Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World Book 1)

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  “I can help clean up,” Kai offers.

  “No, you sit.” I gesture him to an empty chair. “Ma’ii owes me some stories after the shit he’s pulled. I want you to hear them too.”

  I gather our cups. Rub a foot over the new stain in my carpet. I brush past Ma’ii as I head to the kitchen. This time he stays where he is, solid on contact. The hard thump against his shoulder that makes him stumble back a step pleases me more than it should.

  Kai’s voice follows me into the kitchen. “I don’t know if coffee’s such a great idea. Maybe she should lay off the caffeine.”

  I’m in the kitchen, spooning out coffee grounds, listening to Kai and Ma’ii talk.

  “So how do you know my name?”

  There’s a beat of silence before Ma’ii says, “A Coyote knows all things.”

  “That’s right. Mags called you Coyote. Are you the Coyote?”

  “You may call me ‘Ma’ii.’ And you call Magdalena . . . ‘Mags’?”

  “Women like nicknames.”

  “Indeed.”

  I smile despite myself as I make three cups of coffee. Sugar for Ma’ii. I remember Kai likes milk and check the small refrigerator to see if I have any. A little sheep’s milk. A few weeks old, but it smells fine. I pour it in. I take all three cups out, set Kai’s and Ma’ii’s on the table. Kai’s slid into my vacated spot, resting easy in the chair. Arms loose at his side, legs wide. Looking completely unfazed by the strange evening. Coyote’s back in his place. He takes the coffee from me with a shrewd sideways glance. I ignore it and step around his skinny legs to slump down on the sofa. I take a sip. The coffee’s cooled considerably, but it’s still good.

  Coyote says, “So Magdalena tells me you are her future lover.”

  Kai barks a sharp laugh and I spit lukewarm coffee on my pants. “What?” I’m sputtering as heat colors my cheeks. “I didn’t say that. I did not say that!”

  Coyote flips his overlong fingers, offering an open hand as some sort of half-hearted mea culpa. “Well, perhaps not in so many words.”

  Kai grins big. “Maggie and I just met today, so I wouldn’t want to presume. Besides, I’m sure a beautiful woman like her has her choice of men.”

  My eyes shoot to Kai, looking for the joke. I clean up okay, but no one has ever accused me of being beautiful, and I know damn well I’m not as pretty as he is. But I can see nothing but sincerity in his face.

  Coyote nods sagely, eyes on me. “I try to tell her that there are many lovers, numerous as the stars.”

  “You try what?” I snort. “Oh, so now you’re trying to help me? What you said before, that was meant to help me?”

  Ma’ii stares at me flatly. “I know you do not believe it, but I am always trying to help you, Magdalena.”

  “You are always trying to help yourself.”

  “Can I not do both at once?”

  “No, you cannot do both at once.”

  “So Maggie said you are old friends,” Kai cuts in smoothly. “How did you meet?”

  No, I said we were frenemies, and that had been generous. Even more so after his antics tonight, but Ma’ii perks up and smiles a wide delighted smile.

  “Yes, we are old friends,” he agrees cheerfully. “I met Magdalena when she was but a girl, before the end of the Fifth World, when my kind still lived mostly in the dreams of the five-fingered people.”

  “ ‘The five-fingered people.’ That’s us. Humans.”

  Ma’ii smiles, tolerant. “The Diné, yes.”

  “And the end of the Fifth World?” Kai asks. “Do you mean the Big Water?”

  “Just so.” Ma’ii leans forward, settling into his storytelling role. Just like that, Kai has him talking. Not teasing or snipping at me, but sharing his vast knowledge of Dinétah. I am reluctantly impressed.

  “I have lived many lives in many worlds,” Ma’ii says, “even before Changing Woman made the five-fingered people, and in them all the worlds have come to an end in a great flood. Each time the waters rose so high on all sides that we thought the cresting waves were the tips of the snowy mountains. This last flood, the one you call the Big Water, ended the Fifth World and began the Sixth. It opened the passage for those like myself to return to the world.”

  His voice has taken on a dramatic quality, almost like a melody. He’s obviously enjoying himself, basking in Kai’s rapt attention. But I notice that he doesn’t mention his role in causing those early floods, and wonder what role, if any, he may have had in causing the latest one.

  “Earth surface world?” Kai asks.

  “Dinétah.”

  “And before you lived in dreams?”

  “Dreams and visions,” Ma’ii acknowledges. “Legends and songs.”

  “And now?”

  “And now with the rise of Dinétah and the Sixth World, we are as we were before.”

  “And by ‘we’ you mean?”

  “We. The Diyin Dine’é, or as you call them, the Holy People. And those of us who are Bik’e’áyéeii.”

  “So you are not one of the Diyin Dine’é?”

  He leans his head to the side, looking like a dog trying to understand the stupid human, and says, “I am Coyote.”

  “Of course,” Kai says easily, not missing a beat. “And there are others like you?”

  “There are others—Badger, Bobcat, Wolf—but none such as me.” He preens a little and fluffs his cravat.

  “And what about the monsters?” I ask.

  He pauses for a moment, thinking, before he continues. “Some, it is true, were vanquished long ago and did not return. But others were spared by the Monsterslayer and still live. Hunger, poverty, old age. All these were once called monsters. But we also had the great Yeiisoh, the lumbering water dragon whose skeleton lies not far from here across the mountaintops. And then there are the monsters of your own creation. The yee naaldlshii, witches who sell their humanity for power, ch’įdii, the spirits that contain the evil of all men and women upon their deaths. And the ones who Magdalena favors in the hunt. The ones who devour young girls.” His eyes slide my way.

  He’s baiting me, but it makes me think of something else. “What about tsé naayéé’?”

  “Alas, I do not know this monster.” His eyes wander away from me to look at the wall.

  “A man-made creature, maybe something made from witchcraft? It resembles a person but eats human flesh. Or at least tears out throats. And it can’t speak words. I killed one up on the mountain yesterday. It’s the thing that took the little g—” I stop myself. I don’t want Kai to know the details about Atty, not yet. I cover my abruptness with a fake yawn that turns real.

  Ma’ii watches me for a moment, clearly thinking about something, before he says, “It has been many moons since I’ve enjoyed such fine conversation. Stories, and an evening meal shared among friends. It is just what a lonely Coyote needs.” He smiles at me encouragingly, which frankly, isn’t a pleasant sight. The face he wears is meant more for sneers and haughty disdain. Trying to work that long thin face into something passably friendly is ridiculous. Nevertheless, he’s earnest. And then I realize what he said.

  “I never said I’d cook for you.”

  As if on cue, Kai’s stomach growls, loud enough for us both to turn.

  “Traitor,” I mutter.

  Well, perhaps having Coyote here isn’t a total loss. He seems willing to talk to Kai, so maybe there’s a kernel of information in there among his stories that will help us figure out more about the tsé naayéé’.

  “Okay,” I say, pushing myself up from the chair. “I’ll feed you both. Dinner and, yes, more coffee. And then you go, Ma’ii. I can only take so much of your friendship at a time.”

  He touches a claw to his forehead.

  “Thanks, Mags,” Kai says. He gives me that big smile that lights up his whole face. I shake my head. Kai has charm, I’ll give him that. And the fact that he’s charmed Ma’ii is pretty extraordinary. But that doesn’t mean he and Ma’ii getting along is a good thi
ng. More likely it’s a disaster in the making.

  “Great!” I say brightly. “You two talk. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Chapter 14

  Their voices keep me company as I work. There’s a gentle songlike quality to their conversation, and the sound flows through my tiny trailer, filling the space. I only half listen, and not to their words, but to the rhythm of the talking itself.

  I look around the kitchen. I’ve been on my own for so long that it takes me a moment to think about what I can possibly make them to eat. I usually eat standing over the sink, and the food I eat is cheap and convenient. Dried meat. A handful of nuts. Things that come in cans that I can open with a pocketknife and heat in a single pot. Again, remnants of a life with Neizghání despite being without him for the better part of a year. But now I need, no, I want to make a meal.

  I’m not much of a cook. In fact, my natural lack of homemaking skills scandalized my nalí when I was young. But even I can heat up some canned beans and make frybread. I find a can of diced chiles and toss it in with the beans. Next comes a little lard, scooped in a flat pan to melt. I unfold the towel that I keep my soft lump of dough in. I mixed it before I got the message to go to Lukachukai, so it’s still good. I dip my hands in the flour and pound out three pieces of dough pat-a-cake style, the slapping sound bringing back memories of my nalí’s kitchen and the daily ritual of making bread.

  My nalí. She raised me herself, just the two of us living in a trailer not unlike the one I live in now, up along the isolated pine ridge above Fort Defiance. She was a good woman, not overly warm or loving, but she made sure I was fed and clothed and she got me to school every day. My grandmother didn’t deserve what happened to her, what happened to us, on that winter night all those years ago.

  I can’t say why the memory rushes back with the force it does. I’m good at keeping it locked away. Maybe it was Tah’s careless mention of my childhood, maybe Coyote’s crude prodding at the ugly facts, and maybe the truth was that any time I get the least bit comfortable and let my guard down, it’s there, waiting for me, and it always will be.

  The blood.

  I remember there was so much blood.

  Rivers of it, lakes of crimson soaking into the cheap carpet around my grandmother’s broken body. She’s wearing her bathrobe, a fuzzy blue-and-white Walmart bargain find that I keep trying to get her to throw away. She insists it’s fine for an old woman, and teases me for being vain for preferring my pink velour sweatpants, also last season from Walmart, but certainly more fashionable than her baggy thing.

  We are sitting on the couch watching an old Western. We don’t often run the generator just to watch videos, but we’re celebrating. It’s my sixteenth birthday. We’ve even made cake.

  On the screen a proper white lady in a bonnet and hoop dress is asking the beleaguered hero with a star pinned to his chest for help against the Comanche Indians. I make some crack about the ridiculous braided wigs the “Indian” actors are wearing, and my grandmother hushes me, not wanting my sixteen-year-old cynicism to ruin her good time.

  We both flinch at the unexpected hammering on the door. Short on its heels comes the hooting and laughter and the pounding on the walls outside. Somewhere a coyote yips wildly, its own eerie laughter. Faces glimpsed and then lost through the windows, flickering in and out like firelight. Around and around, and we realize they’re circling us. At least half a dozen of them, maybe more, dancing around our trailer like movie Indians circling the wagon, but we’re all Diné here, and for a minute we can’t figure out what’s going on.

  We stare at each other, stunned helpless in our confusion and panic. Slow terror creeps up my neck, cold whispers licking at my ears. I sit there uselessly. Until my grandma yells at me to get the shotgun. She keeps one by her bed. In the other room.

  But by then it’s too late.

  The door bursts open, ushering in the February air and the evil that rides behind it.

  I catch a glimpse of the yee naaldlshii witch wearing the wolf skin and dead man’s jewelry before his pack of followers is through the door, flowing around him like an uncontained tide.

  I sprint for the gun. Hear my grandmother’s voice rise in shrill indignation. And then the terrible sound of impact as something cracks across her skull.

  There’s a heaviness on my back, and I’m falling, tackled from behind. My chest hits the floor. Air whooshes from my lungs. The taste of chemicals fills my mouth as my head is shoved into the carpet. A fleshy hand scrapes across my face, smelling like burned pig fat. I bite, drawing blood. A man screams and lets go.

  A chance to run, and I fight with all I have, scrambling on hands and knees to get away. Until a booted foot smashes me to the ground. Strong fingers massage the back of my head, almost a loving caress through my hair at first, and then he grabs a fistful and slams my face into the floor. Again, again. Pain explodes behind my eyes, blood flows where I bite through my tongue. He doesn’t stop until I lie still.

  My vision begins to fail under the onslaught of agony. I force my eyes to focus long enough to see the witch’s face peer down at me. He’s wearing a wolf’s head on top of his own, the jaw gaping at his forehead and the boneless arms hanging down past his ears. The witch’s eyes are a pale gray and his teeth, as he smiles at me, are rotted and yellow.

  His face disappears as the edges of my world close in and everything goes black.

  I wake. For a moment, I think I must be dead. But my mouth still tastes like ammonia and blood. And there are voices, arguing. The witch and his men. My head throbs in blacks and purples and the words they speak are too fast for me to follow. Strange words I don’t recognize. No. There’s one. Ná’á’ah. The Navajo word for butchering.

  And I know why they’ve come. What they plan to do. And that the fat I smelled on the man’s hands wasn’t pig fat at all.

  Another voice. My grandmother. I dare to open my eyes, and at first all I see is the dizzy swirl of snow through the open door, the pale landscape bled white and cold. Then my grandmother speaks again, this time a low desperate begging. A scrambling noise, grunts and shouts, and the popping sound of a fist striking jawbone. My grandmother silenced. I hear a new noise and can’t figure it out. Until I do. The sound of rope against wheel, as they string my grandmother from the ceiling.

  Sudden hands on me. I’m hauled to my feet. The earth careens, unsteady. Blood drips from my nose, my lips. I swallow and taste my own death.

  The witch shoves something at me. Forces my fingers tight around it. He steps back, diseased eyes never leaving mine. Points at my nalí and then mimes a sharp cut across her throat. He whispers one word. Mercy.

  My hand shakes. I drop the knife. Someone laughs, a sound like the hooting of an owl. The witch shakes his head in mock disappointment. It’s a joke to him. It’s all a joke.

  The punch to my gut comes so fast all I feel is the dull nausea afterward. Tears flood my eyes.

  A braver girl, a smarter girl, would fight. Would take that knife and use it against the witch. Find a way to kill them all and save her grandmother. Be the hero. But I’m not that girl. I’m slow and dumb and can’t even hold a knife in my shivering hand.

  I drop to the ground when they release my arms. Lay my head down in the wet carpet. The sticky sweetness of my own vomit coats my cheek as I lie there, silent, and listen as they butcher my grandmother for meat.

  When it is my turn to die, I don’t resist. They rouse me from the pool of sick on the floor. Loop the cord around my hands so they can hang me up.

  A sound outside.

  The witch pauses, rope still loose around my wrists. He turns toward the door. We all do. A noise, faint at first, the wind through the shattered windows. A kiss of cold touches my face, a whisper of words in my ear. A song I’ve never heard, but the melody is sweet like the taste of blood, the descant as bright as new steel. It wakes me from my stupor, clears my mind in a skull that no longer aches.

  It strengthens the resolve of a will that was o
nce broken.

  Hardens a heart that was once soft.

  And I see.

  The dull glint of dirty silver around the witch’s neck. The red lake that laps at my toes. The hard killing metal of the butchering knife lying momentarily forgotten on the floor next to their abomination of fresh meat.

  And I move.

  The first one is easy to kill. The rope in my hands wraps around his neck, and the butchering knife dances in my hand, and the man is dead before I even realize I am in motion. That I’ve done it at all. Silence, the others so stunned that they only turn and stare at the girl who moments ago was a lamb willing to be led to the slaughter.

  And then the quiet breaks.

  Shouts, as the fragile men move in slow motion around me. I see their actions, the path their bodies will follow before they do. And I am there, making sure they never move again. Even the spray of blood from the witch’s throat seems to spatter my face in slow motion, and I watch, pleased, as his gray eyes go dim.

  I can’t say what awakened my clan powers in that moment, before I knew these powers existed, before it was known among the Diné that such a thing could happen. I sometimes wonder if it was the ghostly kiss I felt from the wind, and whether it was the wind that touched me at all. Or something more. Something, or someone, else. That showed me just how terrible I could be.

  I’m not sure how many I’ve killed when I feel the first tug of my clan power fading, like the ebb of an ocean tide. The massive adrenaline rush I’m riding falls away too, leaving my hands shaking and me suddenly straining against an all-consuming exhaustion.

  I search the trailer, wild-eyed, reeling and terrified that I have not killed them all and now my body is failing and it will be too late. But I only see dead men on the ground, smell their loosed bowels and coppery blood mingling with that of my dead grandmother.

  My shoulders sag and a sob flies from my lips.