“He’s not a skinwalker,” she explained. “He’s not evil and he doesn’t make people sick. Remember when I told you the story of the Tó Dích’įį’nii clan and how the Changing Woman gave our people the protection of the wolf? It was her gift to us. Your father is our protector, as is your uncle. They can both turn into the ma’iitsoh… and one day, you will too.”
Adam cried out and shoved her back. “No! I’ll never be a skinwalker!”
His mother sighed and reached out for him again, but Adam was already out the door. Even though his legs were aching and his chest felt tight with more tears, he ran out of the village and toward the place where they corralled the horses.
What his mother said didn’t make sense. No one could turn into a wolf without the help of evil magic like the skinwalkers used. They weren’t guardians, but tricksters. No matter how gently and soothingly his mother said it, Adam couldn’t accept this new truth. Everything he knew had been a lie. His father wasn’t the great man he had so admired, and if anything his mother said was right, then Adam would become evil too. Now, more than ever, he hated his green eyes and light skin. It reminded him of his father. Of the skinwalker.
Chapter Two
Navajo Territory, 1734
Adam dug his fingers into the earth as he lay flat on his stomach, watching the buffalo herd grazing peacefully in the valley. It was his idea to stay downwind so their quarry wouldn’t smell their approach. He and five other men from the village set out shortly after the noonday meal. Once Adam had become a permanent member of the hunting party just a few years earlier, hunts became more and more successful with half the effort. It was as if he instinctively knew how the buffalo thought and predicted their movements when they charged in for the kill. Adam knew exactly why that was, but he’d never tell a soul.
Beside him, his friend Hashké Łichíí, waited impatiently for Adam to finish his assessment. The others knew this kind of study took time, but that didn’t stop Łichíí from nudging him in the ribs.
“Have you picked one out yet?” he whispered.
Adam shushed him and continued scrutinizing each member of the herd. He looked for the old and the sick. They would be the easiest to catch and the hunters would spend less time in the chase if they could pick their target out of the mass of thick wooly fur before ever mounting their horses.
After a moment, he gave his nod and pointed out a bull that lingered around the edge of the herd. Not only did he have a limp, but his fur was matted and patchy in places, and lacked that youthful thickness like the others in the herd.
Łichíí nodded and pointed the old bull out to the others in the party down the ridge. They all knew the formation that Adam had taught them years ago, the one that was proven time and time again. Two hunters on either side of the herd would get the bull alone and lure him to a place where the last two hunters would charge in an ambush. That’s where Adam and Łichíí would be.
All six rounded the ridge and made their way into the valley at a slow pace as they moved into position.
Adam was considered a man in their village now, respected as a skilled hunter and horseman. They even stopped calling him Green Eyes and honored the name his parents gave him. Sometimes, he wished they wouldn’t. The horse his father had given him passed away a year ago and the village gifted him with another horse, a beige mare with black hooves and a mane to match. That was just fine with him, because Gift reminded him far too much of his father and it tainted every ride.
His father, Geoffrey, hadn’t come back to the village for two summers now. Ever since that night when Adam discovered that his father wasn’t completely human, a rift had formed between them. He no longer ran to meet Geoffrey when he came back from a trading venture with Hugo. Sometimes, Adam had gone days without speaking a word to him, even when they slept together in the same hogan.
Adam’s mother begged him to be civil, if for nothing else but the fact that he was Geoffrey’s son, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not even when Geoffrey finally sat him down and explained exactly what he was.
They called it a werewolf, a shapeshifter just like the skinwalker, but not nearly as harmful. Geoffrey said there were dangerous werewolves, but he and Hugo were not one of them. No matter how thoroughly he tried to describe how the shift took place every month, Adam didn’t want to hear it. His father was an unnatural creature, out of balance with the world and therefore something to be avoided and shunned. Geoffrey could fool his mother, but he would not fool Adam. No man could transform into a beast without the help of magic.
Yet, not a day went by that Adam wasn’t reminded of the fact that he would become what his father was. His mother had predicted it and Geoffrey tried to convince him that it was a certainty. Yet, he was in his eighteenth summer and nothing had happened. In fact, he had never felt better.
The four charging hunters gave a great shout to startle the herd and their plan was set into motion. By prodding with their spears and steering their horses in just the right way, they managed to single out the elderly bull from the rest.
Adam and Łichíí waited near the edge of the valley with the steep ravine to their backs. Beside him, he could sense his friend’s jumpiness as the bull galloped toward them.
“Now?” he asked nervously, his fists tightening over the reins of his horse.
Adam shook his head and pulled out the arrow from the quiver tied to his saddle horn. He could hear the huffs of the bull as it panted, but he wasn’t slowing down. His new horse had grown accustomed to his daring tactics and stood still in the face of the stampeding buffalo. Łichíí’s horse stamped its hooves and whipped his head in protest to his master’s stillness.
“Now?” Łichíí asked more urgently and cast a glance over his shoulder to the bottom of the ravine.
Adam drew back his bow and aimed for the buffalo’s forehead. Just a little closer.
He loosed the arrow and it lodged into the bull’s skull, right between his horns. The beast tossed its thick head and let out a groan as he began to trip over his hooves.
“Now!”
Adam and Łichíí separated and both drew arrows to fire at the bull’s neck as it came tumbling over the last few yards. All six warriors kept their distance until they could guarantee the kill. When the bull’s heavy body stopped heaving for air and when its legs finally went still, they let out their victory cries.
Adam didn’t join in. His eyes honed in on the dead buffalo and he felt something deep within his chest. It wasn’t the relief that usually came with a successful kill. This was something darker. He was more than glad that his people would eat well that evening. There was a kind of pleasure, a carnal satisfaction in seeing the animal writhe in pain as the life faded from its dark eyes.
Such feelings were perverse. He should have been sending up thanks for the privilege to take what he needed from the earth, but suddenly, he only felt entitled to this gift. This kill was meant for him and he earned it. Adam wanted to lash out at the others who dared to come close to the bull, but that wasn’t right either.
He shook his head and stayed back as the other men made to tie the bull to their horses in preparation for the long ride home. Never had he felt such savage impulses.
“Are you all right, Adam?” Łichíí asked as he tied his bow back to his saddle.
Adam swallowed hard and took a breath to bring himself back to the present. “Yes, I’m fine. Let’s just go home.”
He turned his horse to the east and trotted on without his friend. The others followed, dragging the bull behind them, leaving a long scar in the dirt as they went. He couldn’t confess what he truly felt. Adam could scarcely put it into words, but if he didn’t know any better, he would have thought a bit of a beast stirred within him at that very moment. That idea alone scared him into silence for much of the trip back to the village.
But when they came upon the sheep herds just beyond the cluster of hogans, Adam was blasted out of his troublesome thoughts. With some of the
other women, he spotted her. When he was younger, he thought his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world and he’d never find another to equal her. That changed when At’ééd Anaba arrived to their village, escaping an Apache raiding party that had attacked her clan in the west.
She and her fellow K’aa’ Dine’é clan members were welcomed into their village and Adam’s heart never beat the same way again. Even now, as she smiled and laughed with the other women who looked after the sheep, his guts twisted nervously beneath his skin until he thought he would be ill. But, he loved the feeling.
Łichíí came up beside him and his gaze shifted between Adam and the new girl. “If all you’re going to do is stare, then I might as well go talk to her.”
Adam shot him a glare. “You know, you talk too much.”
He laughed. “And you don’t talk enough!”
Adam shoved his friend’s shoulder. “I only speak when it’s needed.”
“And you need to go speak to her before someone else does.” Łichíí waved him on. “Go. We’ll take care of the buffalo.”
That strange territorial inclination swept through Adam, but it disappeared when he looked back at Anaba and how her raven hair gleamed in the sunlight. After a few moments of simply admiring her, Adam finally kicked his horse forward.
All the way toward the freely grazing sheep herd, he rehearsed what he would say, but nothing sounded right. He needed words that would impress her, yet nothing came to mind that would do just that. Everything sounded either too impassionate or too presumptuous. He didn’t want to come across as arrogant or conceited, but neither did he want to be so polite that she wouldn’t see how hard he was falling for her subtle charms.
When he was within just a couple of yards, cutting a path for himself between the startled sheep, he still didn’t have the right greeting. The three women who were with her looked up to him and smiled in greeting. It was the same kind of smile many of the younger girls in the village gave him as he was growing up. One day, he had asked his mother why they giggled when he walked by and that commenced the most awkward conversation of his young adult life.
But he didn’t care about the other girls. He wanted to see Anaba smile at him like that. At least then, he knew he had a chance. She looked up at him through her dark eyelashes and Adam’s lips pulled back into a grin.
“Yá’át’ééh,” he said.
Anaba replied with her own hello, and the other women broke into a fit of giggles before moving away to give them some privacy. Did they know something that he didn’t?
Adam did know that if he tried to dismount, his legs wouldn’t have any strength left to keep him standing. Her gaze alone made him forget what he planned to ask her.
“I see you were successful,” Anaba commented, nodding toward the men who were on their way to the village with the dead buffalo. “They tell me you’re a skilled hunter.”
Would it have been appropriate to agree, or should he be humble like his father once taught him so long ago? Adam shrugged his broad shoulders. Years spent hunting, helping to build hogans for other villagers, and practicing his archery had made him into a strong man, just like his father and uncle.
“I was taught by the best hunters in our clan,” he replied, hoping that displacing the honor to someone else would be a favorable answer in her eyes. “I know you’ve been here a while, but I never had the chance to properly welcome you.”
Anaba shifted her weight from one foot to the other, the decorative beads around her neck jingling with the movement. “Everyone in your village has been so kind. It was generous of you to take my family in after all we’ve been through.”
A shadow of grief passed over her for the briefest moment, but it lapsed just as quickly as it came. Adam wished he could have known her sooner, so he could have saved her from the tragedy she must have endured. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to lose the only home she’d ever known. Just the thought of leaving his mother was unsettling enough.
“My name’s Adam,” he said, hoping to divert the conversation back to something more pleasant. Though, as soon as he spoke his name, he knew he had done wrong.
Anaba looked at him quizzically. “That doesn’t sound like a Diné name.”
He sighed, knowing that he would have to explain his heritage to her. He barely liked to be reminded of it himself. “It’s not. It’s the name my father gave me. He isn’t Diné.”
“It doesn’t sound like an Apache or Ute word either.”
“It’s not. Nor is it Spanish. My father’s… he’s not like anyone you’ve probably ever met.”
A spark of understanding shone in her eyes. “Oh, is he one of those pale men that came to the village earlier?”
Adam’s shoulders slumped as his smile faded. “Pale men?”
She pointed toward the village. “Yes. Two men came riding through earlier. One of them had hair the color of corn.”
That was his father, returned after nearly two summers of being away. And, no doubt, Uncle Hugo was with him. Was it a coincidence that his father returned on the same day that he felt this strange stirring in his chest? Or was it an ill omen of that day he had dreaded for the last ten summers?
“Is something wrong?” she asked, knocking Adam out of his anxious thoughts.
He tried to smile again, but not even Anaba’s pretty face could put him at ease. “I’m fine,” he lied. “I was actually just wondering if you would sit with me during the evening meal.”
Anaba was quick to forget the worried look on his face and she smiled up at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Absolutely! I’d love to.”
He felt he could breathe for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her. She didn’t reject him, despite the fact that he looked so different from the others in the village and he bore an uncommon name that held no meaning in their language. Even if his father was in the village, even if this was the first of many strange and difficult days to come, Anaba said she would sit with him that evening and that made it the best day of his life.
Geoffrey watched as Rebecca’s hands slipped the yarn through the loom strings, slowly creating one of her masterpieces. It had only been two years, but already he could see the lines on her face deepening with age. Even her fingers didn’t seem as nimble anymore. Her movements were slow, as if she were trying to be careful and precise more so than usual. How many times had she had to restart a weave or an entire blanket because she had made an error? Would his presence have changed anything?
He told her they would be gone for a while, just to explore the region to the south and see what legends they could learn from the Mexicans. Although the myth of a nagual was fascinating in itself, it wasn’t worth the time Geoffrey and Hugo spent away from the Navajo territory.
Geoffrey reached out and took one of Rebecca’s cold, shaking hands. He held it tight, warming it as best as he could. The faint scent of sickness lingered over her and he could see her once bright eyes had dulled. Despite the pain she must have been feeling, Rebecca smiled to him in that sweet way she always did.
If this sickness she denied was what he suspected, Geoffrey knew he couldn’t stand by and let it happen. A disease of some sort was sweeping through the native tribes in the south, and it had finally made its way to the Navajo Nation. It was a vicious plague, contagious and it seemed to be nearly incurable, except for one medicine he knew of.
“God, I wish I could stay,” he mumbled as he pressed a kiss to the back of her hand.
She nodded. “I know.” He hated the way her voice sounded so weak and frail, so different than what it had been before they left.
Geoffrey and Hugo had planned to travel more, but as soon as he realized that his son would be turning soon, they rushed back to the Navajo village. He could feel it deep within his soul, a tight and expectant feeling that plagued him and his wolf. Adam’s first shift would come any day now, and he had to be there to help. They wouldn’t make the same mistake as they did with Hugo’s son. But
as soon as Adam shifted, they would leave again. This time, he didn’t know how long they would be gone.
Not only did they have his training to consider, but if Geoffrey could make it to the Spanish in time, perhaps he could save his wife from the final stage of this plague. Death. Entire villages had been nearly wiped out by this mysterious sickness and Geoffrey wouldn’t let Rebecca or her people suffer from it.
“Has Adam been behaving differently at all?” Geoffrey asked, trying to push out the melancholy thoughts for another day.
She set down the stray yarn from her project and sighed. “He’s still the same as when you left. Perhaps a little more distracted than before.”
“Distracted?” Rebecca gave him a sly look and Geoffrey immediately knew what she meant. “What’s her name?” he inquired through a soft laugh.
Rebecca went on to tell him about At’ééd Anaba and her family that had escaped the Apache raids to the south. Geoffrey had heard of the raids and hoped that her village would be spared the violence.
“Adam’s also been talking about becoming an apprentice to the hataałii. He watches them while they paint in the sand and he says he wants to help people in the same way.”
Somehow, that didn’t surprise him as much as Adam’s interest in women. Even as a child, he had been a compassionate boy, willing to help and aid those in need. The thought that he would want to take up the role as a medicine man’s apprentice would have been a noble pursuit. Geoffrey dreaded the moment when he would have to tell Adam that he couldn’t do it. Not right now anyway, when he was so close to turning.
He heard his son approach the hogan and he could already feel the hostility he brought with him. Someone must have told him that his father had returned. How he hated the way things had become since that night so long ago. Geoffrey had known his son was watching, but with Hugo trailing close behind him, he thought that perhaps seeing the shift would have been a better way to reveal the truth.
The Native (A Legacy Series Novella) (The Legacy Series Book 6) Page 3