Chapter 2: The Call of the Mountain

Fifteen years later, Kai Martinez woke to the sound of bones breaking.

He bolted upright in his Phoenix apartment, sweat cooling on his skin as the dream's echoes faded. The digital clock on his nightstand read 3:17 AM in harsh red numbers. Outside his window, the city's orange glow painted the desert night in familiar, comforting artificial light—a world away from the crushing darkness of mountain caves.

But the dream always brought him back there. Always to that moment when Shadi's laughter had cut through the shadows of Brave Woman's Grave, wild and free and about to be silenced forever.

Kai swung his legs over the edge of his bed and padded to the kitchen, his bare feet silent on the hardwood floors. The apartment was sleek and modern, all clean lines and neutral colors—the kind of place that appeared in architectural magazines, which made sense since he'd designed it himself. Every surface was deliberately minimal, every corner free of clutter or memories.

He'd built this life methodically, like one of his blueprints. Bachelor's degree in architecture from ASU. Master's from UC Berkeley. Five years with a prestigious firm in San Francisco before striking out on his own. Awards, recognition, a client list that included tech moguls and movie stars. Everything calculated to prove he'd escaped the reservation's gravity, that he was more than just another kid who'd lost someone to the mountain's hunger.

The refrigerator hummed to itself as he stood before it, not really seeing the neat rows of takeout containers and energy drinks. His reflection in the stainless steel surface showed a man in his late twenties who'd let his athletic build soften around the edges, trading morning runs for late nights at the drafting table. His black hair was longer now, styled in a way that said 'successful professional' rather than 'rez kid.' Only his eyes remained unchanged—dark and intelligent, but carrying a sadness that no amount of success could touch.

He was reaching for a water bottle when his phone rang.

The sound cut through the apartment's silence like a scream, and Kai's hand froze on the refrigerator handle. Who called at 3:17 AM? His mind immediately went to the worst possibilities—his grandmother, now in her eighties, or his parents, who'd moved to Albuquerque but still carried the weight of what had happened that summer.

The caller ID made his blood run cold: Taza Crow Dog.

They hadn't spoken in three years, not since the last time Kai had made the obligatory trip home for Christmas. The conversation had been stilted, full of careful politeness and things left unsaid. Taza had become everything Kai had fled from—rooted in the old ways, carrying the reservation's stories like sacred burdens. They'd grown into different men, shaped by the same trauma but choosing opposite paths through the aftermath.

Kai's thumb hovered over the screen. He could let it go to voicemail, pretend he'd slept through it. But something in the timing, in the certainty that Taza would never call unless—

"Taza?"

"Kai." His cousin's voice was exactly as he remembered—deep, measured, carrying the weight of mountains. "I'm sorry to call so late. I know you're... busy with your life down there."

"What's wrong?" The question came out sharper than Kai intended, but he'd learned to cut through pleasantries when fear was involved.

Silence stretched between them, filled with the white noise of long-distance connection and fifteen years of careful distance. When Taza finally spoke, his words hit like physical blows.

"Another child is missing."

The water bottle slipped from Kai's nerveless fingers, hitting the floor with a hollow plastic sound. "What?"

"Emma Yazzie. She's eight years old. Her grandmother brought her to the summer cultural camp, and yesterday evening she just... vanished. No trace. No footprints leading away from the campsite."

Kai's chest tightened. He could see it perfectly—the summer camp where reservation kids learned traditional skills, heard the old stories, connected with their heritage. The same camp where he and Taza and Shadi had spent countless afternoons, back when the world seemed safer and the mountain's shadows shorter.

"Kids wander off," he said, though the words felt hollow even as he spoke them. "She probably got lost, went looking for her parents—"

"They found her shoes."

The simple statement hit like a physical blow. Kai's hand tightened on the phone until his knuckles went white. "Where?"

"At the mouth of Brave Woman's Grave." Taza's voice was steady, but Kai could hear the tremor underneath. "Both of them, placed side by side like she just stepped out of them and walked into the mountain."

The apartment's modern surfaces seemed to blur around the edges, replaced by memory's sharper focus. A single sneaker, still tied tight, sitting in the cave's mouth like an offering. The sound of search parties calling Shadi's name into the darkness. The way his grandmother had looked at him when they'd finally given up, her eyes holding a knowledge that went deeper than grief.

"The police—"

"Won't do anything meaningful. Same as before." Taza's voice carried a familiar bitterness. "They'll search for a few days, bring in some dogs, maybe helicopter crews. But they don't understand what they're dealing with. They don't listen to the stories."

"Because they're stories, Taza. Folklore. There has to be a logical explanation—"

"Like there was for Shadi?"

The name hung between them like a curse, conjuring images Kai had spent fifteen years trying to forget. His cousin's laugh echoing through cave passages. The weight of ancient words on his tongue. The terrible certainty that something had gone wrong in ways that couldn't be fixed or explained or rationalized away.

"That was different," Kai said, though he wasn't sure he believed it.

"Was it? Eight-year-old girl, vanished without a trace at the same place where your—where our cousin disappeared. Her shoes left behind like she just stepped out of them and walked into the mountain. Tell me, architect, what's the logical explanation for that?"

Kai closed his eyes, leaning against the refrigerator's cool surface. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he could see Brave Woman's Grave exactly as it had been that summer afternoon—the yawning entrance, the sage brush rustling in the wind, the terrible certainty that something watched from the shadows within.

"I can't," he whispered.

"Can't what?"

"Can't come back. Not there. Not to that place."

"I'm not asking you to go in the cave, Kai. I'm asking you to help me find this little girl before it's too late. You know those passages better than anyone—you mapped them all as a kid, remember? You were always drawing those tunnels, trying to make sense of the layout."

The memory hit like a physical blow. He had mapped the caves, obsessively, in the months after Shadi's disappearance. Sitting at his grandmother's kitchen table with graph paper and colored pencils, trying to recreate every twist and turn of the passages from memory. It had been his way of coping, of imposing order on something that felt chaotic and wrong.

"Those maps are fifteen years old," he said. "And I was just a kid. Half of what I drew was probably wrong anyway."

"Maybe. But you remember things others don't. You see patterns. It's what you do now, right? Design buildings, figure out how spaces work?" Taza paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. "Please, cousin. I can't do this alone. And that little girl... she deserves better than just giving up."

Through his apartment window, Kai could see the city spreading out below—a grid of lights and logic, a world where problems had solutions and mysteries could be solved with enough data and analysis. It was the life he'd built for himself, the identity he'd crafted from steel and glass and careful distance from the past.

But underneath it all, in the deepest chambers of his heart, he could hear something else. The sound of a ten-year-old girl's laughter echoing through passages that defied explanation. The weight of words spoken in darkness, creating obligations that transcended time and distance.

Here lies the Queen of Bones.

"I'll catch the first flight out," he heard himself say.

"Thank you." The relief in Taza's voice was palpable. "I'll pick you up at the airport."

After they hung up, Kai stood in his kitchen for a long time, staring at his reflection in the darkened window. The successful architect looked back at him, but underneath the surface, he could see traces of the twelve-year-old boy who'd spoken words of power in a cave and lost his cousin to the mountain's hunger.

He'd spent fifteen years running from that moment, building walls of logic and distance to keep the past at bay. But some obligations ran deeper than fear, and some debts could only be paid in the currency of courage.

As he began to pack, his hands moved automatically—clothes, toiletries, laptop, phone charger. All the necessities of modern life. But before he closed the suitcase, he paused at his desk and pulled out a folder he hadn't opened in years.

Inside were his childhood maps of Brave Woman's Grave, drawn in fading colored pencil on graph paper. The passages twisted and branched in ways that hurt to look at, defying conventional understanding of how caves should work. In the margins, his twelve-year-old self had written notes in careful block letters: "Weird echo here." "Walls feel warm." "This tunnel wasn't here before."

At the bottom of the folder, wrapped in tissue paper, was something else—a small wooden figure, crudely carved but unmistakably human. He'd found it in his backpack the day after Shadi's disappearance, though he had no memory of picking it up. His grandmother had gone pale when she'd seen it, wrapping it quickly and telling him to never show it to anyone else.

"Some things are too dangerous to throw away," she'd said. "But too dangerous to keep close."

Now, holding the figure in his adult hands, Kai felt the same chill he'd experienced as a child. The carving was warm to the touch, its surface worn smooth as if by countless fingers. The face was barely sketched—two dots for eyes, a line for a mouth—but something in its crude simplicity suggested vast intelligence and patient malice.

He should leave it behind. Should let it gather dust in his desk drawer while he flew home to help with a search that would probably turn up nothing more than a lost child who'd wandered too far from camp. But as he moved to put it back, the figure seemed to pulse with warmth, and for just a moment, he could have sworn he heard something—a whisper, a laugh, a voice like wind through cave passages.

The wooden figure went into his carry-on bag.

Three hours later, Kai was at Sky Harbor Airport, watching the sun rise over the desert as he waited for his flight to Albuquerque. His reflection in the gate window showed a man trying to look calm and professional, but his hands shook slightly as he gripped his coffee cup.

He was going home. Back to the reservation, back to the mountain, back to the place where his childhood had died in the darkness of Brave Woman's Grave. Part of him wondered if this was what the cave had been waiting for all along—for him to return, to complete whatever bargain had been struck in that moment of childish competition.

But another part of him, the part that still heard Shadi's laughter in his dreams, knew he had no choice. Emma Yazzie was eight years old, the same age Shadi had been when the mountain claimed her. If there was even a chance of bringing her home, of preventing another family from living with the weight of unanswered questions, then he had to try.

Even if it meant facing the darkness he'd spent fifteen years running from.

Even if it meant discovering that some doors, once opened, could never be closed again.