People of the Silence by Kathleen O'Neal & Gear Gear Read Free Book Online Page B

wake her. Yucca sandals crunched the snow, and dogs padded by his door. During the Time of Gestation, the forty Blessing days, no digging, plastering, or wood chopping was permitted. No one could cut his hair. Women had to clean their houses only after sundown, and then very quietly.
    The lilting voices of the Singers in the great kiva wafted to him on the west wind. The kiva nestled on the west side of the rectangular plaza, while two- and three-story buildings stretched eastward under the sheer face of the buff sandstone cliff. The Singers prepared the way for him.…
    “They’re coming,” he whispered to reassure himself. “They’ll be here soon.”
    He let out a taut breath.
    To lessen his fears, Buckthorn counted the beautiful baskets that decorated the walls, large ones on top, smaller ones on the bottom. Black geometric designs and tan people adorned the weaves. His mother, Snow Mountain, had arranged them in order of descending height along the wall to his left.
    “Oh, Spirits,” he whispered, “I’m scared.”
    From the time he’d turned four summers, the great Singers of Windflower Village had looked at him differently than at other children. Their sharp old eyes had watched the other children tormenting him and noted the times when he’d sought the solitude of the canyons that cut down through solid rock to the River of Souls—and they were many. The elders had marked every fight he’d broken up, and every moment he’d sat with tears running down his face listening to them Sing. Those Powerful elders had seen in him more than an odd lonely child—a boy who had lost his father before he’d seen one summer.
    At a Winter Solstice celebration at Talon Town when he’d seen ten summers, old gray-haired Black Mesa had come to sit beside him, his deeply wrinkled face mottled with firelight, and asked, “Why do you cry when you lift your voice to the gods?”
    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