Footsteps in the Sky by Greg Keyes Read Free Book Online

and found nothing else. She buried her mother’s magic things and blocked up the tiny cave with stones. Afterwards, Sand sat looking at the pile of rocks for a moment that seemed to become the whole night.
    Finally, she trudged reluctantly back down to the Dragonfly and opened up the cargo hatch. She took out an alcohol stove and a wire-mesh bowl that fitted over its burners. She set the stove up with the mesh bowl, kindled the stove, and filled the bowl with the densest rocks she could find.
    Another trip to the hovercraft brought her back with four long, flexible shafts and a sheet of polymer cloth three meters on each side. Sand thrust the sharp ends of the shafts into the ground so that they arched up towards the sky. When all four were planted, she had the skeleton of a dome with the rapidly heating rocks in the center. Finally, she pulled the cloth over the dome and weighed it down on the edges with rocks. Her sweatlodge was finished. She placed a small bag inside, where the heat was already beginning to grow fierce. Then Sand stripped off her tough flight suit, a one-piece garment of reinforced Densedren. The plateau breeze prickled bumps on her exposed skin as she also removed her cotton shorts and shirt. She tried not to hurry, to maintain the dignity of the ceremony. Thus she stood for a moment, her lean body fully exposed to the sucking breath of the sky, as if to express her disdain for it. She took down the elaborate braided rolls on either side of her head that signified her unmarried status, letting her dark brown hair fall thickly to her waist. Then Sand bent down and entered the sweat house.
    It took only instants for her chilled pores to open up. She rocked back and forth in the furnace heat, and sweat soon slicked her body completely. I am like my ancestors, the fish she hummed to herself, recalling her clan’s version of the origin. Fire seemed to walk back and forth across her dark skin, searching for a way in.
    And found its egress through her nostrils, as her lungs seemed to expand with live flame.
    Sand opened up the bag and pulled forth a small swatch of green branches and a thick, resinous piñon cone. Reverently, she placed the juniper branches on the now-glowing red stones. She placed the piñon cone beside it. Both of these things were rare and precious; as sacred plants, both piñon and juniper had been brought from Earth, but required much care.
    They began to smoke, and the thick resinous odor of them filled the sweatlodge. The smoke covered her and filled her up, and now she was a fish in the dark depths of a juniper sea. The smoke scrubbed her, lifting away the touch of her mother’s corpse, the cold plastic feeling of it. The smoke was fragrant purity, and the breath of a ghost could not long withstand it.
    Goodbye , Sand told the smoke. Goodbye, mother .
    She began to sing and did not stop until the cloth of the lodge was soaked with the earliest light of dawn.

Chapter Two
    â€œNu’qa nauti’ta sen tumala’ taniqa’e,” Alvar Washington told himself for the third time, a look of intense concentration on his face. Teng had just entered. She glanced at him with a dour expression.
    â€œYou say the nicest things,” she observed, leaning against the bulkhead, arms folded loosely beneath her breasts.
    â€œDon’t I,” he acknowledged. “Shiau Shi: Teacher off.”
    The image of himself across the table flickered out of existence.
    â€œSo that’s who you’ve been spending all of your time with,” Teng murmured. “I should have known. You’re the most natural narcissist I’ve ever met.”
    Alvar grinned and brushed back his long, thick hair. “Facial expressions are language too,” he told her. “Might as well learn from the face I’ll be using.”
    â€œMight as well,” Teng agreed. “Wanna fuck?”
    Alvar twisted in his seat to face her. “You could try seducing me,”