they were uncomfortable when they were not busy.
“If my daughter is pleased, then I have no objection,” she said, her voice thin with age and something like nervousness. “You must ask her. Ihyannah! You may leave your work.”
The girl rose from her place, leaving the mano still warm from her hand amid the half-ground corn.
“What does the One Who Smells the Wind want of me?” she asked. Her voice sounded meek, but her eyes were twinkling with laughter, and he could hear it in her voice as well.
That did not bother Uhtatse. Of all the young people on the mesa, only Ihyannah never laughed at him. She laughed at some secret inside herself that somehow she shared with him. He had always known that. And now the secret was coming out into the open, for when she looked deep into his eyes, he knew she had foreseen this day.
He smiled. “I have little to offer you, Ihyannah. Your mother is rich in blankets and food. Yet I have one friend in all the world. He thinks himself much greater than he is, but if you want him, he is yours.
“To-ho-pe-pe, this is your new mistress!”
Ihyannah leaned against the juniper that shaded the doorway and began to laugh. Even as she laughed, she held out her hand to the bird. A bit of meal clung to her fingers, and she let him pick it, though his beak must have hurt as he pecked.
“No one but Uhtatse would offer such a gift,” she gasped. “I have been offered necklaces brought by the Anensi, birds with bright feathers, aprons of softest turkey feathers, but I have rejected them all. For what I wanted, truly and always, was a turkey of this exact size and temperament. A bird who knows his worth. Uhtatse’s friend, as am I.” She scratched the creature’s ugly head, and he cocked his neck this way and that to let her reach the best spots for tickling.
The boy felt light, filled with joy and incredulity. Ihyannah was slim and strong, her thighs gleaming with oil, her small breasts just beginning to round into maturity. Her face was narrow and intelligent. Almost naked as she was, she glowed with the sunlight like the shells the Anensi brought from the distant sea, the light seeming to strike through her flesh. For such as she to wait for his gift was a wonderful thing, indeed.
He could not speak his feelings. He sought about in his mind for the proper words, but they were hidden in some cavern deep inside and would not come out for his use. Yet when she looked at him, he knew he need not tell her. She knew, and she had known for as long as he that they two were matched in their ways and their minds. It would be a good life, he knew.
“I must go now,” he said. “I must find my old friend’s body and bring it back. Think good thoughts for my search, Ihyannah.” And that was his first use of her name, as his promised wife.
Chapter Eight
When he left the walled space before the pueblo, the breeze brought to him many signals. He paused before heading for the spot from which Ki-shi-o-te had told him the old protector of the People had fallen. Throwing back his head, he breathed to the depths of his lungs, sorting out the scents that came to him.
There seemed to be nothing but the odors of growing plants, animals of all kinds and sizes, birds going about their business, and people and their affairs. There was no taint of death in the air, though he would have caught that unmistakable scent, no matter how far he might be above the place where the body might lie.
He searched the sky for sign of a vulture, but only a high-circling hawk was visible, and distant eagles disturbed the air, too far away to be of interest. Uhtatse moved along the edge of the cliff, cutting across promontories by perilous paths until he came at last to the edge where the old man had fallen. A broken stone outcrop, some yards down the cliff edge, showed fresh gray-gold edges. Below that, there lay a mass of oak scrub.
It would be safer, he knew very well, to go back and take an easier way down into the Middle Way. It would be very difficult to find the exact spot below, if he did that—he must go down the sheer face, directly to the area just beneath the broken rock. It would be dangerous, he knew, but if the Old One’s spirit was to go free, it must be done. Fresh from his ordeal, he had no fear, now, of anything the cliffs could offer.
Uhtatse felt that he could almost lean forward off the cliff to soar with a swallow’s agility, down to the Middle Way. He was still filled with exuberance, though he did not allow that to make him reckless. He worked his way down the face, fingerhold and toehold, cranny and ledge, yard by yard. At last he found himself at a smooth face that offered no hold at all.
By then, he was only some five of his own lengths above the ground. There was a grassy patch onto which he could drop, so he pushed away from the stone and fell. He rolled easily and came upright again in the middle of the grassplot.
There was something that had troubled him since Ki-shi-o-te had told him of the older man’s death. Why had he not sensed it as he waited in the cliff side? Surely, so momentous a death as this should have shouted itself into his perceptions. As he looked about the brushy space between himself and the cliff, Uhtatse grew more and more uneasy. Every leaf that was crushed in that fall should have cried out to him. Each swallow startled as the body plunged past its nest should have shrieked the news so loudly that he could hear.
Using every skill he had learned, the boy cast about for sign of a fallen weight. This near, even in the cool heights, there should be at least the beginning of the death-smell. There was none. Branches should be broken, then, and leaves torn away. He would find that, if nothing more.
The morning wore away, and still he searched. The grass told him of sun and rain and snow, of worms burrowing beneath, but it spoke nothing about his mission. The breeze did not move at all, as if it held a secret not for his ears.
He stared upward, at last, toward the bright fleck of broken stone high above him. It was barely discernible on the long courses of sandstone. Below it, and invisible from above, lay a shallow ledge, sloping toward his left.
That would have deflected the route of the falling man from a direct downward course. He moved in that direction, seeing and hearing and feeling with all his might. And at last he heard something. Not the hiss of grasses beneath an unaccustomed weight. Not the words of wind sighing over a shape that had not been there before. It was a human sound, soft and completely unexpected.
“Uhtatse....”
He jerked upright, staring ahead. Then he rushed forward, leaping a clump of serviceberry and plowing through a tangle of oak. Curled into a huddle beneath the thick branches was the one he had sought. Alive.
Quieting his heart and his breathing, the boy knelt beside the old man. “I have come for you,” he said.
The dark eyes closed slowly, deliberately, and then opened again. “I knew...that you...would,” came a breathy whisper in reply.
The question Uhtatse had been asking himself burst from his lips. “Why did I not feel you fall? Why did not the mesa tell me?”
He took the old man’s hand between his own. “I was trying so hard to become what I need to be. And it seems that I have failed, if I missed such a terrible event.”
The hand moved in his. “I knew...where...you were. I did not want...for you to know. To come. I hushed it away from you. I knew how near...you were...to your goal. And now you have come. You have achieved...what you sought. I may die...at ease.”
The eyes stared up as if trying to say something further that the lips could not utter. Then they went blank,
