inherited its condition. Whatever the mechanics were. It didn't matter, and she didn't want Ellen to worry. They needed to hold out here until morning and hope that Julieta would come and the ghost would reveal itself to her and they could somehow let it go. No, she decided. Looking at Tommy after they'd laid him among his blankets, she'd seen how the weeks of warring had sapped him. There'd been unceasing doubt and anxiety, and the exertion of the fighting and convulsing. He had nearly suffocated several times. Worst of all, his body had relived someone's act of death innumerable times. There was little left of him, not even physically; even animated by the ghost's preposterous power, his fighting had been feeble. They couldn't wait for Julieta. As soon as daylight allowed, they'd have to get him back to the hospital, where at least his body could be kept alive. Whatever they might do to him there, this wasn't working. This couldn't go on.
They sat for a few minutes, warming themselves on the snapping juniper-twig fire Ellen had rekindled. Cree felt crushing disappointment at her inability to enter the ghost's world. To heal Tommy. She had promised Julieta and Tommy, and she had failed them.
Still, as Pop always said, It ain't over till it's over, and it's never over. Until morning came, she had to keep trying.
'Ellen,' she said hoarsely. 'The ghost, or maybe it's Tommy, says things sometimes. Have you heard it?'
'Yeah. Before you came, a couple of times.'
'Did you hear it say 'away' or 'awake'?'
'Yeah. Only I thought it was a Navajo word, `awee,'' Ellen ended the sound with a glottal stop that could almost have served as a k.
'That's it exactly! What does it mean?'
' 'Baby.''
'Does that mean anything to you under the circumstances?'
Ellen shook her head. She poked at the fire with a stick as Cree tried to imagine what the word might imply, or who had spoken it. Could it have been Tommy, somehow knowing his possessor was Julieta's child, her baby? Or the chindi itself, understanding its plight and struggling to express the tidal pull toward its mother? It didn't make sense. But if either was true, seeing the ghost with Julieta could well reveal everything. If she got here in time.
But she couldn't let her thoughts be prejudiced by Julieta's longing. There were other possibilities to consider. One of Tommy's parents could have called out for their child at the moment of death. But the death was not at all what Cree would have expected if the entity was one of the parents. The person inhabiting Tommy had been hurt in the stomach and chest, not the head. He- she was sure it was male-hadn't died quickly at all, but had fought off the injury and pain for quite some time. The ghosts at the ravine were probably her strongest candidates; the father had just seen his children killed. He might very well have been calling out to one of his 'babies' in his last moment.
She turned to Ellen, who was staring sleepily into the fire. 'Are you up for talking anymore?'
'Sure.'
'Can I ask what clan your people are?'
'I'm Black Sheep on my mother's side. Towering House on my father's side.'
'Are there any Waters Run Together in your ancestry?'
'You're trying to figure which ancestor's in him? Sorry, I don't know. You go back a couple generations, you've got dozens of clans mixed in. Nowadays, people don't know their clans so much.'
The impossibility of untangling Tommy's ancestry depressed Cree, but she gave it one more try: 'So, Tommy… would he be Black Sheep as well?'
'Usually, he'd be 'born to' his mother's clan. We'd say he's 'born for' his father's clan.'
'So what was his mother's clan?'
'Bernice? I don't know. She wasn't Dine-she was Jicarilla Apache. She had a lousy family, we never had anything to do with them. She and Tommy's dad met when they both worked at the lumberyard in Farmington.'
An alarm went off in Cree's head, a connection being made. Abruptly her heart was pounding and she couldn't seem to catch her breath.
Ellen was looking at her strangely. 'You know already, don't you?'
'Know what?'
'About Bernice and my brother. When you first came, asking about whether Tommy looks like his dad, whether he was adopted, all that.'
'Tell me about Bernice,' Cree said shakily.
'Oh, like I said, she was a wild one. She was already pregnant when she got together with my brother-that's what you figured out, right? My parents never accepted her, called her al'jil'nii-that means, oh… like 'loose woman.' But I always figured she was a good match for my brother, he was no saint, either, believe me. And Bernice, she turned out to be the steady one. I was always proud to call her my sister.'
'Had she always lived around here?'
'She was born on the Jicarilla rez, that's about maybe seventy-five miles from here. But she'd lived in Farmington and then ran away to California. San Diego. Met some handsome Navajo guy who got her knocked up and then left her high and dry to go back to his true love. She never heard from him again. She came back when she knew she was pregnant. Her family was no good to her, they threw her out. But it worked out okay. When she met my brother, she wasn't showing yet. They fell in love, he didn't seem to mind about her having some other guy's baby, he said he figured he was old enough he should have had some kids by now anyway. And she settled down. They were pretty happy for some years. I always figured, you know, love will find a way.' Ellen's face had grown warm with remembrance, but suddenly her lips pursed and turned down. 'Unless you do something stupid,' she finished sadly. 'Like my brother getting drunk that time and getting them both killed.'
Love will find a way, Cree was thinking. In Peter Yellowhorse's case, love was still trying to find its way. But he'd done something stupid, and then gotten himself killed.
She wondered how Julieta would handle it when she found out just which ancestor of Tommy's had entered him.
48
The endless night still hadn't given way to dawn when Tommy started moving again.
They had left the hogan's door open. The predawn stillness stole over the land with an eerie serenity as gray light filtered into the darkness. Lying on the floor, Cree could feel chill currents move through the door and roam the room despite the faint heat of the woodstove.
Just as she rolled over to look at Tommy, the eyes in his gaunt face popped open and shocked her. When he labored to sit up, she did the same, struggling to make her arms and legs obey. Her body fit her badly, like someone else's clothes.
Cree heard muffled movements just outside the door, Ellen and Ray keeping watch. She had asked them to stay nearby, or follow from a distance if Tommy still had the strength to walk. Now, watching him as the darkness paled, she doubted he'd even be able to stand. She wondered how soon they'd be able to take him down off the plateau, back to the grandparents' place, and begin the long drive to the nearest hospital. For a moment, she wondered distantly where Julieta was and whether she'd arrive in time. She wasn't sure that whenever she might arrive there'd be enough of Cree or Tommy left to help find the way through this.
Then she gave up on the problem as the ghost's world engulfed her and she surrendered herself to it.
Peter's heart surged with joy when he got out of the last car. Just south of Hunters Point, from here his old house was only a mile ahead. He knew the land to the east well. Walking it would take a couple of hours longer than when he used to ride Bird, but going overland cut ten miles off the distance, and he knew he'd likely have to walk anyway on the seldom-used back roads to Julieta's place.
The bus ride from San Diego to Flagstaff had taken forever, and from there he'd still had two hundred miles to hitchhike. He'd walked back to the highway and had felt lucky when a van pulled over right away. And full of Indians, too. But they weren't Navajos-some Midwest tribe he'd never heard of. They had punched him up a little
