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By Root 1205 0

before her was everything that had been there that night on Ioligam, and a few things more besides. Most had come to her from or through Nana Dahd: First came a piece of ancient pottery with the faint image of a turtle etched into the red clay. That had belonged to Rita Antone’s paternal grandmother, Understanding Woman. There was Nana Dahd’s sacred scalp bundle along with the shiny smooth bone owij—the awl—the old woman had used to weave her wonderful baskets. A few items were Lani’s alone—things she had retrieved from Betraying Woman’s cave—a blackened fragment of a broken pot and the delicate bone from a dead bat’s wing. Last of all was the soft chamois bag that held Looks at Nothing’s precious crystals.

Lani’s fingers trembled as she untied the string and spilled the crystals out into the medicine basket, confining them there rather than risk losing one on the floor. Taking the photo in one hand and a crystal in another, she held them up to the light and studied the faces through the haze of rock. She focused her gaze on Fat Crack’s smiling face. The first three times she did it, nothing happened. Then she picked up the fourth crystal.

After a few seconds she noticed a slight shifting in Gabe Ortiz’s features. They seemed thinner somehow. It’s because he’s ill, Lani thought. He’s losing weight.

Then Fat Crack’s face changed altogether. It seemed to dissolve and then remake itself. Gradually someone else’s features emerged. For a moment a blond Anglo woman’s face—a face Lani had never seen before—seemed to hover there under the crystal. Then those features, too, disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a bare skull. What does this mean? Lani wondered. And what does this Mil-gahn woman have to do with Fat Crack?

Shaken and having no idea what the crystals had told her, Lani carefully returned them to the bag. Then she placed the bag, along with all her other treasures, back in the medicine basket and closed the lid.

With the medicine basket restored to its hiding place, Lani turned once again to her computer. Looks at Nothing’s sacred crystals had left her feeling even more distressed. The old ways hadn’t worked, so it was time to resort to new ones. Lani switched her computer back on and sent three e-mails in a row. Half an hour later, as the sun touched the still winter-brown landscape outside her window, Lani Walker finally lay down and went to sleep.

Maria Elena heard the click of the lock. There was a single blanket on her bed. Ashamed of her nakedness, she pulled that over her now, even though she knew it was useless. He would peel away the puny covering once he reached her. The harsh light flashed on overhead. She cringed and squeezed her eyes shut, not only to close out the bright light but also to keep from seeing his face as he came toward her. To keep from seeing the terrible greediness in his eyes as he reached out to tear away her blanket. To keep from knowing exactly when his hurtful fingers would reach out with some awful tool to probe some part of her that should never have been touched. Somehow to put off the dreadful moment when she would writhe in agony and hear herself pleading and begging for him to stop.

It was as though, by not seeing him, she could avoid or delay what was coming. By not seeing it happen, she hoped somehow to distance herself from the pain and deny its reality while she endured whatever was to come. Acceptance was not an option.

This time the doctor’s approach took far longer than usual. For as long as possible, Maria Elena resisted the temptation to open her eyes. Someone had once said that eyes were the windows to the soul. Señor the Doctor had stolen her body from her, forcing her to relinquish it to him. By keeping her eyes closed, she hoped to deny him what little was left—her soul.

Finally she could stand it no longer. She opened her eyes and was amazed to see not the doctor but his wife. Maria Elena no longer thought the silver-haired woman beautiful. She was evil—every bit as monstrous as her husband.

The señora had come to Maria Elena’s cell with Señor the Doctor