Goddess Girl Prophecy Read online

  My mouth gaping open, I stared astonished at MawMaw’s audacity.

  “Homework, young lady.” She gently tapped my slack jaw as she passed by and left the kitchen.

  It took me a moment to come out of my shock. “What was all that about?” I followed her to the living room.

  “I like Kanaan very much. And I love you.” She lowered herself to her easy chair. “Courting is one thing.” She shook her finger at me. “Inappropriate touching—”

  “It was accidental, MawMaw.” I cut her off.

  “Was it?” She gathered her knitting into her lap.

  “Yes. And he apologized.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes.”

  She pursed her lips. “I know you’re both maturing and tempted —”

  Oh for—I thought a cuss word to myself—sake.

  “I had the talk with Mom a long time ago.” Air quotes were contagious, apparently, because I hooked my fingers on the word talk.

  MawMaw knitted several perfect stitches in her complicated lace project. “Well, now you’ll get my version of it. You’re—both you and Kanaan—are maturing in different ways.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. “I’m seventeen, MawMaw. I’m well aware of the differences between boys and girls.”

  Needles paused, she looked up at me. Several times she opened her mouth to say something, and several times stopped herself. Finally, she just clamped her lips shut, sat back into her chair, and focused on her knitting.

  Grateful that the conversation was over, I turned to the stairs.

  “Neither of you are typical teenagers,” MawMaw blurted out.

  I took my foot off the first step and pivoted to face her. She kept her eyes on her knitting. I shrugged. “We’re both orphans—” It’s the only thing I could think of that made us nontypical.

  Attention still on her needles, MawMaw shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.” She paused for a moment, squinting her eyes like she was searching for the right words.

  “Then, what do you mean?” I pushed her.

  “Solitude is necessary for both of you to”—she stopped her movements, again searching for words—“blossom.” She shrugged on the word like it was the best she could come up with.

  Was it woo-woo MawMaw talking? It sure sounded like it. She stared at the contents of her lap. “MawMaw?” I asked.

  With a big smile spreading across her face, she looked up at me. Her eyes had that faraway-clouded look. Yeah, it was woo-woo MawMaw. She made a shooing motion at me with her hand and went back to her knitting. I watched her for a moment, watched her rhythmic yarn overs and knit-two-togethers. Even woo-woo MawMaw was an expert at lace knitting.

  Chapter 12

  With a sigh, I went upstairs and dug into my math homework. I have to admit that burying myself in homework, just like cooking with Kanaan, took my mind off all the abnormal events. And despite the long nap, I actually slept soundly when I went to bed that night.

  The next morning blew in cloudy. A ceiling of gray hid the commonly crystal-blue Colorado sky. I heard MawMaw in the kitchen, so I took a quick shower and headed down for breakfast.

  “Good morning,” PhD MawMaw greeted me.

  “Yum.” I took my seat at the table in front of a big stack of pancakes and slices of crisp bacon. “Thanks.”

  She beamed with pride. She may have an advanced degree, but she was still a grandmother who loved to feed people.

  As I smeared softened butter on my cakes, I wanted to bring up the stone in the bed. I was mulling over how to start the conversation when MawMaw opened the back door. She handed the officer on duty a cup of coffee—and left the door open. With the cop in earshot, I had to wait for a better time. My frustrated sigh must have given me away.

  “What’s wrong?” MawMaw asked taking her own seat.

  The bruise on her cheek had darkened to almost black. It might have been difficult for others to notice, given MawMaw’s natural skin color, but I noticed. A fresh wave of confusion blurred my thoughts. She took a beating for that bone. My parents most assuredly died for it. Why? And why was it and the skull such coveted curiosities? I wondered for the thousandth time how far Mr. Smith would go for the skull. I didn’t relish walking the halls of Manitou High with him after everything that had happened.

  “What do you know about Mr. Smith?” I asked her.

  “Mr. Smith, the teacher?” she asked.

  When I nodded, an actual sneer came to her face.

  I stopped my fork halfway to my mouth. “That good, huh?”

  MawMaw was the quintessential people person. She liked most everyone, even those with odd quirks and mean streaks like Mrs. Bell. Adamant that everyone had both good and bad in them, MawMaw was an expert at pinpointing whatever decent qualities a person had. In the end, she insisted, the good usually outweighed everything else and that celebrating that only brought out more goodness. It was a rosy outlook I tried to share, but my skepticism that people were just flat-out cruel usually won out. The revelation of MawMaw’s secret didn’t help my opinion of the human race at all.

  “That family has no purity.” MawMaw scowled shaking her fork at me.

  Apparently, the Smiths didn’t fit into her mostly good philosophy.

  Purity was Mary’s invention—a scale for how good people were. The more you considered others in life and business, and sympathized with their struggles, the purer you were as a human being—by Mary’s standards, that is.

  “How so?” I asked.

  MawMaw dressed her cakes as she spoke. “The Smith family came here with the Gold Rush,” she explained.

  I shrugged. “That’s ninety-nine percent of the founding families in the Pikes Peak region.”

  She nodded and swallowed a bite. “Those other families came here and worked hard as miners or ranchers. Instead of working to carve out a living like so many settlers did, the Smith family stole what others worked hard for.”

  “What did they steal?” I asked.

  MawMaw clucked her tongue. “The shorter list would be what they didn’t steal. They stole tools from the miners and sold them back to them. They stole livestock from the ranchers and blamed it on the Ute and Plains tribes. That caused war among all the people—red-, dark-, and white-skinned. They stole our history.” She shook her fist in anger. “And sold it to the highest bidder.”

  Kanaan said essentially the same thing.

  “What historical pieces did they steal?”

  “Tools, jewelry, baskets, hides and skins, even our ancestors’ bones were all worth money to museums on the East Coast and around the world,” she said. “The Smiths didn’t hesitate to steal it and sell it right out from under us.”

  “Bones?” I asked as casually as I could muster.

  For a split second, MawMaw looked as though she was going to tell me the secret. But instead, she looked down at her plate and smeared the syrup around with a chunk of pancake.

  “Sometimes during war or when winter forced tribal bands to move quickly, there wasn’t time to properly tend to the dead. For efficiency, they buried their loved ones right where they had died. The family would return at a safer time and conduct the proper ceremony.”

  She shook her head in sad disgust. “Imagine the heartbreak when they returned to find empty graves.”

  Grossed out, I grimaced. “You mean the Smiths took bodies that weren’t fully decomposed yet?” I asked.

  MawMaw nodded.

  Ew. Done eating, I set my fork down.

  Western stories often took on lives of their own and got blown out of proportion to what really happened. Sham stories are what I called them. I wondered if that was the case with the Smiths.

  “Did anyone actually see them steal? Or is the story built on hearsay?”

  MawMaw took both our plates to rinse and put in the dishwasher. “Hearsay?” She shook her head. “There are too many tales from too many different sources to discount them.” She was only getting madder, and I was sorry I brought Mr. S
mith up at all.

  I got up to go to the back door to put on my shoes, then changed the subject. “Is Uncle Jun coming over to stay with you?”

  I didn’t want MawMaw home alone. Though I was fairly certain that the men in black wouldn’t come back, I didn’t discount the possibility entirely. Her trances were my bigger concern.

  MawMaw nodded. “Yes. He’ll be here soon. In the meantime, the deputy will keep me safe.” She closed the dishwasher and squinted at me. “Why do you ask about the Smiths anyway?”

  With a foot propped on the bench as I tied my shoe, I was glad that my back was to her. “Kanaan said something at lunch the other day that made me curious.” Of course, I gave her the abbreviated version of events.

  Ready to go, I turned back to MawMaw, who was indeed studying me with her eagle eyes. I knew right away that my explanation wasn’t enough. She wanted more info.

  “How physical are you two?” She cut right to the chase, as Kanaan would say.

  Actually glad that she had taken another train of thought, I smiled. “Holding hands is about it.” It was the absolute truth. I didn’t give her time to interrogate me further. I kissed her on her good cheek. “You take it easy today.” I gently stroked the bandage. “Sit and knit. I’ll feed Ella on my way out.”

  “You just wait a minute,” MawMaw insisted. She grabbed her car keys from the hook.

  “No, MawMaw. I’ll walk.”

  “Not alone.” She shook her head.

  “Amaya’s meeting me on the corner.”

  MawMaw hesitated a moment, then put her keys back.

  I threw on my jacket and grabbed my pack. “Remember, I’m working this afternoon.”

  She squinted at me.

  “I’ll be in public, with tons of people around.”

  With a huff, she nodded. “Okay.”

  “Love you,” I added and stepped outside.

  I nodded back at the police officer and hurried to the barn. I gave Ella sustenance for the day, then hurried down the street. Kanaan and Amaya were waiting on the corner. Joy was written all over Amaya’s face.

  “So.” She beamed as we fell into stride with one another. “Kai is almost walking! Even his muscles are regenerating. That skull is a miracle, Wray! Thank you for finding it.” She grabbed me midstep and hugged me tight. “Of course, the doctors can’t explain it.” She released me. Giddiness set aside, she got serious and held both my hands. “Just think of all the people it could help. We should share it with the world.”

  “No.” Kanaan cut in.

  Amaya dropped my hands and whirled around to face him. “Why not?”

  They’d clearly been having this discussion before I arrived. I started walking. “It’s powerful, Amaya.”

  “Tribal rules say that the elders decide what to do with our artifacts. Not us,” Kanaan added.

  Amaya sneered when Kanaan mentioned the tribal rules.

  I nodded at him, though. “That too. But I’m more concerned with the power. People do evil things with powerful tools.”

  “Oh, seriously?” Amaya made a face. “What could anyone possibly do with it that would be evil? It heals people!” she shouted loudly.

  “Keep your voice down.” Kanaan looked around.

  “We don’t know what else it can do, Amaya.” I shrugged. “We still don’t know if there are side effects to it. Better safe than sorry. Isn’t that our creed?”

  Amaya rolled her eyes. She knew it was. “Yes,” she agreed reluctantly.

  “Then, let’s keep it to ourselves for now,” I said.

  Amaya sulked.

  Kanaan nodded his agreement. “The elders will be here for Founders Day.” Kanaan put his arm around her for a reassuring squeeze. “We may find out more then.”

  “Hopefully,” I said, as we walked on.

  Entering the front door of Manitou Springs High School felt very strange. I had only been gone for two days, but it felt very different and foreign.

  I felt different. The absence had changed me. The skull shook my world to the core. In a few hours, I went from totally denying magic existed to experiencing it firsthand. I struggled with that. I got my makeup assignments from math and history, but when it was time for science, my stomach knotted up.

  Since I didn’t know for certain whether or not Mr. Smith sent the men in black, I decided to treat him as though he were a threat and just avoid him. He wouldn’t let me do that, though. Just outside the door to Ms. Savage’s classroom, clipboard in hand, Mr. Smith darted across the hall from his room to stop me.

  “Wray, my dear.” He raced past me to stand in front of the door I was about to pull open. “I heard what happened,” he said with exaggerated concern. “A home invasion? Are you all right?” His shifty eyes went back and forth on mine.

  “Totally fine.” I reached for the doorknob, but he blocked me.

  “Thank goodness.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you know what the intruders were looking for? And more importantly did they find it?”

  “No, and I don’t think so.” Then, I thought I’d test his compassion—give him Mary’s purity test. “My grandmother has a big bruise on her cheek. Plus, she spent a night in the hospital.”

  His hand went over his mouth.

  “They tore up the house pretty well. Smashed all our dishes, put bullet holes in the ceiling.”

  He gasped and his eyebrows shot up in true shock. “They had guns?” I felt his surprise.

  I nodded. “Assault rifles. It was crazy scary.”

  Mr. Smith was truly shaken by that. Maybe he wasn’t as callous as everyone thought.

  “But,” I added, “they left with nothing. So, I guess they didn’t find whatever it was they were looking for.”

  The relief on his face was unmistakable. I would have loved to play poker with the guy. I might have had a fighting chance since his game face was worse than mine. The second bell rang, and I rudely pushed passed him to get into the classroom. “See ya,” I said.

  “You take care, Wray.”

  I wondered if he meant that I should take care of the skull that he had caught a glimpse of. Ms. Savage smiled at me as I took my seat at the lab table. “Well, well, Wray Sky, nice of you to join us today.” The class giggled.

  “Hope everything is okay at your house?”she continued with a question in her voice. Her soft sincerity was refreshing after Mr. Smith’s hallway ambush.

  I nodded once that everything was fine.

  “Good,” she said and meant it. “Come see me after class for your makeup work.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was no lab that day. Instead, Ms. Savage gave a lecture on emerging sciences. I felt like the lesson was entirely for my benefit and directed exclusively toward me, especially the conclusion.

  “The point to my verbosity today is this,” she said, “humans know so very little about their own world. This Earth holds mysteries that boggle the mind and”—she pointed upward—“about the universe, we know even less. But we’re learning. As science unravels and reveals the wonders of the world, the less we need to fear. What seemed like magic to ancient civilizations is just science to us now—for instance, events like eclipses used to scare the bejesus out of the cave dudes.”

  The class giggled.

  “Today, those events can easily be explained by even the most basically educated among us. Their causes are now common knowledge.”

  “So,” I said, “just because you can’t explain something doesn’t mean that it’s magic.”

  She pointed at me and nodded. “Exactly! Given time, science will reveal the who, what, where, when, and why of everything. Everything.”

  The bell rang. The students quickly scurried out the door to lunch. I stopped at Ms. Savage’s desk.

  “I’m really very glad to see that you’re okay,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I appreciated her sincerity.

  “Your homework.” She handed me a fairly thick packet.

  I groaned. “Not so thanks?”

/>   She laughed. “It’s just reading. I think you’ll find it interesting, but, and this is important, don’t open it until you have complete privacy. At home, perhaps?” She looked at me to make sure I understood.

  “Okay?” I nodded, brows knitted together in question.

  “You’ll understand when you see it.” She stuffed her antique messenger bag with folders and papers. “The material is controversial and would have been rejected by academia if they had ever seen it, but I think you will be able to appreciate it,” she said cryptically. “And if you ever need anything, anything at all, my phone number is in there too.” She smiled as she slung the heavy bag over her petite shoulder. “Put it in your phone and don’t hesitate a second to call me.”

  We walked out of the classroom together and both of us noticed Mr. Smith just a few doors down watching us. Ms. Savage turned her back on Mr. Smith. “Walk with me.” She pointed to the hall opposite of where he stood. “What you found is quite profound, Wray. As long as it is in your possession, please take care of it.”

  “It’s not, technically, in my possession anymore,” I hedged.

  “What?” She stopped in her tracks. “The intruders stole it?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s in a safe place.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief.” She started walking again looking over her shoulder at Mr. Smith, who still watched us intently.

  “And after this weekend it will be in the hands of the Nuutsiu. They can take it from there,” I insisted.

  “That is a great plan.” Ms. Savage nodded.

  We reached the door of the teacher’s lounge. “Remember, I’m always here,” she said solemnly.

  I gave her a thumbs-up and rounded the corner to the cafeteria.

  Chapter 13

  I grabbed a salad and some juice in the lunch line, then headed for the table Amaya and I usually sat at. Kanaan was already there with Amaya and their body language, especially the tilt of Amaya’s head, told me they were arguing again.

  “People use cars to hurt other people.” She hissed at him as I walked up. “Does that mean no one should be able to drive?”