The Visitant: Book I of the Anasazi Mysteries Read Online Free PDF Page A

remained outside, their expressions taut as they watched him.
    Several of the women carried infants on cradle boards. They had tied their babies’ heads to the boards to flatten the rear of the skull and broaden the cheekbones, making them more attractive. The babies gurgled and waved tiny fists.
    His two best warriors, Catkin and Whiproot, stood to his right near the base of the towering cliff. They had just returned from
four days of surveying the canyon rim, making certain no enemy warriors lurked there. They looked tired, their faces drawn. Both wore white ritual capes, the feathers dotted with chunks of polished stone.
    Tall and lanky, Catkin was a beautiful woman. And a brave fighter. During a raid, eight moons ago, the Fire Dogs had wounded and captured her. There had been too many of them to risk his warriors in a direct attack, so Browser had sneaked in after dark, alone, killed the two Fire Dogs raping her, and carried her out on his back. Since that time she’d looked at him differently, her eyes softer, filled with a longing he could not allow himself to fulfill.
    For both their sakes.
    Whiproot held a ceramic pot in his two strong brown hands. From the top tendrils of smoke rose and wavered in the heat cast off by the coals taken from the eternal fire. Over the last couple of years, Browser had come to rely on Whiproot the way a roof did a support post. A head shorter than Catkin, the man had a thick, muscular body. A series of terrible scars received in battle ran across his nose and cheeks. Though disfiguring, he wore them with a warrior’s pride. Proof of his courage.
    Catkin carried a small ladder, a delicate thing made of branches, the rungs tied crossways with neat square knots. At the end of the burial ceremony, they would lay the ladder in the grave, so that his son’s afterlife soul could climb out and be on its way to the Land of the Dead.
    He returned his gaze to Catkin, and she gave him a reassuring nod, as if willing him strength across the narrow space that separated them. He closed his eyes. Every time he fought with Ash Girl, he ended up in Catkin’s chamber. She might have been the whirlpool, and he the water. He could tell her anything, and she always offered solid advice. In truth, she was his best friend.
    The sickly sweet scent of death drifted through the door, affecting him like a blow to the stomach. Browser pulled deep breaths of clean cold air into his lungs as he gazed across the desert.
    Father Sun had not yet crested the cliff behind Hillside Village, but his light flooded the canyon, glistening from the buff-colored sandstone and burnishing the underbellies of the drifting Cloud People. It had snowed less than a half moon ago. White frosted the
ledges of the north-facing cliff, and a patchwork dotted the ground. Most of the snow had melted into the sand, then refrozen, turning it as hard as stone.
    Browser reluctantly reached for the door curtain, and let it drop behind him as he ducked into the room. The crimson gleam cast by the bowl of glowing coals sheathed the faces of the six Elders. His son’s wasted body lay on a worn mat in the middle of the floor.
    The old men stood on the east and west sides of the room. The old women stood in the north, to his left, and the south, to his right. Old Man Down Below and Old Woman Up Above crouched in the rear of the house, ahead of him, facing each other, softly chanting the Death Song: “A plume we are bringing, A plume we are giving …”
    Each of the Elders carried a folded blanket and wore a finely tanned buffalohide cape, painted with the red images of wolf, coyote, eagle, and raven, the special Spirit Helpers of the Katsinas’ People. Alternating feathers and seed beads knotted the ends of the long fringes on their capes.
    Browser said, “Please. Begin.”
    Old Man East nodded, and gazed at the naked body lying on the willow twig mat. Tears blurred Old Woman North’s eyes. She made a soft sound of mourning, and Old Man West