A fire pit had been dug in the center of the earthen floor, directly beneath the smoke hole. On the west side lay his sheepskin bedroll and neat stacks of clothing. Mats woven of grass, some of bark, were strewn about near the walls like chairs.
Sawyer was already plucking dried herbs from tiny bags, which hung from the logs near the north side of the hogan.
“Where are you going?”
“You don’t want to do this the easy way.” He pulled two backpacks—incongruous in the middle of this traditional Navajo dwelling—from behind his bedroll. “There’s always the hard way.”
“Do what? And when has anything ever been easy with you?”
“You will learn to open yourself. I’d hoped the urgency of the situation would help, but it hasn’t, and we no longer have time to wait. You need the power now.”
“And just how do you propose we accomplish that?”
“Vision quest,” he said shortly, and tossed one of the backpacks in my direction. “Get your things.”
Chapter 22
Sawyer donned suitable clothing for a mountain death march. Since the temperatures would be lower at the higher altitude, where there could still be pockets of snow despite the calendar’s insistence it was spring, he covered his white T-shirt with long-sleeved flannel and shoved his slim feet into heavy socks and hiking boots. A lightweight ski jacket disappeared into his backpack.
He produced the same outfit for me, right down to the hiking boots. Every size was correct.
I lifted my gaze to the man who lounged in the doorway of my room as if he meant to stay right there for all eternity.
“How’d you know?” I asked.
His oddly light eyes swept from my head to my toes. Wherever his gaze touched, I burned. “I’m good with sizes.”
I bet he was good with a lot of things.
I shook my head. I did not want to go there. Not now. Not ever.
Sawyer’s lips curved, and once again I got the impression he could read my mind. Or maybe it was just my face. I hadn’t tried to keep what I was thinking a secret.
“I meant…” I was gritting my teeth. The words came out tight and angry, which only made his mouth curve more. “Did someone tell you we were coming?”
That someone would have had to be Jimmy—who else would have known?—but I couldn’t see Jimmy dialing Sawyer for any reason.
Sawyer’s eyebrows lifted, and he spread his big, hard hands. “I have no phone.”
“You’ve got something,” I muttered, then tilted my head. “Have you been talking to Ruthie too?”
His smile faded. “No. I have my own connections.”
I had no doubt that he did. I just wondered if his connections were in heaven or hell.
Once, back then, I’d woken in the night. A flicker of firelight had illuminated my window, drawing me across the room.
He wasn’t alone.
I should have gone back to bed, pulled the covers over my head, and stayed there. But I was curious what the goat was for.
I was an old fifteen. I had several ideas, most of them pornographic. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The goat bleated. Sawyer slit its throat. I slapped both hands over my mouth to keep from screaming.
The blood poured onto the ground. Wherever it struck, smoke billowed, a column that grew taller and taller as the blood continued to flow. He bathed his hands in the red river, then laid the broken animal down, with something resembling tenderness.
The contrast between the violent sacrifice of the life and the gentle laying to rest gave me goose bumps on top of my goose bumps. We always fear what we can’t understand.
He spoke, his deep voice ringing through the oddly silent night, in a language I didn’t know. His glistening hands rose, and behind him the fire seemed to leap higher than the mountains, shifting from red flame to a silvery molten glow.
The fire and the smoke twined together, then shot around the edge of the clearing, a living thing, whirling and whirling as if trying to break free.
Sawyer barked one word, an order, and the dancing flame paused, lengthened, and became a woman of smoke. No colors, only black, white, and gray, yet I could see her very clearly standing in the puddle of blood he’d made.
She was Native American—perhaps his age, hard to say, with hair streaming to her ankles and a nose and two cheekbones that fought for prominence in a face that should have been etched in stone—ancient and new, both beautiful and deadly.
They stood together, neither speaking nor touching, though the air seemed ripe with the promise of both. He’d conjured her; for what purpose, who could say?
The Navajo are superstitious about their ghosts, their legends and magic. Yet I knew, even before she glanced up, that what I was watching I was not meant to see.