At the End of Babel Read Free Page B

cities, Tabitha Hoarse Raven.” He looked her clothes up and down, seemed to linger. “And you’re not dressed like a tourist. Why’re you here?”
    â€œI grew up here.”
    â€œDoesn’t answer my question.”
    â€œEnough, Joseph,” Malya said. “Fetch water for our guests.”
    Joseph’s smile faded, and his cheeks darkened. He started back toward the building.
    â€œPlease don’t,” Tabitha said. “We have water. We’ll just be on our way up.”
    Joseph stopped walking, half turned. “You’re going up?”
    Tabitha nodded, even as his mother started to ask forgiveness for her intrusive son.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Tabitha said. “I don’t mind. Yes, I’m dressed strangely. Yes, we’re going up. It’s time for the moondance.”
    Joseph looked confused, but Malya was shaking her head, her eyes furtive. “It’s not allowed,” she said.
    â€œNeither is speaking in Keresan.”
    â€œBad enough to do that. But to do the dance.… You know what they did, don’t you? The lancers? My husband wanted to dance with the others, with all the defiant ones. He came out here with them. To rediscover his ancestors, he said. He died with them that day.”
    Even from several meters away, Tabitha could see the new expressions of emotion passing over Joseph’s face. She ignored them. “I’m not asking for you to help,” she said. “But I won’t lie to one of our people. I’m going to perform the dance.”
    â€œOne of what people? Who? This man here? Me? Joseph? Your ‘people’ is the same as anyone else’s now. It’s the law.”
    â€œNot for me,” Tabitha said.
    â€œThen you’re alone. And you’ll die like the rest of them. Then what will have become of your people? Nothing but a few genetic quirks like us, absorbed soon enough. Maybe a troupe of half-breeds who fake dances for tourists in Santa Fe between night gigs at the poker tables. Some old crones making beaded necklaces to sell on street corners. Nothing more.” The woman turned away from Tabitha. She began to walk back toward Joseph and the building. “Dance. Die. Take your words with you, sister. No one will speak them when you’re gone.”
    *   *   *
    The story was well known to Tabitha’s people: how, in the winter of 1599, Spanish troops had come to Acoma, almost one hundred of them strong in their steel, to capture what they called the Sky City.
    The Acomans went to the edge of their mesa when they arrived. They hurled stones and launched arrows at the Spaniards one hundred meters below. Yet the invaders climbed. Up and up.
    When the Spaniards reached the top, they leveled a cannon at the Acomans. They filled it with small stones and began to fire. To the people, it was as if Father Thunder himself had turned against them, spewing the bone-rock of the life-giving Earth into their flesh, ripping and breaking. Eight hundred of them died that day, and their city was turned to ruin. Of those taken alive, all males over the age of twelve were made twenty-year slaves. Those older than twenty-five had their right feet cut off. Some few of the dispersed managed to return over the years. They rebuilt the pueblo. They returned to sing to the Mother, to beg for her return.
    It had taken the Spaniards three days to fight their way to the top. It took her and Red Rabbit less than three hours.
    Of course, it was easier now. When the Spaniards came, the only ways up were the steep stairways, hand-cut into the sandstone surfaces of the mesa walls. But twentieth-century ingenuity had seen fit to cut a road to the top, to what was then the oldest continually inhabited community in the United States.
    At the top, she and her guide found what was left of the pueblo that those who’d returned had built. First was the church, the old mission of San Esteban Rey. It