The Anasazi were really taking off as a culture and the Outsiders who had plopped down in their midst were not welcome, even though they were taking some particularly uninhabitable area. It wouldn't be until 1150 when a three hundred year drought in a period of global warming would cause their civilization to collapse.
For now, it wasn't quite so bad. After some initial hostilities, the two left each other alone. By 1005, the intruders had built huge walls to seal themselves off from the outside world.
In 1102, that changed a little.
His name within the tribe was Bent-Leg. He was called that because he was born with one leg twisted. Unable to properly run, and not properly skilled with pottery, he became low within the tribe's pecking order.
So it hadn't been too strange for him to find himself challenged.
"Stupid. Stupid. Stupid," said Bent-Leg, referring to himself as he climbed. One foot always was twisted to the side, but he could climb as well as anyone else. He was currently clinging to a rock about halfway up a cliff. "STUPID. Had to listen to them. HAD to respond to Tall-bear. HAD to look good in front of Falling-leaf, even if she'd NEVER look at me like she does at Tall-bear."
Hand gripped stone, other hand went up to grip next spot, move feet to brace, repeat. All the while cursing himself for being a fool and taking the dare.
"Bet this was the plan. Amuse the heck out of everyone if I turn up dead. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid."
Minutes passed with the only sounds being the grunt of exertion, the wind sighing, and the occasional hawk out hunting and keeping an eye on this human doing something incomprehensibly human.
The Wall extended from natural sections of the Canyon, and while the Wall itself was unnaturally smooth - the sections that were natural were merely normal rock. Those could be climbed. Never mind that nobody did it because the Spirits could bring their thunder against any war party that tried to scale those heights long before anyone reached the top.
A buzz like bees became a roar and the metal birds swung by him.
"Go away bird-bees," said Bent-Leg. "This is difficult enough."
He'd seen the bird-bees before, at a distance. When he'd been a child there had been a bunch of others and viewed at a distance.
This was odd though, as the birds didn't spit flame the way they'd done to the war party back in the day.
Well, it was more difficult going down at this point than going up. It wasn't like he could go any faster either.
"We're letting him up?" asked Rah Nar.
"It was inevitable that the natives would get curious, and this is clearly NOT a war group," pointed out Sub-Chief Loh Pah. "Our choices are to allow this, or to kill the native. Since we are not in immediate danger, and our policy has been to exist as peacefully as we will be allowed..."
Rah Nar nodded, shifting views from one of the scout-drones to another. "Well, they're mammallian. This is a male of the species, but look here. A deformity. Probably from birth."
"What? You're right," agreed Loh Pah as he studied the image. "Damn. I hope that doesn't mean this is some form of religious sacrifice."
"That... possibility had not occurred to me," said an equally disquieted Rah Nar.
Bent-Leg had been prepared for near-instant death. Either from falling or from the bee-birds that kept an eye on him.
He had been ready for reaching the summit and finding just more desert scrub beyond the Wall, an anticlimax after the hours spent climbing and the hour or so he'd been waiting for the cramping of muscles to stop.
He wasn't dead. He wasn't faced with such an anticlimax either.
Bent-Leg stared, trying to fix this in his memory so that he could properly relay it back to the tribe.
Saplings in carefully tended rows, greenery where there should be none. Some sort of kiva without the cave around it, reaching up, surrounded by smaller kiva. The kiva were also surrounded by greenery, and there were odd things moving around the area. Not people, but not these Others either.
One of the bee-birds, larger than the other bee-birds, landed atop the mesa and regarded him.
Bent-Leg spent little time regarding this big bee-bird. Instead his attention was entirely on the fields and planted-forest. There was more to this too - he could tell that surrounding mesa and mountains cut off his field of view.
"dak rana mohari renzu."
THIS got his attention, for all that sounds were nonsense.
Between him and big bee-bird was a ghostly image. One of the Others. Bent-Leg could see through this Other though. Ghost? Spirit? Whatever the case, he could see clearly one of the Others up close. Human-like, but clearly not. It was a little shorter than him, but weighed clearly four or five times what he did because it was built so thickly. The arms were a little longer than you'd expect. The legs a little thicker. The torso nearly round. Yet this was no animal, the eyes were human-like though a color he'd never seen before.
Almost sky-colored.
"He's not going to understand anything," said Rah Nar.
"True," said Loh Pah. "Yet from little seeds can come entire forests."
"Ancient sayings aren't any guide," said Rah Nar. "This is an entirely new situation. This could go very bad, very fast."
"Then we'll just have to be very careful," said Loh Pah. "Besides, if this youth is a religious sacrifice - it is only fitting if he comes back to his people with some insight."
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(Posted Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:48)
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