“Tonton Annajaka,” Gordon answered. “You sent Pela to sit toahmecu praying for a man to share her life.”
She nodded.
Gordon raised his eyebrows. “This face of mine not same face you sent up this hill, Tonton Annajaka.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed for an instant. “Different,” she said, giving him the word for “not same.” She touched her left thumb momentarily to her tongue, and waved her fingers at her right temple. “Pela’s call to village say your name, God’n.” She gestured toward his trousers and boots. “God’n from where?”
“Hard question,” he said as he held out his hands toward the fur he had placed to his left, indicating an invitation for the naticha to sit.
Tonton hesitated a moment then walked around the fire and sat cross-legged upon the fur facing him. She reached out her hands, bent forward, and placed one hand over Gordon’s heart and the other over his eyes. He could suddenly smell a sharp odor of death. Tonton Annajaka lowered her hands and sat back, her eyes wide. “I know you, God’n, from old dreams of storm to come.”
“You see much, Tonton Annajaka.”
“I would understand what I see.”
He laughed. “This is my prayer, as well. The spirit I ask answers with fog.”
“You talk in fog and brambles, God’n Redcliff.”
He glanced down, thought for a moment, and said, “I come from after now. That is the truth I have.”
The naticha moistened her lips, let her gaze slip from his face, turned her head, and looked back at Pela in the lean-to. The widow was sitting amidst her furs, her face ashen, her gaze fixed on Gordon. Without looking away from him, Pela nodded in quick respect to Tonton, and said, “Forgive Pela, God’n, for hearing talk not mine.”
He reached back and took her hand. “If I talk where you can hear, the talk is yours.”
She moved to the edge of the bed of cedar boughs and sat kneeling, holding Gordon’s hand to her face. “Pela understand true? God’n born after now?”
“Yes.”
Pela turned to Tonton. “Tana bring God’n to me from after now?”
The naticha studied Gordon for a long time. At last she said to him, “How far after now you born, God’n? Bean-by-bean.”
He smiled at the term for “exactly.” Reaching back to his right, he took his leather backpack from where it rested at the edge of the bed and pulled it next to him. He took the locator from the bag, checked the date, and placed the locator back in the bag. With a piece of charcoal from the fire, he began building a number upon one of the stones from the fire circle. First, one thousand, multiplied by one hundred and thirty-nine on the left, then added to one hundred and fourteen on the right.
[]XXX*IIII X[] [] XIIII
“This many summers,” he said, “two moons, twenty-one days from now.”
The naticha studied upon the number Gordon had written while Pela looked at Gordon, her eyes frightened. He took Pela’s hand and faced Tonton.
“I saw great storm coming, God’n,” said the naticha, a slight tremble in her voice. “When Itahnika gave me my eyes, I first see it. You bring this storm?”
“No,” he whispered, his eyes closed.
“But you see it,” she insisted. “You know it.”
Gordon sighed. “I have seen this storm, Tonton,” he answered. “I know it is coming.”
Tonton stared into the fire for a moment. “You talk with Tonton more?”
“Whenever you wish, naticha.”
She looked at him as he raised a hand, palm facing down, and passed it once across the space between them. “We speak no more of this until we talk more.”
“Yes, naticha.”
She looked at Pela. “About this, speak no more.”
“Yes, naticha.”
Tonton rubbed out the number Gordon had written upon the stone. She then stood and walked silently from the fire.
Pela wrapped her arms around Gordon’s left arm and rested her head against his shoulder as the naticha was swallowed by the shadows. He pulled the bearskin cover from the bed and wrapped it around both of them. They sat that way, watching the fire, until Ekav touched the goddess of the night sky birthing the new day.
After a breakfast of yams and rabbit, Gordon visited the graves. He squatted between them, wondering if the two shimmering images he saw were Coyote’s fulfillment of his prayer for his two dead companions. Had the spirit world been touched by that other dimension producing a couple of interdimensional ghosts?
“Perhaps I walk in dreams,” he said to the quiet as he stood. “We go to the village today, doctor. I’ll see what I can learn.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow move just into the cedars. Whatever it was, it left in a hurry. Gordon stood and walked to the edge of the trees, his eyes instinctively checking the new snow for tracks finding wolf, squirrel, rabbit, birds, and the impressions of human feet too small to be his and too large to be Pela’s. The impressions were smooth, moccasin-like. Gordon silently followed the human tracks to where their distance increased, showing the visitor running. Likely they belonged to Pela’s designated gift from Tana.
He saw the shimmer of distorted light edge from behind a wall of existence. “Do you understand me?” he asked.
The image seemed to lift an appendage made of the same distorted light. “Are you carried by something from a dimension we touched?” Half suspecting he was hallucinating, Gordon watched as the thing seemed to wave again. There was, however, no proof that he was crazy. “If your spirit can travel between times as well as dimensions,” he said to the shimmer, “tell Harith perhaps my mission really is simply to see what happens next.” He turned and headed back to the fire where Pela was packing.
After they were both loaded with Pela’s furs, tools, and what remained of her provisions, they began making their way along the path to the village. On the way Gordon noticed several little homesteads of sod and rock, domesticated horses, goats, even a cow. All of the animals had heavy coats. In one place they passed there was a bin made of woven willow branches half-filled with grain that looked like barley. No evidence of wheeled vehicles.
As they approached a tiny sod house tucked into the side of a bank beneath an overhanging rock flanked with banks of juniper, a man who looked to be in his thirties came from the door curtained with patched animal skins. The fellow wore what looked like a suit of Pela’s furs, although his were dark brown. On his neck he had a striking necklace of blue beads with one large fluted gold bead in the center. The man stopped, Pela and Gordon put down their bundles, there were introductions, and the meaning of the man’s name was Kom Beadsigns, born to Cleft Mountain Clan. Relating the mother’s clan was for Gordon’s benefit. Pela told Kom of her toahmecu, her gift from the winged wolf. With downcast eyes she told about Gordon’s dead brothers.
Kom touched his tongue to the pad of his left thumb and nodded sadly at the possible marriage’s terrible cost. “How little the spirits know us,” he observed. “Five deaths in a sickness, two more in a hunt—good men—another with flints after hot words.” Then his face brightened and he related that his son Ta Avi’s man-raising ceremony was that evening at the clanhouse. He said that there are places at the fire that could stand filling.
Kom Beadsigns touched a small bundle to his forehead and said to Pela, “Kom grateful for fine suit Pela you make my son.” He handed her the bundle, which Pela took and touched to her own forehead in thanks.