Footsteps in the Sky by Greg Keyes

her, wearing Sand’s own Kachina mask. The mesa cared little about her opinion of its origins.
    â€œCome on,” Sand hissed, and the ghost complied. Their feet rasped across the small, windswept court, past potted cacti, juniper, the sharp resin scent of sage. Her mother’s apartment door was closed but not locked. Sand ushered the ghost inside, followed, closed the door and locked it with a double code.
    â€œYou can take off the mask now,” she said, secretly wishing it could stay on. How would this thing react to seeing her mother’s house? Sand’s house now.
    The house was immaculate. Pela had been a neat person, and her end had come quickly enough that the house hadn’t become disordered. Then, too, Sand’s cousins and aunts may have been here, after the funeral, cleaning up the place and perhaps “liberating” a few memorabilia.
    Pela’s face appeared as the woman lifted the mask from her head. She gazed curiously around the small, functional apartment. The floor was the same stone as that outside, but smoothed and polished, covered sparely with the mediocre rugs Sand’s father wove. A work area contained a small cube, several book wafers, a loom. Two futons lay on raised slabs—one of these had been where Pela had lain, just a day before, dressed in her funeral finery. Some cushions surrounded a small table. A dry goods pantry, water basin, and a small irradiant oven comprised the kitchen; Sand and Pela both did their cooking at the clan stove-house. In the kitchen a narrow door concealed a lavatory; otherwise the walls were covered by shelves filled with all kinds of knickknacks—pots, figurines, jars of tobacco, herbs. Dried corn and squash hung from the ceiling in netted baskets.
    Sand watched the ghost look around, registering no decipherable emotions.
    â€œListen,” Sand began. “I will get us some water, and then you will tell me what you’re doing here.” Why you have my mother’s face.
    Sand walked to the tap by the microwave and measured out two tumblers of distilled water and carried them to where the ghost stood. She handed her one of them. Sand sat on the edge of one of the beds and motioned for the other woman to do the same. The water tasted good, tickling cool with a hint of copper tang.
    â€œNow, tell me, or I’ll call those who can make you talk.”
    The woman sipped the water carefully, imitating Sand. Nevertheless, she spilled some down her chin and brushed at it spasmodically.
    â€œSo strange,” she said.
    Sand waited.
    â€œThis body is not what I am, of course,” The ghost began, after a moment. “I am, really a … ‘farmer’ might be your best word. Somebody who makes things grow. I make planets grow.”
    â€œYou create planets?”
    â€œNo. I seed them. I work on them, and then I leave. When I come back, a work on them some more. Then I leave again.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œSo the people who created me will have planets where they can live.”
    Sand smiled a little sarcastically. “You must be very old.”
    The ghost cocked her head oddly, a jerking motion. It took Sand an instant to realize that the woman was trying to nod her head yes.
    â€œWhen I first came to this planet,” The ghost went on, “It had a dense reducing atmosphere. The only native life were single-cell organisms in the high clouds.”
    Sand set her tumbler down on the table. Why was she feeling sick? Was the room receding, the sound of her own voice becoming hollow and distant, like an echo? The ghost drank more of the water, spilled a little more.
    A two-heart, Sand thought, with chill calm. She will kill me, now, take my form, walk among the people. Two-hearts have been with us since the First World, so the legends say. We thought we left them on earth, back in the Fourth World, just as the ancients believed they had left them in the Third World. But we can’t escape