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

lifted the child, Old Woman South carefully spread the blankets they’d brought over the willow twig mat and smoothed them flat with her gnarled hands.
    Springbank and Flame Carrier lowered Grass Moon to the soft bed of white blankets.
    The boy’s mouth opened in a silent cry, and Browser could barely stand it.
    He clamped his jaw so tightly, his head shook.
    Flame Carrier tenderly stroked Grass Moon’s hollow cheek. She said, “Bring the objects of the breath-heart.”
    “Yes, Matron,” Old Woman South responded.
    Each person had two souls, a soul that stayed with the body forever, and a breath-heart soul that kept the lungs moving, and the heart beating. At death, the breath-heart soul seeped out, but it hovered around the body, not certain where to go until the Keepers prepared the way to the Land of the Dead.
    Old Woman South, one of the Kokwimu , a sacred Man-Woman of great power, knelt and brought her own pack from beneath her painted buffalohide cape. Kokwimu had male bodies but female souls. This allowed them to see and do things that ordinary men and women could not. Younger than the other Keepers, she had coiled her long gray-streaked black braids over her ears and fastened them with rabbitbone pins. Graceful brows curved above
her slanting eyes. Her triangular face and sharply pointed nose shone wetly with tears. Her ordinary name was Cloudblower. She was known for telling long stories filled with moral teachings that people only sometimes understood.
    Cloudblower laid out two small yellow bags, a magnificent white shirt covered with red beads, and new moccasins. They shone with a reddish hue in the diffused light.
    Browser had taken Grass Moon’s old clothing and tied it into a bundle that now rested to the boy’s right. At the end of the Death Ritual, Old Man East would take the coals from the eternal fire, kindle a blaze, and burn them, making certain to destroy all of the Evil Spirits that had sickened Grass Moon.
    Browser bowed his head.
    His son had drowned in his own blood, and his mother had not even been there to comfort him. For eight hands of time before he’d died, Grass Moon had choked out, “Mother … mother … mother …”
    Browser had rocked him back and forth, whispering, She’s coming. She’ll be here soon.
    A thread of rage wound through his grief. She had been gone for two days, without a word. He clenched his fists, vowing not to think of her. Not now.
    Cloudblower opened one of the yellow bags and poured white cornmeal into Flame Carrier’s cupped hands then filled her own. They rubbed Grass Moon’s body with the meal, purifying it for the long journey to the afterworld.
    When they finished, Flame Carrier slipped the beautiful burial shirt over Grass Moon’s head. Cloudblower opened the other yellow bag and poured jewelry onto the blanket at the boy’s side—jet ear loops, carved shell necklaces, and two cast copper bells. Very gently Cloudblower pulled the new moccasins onto Grass Moon’s feet. She slipped the ear loops through the holes in his ears and tied the two copper bells to the laces on his moccasins. Finally she draped the necklaces over his head and centered them on his chest.
    Cloudblower sat back with her eyes closed. Tears beaded her lashes.
    Flame Carrier lifted a hand. “It will take the boy’s Spirit four days to reach the Land of the Dead. He will be distraught and
confused. No one must speak his name, or dream of him, lest they call his ghost back from its journey to the underworld.”
    She untied a blue bag from her belt. Blue was the color of the north and signified the Land of the Dead. She bent over Grass Moon and began pouring out a line of blue cornmeal as she slowly backed toward the door. The other Keepers of the Sacred Directions Sang softly, their brittle voices like sand against wood:

    In a sacred manner, we send a voice.
We send a voice.
The path of Father Sun is our strength,
The path of Sister Moon is our robe.
A praise we are making.