The Attack

   Owls swooped from the trees. Coyotes prowled the canyons. Under the same starry sky, the people of Kotyit rested, their brown adobe village washed silver and gray in the moonlight.

   In a room on the upper terrace, Zia cuddled her baby closer against the autumn chill, his sweet breath warming her cheek. She stretched her arm across the blanket where her husband should be sleeping, missing his warmth and the smell of his skin. TapanAshka and the other men followed the elk, the bear, and the deer to fill the storerooms for the winter.

   She heard a faint scraping. Then footsteps overhead. Zia sat up and listened, every muscle tensed. With the men away on the hunt, no one should be out this late.

   A dog yelped furiously, and then - silence.

   Quickly, she concealed TyoPe in a nest of blankets. Then she strained to hear, to see, fastening her gaze on the night sky through the open hatchway in the ceiling. There - movement against the stars, a flicker of light cutting the dark. She held her breath, the blood thrumming in her ears.

   A torch thrust into the room and revealed a grinning, leering, black-streaked face. Zia lunged for the ladder and shoved it. It was too heavy. Already hard brown feet slid down its sides.

   Snarling, she launched her weight onto the man's back. Her teeth tore at an ear, her nails clawed at bare skin.

   With a great howl, the man whirled, turning over baskets and jars, casting grotesque shadows against the walls. He rammed Zia against the ladder. The breath knocked out of her, she lost her grip and fell to the floor.

   Gasping, she inched an arm toward the fallen torch. The raider grabbed her by the hair, hauled her upright, and smashed his fist into her jaw.

   Zia woke with a cool cloth pressed against her face. By the light of the fire, her glazed eyes took in the upturned baskets, the broken pottery -- the furs of the cradleboard ripped away, leaving only its skeleton. She jolted up, pain searing through her jaw - “TyoPe!”

   “Rest easy,” Grandmother said and pressed her back against the blankets. She placed the swaddled infant in Zia's arms.

   Pain throbbed in her face and neck, but her breath slowed as she held TyoPe close. He was safe. Her eyelids drooped. In a moment, she would say the prayers of thanksgiving to Sanatyaya, but now she wanted only to sleep.

   In sudden alarm, Zia's eyes flashed open. “HaNah, the boys?”

   “Your sister and the babies are unharmed. Sleep now.”

   Zia woke to her son's hungry cries and gathered him to her. As he nursed, her fingers searched for the thumb-sized piece of turquoise she wore around her neck. TapanAshka had given it to her, had tied the leather string with his own hands. Gone.

   It didn't matter. All that mattered was that TyoPe was safe.

   She touched her swollen jaw, both throbbing and strangely numb. She ran her tongue over her teeth, not surprised that two were loose from the raider's blow.

   The piercing sound of keening came through the hatchway. “How bad is it?” Zia asked.

   “Bring the child. You will see.”

   As she rose, her head spun from nausea and pain. Zia steadied herself. Then, with TyoPe in a sling around her neck, her feet found the rungs. She climbed, braced to see what damage the marauders had done to her people.

   The wails of grieving women lay over the village like smoke. Broken pottery littered the terraces. Splashes of blood stained the adobe where a grandfather or a daughter had defied the raiders' knives.

   In front of her sister's doorway, Zia stepped over HaNah's dog. Yesterday, Ring Eye had chased sticks, yipping in joy. Today Ring Eye's skull was smashed. Already the ants dined on his blood.

   HaNah's shrill voice arrowed through Zia's brain. “They took everything. We'll starve!”

   Her sister held her infant in her arms. Little Turtle, the toddler, leaned against her shoulder. HaNah's sons were safe, yet she must wail.

   “We will not starve,” Zia said, tamping down her impatience at HaNah's lack of spine. “The men will return. We will have meat.”

   She turned to go, but HaNah grabbed for the hem of her skirt.

   “Don't leave me,” HaNah cried.

   Zia clamped her teeth together and blanched at the pain that shot through her jaw. She had no time for HaNah's moaning.

   She stepped into the sunshine, into the smell of blood, the sight of women weeping. TyoPe's small weight over her heart anchored her as she paced over the roofs of the second level to her friend ChoTaye's room.

   At the open hatchway, Zia's nostrils flared at the strong blood smell. She climbed down the ladder into the smoky dimness. ChoTaye rocked on her knees, her eyes closed, her scalp bleeding where she'd torn her hair. ChoTaye's oldest son lay dead on the floor.

   Zia's gaze tracked the blood that had flowed from the gaping wound in Long Arm's chest, down his arm to the club beside his hand. Only in the last days, his voice had begun to crack. Now his fine long legs lay straight, his over-big feet bare and dusty.

   Long Arm might have been only sleeping, so perfect was his face, his lips softly closed, his brow smooth. Zia reached a hand to touch his cheek. His skin, browned by the sun, chilled her fingers.

   “Sanatyaya,” she whispered, “guide his spirit. Let no evil lead him from the path to Shipapu.”

   Through the hatchway, a beam of sun crossed over Long Arm's face, casting gold over the brown skin. The ray moved on, slowly revealing the true gray of the boy's cold body.

   Grief rolled off ChoTaye, choking the breath in Zia's throat. She lamented and wept with her friend. But under the grief, joy and thanksgiving sang in her heart. TyoPe breathed warm and safe in her arms.

   When other women came to sit with ChoTaye, Zia climbed from the dim chamber.

   Women and their children gathered in the village center. The older boys and the grandfathers who'd stayed behind from the hunt had fought hard. But the Keres people of Kotyit were farmers, and neither their strength nor their skill had been equal to the raiders'.

   The fallen lay on the stones of the square - Sees Far, who told funny stories, Big Nose, who made toys for the children. And here lay T'sina's daughter. All summer, the boys had followed this girl around the village, had dreamed of touching her shining hair, her full lips. She would have chosen her mate this winter.

   Yet birds sang as if this were yet another joyful morning of clear blue skies. Zia took a moment to find the mockingbird warbling in the piñon tree, its gray and white feathers flashing against the gray green of the pine needles. Her breath came more easily. Sanatyaya, moon mother, had sent the bird to show she had not abandoned them.

   For a long while, no one spoke. What was there to say? Everyone already knew what the raiders had taken. Food. All of Kotyit's food. Because of the drought, this year had brought another meager harvest. In the storerooms, where reserves of corn, squash, beans and nuts should have been, there were only the footprints of thieves.

   The Kotyits had expected no trouble. They'd had peace with the Tewas to the north for many years. The nomadic people of the plains had come to them in friendship, to trade, to form ties. And so the hunters had left the village confident the grandfathers and a few stout men they left behind would protect their families from the stray Navaho or bear. But someone had come in force, come to murder and thieve.

   “They were Querechos,” Oneefa said. “Did you see? Those wide, sharp cheekbones? Querechos.”

   “No,” T'sina said. “When they came in the summer, they were friendly. I gave three gourds for their sunflower seeds.”

   “Sashue traded arrowheads for a buffalo hide,” HaNah added. “They were good people.”

   Oneefa pointed a shaking finger toward the bodies they would soon bury. “They did this.”

   “But not the same Querechos who came to us when the crops were green and high. Maybe they were Taracones.”

   “Those Querechos knew we had food,” Oneefa insisted.

   “No matter,” Grandmother interrupted. “No matter now. Put your quarrel away.”

   Zia had seen the broad face of her attacker in the torchlight, the bones prominent under the eyes. It was known. The Querechos had no fields, no crops, no farmers among them. They had no food stores. The animals they hunted had moved on, looking for grass that was watered and thick. When times were hard, like now, the wanderers took what they needed from the villages.

   Zia looked over the women and children gathered in the square. Her friend Mitsa's grandfather lay on the cold stones with the other fallen men, yet Mitsa, closer to Zia in heart and mind than her own sister, was not with the mourners. She stood to get a better look, and still she couldn't see her.

   “Where's Mitsa?”

   Oneefa shook her head. “I haven't seen her.”

   A fist grabbed her heart. She called out, “Mitsa? Mitsa!”

   Oneefa and then HaNah took up the cry.

   She wasn't there. Zia and Oneefa stared into each other's eyes and read each other's thoughts.

   “You know what they'll do to her,” Oneefa said.

   “They'll rape her,” HaNah wailed, her voice rising. “Then they'll kill her.”

   Zia's head dropped, weighed down. Mitsa in pain, defiled, and nothing she could do to save her. What would Mitsa suffer before her body released her spirit, before it could travel to Shipapu where there was no more pain or danger, only eternal feasting and gladness?

   The women sat in silent clusters, their faces slack, their senses numbed. Sees Far had been their leader while Hoshkanyi Nahia was away, but his withered body lay on the stones. Some one, Zia thought, would have to organize them, to tell them what to do now.

   ShoHona will know what to do, Zia thought, remembering the sentries. Her second thought brought fresh pain. ShoHona, TapanAshka's friend, her friend must have been felled along with the other sentries.

   “We should look for ShoHona and the others,” Zina said.

   Grandmother stared at her from a face weathered into deep wrinkles, her eyes nearly hidden by their lids. “Wherever the Querechos left him, the crows are at work on his eyes.”

   “Grandmother, don't say it.” Hadn't the Moon Mother sent the mockingbird? Maybe the sentries were only injured. “I'll find them.”

   Zia bent to hand TyoPe to Grandmother. The pain in her jaw shot down into her neck and shoulder, but she gave no sign of it.

   Oneefa touched her sons' arm to rise. “Yako and I will come with you.”

   Kotyit lay on flat land along the river. Close by, the western mountains cast long shadows over the village. To the east, the plain stretched to purple and brown hills. The sentries had placed themselves where they could see across the valley, up the river, into the slopes, but last night, in the narrow moon's faint light, the raiders had gotten past them.

   Zia spied a trio of circling buzzards and her heart constricted. They found Bear Foot and Two Fists covered by an undulating blanket of blue-black crows. Yako rushed at them, scattering them in a black squawking mass.

   Two Fists' head was split open. Bear Foot lay in a pool of blood from the slash across his neck. Both men were scalped.

   Though her gorge rose, Zia knelt to sprinkle sacred corn meal from the pouch at her waist and say a short prayer for their spirits' swift journey to Shipapu. Then, eyes averted, she and Oneefa covered the ravaged faces with their cloaks to spare them from the birds.

   Zia hardly felt her feet step over the hard dry ground. The sight of Two Fists and Bear Foot extinguished the slim hope of finding ShoHona alive. He too must be dead, sightless eyes taken by the crows. She didn't want to see him that way, but his body must be tended, and his spirit needed their prayers.

   ShoHona lay near the path leading from the river. The crows had not found him, but the buzzing of flies filled the air with their hum. In life, he had thrown a spear the farthest, shot an arrow the quickest, ran a mile the fastest. Now blackened, congealed blood covered the top of his head where once silky black hair had grown. Zia put a hand to her mouth and swallowed bile.

   Nearby, a dead marauder sprawled with a knife in his belly. Another's blood soaked into the thirsty ground. Zia felt no pity that the ants crawled over their faces, into their mouths and noses.

   “Look,” Oneefa said, pointing to the tracks in the dirt.

   Zia read the signs. “Four of them.”

   “It took four men to bring him down?” Yako said, reverence in his voice.

   As before, Zia knelt to sprinkle the corn meal and say the first prayers to speed ShoHona's spirit on its way. She touched his chest and closed her eyes to say a silent good-bye.

   Zia told herself the sun warmed ShoHona's skin. Then she felt the faintest rising under her hand and hope flared again. She put her cheek to his mouth and felt the stir of air.

   “Oneefa, he's alive!”

   Zia spoke his name and touched his lips to waken him. He lay as if he were dead, but he breathed.

   “We'll take him to Grandmother,” Zia said. “She'll know what to do.”

   They staggered into the village dragging ShoHona's heels in the dirt. The women circled and gawped at the terrible wound on his head.

   “He's alive, Grandmother!”

   Grandmother raised both hands and looked to the sky in reverent thanksgiving to Those Above.

   “We'll never raise him to his own rooms,” T'sina said.

   HaNah, surprising all who knew her, said, “I have a fire. Bring him to me.”

   Her doorway was in the lower wall instead of the roof, and her rooms faced the morning sun. They stretched ShoHona's length in front of the hearth.

   Zia looked for other wounds - surely men did not lie death-like from being scalped. When she washed the blood from his face and head, she discovered a purple knot where the murderer's club had smashed into his skull.

   Under Grandmother's eye, she cleaned the mass of raw flesh and put a poultice of pounded yarrow root and ash on them. She wet his lips with cool water, then squeezed drops onto his tongue. He was unconscious, but he swallowed.

   “You have corn meal for the spirits?” Zia asked her sister.

   “My children have cried all day from empty bellies, but I have not fed them the holy meal.”

   Grandmother nodded. “You did right, HaNah.”

   Zia sat back on her heels. “We should do the healing ceremony for ShoHona.”

   HaNah turned swollen, distrustful eyes on her sister. “We should wait for the shaman to come home.”

   “HaNah, we need the spirits' help now.”

   “What if we anger Payatyama?”

   “HaNah, we need ShoHona. Father Spirit knows this.”

   Grandmother spoke, and it was final. “We are Keres women. The spirits will hear us.”

   Zia brought two eagle feathers from the kiva. Grandmother brushed them down ShoHona's body and up again. Gently, she whispered them across his great wound.

   HaNah leaned in to speak in Zia's ear. “What if she does it wrong?”

   Zia only glanced at her breathless sister. “She won't do it wrong.”

   Grandmother held the feathers firmly in her right hand and then struck them into her left palm, dislodging the evil she'd extracted from ShoHona's body. She shook the feathers to the north, west, south, east, above and below, scattering evil until its strength had no direction.

   Zia held a corn-ear blessed by their great shaman Tyame Tihua before he left on the hunt. She breathed on it and passed it to HaNah and then to Grandmother so that they also could breath on the fetish.

   “Our Mother sends you breath,” Grandmother intoned. “She sends you life. She sends you health. Though our breath has no power, the Mother has breathed through us. Now we give her breath to you.”

   Grandmother held the corn to ShoHona's mouth. “Take this breath, ShoHona. Know that the Mother of Us All holds you in her heart.”

   ShoHona yet lay as if dead. Not a finger twitched, not an eyelid quivered. But his mighty chest rose and fell with the Mother's breath.

   Murmuring the prayers four times, Zia, HaNah, and Grandmother sprinkled corn meal in each direction, then over ShoHona's body. Each of them made a new prayer cross of two sticks and tied turkey feathers to it. They placed the crosses on the floor, braced with pebbles to keep them upright.

   They'd done all they could do. They left him by the fire to attend the burials of their friends.

   Fearing to bury the dead too close to the village for fear their spirits would disturb them, the women dug graves in the soil down river from Kotyit. They opened the slack jaws of the dead and placed a pinch of sacred corn meal in each mouth. They folded the lifeless bodies into a sitting position, then placed pots and baskets and treasured pieces in each grave. They sprinkled sacred corn meal and four times recited the prayers for departed spirits.

   Zia had not eaten. Her jaw throbbed. The drone of the chanted prayers and the smell of fresh-dug earth, of blood and death, made her dizzy. TyoPe in one arm, she helped Grandmother walk back into the village.

   The sun sank below the hills. TyoPe held tight in her shawl, Zia climbed down the ladder into her own apartment.

   She hadn't returned to her room since the early morning. Exhaustion weighing her down, she looked at the bedding where she should have lain down with TapanAshka. She yearned to wrap arms around him and bury her face against his chest. She saw again the ruined cradleboard, the pieces of basket thrown about the floor. Her most treasured pot, one delicately painted by her mother's own hand, lay in shards. She wept as if the broken pot were the keenest of all her griefs.

   TyoPe nuzzled her breast, and she opened her dress to him. “Don't fret,” she whispered. “Your father will come. All will be well.”

   She sat with him near the smoky fire and watched the flames cast shadows on the floor. She ignored her hunger and the pain in her jaw. Instead she worried about tomorrow.

   Zia had nursed her son during the day, but she'd had only water herself. How long could she feed TyoPe if she didn't eat?

Crimson Sky
Copyright © 2010 by Gretchen Craig

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