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Chapter 1—Late Summer, 1767  The Kumeyaay Desert Village of Hawi in the Great Desert east of what is now San Diego

   Web lay in a pit on a mat of deer grass and desert mallow spread over heated stones. A similar mat of grass and mallow covered her and the other initiate, Mishtai, her best friend. She was able to ignore the dust the dancers kicked up, but the persistent itch on her lower back tested her control. She bit her lip against the urge to move. The priest had precisely positioned two crescent-shaped stones on her abdomen just above her budding pubic thatch. Any movement might shift the stones before the ceremony ended. A lifetime of criticism awaited the girl who could not withstand the temporary discomfort of the roasting pit during her three-day passage from childhood to womanhood.

    Out of the corner of her eye, Web watched her friend Mishtai. The two girls had begun their monthly courses on the same day, the day of the last hellyach-temur full moon. While Web and Mishtai had gone into seclusion to prepare themselves for the responsibility that went with their new power to bring forth life, their parents had sent out runners inviting the scattered members of their respective sh’mulq sibs to come to Hawi for the girls’ initiation ceremony. During their seclusion, Web and Mishtai had spent hours exchanging confidences. As the first members of their sibs began to arrive, they had made a solemn pact to help each other through the ordeal ahead of them in whatever way they could.

   The itching on Web’s back intensified. No, Web thought. I will not give in to you. I will not move. I have not come this far or endured this much to fail now.

   To keep her mind off the torment, she turned her attention to the crowd dancing around the sand pit. Some of the dancers had traveled many days to reach Hawi in time. So many had come that their numbers strained the resources of the small village.

   While Web watched the dancing, the girl Amul pushed through the crowd and came to stand at the pit to smirk down at the two girls. Despite the mesh ceremonial cap that hid her face, Web stared back, matching her nemesis’ mocking smile. For as far back as she could remember Amul had been the bane of her existence, teasing her, calling her “Slime-Frog” and making slurping noises that caused the other children to laugh at her, always careful to hide her cruelty from the adults.

After a time, Amul tired of her staring and disappeared into the crowd. The moment she was gone, Web’s itching reasserted itself. In order to ignore it, she narrowed her eyes to slits to concentrate on the weave of the mesh that had protected her face and head from the swarming spring flies during her time in the pit.

   Her mother had woven the ceremonial cap from juncus grass, spending hours wrapping and stitching to create a piece every bit as beautiful as the baskets she made to trade. Woven into the coils was a unique design of frogs and ducks. The animals had been sacred to their sh’mulq since the dawn of time when First Ancestor had seen fit to give certain women of her mother’s line webbed hands–hands like Web’s–where flaps of skin grew up to the first joints of each finger. Web had been named for her hands. Before her, the last one so endowed was her mother’s grand-mother. Yet, despite the many stories of Great-Grandmother’s abilities as a healer and maker of baskets so beautiful that even the warlike Quechan people came under the flag of truce to Hawi to trade for them and despite her mother’s exhortations to be proud of her hands, Amul’s teasing and the stares she drew whenever the people of Hawi traveled to other Kumeyaay villages made Web self-conscious of her hands.

   One of the elders of her father’s sib now stepped out of the group dancing a shuffling circle around the pit and launched into a harangue about the responsibilities the roasting girls must assume as adult members of the Hawi band. Web tried hard to be attentive, but she was too tired and uncomfortable to absorb much. So many must-nots. So much to remember. How can I ever live up to the expectations of my parents and my band?

   The delectable perfume of roasting haakwal lizard, her favorite, assailed her nostrils. In the last three days she had been allowed to eat only a cup of shawii acorn mush at those times she had been allowed to leave the pit so that the cooling rocks could be replaced with hot ones. Now that her monthly courses had begun, she must not eat meat or fish or salt for at least one moon; longer if she intended to follow the tradition of the women of her mother’s sh’mulq. She knew her mother expected a longer period of abstention, but at that moment, Web could not imagine another hour without a taste of haakwal, let alone a full moon cycle.

   Steady pressure against her right arm broke through her thoughts. Mishtai had given in to the exhaustion of three days without sleep.

   “Mishtai,” Web hissed softly without moving her lips. “Wake up.”

   Her friend did not respond.

   Cognizant of the consequences to Mishtai if someone caught her sleeping, Web checked to be sure no one was paying attention before inching her covered hand slowly toward her friend, praying no one would notice the barely perceptible ripple in the layer of grass.

   At that moment, the dancers parted to reveal Amul watching her with unblinking eyes. The sight stopped Web’s hand. Pact or not, she refused to give Amul the pleasure of being the one to catch her breaking the rules of initiation.

   Suddenly Mishtai snorted and jerked upright, convulsing the entire covering of grass. Instantly the presiding shaman leaped to the side of the pit and launched into a tirade aimed at the offending girl. Disgust painted the faces of the members of Mishtai’s extended family, standing with her dismayed parents.

   Throughout the harangue, Mishtai kept her eyes lowered and barely breathed. After the priest finished and the adults went back to their dancing, she murmured a hurt, “You promised” to Web.

Web could think of nothing to say that would satisfy the embarrassed Mishtai, especially with Amul still watching her every move. She kept her eyes on the lengthening shadow of the closest ‘aanall mesquite. The roasting would end at sunset. This close to the end, perhaps the adults would not hold Mishtai’s slip against her for long. Perhaps she could claim she too had nodded off momentarily. Would a lie help, or make the situation worse?

   She hoped the right answer would come to her before they were lifted out of the pit for the last time.

   After what seemed an eternity, the singing stopped, leaving a gap of deafening silence. The priest signaled the girls’ mothers and aunts forward. While the women rolled back the pit covering, Web leaned toward Mishtai and whispered, “I didn’t see you until it was too late.”

   “Don’t lie,” Mishtai said coldly. “I can always tell when you don’t speak the truth.”

   “But, I–”

   Her mother’s touch cut off Web’s protest. Mother and two aunts helped her out of the pit. “Oh, my daughter, you have made me so proud. Now you are a woman,” her mother said, removing the basket cap and smoothing Web’s long hair. Prior to the ceremony, she had cut her daughter’s bangs just above her eyebrows in the style of the adult women of the people. Now she cupped Web’s cheek and gave her a tremulous smile full of the emotion she did not voice.

   “Not quite yet, my sister,” said Web’s aunt, Button Cactus. “We must first give her the tattoo marks of a woman and then the priest will lead her to the holy place.”

   “The marking will hurt, my child, but you must not cry out,” her mother whispered. “Remember what I have taught you.”

   Web nodded, sucked in a breath to steel herself against the pain to come and allowed her mother’s sisters to lead her to a small boulder. Button Cactus, as the eldest, waved for Web to sit, then took charge. After a quick glance at the prickly-pear cactus thorns, laid out in a row next to the sticks of charcoal, Web closed her eyes, took several deep breaths and retreated to the quiet place within her as her mother had taught. She was only partially aware of the thorns puncturing the skin of her chin and of charcoal being rubbed into the wounds until her mother announced, “Stand, child.”

   Web came out of her trance to find her mother draping a hekwiir blanket of twisted rabbit skins over her shoulders. “Remember how I showed you to hold it?” her mother asked.

Despite the throbbing pain in her chin, Web grasped the edges of the drape together at the neck so that both hands were hidden inside the folds of the hekwiir.

   Her mother smiled, and the aunts placed garlands made of pliable yucca on her head, then stepped away, leaving her standing by herself. Suddenly she was uneasy about what she would soon witness. Besides making the pact to help each other through the roasting, she and Mishtai had spent endless hours wondering over what the priest would show them in this final stage of their initiation. Was it a hole so deep that it led to the back side of the sky? Or a deep pool in whose depths they would be able to see into the spirit world? Or something even more terrifying?

Suddenly she was not at all sure she wanted to become an adult, burdened with responsibilities and cares. Her chin throbbed from the recent assault of thorns and charcoal. She had one last step to complete her initiation into womanhood. No woman in either parental sib had ever failed any of the ordeals of her initiation, yet her leaden legs refused to move.

   “Go, child. The priest awaits,” her mother urged.

   Web swallowed against the cottony feel in her throat. I do not want this, she wanted to scream.

   “Daughter?” The exasperation in her mother’s tone got Web’s feet moving.

   Mishtai was already with the priest. She side-stepped away from Web.

   An assistant stepped forward to help the priest wrap strips of hide around the girls’ eyes as blindfolds. Then the priest commanded, “Come.”

   Already light-headed from hunger, fatigue and pain, Web stumbled along, blindly following the faint crunch of the priest’s steps in the sand. Her senses told her that he led them out from the village toward the hot-springs.

   Sulfurous smells a short while later confirmed her guess as the little party followed the foot path around the steaming water and headed up the rising pan toward the boundary beyond which ordinary Kumeyaay did not pass. The jumbled rocks that lay beyond that boundary were sacred, reserved for those who possessed the power to enter the world of Spirits. When Web tried to stop, the priest’s assistant prodded her to keep moving.

   At the edge of the rocks, the branch of a creosote bush caught at Web’s ankle. She stumbled and would have fallen if the assistant had not caught her and restored her to her feet. She wanted to turn back, away from the land of Spirits into the land of mortals, but the assistant’s grip remained on her arm, guiding her over the rock-strewn path.

   On and on they went until Web’s legs turned rubbery. She was close to fainting when the priest’s voice intoned, ”Stop.”

   The assistant stripped off her blindfold, and the shaman commanded, “Look. There.”

   Web blinked to adjust to the flickering light of the firebrand the priest carried.

   “Behold Mother Goddess,” the priest thundered. “Behold Her sacred Self. Look you well upon Her for it is from Her that you gain the power to bring forth life. From this moment you, Web, and you, Mishtai, are no longer children. Now you are women.”

   While the priest’s voice boomed off the wall of boulders before them, relating all that would be expected of her now that she was a woman, Web observed, confused by what she saw. An enormous rock formation rose up before her. An odd formation that looked like a double-yoked egg.

   She waited for the priest to explain, to tell her what she was supposed to see, but he had fallen silent. She continued to stare, then suddenly it hit her. Not an egg, the rocks formed the flower petals that a woman – that Web herself – carried tucked between her legs. The two lips that kiss each child as it leaves its mother to join the world, and the door through which a baby passes into life.

   With that realization, power seemed to pour forth from the rocks, glittering with the afterglow of Sun. That power washed over her, engulfing her like the wind that precedes the life-giving rains. Awestruck, she nudged Mishtai. “Do you see it, my sister?” she whispered over the sound of the shaman’s chanting.

   “Do not call me sister. You are no longer my friend,” Mishtai hissed.

   “Silence!” the priest’s assistant ordered.

   Under his glare, Mishtai seemed to shrink while Web bit back the urge to defend herself.

   The priest finished his song and waved his sacred staff toward the rock formation. “The Mother Goddess shows Herself to you now so that you may bear many strong sons and daughters. Look you and think about the man who will be your husband.”

   Husband.

   In one word, Web’s awe for the Mother Goddess and her concern about Mishtai vanished, leaving in her innards a void that had no bottom. She had been so intent on performing her role in the initiation ceremony correctly that she had not thought beyond it. Now that the rites had reached their conclusion, the future yawned before her like a deep, pitch-black cave. She was now a woman. Womanhood meant marriage. Children. And keeping a husband happy.

   When she had five summers, her parents had betrothed her to Shadow Dancer, a boy of seven summers, son of the renowned wekuseyaay rattlesnake shaman, Casts No Shadow. Casts No Shadow and Shadow Dancer lived in the village of Nipaguay over the mountains in the fertile valley of the river that ran into the ‘ehaasilth ocean far to the west. The betrothal had brought her parents great honor and many wonderful gifts from the wekuseyaay and his band. Nipaguay controlled some of the richest planting and hunting land and the best fishing areas along the coast. Web’s marriage would tie Nipaguay to Hawi. For the people of Hawi, it meant reserves of food should they face another starving time, and reinforcements should the Quechan people decide to wage war again.

   In the eight years since her betrothal, Web had seen Shadow Dancer only once: four years ago, when the winter rains did not come for the fifth straight year and the desert refused to bloom, the hungry people of Hawi undertook the long dangerous journey to the coast for food, and there she had set eyes upon her future husband. He was a tall boy with an intense gaze who seemed to be constantly asking questions about everyone and everything around him. Since the time, she had dreamed about him occasionally, but the dreams were the fantasies of a mere girl. Now the reality hit her with the force of a blow.

   Marriage to Shadow Dancer meant leaving Hawi and everyone she loved, forever. Why had she never thought of that before?

   A great sadness welled up from the pit of her stomach. She ducked her head and blinked back the tears that threatened to betray her. She must not cry. Whatever happened, she must make her parents proud.

   Beside her, Mishtai sniffed. Deep in her own misery, Web ignored her friend and looked again upon the Mother Goddess through the mist of her unshed tears. The force flowing from the rocks changed from an engulfing wave to the tenderest of caresses as if the Spirits of the rocks, as if the Mother Goddess Herself, felt Web’s fear and wanted to reassure her.

   Web had no time to absorb the sensation. The priest repositioned her blindfold, and her world again went dark.

   “You are now women. Come. We will return to the village,” the priest said, pebbles clattering under his sandaled steps.

   Before she could take a step, a small hand gripped Web’s arm. “I hope you will leave Hawi soon,” Mishtai said. “You are no friend of mine.” Releasing her grip, she stumbled off, leaving Web to return with the assistant priest.