People of the Silence by Kathleen O'Neal & Gear Gear Page A

crops, and influence the rains to fall. Witches used it to benefit themselves.
    Two summers ago, a Trader had whispered that he had stumbled into one of Sternlight’s private chambers at Talon Town by accident. He said he’d seen piles of exquisite blankets, fine pots filled with chunks of turquoise, jet, malachite, and coral, and baskets of priceless macaw and parrot feathers. He’d also claimed he’d seen a line of human skulls mounted on the wall.
    Cornsilk suppressed a shiver.
    Good people never accumulated wealth. They shared what they had with their families. Only witches amassed such “things” for their own pleasures.
    Leafhopper shifted her squat body to lean over and murmur, “Do you think the First People would starve without us?”
    Cornsilk cocked a brow. “Thinking of subtle ways to kill the witches?”
    “Shh!” Leafhopper said. She glanced over her shoulder, and her bean-sack dress pulled tight across her flat chest. “No, I was just—”
    “Yes, they’d starve. We provide them with almost all of their corn, beans, squash, and dried meat.”
    Made People hosted every major ceremonial at Talon Town, hauling in massive quantities of food to feed the attendants, and pay the priests, Dancers, and Singers who used their spiritual powers to call upon the gods. When the ritual cycle ended, the Made People stored the excess food at Talon Town. First People grew little of their own food; they survived on those reserves.
    No one minded, not if the First People’s voices reached the gods and rain made the crops flourish—but that had not happened in many cycles. The gods seemed to have abandoned the First People.
    But they still ate the Made People’s food.
    “So,” Leafhopper said, “if we just stopped bringing them food they would die?”
    “Or go away. There aren’t very many of them left anyway. It wouldn’t take much.”
    First People only married other First People, and many of their children didn’t live past the first two summers. As a result, their numbers had dwindled dramatically. The Blessed Night Sun, Matron of Talon Town, and her husband, the Blessed Sun, had two living children—all the others had died. The Sunwatcher, Sternlight, had never married, and many of the other First People at Talon Town had vanished mysteriously. In the other thirteen towns in Straight Path canyon, perhaps another three hundred First People lived.
    “But if they all die”—Leafhopper glanced uneasily at Cornsilk—“how will we ever find our ways to the afterlife?”
    “We’ll just follow the north road to the sipapu and travel into the underworlds. We’ll get there.”
    Because the First People had come up through the underworlds, they, and they alone, knew the correct path to the Land of the Ancestors. Legends said that unimaginable dangers, traps and snares, and bizarre half-human creatures, waited to leap upon the unwary soul. Fortunately, the First People knew each trap and hiding place. And, for a price, they would share their secret knowledge.
    “Maybe we’d better not starve them,” Leafhopper said. “I wish to see my parents again. Besides, I think it might take a lot of Power to starve them. And, as you said, Crow Beard keeps corpse powder in his chamber. I don’t think we want to be witched as punishment.”
    Cornsilk smacked a new handful of meal. Pink flour wafted up around her face. “A really evil witch could beat him.”
    “Maybe.” A smile came to Leafhopper’s round face. She shoved up her red headband with a finger, leaving a streak of red meal across her forehead. “Wouldn’t that be interesting to watch? Witches hurling curses and drowning each other with corpse powder. I’d give a Green Mesa pot to witness that.”
    Cornsilk absently glanced eastward, toward the Green Mesa clans. “You don’t own a Green Mesa pot.”
    “Nobody does.”
    “Some of the First People do. They get them in exchange for those little turquoise figurines that guide souls down to the