Sleepwalk by John Saul Page A

a hole in the dome, along with a steady wisp of smoke from the small fire that almost always burned within the kiva. Jed paused, uncertain what to do, gazing at the mouth of the kiva. Since he’d been a little boy, it had always seemed a dark and forbidding place. It was in the kiva that the Kokatí men gathered to carry out their spiritual rites. It was the place from which they emerged on festival days, wearing their elaborate costumes to dance in the courtyards.
    But it was also the place they went to be alone, to chat quietly among themselves without the distractions of their wives and children, or to just sit and think, or commune with the spirits who resided beneath the kiva’s floor.
    Could he really do it? Simply walk up to the hatch in the roof and climb down inside? But he was only a boy, not even a member of the tribe.
    And then he remembered.
    He was sixteen, and among the Kokatí that made him a man. Taking a deep breath, he started toward the kiva.
    He hesitated as he came to the hatchway, then took one more breath and descended the ladder into the chamber below. It was circular, some fifty-odd feet in diameter, and had been hacked out of the sandstone of the mesa centuries earlier. Around its perimeter there was a stone bench, and a circle of heavy posts formed a smaller ring midway between the walls of the kiva and the firepit in the center. As Jed stepped off the ladder onto the floor of the kiva, his eyes began to burn fromthe smoke of the fire For a few moments he could see nothing in the gloom beneath the low ceiling. But after a while his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and finally he spotted his grandfather.
    Brown Eagle was sitting alone on the bench, facing eastward, his eyes closed, his body held perfectly still Jed approached him almost warily, half expecting the old man’s eyes to open and fix accusingly on him. But Brown Eagle seemed not to be aware of his presence at all. When Jed sat down on the bench next to him, the old man never so much as moved a muscle.
    Jed sat nervously at first, feeling the hardness of the stone beneath his buttocks, gazing around curiously. He studied the construction of the dome carefully, examining the peeled tree trunks that extended from the walls of the kiva inward to the heavy beams that had long ago been laid on the tops of the posts, and the smaller logs that lay crosswise above the main stringers. There was a geometric orderliness to the dome, and a sense of timelessness that came from the blackened patina of the old wood. Except for the patch of sunlight that shone through the hatch, moving slowly across the floor as the sun moved across the sky above, there was little clue to what was happening beyond the confines of the kiva, and as he sat next to his grandfather, Jed found his own mind begin to drift in strange directions.
    His eyes fixed on the fire and he began to imagine he saw shapes dancing in the flames.
    A drowsiness came over him, and he began to feel his eyelids grow heavy. When at last he opened his eyes again, the patch of sunlight had moved far across the floor.
    “How do you like it?” he heard his grandfather ask.
    “I—I don’t know,” Jed murmured. “I guess I must have fallen asleep.”
    Brown Eagle regarded Jed with deep and impenetrable eyes. “You didn’t go to sleep. It’s something else that happens here. Something you won’t understand for years. Some people never understand it.” He stood up, stretched, then glanced down at Jed. “What do you say we go outside? Whatever happened to you is over now.”
    A moment later, as they emerged into brilliant daylight, Jed blinked, then glanced at the sun. “Jesus,” he said. “I must have been in there almost three hours.”
    Brown Eagle shrugged. “It happens.” Then he eyed Jed appraisingly. “You’ve grown. Not as big as your dad, but a lot bigger than any of the kids around here. Still, I see your mother in you.”
    Jed’s voice took on a note of belligerence.