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People of the Silence(4)

By:W. Michael Gear


Young Fawn exhaled in longing. I would give my very life to see that.

Her gaze drifted to her right. In the southeast the sacred rock pillar punctured the heavens. Father Sun had risen over that pillar for the past fifteen mornings straight. On this cold dawn, the shortest day of the cycle, Father Sun would be very weak. If he could travel no further, he would stand still on the horizon. That would be a signal that Sternlight needed to perform the “Turning-Back-the-Sun” ritual: He would have to run the east road to help Father Sun.

Four winters ago it had taken seven days for Sternlight to turn back the sun. By then, he had lain near death, curled on the rock like an infant. He had offered his own strength to Father Sun, and it nearly cost him his life. But if the sun could not be turned back, the world would be cast into perpetual winter, and the Straight Path people would die.

This day, of all days, nothing must interfere with the Turning-Back-the-Sun ritual. Father Sun had to see how hard they were trying, how desperate they were for his approval.

Last summer, as the warfare intensified, Father Sun had ordered the sky gods to withhold the blessing rain during the growing season. The Blessed Sun, chief of Talon Town, had told people to pour every extra drop of water they had onto the corn, bean, and squash fields. But they had withered to dust. The springs had dried up. Children had screamed with hunger. And raiders had rampaged across the desert. Like the Straight Path people, the Mogollon and the Hohokam had been willing to kill for a single basket of food.

Horrifying rumors spread that some Straight Path clans had turned in desperation to cannibalism. They’d sought out the Fire Dogs, taking them as slaves during raids, then offered them in bizarre ceremonials to appease Father Sun’s anger before cooking their flesh.

Young Fawn shuddered.

Sternlight himself had marched from village to village pleading for people to turn away from evil, to return to the Straight Path, reminding them that the world had already been destroyed four times. The First World had been scorched with fire, the Second World covered with ice, the Third World drowned by floods. The Fourth World had died when Father Sun sucked all the air away. And the Fifth World, the world they now lived upon, would die too, he said, if people did not cleanse their hearts.

Young Fawn’s breathing went shallow. Sternlight said that Father Sun had told him he would split the Fifth World apart by hurling huge fiery rocks.…

Gravel scritched.

Sternlight emerged from the staircase. He stood absolutely still, staring out at the horizon like a man facing his own executioner, eyes enormous, jaw clamped. Dawn blushed color into his white shirt, dyeing it the rich yellow of bitterbrush petals.

“Ready?” she asked.

He stumbled, startled. “Who—who are you? What are you doing here? Why haven’t you run away?”

“I am Solstice Girl, Elder. I carry the sacred cornmeal.” She untied the four small bags she wore as a necklace and held them out to him. “Come. It is time.”

Sternlight did not move. He stared at her in horror, as though she were an ancient beast stalking him.

Young Fawn took the bags, lifted his right hand, and deposited them in his palm. “Elder,” she said, “you must face the east. Is that not right?”

In a voice almost too low to hear, he said, “Yes,” and forced himself to turn away.

After a few moments, he began Singing. Yesterday, the handsome War Chief, Ironwood, had been along to play the drum; the day before that short pudgy Creeper, leader of the Buffalo Clan, had serenaded the dawn with majestic flute music. Today, the Sunwatcher Sang alone.

As Sternlight opened the first bag, he Sang, “In Beauty it is begun. In Beauty it is begun,” and sprinkled a path of white cornmeal to the east.

He sprinkled the bag of red cornmeal to the south, yellow to the west, and finally the blue cornmeal to the north. Then he offered his meal-covered hands to Father Sky, and bent to touch Mother Earth, saying, “In Beauty it is finished. In Beauty it is finished.”

The meals swirled upward in a luminous haze and sailed out beyond the rim of the canyon. Like fine summer mist, they sparkled and fell.

Young Fawn waited. It had happened the same way for fifteen days. Sternlight called out, and Father Sun appeared.

The Sunwatcher straightened, crossed his arms over his breast, and murmured, “Come, Father, arise and bring life to the world.”

Awe prickled Young Fawn’s spine. The first sliver of molten gold flared on the horizon, and the buttes and mesas shed their dark silhouettes and gleamed with a crimson fire. The drifting clouds blazed orange. Shadows sprang into existence, dark and long, stretching westward.

Sternlight used shaking hands to frame the image of the stone pillar and sun, then let them drop to his sides. Tears traced lines down his cheeks.