and float, like a dead leaf, lightly down into the canyon. But that, he knew, was caused by the long lack of food and water.
He did not trust himself to climb back to the cliff top until he was sure he could rely upon hands and fingers, feet and toes to do their work dependably. Even then, he moved slowly, taking great care with each hand and foothold. As he climbed, he felt the world winging through him in a thousand unfamiliar ways.
The wind spoke, as did the gritty stone beneath his fingers. When he reached the top and stood, facing back out over the dizzy deep, he shouted aloud the triumph of his spirit.
“HO!” he cried, hearing the echo go bounding away along the canyons. He wanted to say more, to cry out to the morning his discovery of all this new world he was finding with every breath he drew. But he could find no words worthy to offer to those gods who had made him this gift. So he cried again, “HO!” and heard the echoes wear themselves away among the stones.
And when he walked beside the corn plantings, he could hear the growing of the strong shoots in the sunlight. As plainly as those of his kind who worked among them, they spoke of well-being, of pain at being bruised or joy at feeling water from the catch-basins cooling their roots.
He must have been smiling broadly, for all who met him on the way began smiling in return, when they saw his face. Ki-shi-o-te came from his house to greet Uhtatse, and Ahyallah forgot herself and sprang up from her stool beside her pile of yucca fibers to lay her hands on his shoulders. She had not done that since he was a boy.
Best of all—more than best, indeed!—was the reaction of Ihyannah, Ki-shi-o-te’s daughter. She smiled as they passed on the trail.
That was better than food, better than being rubbed with oil and given clean clothing and his new blanket to sleep under. Indeed, once he stretched himself upon the hides of his sleeping place, that was the thing he dreamed of for hours and hours, as the sun sank and rose again outside the pueblo.
Chapter Seven
The old man sighed and shifted his weight on the stone. It was now fully dark. The last of the color had left the high layer of cloud lying along the east, and fires twinkled at him from the cliff homes across the canyon. In a strange way, he felt happier than he had felt in many years.
To remember Ihyannah always made him glow with the memory of warmth. Though she had, of course, been counted solely as the daughter of her mother, Sihala, she had been so much like Ki-shi-o-te that the old man had been much closer to her than was usual with fathers and daughters. Uhtatse had always known that they had the same clear vision of the world and their fellows. They had shared a feeling for the things that troubled the Ahye-tum-datsehe.
Because of his own closeness to the Teacher, Uhtatse had known an unusual harmony with Ihyannah, too. Sitting on the cold stone, he chuckled at the memory of his first gift to her. Among the people of the mesa, nobody really needed a turkey. The fowls gabbled and dusted themselves and got underfoot and dashed blindly into the middle of anything that might offer food. Many thought them an unmitigated nuisance, though they were undoubtedly useful for their feathers and their meat. They came from the wild to settle among the People, who must have seemed to be inexhaustible sources of food.
Strangely, he had found it in him to love one of those ungainly birds. What had been its name?
In his youthful ignorance, he had thought that bird the most magnificent gift he could offer to her. Ah! To-ho-pe-pe! That had been what he called that turkey! To-ho-pe-pe.
Uhtatse chuckled softly, recalling the magnificent tail the bird had taken such pride in spreading as he swelled his chest and empurpled his ugly face. He had gobbled louder than any turkey ever known before. Ahyallah had considered him a burden that no family should have to endure, but she had said little. Uhtatse had been so solitary a boy that she was happy for him to have even so unlikely a companion as this one.
* * * *
On the morning of his return, the bird had met him as he came back from his purification. To-ho-pe-pe had stomped about on the path before the key-shaped doorway of his mother’s part of the pueblo, waiting for him. And when Uhtatse walked away toward Sihala’s house, the bird followed, muttering and grumbling at his heels. It was as if the creature had missed him and was scolding him for leaving without any warning.
Other people had pets, of course, but those were rabbits and magpies that were caught and tamed or parakeets traded for with the Anensi, or even, sometimes, puppies. Kangaroo rats and chipmunks were the pets of children. But only Uhtatse had a turkey. The laughter of his contemporaries had never bothered the boy, and it didn’t bother him now. A friend was a friend, no matter if it had wattles hanging from its face and neck and terrible manners and worse habits. He was smiling as he listened to the constant mutter of turkey-talk behind him.
Ki-shi-o-te was waiting in his wife’s doorway, his face showing his gladness. They sat on the sunny side of the pueblo while Sihala moved back and forth with bags and baskets and cord, getting ready to store the vegetables as soon as they were harvested from the fields. She worried much, did Sihala, and much of her provender would spoil before winter came, but she never seemed to learn not to waste her time and strength.
Ihyannah sat on a stone, bent over her metate. Her grinding stone never faltered in its rhythm as Uhtatse approached, but he knew when she saw him. She went stiff for an instant, though her hand moved the mano without pause. Her dark eyes sparked as she turned to glance at him.
Neither spoke. That would be a breach of etiquette, for it was not fitting to show the emotions openly.
Squatting beside his teacher, the boy recounted the tale of his days in the niche. “Now I know,” he said earnestly. “Now I feel and I hear the voices of all the living things and those that are seemingly lifeless, as well. The taint of that spilled blood has left my body and my spirit. I believe that now I can become the Old One that my people need.”
The old man looked away over the lands far below the high spot where the pueblo stood. His eyes were bracketed with sad lines. “It is as well,” he said. “For your predecessor has gone to the Place Beyond. Two days ago he disappeared. We have danced and sung for him, and his spirit has not spoken to us. He has gone from among us.”
Uhtatse stared, shocked. “He was not ill...,” he began.
“No. It was the time for him. A stone he trusted broke beneath his foot. He fell from the cliff, and we have not found his body. That is where his spirit will be, grieving about the spot where his broken body is hidden. It will not be able to go to the Other Place, and that is a terrible thing.”
Uhtatse rose. “I will find the place. I will bring his body back, so that his bones can loose his spirit. He was my friend and the protector of our people. The grass will tell me where to look. The trees and bushes will reveal to me the spot where he lies.
“But before I go, I must ask you. Will your woman allow me to make a gift to her daughter?”
Ki-shi-o-te looked pleased. “You are now the One Who Smells the Wind,” he said. “It would not be fitting for her to object, though you must ask her, of course. And also you must ask Ihyannah if such a gift would please her.”
Uhtatse interrupted Sihala’s constant going and coming by putting himself before her doorway, so she could not enter her house. “It would give me pleasure to make a gift to your child Ihyannah. Will you grant permission?”
Sihala was even older than her husband. Her eyes had faded to a pale golden shade, and she squinted with her effort to see him
