People of the Silence(21)
Outsiders, like the Mogollon, the Hohokam, and the northern Tower Builders, were not people at all. Despite their human bodies, the Straight Path people knew they had the souls of beasts. Why, the Mogollon’s own legends said they had once lived as fiery wolves in Father Sun’s heart and been cast out because they started chewing up his body. As they ran through the heavens toward earth, their blazing wolf bodies had transformed into human shapes. To this day the Straight Path people called them Fire Dogs, for their souls remained predators, watching, waiting for the right time to kill.
The Fire Dogs could not be trusted. They didn’t think like humans.
Cornsilk wondered how the elders of the Made People clans got along at Talon Town. Each clan sent their greatest leader to live among the First People, to help and advise them on the ways of the world. The Made People had, after all, lived here much longer than the First People. But Cornsilk had heard that the First People routinely treated their clan leaders little better than Fire Dog slaves.
Sternlight, the legendary Sunwatcher, had the worst reputation. The Straight Path nation had been suffering from drought for sixteen summers, and where once the clans had looked to Sternlight for guidance, now they openly accused him of witchcraft.
Power flowed through everything in the world, from the smallest dandelion seed floating across the desert to the grandest of the Comet People. Priests and shamans called upon Power to help their peoples, to bring health, assure good crops, and influence the rains to fall. Witches used it to benefit themselves.
Two summers ago, a Trader had whispered that he had stumbled into one of Sternlight’s private chambers at Talon Town by accident. He said he’d seen piles of exquisite blankets, fine pots filled with chunks of turquoise, jet, malachite, and coral, and baskets of priceless macaw and parrot feathers. He’d also claimed he’d seen a line of human skulls mounted on the wall.
Cornsilk suppressed a shiver.
Good people never accumulated wealth. They shared what they had with their families. Only witches amassed such “things” for their own pleasures.
Leafhopper shifted her squat body to lean over and murmur, “Do you think the First People would starve without us?”
Cornsilk cocked a brow. “Thinking of subtle ways to kill the witches?”
“Shh!” Leafhopper said. She glanced over her shoulder, and her bean-sack dress pulled tight across her flat chest. “No, I was just—”
“Yes, they’d starve. We provide them with almost all of their corn, beans, squash, and dried meat.”
Made People hosted every major ceremonial at Talon Town, hauling in massive quantities of food to feed the attendants, and pay the priests, Dancers, and Singers who used their spiritual powers to call upon the gods. When the ritual cycle ended, the Made People stored the excess food at Talon Town. First People grew little of their own food; they survived on those reserves.
No one minded, not if the First People’s voices reached the gods and rain made the crops flourish—but that had not happened in many cycles. The gods seemed to have abandoned the First People.
But they still ate the Made People’s food.
“So,” Leafhopper said, “if we just stopped bringing them food they would die?”
“Or go away. There aren’t very many of them left anyway. It wouldn’t take much.”
First People only married other First People, and many of their children didn’t live past the first two summers. As a result, their numbers had dwindled dramatically. The Blessed Night Sun, Matron of Talon Town, and her husband, the Blessed Sun, had two living children—all the others had died. The Sunwatcher, Sternlight, had never married, and many of the other First People at Talon Town had vanished mysteriously. In the other thirteen towns in Straight Path canyon, perhaps another three hundred First People lived.
“But if they all die”—Leafhopper glanced uneasily at Cornsilk—“how will we ever find our ways to the afterlife?”
“We’ll just follow the north road to the sipapu and travel into the underworlds. We’ll get there.”
Because the First People had come up through the underworlds, they, and they alone, knew the correct path to the Land of the Ancestors. Legends said that unimaginable dangers, traps and snares, and bizarre half-human creatures, waited to leap upon the unwary soul. Fortunately, the First People knew each trap and hiding place. And, for a price, they would share their secret knowledge.
“Maybe we’d better not starve them,” Leafhopper said. “I wish to see my parents again. Besides, I think it might take a lot of Power to starve them. And, as you said, Crow Beard keeps corpse powder in his chamber. I don’t think we want to be witched as punishment.”