Buckthorn had looked at Black Mesa, but hadn’t known the answer. His only reply had been that he couldn’t help himself. But he knew better now. Deep inside him, he felt such agonized love, such longing to hear the gods speak to him, to feel their comforting touch that it manifested itself as despair.
Seven days ago, Black Mesa had entered his mother’s home, and asked to speak with Buckthorn alone. Snow Mountain had bowed respectfully and left. Buckthorn couldn’t conceive any reason why the elder needed privacy to speak with him. He’d shifted uneasily as Black Mesa placed a gnarled hand on his shoulder. The old man’s seamed face had been somber.
“Buckthorn, I have been sent to ask you if you wish to give your life for love. For your people.” Black Mesa had paused, then added, “You may say ‘no’ and no shame will come of it.”
“Oh, but I do!” Buckthorn had answered with his whole soul in his voice. “I do.”
He forced himself to inhale again. His stomach had knotted. But what if I’m not strong enough? What if I can’t travel into the underworlds and return alive?
He frowned down at the two dead field mice lanced on the stick beside him. Black Mesa had instructed him to offer the mice as a tribute to the masked god who would come to drag him away to the underworlds. If the god refused, Buckthorn had been told to expect death.
Perhaps I should have shot a deer, instead? That would seem a far better tribute for a god than a couple of measly …
Feet pounded across the snowy plaza.
He whirled to stare at the door curtain. It fluttered gently in the cold breeze.
The feet stopped outside.
Buckthorn gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
A rumble of voices rose, getting closer, louder … the whole house suddenly erupted in shrillness when the Dancers began scraping the exterior walls with what sounded like knives.
Buckthorn’s heart nearly burst through is chest. Blessed gods, what’s going on?
The Monster Thlatsina threw back the door curtain and stepped inside. Buckthorn gaped in horror.
She was huge. A red-and-white mouth dominated the bottom half of her jet-black mask, and a greasy gray beard hung to her waist. Long tangled black hair, dotted with tufts of cotton, fell over her menacing yellow eyes. Her mouth puckered in an eternal whistle. All his life he had been told that if he didn’t listen to his elders, the Monster Thlatsina would sneak up on him and suck his brains out through his ears. In her left hand she held a crooked staff to catch her victims. Her right fist gripped a huge obsidian knife: for dismembering those who refused to obey her.
“Here!” Buckthorn yelled, and thrust the two dead mice at her. “These are for you!”
The Monster slapped them from his hand, and Buckthorn watched the mice fly across the room, strike the wall, and fall to the floor with a dull thump.
“Get up!” the Monster shouted. She slammed him in the shoulder with her crooked staff.
Buckthorn jumped to his feet.
The Monster pointed to the door. “Get out!”
He scrambled beneath the door curtain and into the late afternoon glare. His mother’s room lay at ground level, on the east side of the building complex. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the twin knobs of rounded sandstone, the Great Warriors, that rose above the cliff.
The River of Souls cut down through sandstone here, and the Straight Path people had found the rich bottomlands perfect for growing corn, beans, and squash. Over the years the village had grown from several small square houses into a three-story structure that rose under the sheer north wall of the cliff, watched over by the ancient bodies of the Great Warriors.
Light snow had fallen last night and blanketed the village like a glittering layer of crushed gypsum. The high cliff dwarfed the gray clay-washed houses. To his right, southward across the mighty River of Souls, cornfields covered the floodplain. There, but a brief run from the village, the river flowed silver in the sunlight. Buckthorn could imagine those murky waters lapping against the cliffs that hemmed it on the south.
People perched on the flat roofs, wrapped snugly in blankets, smiling, happy for him. His mother stood by the ladder that led down into the great kiva. She looked radiant in her red dress with black and yellow triangles around the hem. Eagle down fluttered on the crown of her head. He had to step up onto the circular lip of the kiva. Only about two hands of the structure stood aboveground; the other twenty hands sank deep into the flesh of Our Mother Earth.
The Monster Thlatsina’s staff came down hard on Buckthorn’s shoulder. “Pay attention!”
He spun to look at her. What should he pay attention to?
At that moment his mother stepped back, and a long line of unearthly figures emerged from the black belly of the kiva. They trotted forward in a swinging gait, their feet kicking up sparkles of snow. Ruffs of pine encircled their necks, and their naked torsos gleamed with blue paint. They peered at Buckthorn with great bulging eyes. Their masks, part animal, part wondrous god, bore sprinkles of stars, zigzags of lightning, and dark ridges of sacred mountains. The slant of the sun threw their ethereal shadows across the plaza like leaping beasts. They shook gourd rattles as they came toward him in their loose-kneed shuffle. Their Singing resembled a breeze soughing through a thick stand of pines.