“Of course not,” White Eye chided. “As I said, the gaming pieces were cast long ago. Perhaps Cold Bringing Woman had something to do with it, as did Brother Mud Head, and the katsinas, and perhaps, even, the Flute Player himself.” He paused. “Sometimes the most momentous of events pass unmarked by ordinary men.”
“Let me guess.” Dead Bird snorted. “You’re going to tell us that you’re not an ordinary man.”
“Far from it. I’m as ordinary as the next man,” White Eye responded. “Nevertheless, I knew immediately what had happened.”
Elder Rattler leaned forward to see the old Dreamer’s face. “Knew what? Explain yourself.”
White Eye’s grin exposed toothless pink gums. “I knew that the First People were doomed the moment the Mountain Witch returned from her captivity among the eastern mound builders.”
“What does this have to do with us?” Bad Cast finally nerved himself to ask. He’d begun to feel foolish standing in the presence of elders who were preoccupied with cares far beyond his own.
White Eye swiveled his head. An unseen gaze was piercing Bad Cast’s body. “It has everything to do with you. But for a mistake on my part, you would already be carrying Ripple to the lair of the Mountain Witch, which, if we are to survive, is where he must go.”
Seventeen
As he sat chewing the last of his corn cake breakfast, Leather Hand watched the sun finally crest the high wooded slopes of the Green Mesa off to the east. He and his men had camped on a rise just below the stone pillar known as Thunderbird’s Toes on the southern tip of the mountain. Now the stone caught the first morning light.
The valley between Green Mesa and Thunderbird Mountain still lay in shadow. The drainages cutting the alluvial bottoms created a tracery of deeper purple like veins in the pale soil. He could make out distant farmsteads by their irregular fields.
“There.” Tracker pointed off to the south.
Leather Hand followed the man’s arm. From their vantage at the foot of the rocky prominence, he could trace the winding drainage channel as it worked out of the juniper-dotted slope and etched the yellow and tan soils that stretched into the broad basin. In the hazy south, World Tree Mountain, a black spear of basalt, thrust up from the pale beds of sandstone and clay.
Leather Hand turned his attention back to the place Tracker indicated. In the trees behind him, a flock of piñon jays trilled and called in long rolling racks that sounded like human laughter.
“Perhaps a half day’s run,” Tracker replied laconically. “They have already started their morning fires. You can see the faint blue pall of the smoke. It hangs low in the air.”
Maybe Tracker could see it. Leather Hand couldn’t, but he’d take the Deep Canyon barbarian’s word for it. He stood and gave it one more hard look. Then he turned and saw Turquoise Fox staring thoughtfully at distant World Tree Mountain.
“Do you believe it?” he asked his deputy.
“That it’s a tree?” Turquoise Fox shrugged, glanced down the hill where the rest of the warriors were finishing breakfast, then turned his keen eyes back to the distant peak. “I don’t think so, War Chief. I’ve climbed around the base of that pillar while hunting desert rams. The kind of stone it’s made of looks nothing like wood. Now, you go south, down to the Colored Desert, and you’ll find wood that is obviously turned to stone.”
“Perhaps the world tree lies deeply inside the rock, Deputy.”
Turquoise Fox gave him a sly smile. “What you really want to know, War Chief, is whether I think that peak is actually holy like the Priests tell us. Do I really think it protrudes from the Underworlds into ours, and most of all, do I believe that First Woman sits beneath its roots, spinning out Dreams in World Tree Cave?”
“Do you?”
He shook his head. “If it were a great Spirit tree sticking into our world, it would have branches. Instead, those rocky lines that run out from it look more like roots. If you ask me, whatever it is, it is firmly planted in our world, not the ones below.”
“So you don’t believe that First Woman is down there.”
Turquoise Fox smiled wistfully and shifted his attention to the distant southwest, where a hazy smear leaned eastward in the pink morning sky. “Now there, War Chief, is true Spirit Power. The Rainbow Serpent rises from the Underworlds. At the Serpent’s base, the earth bleeds. Blood runs from the wound so hot it pours out in rivers that glow. Only when it begins to cool does it scab, crack, and harden. Even then, a man can’t touch it. If there is any Power I fear, War Chief, it is the Rainbow Serpent.”