He squinted after the youth. Sunlight slanting through the clouds threw a golden veil over Poor Singer as he climbed toward the village.
“Keeper, I pray I am doing the right thing. If I’m not…”
The earth shook again, a tremor that took Jay Bird by surprise. And then, off to the west, the Rainbow Serpent glittered to life. She rose majestically over the mountaintop behind Gila Monster Cliffs Village, and stretched across the sky like a many-colored bridge of light.
The billowing thunderheads seemed to part before her, retreating to the edges of her glory.
Awed, Jay Bird whispered, “This time … I hear you.”
* * *
Creeper stood beside Webworm in a shower of falling gray ash, watching the stream of people climbing over the walls, down the ladders, leaving Talon Town. Packs wobbled on their backs as they headed toward the wash to fill their jars with gray water one last time. An ominous buzz of conversation stirred the quiet.
Creeper folded his arms and hugged himself. The ash settled over the canyon like a smothering blanket, turning the town’s white walls gray. Nearly four hands had built up in the plaza. A weaving pattern of trails cut through the windblown drifts. Creeper turned and squinted northward. He could barely make out the towering sandstone wall behind Talon Town. Patches of golden rock appeared and disappeared through the thick veil of whirling ash. Traders had been coming through, and they told horrifying stories. The massive quake, they said, had been felt for ten days’ run in any direction.
Webworm let out a deep sigh. He wore a red cape with the hood pulled up to shield his face, but ash coated his black hair and clung to his eyelashes. He had his jaw clenched. “A Hohokam Trader came through this morning. He told me that fiery rivers are pouring out of the Thlatsina Mountains, burning everything in their paths. He said forest fires are consuming the whole world. His people are terrified, too.”
Creeper gazed up at the sky. It glowed an eerie shade of yellowish purple, as though the skyworlds had been battered and bruised by the gods’ wrath. Smoke stung his nostrils with every breath.
“What did we expect?” he said in a low voice. “First the Matron is disgraced, then Talon Town is raided, and she, the holy Derelict, and the Sunwatcher are captured. After that the Blessed Sun is murdered and buried as a witch—”
“The gods must hate us.”
Tenderly, Creeper placed a hand on Webworm’s shoulder. He would not repeat the other whispers he’d heard late at night, whispers that made his heart beat painfully in his chest: “Look at what has happened to us! The new Blessed Sun is half Fire Dog, and the new Matron is a demented old woman! We are doomed! Let’s go before it’s too late!”
Webworm tugged his hood more closely about his face and frowned at the latest group of people to descend the ladders. Their bright capes, reds, yellows, and one a pale purple, contrasted with the ashen ground. Family by family, they were heading for the outlying villages and kin who would take them in. “If this keeps up, Creeper, I will rule over silence. Talon Town will be abandoned.”
“We cannot stop them. They are free people.”
“That Trader,” Webworm murmured, “he told me that just before the rivers of fire spurted from the earth, the ancestors in the underworlds grew so angry that the shaking ground cracked wide open, swallowing rivers and villages, then one of the mountains exploded—the entire top blew off, Creeper! Huge molten boulders flew through the air like birds! He said—”
“Hallowed Ancestors!” Creeper gasped, “Sternlight predicted that the gods would hurl huge fiery rocks to split the Fifth World apart!”
Webworm turned to peer at Creeper with his frightened soul in his eyes. “Do you think … can this really be the end of our world, Creeper?”
Creeper gazed down at the stream of people vanishing into the gray haze. Somewhere out there, a child sobbed.
“Who’s to say, Webworm?” he answered gently. “Only the gods and very great Dreamers know such things.”
Fifty-Three
Sun Cycle of the Dragonfly, Moon of Fledgling Robins
Ironwood led the way up the winding game trail, taking Night Sun by the hand as they walked along a narrow precipice. To his right, the sheer cliff fell away, ending hundreds of hands below in a huge pile of worn and broken boulders. Magnificent mountain peaks jutted through the haze around them. Snow still veined the deepest cracks, but a warm wind flapped the fringes on his buckskin shirt. He loved these alpine meadows. Wildflowers turned the slopes into a mosaic of blue, yellow, and white. Thunderheads crowded the blue high above. It had been raining off and on, settling the ash that still rose in plumes to the southwest.