The Song of Farwalker and Deadgirl

With one more glance over the edge, Farwalker gestured for her to move away from the spire.

"I found this on one of my journeys, I wondered why the gods had placed their spearhead here."

He walked toward the pointed base, readying his axe. "It is here to destroy abominations."

One. Two. The sound of the heavy stone axe slamming into the sandstone base of the tower was curiously soft, yet she could hear the weight of the heavens in it. Four more strikes and the wind shifted, suddenly rising harder and harder from the South.

Farwalker laughed softly at the growing wind. "The Gods themselves want this."

A harsh grinding sound began to grow. Slowly. So slowly at first that it was almost imperceptible, the huge stone began to shift. The grinding grew to a roar as the huge mass toppled forward off the mesa, straight down the side, taking the ledge down in a huge wave of shattered, broken, rock.

Almost completely lost in the sound, were the cries of the Ravenous Ones on the wall as the surge of broken stone swept them away.

Bitter followed Farwalker as he strode up to the edge and looked down into the boiling mass of dust and rock. A small mob of the Ravenous Ones had fled partly up the side of the arroyo wall opposite the mesa.

As the dust slowly settled, Bitter watched the powerful figure of Northpath angrily shoving Followers back toward the Mesa wall, forcing them to scramble over the mass of rock and torn bodies, but they milled around helplessly, unable to find any usable path to even start upward.

Farwalker mulled the scene. "About forty left."

"There were about fifteen sheep-on-two legs. Probably less now." She let their probable fate hang unsaid.

They watched for nearly a half day more as small groups of Ravenous Ones searched up and down the arroyo for a way up the mesa, ranging further and further. The stiff wind and darkening sky seemed to draw a grim smile from Farwalker and he occasionally moved to the edge of the now-sheer cliff to watch the figures below.

An oddly fresh smell filled the wind and Bitter could dimly hear a sound like soft, rolling thunder. She saw Farwalker's smile widened. "Not long now." He pointed out to a dark line of mountains. "Like I said, they never ranged this far South. Dangers are different here."

The roaring grew louder and she could see some of the Followers below looking around in confusion. A few seconds later a boiling torrent of water and rocks slammed down the arroyo.

Bitter stared at Farwalker in shock. "You knew."

"We've been traveling through here for decades as we moved families South, we learned. Storms on those mountains means the water reaches here in three days, never more than three and a half. We just had to keep them here"

A small group of survivors pulled themselves weakly from the flood, she didn't see Northpath anywhere among them.

A small group fled North into the maze of canyons. Bitter pointed them out. "The sheep flee."

Farwalker nodded with satisfaction. "Less than five Ravenous Ones survived here, maybe a dozen more were somewhere down the canyon, they may have made it or may not. Hopefully it got your 'husband' as well."

"Husband no longer, I put his mat out the door." For the first time she could remember, Bitter felt no fear at all. She fought and failed to contain a smile. "He wasn't meeting my needs."

Farwalker smiled at her, shaking his head in amusement and glanced back down into the canyon. "Let us hope that this does not become the custom for divorce."

Bitter followed his glance. "This is a little more complicated."

Farwalker chuckled and began leading the way South across the mesa, heading toward the flatlands.

***

After ten more days of travel, Farwalker pointed toward an odd shape in the distance.

"An abandoned house - we can use the ruins for temporary shelter under treaty."

Bitter eyed the damaged structure. She'd found herself wondering over the last several days what sitting by Farwalker at a real hearth might be like. Their banter had settled into an easy familiarity, and she felt like she'd known him forever. His loneliness, her loneliness seemed to counter, to lessen each other more every day.

Being with someone who treated her as human was disorienting, confusing. But as strange as it was, she didn't want it to end, ever.

As they approached the building, a twitch of smile caught the corner of Bitter's mouth. Maybe she could find what she wanted, what she needed here.

The journey had been hard, but food had been more plentiful after the water from the rains. Bitter still had a small supply of ground corn and seeds.

After they lit a small fire, Bitter searched through the rubble of the dwelling.

"You say you are alone. Why no family?"

"Illness took my family when I was a child. I survived, no others."

Bitter paused.

"You have no family at all? No wife?"

"No woman of our tribe would have me as husband. They believe I am cursed by the death of my clan. I am alone."

"Maybe we can be alone together."

The woman still known as Sea-of-Bitterness placed stones to either side of the small fire, then added a flat stone, a large piece of broken baking stone, over the top of it. She hummed to herself as she poured ground corn into a hollow in the rock ledge near her and began slowly grinding it into even finer powder, adding a bit of ash from the fire to the mix as she did so.

Farwalker watched her silently for a second, hearing only her gentle humming and his own heartbeat. "I have nothing."

"I have nothing either. No home, no hearth to share. No fields. We can have nothing together."

Farwalker's eyes followed her, hypnotized, as she added water to the mix, a bit at a time, making a thin paste.

She glanced sideways at him as she finished mixing the paste. Then she pulled squash seeds from her pouch, slowly shelled them and began rubbing the oil from them on the stone. Leaving one, unopened, seed sitting in the middle of the stone. She watched that seed intently.

Farwalker spoke softly. "This has meaning. Maybe..."

"I know the meaning. My mother taught me that much."

"But..."

"Shhh." The seed popped open and she smiled, a small, pleasant smile.

She scooped a small portion of the paste and smeared it thinly on the oiled surface of her baking stone.

He studied her face in the warm reflected light of the fire. Serene. At peace.

They both watched as the paste cooked to a thin sheet and lifted away from the surface. She picked it up gently, folded it delicately and fed it to the fire.

An offering.

She seemed to catch her breath, then scooped and smeared more paste onto the rock. And again and again, but now, instead of honoring the fire, she rolled the sheets neatly into cylinders and stacked them near her until her supply of paste was gone.

She hesitated, then picked up the piki rolls and turned to Farwalker. She paused for a moment, then knelt next to him and extended the piki rolls. She looked down, obviously embarrassed. It seemed so unlike her.

"I don't know... My mother was... gone... before she could teach me the words."

"We don't need words." He gently took one of the offered piki and ate it slowly, savoring the smoky sweet flavor, but even more, the meaning.

She watched him intently and her eyes welled with tears as he finished, then took another and broke it in half, offering half to her. She took it with shaking hands.

They ate the bread in silence together.

"What is your name?" His voice was heavy with meaning.

"I was once Sea-of-Bitterness. I am now Deadgirl."

"I see you, Deadgirl."

"I see you, Farwalker."

She moved over next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. "My hearth will be your hearth, my home, your home."

He gently shifted her over into his arms and the fact that she had no real hearth, no real home to offer, meant nothing at all.

***

The next morning, Deadgirl kept stealing looks at Farwalker as they headed further South, across open flat desert. Heat, wind, sand; all of it seemed meaningless. His acceptance of the piki, of her, overwhelmed everything.

It all seemed so much like a daydream. The old life seemed fallen away, destined to become an only dimly remembered nightmare.

But a crawling feeling along her spine wouldn't let her relax -- the skin tingling unpleasantly, as if to chasten her for her girlishness.

She struggled to ignore it for two days.

Until she glanced back and saw the motion on the horizon to the North. She pointed wordlessly and they watched until they could make out black dots. Maybe it was her imagination, but one dot seemed larger, more bearlike. Farwalker sensed her jittering fear and stopped to look back.

Deadgirl felt her bile rise as she tried to deny what she knew to be true.

Farwalker put it into words. "His pride must have been sorely injured to keep following us."

She smiled weakly "Or maybe he wants to follow his people's footsteps on the North Road."

He gestured toward a lone rock formation to the South. "We're still too far from the People's territory here. We will need to keep moving, there is a steep slope of loose sharp rock, ending in a ledge on that rock, maybe a man's height up, we can make a stand there."

With a jolt she realized his main concern was protecting her -- if it had just been him, he would have probably been willing to face the group in the open.

Maybe even choose die that way. But not now, not with her.

They reached the lone rock at mid-day, scrambling up the steep spoil of rock and pulling themselves over the ledge to a hollow not-quite-cave. The black dots had grown rapidly to vaguely formed men behind them, pushed along by the sheer will of Northpath.

Without words they began assembling rocks in piles. Spear and axe left together in the center of the ledge, where they could reach them quickly. Occasionally watching the Ravenous Ones moving quickly toward them.

Until, late in the afternoon:

"Sea-of-Bitterness!"

She ignored the furious call, bellowed from below. She looked over at Farwalker beside her and smiled.

"Bitter!"

Still she ignored him, catching Farwalker's soft smile.

"You walk the wrong Path, wife!"

Deadgirl stood and glared down at him. "You have no wife here, Ravenous One. She has rejected you for your failures and sought another husband. Be on your way."

Northpath's lip curled slightly in anger. "Not without Meat, sheep-on-two-legs."

Farwalker stood and drew himself to his full height beside her and began to chant in a steady low rhythm.

"I am Strides-to-Distant-Lands-and-Sees. Come hear my song.

If you dare.

Guide of the People. Traveler on the South Path.

Husband of Deadgirl.

Come, Ravenous Ones, sing with me.

If you dare.

We will sing of Blood.

Together."

As he hefted his axe to his shoulder Deadgirl could see Northpath narrow his eyes. Northpath's First Men were looking at him doubtfully, stark memories of smashed skulls and torn bodies no doubt too fresh to ignore.

He glared at his remaining men and hissed something too low for Deadgirl to catch. There were doubtful looks, but the Ravenous Ones readied themselves.

With no further warning, a wave of the First Men rushed up toward the ledge, pulling themselves along the steep slope. Deadgirl and Farwalker begin to launch stones from their piles into the packed men. Deadgirl watched in satisfaction as one of her missiles crashed into the temple of one of the attackers, taking him down and causing several others to stumble. Even as many fell, though, some begin to pull themselves up onto the ledge. Farwalker seized his axe and spun it as if its weight was no more than that of a reed and begin to lay about them, smashing hands, spears and skulls to a chorus of yells and howls of pain.

The axe blurred and fell with horrific speed, a storm of violence and death among the Ravenous Ones, striking one after another.

Deadgirl kept up her volley of stones, slinging one after another into the faces of men trying to get onto the ledge. For those she struck, it would likely be the end -- the long fall off the ledge and down the jagged rocks on the slope was crippling or fatal. As she gripped a stone from her dwindling pile, she looked to the other side of Farwalker and saw a man pull himself up and fling something at her husband with a victorious yell.

Without hesitation she hurled the stone into the man's grinning, face erasing the look of triumph instantly. As Farwalker's axe sent the last of their attackers spinning off the ledge to crash on the rocks below she shuddered as she saw the brown and grey band wrapped around his arm. She snatched it from his arm instantly feeling the cold scales on her fingertips as she flicked it out. The twin spots of blood on his shoulder made her blood turn to ice.

Farwalker look down at the human wreckage at the foot of the slope contemplatively. Northpath and his men were dispatching the few survivors of the attack on the ledge. Most were too badly wounded to survive, either from the axe or the long fall down the steep slope. Deadgirl watched as Northpath stopped and picked up the dead snake from the rocky ground, turning his face up to smile mockingly up at her.

He knew. He'd seen everything; he knew now that all he had to do was wait.

Farwalker looked at Deadgirl and whispered. "The venom will have worked its way by morning. Whether I am dead or not I will likely be too weak to fight."

They watched as Northpath and the six remaining Ravenous Ones settled into their vigil, lighting a small fire, the smell of their abhorrent meal drifted up to the ledge.

As the night fell, Deadgirl sat next to Farwalker as he knelt, slumped forward, head down. She watched the unblinking night sky over them and reached over and held his hand, squeezing it silently and feeling him squeeze in response.

And through the night, she continued, but as the moon settled, his grip weakened and seemed to fail. She closed her eyes in defeat and exhaustion.

***

A sound, less than a sound, really, brought her to her senses. Her first sight was of her husband, slumped forward, unmoving. Axe laying in front of him.

The numbing pain in her heart at the sight was so profound that the fact that Northpath stood before her on the ledge, one foot on her spear and grinning maliciously, was only dully realized.

He prodded Farwalker's body with his spear lightly, causing it to rock. "Wife, I promise you pain and suffering beyond any you would ever believe possible."

Deadgirl stood slowly. "No longer your wife. And you cannot cause me any greater suffering than I feel right now."

"We will see, and I will relish every second of your agony."

He began to step forward, past the still body of Farwalker.

The blow of the axe missed Northpath's body; Farwalker was blind, hallucinating, but he lashed out with one last, desperate swing before collapsing back in a heap. The axe rang off the rock of the ledge, sparking the sharp smell of flint as it did.

Northpath staggered back a step and Deadgirl smiled the smile of a coyote as she snatched up her spear. He stared in disbelief at his shattered forearms and dangling, twisted hands.

Deadgirl rushed forward, two steps, feeling the spear jolt, then sink forward queasily, just below his ribs. Another step and it stopped, grating against his spine.

"You bore me."

She shoved again and with a rattling gasp, he pitched back off the ledge and tumbled down the spine of broken rock.

A hollow roaring filled her ears as she looked down at the unconscious Farwalker. Then over the ledge at the dead, broken, body of Leader-of-Death-on-the-North-Path as his remaining Followers gathered around him.

They slowly began to look up the steep rocky slope toward the ledge.

She knelt and felt her husband's neck -- he was still alive; the venom would run its course and leave him. Maybe by evening.

But not in time.

Deadgirl stood slowly, stared down at the Ravenous Ones for a moment, then pulled her little blade from her hair.

She sawed harshly at the base of her topknot, the glassy blade nicking her scalp as she sliced the mass of hair away until it came free in her hand. She threw it from the ledge, down into the faces of the remaining Followers.

With dreamlike slowness, she hefted the heavy axe up to her shoulder and began to chant in a high tone, faltering at first, but gaining strength. In the same cant and tone as her husband's Song had been.

"I am Deadgirl. Come hear my song.

If you dare.

Follower of Life. Traveler on the South Path.

Wife of Strides-to-Distant-Lands-and-Sees.

Come, Ravenous Ones, sing with me.

If you dare.

We will sing of Blood.

Together."

The remaining Ravenous Ones stared at her for several slow heartbeats, then, one by one, lowered their gaze, turned away, and began their long journey to the North.

As the last of morning turned to sunlit day, Deadgirl crouched by her husband and began to wait for him to awaken.

***

Post Production Notes:

As I stated, I had to write this one to get it out of my head. Finding the "voice," the story cadence and perspective, for this one was kind of tough.

I imagine the "Anasazi" culture had some similarities to the historical period Pueblo Culture -- Taos, Hopi and, perhaps, Zuni. Those cultures are expressly matricentric -- which is why Deadgirl had to propose to Farwalker - and yes, that is what the piki ceremony was. I've tried not to delve too much into that, except to make the Ravenous into a strongly patriarchal cult almost diametrically opposed, because those are the types of cults that arise in time of great stress. I'm no expert on Pueblo culture, but I do understand death cults. That said, there is simply a lot we do not and probably will never know about the Anasazi/Ancestral Pueblo and their Long Dark Night. As a side note: It should be obvious but among some cultures in the area, "The North Road" or "North Path" represents death, "South" represents life.

Just in case any of the People read this forum: yes, piki is a lot harder to make for most than it is for Deadgirl.