Buckthorn rubbed the back of his hot neck as he looked into the canyon before him. The future lay down there, not among the fading ghosts of dead trees.
Cloud People trailed gauzy filaments of rain as they glided northward. The warp and weft of light and shadow wove a shifting blanket of color. As he watched, the rugged canyon walls went from the deepest crimson to a washed-out pink. He smiled. When the thlatsinas Danced they brought rain, and life.
His long black braid fell over his shoulder. He swore he’d grown skinnier over the past five days. He rubbed the sweat from his thin hooked nose and narrow face. His mother had once told him he should be glad he had fawnlike eyes, otherwise people would call him The Vulture Child. His lungs drew deeply of the damp earthy air. Wind Baby flew across the hilltop, whipping Buckthorn’s long tan shirt around his legs.
It felt good to rest. He had been running all day, rushing to his destiny.
He bent forward and braced his hands on his knees, taking the weight of his three packs from his lower back.
“I’ll be there soon,” he said, and joy flooded his chest.
Black Mesa had told him, “Follow the holy road to the stairs cut into the cliff face. At the bottom of the stairway, you will find a small white house. I have sent a messenger ahead. The Derelict knows you are coming.”
The thought of meeting the blessed elder left him awestruck.
Buckthorn got one last breath into his lungs and trotted forward again. His sandals clicked as they struck the gravel in the road.
He reached the edge of the canyon, and a precipice dropped before him, perhaps two hundred hands. Buckthorn stopped and looked around. For as far as he could see, ridges twisted across the highlands like the knobby spines of ancient monsters. Ropy braids of red, yellow, and white rock sliced through the spines at odd angles. Eroded stone pillars poked up everywhere.
He peered over the precipice. Steep stairs had indeed been cut into the face of the cliff. Excited, he trotted forward. He went down backward, using the steps like a pine-pole ladder. His packs suddenly felt feather-light.
When he jumped off the bottom step, sweat coursed down his face, stinging his eyes. He blinked them clear and looked around.
A tiny, dingy house, two body-lengths square, hid in a tangle of tall sage and bricklebrush. The flat roof sagged. The deerhide over the low doorway had been mouse-gnawed. Plaster flakes from the cracked walls sprinkled the ground. It looked abandoned. Frightened, Buckthorn hurried forward, shoving his way through brush until he found a winding path. Deer tracks dimpled the red dirt, but he saw nothing that looked human.
“Oh, no. He must be here!” he whispered to himself. “I can’t have run all this way for nothing.”
He stopped ten hands from the door. The scent of old juniper smoke sweetened the air. Windflower villagers considered it impolite to shout or make your presence known by stamping your feet, so he stood quietly, breathing hard.
After several moments, a reedy old voice called, “Is it you?”
He smiled his relief. “I am Buckthorn of Windflower—”
“No, you are not. You no longer have a name, or a clan. You are simply you.”
A hunched old man drew back the gnawed curtain and squinted out at him. The Derelict had a deeply seamed brown face and white hair that hung in thin wisps to his shoulders. His small round nose sank into his wrinkles like an egg in a nest, and he had bushy white brows. His lips had shrunken over his toothless gums, but his eyes … his eyes shone as though the blessed Sun Thlatsina lived inside him.
The Derelict hobbled out, scratching his hip through his tattered brown shirt, and gestured to the packs on Buckthorn’s back. “Which are mine?”
“Oh!” Buckthorn blurted in embarrassment. “These two.” He slipped them off his shoulders and handed them over. “My clan contributed all their finest possessions, Elder.”
The packs clanked as Dune took them and slung them over his own thin shoulders. Without a word, he took off down a trail that led westward, paralleling the canyon wall.
Frowning, Buckthorn removed his own pack and stowed it by the door, then followed.
The old man walked until his path intersected a well-traveled trail. There he sat down in the soft sand with the packs before him and leaned against a giant sagebrush.
Buckthorn knelt at his side. The wash glistened in the distance. A silver strand of water flowed down the middle. When Dune said nothing, Buckthorn ventured, “Black Mesa asked me to give you his warmest—”
“Shh! Listen to the divine musician. Hear his music?”
Buckthorn’s gaze roamed the sage and red cliffs. “You mean Wind Baby?” he asked. “I hear—”
“You’re listening with your ears.” Dune shook a finger. “Listen with your heart.”