Photograph by Richard Kunz © 2001

Photograph by Richard Kunz © 2001

     They came at last to where the little wash Bay had been following began to cut down into rock as the land rose up steeply toward the top of the butte.  This side wasn't as steep as the other -- it would be possible to scramble up to the top and walk across to the far cliffs.  Myron put out his hand and stopped Bay.  "This is the place you were yesterday?  You're sure?" he asked.

     "I'm sure.  I remember it."  The morning sun at their backs cast long shadows into the narrow opening ahead of them.  Bay shivered, even though the temperature was beginning to rise.  Myron nodded and grunted.

     "Okay.  Let's go look at it."

     Again, Myron hung back and let Bay lead.  The canyon widened out after the narrow mouth, and the sandstone walls rose quickly overhead.  Soon they were threading their way through the undulating rock formations.  Bay ran his right hand along the wind-polished surface.  It was a recording of the wind's music whistling across the mountains and high plains.  Myron was moving pretty quietly for an old man -- Bay kept turning around to make sure his uncle was still behind him. They stopped to rest after another half hour, and Myron pulled a flask of water and couple of last night's tortillas out of the satchel he carried.  Bay accepted the spare breakfast gratefully.

     "You should always carry food and water when you come out here," Myron said between bites.  "You never know for sure how long you'll be out."  He patted his bag. "I got some meat and some cornmeal in here, too."  Bay nodded.  Another lesson from Uncle.  The old man went on, "we'll get you a satchel -- or maybe you'd like one of those backpacks better.  I think George's nephew has an old one he isn't using anymore."  Bay nodded, though he wasn't really paying much attention.  The canyon walls here were at least forty feet high, and looking straight up created the illusion that they leaned inward.  The slanting morning light had the walls glowing almost pink, reminding Bay of the big seashells his mother had brought back from the Caribbean.  He started when his uncle grabbed his arm.

     "Where are you, boy?" Myron asked softly.  "What are you listening to?"

     They headed west again, scrambling over rocks.  Bay started looking for the vein of polished quartz, but before he found it again, the canyon started to narrow and tend upward like a staircase.  Bay didn't remember that at all.  He stopped, puzzled, and Myron bumped into him from behind.

     "Something wrong, Nephew?"

     "I don't remember it going up like this.  The canyon I was in yesterday was pretty level."

     Myron nodded slowly.  "Let's keep going, then."

     They worked their way up the narrowing defile.  The walls grew rougher, loosing their polish and gaining sharp angles.  The glowing colors faded to powdery browns and duns.  The last yards were a steep scramble, but at last they climbed out of the canyon onto the top of the tableland.

Photograph by Richard Kunz © 2001

     "This isn't right," Bay said.  He was confused and more than a little embarrassed.  "I must have gone the wrong way, missed the right entrance."

     Myron shook his head.  "Nope.  You went to the right place.  I've done this a hundred times."  Myron looked around and then perched on a boulder.  He gestured to another rock nearby. "Sit a while, Bay.  Tell me again what happened yesterday."

     Bay told the story again, slowly, and Uncle Myron asked questions.  What had he heard, exactly?  What had he been doing, thinking when the flute music began?  What had he seen when the sun had struck the crystal vein?

     "But what does it mean, Uncle?  How can this be the right canyon, when it's completely different?"

     Myron just shook his head, and reached into his satchel again.  He pulled out a wooden flute, and turned the instrument over in his hands.

     "Haven't played this in a while," he said.  "Hope I still have the spit to do it."

     Then he put the flute to his mouth and blew a few hesitant notes.  The tone wavered, and then steadied into a sweet purity.  Myron closed his eyes, and played a haunting, soaring melody that made Bay think of hawks wheeling in the sky.  The old dude was pretty good. 

     When the last note had died away, Myron opened his eyes and said, "Did the flute player you heard yesterday sound like that?"

     Bay shook his head.  "Not at all.  You're pretty good, Uncle, but whoever this was, he was world-class."

     "Huh."  Myron grunted, and held the flute out to Bay.  "Well, boy, if you want to find that flute player again, you're going to have to answer the call."

     Bay blinked.  "The call?"

     "You've been called, boy.  It's in the blood, that music.  Marie must have known, that's why she sent you out here to us."  The old man shook his head.  "You just gotta be sure you want to answer that call.  You can't make music with them and come home quite the same, you know."

     Bay was getting more and more confused.  "What the heck are you talking about, Uncle?"  He pushed the flute aside.  He had a bad feeling about this.  Myron was sounding like somebody talking about the Mafia.

     "I'm talking about music that can change the land, boy, music that can change men's hearts, and bind them to another world.  Music like that's got power, Nephew.  Pay attention."  Myron's eyes locked with Bay's in a fierce stare, youth and age in confrontation, passing wordless knowledge between them.  Bay shivered, and Myron looked away, saying, "Music like that can make this world dry and dim for you, boy, and make you long for it all the rest of your days.  But it gives you power."

     Bay heaved to his feet.  "I play lead guitar, man, and that's power enough for me.  I just want somebody to jam with.  Maybe I'll bring a guitar out here later, see what I can do with echoes down in the canyon myself."

     They hiked home in silence.

     That night at supper Uncle Myron came in with an old rucksack swinging from one hand. The green canvas was patched in places, and the leather bottom was rubbed and stained.  "You'll want this," he said as he handed it over the table to Bay, "if you're gonna go out hiking tomorrow."

     Bay folded back the top flap, and pulled the drawstring open.  Inside he found a big plastic water bottle, and a plastic grocery bag tied up around sticks of beef jerky, a big box of raisins, and a package of crackers.  Below that was a soft, heavy, deerskin bag.  Bay lifted it out, and opened it carefully.  Inside was fine-ground corn meal.  Myron said, "Young men out in the hills carry cornmeal.  You should leave a bit here and there as a gift to the spirits, so they don't make trouble.  You can eat it, too, if you need to."

     Aunt Celia shook her head and clucked. "You got that sack from George's boy?  Bay, you listen to your uncle, carry that when you go out.  Now eat before the food gets cold."  Bay shoved the deerskin pouch back into the rucksack, all the way to the bottom.  This was all right -- he could carry what he needed, and still have his hands free for his guitar.

     Bay left early the next morning, his sweet old Spanish guitar in its case slung over one shoulder, and his uncle's gift on his back.  He was getting to know the route to the canyon now, and he made good time to the entrance.  The sun was still in the east, sending bars of light up the rocks.  He stood for a moment, considering the route to the mesa top.    If he believed his uncle, he wouldn't find anything up there at all, while if he was in the canyon there was a chance the flute player would play again.

     He worked his way along the sinuous passage, moving quietly and trying to avoid banging his guitar on the walls.  After a time the canyon began tending upward, the smooth walls became rough, and in twenty minutes he was out on the top of the mesa, a half-mile from the western edge.  The sun was reaching for the top of the sky, and even with the wind it was hot on the high plateau. Bay was glad for the water he was carrying.  Then he headed east toward the easy slope, down to the canyon entrance.

Photograph by Mardelle Kunz © 2001

This time he walked through more slowly, carefully watching the rock walls and the floor.  The fine white sand flowing along the bottom had been disturbed by his, and Myron's, footprints, but still glittered in the light of the sun overhead.  The wind-smoothed rocks were polished here, glowing as if there were a light behind them.  He found the place where the floor tilted up, where the polished stone began to give way to a rougher surface, and he stopped there.  Perched on a boulder that had tumbled from the wall in some past age, Bay slung his pack to the ground, unzipped his vinyl guitar case, and ran his fingers lovingly over the polished wood of the guitar.  He'd found it a couple of years ago at Mandolin Brothers, and fell in love with its action and tone. He tuned the instrument carefully, listening as each note sounded back to him, softly, from the canyon walls.

     He played.  The echoes came back, jarring and discordant, harmonies lost in the clashing noise.  Bay silenced the nylon strings.  This wasn't as easy as he'd thought, and he hadn't thought it was simple.  He thought for a moment, and then plucked a melody note by note, a simple tune he'd been working up for the band.  That sounded all right.

     "Melody," he said aloud.

     Bay played until the sun slipped west, throwing his rock perch into shadow.  Every few minutes he glanced up the slope, curious to see if it was still there, embarrassed to be looking.  He'd never thought of himself as superstitious before, but he was acting like a five year old who'd just heard his first ghost story.  A cooler wind blew down the canyon, and he shivered.  Time to eat some lunch, come back to the real world.  He grabbed his pack in one hand, keeping a grip on the neck of his guitar with the other, and turned back toward the ledge where he'd sat, resting, two days before.  It was around an outcropping of rippled pink stone, and would catch the sun.

     He sat there on the ledge, long jeans-clad legs dangling, his long black hair swinging down in wings over his instrument, intent on the sandwich he'd made that morning.  Afterwards, he tried to pick out the tune his uncle had played the day before.  Bay had a good memory for music, but the eerie minor notes of the flute were hard to duplicate.

     He began again, his fingers a little surer, sounding the notes a little stronger.  The canyon echoed the faltering music back to him, and it didn't sound too bad.  The pattern of note and echo drew him in, increasing the tempo of what he played.  Then his fingers stumbled on the melody, and he paused a moment, drawing a deep breath as the last echo faded away.  Not too bad, he thought.  Not too bad.

     The next time through was better.  The music took shape in his mind and flowed out through his fingers on the strings; the building pattern of sound and echo and silence became complex but never collapsed into noise.  Bay was lost in the music, and barely noticed when the flute joined in, first shadowing the echoes of his guitar, and then becoming the echo.  His eyes flew open when he realized what had happened, and he stilled his strings.  The flute continued, its own echoes awakening in the canyon.

     Bay slid down to the canyon floor as if in a trance, keeping tight hold on his guitar.  Hardly daring to breathe, he snatched up his rucksack and walked toward the music.  As he rounded the corner, the sun struck rainbows into his eyes, blinding him for a moment.  He blinked, and through dazzled eyes he saw that the canyon continued straight ahead, the walls more gracefully beautiful than he remembered. The white sand underfoot bore only one line of footprints -- his own from two days before.  The flute music continued.  He took a dozen steps along the canyon, past the polished quartz.  Then his guitar knocked against a waist-high boulder of polished white stone, and the flute suddenly broke off.  Bay looked around wildly, terrified that the canyon walls would close in around him, leaving him crushed forty feet deep in the mesa.  But the wind sighed softly, and a bird called, and the canyon remained.  He sat weakly on the boulder, and cradled his guitar.

     The bird called again, and Bay's fingers picked out the four notes of the bird's song.  He wasn't conscious of it -- he'd always played automatically while thinking about other things.  The bird sang back to him, and fluttered down the canyon to perch on a ledge ten feet away.  Bay smiled at the little brown feathered thing, and played the song again.  This time the invisible flute player joined in with the bird's response.  Bay grinned, even white teeth flashing against his brown face, and elaborated on the bird's four notes.  The flute player responded in counterpoint.

     "Oh, why don't you just show yourself!" Bay called over the music.  "I've been looking for you for two days," he said, as his fingers played the opening phrase of the song Uncle Myron had played on the flute.

     A girl walked around a great polished rock, toward him from the west.

     She had long dark hair, partly coiled up around her ears yet still hanging almost to her waist.  He thought it would reach the ground if it hung free.  Her skin was the color of old ivory, like his grandmother's, and her eyes were golden brown under level dark brows.  She wore a dress of white cotton that left one shoulder bare, like her feet.  Around her waist was as sash with an intricate pattern woven in, and a leather belt as well, from which hung a pouch of fur, and an obsidian knife.  She carried her long flute in her left hand, and her right held a carved wooden stick with white feathers at the top.

     She was smiling at him.  He was dumbstruck.

     She came close enough to tap his guitar, and it rang like a bell in response to her touch.  She said something, but Bay could not understand her -- the words were like the twittering of birds.  She tapped the guitar again, then thrust the stick she carried into the white sand, lifted the flute to her lips, and began Uncle Myron's song.  Bay's fingers played.  He knew they played, because he heard the notes, felt the trembling of his guitar against his chest.  But he just watched her.  He had never seen a woman so lovely, he thought.

     When she finished the song, she took his hand and pulled him to his feet.  She spoke again, but Bay could not understand her words.  She pulled him forward, walking backward still holding his hand, looking deeply into his eyes.  He gazed back, blind to anything but her face.  Then a shadow fell over them, and rocks closed around, and they were in a cave.  Bay dropped his guitar when she began to unbutton his shirt, and they fell together into a heap of soft furs.

     The moonlight poured in through a crack in the cave roof -- Bay turned and threw his arm across his eyes to block out the cold light.  Beside him, the woman stirred, chirped, and nestled against his side.  He fell asleep again. . . . 

           Bay turned and his hand fell on a bag of canvas and straps lying by his side.  She reached over him and took it, setting it aside, then smiled into his eyes. The moonlight behind her head created a halo of shimmering silver around her, and he sighed as she sank down upon him. . . . 

     He played his guitar while she slept.  The silvery light of the moon fell across her face and set cold fire to the tips of the delicate hairs on her cheeks and forehead.  Bay stopped playing to reach out with one finger, and she opened her eyes.  The disappointment in them made him pull back his hand and return to his strings.  She smiled, and closed her eyes. . . . 

      

Photograph by Mardelle Kunz © 2001

     He opened his eyes and saw her face shining like the full silver moon above him. A cool breeze blew against his naked body, and he reached to pull a blanket over him for warmth.  His hand fell upon cold rock.  Above him, the moon herself rode the night sky.  The little breeze that chilled him blew stronger high above, and sent white clouds to veil the moon.  Bay shivered and sat up.

     He was in the desert, and it was night.  He looked around, and saw that his green canvas rucksack was a few feet away.  It was lying on his clothes.  He got cautiously to his feet, feeling weak and dizzy, and nearly fell before he could walk the two steps to the little pile.  The pack looked empty.  He pulled on his shirt, which hung loose on his shoulders but cut the cool breeze.  He picked up his jeans, and found his shoes underneath.  His had to tighten his belt to the last hole to hold his jeans up. He sat down on a nearby rock, dizzy, overcome with weakness, and waited a minute before bending over to pull on his shoes.  He was thirsty.

     Bay picked up the crumpled backpack looking for his water bottle.  But the pack was too light.  God, he wanted water.  He reached in and found something long and thin.

     His flute.  He held it in both hands, caressing the smooth dark wood.  He felt her hair again in the silky touch of the wood.  He raised the flute to his mouth, but the dizziness made his head spin and he dropped it.  He sat there in the cold moonlight with his face buried in his hands, and cried.

     He didn't know how much time had passed. He was so thin, it could have been weeks or months.  He didn't remember eating -- he didn't remember anything but music and the moon and his beloved.  He was hungry and tired and cold; his head ached worse than a hangover.  And he had no idea where he was.

     A small stone knocked against another, followed by the cascading rattle of sand and smaller rocks tumbling down a slope.  Bay looked up eagerly, seeking his beloved.  But she was not there.  A tall figure stood there, narrow and angular, slightly bent under the weight of the hump on its back, leaning on a stick.  It moved toward him, and he drew in his breath, half afraid.  Then the moon came out from behind a cloud, and he could see that the hump was a large satchel, riding high on his uncle Myron's shoulders. 

     The old man called out to him, "Nephew! There you are at last!"

     "Uncle," Bay tried to say.  But his throat was too dry and his voice was too weak and nothing came out.

     Myron squatted in front of him, and slung the satchel to the ground.  He reached into it and pulled out a canteen and handed it to Bay, saying, "Here, boy.  Drink it all. I brought enough to see us home again."

     While Bay drank, the old man took things out of his bag -- matches and a small pot, a small bundle of firewood, some leather bags and two more big canteens.  It must have been a heavy load to carry.  The last thing Myron pulled out was a jacket, which he handed to Bay.  He built a small fire right there, filled the little pot with water, and put it on to heat.  Bay huddled near the tiny blaze, holding the denim jacket close around him, while Myron sang under his breath and fed the fire.  When Bay started to speak, his uncle held up a hand and shook his head.

     "Not yet, boy.  Not yet."

     The water boiled, and Myron opened his little leather pouches.  He poured in a handful of cornmeal and a handful of raisins and stirred it with a twig.  Then he took out a piece of jerky and broke it up into the pot.  When the mixture had thickened he pulled a spoon out of his pocket, and handed the pot and the spoon to Bay.

     "Eat this.  You need to come back to this world.  Drink more water, too.  Then we'll talk."

     While Bay ate, Myron found the flute.  He picked it up as if it would break, or turn to a snake and bite him.  It made Bay's head hurt more to see it in his uncle's hands, and he winced.  Myron put it down, gently.

     "You know how to play that now?" he asked.

     Bay nodded. His mouth was full.

     "You been gone for three days, Nephew. It'd take longer than that to make that flute and learn to play it."

     Three days?  Only three days?  That made no sense to Bay.  He had spent a lifetime with his beloved.  He remembered many wakenings.  He scraped the pot clean, then set it down and picked up his flute.  He knew every curve of the grain, his fingers fit exactly in the softly rounded holes.  It had been polished by his hands.

     He looked up swiftly to his uncle's eyes, ready to protest, ask why he was supposed to believe he'd only been gone a few days.  But the words died as he saw the look on the old man's face: sorrow, and envy.

     "She . . . I made this.  It got smooth while I learned to play it."

     "Play now."  It was a command, and he could not refuse.

     Bay played his flute, there on the mesa top under the moon.  The music flowed out without thought or plan, saying everything that he had no words for -- about love and loss and the beauty of a woman's eyes in the moonlight.  When he lowered his flute he saw tears on his uncle's face.

     "Now you're in for it, boy," Myron said.

     "Where are we, Uncle? How did you know where to find me?" Bay asked.  He was waking up a little now, the food and water making the world a little more solid, his head a little clearer.

     "Eh?  We're on top of the mesa, the place I took you.  I sat on that rock and played for you four days ago.  That's where, unless you'd run away." He laughed.  "I didn't know when, so I been up here every night, watching.  Celia wouldn't let me come home at night without you."  He laughed again, inviting Bay to make a joke of it with him.  But Bay could see too clearly the old man with the heavy satchel slung on his back, waiting patiently in the cold night wind of the mesa top, night after night.  He knew that he would have died here without that vigil.

     "Who waited for you, Uncle?"  The words slipped out before Bay knew he was going to say them.

     The old man nodded. "Gave you the Sight, too, did she?  My uncle watched for me, Nephew.  He watched for more than a week, but he was a younger man.  You'll watch for your sister's son someday, or his son.  Your father turned his back on us and left me to become an old man. Celia only had girls."  Myron had been putting things back in his satchel while he spoke, and then stood. "You ready to walk yet?"

     Bay stood. He could walk.

     When they came in the door Aunt Celia embraced them both, then shooed her brother away to his trailer. She stroked Bay's head and thanked the spirits for his return, and then put him to bed under soft sheets and warm woolen blankets.  Bay slept through the next day and night, waking only to drink down the big glass of water that was always waiting there by his bed.  He dreamed of his beloved.  When the second morning dawned, Uncle Myron was there to shake him awake, and out of his dreams.  That day Bay worked, moving Celia's herd of sheep from one pasture to another.  It was dusty work in the hot sun, and he felt like a sleepwalker, not saying a word, asking questions with a gesture and tilt of his head. At noon, when they stopped to rest in the shade and eat lunch, Bay took out his flute and began to play.  Myron settled back against a tree trunk with a smile on his face.

      For the next two weeks, Bay worked in the mornings, helping Celia at the house or Myron with the stock.  He began to talk again, first to ask questions, then to make jokes.  He told Celia how much he missed his old Spanish guitar; she clucked sympathetically, then got in her pickup truck and drove away.  She came back with a decent Guild steel string.  He took it gratefully, not daring to ask where she had gotten it.  Myron helped him make a case for the flute, from deerskin and bone. In the afternoons he took his flute and green canvas rucksack out to the mesa.  Every day he walked into the beautiful canyon, to the place where the path turned upward. There he would perch on his rocky ledge and play, hoping to hear the answering notes of a Spanish guitar from around the corner.  She never replied.  As the shadows grew long he would walk the steep path out of the canyon to the mesa top, and back to Celia's house as night was falling.  After the first few days he didn't need to watch where he was going, he knew the path so well. Unfortunately, that gave him plenty of time to think.  Could he go back to New Jersey after this?  Staying here with Celia and Myron, though, that would make his father madder than the band did, and would break his mother's heart. 

     The day before he was to go back to New Jersey, Celia invited everyone for a hundred miles around to come for a barbecue.  Family and friends started arriving at first light, battered old pickup trucks packed full of kids and food.  Myron had dug a pit and slaughtered a calf, and nearly everyone had brought some special dish for the long table Celia set up in her yard.  By noon almost everyone had arrived, and the eating and music and dancing had started.   At least a dozen people had brought drums, big and small.  Some of the younger folks, about Bay's age, had guitars, and there were a couple of fiddlers.  A number of the young men had flutes, too.

     Bay brought out his guitar and jammed along with the young people off to one side, stopping sometimes to listen to the drumming and singing when Myron and his friends in the Stetsons raised their voices.  This was the kind of thing he'd hoped to find when he first arrived on the Reservation. The children ran back and forth through the crowd, shouting, but no one seemed to mind.  Some of the young people took off their shoes and danced.

     In a pause, while cups were being refilled with water or iced tea, and plates were filled with barbecue, Myron called Bay over beside him.

     "Nephew, where's your flute today?" he asked.  "I want to show these old men that you've learned something about your ancestors while you were here."  Myron looked over at his friends, and laughed.

     Bay shrugged, and stood up.  "I'll get it, but I don't know any of the songs you've been playing."  He'd never before felt as uncomfortable as this at the prospect of performing.  Myron said something to his friends as Bay walked toward the house.

      When he came back out with the flute case, everyone had gathered around the old men, waiting for him.  This was beginning to feel like some kind of unpleasant surprise party, and Bay wasn't sure he wanted any part of it.  He lifted out his flute, pausing as he did every time to stroke it and warm the wood, and to remember the moon and the cave and his beloved.  His grief filled him, and he raised the flute to his lips and told the waiting people the story.  When he opened his eyes in the silence when he was done, he saw his loss written on every face. Even the children were sober, and a three-year-old boy was crying.

     Bay drew a breath, and played them a tale about a little bird and a high-flying eagle, one of the songs his beloved had taught him.  After a moment the child laughed, and the old men's drums came in underneath his soaring flute.  The eagle flew for a long time while the young people danced and the old men drummed and the old women sang words Bay didn't recognize.  When he finished everyone was laughing and panting, and they stopped him when he raised his flute again.

     There was no moon that night, but Bay sat out under the bright spangled dome of the sky, in the cool wind of a summer's night, playing after everyone had left.  Myron had clasped his hand and shoulder in wordless approval, before he went to bed.

     When he got home, Bay thought, the first thing he had to do was find a couple of good drummers, maybe a guitarist, and make a demo.  His days with the bar band were over.  The second thing was to get to know his little sister better, and talk her into coming back here with him next summer.  Dad would have a fit, but Grandma would understand.
     Bay put his flute away and went to sleep in his hard and lonely bed.

About the Author: Beth Meacham, best known as an award-winning editor in the speculative fiction field, has published fiction in a variety of anthologies, including Aladdin, By Any Other Fame, Whatdunits, Witch Fantastic, and Sisters in Fantasy 2. She and her husband, author/editor Tappan Wright King, live in Tucson, Arizona. Copyright © 2003 by Beth Meacham. This story makes its first appearance here. It may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.