“What!” Dune shouted.
Ironwood reddened. He still carried the unopened pot of ground turquoise and blue cornmeal in his pack.
“Dune,” he said as he turned, “if I had presented the sacred mixture to you, you wouldn’t have come, no matter what I told you, and I had strict orders from Crow Beard to bring you.”
“You lying son of a weasel! You disrespectful dog drool!”
The Derelict, holy man to four generations of Chiefs, hobbled across the sacred road, gazed at him sternly, and whacked Ironwood in the back of the head with his walking stick.
Young Swallowtail let out a shocked shriek and took off in the direction he had come from, his legs pumping like a terrified coyote’s. He glanced over his shoulder repeatedly, as if to make certain neither of them followed him.
Ironwood rubbed the knot forming at the base of his skull. “I had my orders. It was your own fault, Dune. You forced me to deceive you when you kept asking if Crow Beard was dead.”
Dune sucked his wrinkled lips over toothless gums. Glaring, he lifted his walking stick and pointed to a pink sandstone pillar which stood in the distance. “Do you know what that is?”
“Of course I do,” Ironwood responded. “It’s called Woodcutter’s Penis.”
Dune slitted an eye. “Woodcutter was the last man to deceive me.” He planted his walking stick and headed toward Talon Town. Sunlight glittered through his wispy white hair as he hobbled away.
Ironwood’s gaze riveted on the pink pillar.
“Dune!” he yelled. “Wait! I am innocent! I was under orders … Dune? Dune, wait!”
* * *
Poor Singer knotted his gray blanket around his shoulders, picked up Dune’s long-necked water jug from beside the door, and ducked beneath the door curtain.
Sunset sheathed the canyon. The cliffs threw long cold shadows across the flats and exuded the dusty scent of evening. Luminous patches of gold lay like dropped scarves on the tallest buttes. A single brilliant pink cloud hovered above the western horizon.
Poor Singer walked with his shoulders slumped, head down, kicking every sage that leaned into the trail. He’d kept his fast. The gnawing hunger pangs had receded to leave a terrible craving for food. Even the winter-dry stems on the four-wing salt-bush had started to look good. A floaty halo hung at the edge of his vision, and his thoughts wandered even more than usual.
“I’m morose,” he muttered. “Why am I morose? I shouldn’t be morose. This is one of the great moments of my life. I’m studying with the renowned Singer, Dune the Derelict. Why, there are young men who would give their very lives to be where I am today.”
He kicked another sage. The fragrance of crushed leaves surrounded him. He knew better than to eat sage leaves; they gave a man a terrible headache. Finches twittered in the brush, hopping from branch to branch, eying him curiously. A finch, on the other hand …
“I’m probably morose because I haven’t eaten in so long. How many days has it been?” He squinted down at the narrow slash of wash where the trail ended. “I had my last corncake for lunch on the day I met Dune. What’s that? Six days?”
He’d lost track of the physical world and begun doing some very strange things …
“Ah!” He tripped over a big black rock in the trail’s deepening shadows, and fell on his face. Sage raked his cheeks and stabbed him in the chest. The water jug, by some miracle, didn’t break, but rolled to one side and rocked mockingly on its curved side.
As he pulled himself to his feet, he cried, “Blast you, rock! Do you have to do that to me every night?”
After all the times he’d tripped over it, he still forgot where it was. Out of frustration, he kicked the rock, picked up the water jar, then limped on down the trail.
“Give their very lives, ha! All I’m studying is Dune’s house. I’m not studying with Dune. He’s two days’ walk away!” Anger and sorrow boiled in his empty belly. His clan expected him home in a moon or two—home, and transformed into a real Singer. “I can see it now. I’ll go home and someone will ask me to do a Sing, and I’ll get up, open my mouth, and nothing will come out because I still can’t recall the words! Nobody will believe me when I tell them I arrived, and Dune left and never came back. Or if they do, that could be worse!”
The little wash zigzagged along the base of the cliff and had, over countless summers, carved out a rounded pool in the red sandstone. Water collected there, pure and sparkling.
Poor Singer knelt and dipped in his jug, letting it gurgle full while his gaze roamed the stillness of the desert. He really ought to eat. Though the fasting kept his soul clear, he couldn’t be certain he wasn’t doing crazy things. He’d been having elaborate conversations with the white pieces of plaster that cracked off Dune’s house and the sage that grew up around the walls. Only that morning, he’d spent a hand of time accusing the firepit of sabotaging his efforts to make tea because the charred cotton he used as a starter would never catch. He’d placed the cotton over the red coals, as he did every morning, and blown on it until he thought he’d faint. When all he got was a pitiful smolder, he’d become convinced the firepit had evil intentions. Though, naturally, the pit denied it.