For the Dead Travel Fast
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In the weak rising light, Castle was astonished when the scrub grass and sand gave way to rock formations piled like cairns. He craned his neck to see all the way around, but he was certain they were signposts, and if Walt was garrulous and easy-going, he did not give away much in terms of solid information.
He had no idea where they were going.
The piled rocks were eerie and beautiful, striations of pink and green and blue, and he wasn't sure how they had managed those towers without toppling. The sunlight gave almost no help, casting shadows across the rock so that Castle couldn't tell just how unwieldy it was or how difficult to stack. After the fifth such formation, Walt turned them off the highway onto a dirt road which was smoother than he might have expected, very little ping of rock on the undercarriage, and Kate turned to look at him with a grim set to her jaw.
It's okay, he mouthed. We're okay.
Walt's easy conversation abruptly fell off, and when Castle leaned forward to peer through the windshield, he knew why.
It was majestic: a sheer cliff rose above a thick garland of trees, but the rock itself held a strange, and at first unknowable, face carved into the long expanse of the pink-grey mountainside. As the dust trailed away from the van's oncoming, Castle realized that the forms carved into the cliff were rounded and shaped as doors and windows and walls, that the van had taken them straight to a cliff dwelling so comprehensive he was momentarily speechless.
"God," Kate breathed. "We can't. We're not—this is surely some kind of special… that is, sacred…"
Walt said nothing, bringing the van on towards the cliff dwellings cut into the side of the rock how many hundreds of hundreds of years ago. The sun came up behind them and gave the dwellings a golden luster, and yet if he didn't look at them head on, they almost disappeared, shadows of walls creating an illusion of nothing but rock.
"It's like a castle," she murmured.
"The cliffside dwellings were usually used for defense," Castle answered. He hoped he wasn't misremembering, but Walt didn't contradict him. A smooth front face, narrow windows for archers, even a hint of crenellation at the top. He shivered and crossed his arms over his chest, uncertain they should really be here.
But right before it looked as if they would be heading into the mouth of the cave dwelling, the dirt road instead went northward, parallel to the cliff, and before them he saw an adobe building, squat in the shadow of the cliffside dwellings, which grew larger and larger as they approached.
Upon arriving at a dirt parking lot marked with fallen logs, Castle could see it was actually three stories tall, and some distance still from the cliffside dwellings. There was a sign at ground level, which he couldn't yet read, and Walt parked near the front and killed the engine.
He grinned, nodded to the cliff. "It's something, huh? Ancestral Puebloans, so far away from us, another culture entirely, but very skilled, and clever. This is what we have of their civilization."
"The Anasazi," Castle nodded. "Four Corners land, right?"
"Yes, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico—all the Ancestors' land. Anasazi is the name the Navajo gave them, which means enemies. We don't use that name."
Castle swallowed. "Ancestors," he nodded.
"And we're allowed here?" Kate asked. "White people?"
"No." Walt smiled again. "But for the children of Katoyis, you are right to live here for however long you have need."
Kate looked to him; Castle gave a helpless shrug. "Who is, uh, Katoyis? Is that like Wahkara?"
There was a moment of silence, as if Walt was measuring them, or as if he thought they should know more than they did if they were truly going to live here. (Live here? No, he had a life, they had a life in New York. But New York was so very far from here.)
"Wahkara is the path you follow when you are being hunted and pursued," Walt said finally. He pulled the keys from the ignition and pocketed them, opening his driver's side door. The dust and heat came in, but Castle was already scrambling to get out on his side, wanting to hear the story. "Wahkara was a chief of the Ute peoples. He was a warrior who harassed and raided against the settlers. I won't say white men, because technically, that's me too." Walt had another grin as they reached him at the front of the van. "But European children of Katoyis are children too, so I run errands and make myself useful, in my old age."
Castle could hardly credit the man much older than himself, but he didn't comment, instead taking Kate's hand to prevent her from nervously touching the weapon at her back. "Wahkara is the pathway for people who are being chased, hunted—makes sense, as the Ute people were hunted as well. But who is Katoyis and how are we his children?"
Walt made an exaggerated movement with his mouth, running his tongue behind his teeth in a way that made Kate stiffen. "Katoyis is the great Blood Clot Boy, who grew to become the Man of Justice, the first Peacemaker. Depending on who tells the story, he is a great hero who had poor origins; he came as a gift for an old couple who could not hunt or get meat for themselves. But after a buffalo hunt, the old man came along after and found just a sole clot of blood left from the slaughter, and he gathered it up and told his wife to make a stew of it."
Castle grimaced. But Kate bumped his hip to nudge him towards the large, three-story building where Walt led them. Much larger than he had thought even when they'd parked, and dormitory style. He saw windmills in the distance, which must provide it electricity.
"The stew was boiling when a little boy crawled out of it, Blood Clot Boy—Katoyis. He ate the stew and grew into a very strong boy, and he went and hunted for the old couple because they could not. He brought them meat and furs and went off and had adventures and slayed monsters."
"Wow," Castle gaped, but it was the building itself which imposed before them: clean lines of adobe, where the heat of the day couldn't penetrate, the Spanish-style roof, lines of laundry hanging from some of the poles below the windows which must also be support beams, and beautiful mosaic tile formed a walkway up to the wide double doors of glass.
"Transitions?" Kate croaked.
He glanced back at her and saw she had stopped before the ground-high sign, made of adobe as well, with the letters inlaid turquoise, and gold, shining. Transitions Rehab Center.
"It's both an AA recovery clinic for the Ute people, and also transitional housing for children of Katoyis."
"Oh God, children of Blood Clot Boy—vampires," Castle said, mouth dropping open.
"In one version of the story," Walt said, pushing a panel beside the doors which made them spring open, handicap accessible even in the middle of the desert. "The boy goes out and finds obsidian, black flint, and creates a weapon, either an arrow or a spear, and leaves his old couple to exact justice upon those who have been evil in the world, draining them like you drain a buffalo." Walt stepped inside the rehab center—it smelled like cafeteria food and lysol as the air wafted out through the doors, entirely contrary to the mythic legend Walt was telling them, of buffalo and blood. Walt gestured Castle and Kate in after him. "And so we have our own Black Flint, here, whom I will introduce you to. Hey, Doc, two new ones for you."
Coming down a hall, evidently warned of their impending arrival, was a dark-skinned black woman with thick braids piled on top of her head, and the flapping white lab coat, and a scowl.
Kate stiffened, but it wasn't Dr Harris; it couldn't be Dr Harris.
"Hello," the doctor said, extending her hand. Behind her was a native woman with shining dark eyes who seemed to be laughing. "I'm Aurora Harris. I see you've run into my sister. Don't mind her; she's quite intense and forgets that we're all human. Or were, once."
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