Kiss of the Bees

Grunting with effort, she tugged off one of her boots. “Here,” she said. She tossed the boot a few feet in front of her. The explosion that followed reverberated back and forth inside the cavern. Clinging to the cold stalagmite, grateful for its solid presence, Lani thought there had been a dozen shots instead of only one.

She had ducked her head and closed her eyes, so the flash of light hadn’t affected her. But her ears were roaring. From far away she could hear Davy calling to her. “Lani! Lani! Are you all right?”

“I’m still here, Mitch,” Lani said again, not raising her voice, barely speaking above a whisper. “I’m here and I’m waiting.”

Carefully judging the distance, she pulled off the second boot as well, tossing it slightly behind her and to the left. She heard him rush forward, close enough that she felt him brushing past her as she ducked back behind the stalagmite once more. There was another explosion of gunfire, another ear-shattering roar. And then nothing.

For a second or two Lani thought she really had gone deaf. She was afraid that the silence that suddenly surrounded her would always be there, that it would never lift. But then, from very far away, she heard Davy calling again, pleading this time.

“Lani, please. Answer me. Are you all right?”

There was a groan—little more than a moan, really. It came from beyond Lani’s hiding place. From beyond and below it. From the bottom of the hole into which Lani herself had almost fallen.

She heard the sound and was chilled. It meant that down there somewhere, far beneath the surface of the cave, the evil Ohb was still alive. He had taken her bait. The boot had done its work, but the fall hadn’t killed him. Even now she could hear movement as he struggled to rise from where he had fallen. Lani knew with a certainty that she had never known before that as long as Mitch Johnson lived, every member of Diana and Brandon Walker’s family would be in mortal danger.

Coming out from behind the stalagmite, Lani felt around her in the dark. She remembered being told once that limestone caves are fragile—that the formations break off easily and that they need to be protected from human destruction.

“I’m okay, Davy,” she called. “But don’t come in right now. I think he’s hurt, but he may still be able to shoot. We need help. Go get someone with guns and lights and bulletproof vests.”

“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’m fine,” she answered. “Go now. Please go!”

She heard Davy shuffling back down the passageway just as Mitch Johnson groaned again. Feeling her way around the floor of the cavern, she located another stalagmite, one that was much smaller than the hulking giant behind which she had hidden. This one was about a foot in circumference and three to four feet high.

“Ants are very strong,” Nana Dahd had told her. “When they have to, they can carry more than their own weight.”

Positioning her back against the large stalagmite, she pushed against the smaller one with both her feet and all her might. She pushed as hard as she could, straining until stars of effort blazed inside her head. At first it seemed as though the rock would never come loose. But then she remembered who she was—Mualig Siakam—a powerful medicine woman, someone who, with the power of her singing, could determine who would live and who would die.

Had Mitch Johnson been a little baby, surely the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees, Kulani O’oks, would have refused to sing.

Pushing again, Lani Walker felt the stalagmite give way slightly, rocking gently and trying to come loose from its moorings like a giant baby tooth in need of pulling. She pushed again and the rock was looser.

All things in nature go in fours. It was the fourth push that broke the huge rock free. She felt it tottering toward her and she had to push it yet again to send it tumbling in the other direction. She heard it scrape across the lip of the hole. Then, for a space of several seconds, there was no sound at all, then there was a muffled bump as the limestone boulder hit something soft and came to rest.

Holding her breath, Lani listened. In the whole of the cave, except for the steady drip of water, there was no other sound, no other being. Mitch Johnson was dead. In the emptiness of his passing, Lani realized that the spirits of Betraying Woman and Andrew Philip Carlisle had disappeared as well. The three of them had joined huhugam—those who are gone.

This time, they would not come back.

“Lani, I’m here,” Davy shouted. “Brian is with me. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she called back. “It’s safe to come in now. The evil Ohb is dead.”

17

They say it happened long ago that after the Tohono O’othham defeated the PaDaj O’othham—the Bad People—the Desert People settled in to live near Baboquivari—

I’itoi’s sacred mountain—which is the center of all things. Much later, when the first Mil- gahn, the Spaniards, came, they mistakenly called the Tohono O’othham the Bean Eaters after some of the food the Indians ate. And even later, other Mil-gahn—the Anglos—came to call them Papagos.

But the Desert People have always preferred to call themselves Tohono O’othham. They have lived forever on that same land near the base of Baboquivari. There they have raised wheat and corn, beans and pumpkins and melons. There they learned to make chu-i—flour, and hahki—a parched roasted wheat that is also called pinole. There they learned to make baskets in which to store all the food they raised.

Other people knew that the Indians who lived in the shadow of Baboquivari were a good people—that they were always kind to each other. It was that way then, and it is the same today.

Together, Davy Ladd, Brian Fellows, and Lani Walker made their way on hands and knees down the long passageway to the hidden outside entrance. Only when the two men helped the girl to her feet did they realize that other than a pair of bloodied socks, her feet were bare.

“Where are your shoes?” Brian asked. “You can’t be out here on the mountain in bare feet. I’ll go back and look for them.”

“No,” she said. “Don’t bother. I’ll be fine.”