Tonight, She is Most Wise

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

She went away a girl and returned two years later a mysterious woman, unmarried, without child, her hands soft from lack of labor. She came back, she said, because she dreamed seven nights in a row of a black full moon rising between the spires of the Twin War Gods.

To the elder women, including her mother, she explained that she had nursed a sick child back to health in the village of her mother’s sisters. After hearing that, every mother within a day’s walk brought her their sick children and she rarely saw the light of day.

For four days the women held counsel. They ignored her premonition of the black moons rising and decided to give the girl a new name, Satikya, healer of children, and planned a ceremony to celebrate her return and coming of age. They chose the rising of the full moon following the first harvest of fresh sweet corn.

As custom dictated, she sat in a special place that day and evening before the rising of the moon and the villagers called on her for her blessings and guidance.

“Tonight, she is Most Wise, more even than Grandfather Skywatcher,” said her mother to anyone who cared to eavesdrop.

Grandfather came last to see her, even as the first perceptible light of the moon smudged the northeastern sky. With much effort he kneeled before her and looked into her radiant face. Her hair had been woven with turkey feathers and flowers into a wide arc that half-haloed her head. The dancing flames of a young fire lit her face.

“Give me your hands,” she said, and Grandfather placed his gnarled paws in her warm brown hands.

She closed her eyes and swayed as if winds buffeted her, then brought Grandfather’s hands to her face. Tears rolled down her cheeks when she opened her eyes.

“Soon you will be in pain no more,” she said. “Something terrible will happen that has never happened before, and you will become high above others, and everyone will see you and some will come afterward who will prevent that terrible thing from ever happening again.”

She released Grandfather’s hands and covered her face with her own.

Grandfather wondered what she meant, but asked no question, as custom called. For years, since before this girl had left a girl and returned a woman, he had dull premonitions he could not clarify. Something terrible would indeed happen, he thought, as the girl said. He would be held high for all to see, and it would rile some into revolution.

I will be a martyr, he thought.

He rose slowly, pain shooting through his knees and lower back such that he could not breathe. He stood until it eased.

“Thank you, my wise fortuneteller,” he said. “I accept my path.”

Then he left to watch the rising of the full moon as he had done without fail since before all others in the village had even been born.

A sign is coming, he told himself. I must be vigilant. It must be left to others to prepare for what comes after.

# # #

Although no one knows Anasazi customs, it’s not uncommon among Native American cultures for young girls who become women to be considered “most wise” during a short period of time, during which they bestow blessings and healing words to visitors. The coming sign that brings terrible things is the Taurus Supernova, which appeared on July 4, 1054, and became the brightest object in the sky except for the sun and the full moon for a month.

The Sun Spider

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

Lucio found the longest, straightest sapling he thought he could handle. He cut it down and beat all its limbs off with his river-stone ax, then dragged it to the open glade rock below the village.

He found seven more and did the same.

“What are you doing, Lucio?” a boy asked.

“Building a Sun Spider,” he said.

A crowd began to gather as he worked. Women carrying water from the little river changed their path to pass by the glade rock. Hunters left and returned the same way, and old women set up their looms in the shade on the uphill side.

Lucio beamed in the attention, but he refused all help and worked alone. After he gathered eight long polls, he began stacking shorter logs like a strangely laid bonfire. He set the logs in an interlocking fashion that towered into a strong structure more than twice his own height.

He leaned the straight poles against the structure and tied them together with long cords of yucca string, then climbed and work for days atop the structure.

When he had secured the eight polls together at the top and stacked stones at the footing of each he noticed the ancient skywatcher standing in the shadows. The old man had never shown the slightest interest in Lucio, and now his chance had come.

Lucio called to the boys of the village and gave them the logs for firewood from the central scaffolding as he dismantled it, until only the eight spidery legs stood over the glade rock. Where he had tied them together with the cord he had woven a small body of a spider made of willow sticks. It hovered over the glade rock like a giant long-legged creature waiting for something. The next morning, Lucio stood in the small shadow cast by the spider’s body and slowly moved with it until evening.

The old skywatcher came to him and spoke. “You will mark the pathway of the shadows with small stones.”

“Yes, Grandfather. And there will be moon shadows two.”

“Mark those as well. I will keep an eye on you.”

Women began bringing Lucio regular meals and water. Boys brought him small river stones for marking the shadow paths, and men built a small pit house where he rested when there were no shadows. Grandfather sent special stones to mark auspicious events, such as the first shadow on solstice days or the arc of shadows produced by a full moon during harvest.

For three years, he meticulously recorded the shadows of the Sun spider. The glade rock became covered with tracks of palm-sized river stones and he walked with great care among them.

Then one night a storm crashed down the spindly legged spider and scattered the stones, and Lucio couldn’t bear it. During the storm, he left, and the people of the village did not know what happened to him.

# # #

I know of nothing like the Sun Spider I describe here. But these people paid more attention to the sun and the moon, direction and shadows, than modern Americans pay to professional sports. There were, I imagine, many such structures built to track the movement of the sun and moon, most of which did not work and did not leave any recognizable archaeological residue.

The Upright Log and the Sun

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

After the fall harvest and before the big snows, Grandfather directed the men of the village to find a long straight log and hundreds of stones as large as a man could carry. For weeks, they worked and sang and laughed. Children played among them and women kept them well fed and watered.

Grandfather had them erect the log on a spot he had chosen with great care, all the stones stacked in a cone at its base to hold it upright.

A week before the winter solstice, he pointed to the Mesa Ridge to the West. “Natwani,” he said, and a short man with massive shoulders and chest stepped forward. He grew the best crops each year and served as captain of the archers. “Take three men and cross to the mesa top there.” He made Natwani site from the log to the crest of the cliff opposite to precisely find his spot.

Natwani memorized the features of the place, then turned and looked at the horizon in the opposite direction, imagining what the pointing-up log would have as its eastern backdrop. Then he nodded to Grandfather.

“On the morning of the standstill of the sun,” which is when the sunrise moves no further south at the winter solstice, “mark the spot where the sunrise and this log line up. Make a place where only one man can stand between cairns of stone we can easily find next year. I will light a signal fire here the night before the solstice sunrise — but you can count it as the seventh sunrise starting tomorrow.”

Natwani nodded again. He understood what the old man wanted, and he wanted it too. From the time of the winter standstill of the sun, they could count days and watch the movement of the sun to know when they must plant the year’s crop. They lived in a place with a tight growing season, barely long enough most years for one good harvest of corn. Planting a week early or late could cost them dearly.

Fat flakes of snow fell the next morning when he set off with another man and his son, Choovio, who had grown nearly as strong as his father.

“Why does that crazy old man make us do these things?” Choovio asked as they crunched through the new snowfall.

“What makes the corn grow?” asked Natwani.

“What does that have to do with it?”

Natwani said nothing. They waded across the small river at a shallow place, the rippling near-freezing water stinging them to their thighs. They dried their feet and pulled on their foot coverings and leggings they had carried on their shoulders across the water, then began ascending the mesa, which warmed them.

“Sunlight and warmth and water,” answered Choovio.

“Yes,” said Natwani. “And more. You know. Go on.”

Choovio sighed. His father wanted him to answer like a child reciting after his teacher. “And the spirit of the sun must touch the spirit of the earth and then each go back to their separate places and the corn grows between.” Every child and villager knew this. But it didn’t explain why they had to go spend a week on a cold ridge top.

“When the winter sun stands still, when the sun rises in the same place for days in a row, that is when the sun and the earth come together. Grandfather wants us to see it more clearly so that we can better thank the sun and the earth when they are closest together, and they will not be offended, and so our crops will grow.”

“Couldn’t we just do that from the village?”

At the top of the ridge, Natwani found the place he wanted to be, the standing stick near Grandfather’s sky-watching platform pointing to the cleft in the eastern mountains where he expected the sun to rise seven mornings hence.

They gathered enough stones before nightfall to build a low wall that blocked the cold wind, and they huddled for warmth. The next morning, they watched the sun come up near the cleft.

“Just watch and learn, my son,” said Natwani to Choovio. “Someday soon the wisdom of manhood will come to you, and you will understand.”

Choovio felt too cold to care whether he understood anything ever again, but the following mornings he noticed how slowly the sun crept into the cleft until it seemed to stand still. The morning after they saw Grandfather’s signal fire, the whole world seemed to come to a halt, the wind died and the little river stopped rushing, and the only signs of movement came from The People in the village.

Natwani lined the upright log with the first appearance of the sun and marked the spot carefully, then he raised his hands in welcome and Choovio, feeling a strange rush of power, joined him.

# # #

On the sharp ridge due west of Chimney Rock, Colorado (the northeasternmost outlier of the Anasazi culture near Pagosa Springs) are many sites that appear to have been used by the ancient ones to use the twin columns of Chimney Rock like a gun sight to view celestial events with precision. When they couldn’t look through the twin columns, perhaps they raised logs upright to use as sighting guides.

A Clash of Delegates

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

The two visiting dignitaries ignored each other as they performed their morning rituals to welcome and encourage the coming of the sun. They offered cornmeal and corn pollen to the sunrise, they chanted ancient words, and they acknowledged the four directions that became six when they called to the underworld and the above-ground world.

They also listened carefully to each other and noticed the differences.

“You give much emphasis to the underworld,” said the delegate from the North as they walked together back to the great house of the High Priest.

“You give much emphasis to the above-world,” said the delegate from the South.

“All things come from the sky: the warmth of sun, the water for life, the wisdom of moon and stars.”

“Yet The People crawled up from below into this world. The underworld is our womb, our mother.”

“The People were born of the earth and the underworld, it is true. But once born, no one returns to the womb.”

“You are wise and speak truth — but neither does one, once born, fail to honor one’s mother.”

“You are wise and speak truth as well. But while to honor one’s mother is a requirement for balance, men also must raise their heads and recognize the higher spirits of the sky.”

“To recognize the sky is without question necessary for balance. But the superior spirit force resides in the underworld, there must be no question.”

“There must always be question,” said the man from the North, feeling anger within him. “The proof of superiority lies solely with the health and happiness of The People. The spirits of the underworld give their bounty only grudgingly, with the constant urging of Father Sun and gentle rain.”

The man from the South also felt the heat of anger rise into his head. “The spirit of the underworld does nothing begrudgingly. All that we have, our buildings and our tools and our food, have their roots, their beginnings, in the underworld. It is right and proper to worship Másaw as the supreme spirit.”

The man from the North stopped and the man from the South took two paces, then turned to face him. The Northerner narrowed his eyes and said, “The Plumed Serpent of above-ground, of the air and the sky, is, and has always been, the supreme spirit.”

Without speaking further, they stood, each trying to be more stoic than the other, until a page said they were wanted in the great kiva with the High Priest and the other delegates.

“Events will prove who is right,” said the Southerner.

The Northerner nodded. “It is out of our hands.”

# # #

We can only speculate, of course, about the religious tendencies of the Anasazi, and extrapolate, perhaps, from their living descendants. But something significant happened in and around Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, a thousand years ago that made these people build the largest buildings in North America (until the 1800s in New York) and then abandon them. Religion could have been a primary driving force.

Waking the High Priest

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey

“I will not wake him,” said the Owl Man.

“Who, then?” asked the warrior.

Both were the most junior and newest members of the High Priest’s house, and they were the only ones left on duty in the hours before first light. Both knew what happened to the last ones to wake the High Priest.

“Pok,” said the Owl Man. “Pok should wake him because he is in charge of protecting this canyon.”

“I will not wake Poke,” said the warrior. He knew the order: do not disturb the Chief Warrior.

“They must know,” said the Owl Man who had been with the High Priest’s house more than a moon longer than the young warrior.

“So who do we tell?”

The Owl Man’s eyes darted from side to side. “If we do not say anything soon, they will be the last to know. That will be worse than waking them.”

“Maybe we should wait until it’s visible from here,” said the warrior. “In case they want proof.”

The Owl Man eyed him. He has a good point, he thought. “You are right. We have not even seen this new star. We just have the runner’s word from the High House.”

“Runners do not lie. If he said he saw it, he saw it.” The warrior stood tall to emphasize his thumb-width’s height advantage over the Owl Man. “But maybe it will go away before it rises over the canyon wall.”

“I am not a skywatcher,” said the Owl Man. “I do not know these things.”

They stood quietly, both their eyes searching from side to side in the darkness, looking for an answer, a way to do their duty and not risk their necks.

The Owl Man sighed. He glanced at the orange flicker of the dying signal fire from the High House. The risk of not telling the High Priest about the unexpected appearance of a new star in the sky began to seem more grave than merely waking him. He sighed again.

“We must tell someone,” said the warrior.

“I will wake the High Priest,” said the Owl Man. He looked at the rim where he expected the new star to appear along with a sliver of moon, but he saw only the usual smudges of light. “I will wake the High Priest,” he said again. He looked at the warrior who held his gaze a moment, then nodded.

“And I will wake Pok,” said the warrior.

The Owl Man and the warrior both nodded, but they stood without taking a step in the chilly morning air.

# # #

Am I too obscure about the new star? Just for the record, it’s the Taurus supernova that exploded into the Crab Nebula, visible on earth as the brightest object in the sky (other than the sun and the moon) for about a month beginning on July 4, 1054. Imagine being down in Chaco Canyon and reports come in about this new star, but you can’t see it yet because it’s not risen above the canyon rim. Would you wake the High Priest before you actually saw it?

The Silent Prayer Stick

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

The old man scoured the ground below the largest piñon tree looking for the perfect stick. He needed strong wood, not rotten. About the thickness of his little finger. As long as his elbow to his middle finger.

He felt light-headed and weak. For two moons, he and his family had eaten only tiny rations of corn cakes or corn mush. Their beans and dried squash had given out, and they had already pulled every edible wild plant they could find from the canyon. There’d been no game, even desert rats, for two seasons.

He bent and picked up a stick that felt good to him. The right thickness and length. He gave thanks to the big tree and turned back home.

There he sat in the dim light of the single boxy room where his entire family slept to keep warm. With rough stones, he scraped the bark off the stick, exposing its white flesh.

Using a broken shard of arrowhead stone, he carved a spiral down the length of the stick, then carefully painted the groove he’d cut using a single strand of his own gray hair as brush.

For four days he worked on the stick, beginning the night he judged to be the longest of the year, the winter solstice. The first full moon after the longest night was what spurred him to find the stick and work it so carefully. It was an auspicious time for prayer, and he and his family needed a blessing.

He made a fine string of dried yucca fibers, and tied a single hawk feather, his most pristine, to dangle from the stick. Finished, he held it up and made his family listen.

“This prayer stick is for all of us. Take it and put your spirit into it and pass it on.”

Each member of the family, even the baby, held it a moment. Then the old man took it and said words so ancient no one understood them, and he went outside. He watched the moon grow in size each night until it rose full.

Slowly, he marched in a one-man procession to the opening of a small cave beside the spring where the women gathered water. He raised the prayer stick to the full moon, then crawled into the cave placed it upright between two stones. He backed out of the tight space and stood a moment, as if to speak, but no sound emerged from his mouth. He swallowed, glanced longingly at the full moon, then returned to his starving family.

# # #

Most Anasazi skeletal remains show signs of malnutrition and starvation. Only the highest elite citizens escaped the ravages of occasional hunger.

The Matron of the Spring

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

The matron of the hot spring inspected new people as they arrived and assigned them a reed mat, a cloth of cotton, and a robe of cotton or animal skins, depending on their rank. When an arrival impressed her, she bestowed the buffalo robe to them.

When the latest old man came to soak in the hot water, she watched to see if he behaved as if a crazy spirit had replaced him, or if he carried himself with lucid wisdom. This one seemed aloof to the physical things going on around him, yet completely aware.

She handed the buffalo robe to him.

“I’m not worthy of a top robe,” he said. “I just wish to lie in the warmth and watch the sky for a few days.” He coughed and cleared his throat and struggled with his next words. “And wait for my grandson to return.”

The matron offered the robe to the old man’s companions, an unusual albino woman and a boy. The albino woman took it with a grateful nod. The boy turned and gazed at the highest mountain north of the hot spring.

The matron had seen this before. Old men from all the surrounding clans would bring their sons or grandsons to climb the peak of the mother of hot water, while they suspended their bodies and spirits in the fragrant waters and mud of the springs.

“He’s older than he looks,” the albino woman, called Nuva for “snow,” told the matron. They watched the boy, Tuwa, set off for the mountain in the first dim light of the next morning.

“I’ve seen smaller boys go to the mountain,” said the matron.

“Do they all return?”

“Most,” she said. “Very few fail. It is more difficult than dangerous. I myself have been close to the top.” She didn’t want to alarm this odd white woman who tended the regal old man. People who became panicked because their sons and grandsons did not return invariably failed to pay her, which meant less food and meat and clothing for her family.

When she learned they were from the Village of the Twin War Gods, and that Grandfather was its famous Sky Chief, she quietly made the other soakers leave the big pool to Grandfather alone. He lay in the heat with his head propped on folded animal skins and watched the sky without speaking.

Finally, the boy returned, staggering and babbling wildly, and the matron tried to appear to leave them in private while staying close enough to overhear. His story had more profound meaning than most, and she shrank from the blasphemy Grandfather spoke against Másaw, the great spirit preferred by the High Priest of Totec Canyon. Glad that no warriors were here from the canyon, she helped clean the mud from the old sky watcher and dry him off to prepare for their return walk to the Twin War Gods. She felt no personal allegiance to Totec Canyon and its new religion, but trouble would hurt her trade.

The Sky Chief approached the matron with a self-effacing bow. “You have helped the bones of this old man,” he said, and handed her a small plain pouch.

When they were on their way and out of sight, she shook the contents of the pouch into her hand: fifty well-worked turquoise beads. She quickly poured them back into the pouch and hid it between her breasts. She’d never received a richer payment.

She looked around, but no one watched her with any particular attention, and she thought about the boy’s story and the interpretation by his grandfather. Someday, she thought, this will become a problem. But she also felt obliged to the old sky watcher, his grandson, and the albino woman. Their generosity demanded it. She squinted in the bright sunlight to watch three new people approach her spring. People will always come here, she told herself. Regardless of changing leaders and religion and the unspeakable acts of warriors she heard whispered by her visitors. She just hoped that all of it left her spring and her people alone.

When the new visitors arrived, a skinny-legged old man, a woman, and a boy who said, “This place smells funny,” she handed the old man a worn cotton robe.

# # #

These are the hot springs of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and the Village of the Twin War Gods is the nearby Chimney Rock archaeological area. The peak climbed by the boy is Pagosa Peak, north of Pagosa Springs. “Pah-gosa” is Ute for “water boiling.”

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Fall!

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

The forest rang with calls of “Fall! Fall!” Then the slow pounding of stone on living wood resumed. Men and boys worked two to a tree.

“Look!” shouted the old man. “They have fallen their first tree!” He pointed across a wide glade of grass to another encampment of tree-cutters who had arrived the day after the old man’s crew.

“Our trees are bigger. Harder to fall,” said the half-wit, a man with one eye that googled out of control. The men tolerated him at a distance and rarely responded to anything he said.

“Work, don’t talk,” growled the old man, rumbling his voice like a bear’s. “By dark I want more trees fallen here than there!”

The wood-cutters picked up their pace. They took turns, each pounding their tree with a dull river stone until their arms hung limp.

“Fall!” called the half-wit in frustration. Soon all the men joined in. “Fall! Fall!”

The first tree fell and the men cheered. More began to fall and the old man danced in circles when they had one more tree on the ground than the crew across the prairie.

At dusk, the only tree still standing belonged to the half-wit and his partner.

“Tree too big,” said half-wit, gasping. He beat at it ineffectually and the other men gathered around to watch. The crew from across the prairie walked over to socialize and they, too, watched.

“Why don’t you help him?” asked a man from the other crew.

“We will. But not until he passes out. We have a Grandmother who believes he accidentally casts spells when you help him.”

So they watched until, by moonlight, the exhausted half-wit had whimpered himself to sleep. The men gently moved him out of the way and had the tree down before the women’s camp called them to dinner.

# # #

Can you imagine cutting timber this way? Think of a world with no steel axes, only river stones hafted by wood and leather and yucca string. That’s the Anasazi.

Unblemished Snake Boys

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

The boys hustled out of the village and climbed the short cliff to the broken ground above.

“We saw three sunning themselves up there, remember?” The oldest boy led them and did the talking. The middle boy nodded.

The smallest boy said, “I don’t remember anybody sunning themself.”

“You were sick then, I think,” said the oldest.

When they came to the rock with the black hole yawning beneath it, they slowed and stepped more carefully, except for the youngest, who skipped from rock to rock. “How are we going to catch it?” he asked.

“The priest said no blemishes,” said the middle boy. “What are ‘blemishes’?”

“It means we can’t pierce its skin or cut it or anything,” said the older boy.

“Why not?” asked the youngest.

“I don’t know,” said the oldest. “To keep its spirit from leaking out or something.”

The boys saw it at the same instant and froze. “Wow,” said the older boy. “That’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

“It must be the grandfather,” said the middle boy.

“The great-grandfather,” said the youngest.

The snake turned its head as if it saw them and raised its rattle but didn’t make it buzz. The boys squatted and watched. After a while, the snake settled and lowered its tail.

“How do we get it?” whispered the youngest.

“Run up and grab its tail,” said the oldest.

The eyes of the youngest grew large. “I’m not doing that. It’s bigger than I am.”

“It’s bigger than all of us put together,” said the middle boy.

“We’ll wait until it crawls away and I’ll grab its tail,” said the oldest. The two younger boys looked at him as if they’d never truly seen him before.

After the day warmed, the snake slid off the big rock and began winding its way through smaller stones. The oldest boy surged ahead, wrapped both hands around the tail above the rattle and pulled. The thick snake coiled, its head anchored in the rocks, and pulled the boy forward. “Help!” he called. The middle boy came and pulled the older boy’s waist. Together, they straightened out the coil, the snake’s head still firmly among the rocks. The youngest boy jumped around behind them, waving his arms.

A stone broke loose and the boys fell back as the snake coiled its head back toward them.

“No!” yelled the youngest. He lunged forward and kicked the snake’s head just as it began a strike toward the oldest boy’s thigh. The boys scrabbled away on all fours, the oldest still holding the tail, and he dragged the snake behind him. The middle boy helped, and they ran toward the village, the body of the snake bouncing behind, its head coiling toward its tail but not able to reach the boys. The youngest ran behind flapping his arms, shouting, “We got it! We got it!”

When they ran into the village, women screamed and ran up ladders to the rooftops and the men formed a circle around the boys and laughed and shouted instructions. The snake had become more lethargic, but still tried to arrange itself into a tight coil. The younger boy danced around the head flapping his arms as if the snake had cast a bird spell on him. The boys continued to drag the snake in circles to prevent it from coiling back on them.

A man threw a stick near them and the younger boy got it behind the head and stood on it while the other two boys pulled it out as straight as they could. The snake’s muscles bulged and turned beneath its shiny skin.

While the boys huffed and puffed, the priest and village chief inspected the snake from head to tail.

“This is the biggest, most impressive rattling snake we have ever had,” said the priest. The chief wrapped twine around the snake’s jaws and other men helped the boys stuff it into a large clay pot with a lid.

That night around the fire, the boys told the story over and over, the men laughing and the women squealing at the appropriate places.

Then the priest stood and quieted everyone and called for the boys to stand before him. He smudged their foreheads with cedar ashes and in a solemn, chanting voice gave them new temporary names until they reached puberty:

Suqlanga, Snake Tail Puller, for the oldest.

Suqaya, Snake Helper, for the middle boy.

Suqtava, Snake Head Kicker, for the youngest.

Decades later when migration time had come, the three once again caught a big, unblemished snake, brought it back to the village, cut off its head, and arranged its still-writhing body on the floor of their childhood kiva. The entire village watching, they set the roof beams on fire, which were hard to ignite. They stood around the flames that night until the roof caved in after first light.

Then they turned and walked away without looking back.

# # #

Is the ending too abrupt? Note that many (perhaps most) Anasazi villages look like the people just suddenly walked away after burning their kivas. In one ruin near the Four Corners area, the skeleton of a rattlesnake appears to be ceremonially laid out on the floor of the kiva before the roof was burned. This incomplete snippet of a story is part of my grand attempt to grapple with what it looked and felt like to live in a society that migrated so much and, apparently, so easily.

Sumtovi, Son of the High Priest

An Anasazi Story by Jeff Posey.

Before the High Priest came to power, a long line of sky chiefs declared the supremacy of the center place as defined by the movements of the sun and moon and stars. This, they claimed, meant that the sky gods insisted upon the ruler of The People to reside in a specific site inside Totec Canyon.

But the sky chiefs ruled by knowledge rather than power. When refugees from collapsing societies far to the south arrived in the villages south of the canyon, the man who became the High Priest saw the potential of skilled warriors. He enlisted the help of Pok in channeling the ultra-violence of the southern refugee warriors into a revolutionary force that crushed the dynasty of the sky chiefs and took control of the entire region. The southern villages outside Totec Canyon embraced the new guard, and they formed the Southern Alliance.

Cracks in the solidarity of the Southern Alliance first appeared in the Village of Black Stone, childhood home of the High Priest, and the place to which Pok migrated from the north. Sumtovi, eldest son of the High Priest, believed he should lead the Másaw warriors, not Pok.

“He is not even from the South,” Sumtovi argued to his father. “His blood is that of the sky watchers!”

“I need you here. I must have unquestioned support from my own home village.” He had just been elevated to High Priest by enthusiastic acclamation of the Southern Alliance, with reluctant assent by the weaker alliances to the west and north. The east had been left intentionally uninhabited to give the rising sun unfettered approach to Totec Canyon.

“Pok will turn against you,” Sumtovi said. Age had not yet softened his anger.

“You want to sit with me in power in the Great House, I know that,” said the High Priest. “But you can do me far more good here.”

“But who will protect you from Pok? He will turn on you. He is loyal to nothing and no one.”

“That is exactly why he is right to be the top Másaw Warrior. He believes only in the power of violence, and all subtle things are lost on him. He has no allies and no friends, he has killed every wife and child given him, and he dismisses every god but the one of war. His warriors fear and therefore respect him. Yet he has no spiritual power. I will rule that realm completely.”

“But how will you protect yourself from him?”

“You and the Southern Alliance will protect me from him. And the household workers I select. Never underestimate the power of the cook, my son. A few choice herbs from a plant master placed into food can make a man do almost anything.”

“Then perhaps I should be there to protect you from your cook.”

The High Priest laughed and slapped his son on the shoulder. “You become the supreme leader of this village and the first voice in the Southern Alliance Council, and I will become the supreme spiritual ruler of Totec Canyon. That’s how we will gain and hold the most power. That will protect us. Pok is just a tool.”

Sumtovi sighed, then agreed. He watched his father and his large entourage leave for a new life at the Great House, just recently cleansed of the sky watchers by Pok and his army. Sumtovi vowed to find every way he could to keep track of Pok and to protect his father.

# # #

This is a completely different take on Sumtovi than in last week’s FridayFlash. It feels more solid to me as an element in my bigger story. If you read last week’s story, what do you think?