Dance of the Bones

One day while Braiding Woman was working, Nephew--of--the--Sun kicked his red ball so hard that it rolled onto the mat the woman was weaving. The woman quickly picked up the ball and hid it in her dress. When Nephew--of--the--Sun came looking for it, the woman claimed she hadn’t seen it. He said that was very strange since he had seen it land on her mat, and some of the dust was still there.

Hihgtpag O’oks—-Braiding Woman—-still claimed that she hadn’t seen it. After a while Nephew--of--the--Sun grew very angry. “If you keep it, something very bad will happen to you, because the red dust ball belongs to Tash.” After that the nephew went away.

Braiding Woman was very frightened. She called Nephew--of--the--Sun to come back for the ball, but when he did, she couldn’t find it.

On the eighth day after this, around noon when it is very hot and all the animals are sleeping, Braiding Woman became very sleepy. That was strange because she always worked through the day without needing to rest. She asked Cricket—-Chukugshuad—-to sing to her to keep her awake. Cricket tried, but it was no use. Braiding Woman had to sleep.

AVA RICHLAND, WITH THE REMAINS of her blended scotch in hand, sat in solitary splendor in her lushly appointed living room and gazed serenely out through floor--to--ceiling windows at the sunset over the Tucson panorama. From their home, situated on the last buildable lot, high in the Catalinas, she could see almost the whole of the city, stretching for the better part of twenty miles in any direction. Their property line bordered Forest Ser-vice land, with the sheer cliffs of the mountain rising skyward less than fifty yards beyond that.

“I built there because of the view,” Harold, the man who would be her husband, had bragged back when he and Ava had first met. “Best view in town. No one can ever top it. I made sure of that.”

Of course, the view would have been better if it hadn’t been for those pesky Dark Sky -people. Ava had no patience for what she regarded as a bunch of wild--eyed activists who thought it was so much more important to keep the skies dark for the astronomers at Kitt Peak than it was to have adequate lighting on the city’s streets. Especially now, with the arrival of cataracts—-particularly the one in her right eye—-she was of the opinion that seeing to drive down the street was far more important that seeing what was happening on Mars.

Ava glanced at her diamond--encrusted Datejust Rolex, one that had once belonged to Alvira, Harold’s first wife, and saw that it was just now seven. In recent years, she would have been at the University of Arizona campus, rubbing shoulders with all the other Tucson VIPs at the Authors’ Dinner for the Tucson Festival of Books. Her good friend Matilda Glassman had always made sure that Ava and Harold were seated at a table with one of the big--name visiting authors.

Ava tended to enjoy those dinners, even if Harold despised them. She had made her way up from some very straitened circumstances, and Ava still got a charge out of being seen in public, where she and Harold were regarded as one of the city’s luminary -couples. She liked being photographed at charity events, even if her place in the limelight was due to the size of Harold’s donations. As far as Ava was concerned, -people like Matty Glassman were welcome to hustle around and do the actual work.

This year’s Authors’ Dinner was going on without either one of them. They’d had tickets, and Harold had suggested that she go without him, but because she knew that Harold’s son and daughter--in--law, Jack and Susan, would be there too, Ava had declined. She made it sound to Harold as though she couldn’t bear to go without him. The truth was, she didn’t want to be in the same room—-even a ballroom—-with Jack and Susan. Ava disliked the -couple, and she knew the feeling was mutual. If she showed up without Harold, Susan was bound to stop by Ava’s table long enough to make some catty remark about it being such a shame that poor Harold was once again left to his own devices.