Free At the End of Babel by Michael Livingston Page B

sounds of remembered death until all she heard was the burning of the juniper before her, and all she saw was Red Rabbit, rocking and puffing on his fading cigarette. “What would God be,” she said, “if there was no one to call his name?” No one to hate him.
    â€œWhy call him now, though?”
    â€œDo you remember nothing of the old ways?”
    He shrugged. “I remember the old ways through the canyons. That’s why you hired me, yellow woman.”
    It was true enough. Since the killings, she’d lived in the cities. She knew nothing of the wild places anymore.
    Tabitha sighed. “The moon doesn’t rise in the same place every day. It moves along the horizon. Every eighteen or so years, it reaches its northernmost point on the horizon, rising as far north as it will rise before returning south to begin the cycle again. A lunistice, it’s called. And during that time, the moon, for just a little while, appears to rise in the same place. Some people call it a lunar standstill. It last happened a little over eighteen years ago. When I was eleven. It took me a long time to understand the why and the when. So, I know it’s about to happen again.”
    â€œThe moon?” Red Rabbit looked as if he was trying not to laugh. “You’re going through this for the moon?”
    â€œYes. It may seem strange to you, but it wasn’t to our people.” She ignored the look of exasperation in his eyes, kept talking. “Many of the pueblos were built to observe the cycle. Chimney Rock, for instance. Why would they build the pueblo so far above the plain? Far from water, wood, food…”
    â€œMaybe they liked the view. Pretty place. Casino there now.”
    â€œTrue. But if we were there tonight, and we watched the moon rise, we would see it come up between the two great rock spires to the north. We could watch it just as our ancestors did when they first built it over a thousand years ago.”
    â€œWhy’d they like the moon so much?”
    â€œIt wasn’t just our people. You could see the same thing at Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, the pyramids in Egypt. When Tsichtinako created—”
    â€œTseech-tee…?”
    â€œTsichtinako . Thought Mother. Our legends say she created the universe through the hand of Uchtsiti , the All-Father. He built the world by throwing a clot of his own blood into the heavens. The chaianyi, what the whites would call medicine men, they taught that the sun represented Uchtsiti . It was the male. It was father. The moon was the female. We might call it mother. Both male and female are needed for life, but the male drives away what he most needs, so the moon flees to the north, toward death. It was said that if man does not call back the moon, she will leave us forever. The father’s consort will be gone. He can have no more children. What is will wither and die. Nothing new will replace it. It was said by the chaianyi that Thought Mother taught this much to the first peoples when they emerged from Shipapu , the darkness beneath the earth.”
    â€œYou believe this?”
    It took her a moment to answer. She was remembering her father’s footfalls, his leather moccasins shuffling in the clay as he danced and sang, danced and sang. “My ancestors believed,” she said at last. “So it’s important to me.”
    â€œI don’t believe in gods,” Red Rabbit said. Suspicion flashed in his eyes. “I believe in money.”
    â€œWhich is why you won’t get the rest until you’ve taken me to the top of the rock.”
    Whatever had been in his eyes vanished. “Then eat, Hoarse Raven. The trail to the Sky City is long.”
    She swallowed the rest of the bread, then stood and looked out through the canyon opening to the flat plain. Spread out before her, the patched and faded land reminded her of one of the woolen blankets her grandmother once made for her. And kilometers