Free Day of the Dead by J. A. Jance Page A

somehow imbued Lani with the certain knowledge that the darkness of the cave was her friend rather than her enemy—that by surrendering herself to the darkness instead of fighting it, she could be saved.
    On Lani’s final venture into the cave, where she had gone to leave her one remaining shoe as a tribute to Betraying Woman’s moldering bones, she had discovered a talisman of her own—the dried, baby-finger-like bones from a long-dead bat.
    “Nanakumal Namkam,” she whispered hoarsely.
    Fat Crack nodded. “Bat Meeter,” he said. “You have met Bat and made some of his strengths your strength. That, too, is good, so taken together, what do you think all this means?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “When Looks at Nothing came to me and told me I would be a medicine man,” Fat Crack said, “I thought he was crazy. How could I be a Christian Scientist and a medicine man at the same time? It didn’t make sense, but I know now he was right.”
    He paused while Lani waited. Finally he spoke again. “You know the duajida ?”
    “The nighttime divination ceremony?” Lani asked.
    “I have done the duajida for you, Little Bat Meeter,” Fat Crack said softly. “Every time it is the same. The spirits say you will be two things at once— Kulani O’oks, Medicine Woman, and also a doctor.”
    “A doctor?” Lani asked. “As in a hospital?”
    Fat Crack nodded. “It’s the same thing my auntie, Rita Antone, told me long ago,” he said. “And the duajida says it is true.”
    ***
    Pulling her robe on over her naked body, Lani glanced at the window. It was still night outside on the frozen prairie beyond the double-pane glass. And since the night wasn’t over, it was still all right for her to do a duajida of her own.
    For days now she’d had a nagging feeling that something was terribly wrong back home. Since Fat Crack was the one who was ill, she was convinced his condition was the source of her malaise. Because no one seemed willing to tell her what was really going on, it was hardly surprising that Lani might look to some other means of finding out what she wanted to know.
    She went to the dresser and took down a small framed picture that dated from the night of her high school graduation. She stood in her cap and gown flanked on either side by Gabe and Wanda Ortiz. After retrieving her medicine basket from her dresser, she sat down cross-legged on the floor, pried off the tight-fitting top, and spilled the contents onto the rug.
    There before her was everything that had been there that night on Ioligam, and a few things more besides. Most had come to her from or through Nana Dahd: First came a piece of ancient pottery with the faint image of a turtle etched into the red clay. That had belonged to Rita Antone’s paternal grandmother, Understanding Woman. There was Nana Dahd ’s sacred scalp bundle along with the shiny smooth bone owij —the awl—the old woman had used to weave her wonderful baskets. A few items were Lani’s alone—things she had retrieved from Betraying Woman’s cave—a blackened fragment of a broken pot and the delicate bone from a dead bat’s wing. Last of all was the soft chamois bag that held Looks at Nothing’s precious crystals.
    Lani’s fingers trembled as she untied the string and spilled the crystals out into the medicine basket, confining them there rather than risk losing one on the floor. Taking the photo in one hand and a crystal in another, she held them up to the light and studied the faces through the haze of rock. She focused her gaze on Fat Crack’s smiling face. The first three times she did it, nothing happened. Then she picked up the fourth crystal.
    After a few seconds she noticed a slight shifting in Gabe Ortiz’s features. They seemed thinner somehow. It’s because he’s ill, Lani thought. He’s losing weight.
    Then Fat Crack’s face changed altogether. It seemed to dissolve and then remake itself. Gradually someone else’s features emerged. For a moment a