necklace touched him, and he felt an instant of union with everything alive.
When Ki-shi-o-te and his daughter drew back into the group, Uhtatse could see his shadow drawn in ochre and purple on the sandstone before him. He lifted the staff at arm’s length above his head. As it moved, a brisk wind swept down the canyon, riffling the necklace feathers at his neck and fluttering the tail of his headband across his ear. High above, a hawk shrilled twice.
Down in the still-shadowy depths of the canyon, the swallows were wheeling and dipping, burbling their morning cries. Even as he stepped from the rock onto the soil of the mesa, he had a sudden dizzy vision.
It was blurred and unfocused, but he seemed to see people moving up and down the steep cliffs, bearing stone and juniper posts. Building, down there in the deeps—what? There came a swirling vision of pueblos in the cliff sides—and then he shook his head and was steady again, seeing nothing but the sandstone cliffs, with their arched openings, before his eyes.
Sihala stepped forward, holding in her hand a basket filled with shelled corn. She handed it to him, turning her head politely so as not to meet his eyes. She beckoned to Ihyannah, who moved forward a single pace and stood looking up at Uhtatse.
To-ho-pe-pe gabbled importantly and bustled forward between the feet and legs of the onlookers to join his mistress. Uhtatse felt a terrible impulse to laugh, but he controlled it and avoided looking at Ihyannah. If they looked into each other’s eyes, they would both break into laughter, and that would not be fitting at such a solemn moment.
He reached to take her fingers into his own. The two of them went down the path toward Sihala’s home, where Ihyannah would stay for a while. When the harvest was in, they would hope to build a room onto the pueblo for themselves, or they might even make a pit-house. For now, they must remain with parents.
He knew that she would help him to remove his robe and necklace and lay them away in the basket where they were kept, along with the staff. The two of them would work silently, speaking no word but communicating with their hearts.
It had been a strange day, a breaking-away from all his life before this. It was frightening, exhilarating, and stimulating, all in one. He smiled at Ihyannah.
She glanced back to make certain that they were out of sight of the rest. Then she smiled back.
To-ho-pe-pe came after them, wings spread, chest expanded to its fullest roundness, wattles at their most astonishing shade of purple. As he caught up to them, he paused to dance in a circle, gobbling mightily all the while and trailing his wingtips in the dust of the path in an eccentric pattern.
Ihyannah began to shake. Uhtatse felt his own ribcage begin to quiver.
Laughing, they went down the path together, hands clasped. The turkey followed them, doing its war-dance and raising echoes across the canyon with its raucous comments.
* * * *
The old man sitting on the cliff felt a sympathetic chuckle rising within him. That had been a good day. Not the best of all, perhaps, that were to come, but a good day, filled with happiness. He and Ihyannah had shared something very rare and precious. It had ended, of course, as all things must end for those who walked in flesh, but the memory had warmed him for many seasons.
Yes, it had ended as the life on top of the mesa had ended, when the time came. He had been the one who caused that, to be sure, and he could not regret it. His own life, indeed, was about to end. He could not regret that, either. It was fitting, and that was a good thing.
Chapter Eleven
The mesa had not changed. The people and the dogs, the birds and beasts and plants seemed to be just as they had been all Uhtatse’s life. From his earliest memory, little had altered on the high mesas.
Yet something had changed. He had changed, permanently and drastically. The mantle of responsibility that had hung about his shoulders as he stood on the quivering rock of the promontory might have been laid away in its basket, but the reality of the task it had bestowed upon him was never absent from his mind.
He slept little. It was summer, and that was the time when the enemy would come, if the Kiyate came at all. The most worrying thing about those fierce people was their randomness. Years might pass without an incursion, and still they might hit the vulnerable pueblos at any time. He had to be watchful, day and night.
It would have helped to have the comfort of his own home and Ihyannah, but their true marriage would only take place when they moved into the part of the pueblo that would be Ihyannah’s. Until then, they could take pleasure in one another, talk and laugh when there was time, and walk away into the junipers to make love. But they could not live in the same house or eat from the same pot. They could not reach out in the night to comfort each other’s nightmares.
Those nightmares, for Uhtatse, were becoming regular visitors. He would wake, sweating, on his bed-pile. Not until he rose and went out into the night, walking fast and breathing deeply, would he shake away the miasma of the dream. And yet he could seldom recall the substance of that dream—what was it that was haunting him in the night?
When he began to awaken others in his mother’s house, he took to sleeping outside amid the piñons clumped together beyond the pueblo. It was chilly, once the sun set, but he rolled into his feather blanket and tried to sleep. The dreams became worse, not better.
The restlessness of his dreaming sent him moving about the mesa at all hours. Even in the darkest time of the night, he would roam up and down the slotted rims of the mesas, feeling afar for any disturbance. He believed, more and more, that there was danger out there in the lower country, moving nearer and nearer as day followed day.
It would have helped if he could have wearied himself with hard work in the gardens or with the hunters. Yet now he was committed, and it was impossible for him to distract himself with those necessary labors. Others must do those things, while he sent his senses frantically across the mesas and over the lands below.
He said nothing to Ihyannah. Her laughter was precious to him, and he would do nothing to damp her high spirits. Indeed, only her cheerful heart and her warm, responsive body made life bearable for him, as the summer bloomed and faded.
His wife, however, was sensitive as well as intelligent. He lost weight and became abstracted. That was not lost on her, and she came at last to touch his shoulder.
“You are troubled, Uhtatse. All is well on the mesa. There is no sickness. The gardens flourish. The game is fat and the weather excellent. The thing that troubles you comes from inside, not from outside. It will make you ill, if you keep wandering in the night and worrying about whatever is down there in the low country.
“It would help if we could live in the same house, and yet the building of the new space is not complete. It is forbidden to move into rooms that have not been purified and had the ceremonies performed to make them wholesome. If you will allow me, I will move out into the piñons with you.”
He turned to lay his cheek against the top of her sleek head. She smelled like earth and air and juniper. That comforted him on some deep level of his being.
“I feel as if the weight of the mesa rests on my shoulders,” he said. “I worry that some enemy will creep up, and I will not know. I am responsible for the safety of our people, and I feel that I am not old enough—or skilled enough—to keep them safe.” He sighed. “Ki-shi-o-te tells me that this is natural. No one, however skilled, he says, can keep anyone safe, for our world is not a safe place. And yet I cannot rest, and
