A Rainbow in Paradise Page 10

  "So why did you do it?" Even as she said it, she was embarrassed she had asked. She knew why he had done it. She felt the answer in his presence.

  "Because I believed what the minister taught."

  "Yet you're a Navajo, and you continue to practice the ceremonies of the native faith."

  "Many of the Dineh are baptized Christians who still find strength in the legends and rituals of the People."

  "I don't understand—"

  "I know you don't. Be patient a moment," he answered, gently taking her hand. "I think perhaps I can show you."

  Again she nodded, waiting in silence while Logan drove them out of town and into the hills, onto the reservation lands, into Dinehtah. It wasn't long before he stopped the truck atop a knoll and came around to open her door. "Come," he said, offering her a hand, "walk with me," and she smiled as she took his hand, thinking she might follow this man anywhere he led.

  He did not lead her far. A few yards from the truck, he stopped where the earth fell away beneath their feet. They were looking out over a vast expanse of the Arizona Badlands, the multi-striped hills for which the Painted Desert was named spread out below them. "Look," he said, but she couldn't have helped looking. The scene commanded attention, its stark beauty and regal splendor a feast to the senses. After a moment, he asked, "What do you feel?"

  "Awe," she answered slowly. "Amazement."

  "Do you feel the spirit of this land?"

  She paused and, for a moment, closed her eyes. Then she knew she did feel it—through the soles of her feet, through the touch of the desert breeze on her skin, even through the penetrating silence. She nodded assent, barely whispering, "Yes."

  "Eden," he spoke, his voice intent, and she opened her eyes, turning to face him. "Eden, the Dineh feel it, too, only our tradition has given it a name. When we feel the peace of the home, we say that Hasch'ehooghan, or Hogan god, is there. When we feel the spirit of the land, we say that Talking god is upon the land. When we see the lightning storms forming in the hills, we say the yei, the Holy People, are coming to bless us."

  He raised a hand and touched her cheek, a touch almost as gentle as the whisper of the breeze against her skin. "As a teenager I heard Reverend Willis teach about the creator of all things and I felt the truth of what he was saying, yet I also knew the traditions of my people were, in many ways, metaphors for the truths the good reverend taught me. There are some ceremonies, some of the more religious and less social ones, that I no longer attend..." He let the sentence trail away, and Eden felt his sadness about the parts of his tradition he had given up. "Still, I find few contradictions between one form of faith and the other."

  He moved his hand from her cheek to her waist and drew her close to him. They stood together on the cliff, arms around each other, Eden snuggling close as they looked out over the vast expanse of divine creation and shared in the spirit of the land.

  Chapter Seven

  Eden stretched her back against the seat of the truck. "Are we there yet?" she asked, mischief in her voice.

  "Almost," Logan reassured her.

  It was Labor Day, and for the past half-hour, Logan had been driving a narrow, winding trail of hairpin switchbacks and stomach-twisting angles where juniper and piňones towered over the roadway. Now as Eden watched, he brought them onto a flat plateau. All that lay above them here was the endless sky and, maybe a half-mile away, the opposing wall of the canyon.

  "We're here," Logan said, setting the emergency brake.

  "Ah yes, but where is here?" Eden teased, gesturing at the emptiness surrounding them.

  "Come on, I'll show you."

  He held out his hand and Eden took it, warmed by his touch. She was becoming more accustomed to the nearly electric jolts of energy that shot between them whenever Logan was near. She no longer startled at his touch; now she was content to bask in its warmth, enjoying it while it lasted, knowing the loss would be devastating.

  Logan led the way down a narrow trail. Eden followed until they came to the cliff side. He stopped a safe distance back and pointed at the base of the opposite cliff. "Look," he ordered gently.

  Eden looked. At first all she saw was the towering wall of red and yellow sandstone, then, "Oh!"

  "It is something of a surprise, isn't it?"

  "Oh!" she said again. "Logan, what is it?"

  "White House," he answered.

  Eden looked out across the valley with its meandering stream lined with tamaracks and mesquite. There, on the canyon's opposing wall, lying partly in the shelter of a natural cave some hundred feet or so above the canyon floor, and partly on the valley floor itself, lay the remains of an ancient pueblo. Carefully shaped rock-and-mud walls formed both tall, rectangular dwellings several stories high, and round ceremonial kivas, sunk deep into the earth. “Can we go down there?" Eden asked eagerly.

  "We will in a little while," Logan answered. He handed her a pair of binoculars. "I thought you might like this view first. It shows you how well camouflaged these dwellings were in the old days."

  "They certainly were that," Eden agreed. Using Logan's binoculars, she studied the ruin. Despite its name, the pueblo wasn't white, but it had once been covered in a pale adobe clay that blended into the surrounding rock walls, effectively hiding the village in plain sight. "I thought your people didn't live together like this," she argued, remembering what he'd told her about the rancherias on their first drive into the canyon.

  "They didn't. The White House is an Anasazi ruin."

  "Anasazi," she mused. "The Old Ones. Then the Anasazi aren't ancestors of the modern Navajo?"

  He shook his head. "Their descendants, more than likely, are the Hopi and Tewa and other pueblo peoples of the southwest—"

  "The ones you call the Kisani."

  He smiled, pleased. "Right. The Kisani are all Shoshonean people, using similar languages and continuing to build in the pueblo styles learned from the Anasazi. Their high-rise pueblos always remind me of inner-city apartment buildings. I've never had any wish to live like that."

  Eden twinkled at him, looking mischievous. "You know, when you frown like that, it makes a little crease in your forehead, right here between your eyes." She placed one forefinger on the spot.

  She didn't know whether he was more pleased or embarrassed, but Logan responded with a mumbled "Hmph." Then a purposeful intensity came into his face as he reached up and took her hand, still poised above his forehead. Holding her gaze, he gently and carefully kissed each of her fingers in turn before intertwining them with his own. Eden heard the sharp intake of her breath. She tried to steady her pulse.

  Logan flashed her one of his breathtaking smiles. "Have I told you today how beautiful you look?"

  She remembered how this conversation was supposed to go, how it had gone between them before. "No, I don't believe you have, but you're welcome to, if you like."

  He laughed, happy to replay their banter. "All right, I will," he said, but there was no humor in either his voice or expression when he spoke again. "You are beautiful, Eden—as beautiful as your name, as beautiful as paradise." He slipped his arm around her, drawing her close.

  "Paradise," she whispered, breaking his gaze before the spell of it carried her away.

  He took her hand then, and for a moment they stood looking down upon White House, then he stepped a little away from her, breaking the warm contact. "Let's have some lunch," he suggested. "Then we can go down to the canyon floor and have a look at the pueblo up close."

  "Sounds good." Eden nodded agreement.

  * * * * *

  "So if your people aren't Shoshonean or descendants of the Anasazi, who are your relatives? And how did your people come to be here?" Eden asked. They were wandering among the ruins, examining the evidence of the Anasazi's advanced building techniques.

  "Anthropologists tell us we're Athabascan," Logan answered, "most closely related to the Tlingit people of the northwest."

  "The people who make those beautiful Chilkat blank
ets," she said.

  "Right, and the totems. I'm told that Navajo and Tlingit are enough alike that speakers of the two can talk to each other—at least a little."

  "Like the romance languages? Spanish and Italian?"

  "I suppose so," he answered. He dazzled her with a smile. "I've never tried it myself."

  Eden answered his grin and then turned her eyes upward. "Some of these dwellings seem to go up several stories," she observed, looking skyward at the remnants of the logs that had marked the floor of an upper story, the ceiling of the lower one.

  "Five stories here." Logan pointed upward, counting the levels.

  "Amazing," Eden said. The day, together with the days before it, was exhausting her capacity for wonder. If the natural beauties of the canyon and the ruins of the ancient Anasazi weren't enough, there was one very modern local feature who was making quite an impact of his own. She feared her heart would remember it for a long time to come. "How large was this community, Logan?"

  "Hard to say, probably a few hundred people. More than eighty rooms have been charted. Some may have been simply for storage or ceremonial purposes, but others could have housed large families. Something around three hundred is probably a reasonable guess."

  "Amazing," she said again.

  Eden looked up at one towering wall and tried to picture White House as it once had been—busy, bustling, teeming with life. For a moment, the present ruins faded and she could almost see the pueblo as it was then, could almost hear the mothers calling to their children, could almost feel in her own legs the strain of the long climb up log ladders to an upper-story room, or the peace of settling down for sleep at the end of a long, wearying day. This place had been home to generations of people who had never seen grocery stores or video recorders or electricity, had never known the tyranny of clocks, but who had lived and died here—happy and fulfilled in their own way of life. She sighed.

  "You okay?" Logan asked.

  "Um-hm," she answered, nodding. "It's just that... I don't know. It almost sounds silly."

  "What's silly?"

  Eden hesitated. "It's just that... I've always been so grateful for all my modern conveniences, and felt so sorry for people who didn't have all that I've had. Now, today..." She paused. "It's the first time I've ever wondered if maybe I missed something by not being born here, in an earlier time." She looked up and flushed. "See? I told you it was silly."

  "Not at all." He gently cupped her shoulders, turning her toward him. "It's not silly, Eden. It shows the depth of your spirit."

  "You think so?"

  "I am sure." Emotions played across his face, and though she couldn't decipher everything, she saw tenderness there.

  "Does it surprise you that I can feel the peace here?"

  "Frankly, yes. At least a little."

  Eden nodded. "That's okay. It surprises me, too."

  Logan responded by drawing her close, one arm about her shoulders. "There is peace here, isn't there?" he answered, holding her warmly.

  "Yes. I think I know why the Anasazi came here, and why your ancestors loved this place."

  "For peace," Logan agreed. "For solace of spirit." He alone knew how deeply he struggled with the words, how deeply troubled he found his own spirit. He had promised himself he would let Eden go, would give her up as a willing sacrifice to honor the vows he had made. He alone knew what a desperate sacrifice that would be.

  Face it, Redhorse. You love her. He gulped, afraid to acknowledge the truth. You love her and there's nothing you can do about it. "Let's look around a little," he said aloud, hoping to shake the odd feeling that had just come over him, but even as they moved forward, he knew it was true. He had known better than to tempt himself with Eden's company. Now, so quickly, he was in love with a totally unsuitable woman. Letting her go would break his heart.

  "Look, there's a bit of pottery," Eden said, reaching to pick up a shard that must once have been part of a water jug. As they continued to walk about the ruins, Eden commented from time to time on things she noticed. What Logan noticed was the character of the things Eden saw—small things that suggested the day-to-day lives of the people who had lived here. He watched and listened, fascinated by her insight, her openness. Until he met Eden, he had never imagined that a belagaana could exhibit this kind of warmth and vision about a people so alien to her own. What touched him most was the way she saw them—not as alien, but simply as people, not so different from herself and those she loved.

  Loved. Logan was awash in emotion, startled by the depth of his feelings. He had never questioned the attraction he felt; that had been obvious to them both from the moment they first met. Though the raw power of it was new to him, the emotion was primal and familiar. He had been attracted to beautiful women before. What startled him was how quickly the rest had come, unbidden and unwanted—the admiration of her intelligence and warmth and essential goodness, the respect for her mind and heart. What startled him even more—scared him, frankly—was the tenderness he often felt when he was near her, the desire to hold her close, to protect her from harm or fear, to share with her....

  You love her, Redhorse. He cut off the thought. "Are you ready to go now?"

  "Okay, if we must." Eden turned to him with a beaming smile that almost took his breath away and made his heart do funny little flip-flops in his chest.

  You're really in deep, aren't you? he cautioned himself as they walked toward the truck. You've blown it, buster. Falling in love wasn't part of the plan. Watching the gentle, entirely feminine way Eden moved in front of him, he wished it could be.

  "Oops." Eden's single word interrupted his wayward thoughts as she stopped stock-still in front of him. He had to catch himself to keep from plowing into her. Then he braced them both by taking hold of her shoulders.

  "What's up?"

  "We have company," she said, gesturing to the trail ahead.

  They were on the steep hillside with only this narrow trail to lead them to the valley floor. Given the nature of the "company" Eden had spotted, it looked like they might be delayed a while. Across their path lay a large rattlesnake, stretched out to most of its four- to five-foot length. Apparently it had been making its way across the trail. Now it turned its pointed head toward them and sat poised with its neck raised, flicking its tongue to taste the air.

  "I'm glad you saw it now," Logan said. "Instead of when we stepped on it, I mean." As he spoke, the snake rattled a warning and he drew Eden back toward him.

  "It's all right," she said softly, her voice eerily calm. "We aren't close enough to be a real threat to her. Besides, she doesn't mean to hurt us." Logan felt the movement as the woman before him leaned slightly toward the snake. "Do you, girl?" she asked, her voice a purr. "All you want is to go your own way home, isn't that right?"

  His mind a blur, Logan watched in awe as the snake tasted the air again and dipped its head in a motion peculiarly like a nod. Then, as he watched in wonder, it slowly made its way off their path and out of sight. As it moved, he checked all the signs his father and uncles had taught him to watch for—the shape of its head, the size of its middle. There were no sure ways of knowing—short of picking it up and examining parts of its body that no living snake wanted a human to touch—but indications suggested the creature was indeed female. He felt his mouth go dry as he watched it apparently respond to Eden's suggestion, clearing the way so they might move on.

  "I think we can go now," Eden said in a steady voice, as if she hadn't just been the source of some sort of miracle.

  Logan stared. "How did you do that?"

  "Do what?" Eden had begun to walk along the trail, already past the place where the snake had crossed, though he noticed she carefully stepped over its path. From his memory, he heard his grandmother's voice warning him never to step on the trail of a rattlesnake, lest it follow him home. It was a tradition of the Dineh, so how did Eden know it?

  "How did you make that snake leave?" he said, his voice filled with wonder.


  Eden snorted. "Logan, I didn't make her do anything. She didn't want to hurt us. All she wanted to do was go home. We were in her way, too, you know."

  "How did you even know that snake was female?"

  She shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe it wasn't."

  He shook his head. Something had happened here, and he wasn't settling for simple explanations. "You knew," he answered. "What I want to know is how."

  She turned and looked him full in the face, her eyes sparkling with mystery. "Logan, I was born in this desert just as you were. This isn't the first time I've walked out on it, and that isn't the first snake I've seen." She sighed, glancing away, her eyes apparently fixed on something distant Logan could not see. "Sometimes I feel in tune with it all," she said simply. "Sometimes I just know." She smiled then, like some kind of desert spirit—a yei, or one of the Holy People, come to bless or curse his life—and waltzed down the trail.

  As he watched her go, he was struck by a thought so alien, he almost didn't believe he'd thought it, yet it hit both his mind and heart with such power, he knew it was true: Eden Grant was belagaana, but she was also a child of the desert, a daughter of Dinehtah. The recognition shook him to his very soul.

  * * * * *

  The shadows of the rabbit brush and creosote were already lengthening as Logan turned his truck toward Rainbow Rock, but the idea that had struck him as they left the White House ruins was lengthening as well. Unable to get it out of his head, he spoke it aloud. "We aren't too far from my grandmother's hogan. I've been thinking about maybe dropping in on her."

  Eden, who had been watching Logan since they left the ruins, was aware that something about him, something between them, had changed. She didn't know what it was, but whatever had happened, it seemed to be drawing them forward, propelling them in a new direction. An odd thought crossed her mind: the feeling they were on a course that fate had somehow charted for them, and their future, whatever it may be, lay down this path.