The thought crossed my mind that Wuzzie could have been mistaken, made up the dream to have a place for us to go, a hope to follow and keep us working and alive. It was a fleeting thought, one quickly taken back for fear it would be noticed as a foolish thing. Just my being here Wuzzie might find as the reason the land coughed up no herd.
“Whoever has something to tell must do so now, before it is too late,” Thunder Caller called out, his eyes scanning the gathering.
A deep-buried silence followed.
Each seemed lost inside, looking for wrongs that might have offended. My eyes were cast to the ground on which I sat, searching myself for something I might have done besides being who I am, as I am. My thoughts searched deep, reaching to my depths as though my memories were hands digging in the water for tule tubers.
I did not at first hear Summer Rain speaking in the voice of a woman married to the headman. When her words finally reached me, I knew within an instant that the burden ahead would not be borne by any basket I could carry by myself.
“—to walk as one,” Summer Rain said. “We crossed the tracks the charmers made.” Her voice cracked. “She chose to do it. Made me do it.”
Great racking sobs interrupted her breathing now and halted for just a moment her stinging words. I felt my face heat up, heard my heart pound steady, ever steady, though so loud I feared my head would burst. All moisture traveled to my palms.
“She is a bad spirit,” Summer Rain continued, her voice a whine. “Very powerful. Not even the dog gave us away. She made us invisible to his eyes, your ears, so you did not—”
“That hunt went well!” I heard myself breathing hard, my words spoken to the men of the circle, not Summer Rain. “You took many hides and much meat. Remember? Your bullets hit their mark.”
I turned to Stink Bug, Shard.
“None were lost and—”
“Do not tell us what to remember,” Grey Doe snapped.
“You do not deny Summer Rain’s words?” Thunder Caller asked in wonder.
“I would not have done it by myself. I am not so brave as …” Summer Rain’s words drifted like smoke into wind before being silenced by her husband’s eyes.
“It is my fault,” Wuzzie said into the chaos, raising his voice and his hand, settling matters and my life. “And I will mend the hole in this net.” The group remained silent as he stared at me. “I will think on what must be done to make repairs. Tomorrow we will meet again,” he said with a flick of his hand to his chest. “That is the plan.”
Each filed out to his own lodge, filled with his own thoughts.
Mine were consumed with anger at Summer Rain, who did not need to speak, at Wuzzie, who did not need to make repairs, at myself for being who I was, doing what I did. I looked to see if Lukwsh’s eyes accused me … or Shard’s. Lukwsh would not meet my gaze, but Shard did. His eyes rested on me with sorrow, not accusation.
I did not sleep that night. Instead my eyes searched the wickiup for signs of safety. They sought memories of tender moments, baskets filled and emptied, of gifts given and received. My fingers sank and twirled in the thick hair of the dog who lay loyally beside me, his breathing a comfort to my short breath, eyes puffed with tears. They did not look into the future, those eyes, did not waste their time in hope.
Sometime before sunrise I felt the presence of another kneeling beside me on my mat. I turned to give a startled cry, but he placed his hand over my mouth and leaned to my face. He whispered in my ear, his breath warm against my cheek. His words were tender, strange, spoken without anger but with force.
“Each time,” he said, “remember this: gather farther and stay longer. And when I signal you, that time, do not return. It is the only way.”
Shard’s words had no meaning. But I set understanding them aside when I felt his lips press against my forehead, his fingers outline, seem to memorize, the contours of my face and mingle with the wetness of my tears. He touched the tip of my widow’s peak, brushed my hair back from my face. His eyes glistened in the murky morning light.
“I will hold you always in my mind,” he said.
“Only in your mind?” I asked bravely.
Flake nudged beneath his hand and waited for the pat he wanted, giving Shard a momentary pause he did not fill with words. Instead, he leaned into me, his lips found mine and pressed against me with a tender yearning. Soft kisses moved to my forehead. He held me close to his chest.
“What will happen?” I asked, moving back from him, though I would have stayed in his embrace forever. “What do I gather?”
He shook his head. “Trust me in this, Shell Flower. Just remember what I told you.” He held me a while longer, and something told me to memorize the scent of tanned hide lingering on his skin, the feel of my cheek on his chest, the sound of his heart to my ear. One last kiss to the soft place beside my eye.
Then he left.
My fingers lingered at my temple, the last place he had touched me.
At the first seep of eastern light washing over the rabbit brush and sage, Lukwsh moved about, stuffing things into a small treasure basket—dried seed cakes and berries. I saw her slip Wren’s flint inside and some items too small for me to see. She must have felt my eyes watching her for she motioned me with her chin, and I came to her.
“First, we bathe you,” she said.
“Why?”
She shook her head, motioned me to silence. I stood and held my arms out. Warm water squeezed from a chamois ran over my shoulders and breasts, ran like an escaping river over my hips, my legs. The water was scented with wild rose hips, scented as for those who are washed to prepare their bodies for a journey to another world.
My heart picked up its pace; a finger of fear worked its way up my back. Goose flesh formed in tiny bubbles on my skin, though the lodge felt warm. A small fire heated the water.
Lukwsh rinsed clean water over my hair and squeezed it through the thickness. Behind me, she twisted my hair into a single braid, a dried shell flower woven into the center, Sunmiet’s barrette at the base. Then she dressed me in the softest buckskin I had ever felt. I wondered what made her decide to bring it. I wanted to ask, but she would not lift her eyes to mine, would not let me read inside her thoughts. I wondered when she tanned the hide, sewed on the shells and seeds. Would it have been what I would have worn when I invited Shard to my lodge, made Lukwsh a moo’a? I could not ask; she would not answer.
Lukwsh motioned me to hold my arms out again, and she wrapped a cord around my waist, secured beneath my skirt the basket she had filled, patted the flapped cover so it did not bulge. The soft buckskin shirt hung over my hips, molded itself to me like a friendly child. Flake sniffed at the buckskin fringe that fluttered along my legs.
Satisfied, Lukwsh touched my fingers to hers in a caress lighter than a whisper.
“Why?” I said, my voice hoarse, my future pushing through this present pain.
She shook her head. “I cannot say. Wuzzie wears many faces. Just do as you are asked.” She smoothed the hide over my shoulders, brushing some imaginary thread from the skirt. “Do what you are told.”
I watched water pool behind her eyes and wanted to ask her more, but she silenced me with her hand.
“I made a good bargain, na?” she said, her words thick with tears caught in her throat. “Always remember. It is not possible to live without a good knife, and you were more valuable than one carved from obsidian.”
Her sadness spread over me like the slow rising of a river.
I tried not to think of Wren’s dream that spoke of future death as I walked out into the sunshine, out into the circle. Wuzzie sat at the center of a gathering planned before, without my knowledge, palms upward, arms outstretched. In his high-pitched singing voice he called me forward, signaled Thunder Caller and Stink Bug to help me sit before him in the sand. A curlew screeched in the distance.
“This is the plan given to make repairs. When this is complete, rain will come, the earth will shake, rocks will fall from the ledges,
the antelope will appear, and the dead will rise. But owls will die. We will help the spirits make this happen.”
His eyes opened like a flash of lightening burning into mine. I remembered the day he found me, how I wondered if he was a nightmare or a man. Now it did not matter.
“You will gather as you did when you made the passage from being a child to a woman,” Wuzzie told me for all to hear. “And when you are finished, your spirit will rise in the wind.” His fingers fluttered upward.
Is there a dread so heavy a being cannot move? Is there a fear so loud, so noisy that no other sound can enter in one’s ears, one’s mind, one’s thoughts? A fog stole my thinking, put heavy pressure on my breathing. Wuzzie’s world swam before me and made my stomach ill. My clouded eyes searched for Lukwsh, for Shard, for safety.
They found Shard, caught his glance. His eyes spoke sadness and something else. He nodded his head so slightly I almost did not see it, but the movement brought me back to words he had said: “Gather farther and stay longer. And when I signal you, that time, do not return.”
His eyes moved back to Wuzzie, and mine followed, aware again that the scrawny man spoke.
“I have chosen the place,” Wuzzie said. “Around this, you will bring your fuel. It will be set before the headman’s lodge in the first circle. My wehe will mark the spot.”
The circle parted for me in silence. I was amazed the circle parted for me. I was still alive, could still be seen. My feet felt heavy, my head lowered with a burden too large for any basket.
Even in the deep ravines some distance from the camp I could hear the drums. Like a heartbeat, they drowned out the frantic feelings that pushed up toward my throat. I could not let myself think of what they meant, the ending that they promised. I could not let my mind go past my task to “gather farther, stay out longer.”
The red willow growing beside the stream bent but did not break easily. I looked inside the treasure basket and saw a small knife, but I decided cut branches would be noticed when I brought them back. I might be searched. So I laid the basket down, hid it for a later time, marked the place.
I took a long time gathering, then walked slowly back.
Thunder Caller was the first to meet me. He took the pile from across my shoulders and did not meet my eyes. He said nothing, but I wondered if he thought my load light for such a long time spent in gathering. He laid the branches around the obsidian wehe Wuzzie had laid in the sand. The pile of sticks reminded me of Wren’s small gathering after she burned her feet and the way we eased her pain.
Beside Wuzzie’s knife stood a pole they had pounded in the ground.
As I dropped a second armload at the pile, Stink Bug greeted me. He grinned as he patted the pole affectionately and stepped back from the brush.
“It will not be such a hot fire,” Stink Bug said, “but with the green willows, it will burn a long, long time.” He scratched his fat thigh and smirked.
My return to the ravine took me longer. I walked as though through thick mud, understanding now the magnitude of the coming sacrifice.
I caught a glimpse of Wren watching. She did not turn away when I looked; her eyes carried a deep sadness, like the losing of a friend. She smiled and waved a child’s wave, and I wondered what her words might be if she had no word for good-bye.
Flake bounded beside me, brushed at my legs. His presence warmed me as he wagged his tail and jumped before me, head lowered in play.
“O Flake,” I said into his pool of brown eyes, so grateful for his presence.
I heard the shout—“Flake, come!”—as the dog turned with me to look. A flame burst inside me like a hot rock dropped in oil as I recognized the caller. I watched Flake abandon me for Shard.
Why gather farther and stay longer? Why hope Wuzzie’s mind would change? Why not just let them end this struggle quickly? I felt as empty as a broken basket.
I made three more gatherings, going farther out, remaining longer. The wind picked up and I recognized the feel of late afternoon. Stink Bug managed to stay close to the pile, picking at his teeth with a stem of dried grass, his wide mouth still set in a smirk.
Shard walked between us as though sent to shield me from my fate. His eyes were filled with a feeling I had not seen in them before, a look that turned to strength as he caught my gaze. He looked east, then north, with a slight movement of his chin and the promise of a smile. I took it as the signal.
I memorized everything about his face, his eyes, his nose and mouth, how the sweat stained his headband, how wisps of hair stuck to his cheek. I caught the way a smile moved across his face like a gentle sunrise lighting the desert. He bit at his fingernail as though a boy, then brushed at his eyes as I turned away.
My feet wanted to race away, but I forced them to walk no differently than if I’d just been sent for seeds. Some dried sagebrush lying close to camp I placed in the cordage strapped to my back, showing evidence of my efforts. Like a sage hen grubbing for bugs in the desert, I walked and bent and picked up sticks, walked and bent and picked, heading ever steady toward the source of Home Creek, toward the cuts in the deep ravine.
Beyond the sight of camp, I dropped my cordage burden and shoved it under some willows. I uncovered my small treasure basket, and while strapping it around me, began to run.
THE TWELFTH KNOT
THE RHYTHM OF DISAPPEARING
My sense of time departed.
I reached the narrowing where a stream pressed out of the ground as a seeping spring but did not know how far it flowed from camp. Still, the sound of the drums no longer beat in my head, only the rhythm of my message: Gather farther and stay longer and do not return. Fallen logs stretched across the spring, scattered between rocks and boulders broken from the ridgecap and resting against each other, most larger than a wickiup.
Beyond them lay the narrow opening of rock that spired upward higher than the tallest pine tree of my memory. Like smoke moving up through a hole to the stars, my feet and hands would need to carry me upward through jagged rock, along narrow ledges using shallow footholds, upward to rolling grasses taller than my being. My neck ached with looking.
The water pressing through the grass felt cool and tasted sweet. The splash of it felt good on my hot face and neck. A breeze cooled as it drifted across the water and announced that night would soon settle.
I had not eaten all day and reached now for a dried cake, surprised that in the midst of this I could still savor the bite. I took a moment to wonder. I wondered who would follow, how long I had. Maybe no one would be sent. Perhaps they meant it as a simple way to rid themselves of me. That thought cheered me, made me wonder if that was why I gathered alone. Perhaps Stink Bug simply sat by the stick pile to frighten me, to make me want to leave, to force me from the people’s presence. I let my mind consider the idea that my life had little risk, let it roll around like a sweet meat, giving me time to get used to the taste before it became bitter with truth.
I wondered what they were doing, Shard and Lukwsh and Wren, whether they thought of me. I even reflected on Flake and the piercing pain of Shard calling him back, as though his own dog was not enough, as though I did not deserve even the comfort of a dog. The hollowness of my chest told me my wonderings were of no value, that I had no time to mourn.
The sun set; the wind laid. The ridge cap cutting into the purple sky needed scaling. It was the next step. The ravine narrowed and going up—to get out—appeared the only way. It was not a task for nighttime, not even with a promised moon. It would be best to travel under stars once I reached the upper, smoother ridge that eased gently back toward Snow Mountain and the lakes and to the world beyond, whatever world I chose to walk toward. Even the thought of what lay beyond caused my breath to shorten.
“Think of climbing the rocks. Just get over the rocks,” I said out loud, surprised at the strength of my voice.
I could not climb them then, not that first night. My limbs were suddenly exhausted.
Beneath a fallen cottonwood I
removed my basket, stirred up the tree’s fluff like old snow, bent again to drink my fill, then nestled down to a restless, dreamless sleep.
The moon had already been up some time when I heard the noises, loud enough to wake me from an awkward, aching sleep, yet too faint to recognize and name.
A rabbit scampering in the fallen branches? No, something larger.
My mind jolted awake. Sounds thundered in my ears just beyond my face. Swishing sounds, something moving through the dry sage beyond where the ravine narrowed before the spring seeped. The air felt cool. I could hear the gurgling of Home Creek formed up as a stream beyond the spring. The moon shone bright though not full, so bright the junipers cast shadows on the sage, made the willows dance upon the water.
My heart pounded, my breath came short and shallow, my tongue thickly dry. My body knew to fear before my mind could name the source.
Two men on horseback cast shadows, moving as a bad dream without effort through the sage. They approached the boulder-scattered area, dismounted, and tied their horses to a juniper. They jumped across the shallow stream, stood looking, began to weave their way through the tumble of boulders, their feet slipping on the smaller rocks, the sound carrying like an angry grumble through the desert night. They had no reason to be quiet. Did I hear them actually exchange words? Did they speak my name? Perhaps they came to tell me all was well, the herd found, and I could come back. Perhaps Wuzzie planned this sequence all along. Hope inched its way inside me. I watched from my concealment near the log, wondered if I ought to stand, to just call out.
But Shard’s words beat their rhythm in my head: Gather farther, stay out longer, and do not return. And do not return.
They dipped out of sight, moving slowly around the boulders, but kept coming like a cramp at night.
Searching, searching for a hiding place, I scanned the boulders, looked for washes, maybe caves. Heard their voices. My shoulders pushed up against the cottonwood log. I eased sideways, then on my belly, pulling with my elbows, made my way toward the opening of a rotten log. I reached inside.