He studied Taleghani’s grave, attempting to focus on it through a brief pass of ripples like heat waves above a blistering hot road. “So, Doc, Plan B is to sit around waiting for a ride or until Mount Kebira blows up all over me.”
Gordon slowly stood, fighting waves of dizziness, then turned and looked through the trees across the river to the village. He could see only the white cones of thatched roofs dusted with snow. Deep in the trees to his right were the whispers of moving paws. He glanced in that direction, his heart quickening. He smiled at the reflection of yellow eyes looking back at him. “You’ve taken me down a path this time, Coyote,” he said. “The lesson, though, is still a little unclear.”
Reality began to pitch and yaw with his weakness and he turned and stumbled back to the lean-to. Once there he gingerly climbed beneath the covers next to Pela, fully dressed in her furs. After a moment he began exploring his own body with his fingers, looking for injuries. Legs, neck, head, and back sore. Nothing broken. Nothing cut but his head, which seemed to have borne the brunt of his trauma.
His watch and silver belt buckle were missing. No, there was a bit of the buckle left in the hand-tooled leather where it had been attached to the belt. Half of the prong had been left dangling in a hole in the belt’s tongue. He picked it out and looked at it. The silver surface was dull, resembling a cold solder joint. Holding it between two fingers, he squeezed gently. The piece of silver instantly transformed into powder. That was what must have happened to his watch, he realized, and to the capsule. He called to mind the sensation of the capsule moving that had alarmed Mehmet so. One of the dimensions they’d nudged into on the way to Pela’s village must have nudged back.
Titanium into flour, silver into talc—what must physics be like in that other place, he wondered. Gordon decided that when he was able he’d inventory what he had left in the way of weapons and supplies. Anything that used metal was probably going to be useless. Tonight, however, he would rest and try to learn a few words of another language: body parts, camp items, terrain and weather features, animals, plants, foods, a few verbs, an adjective or three. After that, maybe tribes, organization, defenses, weapons, what’s going on in Pela’s world, who calls the shots, and what gods justify insanity in this time and place.
Sooner or later he would have to address the big one for himself: stay in the village where Harith and the timespan bigwigs knew when and where to find him, or get the hell out of London before the meteor hit and turned the village into a bloody mud bath. And did he even want to survive almost a hundred and forty thousand years out of his own time?
He gestured toward his mouth, then pointed at his head.
“Chola,” answered Pela, touching her own head. “Amu,” she continued as she touched her mouth. Later, as she pointed at body parts, snow, things in the camp, and said the words, Gordon tired and the pain filled his head until it took him deep into the shadows and left him there.
The new sun came up soft and peach-colored, the beams of the new day caressing the freshly fallen snow through the cedars, the sound of a distant rooster greeting the light followed soon by the momentary barking of a dog down in the village. Gordon listened to the sounds, allowed his gaze to note and record every aspect of his surroundings before it settled on the wisps of smoke from the fire’s coals climbing into the icy air. Wood smoke. The smell of it brought Hosteen Ahiga before his mind’s eye, the old man in the reservation hat always outside the New Meeting House on the Jemez Mountain Trail near Buffalo Hill Road, sitting on a bench next to the Coke machine, smoking cigarettes. Adults driving by would wave, call out greetings. Those walking by would nod their heads in acknowledgement, present a new wife, husband, baby, or a child who had accomplished something special. The only response they’d ever get from the old man was a nod. Once in a rare moment he would repeat the name of a presented child. His gaze, however, was always fixed out there on some vista invisible to other eyes. Young boys making fun of him would call him Iron Eyes Ahiga and say the old man waits for the return of Goyaaté, the leader the Bilagana called Geronimo.
That February afternoon when Gordon was eleven, after another day fighting in school, he ran away from the place and hitched a ride to the trail, hoping to get a ride down to Route 44 and from there to anywhere. Life as a Pueblo Indian sucked, and life as the son of a Navajo witch sucked even more. Walking south toward Buffalo Hill Road, Gordon passed by the meeting house and saw Hosteen Ahiga next to his Coke machine, sitting, smoking, staring with unblinking eyes at whatever it was he was seeing. The old man had on a heavy olive-colored wool coat with dull rust-colored horizontal stripes in homage to the winter.
Unfocused anger was Gordon’s constant childhood companion, its occasional focusing landing him in most of his difficulties with authority. At that moment the apparent unremitting serenity of another angered him more than anything else. He climbed the meeting house steps and stood in front of Hosteen Ahiga. The old man smelled like wood smoke. Gordon stared with his own unblinking gaze into the old man’s eyes. After a minute of this futile attempt at staring down Iron Eyes, Gordon began to suspect the old man was blind. He was not, however. At last Hosteen Ahiga said, “Grandson, my mother was Joan Blackdeer of the Coyote Pass People. My father was George Ahiga of the Folded Arms People. You are Gordon Redcliff. Your mother, Nascha, was born to the Coyote Pass People, which makes you Coyote Pass. Your father—”
“My father is gone,” Gordon rudely interrupted the old man.
Hosteen Ahiga’s face cracked the tiniest of smiles, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening. “Fathers and mothers never go completely, Grandson.” His eyebrows went up as his shoulders gave an apologetic shrug. “That’s DNA for you,” he added.
Gordon, fighting to keep his angry expression and attitude, said, “What about my father, old man?”
“Niyol Redcliff was born to the Bear Enemies People in Santa Clara. Eleven years ago he stood where you are standing and told me he was going to Hollywood to get into movies.”
“Did he tell you, Grandpa, why he ran? Why he left us?”
The old man nodded, his unrelenting gaze fixed on Gordon’s eyes. “He said your mother was crazy as a corset full of frogs, and he couldn’t stand it anymore.”
Gordon blinked and looked down. “Why didn’t he take me?” he asked.
Hosteen Ahiga allowed the question to answer itself as he shifted his gaze down the Jemez Mountain Trail, windrows of dirty snow beneath darkening clouds that promised yet another winter storm. He looked back at the boy. “Your mother is sick, Gordon. There is nothing anyone can do for her except be there.”
“The Christians over on Mission Road say they pray for her,” said Gordon. “Prayer is talk, and talk is cheap.”
The front rim of the old man’s hat dipped slightly. “As I said, there is nothing anyone can do for her except be there. Being there was too much for your father.” Hosteen Ahiga leveled his gaze at Gordon. “Perhaps you are stronger.”
Gordon looked down the road that promised to leave all his nightmares behind. He heard the old man say, “Coyote teaches much, Grandson, but his lessons are expensive. The Trickster’s wisdom is to lead us down paths right into trouble just to show us why those aren’t the paths we should have traveled.”
“Useful knowledge delivered too late, you mean,” cracked Gordon.