The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

  Ruthann pats Sophie on the back. “Ssh, Siwa,” she says. “They’re not here to hurt you. They keep you safe.”

  When they stop dancing an hour or so later, they jangle toward the heaps of gifts they’ve carried up from the kivas. They toss baked loaves of bread to the people sitting on the roofs. They pass out watermelons and grapes, popcorn balls, peaches. They hand out bowls of fruit, squash, corn, Little Debbie cakes. Wilma, a recent widow, is given one of the biggest baskets.

  Finally, they pass out presents to the children. For the boys, there are bows and arrows wrapped with cattails and cornstalks. For the girls, katsina dolls tied with boughs of juniper. One dancer, perspiration pouring down his arms and sides, sweeps across the plaza to the spot where we are sitting. He holds two katsina dolls, their painted faces glazed by the sun. He hands one to Wilma’s daughter, and then kneels in front of Sophie. She shrinks away, cowed by the vivid flecks of his mask and the clean sharp smell of his sweat. He shakes his carved head, and after a moment her fingers close around the doll.

  The agility with which this particular katsina moves, and the long lines of his body, are familiar. I marvel at his footwork and wonder if, underneath the mask, this might not be Derek, the hoop dancer we met in Phoenix, Ruthann’s nephew.

  “Isn’t that—”

  “No, it’s not,” Ruthann says. “Not today.”

  The katsinas, ready for a short break, split into two lines that fold back upon each other and march out of the plaza, down the mesa in a long, undulating line toward the kiva. The clouds seem to follow them.

  Ruthann reaches for Sophie, who is holding her new doll tight. She rests her cheek to the crown of my daughter’s head and watches the katsinas go. “Good-bye,” she says.

  * * *

  The next morning when I wake up, Ruthann is gone and Sophie is still fast asleep beside Greta. I tiptoe outside in time to see a man climb to the roof where the golden eagle is tied, watching the ceremonies. The bird beats its wings, but a tether around its foot keeps it from flying away. The man talks softly to the bird as he moves closer, finally wrapping the eagle in a blanket.

  When a woman comes out of the house beside me, I turn to her, alarmed. “Is he trying to steal the bird?” I ask. “Should we do something?”

  She shakes her head. “That eagle, Talátawi, he’s been watching us since May, to see that we’ve done all the ceremonies well. Now it’s time for him to go.” She tells me that her son was the one who captured Talátawi, as his father lowered him by rope down a cliff to an eagle’s nest. That the eagle’s name means Song to the Rising Sun; and that since they’ve named it, the bird is a member of their family.

  I wait for her husband to untie the bird, to see it fly off. But as I watch, the man wraps the blanket more tightly around the eagle. He holds it while the bird fights to breathe, and finally it goes limp. “He’s killing it?”

  The woman wipes her eyes. The eagle, she tells me, is smothered in cornmeal. All of his feathers will be removed except for a few, to be used in pahos and ceremonial objects that will bless the people of Sipaulovi. Talátawi’s body will be buried with gifts from the katsinas, and will journey to tell the spirits that the Hopi deserve rain. “It’s all for good,” she says, her voice shaking, “but that doesn’t make it any easier to let go.”

  Suddenly, Wilma slams out of the screen door. “Have you seen her?” she asks.

  “Who?”

  “Ruthann. She’s gone missing.”

  Knowing Ruthann, she’s gone to raid the junk piles that dot the reservation. Yesterday, as we were hiking up toward Sipaulovi, she told me that the Hopi believe when something’s wrecked or used up, it has to be given back to the earth, which is why trash is left on the ground and garbage in a heap. Eventually, after you die, you’ll get back whatever it is that was broken.

  At the time, I’d wondered if this held true for hearts.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” I tell Wilma. “She’ll be back before you know it.”

  But Wilma wrings her hands. “What if she walked too far, and couldn’t make it home? I don’t know how much strength she’s got.”

  “Ruthann? She could probably win an Ironman competition.”

  “But that was before the chemotherapy.”

  “The what?”

  Wilma tells me that when Ruthann found out, she went to see a native healer. But it had spread too far too fast, and she turned to traditional medicine. She told Wilma that I’ve been driving her to the hospital for her appointments. But I have never taken Ruthann to any doctor; she has never even mentioned having cancer.

  On the roof behind us, the man sings a prayer that’s striped with grief, and rocks the body of Talátawi in his arms like an infant.

  “Wilma,” I say, “I want you to call the police.”

  * * *

  I don’t want anyone coming with me—namely, a tribal police escort—so I surreptitiously scent Greta off a shirt in Ruthann’s suitcase. The bloodhound immediately begins to strain at her leash, even before I give the command. With Wilma talking to the cops and Derek babysitting for Sophie and his own little sister, Greta and I sneak away unnoticed.

  We move across yellowed ground split by deep fissures; we step gingerly over slabs of stone that have tumbled from the crests of the mesas. In some places it is easier than others—in the soft layer of dust that coats the earth, there will be a footprint; some of the vegetation has been kicked aside, or crushed. In other places, the only trace left behind of Ruthann is a thread of her scent.

  There are any number of dangers that might befall Ruthann out here—dehydration, sunstroke, snakes, desperation. It is terrifying to think that her recovery might sit squarely in my hands, and at the same time, there is a part of me that’s almost relieved to be doing this sort of work again. If I’m actively looking for someone, it must mean that I’m no longer the one who is lost.

  Suddenly Greta stops hard and alerts. She lopes off at a run, as I try to dodge boulders and juniper bushes in an effort to keep up. She turns onto a rutted road made for four-wheel-drive vehicles, and leads me into the bowl of a small canyon.

  We are ringed by sheer rock walls on three sides. Greta edges closer to the cliffs, pushing her nose along the cracked earth. My boots kick over shards of corrugated pottery and broken arrowheads and owl pellets. On the facings of the rock are markings: spirals, sunbursts, snakes, full moons, concentric circles. I trail my fingers over figures with spears and bighorn sheep; over boys holding what looks like a flower over their heads and girls trying to snatch them away; over twins connected by a wavy umbilicus. One entire wall is like a newspaper—hundreds of drawings densely packed into the space. It is amazing how much of the story I can understand, although these must have been hammered into place a thousand years ago.

  I am distracted by one symbol: a stick figure that could only be a parent, holding the hand of what could only be a child.

  “Ruthann!” I call out, and I think I hear an answer.

  Greta sits at the edge of a narrow crevice, whining as her paws scrabble for purchase. “Stay,” I command, and I take hold of the edges and hoist myself up to the thin ledge six feet off the ground. From here, I can see another foothold; I start to climb.

  It is when I’ve worked myself deep into the split of the rock, too far in and too high up to see Greta anymore, that I notice the petroglyph. This artist went to great pains to show this was a woman—she has breasts, and loose hair. She is pointed upside down, and her head is separated from her body by a long, wavy line. On the facing rock are a series of notches, precisely cut. I realize it is a calendar; meant for a solstice. On a particular day, the sun will hit this just right; and a line of light will slice the neck of the falling woman.

  A sacrifice.

  A rain of pebbles from overhead makes me glance up in time to see Ruthann step onto the lip of the cliff, another fifteen feet above me. Her body is wrapped tight in a pure white robe.

  “Ruthann!” I shout, my voice caro