At the End of Babel Read Free

one way or another. She had a hard time not watching the sky, and several times she tripped on exposed juniper roots, causing no small amount of pain to feet already aching from the new moccasins.
    An hour after departing the well, they left the sandhills and entered the flatlands. And although the sage and sparse-grass plain was more exposed to any passing skiff, they were able to take a more direct path toward the waiting mesa. Tabitha felt her mind begin to ease. There was no place to hide now. No place to run. If a skiff came, she’d be dead. Red Rabbit, too, probably, though he did not seem concerned about the possibility as he trudged ahead of her through the dirt.
    The wall of Acoma mesa, towering higher with each step they took, was rusted clay, a deep and rich color. Dark streaks ran down its many faces. The stains of ten thousand tears.
    Farther in the distance along the horizon, almost five kilometers northeast of the Sky City, she could see where yellow sandstone cliffs rose one hundred and twenty meters out of the dusty sea. The old stories told how the people had long ago lived atop those cliffs. It was a beautiful village, but there was only one trail to the summit. One day, the people went down to the plain to gather the harvest. Three women, though, were sick and couldn’t go. That day, terrible rains came. The waters washed away the trail to the village. The men tried to find another path up, but there was none. There was nothing anyone could do. Weeks passed, and the women grew quiet as they starved to death. One of them died. The other two, who did not want to die of starvation, walked to the edge of the cliff, looked down upon their families and their friends, then jumped, hoping to find the arms of Great Eagle or White Hawk. It was said that their cries could still be heard among the crags sometimes. The place had been very holy among the people.
    The whites did not understand this story. They called the place the Enchanted Mesa. To Tabitha’s people it had been Kadzima , the Accursed.
    *   *   *
    Tabitha and Red Rabbit found a little farm at the base of the Acoma mesa. Dry farming. Her family had done the same until the skiffs and their crews of lancers had come.
    The farm was little to look at. A shanty of four weathered adobe walls, not more than four or five meters on a side, covered over with corrugated sheets of scrap metal, with two windows: one cracked and grimed, the other clumsily boarded over. Desiccated posts made of piñon branches marked the perimeter of a small yard in front of the building. Two chickens and a rooster, still contained within a battered wire mesh strung between those posts, were the only signs of life.
    At Red Rabbit’s urging, Tabitha stayed some distance behind him as they approached. He had an old-style gun in the holster at his hip, and Tabitha noticed that he kept his hand close to it and that he walked with a sort of balanced crouch. “I don’t think anyone here wants to hurt us,” she said.
    He didn’t turn around to answer her. “I don’t take chances. Never know who lives out here.”
    â€œProbably just poor farmers.”
    â€œMaybe,” he said. “But there’s lots of crazies outside the cities. People like me.”
    Tabitha looked down at the ceremonial knife tied to her belt with leather thongs. She fingered it for a moment, then thought better of it. Instead, she cupped her hands around her mouth and called out. “Hello?”
    Her voice echoed back from the building and the silently brooding rocks. The chickens clucked in senseless reply.
    â€œIs anyone here?”
    Red Rabbit had turned to glare at her, but the sound of shifting rock spun his attention back around. There was a native woman standing among the jumbled boulders beyond the shanty. Her arm was extended to her right, disappearing into rock.
    â€œShow us your other hand!” Red Rabbit called.
    The woman