Ayání’s old, withered face wrinkled with displeasure. “If this spreads from person to person, then where did it start? Who caused the sickness to begin with?”
Hugo shrugged. “It might have come from someone who came from outside the village.”
“You and Geoffrey are the only ones who have visited us for many months.”
He hated to point fingers, but if Ayání was willing to do it, then so would Hugo. “And you also took in refugees from another clan who were attacked by the Apache. Maybe one of them had it and they got it from the Apache, and the Apache got it from the Spanish. We can always find a trail back to place blame on someone else, but it can end here with your village. We can keep it from spreading. Why does Adam have to go up to the mountain if we’ve already found the cure?”
Ayání shook his head. “Because this medicine will not end the suffering. I do not blame you, the Apache, or the other clans of the Diné for this illness. Adam must find the one who caused this, and only the wolf within him can tell him that.”
It would have been impossible for Hugo not to hide his surprise. “The wolf?” he asked with a nervous laugh. “There’s no wolf in him.”
“Yes, there is,” he argued before stepping up to place his shaking hand upon Hugo’s chest. “Just like there is a wolf in you and in Geoffrey. You are the pack that protects the people, a gift from the Changing Woman. I knew it the moment you came to us years ago.”
Well, perhaps the Navajo weren’t as ignorant as Hugo thought. If this old man, whose dark, wrinkled hand pressed against him with such boldness and conviction, knew that they were werewolves when no others even entertained the thought, then maybe he was right about Adam. Maybe the boy did need to do some soul-searching. If for nothing else, then as part of his training.
Hugo would have stepped back out of reach from the healer, but he stayed with his feet firmly planted in the dirt. “You know, and you haven’t thrown us out?”
Ayání smiled. “I know you are not skinwalkers. You do good, not evil. If you ever brought harm to our people, then yes, I would have beaten you off with sticks.”
And somehow, Hugo knew the old man could do it too.
Ayání dropped his hand and turned to duck back into his hogan, but gave him a few last words before disappearing into the shade. “You three are a pack, Hugo. You look after one another. I’m sure you have seen that Adam is special. Protect him for the sake of all those who will cross his path. He will be a mighty warrior someday, as will his descendants.”
Hugo stood, stewing on the words of the healer. They were similar to what the spirit of peace had prophesied over them in Russia, the same words he had been thinking about for the last few days as they witnessed the notable skill in his nephew. Was it purely coincidence, or was it like Adam had told him once. They were all connected, like a spider web. At the time, he thought it was just the ramblings of a budding philosopher, but now, there seemed to be some credibility to his assessment of the werewolf condition.
Maybe they were all connected, and maybe, just as they were beginning to realize, Adam certainly was special. Special enough that he needed to be kept safe at all costs.
Chapter Seven
Adam pulled himself over the edge of the ridge and took a moment to catch his breath. The air was thinner on the mountain and the wind went straight through his thin shirt to chill the skin beneath. Several hours of climbing and his wolf finally allowed him to stop. Adam had been content to stay at the base of the mountain, but the snowy caps called to his soul, urging him to do as no other Diné had done.
He turned and gazed out over the landscape below, the cliffs and winding rivers, the villages that dotted across the territory with their wisps of fire smoke trailing upward and the evening sun beyond to the west. He had seen their land from great heights before, but never from the sacred mountain.
Patches of snow surrounded him on the rocky ledge, but there was much more near the peak above him. For whatever reason, the wolf chose this spot.
When he had started out from the village, the wolf within him had been silent, giving up no details or hints to what Ayání might have been suggesting. Yet, as soon as he neared the mountain, the wolf came alive and coaxed him onward with no explanation. There was only the longing to reach this previously undefined place.
Despite the cold and the way his lungs burned for more air with each breath, Adam knew this to be right. Here is where the wolf would speak to him. But no matter how long he waited, the wolf didn’t utter a word or give a single sensation that would lead him closer to some revelation.
Adam watched the sun dip below the plains and hills, but still no supernatural truth came to him.
“Why am I even here?” he asked himself, sitting on the cold stone with his hands resting on his knees. The wolf had not been so silent before when he demanded guidance, so why hold back now?
As the crimson sunset waned into the dark violet of twilight, stars glittered across the night sky. He looked up and traced the constellations that his father had once shown him. Animals and heroic figures from faraway lands took shape in the darkness, but they looked the same as they would have if he were standing outside the village. The only difference now was that he was older, and much colder.
There seemed to be nothing special about this place. He had come all this way just to sit and freeze. Adam slammed his fist on the ground, causing a crack to slither in the rock. Though he could see well in the darkness, he reasoned that it would be better to head back to the village in the morning at first light.
He cleared away some of the snow with quick, frustrated sweeps of his arms and laid down upon his stomach. Still, he couldn’t sleep. With his head nestled in his arms, he stared out over the Diné territory, the home he knew he would have to leave soon. He could see the soft glow of the fires and hear the beating of the drums as they danced in giving thanks for all their many blessings. Though he couldn’t hear their voices, he knew the songs and chants by heart.
Even though he knew it would expend his lungs too much, Adam sang to the rhythm and remembered easier days when he had never given the notion of werewolves and skinwalkers a second thought. Back when his parents could do no wrong and all he cared about was proving himself to his father and his friends.
Now, he was a man, but he didn’t feel like one. He had earned the respect of his clan, especially to his friends and Anaba. He remembered the way she smiled when he returned to the village with the medicine, and how he had gone to her mother’s hogan to administer the cure. He’d miss her, as well as Łichíí and Ayání. He’d miss his mother the most and he felt his heart grow as cold as the ice around him.
He thought of his father and uncle. Why hadn’t they come to find him? Surely they knew he must have been gone by now. Or did they know of this fruitless quest that Ayání had sent him on? What was atop this mountain that he couldn’t have learned in the village?
Then, it came to him. It was the silence. There were no animals to distract him, only the whistling wind and the soft drumbeats below. The rhythm of the earth, it’s heartbeat. Up here, there wasn’t so much crowding into his ears, vying for attention as in the village. Here, it was quiet.
Adam bolted upright and crossed his legs. Not only was it silent, but there were hardly any scents on the wind. Just the rock and snow. Why did he not notice it earlier?
Just like he had done over the past couple of nights, Adam closed his eyes and listened. While there were no noises, he listened to the voice within him, the one he should have been listening to all along.
He slowed his breaths and eased his heartbeat to a steady cadence. The roar of the wind died away, and he no longer felt the cold biting into his skin or the slight ache of hunger in his belly.
In the dark void of his mind, he followed the other pulse that called to him. An ethereal mist formed in the emptiness, taking on the figure of the wolf that shared his body. It was gray at first, but then as it matured and Adam could see the golden eyes
of the beast, the mist plumed with splashes of green and blue that mixed into shades that resembled the late evening sky.
He met the gaze of the wolf in this spiritual plane and watched how its ears swiveled toward sounds he couldn’t hear. With each movement it made, the translucent mist around its body left wisps behind, appearing more like a ghost or spirit than something with a physical form. It ducked its head low with a curious look, but Adam didn’t advance toward it. Not yet. He didn’t even know what to say or what to ask.
He fell to his knees within his vision and offered out a hand to the wolf. It bobbed its head, wary and yet not as suspicious. There was an element of recognition in its golden stare, like it knew what Adam was as much as he knew what it was.
Slowly, the wolf came forward, its paws leaving no tracks behind. Adam never looked away from those eyes he shared with the spirit, the one who gave him the strength, speed, and senses he had never dreamed of.
The tip of the wolf’s nose touched his fingertips and a surreal warmth spread down his hand, through his arm and into his core. The same vapor that created the wolf swirled around his arm like a creeping vine, but Adam wasn’t afraid.
In fact, he smiled at the tingling sensation that crawled across his skin wherever the haze made contact.
The mist crept up to his shoulder and spilled over his chest, consuming him like a rolling fog over the river in the early morning. When the purplish mist veiled across his face, he saw little of the wolf before him. New visions of the world outside this plane flashed in his vision.
One of the rivers that flowed through the Diné land was shown to him, pristine and clear as its currents swept northward. But soon, a dark, evil sludge poured over its banks, tainting the waters. A figure appeared as clouds shrouded the sun above. The man stood tall, so cloaked in fur pelts of black and silver that Adam couldn’t make out his face.
A staff was in his right hand and as he waved it over the great river, it became blacker and blacker. The stench of sickness that he had smelled in the village assaulted his nose. The wicked man danced and exalted over the polluted river, chanting and crying out in victory over this evil thing he had done.
This is what the wolf needed to show him, what Ayání had inferred. This was the cause of the disease that plagued the Diné, the Comanche, and the Spanish. The river that ran through their adjoining lands had been cursed. Cursed by a skinwalker.
Adam opened his eyes and the cold snapped him back to the physical plane where sights, sounds, and feelings existed. He had only ever heard of these meditative visions from the medicine men of his village, but he never imagined that he could have one himself with no training whatsoever.
He thanked the wolf as his heartbeat quickened with this new realization. His people had been afflicted with this illness, not by anything that Geoffrey or Hugo would know about. He had to see Ayání and tell him that it was a skinwalker who was behind it all.
Then again, what could Ayání do? The medicine men had performed every ritual possible to expel the sickness from the village and nothing had worked. What if they already thought of skinwalkers and their typical remedies had no affect? What could be done?
He clambered over the ledge and eased himself down. He still had to warn them. If this truly was a skinwalker who poisoned their water, then it would take more than one dose of medicine to cure his mother and the other villagers. If chants and rituals couldn’t negate the evil of a skinwalker, then it was up to Adam, Geoffrey, and Hugo to seek him out.
Geoffrey added another skinny bit of kindling to the fire within their hogan. Rebecca was sleeping soundly on her bed, her throat less sore than it had been and her fever was beginning to break. The worst may have been behind them, but just as one problem was solved, another arose to take its place.
When he inquired to Hugo where Adam was, there was little suppressing his frustration upon hearing the truth. They argued for the better part of the evening on the prudence of following after him to the mountains or waiting until Adam returned, which was hopefully sooner rather than later.
If Adam had run off any sooner in his training, Geoffrey might have disregarded everything and chased after his son. However, the few days that they spent together allowed him to see that Adam was fully capable of taking care of himself. Perhaps he always had been, and Geoffrey had been too blinded by his assumed parental obligations to see it.
That didn’t keep him from worrying and keeping one ear open for his son’s return.
So, as soon as he heard the rapid pounding of bare feet upon the earth as Adam ran into the village, Geoffrey bolted from his place by the fire and went out to meet him. What he nearly collided with was a version of his son that he had never seen before, not even on the morning after he first turned.
Something must have happened on the mountain to make him don such a frenzied, frightened look, and the craze seemed to transfer to him when they clasped arms.
“What’s wrong?” Geoffrey demanded after giving his son a light shake to draw him out of his wide-eyed daze.
“It’s a skinwalker,” he said, breathless from his long run from the north. “The skinwalker is making everyone sick. I saw it.”
Geoffrey gave his son an incredulous look. “You saw a skinwalker?”
“No, not in person,” he said with an added flavor of irritation. “My wolf showed me. We have to go find him. Now!”
Before Adam could bolt off again into the darkness, Geoffrey held fast and kept him planted. “Son, there are no skinwalkers. Was it another werewolf? What exactly did you see?”
Though it seemed too fantastic to believe that there was another werewolf in this part of the country, it was equally disturbing to think that his son had some sort of hallucination that his wolf triggered. What did the old medicine man say to Adam? Why did he even go to the mountain in the first place? Either Hugo didn’t know those finer details, or he had withheld them in their earlier conversations.
“I don’t think it’s a werewolf,” Adam said after gulping down a few extra breaths of air to steady himself. “At least, he didn’t look it. He looked like a skinwalker.”
Adam went on to describe how he had dropped himself into some meditative state that mentally transported him into the spiritual world where he met with his inner wolf face-to-face. Geoffrey didn’t even think such a thing was possible, but if living so long had taught him anything, it was that he had to keep an open mind. He didn’t pretend to know everything, and unlike Hugo, he was willing to learn. He just hoped that his son hadn’t induced these visions through something that could prove addictive.
He continued to listen to what exactly the wolf had shown him; the river, the supposed skinwalker, everything.
“I think I know where the skinwalker is, too. We have to go and confront him.”
Geoffrey finally let go of his son, convinced that he wouldn’t run off again while they were still speaking. “Confront him? And do what? If what you’re saying is true, then he’s poisoned the river and there’s nothing else to be done. I know a way to purify the water so no one else will get sick. The people just have to boil it and – “
Adam turned insistent. “What if he comes back and does something worse? We have to reverse the evil he’s brought upon the land and I know how.”
He was vaguely aware of Hugo’s approach, but didn’t acknowledge him. “Whoever this man is, he didn’t curse the land or bring some evil upon it. He probably dumped something into the river and that’s how everyone’s been falling ill. I can understand your concern, but what is it that you suggest we do?”
Hugo stood by and folded his arms over his chest. “So there is a skinwalker?” he questioned with a smug look on his face. “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
Geoffrey sneered at his brother. “Let the boy speak.”
Adam pointed to the east where the source of the river flowed. “I saw the place where he’s hiding in a mountain cave. We need to go there, burn his staff and everything he use
s for his rituals. When we find him, we have to say his name and then every evil he inflicted on the Diné will be paid back to him.”
The two brothers looked to one another, each just as perplexed as the other. The Navajo were not the only tribe to have their peculiar superstitions, but he had never heard of this foolproof method for exorcising a skinwalker.
Hugo was the first to break the pause between them. “Brilliant,” he said, brows arched as if he really thought this was the most ingenious plan. “So, what’s the skinwalker’s name?”
Adam’s hands lifted as if he were trying to reach for the answer but struggled to do so. “I don’t know, but I think we’ll find out once we get to the cave.”
Geoffrey pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “And what if we find nothing there? What if there is no cave and there is no skinwalker? What then?”
That was the wrong thing to question. A fierce pulse of power emanated from Adam, the first hint of dominance they had witnessed in him since he turned. “I know he’s there,” he maintained. “My wolf wouldn’t lie about this. Why should it? It cares for the same things that I do, unlike you.”
Without so much as letting his displeasure show in his face, Geoffrey sent out his own wave of dominance to counter his son. Adam staggered a step back, but displayed no hint that his father had affected him. He was a proud warrior and would remain so, even as a werewolf.
“Don’t ever think that I don’t care about this clan or your mother,” Geoffrey growled. “I do care, but I’m not willing to chase after phantoms and hallucinations just because you had some spiritual experience up on a mountaintop. The medicine is helping and once everyone knows to purify the water, the present threat will be gone.”
The Native_A Legacy Series Novella Page 10
