Cornsilk smacked a new handful of meal. Pink flour wafted up around her face. “A really evil witch could beat him.”
“Maybe.” A smile came to Leafhopper’s round face. She shoved up her red headband with a finger, leaving a streak of red meal across her forehead. “Wouldn’t that be interesting to watch? Witches hurling curses and drowning each other with corpse powder. I’d give a Green Mesa pot to witness that.”
Cornsilk absently glanced eastward, toward the Green Mesa clans. “You don’t own a Green Mesa pot.”
“Nobody does.”
“Some of the First People do. They get them in exchange for those little turquoise figurines that guide souls down to the Land of the Ancestors.”
“Great,” Leafhopper said. “I’ll have to steal a figurine to get a pot so I can pay to see witches kill each other.”
Cornsilk smiled, grabbed the black-and-white bowl of coarsely ground meal and got to her feet. “I’m going to go heat this up.”
“I’m coming with you!” Leafhopper jumped to her feet and stared wide-eyed at Cornsilk. “After all this talk of witches, I’m not going to sit here by myself. What if there’s a witch watching from the bushes? He might shoot a witch pill into my mouth and kill me.”
Cornsilk frowned out at the red hills, where birds chirped and membranous insect wings glittered in the sunlight. A nighthawk sailed over a line of up-tilted sandstone slabs and disappeared into a stand of prickly pear cactus.
“I don’t see anybody out there,” Cornsilk said, and started across the plaza … briskly. Just in case.
Leafhopper trotted at her side, craning her neck to examine anything that moved beyond the walls of Lanceleaf Village.
Five
When the sun sank below the distant mesa, glowing red spikes shot over the horizon, lancing the hearts of drifting Cloud People, turning them into blazing beasts as they lazily roamed the skyworlds. Southward, the tallest peak of Morning Star Mountain gleamed crimson. Shadows cloaked the rolling hills around the sacred mountain. As the light dwindled, birds found perches on the cactuses and scraggly limbs of brush, their feathers fluffed against the cold.
Buckthorn pulled his red-and-black blanket up over his chest. He had camped on a hillside in a fragrant grove of junipers. The branches twisted above him and created a spiky nest at his back. Faint traces of blue smoke from his supper fire had been trapped by the thick needles; they spun and curled as they poked for a way out.
In the spaces between the limbs, Buckthorn could see the early risers among the Evening People.
He yawned. He had run, off and on, all day, and weariness weighted his tall skinny body. As slumber came, his thoughts flitted like moth wings in torchlight. Where did his path lie? What did the Spirits wish of him?
He had traveled to the First Underworld and received a vision from the ancestor Spirits who lived there. A strange vision of his father. He’d been young, with jet-black hair and broad shoulders. He had worn a pure white buckskin shirt and a magnificent turquoise pendant. When the man had first spoken to Buckthorn, he had instantly recognized that voice—because it sounded so much like his own, deep, soft, with a wistful tinge.
A cold breath of wind shivered the juniper grove. Buckthorn tugged his blanket up to his chin. Fanned by the breeze, the gray charcoal in his firepit became a living bed of red winking eyes. He watched them, and yawned again.
If only he had understood what his father had been trying to tell him.
“There is danger ahead, my son. You must have the heart of a cloud in order to walk upon the wind.”
“The heart of a cloud…” Buckthorn whispered. Deep blue puffs of cloud sailed overhead, their edges shining with starlight. Wind stirred the juniper branches. The gnarled trees creaked and moaned in complaint. “But what does that mean?”
His weary soul seemed to rise at the urging of Wind Baby and coasted on the current like corn pollen on a summer zephyr. His father’s soft voice slipped into his Dream with the lightness of a bobcat’s footfalls.…
“Come this way, son. Come this way.”
Buckthorn seemed to float, breathing hard, and stared into the black eyes of the young man who had guided him through the First Underworld. The man bent over Buckthorn, smiling, his handsome face, with the straight nose and large dark eyes, glowing reddish in the glare of the wind-blown coals. He wore the same white buckskin shirt and magnificent turquoise pendant. His loose long hair flipped around his broad shoulders in the gusts. His white moccasins reached his knees and seemed to blend with his long shirt. Blue, red, and black beads chevroned the tops of his moccasins.