make my life an offering. That it would save far more people than my death.”

An odd throbbing pain built above Jay Bird’s heart. This wise woman of the mountains had hidden a message for him alone in those words. She is warning me that my grandson will be a very great holy man. That is, if I don’t kill his soul by killing his friend.

But to let Ironwood go free! His wife’s dead eyes stared out at him from the depths of his soul. How could he let her murderer go? Or turn his back on the loss and abuse of his daughter? Could he simply forget the terrible suffering and grief?

Jay Bird shook his head. “I can’t let him go, Poor Singer.”

“He was following the orders of his Blessed Sun, Grandfather, as your War Chief follows yours. You are punishing the tool for allowing itself to be used.”

“But his death will strike terror into the hearts of our enemies, Grandson. I must—”

“They are already afraid, Grandfather.” Poor Singer’s nose wrinkled at the strange odor carried on the western breeze. “The gods have their own sense of justice. I…” He frowned. “Like an old tree, the Straight Path nation looks massive from the outside, but the center of the trunk is rotting, dying. They do not have much time.”

“How do you know, Poor Singer? Did the gods tell you this?”

Poor Singer folded his arms tightly across his chest. “No … but I know it to be true.”

Jay Bird’s brows lowered at the glow in Poor Singer’s eyes. For long moments, he stared into those eyes, seeing the promise of the future, the pain of the past. Justice was such a tenuous thing, the balance so precarious. How could he believe? Poor Singer was barely a man. Could Jay Bird trust his vision?

Jay Bird closed his eyes. “Sometimes,” he whispered, “a man must be willing to forego the satisfaction of vengeance and place his faith in his family.”

Poor Singer straightened. “What does that mean?”

Hatred curled like an angry snake in Jay Bird’s belly. “It means I…” He could barely get the words out. “I will free Ironwood.”

Poor Singer embraced Jay Bird so hard the hug drove the air from his lungs. A warm sensation spread through him—the same sort of elation he used to feel when Young Fawn hugged him. Jay Bird smiled wearily and patted his grandson’s back.

“But you must tell him,” Jay Bird said. “If I look upon him again, I will surely kill him.”

“I’ll tell him!”

Jay Bird shoved back. “Then go. Do it now, before I have time to reconsider. We will talk more later.”

Poor Singer leaped to his feet and ran, his legs pumping as he took the trail toward the pen.

Jay Bird struggled to calm his writhing gut. All those years of brooding, the suppressed rage, had carried him as wind does a feather. Now, his soul had come to ground. The arms of the breeze had failed him.

Is this the price for all that pain? He had grown sentimental in his old age. But perhaps it would all work out. Poor Singer would have to repeat his vision to the entire community. Everyone would wish to hear it. And it might be the only thing that saves me from my people’s wrath.

Not that it mattered. He had endured their wrath before, and this one act had given him the grandson he might otherwise have lost. The warmth of Poor Singer’s embrace lived in his heart.

He squinted after the youth. Sunlight slanting through the clouds threw a golden veil over Poor Singer as he climbed toward the village.

“Keeper, I pray I am doing the right thing. If I’m not…”

The earth shook again, a tremor that took Jay Bird by surprise. And then, off to the west, the Rainbow Serpent glittered to life. She rose majestically over the mountaintop behind Gila Monster Cliffs Village, and stretched across the sky like a many-colored bridge of light.

The billowing thunderheads seemed to part before her, retreating to the edges of her glory.

Awed, Jay Bird whispered, “This time … I hear you.”

*   *   *

Creeper stood beside Webworm in a shower of falling gray ash, watching the stream of people climbing over the walls, down the ladders, leaving Talon Town. Packs wobbled on their backs as they headed toward the wash to fill their jars with gray water one last time. An ominous buzz of conversation stirred the quiet.

Creeper folded his arms and hugged himself. The ash settled over the canyon like a smothering blanket, turning the town’s white walls gray. Nearly four hands had built up in the plaza. A weaving pattern of trails cut through the windblown drifts. Creeper turned and squinted northward. He could barely make out the towering sandstone wall behind Talon Town. Patches of golden rock appeared and disappeared through the thick veil of whirling ash. Traders had been coming through, and they told horrifying stories. The massive quake, they said, had been felt for ten days’ run in any direction.

Webworm let out a deep sigh. He wore a red cape with the hood pulled up to shield his face, but ash coated his black hair and clung to his eyelashes. He had his jaw clenched. “A Hohokam Trader came through this morning. He told me that fiery rivers are pouring out of the Thlatsina Mountains, burning everything in their paths. He said forest fires are consuming the whole world. His people are terrified, too.”

Creeper gazed up at the sky. It glowed an eerie shade of yellowish purple, as though the skyworlds had been battered and bruised by the gods’ wrath. Smoke stung his nostrils with every breath.

“What did we expect?” he said in a low voice. “First the Matron is disgraced, then Talon Town is raided, and she, the holy Derelict, and the Sunwatcher are captured. After that the Blessed Sun is murdered and buried as a witch—”

“The gods must hate us.”

Tenderly, Creeper placed a hand on Webworm’s shoulder. He would not repeat the other whispers he’d heard late at night, whispers that made his heart beat painfully in his chest: “Look at what has happened to us! The new Blessed Sun is half Fire Dog, and the new Matron is a demented old woman! We are doomed! Let’s go before it’s too late!”

Webworm tugged his hood more closely about his face and frowned at the latest group of people to descend the ladders. Their bright capes, reds, yellows, and one a pale purple, contrasted with the ashen ground. Family by family, they were heading for the outlying villages and kin who would take them in. “If this keeps up, Creeper, I will rule over silence. Talon Town will be abandoned.”

“We cannot stop them. They are free people.”

“That Trader,” Webworm murmured, “he told me that just before the rivers of fire spurted from the earth, the ancestors in the underworlds grew so angry that the shaking ground cracked wide open, swallowing rivers and villages, then one of the mountains exploded—the entire top blew off, Creeper! Huge molten boulders flew through the air like birds! He said—”

“Hallowed Ancestors!” Creeper gasped, “Sternlight predicted that the gods would hurl huge fiery rocks to split the Fifth World apart!”

Webworm turned to peer at Creeper with his frightened soul in his eyes. “Do you think … can this really be the end of our world, Creeper?”

Creeper gazed down at the stream of people vanishing into the gray haze. Somewhere out there, a child sobbed.

“Who’s to say, Webworm?” he answered gently. “Only the gods and very great Dreamers know such things.”