Thunderhead

Black remained motionless, transfixed by the awful sight, as Sloane moved slowly, like a sleepwalker, toward the stunted tree that held the weather receiver. There was a snap of a switch, then a low wash of static. As the unit locked onto the preset wavelength, the static gave way to the monotonous, nasal voice of a weather a

Black swivelled his eyes from the thunderhead to the sky directly above them: bright, flawless blue. He looked down into the valley of Quivira, peaceful and quiet, the camp awash in morning sunlight. The dichotomy was so extreme that, for a moment, he could not comprehend it.

He stared back at Sloane. Her lips, still withdrawn from her teeth, looked somehow feral. Her whole being was tense with an internal epiphany. Black waited, suddenly breathless, as she snapped off the instrument.

“What—?” Black began to ask, but the look on Sloane’s face silenced him.

“You heard Nora’s orders. Let’s get this disassembled and down into camp.” Sloane’s voice was brisk, businesslike, neutral. She swung up into the stunted juniper and in a moment had unwound the ante

“Let’s go,” she said.

Without another word, she swung the bag over her shoulder and walked to the ladder. In a moment, she had disappeared down into blue space.

Confused, Black slowly buckled on his harness, took hold of the rope ladder, and began to follow her down.

* * *

Ten minutes later, he stepped off the rope ladder. His distraction was so complete that he only knew he had reached the bottom when his foot sank into the wet sand. He stood there, irresolutely, and again turned his eyes upward. Overhead, the sky was an immaculate azure from rim to rim. There was no hint of the cataclysm taking place twenty miles away, at the head of their watershed. He removed the harness and walked back toward camp, his steps stiff and wooden. Despite the burden of the receiver, Sloane had scuttled down the cliff face like a spider, and she was in camp already, dropping the equipment beside the last pile of drysacks.

Nora’s urgent voice brought Black out of his reverie. “What’s the report?” he heard her ask Sloane.

Sloane didn’t answer.

“Sloane, we have no time. Will you please give me the weather report?” The exasperation in Nora’s voice was unmistakable.

“Clear skies and warmer temperatures for the rest of the day,” Sloane said, in a monotone. “Less than a five percent chance of precipitation.”

Black watched as the strained look on Nora’s face was replaced by a flood of relief. The suspicion and concern vanished from her eyes. “That’s great,” she said with a smile. “Thanks, you two. I’d like everybody to help take the last of the drysacks up to the caching site. Then, Aaron, you can go ahead and seal up the entrance to the hidden cavern. Roscoe, perhaps you should go with him. Keep a close eye on each other. We’ll be back to help you take the last load out in ninety minutes or so.”

A strange, utterly foreign sensation began to creep up Black’s spine. With a growing sense of unreality, he came up beside Sloane and watched as Nora gave a shout and a wave to Smithback. They were quickly joined by Aragon. Then the three walked toward the rows of supplies, shouldered their drysacks, and started for the mouth of the slot canyon.

After a moment, Black tore himself away and turned toward Sloane. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice cracking.

Sloane met his gaze. “What am I doing? I’m not doing anything, Aaron.”

“But we saw—” Black began, then faltered.

“What did we see?” Sloane hissed suddenly, rounding on him. “All I did was get the weather report and give it to Nora. Just as she demanded. If you saw something, say so now. If not, then shut your mouth about it forever.”

Black stared into her eyes: her whole frame was trembling, her lips white with emotion. He glanced upcanyon, in time to see the group of three cross the stream, toil briefly up the scree slope, and disappear into the dark, terrible slit of rock.

Then he looked back at Sloane. As she read his eyes, the tension in her frame ebbed away. And then, slowly, she nodded.

46

JOHN BEIYOODZIN HALTED HIS HORSE AT THE top of the hogback ridge and looked down into the valley of Chilbah. The horse had taken the trail well, but he was still trembling, damp with perspiration. Beiyoodzin waited, murmuring soothing words, giving him time to recover. The late morning sun was glinting off the peaceful thread of water winding through the valley bottom, a ribbon of quicksilver amid the lush greenery. On the high benchlands above, the wind stirred the cottonwoods and copses of oaks. He could smell sage and ozone in the air. There was a sudden stirring of wind that pressed at his back, as if urging him over the side. Beiyoodzin restrained an impulse to look; he knew all too well what loomed up behind him.

The buckskin shook out his mane, and Beiyoodzin patted him soothingly on the neck. He closed his eyes a moment, calming himself, trying to reconcile his mind to the confrontation that lay ahead.

But calm would not come. He felt a sudden surge of anger at himself: he should have told the woman everything when he had the chance. She had been honest with him. And she deserved to know. It had been foolish to tell her only half of the story. Worse, it had been unkind and selfish to lie. And now, as a result of his weakness, he found himself on a journey that he would have given almost anything to avoid. He could hardly bring himself to contemplate the terrible nature of the evil he had to confront. And yet he had no choice but to prepare himself for conflict; perhaps, even, for death.

Beiyoodzin finally saw the situation clearly, and he was not happy with the role he had played. Sixteen years before, a small imbalance, a minor ugliness—ni zshinitso—had been injected into the small world of his people. They had ignored it. And as a result the small imbalance had become, as they should have known it would, a great evil. As a healer, he should have guided them to doing what was right. It was precisely because of this old imbalance, this absence of truth, that these people were now down in Chilbah, digging. He shuddered. And it was because of this imbalance that the eskizzi, the wolfskin ru

At last, he reluctantly turned around and gazed toward the storm, amazed to see it still growing and swelling, like some vast malignant beast. Here, as if he needed it, was a physical manifestation of the imbalance. It was releasing ever thicker, blacker, denser columns of rain down onto the Kaiparowits Plateau. It was a tremendous rain, a five-hundred-year rain. Beiyoodzin had never seen its equal.

His gaze moved over the distant guttered landscape between the thunderhead and the valley, trying to pick out the flash of moving water; but the canyons were too deep. In his mind’s eye he could see the torrential rains falling hard on the slickrock of the Kaiparowits, the drops coalescing into rivulets, the rivulets into streams, the streams into torrents—the torrents into something that no word could adequately describe.

He untied a small bundle from one of his saddle strings—a drilled piece of turquoise and a mirage stone tied up in horsehair around a small buckskin bag, attached to an eagle feather. He opened the bag, pinched out some cornmeal and pollen, and sprinkled it about, saving the last for his horse’s poll. He brushed first himself, then his horse’s face, with the eagle feather. The horse was prancing now in growing agitation, eyes rolling toward the thunderhead. The leather strings of the saddle slapped restlessly in the growing wind.