People of the Silence(17)
Morning blushed gold into the rolling hills around Lanceleaf Village and glimmered on the green spears of yucca choking the slopes. It shone on the up-tilted blocks of tan sandstone rising over the patchwork of empty corn, squash, and bean fields that lay on every flat area around the village.
Billows of orange cloud burned swathes in the translucent eastern sky. Beneath them, the rugged peaks of the distant mountains were mantled in pristine white, and today they seemed to rip at the bottom of the clouds. At their base lay flat mesas, home of the Green Mesa clans who farmed the butte tops.
To the north rose the Great Bear Mountains, the home of First Bear, who had raised the high granite peaks to shelter him in hibernation. The claw marks of First Bear had ripped the land under the mountain, leaving long twisting ridges of canted rock. Ephemeral creeks ran at the bases of those ridges, flash flooding in spring, tumbling whole trees down into the basins, and trickling cool and clear after misty winter rainstorms. Those washes brought life to the land around Lanceleaf Village.
Generations ago, several families of the Ant Clan had come to farm the alluvial flats and mesa tops around Lanceleaf. In the beginning they built an attached line of four houses to spend the summers in while they worked the fields. With the crop surplus, they’d stayed through the winter, and in the following years, other clan members came, and additional rooms were built onto the village. Several kivas were dug into the red clay soil.
Life hadn’t been easy despite the rich bottomlands and water. The Tower Builders, barbarians who lived to the northwest, raided the Straight Path clans, killing, stealing food, and taking slaves that they drove northward to work their fields and clean their squalid houses. Sometimes wild peoples came down from the mountains, hunters who wore skins and worshiped animal gods. The wild hunters might trade, or they might raid. Then, like the beasts they were, they’d melt into the mountains without a trace.
Nor had all enemies been foreign. Lanceleaf had fought its share of wars with other Straight Path clans over the years. As a result, what had begun as a line of houses had been expanded with an eye toward defense. As the village grew, a second story had been added, then more rooms until the rectangular structure completely enclosed the plaza, providing a perfect corral. The only exit was a small gap between the walls in the southeastern corner, which they blocked with a pine-pole gate.
As long as the people had adequate warning, and could close the gate, the villagers could stand off any number of attackers by taking to the roofs with their bows.
But on this bright winter day, thoughts of war were far away. The men had left Lanceleaf Village to hunt at dawn, and most of the young women had gone to gather colored sand for sacred paintings. Dogs stretched out in the sunlight, sleeping. A few bold flies buzzed around them. Occasionally one would land, take a bite. The dog would wake with a sharp yip and go into a snapping frenzy, before flopping down again and drifting back to sleep.
Turkeys strutted through the village plaza, and they dipped their heads to examine every human activity, their brown-and-white feathers glinting in the wash of sunlight.
They had been bothering Cornsilk earlier, but now they tormented the seven old women sitting on the west side of the plaza. Her village rarely had meat, except on special occasions, so the turkeys were particularly prized. The young pullets pecked relentlessly at the strips of green yucca laid out for weaving baskets. Waving arms and harsh words split the morning. Matron Clover, the elder of Lanceleaf Village, reached out for a strip to weave into her sifter basket. As she started to lift it, one of the pullets leaped forward, grabbed the strip, and tugged.
“Stop that!” Clover yelled, her elderly face a mass of crisscrossing wrinkles. She tugged back. “Let go!”
With a great heave, she jerked the wet yucca strip away, and eyed the turkey malevolently. “Get away! Go find somebody else to bother.” She used the yucca to smack the pullet on the back. It let out a sharp high-pitched squawk and bounded off. Clover mumbled something Cornsilk couldn’t hear, but the other women laughed.
On the opposite side of the plaza, five hens dodged the flying chips from the eight old men making stone tools. Every time one of the men’s antler batons struck a flake of stone from a chert core, the hens dove for it, squabbling and plucking feathers from each other, before one hen grabbed it up, contemplatively tasted it, and spit it out.
The fat gobblers had bedded down along the south wall where a line of cradleboards leaned in the shade. Infants wrapped in bright blankets gurgled, shrieked, and waved tiny fists at nothing. Cotton straps ran across their foreheads, tying them to the cradleboards, and shaping their skulls. Flattening the back of the head broadened the cheekbones and gave the face a more desirable triangular appearance.